I've pushed it to the furthest recesses of my mind every day. If I'm being brutally honest with myself it changed who I am on a very fundamental level. It was my rock bottom and for the rest of my life I'll always remember that it was Parker who pushed me there. "I try not to think about it anymore."
"We don't need to." He smiles up at me. "Today is the first day of our new life together. Fate brought you back here, Kayla. We were always meant to be together."
We were never meant to be together. Love isn't supposed to rake you over the coals like this. It's not a game of hide and seek. Parker loves me when it's convenient for him. He's proven that enough times that falling back into the trap that is his empty promises will only stall my life again. I can't do this anymore. I want the answers to my questions and then I want Parker to become a distant memory. "I need some answers, Parker and right now, you're the only person who can give them to me."
"If that's what it's going to take to get you back, ask away."
Chapter 3
I should tell him, right here on the spot, that the chances of the two of us getting back together are level with the chances that I'm going to win the lottery someday. It's never going to happen. I can barely look at him without feeling anger and disgust. The idea of crawling back into a relationship with him is so foreign to me I can't even process it.
"When did you meet Ben?" I ask with quiet resolution. I need a jumping point to clear the hurdle that is his connection to Ben. I heard the fragmented edges of a conversation between the two of them. Now, I want Parker to fill in all those scattered blanks for me.
He leans forward again, tracing his thumb across my knuckles. I don't pull back for fear of losing his desire to do what's right. I know he wants to share with me. I see it in his face. "It wasn't long ago, Kayla."
"How long?" I push because having a full understanding of when they met matters more to me than I'm willing to admit right now. I'm trying to convince myself that I want every single detail so I can carry it all back to Noah when I recount today's events to him. There's more to it than that. I need to know that the night in the hotel room and the days spent with Ben hold some meaning beyond his desperate need to regain Noah's attention.
He pulls his hand through his brown hair, his fingers separating the curly locks. "It was two or three weeks ago."
"Two or three weeks," I repeat back in a mumble. "Where did you meet him? Did he contact you?"
His hand glides from his hair over his face stopping to pinch the bridge of his nose. "I met him outside your apartment building. I was standing on the street when he came out of the building."
"How did you know where to find me?"
He shrugs. "I thought about going to see Alexa to ask her but I didn't want her to rail on me. I thought you might have stayed in touch with your old boss so I stopped by there."
"Vivian told you where I live?" I ask before taking a drink from the bottle of water.
"She said I missed you by twenty minutes." He leans back, smoothing his hands over the front of his shirt. "I had to get up the nerve to talk to you. I stopped at a bar by your place and had a few beers."
I doubt that anything would have turned out differently had I known Parker was only a few feet from the front door of my building just days ago. The fact that he confirmed that he left me for someone else would have come to light then. Seeing his gentle smile would have only been a brief reprieve from the inevitability of it all.
"Once I decided I was ready to talk to you, it was dark out." He glances at his wrist as if he's expecting to find a watch there. "It had to have been near ten. That's when I saw him."
"Ben was outside my building?" There's more surprise woven into the words than I intend. Although our time together was spent mostly in his apartment, he was at my place a few times.
"He almost ran into me when he opened the door." He rolls his eyes. "I was already feeling pretty good from the beers if you know what I mean."
He was bordering on drunk. I don't need him to spell it out for me. When we lived together, Parker would be passed out in bed after two or three beers. "I know," I offer because it's the step I need to take to keep Parker on this path with me. I want him to keep talking so the less I chime in, the better.
"I tried to get into with him." He rolls his hands into fists and darts them into the air between us. "I was on edge and pissed that he bumped me with the door."
Parker, always the charmer almost hit Ben? "You tried to punch Ben?"
"I egged him on but he just stood there with a smirk on his face."
That sounds exactly like the Ben I've come to know. The idea of him randomly getting in a fistfight with a stranger on the street is foreign to me. I feel a hint of shame wash over me thinking about Parker acting like an asshole. It's misplaced but it's a lingering leftover from all our years together when I had to witness that behavior first hand.
"He said I looked like I could use a beer." His tone is even. "I asked if he was buying and we went back to the bar."
I lock my eyes on his face. "You and Ben drank together at the bar by my place?"
He closes his eyes briefly. "It was for a few hours. He talked about his brother and some chick he was falling for. I wasn’t really paying attention."
I don't react. I can't. "What else did he talk about?"
"Nothing. He just listened while I confessed everything to him."
"Confessed what?" I push my hair back behind my ears suddenly feeling very overheated. "What did you tell Ben?"
He hesitates briefly as if he's searching for the right order to place his words. I've seen him do that before. It's a ploy he uses when he wants to soften the emotional blow of whatever he's about to say. He did it repeatedly the night he left me. "It was mostly about her."
"Her?" I don't even know her name. I don't need to know it but he's about to tell me.
"Elsie," he offers softly. "That's the woman I …"
"Yes," I interrupt. I don't want this discussion to jump into a tailspin and rocket off into a direction I don't want it to. "You talked to Ben about her?"
"I told him she left me that day," he begins before he stops himself. "I mean I told Ben that Elsie and I broke up."
I don't care. I truly don't care if Elsie walked out on Parker when he was begging her to stay. I've emotionally left. If I had any doubt about that before tonight, it's all been erased and replaced with a sense of quiet closure.
"I'm sorry, Kayla." He sighs before he continues, "I told Ben that I realized what a mistake I made and that I was in love with the girl I broke up with. I told him I was in New York to ask her to marry me."
"You told Ben that was me?" There's no excitement in the question at all. Right now, they are only empty words that are strung together to get me to the truth of what's going on. I'm still reeling from discovering that Ben has been using me as a pawn to get back into Noah's life. Knowing that he enlisted Parker's help to do that doesn't change anything about the way I feel. I don't want Parker in my life. I certainly don't want to be engaged to him.
"No." He hangs his head down. "I never said your name when we were at the bar. He didn't know it was you."
It's obvious that at some point the two of them realized my connection to them both. "When did Ben know I was the woman you were talking about?"
"I'd say about a week after that."
"A week?" I throw the question at him sharply. "I don't understand how you went from talking about me at a bar to agreeing to take money from him to stay away from me."
"It wasn't like that." His hand trails a path across his lap before it stops short of my knee. I'm grateful that he doesn't try and touch me. I don't know that I could resist the urge to pull back at this point.
"What was it like?"
"Kayla, please try and understand where my mind was back then." His voice is no louder than a whisper. "I just wanted to ask you to marry me so we could start all over. So I could forget what a fucking idiot I'd been before you moved back to New Yor
k."
I see the vulnerability in his eyes. I know he's in pain. I know that he wishes that he could undo what happened between us but that's not possible anymore. Life has changed. I've changed. "I want to understand, Parker. I really need to."
His gaze drops to his lap. I watch his shoulders surge forward. "Ben offered to help me that first night at the bar. He didn't know me, Kayla, and he just up and helped me."
"Helped you?" I tilt my chin down hoping he'll catch a glimpse of me out of the corner of his eye. "How did Ben help you?"
He pulls his body back until he's facing me directly. "I told Ben that I wanted to ask the love of my life to marry me."
I work hard to not react to the words. "What did Ben say?"
His palm etches a path over his lips. "It's not what he said, Kayla. It's what he did."
I'm stuck. I want to know. I need to know but I'm scared that Parker is about to tell me that Ben concocted a plan to keep Parker from me because of his selfish agenda to get Noah back. I honestly don't know if I would have taken Parker back if he would have showed up at my apartment door with the beautiful ring I longed for, in his hand, and a marriage proposal on his lips. The idealistic part of me wants to believe I would have turned him down, but the romantic parts of my heart, know better.
"What did he do, Parker?" I ask for clarity, not for me, but for Parker. I want him to know that I need to know this. It is instrumental to my moving forward with my life. I have to sort out what happened between these two men before I can even think about talking to Noah and Alexa about this.
"He told me he believed in true love." He cocks his head to the side. "He said young love was worth fighting for."
It sounds like something Ben would say. His soul is soft and hopeful. I saw it myself when he cared for me after my fall. The man that tended to my wounds and nursed me back to health is so opposite of the man who I heard talking to Parker hours ago. They don't fit together, regardless of what my heart is still hoping for.
"I told him I had to go back to my hotel to sleep before I went to see my girl." His index finger taps my knee. "He told me we needed to make a stop first. He was feeling good too but he wasn't as drunk as me."
I look away to steel my emotions. Knowing that the man that I loved for years was getting drunk in a bar with the man I was beginning to fall for is already a lot to absorb. "Where did he take you?"
"To the bank, Kayla," he says in a rush. "We went to the automated teller machine."
"What? Why?" I spit the questions out so quickly they are almost indistinguishable from one another.
"He took out three thousand dollars and handed it all to me," he says hoarsely. "He said it was for the ring. He wanted me to get it so I could ask the woman I love to marry me."
My emotions swing to the side as if they've been slapped. "Ben just handed you the money to buy that ring?"
He drops his head into his hands. "I took it. I took his number too so I could pay him back but he told me it was his gift. He said he wanted to help make Elsie's dreams come true."
Chapter 4
This is what it must feel like to be driving in the middle of a fog patch. You know that you're headed in the right direction but beyond that, everything is murky and hard to place. I need Parker to explain more to me but hearing him tell me that Ben gave him the money for the ring has stalled everything in my mind.
"You said that Ben told you to make Elsie's dreams come true?" I want Parker to repeat it back to me. It doesn't add up.
He scrubs his hand over his face. "I didn't realize he used her name until the next morning when I woke up and thought about what had happened. I sent him a text message telling him I'd pay him back when I could and he replied saying that knowing Elsie would be happy was enough for him."
"Why would he think the ring was for her?" My eyes drop to the floor where the wayward ring box still sits. Parker never bent down to pick it up and I never offered to retrieve it either. It holds absolutely no meaning to me now. He may as well give it to Elsie.
"I was all over the place in the bar." He runs both his hands through this hair, pushing the curls back from his forehead. "I guess he just assumed that Elsie was the one I wanted."
She was. He wanted her enough to leave me only a few weeks ago. Parker wasn't kidding when he said he was all over the place. He still is. He's adrift emotionally and looking for anyone who can give him an anchor. I know that's the only reason he wants to marry me. It's because she dumped him. Being alone is torture to him.
"You corrected him at some point I'm guessing." I'm not really guessing. I know he did. The conversation they shared when they walked into his apartment is proof of that.
"I called him again about a week after that." He licks his upper lip. "I felt guilty about the money so I told him I wanted to work out a repayment plan."
"That makes sense." It does. Parker is proud. He's always been too proud to go to his wealthy family and ask them for any help at all. The fact that he took money from a stranger to buy a ring is shocking. The fact that he wanted to pay it back isn't surprising in the least.
"That's when I corrected him and told him the woman I loved was named Kayla."
I stare at him, my lips slightly ajar. I want to say something that will halt this in its tracks now. I don't want to know any details beyond this because it's when everything shifts to something more sinister. It's the point where Ben transforms from the helpful, kind and caring stranger to the man who used Parker and me to try and get his brother back.
"Did he tell you that he knew me then?" I ask quietly.
His jaw tenses slightly. "He said he was actually coming out of your apartment that night we met. He said you knew his brother, Noah. I asked if it was Alexa's Noah and he said it was. I realized then that's how you met him. It was through them."
"What else did he say?" Judging by Parker's lack of response to Ben's kiss on my forehead earlier he hasn't connected the dots enough to know that Ben and I are lovers. I'm not going to change that by correcting him about the details of how I met Ben.
"He said you were a good person." A small smile pulls at the corner of his mouth. "I said I already knew that."
"What else?" I push through the pleasantries. I need to.
His eyes move over my face. "He said that you were helping him accept some stuff that happened between him and his brother a long time ago. I didn't ask for the details."
I'm grateful for that. What happened between Noah and Ben when they were teenagers isn't Parker's business. Pulling him into that circle of information isn't something I'd ever do. Ben and Noah's pain is theirs alone to share with who they choose. "Ben said that you had a deal?"
"We did." He nods only slightly as if he doesn’t want to fully acknowledge it. "Ben told me to keep the money for the ring. He said he just needed more time with you to help him deal with what happened between him and Noah. He said you were the best friend he's ever had."
Those words should buoy my heart. I know, judging by the routine of Ben's life that he doesn't have close friends he confides in. Work is his focus. It's how he shoulders the burdens of his past. "You agreed to give him that time with me?"
"I did." He pinches the bridge of his nose. "I thought you could help him while I worked on finding a new place for us to live."
My eyes take in the room. This apartment had been my safe place for a few months before I'd been thrown back into the sea of uncertainty that Parker had tossed me into when he left me. I imagined we'd build our lives together in this place and now all I see when I look around is emptiness and what could have been.
"Today you told Ben you wanted to talk to me," I say the words evenly. I'm not bringing it up because I want to know what Parker was going to say if Ben would have given him the green light. I'm sure it would have included a marriage proposal and the promise of a future that would have lasted only a few months until someone else caught Parker's eager and willing eye.
"A few days ago I called him and told him I w
anted to talk to you." His expression is as vacant as I feel right now. "I just wanted to know if you still wanted me."
I don't delve into that pool because I'd have to tell Parker the truth, which is that I stopped wanting him weeks ago. "He wouldn't let you talk to me?"
"He told me he was coming to town this weekend and we'd talk then." He shrugs.
It stings even though it shouldn't. The mere fact that Parker gave up on talking to me so easily only bolsters my belief that we were never really meant to be. "That's what was going on when I overheard you."
His lips thin into grimace. "I shouldn't have agreed to what he wanted, Kayla. I should have come right back to New York to ask you to marry me but I've been so nervous about how you'd react that I kept putting it off. He kept telling me to take time to think things through. He said he didn't think I was over Elsie yet. I was really confused. Now everything is all fucked up."
"Everything works out the way it's supposed to, Parker," I offer as I pull myself to my feet. "It wouldn't have worked between us anyway."
"Why not?" He doesn't move from where he's seated.
"I don't love you anymore." I look directly at his face as the words leave my lips. "It's over for me. It ended the night you left me for her."
He doesn't respond. I see nothing within his expression so I turn on my heels, walk across the apartment and out of Parker's life for good.
Chapter 5
"What time are you done for the day?" His deep voice jars me out of the number coma I've been stuck in for much of the afternoon. I wish I could say that I was doing something fascinating like working out the details of a big merger, or planning out the investment strategy of a client, but I'm balancing Vivian's checkbook for her. Yes, this is the life of a single, accomplished woman in Manhattan.
"Noah." I grip the side of my desk to calm my shaking hands. I'd been avoiding his texts since they started to roll in on Saturday evening shortly after I left Parker's apartment. I sent him back one, brief response, early Sunday morning after I'd been woken up by a loud argument in the room next to me in a hotel I stayed at. I'd debated calling my mother to see if I could crash in my old room but the price for that would have been too steep. Answering questions about Parker and me, and my time in New York was too much for me to handle at the time. It's too much to bear now.
RUIN - Part Three (The RUIN Series Book 3) Page 2
