by Avery Flynn
Listing toward the living room, he grabbed a bottle of whiskey from Clover’s flea market bar cart on the way and settled onto the couch in a haze. He clicked the remote and an episode of Flea Market Flip appeared on his TV. His finger hovered over the button to change the channel but he couldn’t push it. They’d seen this one together. The older women kicked their husbands’ asses. The remote slipped from his hand and landed on the coffee table with a hard thunk.
Watching this horrible show was like pouring rock salt into a gaping wound, but he couldn’t stop because what all the alcohol in his system couldn’t dull was the fact that Clover was gone and it was his fault. He’d missed some detail that really mattered. He’d fucked up. Now he’d pay the price.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Someone had taken a tire iron to Sawyer’s head. It was the only explanation for the pounding that was loud enough to rattle his teeth. He opened his eyes and sat up. That was a mistake. His stomach pitched and the room spun just enough to make him squeeze his eyes shut, white knuckle the couch, and promise to whomever was listening that he would never ever do whatever it was that he’d done to get that way ever again.
The intercom buzzed and the sound vibrated down his spine.
Okay, it wasn’t a tire iron, but Irving’s buzzer finger that was trying to kill him. Girding himself, he took a breath and then stood up and staggered toward the intercom box by the elevator.
He pressed his hand to the talk button and leaned his sweaty forehead against the cool elevator doors. “Irving.”
“This is not Irving,” his mother said, her normally strident tone had an extra robotic quality thanks to the crappy intercom speaker and his whiskey-soaked brain. “Undo the override lock on your elevator.”
When had he locked the elevator? Last night? No yesterday morning. It was coming back now. Clover had punched through his rib cage to rip out his still beating heart, he’d gotten very, very drunk for several days, and after that it got gray—or was that amber-colored—and foggy. Whatever color his world was, it required solitude to really soak up all of the self-pity. It was definitely not the place for his mother—especially not when he was so foul after almost two days in the same tuxedo pants and undershirt that he could smell himself.
“Mom, I’m not really—”
“Do not even bother,” she interrupted. “Your brother has told me everything about the idiotic fake engagement you two cooked up.”
Well, he didn’t have to worry about puking anymore because his stomach had dropped down three floors. “Shit.”
“That’s a succinct way of putting it. Now undo the elevator override lock.”
“I’m not really feeling well.” Or sane. Or remotely human.
“Just imagine how you’ll be feeling when your sixty-one-year-old mother has to climb dozens of sets of stairs just to give you a piece of her mind. Unlock the elevator immediately, Sawyer Anthony Carlyle.”
His middle name. It didn’t matter that he was a grown man, it was still parental fucking kryptonite. Knowing he was going to regret it but that he didn’t have a choice, he entered his security code into the touchscreen menu and unlocked the elevator. Then, while the touchscreen displayed the floor numbers as the elevator passed them on its way up to the penthouse, he ambled back to the living room and the chaos that awaited him there. Yet another do-it-yourself show was on the TV. About a dozen empty beer bottles, a mostly empty bottle of whiskey, and a half-eaten bag of sriracha-flavored chips littered the coffee table. He was contemplating cleaning the mess up when the elevator doors opened. His mom and Hudson got off.
“Oh look,” Sawyer said, his voice a rusty unused sound, “you brought Brutus with you.”
“Hudson didn’t betray you. He’s trying to help you.” Helene gave Sawyer a long, disgusted up and down look before grimacing. “Are you still drunk?”
“What makes you think I’m drunk?” he asked from the safety of his non-moving couch because the rest of the room was starting to tilt on its axis.
“You’re still in your tux and the gala was two days ago,” his mom said, keeping her distance—no doubt to avoid the smell.
Hudson, on the other hand, leaned forward and took a deep and dramatic whiff. “And you smell like a dive bar floor after they turn on the lights.”
“Good thing neither of you need to be here anyway, so go away.” He grabbed the bottle of whiskey more for show than anything since the contents of his stomach echoed the slosh of the amber liquid in the bottle.
Hudson swiped it out of his hands and set it down on the bright red bar cart. “You’ve had enough.”
Sawyer couldn’t look away from the cart. He and Clover had refinished it out on the balcony and staring at it was like dragging barbwire across his skin. So he kept staring at it as a punishment for her leaving and a reminder that she’d been here at all. He got up and stumbled toward it. “I’ll say when I’ve had enough.”
“No, you’ll listen,” his mom said, stopping him in his tracks.
The change in momentum was more than his fragile sense of balance could take. He flung his arm out to keep from tipping over, connecting with a chair and sliding down into it.
Holding on to his anger since his dignity had disappeared, he glared at his mom and brother. “You obviously want to say whatever it is that you’ve got on your mind, so say it and leave.”
“You’re a moron,” Hudson said.
“Maybe,” Sawyer said, sounding every bit like an asshole but unable to stop himself. “But I’m still smarter than you.”
Helene walked in between them, stopping the argument before it even got started, and halted in front of Sawyer’s chair. Arms crossed and her expression grim, she shook her head in dismay. Then she got down to giving him the talking to she’d obviously come here for.
“For the past year, I have been so afraid that you’d go through life without having what your father and I had—love,” she said. “You’re so busy with Carlyle Enterprises and your blasted big-picture vision that you miss all the little things that make life important. The small moments that combine to make something great. After what happened with your father, I couldn’t let you make the same mistakes he did. And I couldn’t fail you the way I failed him by not finding a way to make you see that there’s more to life than your damned big-picture plan. So I began pushing wife candidate after wife candidate at you and you barely even noticed.”
“Oh I noticed,” he grumbled.
“Not until Clover came around,” she shot back.
Having her memory imprinted on his brain was bad enough. Hearing her name was unbearable. “If you’re here to talk about her, you can just leave now because she’s gone.”
“We’re all aware of that,” Hudson said. “Irving is a fountain of information.”
To everyone but him it seemed.
Helene went on as if neither of her children had said a word. “When your brother told me about this juvenile little plan you came up with to have Clover pose as your fiancée, I was utterly annoyed.”
He swore he could smell smoke as the creaky gears in his head jammed to a halt. Eyes narrowed, he turned to Hudson. “I can’t believe you told her.”
“When you didn’t show up to work for the first time in your entire life yesterday, Mom broke out the pliers and battery jumper cables.” Hudson shrugged. “She broke me.”
Sawyer sank back into the chair, defeat weighing his shoulder down. “Thanks a lot.”
Still ignoring her children’s sniping, Helene continued, “And then when Linus told me about your absolutely horrible proposal—”
Jesus. Humiliation heated his face to wildfire levels. “Is there anyone who can keep their mouth shut around you?”
“No,” Helene said. “Not even your fake fiancée who told me all about your dates to the flea market. I’ve never met anyone who could get you out of the all-business-all-the-time mindset. But she did. And looking at how you’re handling the fact that she left, I can only come to one conclu
sion. You are as in love with Clover as she is with you.”
If he’d had it in him, he would have laughed. It would have been a bitter, mean little laugh but a laugh all the same. Instead, he just sat there like a man who’d been slugged one too many times by a heavyweight boxer.
“Try again,” he managed to get out. “She said no.”
“To being your teammate?” Helene snorted, a sound he’d never heard her make before in his entire life. “Color me shocked.”
Why did the women in his life keep getting stuck on that word? Correction. Not women. Woman. Clover was gone. Out of his life. It was just woman now. And that woman was his mom. That wasn’t fucking pathetic at all.
“It wasn’t like that,” he said, the pit of his stomach filling with the kind of dread that only happened when he’d fucked up. “I didn’t want her to think that marriage meant the end of her autonomy, her sense of adventure. I didn’t want her to feel trapped.”
“So instead you made her feel unloved,” Helene said. “Well done. Add to that your brother brilliantly interfering by telling her to break it off with you.”
“You what?” He bounded out of the chair toward Hudson, swinging.
His brother easily avoided his wild punch before connecting a jab to Sawyer’s jaw. Sawyer’s head snapped back and pain vibrated through his already aching head. Not that it mattered. His brother—the one he’d always trusted to have his back—had pushed Clover away. Red leaked into Sawyer’s vision and he struck out with everything he had. Unfortunately, after almost two days of only alcohol and sriracha-flavored chips, that wasn’t much. Hudson bobbed and weaved, then shoved Sawyer hard until he landed back in the chair he’d jumped out of.
“Oh, stop it.” Helene glared at both of them. “Sawyer, you’d already mucked it all up before your brother opened his big mouth anyway. No one wants to get married because their future spouse thinks they make a good teammate. Everyone wants to be—and deserves to be—noticed and loved for the little things that make them who they are, the details that make them special. If you love her, those are the reasons why you do and you have to tell her every one.”
What bullshit.
All the frustration that had been boiling inside him spilled over. “I do notice all of those details about Clover,” he yelled, loud enough that the words reverberated in his head. “The way she chews her lip when she’s nervous. The way the sunlight catches her hair and brings out the red you don’t see otherwise. The way her brain moves so quick in negotiations. The way she owns a room the moment she walks into it.”
His mother lifted an eyebrow but otherwise didn’t react to his outburst. “Then I suggest you find a way to tell her that.”
All the fight leaked out of him as the realization hit of just how much he’d fucked everything up. If he didn’t feel like puking so much, he’d go get the bottle of whiskey from the bar cart and fall back into it.
Helene opened up her purse, reached inside, and pulled out the emerald and diamond engagement ring. “A hotel employee found this in the supply closet and the hotel notified management, who called me. Of course, I immediately recognized it as your grandmother’s ring.” She held it out to him. “I believe you’ll be needing it.”
He kept his hands fisted on his thighs and his gaze averted. He’d fucked up. Clover was gone. A ring wasn’t going to bring her back. “I won’t.”
She harrumphed and dropped the ring onto the red bar cart. “So you say.”
Obviously deciding that she’d driven the sword in deep enough, Helene motioned to Hudson and they both walked to the elevator and disappeared inside, leaving him alone to stew in his own misery and stink. From where he sat, he could see the ring glimmering as the light streaming in from the balcony landed on the bar cart. He should throw both items over the balcony railing. The thing squeezing his chest tight loosened. He’d never had a better idea. Get rid of them and anything else that she’d ever touched. Then, he could create a new big-picture plan on the clean slate that would be left.
Energized for the first time since he’d left the Bayview Hotel, Sawyer leaped out of his chair and strode over to the closet where he had hidden all of the stupid hiking boots she’d ordered. He piled them high on the bar cart. He reached out to grab it by the handles ready to toss the whole lot overboard and— He couldn’t do it. Maybe later, after a shower. That would clear his head, and afterward he’d get rid of anything that even remotely reminded him of Clover. Now that was a big-picture plan.
…
Achy but cried out, Clover cuddled deeper under her covers and pressed “Next Episode” on her tablet. So what if she was now three episodes deep in a superhero show about a woman who drank too much and did her best to act like she didn’t give a shit about anyone except her best friend. Perfect for someone who was in a fuck-the-world kind of mood. It wasn’t like Clover had anywhere to go or anything to do. She was unemployed. Australia was officially a pipe dream. And she had a hole in her chest where her heart used to be. Plus she couldn’t get Hudson’s words out of her head about how she’d been looking for her purpose. What was the point of it all? What good was having all of the adventures in the world and helping people if she didn’t have anyone to share those experiences with?
Take, for example, her mom. For most of Clover’s life, if she’d had to nail down a purpose and a point, it would be to make sure she didn’t turn out shackled to a white picket fence like her mom. But after what happened with her dad, she’d seen her parents’ life in a new light. They were happy together. It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. But it was real, it was good, and—she suddenly realized—it was an experience, an adventure, she wanted to have, too.
The credits on her show had just started to run when her tablet screen froze and her mom’s face popped up as if she’d conjured her by thought alone, and Clover clicked accept. “Hi, Mom.”
“Are you sick honey?” her mom asked. “You don’t look so hot.”
Thanks for the confirmation, Mom. “No, just considering never getting out of bed again.”
Concern put a little V between her mom’s eyes. “What happened?”
Oh Dios mío, where did she start? Really, there was only one place she could. So, she told her mom about the weirdest temp job ad she’d ever read for a personal buffer then continued on to telling off Sawyer’s mom without realizing, landing the job, and then ending up with a fake fiancé. By then she was on a roll and naturally went on to explain how pineapple shakes led to flea market finds and then, finally, to a maybe baby and the world’s worst proposal from the man she loved who didn’t love her back.
And because the fates were bitches, she was crying again by the time she got to the end of it. “I couldn’t say yes.”
“Even though you love him,” her mom said, her voice soft with sympathy.
“Especially because of that.” She hiccupped and wiped her nose with one of the last tissues in the box by her bed.
Her mom sighed, her own bottom lip trembling. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s my fault.” She wiped a tear away with the back of her hand and took a deep breath. “I was just so worried about getting trapped in some kind of domestic prison that I never realized I was falling in love with Sawyer until it was too late.”
Her mom cocked her head. “Domestic prison?”
“Mom, I’ve been a complete ass to you.” A choked sob had her shoulders shaking as tears streamed unchecked down her face. “You gave up so much when you got pregnant with me and had to marry Dad—”
Clover’s voice broke, the need to finally tell her mom everything overweighing any hesitation to peel back the polite covering and finally say what had been eating away at her for all these years. “I never wanted to be like you, Mom. That’s why I kept leaving.” There. She’d finally said it, but she didn’t feel better. She felt worse. Worse than a complete ass, if that was possible. She swiped at her wet face, trying to clear her vision enough to gauge how much those wor
ds had hurt her mom.
“I know, honey,” her mom said. “It’s okay. I know to you I always seemed to have given up everything to be with your father.”
“But you did, Mom! No more trips for you. No more adventures. No more excitement. You sacrificed everything and still ended up eating apple pie, which you hate, on a weekly basis just because dad likes apple pie for Sunday brunch. I swore to myself that I’d never end up like that.” The tears started falling again in earnest as she realized how she’d short-changed her mom for her entire life. She was the worst daughter ever. “All I could see was all you’d given up, not what you gained, too.”
“Until Sawyer.”
She sniffled. “Yeah, until Sawyer.”
The smile on her mom’s face was the last thing Clover expected to see after laying everything out there like she had.
“It’s true,” her mom said with a gentle shake of her head. “I gave up a lot when I married your father, but I gained a lot more than I lost. Not to mention I didn’t have to marry your father. I chose to because I loved him, and I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him—I still do. You’re looking at marriage like it’s a zero sum game with only one winner and loser, but it’s not like that. There’s middle ground. There’s compromise. Your father and I have both made sacrifices, but it’s worth it because we have each other.”
The words hit home in a way Clover hadn’t expected. Middle ground. That’s what Helene had said Sawyer had trouble finding. Up until this moment, Clover hadn’t realized she’d been missing it, too, but her mom was right. She had been living her life on an all or nothing loop.
“Do you ever regret it?” She swallowed past the emotion making her throat tight and asked the question she’d been wanting to voice ever since that overheard conversation when she was eleven. “Do you ever regret having me?”
“Never,” her mom said, her voice firm. “I love your father. I love you and your brother. Would I have gone globetrotting if I hadn’t married your father? Maybe. But if you spend your life just looking for the next big thing because you’re so afraid of missing out, then you’re bound to miss out on what you already have.”