Give Love a Chai (Common Threads Book 2)

by Smartypants Romance

  “Okay, okay—here goes.” Pippa took a deep breath and plowed ahead, her voice speeding up so fast that I had trouble catching her words. “I saw Andrew leaving the hotel with a brunette. They left before I could react, but it was definitely him.”

  “Are you sure it was Andrew? You said the lighting was dark. Or even if it was Andrew, maybe he works with her. If she’s a celebrity, he might be working on her security contract,” I protested. When I told Andrew that I wanted to be with him, I meant it. We wouldn’t last if I started falling apart at every rumor that came our way.

  Pippa looked as if she felt sorry for me. “Why are they meeting at a hotel? They weren’t having a business lunch in the hotel restaurant. They were coming from the elevators that led to the condos on top of the hotel. And, it looked as if they were trying to be discreet. The woman was wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, inside.”

  Pippa’s arms rose a bit as if she was going to hug me but thought better of it. “I’m so sorry. That’s why I was hoping this would just be a fling on both sides. Maybe it’s nothing. Has he been acting weird?”

  That stopped me. I thought back to the mysterious call a couple weeks ago. Or the multiple times that I had seen him texting someone, only to turn off his phone when I got closer. He said that it was nothing to worry about. I wanted to trust him. Yet, all I could imagine was Andrew with a mysterious brunette.

  Did I really know him? Did I really know what his life was like in Chicago? Did he actually go to Chicago for work? This was the age of Zoom and Webex and any number of video conference services. Why couldn’t he have his client meetings virtually? Was work an excuse to live a double life? Maybe it was just Charlie. No, she’s blonde. Who the heck was this woman? Remember, his dad was a con man. Maybe it runs in his blood. No, no, no …

  I sank down to the cold grass. My mind was numb. Stupid. I am so stupid. All I knew was that Andrew had lied to me again. He had either outright lied or lied by withholding something. Why couldn’t he open up to me? I had been thoroughly conned, while he must have been laughing his ass off at how stupidly naïve I was.

  Fudge expectations.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Andrew

  July 1, 2009

  Ting Ting,

  You’re with me in bed sleeping, so I’m not sure why I’m writing this note to you. Except I guess, I wanted a chance to sign this letter as your official husband. Seeing the ring on your finger doesn’t feel real. Having you all to myself doesn’t feel real.

  I’m scared to sleep, because I know I’ll wake up as nobody again. I tell myself that it’s okay—we’ll make it, despite the odds. How could we not? There is no option but to make this marriage work. Because not having you in my life is not an option.

  So sleep, love. I’ll join you soon.

  Your official husband,

  Andrew

  My life was too good. My work was going smoothly. Boston was growing on me. Most of all, my relationship with Tia was indescribably amazing.

  Fairy-tale endings or miracles didn’t happen to regular guys like me. Years away from my father had given me enough confidence that I knew that I deserved better than what I had the first seven years of my life. Education—attainable. Good, steady job—attainable. A home—attainable. Small circle of friends—attainable. Even a nice, steady woman who could offer companionship—on optimistic days, even this was attainable.

  This joyful state I was in? No, euphoria and constant smiling were not for me.

  I was scared shitless.

  My phone dinged to signal a new text. I had barely read the name of the sender when my phone buzzed in my hand. Groaning internally, I accepted.

  “Andrew?” The voice was thin and sounded muffled, as if she didn’t want anyone to overhear.

  “Hi.”

  “Sorry for calling you. I have to see you.”

  “I think you should stay in Chicago. We’ll figure something out.”

  “I’m just going crazy over here, Andrew, trying to hide this all from Will.” Sigh. I could hear her thinking over the phone.

  I hated the lost quality in her voice. Most of all, I hated the secrets we had to keep. “I’ll figure something out. Give me a couple more days.”

  “Okay, I trust you.” It was misplaced trust. I had nothing figured out.

  “Don’t come to Boston. I don’t want Tia to know. Okay?”

  “Okay. Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  The phone beeped off.

  This was a fucking mess. I rubbed my forehead with a fist, as I sorted through scenarios and possible solutions. The problem was that there was none.

  Lost in thought, I turned away from the floor-to-ceiling window near the bed to make some more coffee in the kitchen. I stopped cold.

  There, pressed against her door, face ashen was Tia. Fuck, how much did she hear?

  She recovered quicker than me, and in a low, robotic voice, she asked, “Who was that? Pippa said that she saw you in Chicago with a woman. Was that her? What don’t you want me to know, Andrew?”

  For a moment, I debated not saying anything—let Tia think the worst. Once everything was solved, I would confess everything to Tia and hope that she wouldn’t run from me again. But, I couldn’t stand the hurt look in her eyes, and I didn’t want to make the same mistake as ten years ago.

  “Tia, it’s not like that. I saw Charlie when I was in Chicago this week.”

  “I thought she was blonde?” Relief and suspicion warred on her face.

  “She is,” I insisted. “She wore a wig.”

  “Why?” Suspicion seemed to be winning.

  “Her parentage isn’t common knowledge. To this day, I’m not even sure if her dad knows. Because of her parents and who she’s married to, she gets photographed sometimes.”

  “Okay. So, what’s up with the weird phone calls, then?”

  Fuck. “What do you mean?”

  “Was that Charlie on the phone? You told her that you didn’t want me to know. What’s the secret?”

  I hesitated. That was the wrong move.

  “That’s how it’s going to be, huh?” Sadness shone in Tia’s expressive brown eyes. “You’ve been furtive about texts too. Sometimes when you get a text, your face gets really dark and angry, and then you go outside. You told me that it’s about work, but I don’t think so.”

  She thought for a moment, her nose crinkling. “You have a different look when work texts or calls come in. Also, I’ve seen you in the middle of the night on your personal laptop, not your work laptop. There’s something else you’re not telling me. I know you well enough to know when you’re hiding something big.”

  “I will explain.”

  Her right eyebrow rose a fraction.

  “Later,” I finished lamely. I knew I should tell her now. Will she stay if she knew the mess that I was in? It wasn’t a chance that I wanted to take.

  “When Pippa told me that she saw you in Chicago with the brunette, I cried like a fool. And then, you know what? I thought, I didn’t trust you last time and jumped to conclusions. This time, we’re both adults. I’ll act like a reasonable, mature person, and come to you first. I appreciate that you told me part of it, but partial truth isn’t enough anymore.”

  “It’s not that I don’t want to tell you. I promise, I’ll tell you the rest after this is—after I handle this.” I reached out to her, to close the physical distance.

  With every step I took toward her, Tia pressed herself even tighter against the door. As if she pressed hard enough, she’d be able to escape to the other side of the door and out of my life.

  There were those tentacles with thorns again crawling and destroying my insides. I could tell Tia. I wanted to tell Tia. It was at the tip of my tongue to tell Tia.

  No, she would never stay when she saw how ugly this was. No one would choose to be part of this. Fight for her afterwards.

  That thought stopped me. I bit my tongue so hard that I could taste the metallic tang of blood. Sti
ll, I kept my mouth firmly pressed shut, lest stupid confessions came out.

  Looking sad and with something that looked despicably like pity, Tia said, “I want to trust you. I want to wait for you to tell me whatever is happening, even if it’s horrible. But why should I trust you if you refuse to trust me? Why should I put myself out there and look like a fool, if you still refuse to let me in? It’s not a real relationship without that foundation.”

  “This is the realest relationship that I’ve ever been in.” That was the miserable truth. Even as I could feel our relationship crumble before me, Tia had been and was still the bedrock on which I rested.

  “I ran away ten years ago because I was too insecure and scared to fight for us. Andrew, I’m walking away today because I’m standing up for us.” She held up a hand to stay my words. “I’m walking away to give us time to think. I need to calm down, and you need to decide whether you’re all in. I know that I am great and that I have lots to give. It’s taken me a long time to realize that, and I won’t shortchange myself.”

  “Tia, stay.” My vision blurred with fear. I heard her words, and some part of my brain even understood where she was coming from. It didn’t mean that I was any less petrified that I would never see her again. My insides tore with every shake of her head and the resolution in her eyes.

  She said, “If you want us to have a real chance together, you need to show both of us that you’re ready to fight for us, that you’re willing to let me in, and trust that we can work through anything. You stay here for as long as you need. I’m going to head to Pippa’s. I’ll call you soon.”

  Before I could unstick myself, Tia slipped out of the door. The click of the latch closing behind her echoed in my head, until I could hear nothing but that final echo and see nothing but the pity and dejection in her eyes. It was worse than straight-out rejection. Pity was just drawn-out rejection, because who wanted to be with someone they felt sorry for?

  Frustrated, I threw my phone across the room. It did nothing for the emptiness that was overwhelming me, so I punched the wall. Fucking bad idea. The exposed brick wall did nothing to alleviate my bad mood except give me bloody knuckles on top of it.

  Feeling trapped by the walls of the apartment and judged for the mess that I was in, I did the one thing that usually helped—I ran.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Andrew

  September 1, 2009 (torn, never sent)

  Ting Ting,

  Please come back.

  Yours forever,

  Andrew

  That day, I ran ten miles. Afterward, I threw myself into work. Exhausted, I slumped into fitful sleep on Tia’s couch. I couldn’t bear to sleep in the bed when she was so conspicuously gone. Yet, I couldn’t bear to leave the apartment in case she came back.

  On Sunday, I ran eight miles, showered, and went to a nearby church service. The peace that service usually gave me lasted only until lunch. I ran another five miles and threw myself into work again. Exhausted once again, I slept on the couch. The couch was just under six feet, which meant that I slept scrunched for the second night in a row, dreaming of Tia’s pitying, judging eyes.

  On Monday, I got up at four a.m. to fly to Chicago, barked at my colleagues, argued with my clients, and was a general ass. Before heading back to O’Hare to fly back to Boston, I stopped by my colleague Alex Greene’s office. Hacker extraordinaire, with a more-than-occasional willingness to stray over lines that he’d claim he didn’t know existed. I spent at least twenty percent of my time trying to convince him that he needed to stop doing whatever quasi-law-blurring thing he was working on and bailing him out of whatever trouble he found himself in because he found some clever loophole that still managed to piss people off.

  As per usual, I dropped off my cell, laptop, and backpack in the box before his office door. Experience taught me it was either that or have Alex go through my stuff and take out batteries, SIM cards, memory cards, or whatever he deemed was hackable.

  Barely sparing me a glance from his multiple monitors, his fingers flew over the keyboard as he said, “You look awful, Parker.”

  “Thanks.”

  Eyes narrowed on me for a moment before turning back to rows of code. “You’re being sarcastic.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  “No.” Alex’s fingers paused over the keyboard, brows furrowed.

  Dread lodged low in my stomach. Alex was my best shot at getting out of this mess, and if he couldn’t find anything, I was fucked.

  A moment later, he amended his statement. “Not yet. I’ll send a message if I do. When I do.”

  “You could just text or call me.”

  One dark brow rose in disbelief. “Risk someone hacking it? No, I prefer the advice column in the Chattanooga Times better. Don’t forget to use the latest encryption code. It was in last week’s Des Moines Register’s yard sale section. You know what happened when you used the wrong code last year. Anybody could have read your text.”

  For the first time since Saturday, I laughed. “Duly noted. It was a rookie mistake. Thanks, Alex, for doing this.”

  “It’s what friends do, right? Help each other? At least that’s what my wife says.”

  My flight ended up getting cancelled that night. Winter plus Chicago equaled delayed and cancelled flights. Opting to stay at a hotel overlooking a tarmac, I stayed up until three in the morning working on a particularly tricky contract. Two hours later, I was back in the terminal only to hear that my six o’clock flight had been delayed until eight, then nine forty, then noon, and ultimately one in the afternoon.

  Exhausted from the lack of sleep the night before and from waiting in the airport while trying to work with shitty Wi-Fi, I promptly fell asleep as soon as the plane took off.

  It was close to four by the time I got back to Tia’s apartment. Silence met me, heavy and morose. The absence of Tia followed me like an unwanted shadow. There was no peace to be had here. Only reminders that I had screwed up. The probability of convincing her to forgive me after I solved the mess was diminishing.

  “Fuck.”

  Grabbing my coat, I locked up and headed down the stairs. I walked briskly through the crowds of people heading to subway stations and parking lots, past stalled cars navigating the crooked streets built before city planning was the norm, past joggers on the Harvard Bridge toward Cambridge. It was an ironically named bridge, as it actually led to MIT. As Tia had told me with a laugh, it was 364.4 smoots long, where one smoot equaled the height of some MIT frat guy named Smoot.

  It was a stupid way of measuring things.

  Yet I loved that Tia had giggled uncontrollably when she described how a bunch of probably not sober frat boys carried one of their brothers along the bridge, armed with measuring tape.

  I hated the silliness of women giggling. It reminded me of how kids gossiped about me when I was younger. Yet, I loved Tia’s giggles.

  I loved that she pointed out every random store from her apartment to the university, as if she had personally visited each one of them, as if each one was important. I loved the way that her fingers wound around mine as we walked around the city after dinner, tightening when she saw something interesting. I loved how she felt, tucked under my shoulders, and the light in her brown eyes as they gazed up at me.

  It had been seventy-five hours since Tia had walked out. Seventy-fucking-five hours of limbo hell. Memories of her were starting to feel like unachievable dreams, not reality, and that scared the shit out of me.

  It was almost five when I arrived on campus. It was more deserted than I had ever seen, given that this was the last week of finals. There were a few groups of students walking through the long hallways, stress written on their faces. I walked toward the lecture room that Tia taught in. She had mentioned last week that she was planning to hold extra office hours to answer any questions while her students worked on their final project.

  Opening the door to the large lecture hall, I spotted Tia immediately. She was shorter th
an most of the students clustered around her. Despite that, there was a quiet, commanding presence as she held court over the stream of steady questions.

  As I watched Tia, who hadn’t yet spotted me, one person at the edge of the large room caught my eye. In a room full of young students writing down every single thing that Tia was saying, there was one person who wasn’t participating. Like me, he was watching her carefully.

  The hairs at the back of my neck prickled. I didn’t know why, but I didn’t like how he watched her. There was something too still about how he sat, too out of place.

  Without a plan, I walked slowly in the man’s direction. A few rows away, he turned toward me suddenly, a smirk on his face, as if he were waiting for me. Expecting me.

  It couldn’t be.

  My heart dropped as my eyes flew to Tia. I must have made some sudden movement, for she finally glanced my way, her surprised eyes catching mine, before we both looked at the other man. As if this was the most natural place for him to be at, he winked at me and exited out a side door.

  Pushing a couple students to the side, I rushed over to Tia, my hands patting her down. “Are you okay?”

  “Andrew, what’s going on?” Surprise laced her voice. Surprise, not fear. I forced a deep breath in an attempt to calm down.

  “Hey, man, she doesn’t keep answer keys on her.”

  “Yeah, wait your turn if you have questions.”

  I turned toward the voices. There was more unfounded concern over me getting an unfair advantage on the final project than alarm over the strange man in the lecture hall. Maybe I was the one going crazy.

  Whispering low against Tia’s ear, I warned, “Stay here,” before bolting across the room. The side exit let me into an empty area near some study rooms filled with students cramming for exams. A few stray students and faculty wandered around. There was nothing out of place—just the regular bustle of a university before winter break.