Crushed (Crystal Brook Billionaires)

by Jessica Blake

  But then he would have responded to my email…

  I ignored that last thought and pulled the Facebook app up on my phone then went immediately to his page. The last thing posted on there was a link to a review shared three weeks earlier. I gritted my teeth and dropped the phone.

  I would get my coat and walk downstairs. That’s what I would do. That would kill a few minutes. And then if he still hadn’t arrived, I would consider hailing a cab and going to his place.

  Because what if he’d been in an accident? What if he was laying on the floor, knocked unconscious or bleeding to death?

  I jumped up and grabbed my coat and purse then flew out the door, barely remembering to lock it behind me. The whole time I kept my phone in one hand, so that if a call came in from him I would know the second it happened.

  On the street, I paced, walking up the block and then back, never letting the front entrance to my building out of my sight.

  Six fifty-five.

  I couldn’t do it any longer. The idea of something being wrong and him possibly needing my help was excruciating. I ran down to the end of the block, grateful I’d changed into flats, and caught a cab.

  The whole drive to Prospect Park I focused on my breathing. In and out. Perhaps he had only fallen asleep. Writers didn’t always keep normal hours — at least so I’d heard. And Peter could be prone to staying up and working through the night if he had a deadline to meet. So if that was the case, he was only taking an extended nap.

  Traffic congested the corner around from his apartment. I paid the driver and climbed out, running across the street just before the traffic light changed. I kept the pace up on the slight incline, not stopping until I was on his front stoop. The curtains were drawn on the ground floor apartment, but I could still tell the living room lights were off. My heart rate picked up, though I didn’t know just what it meant. It could have been a bad sign even if the lights were on.

  I knocked on the door and waited. When waiting became too hard to bear, I knocked again. I pounded.

  “Peter!” I called.

  No answer.

  I hopped down the steps, thinking to ask one of the neighbors if they’d seen him that day. There was no one around though, and I wouldn’t have been able to pick out someone who lived in the building if I tried. People in New York didn’t know their neighbors.

  For the first time, I realized what a ridiculous practice that was, not knowing people you lived next to. There were a hundred reasons you needed your neighbors, for God’s sake.

  I knocked again, then tried the door. As expected, it was locked. The window had bars on it, so breaking in wasn’t an option.

  I grabbed at the roots of my hair, wanting to scream. I checked my phone. Seven-thirty. I needed to call the police. But it was still so early. Would they take a missing person’s report seriously?

  Something had happened. I knew it. Peter would never blow me off, never just disappear off the face of the planet like this.

  I racked my brain. Did I have the numbers of any of his friends? Maybe I could call someone and get them to help break into the apartment with me. At the very least, I could get another person to help me become more rational because it felt a whole lot like I was freaking out.

  The reading. I would go to the reading.

  I flew down the steps and turned to go back to the corner. Cabs there were harder to get, but I needed to try.

  Just as I went through the gate, someone who looked familiar appeared. My breath caught. It wasn’t Peter. It was his friend Rory. He was a great guy, a college friend of Peter’s. We’d hung out half a dozen times or so.

  “Claire,” he said. “Is Peter around?”

  “I can’t find him,” I said breathlessly. “I think something’s wrong. He’s not answering the door or the phone.”

  His face crinkled with worry. “He was supposed to meet me this morning.”

  I stared at him. “And he didn’t?”

  “No.”

  I grabbed his arm. “We have to get into his apartment. Something might be wrong!”

  “All right,” he agreed.

  Rory took one step forward, and then his phone rang.

  *

  The whole ride to the hospital, my ears drummed. It was all I could hear, that senseless thrumming. Rory and I remained quiet. There was nothing to say. The phone call from Peter’s brother had contained all the available information. There had been a car accident on 278. Peter was unconscious, in critical condition. It didn’t look good.

  It didn’t look good.

  It didn’t look good.

  That was all I heard, over and over.

  So he could die. That’s what could happen. But that idea didn’t make sense. I looked at my phone. Eight o’clock. We were supposed to be on our way to the reading, our bellies full after a lovely dinner. We were supposed to be walking arm in arm across Columbus Circle, listening to the whoosh of subway trains beneath the grates and the honk of car horns in the night.

  So how could it be that none of those things were happening?

  I opened the door before the taxi came to a full stop. Rory was close behind me, and we hurried up to the entrance together, pushing the heavy glass doors open just enough so that we could wedge through.

  Signs pointed to the front desk and the waiting room, and we rushed in that direction. Rory stopped at the counter to talk to the woman behind it. I turned, taking in the rows of blue cushioned seats. People slept sitting up in them. People read magazines in them. People stared at the ground in them. People tried to entertain fretful children in them.

  “…for Peter,” someone said.

  I turned to see a group of a few people about my age standing near one of the hallways. My breath hitched. Were they talking about my Peter?

  “Claire,” Rory said, coming up next to me. “I need to find someone else to talk to. That nurse doesn’t know anything.”

  “Okay,” I dumbly said. “Do you know those people over there?”

  He looked in that direction. “Lily?” he asked.

  One of the girls turned and looked at him. Rory hurried over. I stayed right where I was, planted to the ground, too afraid to move.

  “What’s going on?” Rory asked.

  The girl named Lily shook her head, dark hair swishing around her shoulders. She briefly glanced in my direction then looked back at Rory. “We don’t know. He’s in intensive care.”

  “Ms. Webber?” asked a voice.

  We all looked to see a man in a white coat striding across the waiting room, heading for the small group. Finally, I moved, taking a few steps towards them, knowing it would be hard to hear the doctor’s words over the frantic beating of my heart.

  “Yes?” Lily asked.

  He stopped right in front of her and inclined his head. “I’m sorry,” he gently said. “We’ve lost him. We did all we could.”

  There are some things you can’t describe. Thousands of poets, writers, and artists have tried to. They’ve tried for thousands of years.

  You can’t describe love. You can’t tell another human being what it’s like to look into the eyes of a stranger and somehow know that you were destined to meet them all along. You can’t describe what it’s like when all the jagged puzzle pieces of your universe finally come together, fitting so perfectly.

  But you can try.

  It’s like a light comes down, a big bright beaming one, and it goes through your head and right out your chest, onward to illuminate the world around you. And not just what you see. When you love, you see the brilliance in it all. You see how nothing can ever be lost, not really, because each moment is a gift. Each moment holds something, whether it’s a warm embrace in another’s arms or a cold, hungry walk down a rainy street. All those moments were given to us, and so they are holy. They are holy and, sometimes, meaningless all at the same time.

  And to lose someone?

  To lose someone is to have the light zapped back up, taken away from you. Suddenly nothi
ng is holy. Nothing is pristine, not even the best that the world has to offer.

  Nothing is good anymore.

  Nothing makes sense.

  People were moving, talking, but it was all distorted. Blurry.

  The girl named Lily turned to me, saw me staring.

  “Who are you?” she asked, a tear sliding down her cheek.

  It hit me. Peter had a cousin named Lily. He’d mentioned her a few times. She lived in Queens.

  And she clearly didn’t know I existed. Lily Webber. Peter had known her his whole life.

  And me? He’d only known me for two months. Lily had no clue who I was.

  “No one,” I said. “I’m no one.”

  And it was true. The romance was over. I would never get the chance to be what I was supposed to be in his life.

  Peter was gone.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Claire

  I popped the passenger’s door open and jumped into the front seat, the air conditioning hitting me full blast.

  “Hi, Mom. Thanks for picking me up.”

  Despite the seat belt holding her in, she reached over and gave me a hug. “Of course, honey. How are you?”

  “Good,” I quickly said, giving the safest answer.

  A car honked from somewhere behind us.

  Mom glanced in the rear view mirror. “All right, all right,” she muttered. “It’s Friday afternoon, for heaven’s sake. You’d think people wouldn’t be in such a hurry.”

  “Especially not at this airport,” I agreed.

  She shot a sidelong glance at me and put her car into drive. “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing. Just that RDU isn’t exactly hopping most of the time.”

  She gave me a reprimanding look, but one that held a hint of a smile behind it. “You must be doing good if you’re making demeaning jokes.”

  I guffawed. “God, Mom, I’m not that cruel, am I?”

  “No,” she smiled. “That was a little jab of my own. How was your flight?”

  “The flight was decent. Quick, at least.”

  I settled back in the seat and watched the familiar tapestry slide by the window. Tall, leafy green trees. For a while, towering office buildings and signs for chain restaurants and gas stations. As we gained distance from the airport, the hints of urban life became less and less, and the exits farther apart.

  Two months since I’d been in Crystal Brook and — quite unexpectedly — I was already finding being back to be just what I needed.

  It wasn’t that New York was awful. It was… decent. Yes, decent. Just like the flight out of it. Especially since I’d taken the advice of nearly everyone in my life and started seeing a therapist. Or maybe I should say was forced to start seeing a therapist. Jason called me into his office on one of the days he was in the city, and in typical Jason fashion, announced that he had made an appointment for me with one of the highest rated therapists in New York. On top of that, the bill would go to the company.

  I’d almost argued that I could take care of my mental health myself, but the truth was that no, I couldn’t. The last few months had been proof.

  And so I’d gone. And I’d gone back the week after that, and the week after that. I’d been going for six weeks, and I finally started feeling like just maybe there was some light at the end of the tunnel.

  That was the best way to describe it. Maybe there was light… at the end. Because the end seemed very far away.

  The dreams were still with me, just like the crippling bouts of depression that could hit me out of nowhere. The memories were still there, hanging over my head. The hospital. The funeral, full of a few people I knew but mostly ones I didn’t. The fresh gravestone I hadn’t visited once.

  The questions were still with me. What if Peter had lived another ten years? Another twenty? Another forty?

  Would the love I’d felt have turned into what I had sworn to myself it would? Would we be married and living in a house in Vermont with a vegetable garden and two kids?

  The latest discovery I’d made was that coming to terms with a loss is one thing. Coming to terms with the questions left behind is a whole other one. They would always be there. Acknowledging them and releasing them helped… some.

  Except on those nights when I was alone, the rain or the stifling summer heat, it didn’t matter which one, sneaking in through my window. During those times I knew without a doubt that something had been stolen from me. If there was a God in charge of it all, he, for some shitty reason, had seen fit to either punish me or teach me a lesson.

  Because it still didn’t make sense. None of it made sense. The situation went beyond not being fair. It was cruel.

  I’d only just met him. The very first man in my life who made me think about the things I never had before. A house. A family.

  The irony was that once I’d met Peter and started thinking about all those new things, I’d also taken on a new perspective of the world. The craziness of it all had started to make sense. All of the questionable boyfriends, the tumultuous relationships. They’d taught me something and — in a way — led me to Peter. I wouldn’t have gone to that party that night if the guy I’d been casually hanging out with on and off for a few months hadn’t bailed on me.

  And then once Peter died…

  Yeah. So much for divine order and all that shit.

  “It’s so good you’re here,” Mom was saying. “Gwen is freaking out.”

  She signaled and got into the right lane. The upcoming exit sign for Crystal Brook flew by us. I’d been so lost in thought that we’d just taken a forty or so minute drive in what seemed to be no time at all.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Mom sighed. “You know Gwen. She’s doing it all.”

  I made a sputtering noise. “And let me guess, she can’t keep her head above water, but she’s not admitting it?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “She didn’t tell me anything…”

  Mom slowed down and took our exit. “Of course not.”

  I chewed my lip. Because you’re in such a fragile state, was the unspoken second half of that sentence.

  “Oh!” she suddenly exclaimed, her face lighting up like the sun. “I saw your friend Owen.”

  I stared at Mom. Since when were Owen and I officially friends?

  I’d thought of him since last seeing him on the river trail. A lot. More than I should have been doing. In fact, it seemed some days that my mental activity alternated between cripple worthy painful thoughts and thoughts of the opposite: Owen.

  The sweetness he’d shown me on that walk did something to me. Maybe it was the way he’d listened with an open heart, the question he’d asked about Peter or the way he’d hugged me and made me feel like there really were safe places left in the world. Really, I didn’t know, but I was grateful to the man.

  I’d declined his offer to walk me the rest of the way home simply because the conversation we shared had been so intense… so close to intimate. I felt like he’d seen a deep part of me. What’s more was that he hadn’t turned away from it.

  It had been good… and scary.

  I assumed he hadn’t been in New York in the last two months, and that was why he hadn’t gotten in touch. I also told myself that it was probably for the best. Often when I thought of him, my body stirred in a way it hadn’t in a long time. That shit scared me. A lot.

  “Claire? Did you hear me? I saw your friend Owen. You know, the brawny one?”

  I laughed.

  “What?”

  “Brawny is a funny word.”

  Her lips pursed. “Well, he’s more like urban brawny. Not really like the guy on the paper towel roll.”

  “No. He’s not much like a lumberjack at all.”

  “I ran into him at the hardware store. I was there with Gwen.”

  “Oh,” I said for lack of anything better.

  “He just bought a house in town.”

  My head swiveled in her direction despite my internal promise not to engage i
n the conversation. “Another one? I thought he already had one.”

  “That one he’s been staying in? No. That’s his parents’ house. He just bought a nice one on Glendale that he’s fixing up. Well, it was nice when it was built, I’m sure. It needs a lot of work. I think he can do it, though. He seems like he has a lot of energy.”

  “You saw his house?”

  She shrugged. “He didn’t take me there, no. He offered to show it to us, but we didn’t have time. I drove by just yesterday though. It’s that really old one with the peeling paint.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She was talking about Owen like they were best friends. Last I’d checked in she didn’t even know the guy.

  And why had he decided to buy a house in Crystal Brook, of all places?

  It couldn’t be just because his parents had a place there. They owned multiple homes. Owen could live anywhere in the world he wanted to. And it was his first house. From everything I knew about Owen, that in itself was probably a big deal.

  I licked my lips and stared out the window. We were only minutes from home. The street signs flew by, and there was Glendale. Owen’s street. I watched the green sign grow small in the side mirror and then vanish as we hit the next corner.

  Immediately, the voices in my head started warring.

  Maybe I should go and see him…

  Maybe that’s a bad idea…

  Why would that be a bad idea?

  You know why.

  I couldn’t do it. I needed a break, needed to cut loose. Meditation didn’t work. I’d already tried that shit. The only real answer at hand involved alcohol and my sister.

  “Can you drop me off at Freddy’s?”

  Mom was quiet for a couple seconds. “Sure. Aren’t you tired?”

  “Not too much.”

  “All right. Will you be home for dinner?”

  “Um…” I hesitated, not wanting to be rude on my first night home, but really not in the mood for a curfew.

  “You know what,” she said, waving her hand. “Go have fun with Gwen. That lets me off the hook. Danny’s at a friend’s house anyway, and your dad will be happy with frozen pizza.”