by Lory Wendy
“She wasn’t. Rocky told me.”
“So then what part did Rocky play in all of this?” I feel stupid that I’m not keeping up, but Julian isn’t explaining things as well as I think he thinks he is.
“Rocky’s good at recon. For a while, I thought he fell for her. I mean, I know what falling in love does to someone.” We both smile at the comment despite the air not calling for any kind of lovesick giddiness. “But that didn’t last long.”
“Why do you say that?”
“When’s the last time you saw Rocky and your sister together?”
“When is the last time I saw my sister, period?”
“True.”
“So, let me just try and catch up.” I raise my hand. “Chantel introduced you to my sister hoping you guys would hook up, but she got with Rocky, who must have known she owed you money in the first place, right?”
“He knew.”
“But then Rocky and Blaire tried to hook me up with Pierce, which clearly didn’t stop you. Then Chantel went back to hooking up with him, despite knowing he tried to get with me. I guess it’s just a free for all with you guys, huh? Ain’t no fun if the homies can’t have none?”
Julian rolls his eyes, another uncharacteristic move for him. I get it. I always focus on the wrong things. At least his initial accusation of me and Quincy makes sense now. They have no boundaries.
“Okay, fine, all the weird relationship stuff aside, I’m just not getting your point.” I yawn a couple times through my statement, causing Julian to yawn too, and the contagiousness of it to bounce back and forth a few more times.
Three yawn cycles in, Julian pushes himself off the dresser. “You should lay down. It’s been a long night.”
At his words, I glance toward the door opening. With his bedroom’s thick curtains, it’s never easy to get a good sense of the time of day, but the frames on the hallway walls have small shadow lines underneath them.
“The night is over.”
“Still, you need some sleep.”
I don’t think I can sleep right now even if I wanted to, but exhaustion is more than an understatement of how I feel. Maybe what he’s telling me is making perfect sense, but my brain is too fogged to keep up. As more yawns escape, and light slowly creeps its way deeper into the room, I have no choice but to compromise. I climb under the blanket and hook my arms under the pillow. Behind me, I hear Julian shuffling his way over. I’m asleep before he even makes it to the bed.
I wake up a few hours later with the same heavy feeling I went to bed with and Julian's alarm blaring in the background.
“There’s no fucking way I’m going to work today,” he grumbles, silencing it.
Typically I sleep right through his alarm, or at the very least fall right back asleep, but this morning I can’t. I’m hyper aware of everything, including his shallow breathing and the synchronized beating of my heart. Sleep is the last thing on my mind.
I turn to face him, not surprised to find his eyes on me. His phone is in his hands and the glare from the screen highlights his red-rimmed eyes. He didn’t sleep either.
“Rough night?” I ask.
Julian snorts and sets his phone down. “Did you even sleep?”
“On and off.” I stretch and reach behind me for my own phone. No missed calls, no new text messages, and it’s still pretty early. Flopping back against the pillow, I throw my arm over my face. I’m not ready to deal with the day, or the real world, or part two of the conversation from before we went to sleep.
“Rocky called,” Julian whispers, essentially making the decision on whether or not I still want to hear more. “He left a message, said he has something to tell me about last night.”
“You should call him.”
“I will.” Julian groans, sitting. He leaves the room without saying much else.
His cold demeanor doesn’t go unnoticed, and when he’s not back a few minutes later, I go after him.
What I find is him sitting on the couch, still shirtless, and with his elbows resting on his thighs. His focus is on the floor, eyes blurred at something I can’t see.
“You okay?” I whisper and take a few steps forward.
“I should be asking you that.” He smiles sadly. “Come here.” He pats the spot next to him. I do, and the second I’m at his side, Julian pulls me in for a deep kiss. I follow his lead, willing to give him what he needs in this moment, but the desperation in his move makes me even more nervous than I was last night. “You know how much I love you right?” He rests his head on my forehead.
I gulp. “Nothing good ever comes after a question like that.”
“Tell me,” Julian pleads. He grips my hands so hard it hurts. “Tell me that you know how I feel. That you don’t doubt for a second what we have is real.”
“That rhymed.”
“Selena.”
“Okay, okay, sorry. Yes, I know how you feel.”
“I have something I need to show you.” He disappears into the kitchen and when I hear him opening and closing cabinets, I know he’s going into the small one that conceals one of his many safes. He returns with nothing but a small folded piece of paper that he hands to me but doesn’t sit back in his original seat.
“What’s this?” I unfold it. “A check?” It takes about two more seconds before I realize I’m looking at a check made out to Julian, dated less than two weeks after our fire settlement, and signed by Blaire Monroe. The amount makes me gasp, and I remember the part of Blaire not paying him back until recently. “My sister owed you one hundred thousand dollars?” I throw the check down as if it burned me.
“Yes, and there’s no way she would have ever been able to get that kind of money unless—”
“Unless we sold the house.” Like she’d been pushing me to. “Or with that money from the insurance claim,” I add. Oh God. My body slumps over and for a few seconds, I forget to breathe. The fire. “I’m going to kill her!”
“Your sister didn’t set the fire, but it was her idea.”
“So then who set it, you?”
“I already told you. Rocky’s the one who likes to torch shit. Not me.”
“And he told you he did it?”
“He didn’t have to. That night we came back from the festival, and your sister texted you to ask you if you were home. Then twenty minutes later he texted me. I knew it the minute I saw them in the driveway.”
There are so many things about his confession that knock the wind out of me. While my sister’s betrayal cuts deep, Julian’s is the salt being poured into my wound. “You knew. You knew the entire time?”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Why didn’t you cash the check?” My lips tremble.
Julian takes a step forward but stops.
“No,” I say, just as a tear falls. “Stay where you are. Answer me.”
“I didn’t cash it because I don’t want your sister’s money.”
“Did you figure that out before or after the fire?”
“The fire was a mistake.” He takes two large strides to the couch, pulling me up by my shoulders. “Look at me. It was never supposed to go down like that. Something went wrong. Rocky has never let a fire get out of control like that.”
The tears continue to stream down my face. Julian’s image is blurry, but I can still see the pleading in his eyes. Fuck his remorse. “That was my parents’ house and now it’s gone. Over money?”
“It wasn’t my idea.”
“But you went along with it!” I shrug out of his hold and pull my arms out of reach when he tries to pull me back. “You claim you love me?” I scoff. “You should have never let me go through something like that.”
“I do love you. Think about it.” He pokes his temple. “It’s because of that this didn’t happen sooner. Do you know how many times I asked Rocky to call it off? Your sister was the one that kept pushing for it. She wanted that money even after I told her to forget about it.”
“Why would she want the money then?”
/>
“Because she wanted me to end things with you, and she figured paying me off would be enough.”
“What?”
“Yeah,” Julian says smugly, pointing to the table. “That check wasn’t about her debt anymore. It was about buying me off so I would end things with you.”
“Why, so she could be with you?” I ask, annoyance dripping from my voice.
“No, so she could disappear in peace.”
“Disappear to where?” As far as I’ve always known, Blaire’s plans are to live and die in Colorado.
“I mean metaphorically. She wanted to be out of sight and out of mind. It didn’t matter that she was messing with Rocky, or that I was messing with you. She was always scared I would come after her for my money.”
“Wait.” With those words, it dawns on me exactly who Julian is, and exactly why Blaire truly hated him. “You’re the bad investment,” I accuse, pointing a finger at him. “You’re the guys she borrowed money from that she was so scared of. Oh God.” I gasp and have to lean against the wall to support myself. “You’re the reason she stole money from Stretch in the first place. You’re the reason I had to—” My breaths come in spurts.
“Sweetheart, I’m so sorry. I never thought any of that shit was going to happen.”
“You’re sorry?” I spit the word back at him. I cover my mouth, forcing back a sob. “You have no idea what I had to go through because of you. I even lost my house because of you. When is enough, enough?”
“Because of me?” His face contorts and even though there’s still a minute amount of softness in his eyes, there’s nothing but hatred in the curl of his lips. “I didn’t put you in that situation. I’m the one who got you out of it. And as for the house, we weren’t even supposed to be there. I always kept you out of the house when I thought—”
“You always kept me out of the house?”
His mouth falls open slowly. “I mean…”
I shake my head slowly, disbelief nearly cutting off my voice. “Is that why you started dating me? To make sure I was out of the house just in case Rocky or Blaire decided to set it on fire?”
He looks away, silently answering my question, and completely shattering my heart in the process.
Chapter Thirty-Three
For nearly an hour I lock myself in the bedroom to hide my tears from Julian. I won’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me cry over him, or let him talk me into changing my mind. I’ve made a decision, and whether or not it’s for the best—in the long run—I don’t know. But for now, it’s all I have.
“You’re leaving?” He jumps up from the couch when I stroll passed him with a bag in hand.
“Yes.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’ll figure it out.” I sidestep him. “Thanks to you, Rocky, Blaire, and the fire, I’m a couple hundred thousand dollars richer. I figure I can spring for a few nights at a hotel.”
“Sweetheart—”
“Do not call me that.” I ball my fist.
He nods. “Selena.”
“Don’t call me that either. In fact, don’t call me anything. Just forget me.” I sidestep the other way. He blocks me.
“Don’t leave while you’re pissed.”
“You don’t need me here anymore,” I remind him. “I was just collateral so you could get your money from Blaire. You got that now.”
“You know that’s not true. You’re wrong. I need you more than I’ve ever needed anything. Please, don’t go.”
“Please move out of my way.”
But he’s unrelenting and grabs the bag out of my hand. “You stay. I’ll leave.”
“Keep it.” I flick a wrist in the direction of the bag. “That’s the stuff I bought with your card anyway, and I know how important money is to you.”
He frowns, setting the bag down. “You said you believed me. That you knew how I felt was real.”
I have to look away from him, from his eyes, from the window to my heart and soul. “I do, but there’s something you’ll always love more.” I push past him, and this time he doesn’t follow or try to stop me. Not until I reach for the doorknob.
“Give me one week,” he calls out.
I stop, but I don’t turn around.
“I don’t want you to go,” he says. “And I know I can’t hold you here if you don’t want to be here. But this Stretch shit? I need to figure it out. You need to give me time to do that before you run off to God the fuck knows where. One week. Please.”
He has a point. Though I have my suspicions about what happened, who might be behind it, there’s no proof. But I’ll die before I stay here with Julian. “I’ll be at Hope’s. Don’t call me. I’ll call you.”
Exactly one week later, I find myself back at the place where, at least for me, it all started.
And as usual, I can see everything from this corner of the bar.
The paint’s still chipped and the tables and chairs are old and flimsy. As far as I know, Stretch has only been dead for less than two weeks, but Imperial looks and feels like it’s been deserted for months.
The door swings open when Pierce walks in, head high, swagger cocky and Chantel at his side. Two steps behind them is Blaire.
I want to strangle her.
“Can I make you guys something to drink?” I ask, already mixing up an Irish coffee. Blaire and Chantel settle on the stools in front of the bar while Pierce chooses a seat at a table near the door.
“Why are we here?” Blaire looks around wide-eyed and fidgety.
There are a few ways to answer that question. We’re here because just like I’ve acknowledged that even though the guys are bad guys, they’re still my guys. Blaire and Chantel may be completely fucked up and dysfunctional, but that doesn’t make them any less my dysfunctional family.
Family deserve their chance to air out their side of things, maybe even make things right. If that’s not what they want, however, I at least deserve an explanation.
“We’re here because we need to catch up,” I say, sliding Blaire a drink across the bar. “And we’re going to start with you telling me which one of you killed Stretch.”
To Be Continued…
About the Author
Lory Wendy is a daydreaming contemporary romance writer.
When she isn’t writing, or reading, you can find her binge-watching True Crime television with "Snapped" being the most watched.
Born in New York, raised in Florida, and matured in Massachusetts, she's never sure how to answer the question, "Where are you from?"
At the moment, though, Lory has recently returned to New York where she's drawing on the city lights, and packed to the brim trains, to inspire her writing.
Be sure to follow her for updates on her upcoming releases, including the explosive conclusion to the HIGH STAKES duet.
Also check out… Ricochet
www.lorywendy.com
