Confusion.
Anger.
Defeat.
Grief.
“I was going to tell you. It’s not like I’m ashamed of it or wanted to keep it a secret. Is this why you’re mad?”
“You think I give a shit about where you’re from?” He looks at me with this cold, dark stare that has my stomach twisting in knots. “Do you? Because if that’s what you think, then you don’t know me at all.”
Where is this coming from? Who is this person? This isn’t the man I know. My chest feels as though it’s been hit by a meteor, my heart like it’s been impaled. Everything is cracking.
“The world, our world, is going to crumble after this.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time my world has crumbled. I think I can handle it.”
Blaze was right. The world is falling apart around us. I refuse to fall with it. I’ll hold onto the ledge until my fingertips bleed if I have to, but I will not fall.
I’ve been broken. I’ve stumbled. I know what messy looks like. And I’ve stood on top of it all.
But I’ve never had anything like this to lose before now.
“No, I don’t think that. I know exactly who you are. At least I thought I did. Blaze, what is going on?” I move to reach for him, but he backs away. If I could just touch him…
“I should have never made you think this was anything more than…” His words are sharp and brutal.
“More than what?” I glare at him. “More than what, Blaze? Say it. Tell me exactly what the fuck you think this is.”
“Nothing, okay. This is nothing. It was a mistake, and I’m sorry I let it go this far,” he says flatly, and everything about it feels final.
Nothing. He may not have promised me forever, but what we have is more than nothing. I felt it. He felt it. Hell, we’re feeling it right now. The world doesn’t shake over nothing.
My whole body trembles, and I practically hear the snap in the air when I finally break. “You’re a chickenshit, you know that?” A sob rips from my throat, but I fight back, swiping the tears from under my eyes. “You can run from me all you want to, Blaze, but guess what? I’m not her. I’m not going to chase you.”
“I don’t want you to.” When he looks at me, I see the Blaze I know. The icy-cold bite is gone from his voice, replaced by torture and anguish as if he’s given me all the fight he had in him and now he’s done.
I was wrong. I can’t handle this. It hurts too much. I don’t have the strength to hold on this time. I wade through the crowd and hurry to the door, leaving behind the din of voices and laughter. Haley is a blur of smiles and waves as I brush past her. She reaches for me, but I don’t stop. I can’t.
Blaze is still here, standing by the bar watching me leave. And I refuse to let him see me fall.
Crying is how your heart speaks when your lips can’t describe the pain. I added that quote to the journal the day I was released from foster care. As I sit in my car in the middle of a packed parking lot while the world moves on around me, I clench my fists around the steering wheel and let my tears describe my pain.
Chase Abbott found a loophole. He didn’t become a god in the corporate world by sheer luck. Finding cracks in his opponent’s armor is how he does business. A little research on the fire, a phone call to the sheriff’s department, and Dad knew exactly where to land his punches. I had him beat, though. He was on his last leg. My fatal flaw was when I went to see Levi about Adrienne. I showed my cards. I let him know how important she is to me. I know Levi has always been jealous of me, but I obviously underestimated how low my brother would stoop to knock me off my pedestal.
Hector and I promoted the shit out of re-opening The Taproom. Never in a million years did I imagine dear old Dad would catch wind of it and decide to show up. He lives in New York for fuck’s sake. God bless the power of social media.
Naturally the first thing Dad did when he walked into the brewery was bark out a bunch of threats—all of them directed toward Adrienne, all of them ending in an ultimatum. Go to New York or else. I went at him about minding his business and he fired back with, “Where do you think Levi is getting the money to sponsor not one, but two of those foster houses?”
It’s just like my father to buy his way in. He’s the devil in a three piece suit. People all over the globe sell him their souls in exchange for real estate, cars, and companies. He takes and takes until he sucks the life right out of you. Until he owns you.
Fuck the devil.
He doesn’t own me, not entirely, not for good.
“Oh, and the agreement was that the donation to Corporate Cares will be spread out evenly into monthly payments over the course of one year. So, don’t think that as soon as I write this check that you can leave. This is far from over. If you walk away from me, all it takes is one phone call and that money stops. And when Kai Sullivan wants to know why, I’ll be happy to tell him how I found out one of his counselors was caught up with a convicted drug dealer.”
“That’s a lie and you know it.”
“Do I? What I do know is he followed her to a bar. The two of you had words, probably out of jealousy, and he ended up in jail. She’ll lose her job. She has no family to run to, nowhere to go. Do you want that for her? Do you want to take another life?”
“You’re a real piece of shit.”
“Maybe that’s true, but I’m still your father, and I refuse to let you throw your life away.”
Throw my life away. The Taproom is my life—was my life—but I would give it up a thousand times over if it meant Adrienne got to stay with her boys. Hector is running the brewery until I can sell it. The patio will be complete next week, then I’m putting it on the market. I can’t go back there. All I see is her. All I feel is the pain in her eyes when I lied to her face.
Nothing.
I told her we were nothing.
She is everything. She’s in my blood, all the way to my bones. I would have to split myself open to get rid of her.
Not running after her was like not breathing—it fucking killed me. I replay the look in her eyes over and over. It haunts my dreams, even though I pray for it to stop, for the pain to stop, for the burning, aching need to say fuck it all and run back to her to just stop. Being with me would mean not being herself, and there’s no fucking way I would ever ask her to do that. Now there’s a hole in my chest, vacant and huge. Put there by the regret gnawing at me, chewing its way through my heart and eating me alive. Regret for making her believe for one second that I gave two shits where she came from.
When my father told me Adrienne grew up in foster care, my heart swelled and soared like a goddamn hot air balloon. She could’ve ended up like Micah, bitter and pissed off at the world. Not her. Not my girl.
My girl.
After the way I left things, I don’t deserve to call her that, don’t deserve to even think it, but that’s what she is. Mine. Not only did she beat the system, she climbed out of it and took it by the fucking balls.
She took me by the fucking balls. Then I destroyed her the same way I destroy everything. Now, I will tear myself apart in order to put her back together.
It’s my eighth day in New York. My eighth day forcing smiles at people I don’t know, walking past glass walls covered with Post-it notes because Dad thinks he’s being innovative by letting his employees post their thoughts everywhere. I wonder what he’d say if I posted mine. It’s my eighth day of eating pretzel-covered cheese from a kiosk for lunch because it reminds me of Hector. My eighth day of staring at my phone, then holding my finger over her name just to see if I’ll be weak enough to click on it.
Right now, I’m staring out the window overlooking a jungle of steel and glass. If I stand in the right spot, I get a glimpse of the Hudson River, of the way the sunlight reflects off the water. It’s easy to feel alone up here, to feel isolated regardless of the bustle going on outside this office. It’s like an island in the sky. Everything seems so out of reach, so cold. I hate it.
I h
ate ties.
I hate corner offices in high-rise buildings in Manhattan.
I hate conference calls at 10:00 p.m. to Tokyo.
And I hate being six hundred and thirty miles from Adrienne.
I sense my father in the doorway before I hear him speak. He’s like the cold gust of air when an evil presence is near. I managed to avoid him for the past three hours. My luck was bound to run out sometime.
“Quite the view, isn’t it?” He stands beside me with his hands tucked into the pockets of his light gray suit.
I don’t bother looking directly at him. “It’s not North Carolina, that’s for sure.”
He stares at the river with me. “Give it some time. You’ll adjust.”
Adjust? I’d rather break through this glass and jump into the Hudson. I’m not here to adjust. I’m here to survive. He can have his dirty money and five-thousand-dollar suits. He can have empty conversations and a loveless marriage. I don’t even care enough to hate him for it anymore.
He pulls a hand from his pocket and rests it on my back. “One day, you’ll thank me for this. I’m giving you a future, Blaze. Selling beer to a bunch of drunks isn’t a respectable way to earn a living.”
Thank him? He took my future and used her as bait to get what he wanted. I’ve yet to find the need to thank him for that.
I finally turn to face him. “As a matter of fact, craft beer is a highly respected industry. But not nearly as respectable as selling risky mortgages to the federal government or using DocuSign to falsify signatures on loan payment changes or fixing the price on currencies on the foreign exchange market.” I clap his shoulder. “If you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying, right, Dad?”
He drops his hand, and his jaw tenses. “Watch your mouth. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I know more than you think.” Not all criminals end up behind bars. Most of them drive a Bugatti and vacation in Monaco. My lips curve up in an insincere smile as I walk back to my desk. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a bunch of respectable work to get back to.”
My pulse is pounding. My skin is covered in sweat. My breath comes out in sharp, clipped huffs.
Four miles.
That’s up a mile from what I ran last week. Next week, I’ll shoot for five. I started at one. Every week, I add a mile. That’s how long I’ve been in this hell. Four weeks. Every morning for four weeks, I run. I punish my body and try to purge my demons, but nothing helps. Nothing dulls the ache.
I miss her.
I miss her smile. I miss her sass. I miss being inside her and watching the way she sucks in a breath then licks her lips right before she comes apart.
My hell on earth is a penthouse on the twenty-sixth floor of a building on East 52nd Street. I could fit my entire apartment back in Charlotte inside the living room and kitchen—with room to spare. The doorman holds the door when he sees me coming through the wrought iron archway that leads to the building’s courtyard. I feel a little like shit that I’ve never stopped to ask his name. I haven’t asked for anyone’s name—not the security guard at Abbott Tower, not the admin who sits outside my office and screens my calls, not the guy down the block who sells me the best damn coffee I’ve ever had from a cart on the sidewalk—no one. I’ve been treating everyone here like it’s their fault my dad’s an asshole. Jesus, four weeks and I’m turning into him already.
I stop and check for a name tag on the doorman’s charcoal gray vest, but there isn’t one.
“Is there something I can help you with, Mr. Abbott?” he asks, still holding the large glass and iron door.
My calves are burning and the cold air bites my lungs with every breath I take. “I just realized I don’t know your name.”
He grins this full-toothed, wide-mouthed grin that makes you want to believe in humanity again. Then he tips his gendarme hat. “Morrison, but everybody calls me Morie.”
“It’s great to meet you, Morie.” For the first time in over a month, I smile—a real smile.
Inside the lobby there’s a double-sided fireplace with a massive stone hearth and an even more impressive chimney. In front of each side there are groups of white leather chairs for conversation. On one wall there’s a concierge desk for packages and guests, and on another wall there’s a row of elevators. My elevator is the one on the far left. It only goes to my penthouse and the one below me, which I think belongs to Henry Kissinger or some shit. I don’t exactly know. It’s not like he knocks on my door to borrow sugar, and it’s not like I do anything other than work, run, and watch the goddamn Golden Girls. That’s my life on a loop.
The elevator opens directly into my penthouse—my upscale and professionally decorated penthouse. Dad really went all out with this one. My phone vibrates inside the band against my arm.
“Yeah,” I say once I click the button on my earbud. Not the most polite way to answer a call, but I’m sweaty and breathless and who the fuck cares about manners.
“Are you fucking? Because it sounds like you’re fucking.”
Hector motherfucking Romero and his jacked-up sense of humor. Every time he calls, I have to bite my tongue until it bleeds to keep from asking about Adrienne. He’s still dating Haley, so I know he knows how she’s doing. At least he’s decent enough not to bring her up. No use twisting the knife when it’s already wedged in my heart.
I don’t even look at other women. I sure as hell am not going to touch one. Adrienne is still mine, and I am still hers. No amount of distance, lies, or even God Himself is going to change that.
“Yeah. Your mom says she’d tell you hello but she’s got a mouth full of my balls so…” I wipe my face with a towel then grab a bottle of water from the fridge.
“You wish, assmonkey. Seriously, what the hell are you doing?” I can tell he’s at the brewery by the music playing in the background.
I down the water then toss the towel in the laundry hamper. “Running. We can’t both be fat and ugly when we get old.”
“And to think I actually miss your smart ass…”
I can’t tell if my heart is hammering because of his words or if the adrenaline is still pumping from my run. “I miss you too.”
“I don’t know how to say this delicately, so I’m going to just say it.” He pauses. “You have a buyer for the brewery. I think this one is a keeper.”
He’s saying that because I’ve turned down the last three offers even though they were all willing to give me the full asking price, which I set ridiculously high… on purpose.
“How is this one any different from the last three? That one guy… What was his name? Jeffery? He didn’t know the difference between a lager and an IPA. I didn’t bust my ass on that brewery to leave it in the hands of some dildo for brains.” I start the shower and kick out of my running pants, wrapping a towel around my waist and grabbing my razor. No five o’clock shadows allowed at the office.
“It’s different this time because this time it’s me.”
“What the fuck did you just say?” I drop the razor. The metal blade clinks against the ceramic sink.
“I said it’s me, Blaze. I’m the next dildo who wants to buy The Taproom.”
I rub my hands over my face and give a weak laugh. The water begins to heat, causing steam to seep from behind the double glass doors, mimicking the heat rising in my neck.
He’s quiet.
I’m quiet.
It’s too fucking quiet.
“You’re serious?” I finally ask.
“As a heart attack. This place is my home too. I can’t imagine my life without—”
Life without the dream you built. Life without the first woman who made you feel alive after years of being dead inside. Life without happiness.
I interrupt him. “Yeah. I get it.”
A pause. Then he says, “I know you do.”
“Well, then I guess I have myself a buyer.” I feel the urgent need to puke… Or get completely shit-face drunk. I’m debating between the two.
“Fuck yeah.” He clears his throat. “Before I go, there’s one more thing.” He sighs, a quick sharp huff of breath. The kind you give when you’re bracing for the blowback your words will inspire. “Micah Davis.”
“What about him?”
“There was a fight at the jail. It got pretty ugly. Apparently, the guy had enemies on both sides of the law.”
“Is he okay?”
“No. He’s not okay. Haley told me about the fight. Some cop guy she knows told her. I looked but couldn’t find anything about a funeral. The cop guy said there’s no family to claim the body so…”
The world comes to a crashing halt.
He’s dead. Micah Davis is dead.
Cold silence follows his words, leaving me standing here naked and awkward while the bathroom fills with steam. I can’t even see myself in the mirror anymore, which is a good thing. I may not have been the one to deal death’s final blow, but I’m the one who took his life.
A tear spills out of one eye, leaving a wet trail over my cheek. I wipe it away then take a breath. “Can you claim it? Just tell them to wait or whatever the fuck you do for things like this. I have to come back to do the paperwork for the brewery anyway. I’ll make sure he’s buried the right way. I owe him that.”
“You don’t owe him shit, but yeah. I’ll do what I gotta do.”
“Thanks, man. I’ll see you soon.”
Drunk. I decide I’m going to go with drunk.
I end the call then send Dad an email. I won’t be making it into the office today. Today, I’m going to sit on my white leather sofa, stare out the floor-to-ceiling windows, and spend the afternoon with whiskey and regret.
I can’t stop staring at Adrienne, at the way her eyes are burning a hole through the casket as if it’s the very thing keeping her grounded, at the way her chest rises and falls with each calculated breath she takes, at her legs, smooth and toned—legs that are destined to be wrapped around my body.
Hector told me she would be here. He said Liam needed the closure and that he needed to be here for his sister. Other than me, Adrienne, Liam, his sister, Hector, and Haley, the funeral parlor is empty. There’s no one else.
Blaze: A Driven World Novel (The Driven World) Page 16
