by Cora Brent
“I suppose.”
“And you weren’t dating her.”
“No.”
“Just fucking her.”
He let the fork drop on his plate with a clatter. “What do you want to hear, Audrey? I was no angel and you know it.” He grabbed my hand and gazed intently into my eyes. “She doesn’t matter. All there is now is us.”
I didn’t know what had made me lash out other than the fact that I was distressed over the situation at work. Maybe I was searching for a way to not be the lone screwup today. In any case I had no right to take out my angst on Jason. I had no doubt that I was the only woman in his life. I covered his hand with my other one. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
Jason smiled and kissed my hand like the prince he was.
Later we attacked each other as soon as we were back in the room. We screwed standing up against the wall and moved to the shower where I urged him to go harder, harder, and fucking harder still, even though my back would probably be sore the next day after knocking so forcefully against the wall tiles. Then I sank to my knees right there in the steam and finished him with my mouth. We retreated to the room and collapsed on the bed in an exhausted, wet pile, but I knew Jason had enough stamina to be ready again soon. He was. I climbed on top and rode him at a frenetic pace until I shook and came. Then he took charge, flipping me over and ending the job from behind.
We crawled beneath the covers sometime after one a.m. and Jason stroked my back. “Everything is going to be fine, Audrey,” he soothed, undoubtedly trying to comfort me because he understood me well enough to know I wouldn’t be able to stop worrying about my epic mistake.
“I know,” I said, and wished I had a better talent for lying.
Jason was asleep when I slid out of bed and wrapped myself in his shirt before settling down on a leather armchair positioned opposite the television. There in the darkness with my boyfriend sleeping ten feet away, I drew my knees up to my chest and stared at the tiny refrigerator, wondering how the minibar was stocked. This was a classy resort. There might be an entire bottle of wine in there.
I never did open it to find out. But I did stare at the closed door for a long time before returning to bed.
CHAPTER TWENTY
On the drive home Jason mentioned that he planned on going to see his father later in the afternoon and take him out to eat, maybe bring him back to the house for a little while. He extended an invitation to me, but I said I was tired.
“I wore you out, huh?” he joked, placing a confident hand on my knee.
“Indeed,” I said.
He carried my suitcase to my apartment door like a gentleman, and I kissed him tenderly before burying my face in his warm chest.
“Thank you for an amazing weekend,” I murmured, wishing I could stay just like this for a few hours with my cheek pressed to his chest.
Jason’s arms circled me. “The county offices open at nine. The architects open for business at eight. Why don’t you get some rest and I’ll meet you there in the morning? They can produce a clean copy of the plans, and then we’ll drive straight over to the county office and drop them off. They’ll lift the freeze and work should resume by the afternoon. I remember something like this happened once on a City of Surprise project I was working on. It’s just bureaucracy, Audrey. It’ll get sorted out.”
“Okay,” I said, feeling guilty because I had other plans, plans I couldn’t tell him about.
He kissed me once more and started to walk away.
“Jason?” I called, with a sudden surge of panic that this moment right here was a turning point, that if I couldn’t be honest with him right now, then I might lose him later.
He had turned around and was waiting to hear what I had to say.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” I said.
He grinned. “Yeah, you will.”
Once I was inside my apartment, I went out to the patio and watched his car drive away. Then I immediately made a phone call.
“Can you still meet?” I said into the phone. “I don’t mind coming to you. I really appreciate this.”
Half an hour later I was knocking on Lukas Lund’s door. He opened it almost immediately, wearing a white T-shirt, jeans, and a disarmingly friendly expression.
“Come in, Audrey,” he said, standing aside.
I hesitated before stepping over the threshold. “I really do appreciate this, Lukas.”
He nodded. “You mentioned that already.”
“Well, I wasn’t sure you’d be eager to help me after what happened the last time we saw each other.”
“Eh.” Lukas waved a hand. “Not my finest moment. I couldn’t really blame the guy for getting territorial, and I wouldn’t have pushed my nose in if I’d realized you and Jason were together.” He paused. “You are together, right?”
“We are,” I said, looking around his condo. The walls were covered with the baseball memorabilia I remembered seeing at his last place.
“Give me a second and I’ll get what you need,” Lukas said, disappearing down the hall.
The glass balcony doors were slightly ajar. I slid them open farther and took in the view of downtown Phoenix. Noise bubbled out of Chase Field next door, and I could see there was a baseball game under way.
I turned around when I heard the soft shuffle of Lukas’s bare feet on the hardwood floor. He was holding a pair of rolled-up architectural plans for the county courthouse.
“Thank you,” I breathed as he handed them over. “I’ll get these turned in first thing in the morning, and hopefully they’ll lift the halt right away.”
“I’m sure they will,” Lukas said to reassure me. “They want their courthouse built as much as you want to build it.”
“Lukas.” I tucked the plans under one arm and swallowed. “Thank you again. It would have been easy for you to throw me under the bus here.”
He stared at me. “I wouldn’t do that, Audrey.”
The crowd at Chase Field roared and I looked over.
“Sounds like a home run,” I observed, staring down at the sea of cheering people.
“Does he deserve you?” Lukas asked almost under his breath.
I looked up into his clear blue eyes. They weren’t hurt or angry. Just curious.
“Yes,” I said. “He does.”
“Good,” Lukas said. “Then please tell him I’m sorry for trying to sucker punch him.”
I hugged the plans and moved away from the glass door. “I should let you get back to your Sunday afternoon.”
He smiled. “I didn’t mind the interruption at all.”
“Goodbye, Lukas.”
I went straight home after leaving Lukas’s place. For a moment I considered texting Jason and offering to meet up with him and his dad. But I dreaded telling him I had been to see Lukas. Plus I wanted to spend the evening taking a second look at all my recent emails to make sure nothing else had slipped through the cracks. For the last month I’d been so consumed with all things Jason, it was no wonder I’d managed to screw up somewhere. Now wasn’t the time for either of us to get used to goofing off. It was time to take stock of the things that were important.
By the time I was finished sorting through all my communications for the last month, it was close to midnight, and I fell asleep confident that I hadn’t missed anything else. And I had no intention of missing anything in the future.
In the morning I awoke with a feeling of purpose. All I needed to do was be there at the county offices when they opened at nine, hand over the plans, and beg for the project to restart. I texted Jason at seven to let him know he didn’t need to meet me at the architects’ building to retrieve the plans. I nervously awaited his reply, figuring he would want to know why that portion of the plan had been scrapped.
He didn’t want to know why. Somehow he already knew.
Jason: I heard.
I frowned over the message. But Jason didn’t explain further, nor did he answer my next text when I let him know that I coul
d handle the visit to the county offices myself.
I was the first person waiting in line for the county building to open, and as soon as I called my contact, Lacy Acker, to let her know that I was present with the plans in hand, she came down to the lobby and ushered me upstairs. After I presented the plans, I apologized for all this grief at least three times to every person I saw, even a roaming janitor, figuring it couldn’t hurt. Lacy Acker left me waiting in her office while she personally obtained the go-ahead to resume work on the courthouse project now that this particular bureaucratic box had been checked off. I heaved an audible sigh of relief when Lacy made the call to The Man that the construction crews were free to return to the property. Before I left I shook the poor woman’s hand so hard it nearly fell off, but I was jubilant, floating on air as I left the building, firing off a text to Jason to let him know all was well now. I even sang along to the car radio as I inched through downtown Phoenix traffic.
Walking into Lester & Brown I was still grinning like an idiot. I kept grinning until I got to my office.
Jason looked up from his laptop when I walked in. My first instinct was to run over and kiss him in celebration. But I could tell at once that he wasn’t pleased about something.
“Don’t tell me there’s more bad news,” I groaned, sinking into my chair. “We just got one major hassle resolved. It would be nice to enjoy at least twelve hours without another.”
“We didn’t get anything resolved,” Jason said. He snapped the laptop lid closed.
Panic flared. “What are you talking about? I just came from Lacy Acker’s office. The crews should be back on-site within an hour.”
Jason stared at me for a long, silent moment. I had a feeling I wouldn’t like whatever was going on behind his narrowed eyes. I was right.
“We didn’t get anything resolved,” he repeated. “You ran around and did it all yourself. Audrey Gordon, one-woman show.”
I sighed. “Is that seriously what’s bugging you? That I took care of this without your help? It was my fuckup, Jason. Of course I should be the one running around like my hair’s on fire.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “And that’s why you had to go to Lukas’s place without telling me?”
How in the hell did he know about that? “He was willing to help out and get me the plans so I wouldn’t have to worry about begging for them this morning. That’s all it was, Jason.”
Yet I knew my defense was a partial lie. I hadn’t told Jason because I knew he’d object. The trouble between him and Lukas might have gotten in the way of my opportunity to obtain the blueprints and get a head start on fixing the mess I’d made. And I’d prioritized that above all else.
“I know,” Jason said, but there was an ominous quality to his voice. “He told me.”
“You talked to Lukas?”
“Yes, I talked to Lukas.”
“So you’re all pissed off I went to see him before you could go behind my back and do the same thing?”
He glared. “I was trying to spare you the chore of seeing him.”
“It wasn’t a chore. It took five minutes. Lukas was pleasant the entire time.”
“He was pleasant? He’s an ex who scared the shit out of you once, and I don’t fucking trust the bastard.”
“Jason, seriously, it was no big deal. He seemed glad to help. Anyway, what kind of conversation did the two of you have?”
“I gave him a call last night. Told him I wanted to clear the air between us and asked him if there was any possibility he might hand the plans over to me to give you one less thing to worry about. Turns out there was no need. You’d already been there to get them yourself.”
I winced. “I know I should have mentioned it. But I thought you’d just worry. Or else you’d insist on coming along, and like I said, this was my fuck up. My mess to deal with.”
Jason shook his head and looked away. “I don’t get you, Audrey,” he said in a wounded tone. “I thought we were on the same page. I assumed we were a team, in more ways than one.”
“We are. It’s just—”
“What?” he snapped.
“There’s a lot at stake right now,” I said, crossing my arms. “We’ve been so wrapped up in each other.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“It might be when we’re trying to manage a two-hundred-million-dollar project together. Maybe we should cool it a little bit. Until the courthouse is done.”
“That will be a year from now,” he said quietly. “An entire goddamn year that you want to put us on freeze for.”
“Jason,” I choked out. None of this was coming out right. “You know how I feel about you.”
“No, actually, I have no fucking idea how you feel about me, Audrey. But if you’re interested, I’ll tell you how I feel about you.”
A sour taste filled my mouth and I had to bite my lip to keep it from quivering. I’d always prided myself on being a woman who didn’t cry often. I’ve had macho assholes screaming in my face before and I didn’t even blink. This was a different kind of pressure. Jason might say the kind of words that would actually make me crack.
“Are you interested?” he asked sharply when I didn’t respond right away.
“Yes,” I whispered.
Jason pushed out of his chair and crossed the small room. He pulled me to my feet before cupping my face in his hands and bending down a little so we were eye to eye.
“We’re the same, Audrey, always have been. Both of us cut from the same damaged cloth. Both of us hell-bent on proving we’re worth more than the sum of our past screwups combined. But in spite of all that bullshit bad history, I believe there’s nothing we can’t do together. You’d believe it too if you’d let yourself. And if that’s not enough, then you should know that I’m absolutely fucking crazy about you.”
I was crazy about him too. But those wild highs that surged through me when I was with Jason might prove to be a risk to my career, even my stability. I’d wrapped myself up too far in my job at this point, and I was afraid. I was afraid that work was the thing keeping me grounded, the thing that had defined the person I’d become. Without that constant focus I might flounder, I might backslide. My father hadn’t been the one to plant the idea in my head. It was already there.
Plus, if Jason and my father were right, that we were essentially two sides of the same coin, was that really a good thing?
Even if I’m in love with him.
We were still eye to eye, still so close that anyone glancing in would know with certainty that we were lovers. Jason must not have liked what he saw in my face as my thoughts careened around, because he was already inching away when my phone started beeping.
“There’s a meeting,” I said, hating the lifeless sound of my own voice. “The weekly departmental meeting. That was the five-minute notification.”
Jason took a big step away from me. I looked down. I didn’t need to see his face to know I’d disappointed him. He’d asked me for optimism and I’d silently refused to have any.
I picked up a legal-sized notepad. I felt drained, ten years older than I had the moment I walked in here. The thought of losing Jason made me want to retch my guts out into the wire wastebasket.
My calendar reminder beeped again.
“Are you coming to the meeting?” I asked him.
He nodded without looking at me. “In a minute.”
“I can wait for you,” I said, watching his back. If he turned around now, I’d go to him. I’d run into his arms and tell him yes, that I believed we could do anything together. I’d tell him he was worth more than any job, any project, any career.
But Jason didn’t turn around.
“Go ahead,” he said. “I won’t stand in your way.”
He walked into the conference room a minute after I did. We sat on opposite sides of the table and avoided each other’s eyes the entire time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Are you and Jason fighting?” Helen asked over a lu
nch of wedge salads after she dragged me out of the office for a little while.
“We’re not fighting at all,” I said truthfully, because Jason and I weren’t fighting. We’d scarcely spoken to each other in the four days that had elapsed since that emotional Monday morning confrontation, but I reasoned it couldn’t be considered fighting if we communicated through terse work-related text messages. I hated the way things were right now between us, but the week had been hellish. It seemed the second work resumed on the courthouse site, a series of mishaps ranging from vandalized raw materials to a vanished crew of laborers had taken up the bulk of our attention. Jason had spent most of his time on-site this week and that might have been justified by the recent spate of disasters. Or it might have been because he was avoiding the tense atmosphere of our shared office.
On my end, I was bouncing between the jobsite and the office, clocking late hours as I tried to iron out some contract issues with our subcontractors. All week I’d been among the last to leave the building every night. I was sure Jason was working hard too, although he probably didn’t go home and read through all the day’s emails and texts one more time before collapsing into a brief, fitful sleep.
I missed him. I especially missed him at night. Sleeping alone is an empty feeling when you’re yearning to have someone specific at your side. Even though I knew exactly where to find Jason virtually every minute of the day, a wide chasm yawned between us, and I was unsure how to cross it. The idea of losing him scared the shit out of me. Yet I didn’t have the time or the energy right now to give him a more complete commitment.
“Audrey, earth to Audrey,” said Helen, waving a hand in front of my face.
I blinked. “Sorry, what was the question?”
My coworker and friend raised an eyebrow. “No question, doll. You said that you and Jason weren’t fighting, and then your eyes glazed over while you stared at that old man in the corner.”
The old man in the corner turned out to be squeezing the contents of a salad dressing packet directly into his mouth.
“Purely unintentional,” I said. “I must have blacked out for a moment.”
