by JJ Jones
“OK. OK, let’s talk about this. Let’s try and be reasonable.”
“Reasonable? Oh, I’m so sorry, was I being too unreasonable for you? Should I have been more understanding about all of this?”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“No, I don’t. By all means, why don’t you go ahead and explain yourself?”
“This is Audrina. She’s my sister’s friend.”
“Fine. What exactly does that have to do with anything?”
“Well, she called me, my sister did, and told me Audrina was moving to town. She said she was nervous because she didn’t know anyone. She asked me to show her around.”
“Huh, that’s funny. I didn’t realize showing her around meant showing her your penis.”
“Come on, Aubrey. Don’t be like that.”
“Don’t be like what? Am I wrong? Is that not what you were doing?”
“Maybe I should go.”
It would have been funny, watching this Audrina girl try to climb off Brent while maintaining her dignity if it hadn’t also meant that he was cheating on her. And she loved the way she said maybe she should go. Maybe, like there was any chance that it would be OK for her to stay?
It was the strangest feeling, standing here and watching all of this. It was like being in a bad movie and it made her feel all of the cliché things she had always pitied other women for. Had she done something wrong? Had she not been enough? She was pretty and she knew it, although not in a concerted kind of way, petite with blue eyes like her mother and long strawberry blonde hair. But maybe it wasn’t enough? Maybe he had gotten bored, maybe she hadn’t been enough in bed. Maybe. There were so many maybes in a situation like this that they could drive a woman completely insane if she let them.
Well, fuck that. Aubrey wasn’t going to let them. She hadn’t done anything but love and support this son of a bitch both financially and emotionally for the last two years of her life. There was nothing about this that was her fault. This was on him and his girl on the side. But honestly, it was mostly on him. He was the one who had been charged with the responsibility of loyalty and he was the one who had failed miserably. Who knew what this Audrina’s deal was?
“Yes,” Aubrey said with an eerie calm that surprised even her, “going would be a good idea. And while you’re at it, take him with you.”
“What? No! Babe, come on. Let’s talk about this.”
“I don’t think so. As far as I’m concerned, there isn’t anything to talk about.”
“But don’t you want to hear my side?”
“Not even a little bit. There’s no way to talk yourself out of this, Brent. I saw you. This is not showing someone around. It’s called cheating, and it’s not something I’m willing to tolerate.”
“So you’re just going to throw everything we have away? Everything we’ve built together?”
Looking into his sad brown eyes, Aubrey could feel herself weakening, second guessing the decision to throw him out and be done with it. Two years. She had spent two years of her life with this man and for the most part they had been good years.
He had been there for funerals, for birthdays, he had been her date at her best friend’s wedding. If she threw him out now and put an end to them, she wouldn’t get those things back. Always and forever they would be tainted with the memory of him, and maybe the wanting of him, too. It seemed like such a sad, terrifying thing to do, to go back to the beginning and start all over again.
But then he stood up and she watched him clumsily wrap the sheets around his waist, ungodly expensive sheets she had bought just because he said he was a troubled sleeper and they might help. Looking at that she realized something important, something she might not have realized until years down the line if it weren’t for this unfortunate event.
She didn’t really love him any more. She loved the idea of him, of what they once were and what they might have been in the future in some alternate universe where he wasn’t quite so selfish. So no, she didn’t need to think about what he was throwing away. What she was throwing away had already been dead for a long, long time. She just hadn’t realized it.
“What do we have, Brent?”
“What do you mean? We have this. Us.”
“Right. That’s what I thought you were going to say. I’m sorry, Brent, really. But that just isn’t enough for me any more.”
“But what am I going to do?”
He was starting to cry now, but Aubrey knew it wasn’t for them. It was for himself, for what he was losing. This meant his meal ticket was gone. He was going to have to find someone else foolish enough to fall for his charisma, to pay his way through school and through life. This was definitely going to change things for him.
It was going to be a rude awakening, probably better in the long run but also painful for him at the moment. Oh well. He would survive it, right?
“What do you mean, what are you going to do? You’re going to do what almost everyone else our age does. You’re going to take care of yourself for once. Now please, I would like you to go. We can figure out getting you your stuff later, but right now I need you to leave. Because honestly, I don’t want to look at the two of you any more.”
Part of her expected him to put up more of a fight, to get down on his knees and beg, even. But then again, maybe he realized there wasn’t really any point. He knew her, after all. He knew how stubborn she was, knew from past conversations about other people how little tolerance she had for cheating and the people who tried to get away with it. All he did now was hang his head and sigh a long, sorrowful sigh before walking into the closet and stuffing a bag quickly with some of his clothes.
He gave her one last mournful look and then headed for the door, stopping for an awkward moment while he waited for Audrina to get her clothes all the way back on. Thank god he left the key without her having to ask, seeing as she wasn’t really in the mood to chat about the ordeal any further.
And it wasn’t like he had any kind of claim to the place. Hers was the only name on the lease. It had to be; Brent didn’t have any money to help with the rent. She waited, not moving from her post by the bedroom door, until both of them left and the door shut behind them, then sprinted to it so she could lock it firmly behind them.
It wasn’t like she really thought they would try to come back inside, but just in case. She needed to know that Brent wouldn’t be back inside her apartment again and she needed to know it for sure. She wasn’t sure she was up to another confrontation like that.
“Shit, this is the worst day.”
Now that the whole disaster was over and the adrenaline was starting to leave her body, she felt badly shaken and sort of sick to her stomach. She was alone. It had been a hell of a day and there was nobody there to talk to about it. The person she usually discussed this sort of thing with was the one responsible for a large part of what was troubling her. She shook her head, hardly able to believe what had just happened, and poured herself a big ol’ glass of wine before settling in front of the TV. If there was ever a night for an HGTV marathon, this was it. She was going to be OK. There was no other choice but to be OK. It was just going to take a little bit of time before the shock wore off and she went back to feeling like herself. A pair of ratty sweats helped, the bottle on the table in front of her helped a little more, and she settled in to try and reteach herself how to be a single girl.
There was one good thing that came out of all of this though, if she was inclined to look for the silver lining of the situation. Everything that had just happened had helped her to make a very important decision. So there was that, at least. Thank god for small blessings.
“I want in.”
“Whoa! Good morning to you, too, Conner. Looks like we’re going to have a lovely day.”
“I know, I know. Here, I brought you a coffee.”
Aubrey had stormed into Mr. Conrad’s office like a tornado, startling him in the middle of a phone call she very much hoped was to his wife.
Who the hell knew after the events of last night? She wasn’t prepared to believe that anyone was faithful at this point. But it sounded like it was his wife and she had interrupted, brazenly and without feeling the least bit sorry about it, either.
She had business to take care of and he was the one she needed to take care of it with. She had hardly slept at all, only an hour or two, and she was in no mood for beating around the bush. If she was going to do this thing she wanted to do it right now. No more thinking it over, no more giving it some time, she was all in.
“Well, thanks for the coffee, even if it does come with that crazy look in your eyes. So what’s the deal? What’s going on with you?”
“What do you mean? Nothing’s going on with me.”
Judging by the look on Mr. Conrad’s face, however, she had to wonder what she looked like at the moment. She must look like a hot mess for him to be reacting to her this way, either that or she really was just acting straight up crazy. She didn’t care. It didn’t matter any more. She was like a pit bull. Once she decided to do something, it was going to get done, come hell or high water. It was what made her a good employee and also what made her a total pain in the ass.
“All right. Then do you want to explain to me why you’re slamming into my office saying you’re on board with a project I just last night told you I wanted you to think over?”
“I thought it over. I’m good to go. When do we start? When do you tell me what we’ve got going on?”
“You thought it over for one night. That’s not a whole lot of time, Conner. What did your man say?”
“What man?”
“Brent, I thought his name was,” Conrad said with a voice and expression that both seemed thoroughly confused, “isn’t that right?”
“Not any more. That’s over. I’m single now, so see, there’s no problem. I don’t need to check it with anyone but myself and like I said, I’m good to go.”
“Aubrey, hold on a minute. I don’t know if this is the best time to be making a decision like this. What’s that saying? The first thing you do after you burn your mouth on hot soup will be a mistake.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Did you and Brent break up just last night?”
“Yes, but I don’t think that’s relevant.”
“That’s your hot soup. I don’t know that you should be making big calls right now. Because honestly, you look like shit. Did you even sleep last night?”
“I slept enough. Look, Conrad, I see what you’re doing. I know you’re trying to look out for me and I appreciate it, really, I mean that. But if you want to look out for me then don’t take this away. I’m ready. This job is everything to me. Now I don’t have anything holding me back, not even Brent. I want to be a part of whatever new operation you’ve got going on. I need to be a part of it.”
She looked at him with eyes she willed not to fill with tears, and waited with her breath held. For a minute, she was positive he was going to say no. He probably should have said no, to be quite honest. His job was to assess whether or not she was physically and emotionally fit for the job and she had pretty much just proved that her emotional state was precarious at best. But Conrad was more than a boss to her.
He was a mentor, a friend. He was the closest thing she had ever had to a father and he looked out for her in a special way because of it. He shouldn’t give her the job until he sent her for an extensive evaluation which she worried she might fail, but then she could see his face begin to soften and she knew he was going to let her have it. Whatever “it” was.
“All right, but you have to fucking promise me that you’ve looked deep down into your soul or whatever the hell it is that governs us and found that you’re ready to handle something big. Can you promise me that?”
“Yes,” she said a little bit too eagerly for it to sound believable, “yes, I absolutely promise.”
“OK. I’m going to let you in on something that is arguably the biggest fucking deal we’ve come up against in the history of this country. I need you to listen, and I need you to listen closely. Remember, there’s no going back from this.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Jesus Christ, he had had bad hangovers before, but nothing in his extensive experience had ever been anything close to this. This felt exactly the way death must feel and if death wasn’t imminent, he sure as shit wished it would hurry up and find him. It felt like the very floor beneath him was moving in great undulating waves and he rolled over onto all fours, dry heaving over and over again.
He must have been throwing up for a considerable amount of time, time which he had no memory of, because there wasn’t anything left in his stomach to come back up. If possible, it seemed like the ground was even less stable now that he was on all fours. But that couldn’t be right. He had been hungover enough times to know how his body was going to handle it.
Sure, there were various degrees of a hangover with him just as with every other person alive, but in none of those degrees did the floor do gymnastics quite like this. Almost always when he threw up, he started to feel better, not more disoriented. And now that he was thinking about it, there were other things that didn’t seem quite right about his current situation. He couldn’t see anything.
He wasn’t blindfolded or anything quite as simple as that, but he couldn’t see all the same. It was like he had gone to sleep and woken up blind. Was that even possible? Was that a thing that happened that he just didn’t know about? And then there was the fact that he could tell he was not alone. The more in control he got of his senses (which, to be fair, was still nowhere near ideal for him), the more aware of that fact he became.
Through the sick and pain his body was grappling with Chase started to realize that he was in very big trouble.
“Look at that,” a gruff voice said with a hoarse laugh, “he’s starting to come to.”
“Sure is, isn’t taking kindly to it either, from the looks of it.”
“Who’s there? What the fuck is this?”
“Well, this is your nightmare, son. Didn’t anyone tell you that?”
“I guess I missed the memo. Now who the fuck are you? How come I can’t see anything?”
“It’s the electricity,” a third, slightly more friendly voice called out, “our bodies aren’t meant to handle such a high voltage. A normal human would be dead after taking that kind of hit. It doesn’t kill us but it knocks us out cold, takes away anything not necessary to keep us alive. You’ll get it back soon, although I don’t know that you’ll want it. We aren’t the best looking bunch at the moment.”
Chase bit his tongue while he waited out another wave of nausea. Everything after Mitch and the boys telling him that they knew what he was still felt unbelievably foggy to him, but things were starting to come back to him in little bits and pieces and what he was remembering wasn’t good. He could vaguely see himself stumbling into his pitch black apartment and running into anything and everything that was even remotely in his way. He remembered thinking about aspirin and a glass of water but couldn’t quite say if he had gotten either of them. He remembered throwing himself backwards onto his bed, staring up at a ceiling where he only saw lights from the outside world streaming across as he thought about what a strange evening he had just spent. And then?
“I wasn’t alone.”
“What was that? You’re talking like a lunatic.”
“I said I wasn’t alone. Who the fuck was in my apartment? Was it you guys? Whoever the fuck you are?”
“Calm down,” the nice one said, “none of us were in your apartment. Some of us were already in this wagon when they brought you down. Some of us got put in while you were out. Those still haven’t come to.”
“How many are in here?”
“Seven. I’m going to guess that’s all they’re going to get on this round. Doesn’t look like they can fit any more at the moment.”
“Who are you?”
Chase hated the weak, desperate sound of hi
s voice. He hated that he sounded like he couldn’t take care of himself. Shit, he hated the fact that, at this point in time, he couldn’t take care of himself. He was blind as a bat and sick, sick, sick. He had no idea what was going on and he was at the mercy of men who could see when he couldn’t.
And just to add insult to injury, on top of all of that, he could feel himself fading out again, feel his consciousness beginning to slip. He wasn’t going to be able to keep awake for much longer. He was already slumped over to one side, fighting to stay present long enough to hear the answer to his question.
