by Coco Holland
“What are you doing?” she asked as I placed them into an envelope.
I finally stopped and looked at her.
“This is what he wanted.”
“He wanted pictures, but I never took them,” she started.
“This is what he wanted,” I repeated, interrupting her. I walked toward Leah, holding out the Manilla envelope. “Tell him the charade is over and to give you your money.”
She stepped back, shaking her head wordlessly.
“Give Berger this,” I insisted pushing the envelope into her hands. “And your brother’s scholarship is safe.”
Her face crumbled at the mention of her brother. Tears streamed down her face as she took the envelope into her hands.
“You can go now.”
“Thank you,” she whispered. She looked down at the envelope, not meeting my eyes.
It hurt to look at her.
“Go home Leah,” I said. I sat down in my desk chair and turned away from her. “You got what you needed. I’ll message George to meet you downstairs.”
I listened to her footsteps, walking away from me and tried to ignore the aching void that she left behind.
Chapter 11
Leah
That was it then. It was over. I got what I wanted but at what cost?
I struggled to keep calm as he turned away from me, but the tears fell fast, and I could feel an ugly cry bubbling up from inside of me. He knows and my world felt empty and cold again, whatever warmth was gone. I had to get out of here. The pain and humiliation were too much.
I took my things and left his apartment. Callum didn’t stop me, even though I desperately wanted him to but he did call George. He was there outside at the entrance, the car in idle, I didn’t even have to wait. I had been dismissed, coldly and efficiently.
I cried all the way home. The ugly cry that threatened to come in his office came in the back of his car. Sobs wracked through me as I sat surrounded in the elegant luxury of Callum’s car. I felt completely and utterly alone.
“Are you ok miss?” George opened the door to find my red, tear stained face. I peered outside. We were outside of my place.
“Yes,” I replied. I rubbed at my tears. “I’m sorry.”
“No, need to be sorry miss,” he said reassuringly. He held his hand out and helped me out of the car.
Home sweet home.
Strangely enough, I was glad to be there. It was a small comfort to be back to what I knew. I wanted to have a long hot shower and to climb under my covers and sleep. I didn’t want to think anymore. I didn’t want to remember Callum’s hurt face, or what I had done to make him feel that way. I grasped the envelope in my hand. It was all for this.
What a joke.
I swallowed another sob. At least Ollie was safe and his future was just that little bit more secure. I got what I wanted and I also I got what I deserved.
I lost him. For someone that had been in my life for so little time, I couldn’t believe how sad I felt knowing that I could never touch him again. Or talk to him again. I wouldn’t feel safe or special like that again.
“Do you want me to escort you inside miss?”
“No thank you, George,” I stepped clear of the car. “Thanks for dropping me off.”
“It was my pleasure miss.” He bowed.
“Goodbye George, it was nice meeting you.”
“Until next time miss,” he said kindly. He walked back to the driver’s door and re-entered the car. I waved as he honked goodbye and turned back to my home.
The lights were off when I entered the house, and it was eerily quiet.
I had a sinking feeling as I walked down the hallway. Ollie’s room – empty. Mama’s room – the same.
The neighbor’s dog barked outside.
“Where is everyone?” I huffed as I threw my stuff down onto my bed.
I took out my phone.
Leah: Where are you, Ollie?
I settled into the couch and waited. Mama came home first, stumbling into the house at 1 a.m. She gave me a vacant stare before heading to her room.
Probably to sleep off whatever she was on that night, I thought unkindly.
I called Ollie’s phone.
No answer.
It was 2 a.m. when I woke up to the front door opening and my kid brother trying to tip toe past me in the dark.
“You’re home late,” I said sternly. I got up and turned the light on.
He jumped backward startled.
“Leah, you freak,” he exclaimed. “You scared me to death!”
“Where have you been?!”
“Out,” he said his expression guarded. “What’s it to you?”
“It’s everything,” I folded my arms. “Who were you with?
He rattled off some names. They were kids from his chess club.
“What were you doing? Why are you home so late?” I asked.
“None of your business! Why are you hassling me?”
“Are you on something?” I ignored him.
“Look me in the eyes,” I grabbed his face. I searched his face and checked his pupils.
“What?” he struggled against me, pulling away from my grasp. ”Get off me! I’m not on anything! Stop bugging me, God!”
“You come home at 2 a.m. and try to sneak in. Of course, I’m going to be suspicious, kid!” My voice raised a few decibels more than I would’ve liked.
“Kid? I’m only three years younger than you,” he yelled back. He tilted his chin. “Stop acting like you’re my mom!”
“Someone has to! Someone has to act like your parent!” All my frustration and misery bubbled over. “You don’t fucking complain when you’ve got food to eat. When you’ve got a roof over your head. You don’t care when I act like your mom then!”
I wiped a tear back with the back of my hand. Ollie’s eyes widened.
“I’m sorry Leah,” he said, his shoulders sagging. “I know you do a lot for us…”
“I’m sorry too,” I said. “Shit. It’s not you. I’m going through something.”
“You wanna talk about it?” he said. “We’re both up anyways.”
I shrugged. We sat down on the couch.
I didn’t want to start the conversation, and I guess he could sense that.
“I wish things weren’t the way they are. I wish…” he said wistfully.
I knew what he wished. Because I wanted for it for a long time. A family like you’d see in movies. A dad. A good mom. Happy.
“I’m sorry for coming home late,” he said. “Me and the guys were celebrating.”
“It’s alright Ollie.”
“We’ll be ok Leah,” he said rubbing circles on my back. “You don’t have to take the load on all by yourself. I’ll take care of you and Mama. You won’t have to work at that place anymore, I promise.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat.
“I promise,” he said grabbing my hand.
“I know you will kid,” I said. “You know I never thanked you for that night. That thing with Freddie.”
His face darkened.
“I don’t want to talk about that,” he said. “I wanted to kill him. I still do.”
“You saved me, Ollie,” I continued. “If you didn’t come home that second, who know what he would’ve done to me…”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it, Leah,” he frowned. He opened and closed his fist.
“I’m just saying, that’s all,” I said, sensing that I should back off. “I know I treat you like a baby sometimes, but you’re grown now. I think you’ve been an adult for a while now.”
He shrugged.
“Listen, I’ve got money coming,” I said. “For school next year.”
“Where did you get it from?” Ollie’s eyes were full of suspicion.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does, Lee. What did you do to get that money?”
“It doesn’t matter anymore, ok?”
“Well I don’t want it,” he said.
He jutted out his chin.
“How are you going to pay your way through school?” I asked.
“Lee,” he started. “I’ve been trying to tell you.”
I looked at him questioningly.
“I don’t want to take the scholarship,” he continued. “I want to keep working at the shop. I figure if I go to college and do something I have no interest in, it’ll just be a waste of time. Reggie agrees with me.”
“What would Reggie Taylor know?” I was going to kick his beefy redheaded ass.
“He knows that I love doing it. That it’s what I want to do,” he said patiently. “You’d know that too, if you’d just listen to me sometimes.”
I closed my eyes.
It had been for nothing. I had hurt the man I loved, for nothing. It would’ve been funny if my heart wasn’t broken.
I opened my eyes. Ollie sat there with a guileless expression on his face. I couldn’t feel anger towards him. Instead, I held him close and kissed his forehead.
“Uh,” He wiped his forehead with a cringe. “Gross.”
“I’d do anything for you,” I said.
“I know Leah,” he said. “I love you for it, but I don’t need your help anymore.”
“I love you, too kid,” I replied. “I’ll respect your decision.”
He hugged me tight.
“Don’t go back to the coffee stand,” he whispered. “Please. You gotta figure your own way out of this place. Use the money on yourself.”
I hugged him back. I wouldn’t take the money. I knew there was nothing left to do but to do the opposite. For the first time the choice was clear. I knew what to do, where to go and when to do it. Callum was always there on a Friday night after all.
Chapter 12
Callum
It was déjà vu when she walked into Alta, hips swaying making a beeline towards me, a look of determination in her eyes. She looked just as beautiful as the first time that I saw her. More beautiful, I decided. Her eyes were clear and steady as she locked eyes with mine. She held two envelopes in her hand, one large envelope and the other small. I raised my brow at her, and she continued to move through the crowd toward me.
“Callum,” Her sweet voice was like a punch in the guts.
“Leah.” I nodded.
“I think you know why I’m here,” she said.
“Come for another ride?”
“No,” she said her voice pained. “I’m here to give this back to you.”
She placed the envelopes onto the table. I ignored them and turned back to my drink.
“I also…” she paused. She placed her hand on mine. She looked at me, her eyes searching my face. “I wanted to apologize to you. I was stupid. I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t want to hurt you.”
I hated the way my body reacted to her. Her sweet fragrance. The softness of her skin. I pulled my hand away.
She flinched but pressed on. “I want you to know that, I fell for you and it fucked up everything. I think you felt something, too. I know that made it worse. It complicated things. I thought… I don’t know what I thought. I guess that no one would get hurt. That you were just some guy, that it didn’t matter, but you turned out to be THE guy and it did.”
Yeah, it did fucking hurt. It still hurt, but it would go away. It would go away if Leah did. If she went away, months and years would pass, and the pain would go.
“You still need the money though, don’t you?” I said, my voice brittle and cruel. “I did like screwing you Leah. I’ll pay you double what he paid you, to fuck me one last time.”
She reeled at my words, snatching her warm hand from mine.
“Fuck you, Callum.”
“That’s the point, beautiful,” I pulled her close. “You were happy to fuck me for money, what’s stopping you now?
I felt the electricity spark between us. The familiar lust and, yes, love, there in the space between us. I wanted to kiss her. It didn’t have to be this way. We could turn, leave this shit behind us and begin again. We could stand the test of time. I knew I could love her for a lifetime.
I’m a fool. Don’t listen to me.
“Why are you being like this?” she said. Her eyes watched my lips.
I let her go before I did anything stupid.
I touched the two envelopes that sat on the counter and remembered the pain I felt at her betrayal. I didn’t want to feel that again. I thought Natalia hurt me, but that paled compared to this. This was an unbelievable ache. The same gaping void that Mom left when she died. Loving Leah and losing her widened the void. I didn’t know I could hurt that much. Even if we reconciled, I knew then that loving her meant eventually losing her. Maybe before her time, like Mom. And I couldn’t do it.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I don’t hate you Leah, funny thing is I understand and maybe, if I had been in your position, I would’ve done it myself.”
She was only a pawn caught in the middle of a game that I was refusing to play with Berger. I saw the barrage of texts and heard about the thinly veiled threats. Thomas Berger was an intimidating to most grown men, and she was a twenty-year-old with money problems. She was desperate, I could see that now, and she was afraid.
“It wasn’t all bad. I liked spending time with you,” I continued. “But we can’t have a do-over.”
“We can’t?”
“Remember what you told me that night I drove you to your house for the first time?”
She shook her head.
“You said that it was best if we leave it like this. Something nice to think about on a gray day. A nice---“
“Fairy tale,” she added. She nodded, tears shining in eyes. “I understand.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me, too,” she replied. She brushed her hands down her skirt. “Will you give the money back for me?”
I nodded. I couldn’t trust myself to say anything else.
“Goodbye, Callum,” she whispered.
“Goodbye, Leah.”
And with one last teary lopsided smile, she disappeared into the crowd.
Yes, I’m a fucking idiot.
I knew it when I got home that night and walked into my expensive empty apartment. Hell, I knew it before then, when I got into my expensive car alone. I knew it when she walked away and I let her do it. It turns out choosing to walk away from someone you’ve fallen in love with is a really stupid idea.
Yep, I’m a fucking idiot.
I knew I was going to have to do some quick thinking and smooth talking to get her back. I’d have to prostrate myself in front of her and tell her how stupid I was.
There was just something I had to do first.
So, there we were. Two friends, former friends, together in the same room again. Older. Tired. Miles apart.
“How’d we end up here Tom?” I asked wearily.
“You tell me,” he said. “You’re the one that sat on the deal. We wanted this, you and I, the goal was to sell. You were the one that changed the stakes.”
“We wanted to build something great. It wasn’t just about the money.”
“Well, we’ll have to agree to disagree,” Berger looked at me pityingly. “I didn’t think it would work you know? I was getting desperate.”
“Didn’t think what would work?” I raised my eyebrows
“The photos. I didn’t think you loved her,“ Berger shrugged. “She didn’t seem your type.”
“I do love her,” I frowned. “Leah is the best thing that came out of this fucking mess.”
“Leah?” He raised his eyebrows. “The kid? I meant Natalia.”
“What? No, Natalia left months ago.”
I looked at him in shock.
“Is that why you wanted those photos? To threaten to give them to Natalia?” I asked. I rubbed the nape of my neck.
“Well, yes,” he said warily. “You broke up with Natalia?”
“Yes,” I murmured. “All that effort for nothing.”
“Not nothing,” he said w
ith a grim smile. “I still won.”
I shook my head. “I’m afraid no one won.”
“Wait, you’re in love with bikini coffee girl?”
“Forget it.” I sighed.
“She has a sweet little ass – “
I glared daggers at him. The feeling of possessiveness rose inside me like bile. He wasn’t going to talk about her like that.
“You would do well to keep quiet about her now, Berger,” I said, my voice ice cold. He raised his hands in surrender.
“You surprised me, Callum,” Berger said with a chuckle. “Crazy to think, after all these years, you surprised me.”
I didn’t reply.
“You love her…” he made quotation marks in the air when he said love.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said plainly. “We aren’t that kind of friends now Berger.”
“I suppose we aren’t,” he agreed. “Maybe we never were.”
His words hung over us. I felt exhausted.
“Are you happy?” I asked. I rubbed my eyes. “Now you’ve gotten your way, that is.”
“I wouldn’t say that no,” he leaned back into his chair. “Relieved. Not happy. I needed that money.”
“Why?”
“I owed someone.” He crossed his arms.
“Who?” I asked. This was the first time I ever heard of it.
“Like you said, we aren’t friends anymore.”
I took the two envelopes from my top drawer and pushed them across the table.
“This is what you came here for,” I said tapping the top envelope.
“What’s this?” Berger lifted the smaller envelope up and examined it.
“The money.”
“She didn’t take the money,” he said. “What a little fool.”
Leah wasn’t a fool. She was self-sacrificing and possibly loved far too much, but she wasn’t a fool.
“I guess I win on all accounts,” Berger smiled thinly. He folded the small envelope and put it in his back pocket.
“Like I said before, no one won.”
“It didn’t have to end up this way,” he shrugged.
“But it did,” I said.
“If it means anything, I came down on her hard. Used her brother against her.”
