Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Savannah…
I went back to my little mother-in-law hovel and immediately went in to shower. I stood under a punishing hot spray and couldn’t help but let my mind wander to the feel of Corbett’s hands in my hair.
It’d been a long while, and even if my brain was like, “ew, God no,” it seemed that my heart and my body had other ideas about it.
I longed to be touched like that for real, which was honestly wishful thinking with how men were these days. I’d given up entirely on dating in college after some harrowing dates.
Men were just… ugh, anymore.
While I genuinely found Corbett Prescott irritating before all this, now I found myself… I didn’t know – three-quarters terrified, and at least one-quarter intrigued.
Still, the terror was totally winning right this minute, and I honestly couldn’t get into the shower fast enough, like it would do something to wash the horrors of the night before down the drain.
I stood under it, washing thoroughly with my comfort-scented potions and lotions that held the sun-drenched smell of peaches.
The fruity scent hung in the steam that filled my bathroom.
When I got out, I felt marginally more relaxed than when I’d entered.
I wound my hair into a towel, dried myself as thoroughly as possible with the other towel, hung it to dry, and shrugged into my soft, fluffy robe.
It was one of those cheap, microfiber bathrobes that was soft and almost furry against the skin. It was one of my most favorite things to cozy up in, especially in the winter months.
I didn’t bother with slippers, I just went out into my bedroom with a sigh and tried to soak up my solitude – basking in it, like a lizard under a heat lamp.
I loved being alone. Especially after spending all day, every day putting on airs for these unbelievably snobby and wealthy people – fooling them into believing I was one of them when nothing could be further from the truth.
My family had always been firmly in the middle class – maybe upper middle class at some points, but just barely.
These people I worked with and for were a whole different league of rich – and even though they believed I was one of them, I didn’t feel it. At all. Ever.
Yes, I was pulling in the kind of money to put me on their level – but I was living way below my means, as modestly as possible, for a reason.
The truth was, I was just a country-bumpkin farm girl who knew how to thrift where the rich people lived so I could cosplay as one of them.
Last night had definitely opened my eyes to just how out of my league I was.
There was no reason not to call the police.
The more I thought about it, the more it freaked me out that Corbett had been so…
cavalier about not calling them. Like, in what world is it more convenient to dispose of a dead body yourself versus just calling the police and telling them the truth about what had happened?
I made myself some sunshine in a cup. A warm and comforting peach tea blend I’d found in one of the Savannah tea rooms that a client had insisted on meeting at.
My hands trembled and shook, and I didn’t know what to do with all of this except go through the motions of making my tea, and go sit with things for a while.
Tomorrow was Sunday, and while there was usually plenty of business to keep me going seven days a week, I was religious about taking Sunday off, even though I wasn’t a subscriber to any one particular church or faith.
I had been raised Christian, but I didn’t really belong. My family was religious, and my mother and father attended church on Sundays, but I didn’t think they really cared about it so much as they cared about my grandmother and her love of the church.
I hadn’t been raised the kind of stringent Christian – church three days a week, youth group, and all of that kind of mess – but more of attending on holidays and with my grandparents when they had me for the weekend.
I didn’t think Corbett Prescott would survive setting foot inside a church. Given what I’d learned about him last night, he was the devil himself, and to do so would set the church ablaze – he would be fine.
Still, my main concern in all of this wasn’t him or even me. My primary concern was how I was going to keep going at the clip that I was in order to pay Uncle Sam to keep my family’s farm out of hock or whatever.
You see, my granddad was a good farmer. He grew and sold some of the best peaches South Carolina had to offer! What he was not was a businessman, or good with numbers – and we had discovered, after his passing, that the farm was in trouble when it came to the back taxes that were owed on it.
My mom and dad had taken on the management and day-to-day operations, but farming wasn’t what it used to be.
It’d been a long, long time since the farm had turned enough to support all the things, and for some reason, my grandpa had decided the taxes were the thing that could wait… and wait… and wait, and wait, and wait.
We needed money to make regular payments, and to keep those payments up, or Uncle Sam would take the whole thing. Thus I put myself through college and took on the challenge of keeping our heads above water.
I was handling it – but barely – and I was getting to where there was a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.
But it had required that I become the best at what I do, and to maintain being the best, you had to put in the work.
I didn’t know if I could afford the distraction that was Corbett Prescott and this indentured servitude he seemed to delight in having me under.
While I didn’t know what I was going to do, I knew what I was not going to do – and that was panic. I was so not going to panic. Not yet, anyway.
I’d juggled so many things in the past that this was just one more thing, and I could do it.
I was sure I could do it… But lord, I needed to stop, take a minute, and breathe.
I couldn’t fully assess what juggling this would entail until I knew what it looked like, and so far, it looked like I didn’t have to really do anything until Corbett called. Lord knew when he would do that.
At least, hopefully, not any time soon.
I curled in the corner of my overstuffed, boneless couch and stared into the faux flames of the space heater in the fireplace, my hands wrapped around my mug of steaming tea as though a blizzard blew outside.
I was definitely in the freeze portion of fight, flight, freeze, or fawning, and freeze was okay for right now.
I knew that I had plenty of fight left in me should it come to it.
I wasn’t about to fawn, and there was no running.
My family’s legacy depended on me staying right here and following through.