The Messenger (Professionals Book 3)

by Jessica Gadziala

  "She doesn't..."

  "Then show her. Convince her. You know Jules. She sometimes can't see things that fall outside her tunnel vision."

  "She's been distant since we came back to work."

  "'Cause you seduced her with your game room and mad cooking skills and TV marathons, then let her go ahead and act like nothing at all had transpired between you."

  "I didn't let..."

  "You let," he cut me off. "You say she's been distant, but Kai... you've been skirting around her. I haven't seen you at her desk, fiddling around with her organizer. You don't massage her shoulders anymore. How can you accuse her of the same thing you are clearly guilty of?"

  Maybe I had been giving her space.

  I had convinced myself that she needed it. To get back into the swing of things. To focus on getting her life on track.

  I didn't want to pressure her when she had enough on her plate.

  Hell, telling her family about Jameson alone likely took a huge toll on her. I could tell when she had done it. She had come into work on Monday looking weighted, moving a bit slower than usual. She'd likely had brunch with her mom and sister, spilling it all. Then, I imagined, she had needed to go home and tell her father as well. Her friends. It was a big deal.

  "She needed to focus on telling everyone about this whole thing."

  "Sure," he agreed, nodding. "But don't you think that maybe the whole experience of doing so might have been a lot easier had she someone to come home to, to lean on, someone to help lift the weight off her shoulders?" he asked, raising a brow when I could find nothing to say. "Exactly. You should be ashamed of yourself, man. Letting her go home to that empty apartment full of ghosts. And, sure, Finn had cleaned the place, changed the locks, put in some better security, but you know she doesn't feel good there. You could have been there with her."

  From what I overheard Jules telling Miller, Finn had cleaned everything from top to bottom, going so far as to shampoo all the furniture, and then removed and replace her old mattress. Because Finn was one to understand that there was no cleaning some things, there was no way to get the ick out. You had to rip it out and start again.

  "What's going on in here?" another voice joined the room, making us both look to see Gunner moving in, closing the door.

  "Oh, nothing. Just telling Kai that he's a chickenshit. Care to pile on?"

  "Sounds good. I don't have dick going on," Gunner agreed, moving to lean back against my door, crossing his arms. "So why the fuck haven't you made a move yet?" he asked, casually, but in that gruff way he was so well known for.

  I wanted to tell them to back off, to get lost. But the thing about this particular group of guys was, if you tried to push them away, they charged closer. I was surrounded by uber alphas. I barely stood a chance.

  "Nah," Lincoln said, looking over at Gunner. "You know his M.O. He's gonna mope and moon and then when he can't take anymore, he's gonna scurry on down to the woods to visit Ranger where he can daydream about Jules instead of making a move and getting that dream to be a reality."

  "I mean aren't you sick of fucking your hand all these years?" Gunner asked, blunt as ever. "Don't try to deny that isn't the case. You never spend time with any women. Sure, you let everyone believe you did, but you can't fucking fool us all for long, you know... easy, woman," he growled when Miller shoved at the door, nearly knocking him away from it.

  "Oh, is this an intervention?" she asked when Gunner moved aside to let her in. "Why wasn't I invited? I am good with the ass-kicking. I mean who was it who got the balls to tell Kai he missed his shot when Jules got serious with Jameson? Hm? Oh, right, that was me. The one without actual balls. So how far have we gotten?"

  "So far," Lincoln went on, making me close my eyes as I took a deep breath, steadying myself for another round. Words, to be fair, were often worse than an actual ass-kicking. Especially from people close to you who knew exactly what to say. "We have covered... he's a chickenshit and... isn't he sick of yanking the crank when he could be getting the real thing."

  "Hmmm. What does that leave me?" Miller mused, moving to sit on the other end of my desk opposite Lincoln's kicked-up feet. "How about... not only are you a shitty love interest, but you are a crappy friend right now too?"

  "Got that," Lincoln said, raising a finger in the air.

  "Damn. You guys got all the good stuff."

  "Maybe if you weren't so busy mooning over Quin's new client, you would have gotten here sooner," Gunner suggested.

  "Hey, did you see him? Can you blame me? The man looks like he would win a fight against a stone wall. And that voice..."

  "The man is a drug dealer, Miller," Gunner insisted, rolling his eyes.

  "Hey, we all have our flaws!" Miller said giving him a self-deprecating smile. "Speaking of flaws. Yours is you are too fucking nice, Kai. Jesus Christ. You had her in your house. You brought her tea to her bed every night. And I know what Jules wears to bed, Kai. Hell, I'd be half-tempted to do her, and I don't swing that way. But no, you had to be the shoulder to lean on, the sexless best friend."

  "You're acting like being nice is a bad thing."

  "It is when it makes you choke when you really want something," Miller explained. "Look, Jules has been opening up since she came back. Hell, I even caught Gunner bullshitting with her about various self-defense options."

  "Self-defense?" I asked, straightening up.

  "Yeah. I mean, of course. She had someone beat the shit out of her, Kai. I know you aren't a woman, but it does something to you. The possibilities of what could have happened does something to you. It doesn't matter that Jameson is dead. She wants to ensure that no one gets the better of her like that again. And, I mean, she's living all alone. Working in a job where some of the scumbags hit on her, show too much interest in her. Of course she is looking into ways to defend herself."

  "I helped her fill out her gun permit," Lincoln added.

  Jesus.

  So much was going on under my nose.

  While I sat in my office, refusing to be part of that world, to help her pick what kind of self-defense to do, to help her with her gun permit.

  "This is pointless," Gunner said, moving to stand up again, shaking his head. "If he hasn't been able to make a move in all these years, he never will. Who wants to go get a drink?" he asked. "Sloane is having dinner with her editor."

  "I'm always in," Miller declared, jumping up to follow him out.

  "I'll be right there," Lincoln called, slowly unfolding, putting his feet back on the floor, leaning forward toward me."Learned a lot of shit in my life, Kai. But maybe the most important is this - taking chances and getting shot down sucks. But nothing is worse than never taking them at all. Don't be leaving this Earth with 'what-ifs' on your mind."

  With that, he jumped up, walked out, went to join our friends.

  Quin was still in the office with his drug-dealing client. But he would file out sooner rather than later, wanting to get home to his woman.

  And that would leave us.

  Me and Jules.

  Like so many nights in the past.

  I wouldn't leave before her.

  Because I always walked her to her car if no one else was left to do it.

  I took a deep breath, wondering if I could find it.

  The nerve to do something.

  To take a chance.

  A chance to ruin everything, sure, to kill the possibility of a future with her once and for all.

  But a chance to get everything I ever wanted too.

  I guess we would see.

  -

  Flashback - 36 months before -

  She got the job.

  She got the job, and she was going to be paid a borderline ridiculous sum of money to file, answer phones, and fetch coffee.

  It was hard to wrap her head around it.

  Because, sure, she had been looking for secretarial work after a string of hospitality jobs, had even been on a few interviews at doctors' offices, lawyers' office
s, and even a tanning salon. But she had expected the usual.

  A nine-to-five job making between ten and twelve dollars an hour.

  Not great money, but decent. Enough. To hold her over until she could go through yet another round of college applications.

  She'd learned her lesson, too.

  Sure, she would re-apply to Yale, where she had envisioned herself since she was a little girl.

  But she had smartened up; she would never again put all her eggs in one basket.

  It had been incredibly short-sighted of her.

  And as someone who had prided herself on being rational, it didn't sit well to be so foolish.

  So she would also re-apply to Yale, Harvard, and Princeton. But this time, her third time, she would also apply to Montana State, Oklahoma State, and Montana State - places with nearly one-hundred percent acceptance rates.

  She was getting too old not to get accepted somewhere.

  But a job between ten and twelve dollars an hour would give her more than enough to pay her few bills. And then she could save up a lot to use to buy books, or pay for food, transportation, whatever she might need while on campus.

  It was temporary.

  She didn't need to make a fortune.

  And because of that mindset, she had traipsed herself into the offices of Quinton Baird like she owned the place. Because, in her mind, it was a stepping stone. Not exactly beneath her, but certainly not a job that would require all of her potential.

  Even after meeting the somewhat intimidating Quinton Baird who was a Fixer, whatever that might mean, she had all but demanded the job, had practically told him he would be a fool not to hire her.

  And, unbelievably, he had just... agreed. On the spot. With a waiting room full of other older, more seasoned applicants.

  This professional, confident, worldly, somewhat scary man had agreed to hire her.

  That was surreal enough.

  But then he had given her the employment binder.

  In it she found the usual things.

  Her employment forms that looked almost alarmingly official.

  There was her paperwork for the company health plan, something that made her immediately feel like an adult more so than anything else. She'd get off her parents' plan. Even before she legally had to. It even had dental.

  Then, of course, there was the fine print.

  She would be expected to be in the office when she was needed, whether that meant from nine-to-five or seven-to-eleven, she would be there.

  She would handle the normal tasks of office-keeping as well as run errands and, oddly, deposit files in some lockbox off premises.

  She would also have to sign a confidentiality agreement.

  But in return for all of that, she would get paid just shy of six figures.

  Six figures!

  With the potential for a yearly bonus.

  As if six-figures wasn't already more than enough money.

  She couldn't help but take to a bit of a fanciful - and therefore uncharacteristic - moment to daydream about what that kind of money could do for her.

  Get her an apartment.

  Fill it with all the things she saw in magazines that she loved, but thought she couldn't even hope to own until after she got her MBA and a lush corner office.

  She'd even given serious thought to stopping. Applying. The colleges would be there if she should ever need them in the future. But why go, racking up debt, if she had such a stable job already?

  It wasn't that she devalued the importance of an education, but she was also a bit too practical to choose a potential over a reality.

  So she took the job.

  Within three days, she had decided to stick it out, put college out of her mind.

  She met the major players in the office.

  Quin, of course, was the boss, The Fixer.

  Smith seemed to be his second-in-command, The General.

  There was Finn, The Cleaner.

  There was Lincoln, The Middle Man.

  There was Miller, the only girl in an all-boys club - The Negotiator.

  There was the guy who lived in, oddly, the Pine Barrens. Ranger. Named, for reasons she had yet to suss out, The Babysitter.

  And last, but not least, there was Kai. He was The Messenger.

  What that meant, she had no clue. But she was sure it was important. They all seemed to be important for some reason. They got paid ridiculous sums of money to 'fix' things for people. She'd seen the invoices. She'd nearly spat out her coffee at a few of them, unable to fathom what problem there could possible be that could cost upward of one-hundred-fifty-thousand dollars.

  Whatever it was, they paid it.

  So these men - and Miller - did crazy jobs.

  They were all in possession of something she could only begin to understand in the way of skills.

  "Heya honey," A voice called, making her head shoot up, finding Kai standing there holding out a coffee to her.

  She was picky about her coffee.

  Her own mother never seemed to get it right even though she had drank it the same way for over a year.

  But she appreciated the gesture anyway, reaching out for it, feeling her fingers brush over his. A sizzle seemed to meet at the contact, only to spread up her arm, over her chest, down her belly. Lower. Her breath sucked in, surprised, unsure.

  "You really brighten up this place," he declared, giving her a brilliant smile, pulling his hand away, and moving down the hall, leaving her standing there with her system starting to catch fire.

  What the hell was up with that?

  TEN

  Jules

  New normal.

  That was the phrase.

  Everything felt different, but this was just how it was now.

  My new normal.

  I had heard Quin give this speech to clients over and over through the years. It had sounded somewhat trite back then. But now that it was my reality, I got it. I got why he needed to say it to everyone. Because it was true.

  No matter what had happened, you learned to adjust.

  Humans were adaptive creatures that way.

  People could - and did so every single day - come back from terrible things. Not curl up in a ball and half-live forever. They came back. Stronger. More determined than ever.

  That was what I planned to do.

  It started with moving back into my own place, finding it spotless, making a mental note to send something nice to Finn. I mean, the man had gotten me a new mattress. I didn't know exactly what he was into - cleaning supplies aside - but I had to get him something.

  And I did what many others who had to go home had to do. For some, that meant trashing old photographs, for others it meant hosing down the blood of loved ones off the driveway.

  For me, it meant making what changes I could to make my space feel like mine again.

  I rearranged my living room, donating all my old throw blankets and pillows, replacing them with new. I got rid of every item in my cupboards that had belonged to Jameson. I cleaned the box he'd left out of my closet. I got a new computer. I got my wedding dress cleaned to remove the mascara, then donated that as well. Out, too, went the dresses that Jameson had made comments on. They were the ones least like my wardrobe anyway, the too short or too low cut ones, the ones that clung like a second skin in thin material that meant nothing was left up to the imagination, that meant I had to invest in panties that were laser cut to avoid any kind of lines.

  Once all that was done, the air in my apartment felt lighter, easier to breathe.

  Then, finally, I did the unthinkable.

  I got a TV in my living room. Sure, I attached it to the wall then hid it behind an oversized canvas print so it wasn't an eyesore all the time, but it was there. It was part of my new normal. Where I planned to continue watching the crime shows I had suddenly found myself hooked on.

  I also signed up to take lessons from Janie and Lo at the local self-defense gym. I'd settled on Krav Maga because that was wh
at Gunner had suggested. And I had plans to go visit the local shooting range over the next weekend. Instead of cleaning my already clean oven.

  Maybe those things sounded fear motivated, and maybe that was a part of it, but it was more about excitement. When the idea of self-defense came to me, I was exhilarated. It was something I hadn't felt in so long that I almost didn't recognize it. So when I finally did see it for what it was, I knew it was something I had to pursue.

  I needed to start having a life again.

  Not plans, not goals to reach, a life.

  I had agreed to go out for drinks with Miller after work the following Friday too.

  Actually, things with my coworkers had changed entirely.

  And, what's more, I knew it wasn't because of what had happened to me, per se, that it wasn't pity attention from them. It was because I was suddenly just open to connections with them. They sensed it. They pounced on it.

  They had all always been a close-knit group. And I had been keeping myself as the outsider. For reasons that didn't truly make sense to me even as I tried to analyze it. It really came down to the fear that if they got to know me, they would think less of me because I wasn't from the same world that they were. Which was ridiculous. Quin and Gunner were with women who were not from this world. Lincoln dated a never-ending line of women who weren't familiar with the darker areas of life.

  It all came down to useless insecurity.

  For someone who had always thought of herself as self-assured, everything kept coming up as pure, undiluted insecurity.

  It was why I had my life mapped out so perfectly, why I wanted this flawless little picture of a life. Not because that was truly what I wanted, but because it looked right. From the outside. It was why I settled for Jameson who I didn't love, who didn't even manage to please me in bed. He looked right from the outside.

  Because I was worried what others thought about my life, my choices, my likes and dislikes.

  What a ridiculous, unfulfilling way to live.