Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Savannah…
“Savannah!” I jumped, and looked up from where I had been staring at my laptop screen, frozen, without really seeing it.
“I’m sorry,” I shook my head. “What is it?”
Fabian looked genuinely concerned for me.
“Girl, what is wrong with you today? This isn’t like you.
” He took the seat across from my desk, crossing his legs and putting his notepad in his lap, snapping its leather folio shut and staring at me pointedly and I could see the come-to-Jesus meeting was nigh, even if Jesus wasn’t the religious figure in our case, per se; but more like some cute-as-hell little Cuban gay boy ready to serve up some sangria for the chisme about to be served to our little get-together… That’s gossip, for the uninformed.
I sighed and sat back in my chair, and searched Fabian’s face.
“Corbett Prescott,” I said and I worried over his reaction to the name.
“What’s he done this time?” he asked, and he snapped his folio back open and I took that to mean he thought I was ten million miles away over work…
I shook my head.
“The man I’ve been… seeing… is Corbett Prescott.”
Fabian gasped and leaned forward, putting both hands flat on my desk and whispering harshly, “Girl, shut the front door!” he looked at me aghast.
I squeezed my eyes shut and said, “I know, I know! Just, one thing led to another and now here we are and, oh Fabian – I’m afraid I actually really like him. Like, like, like him, and I don’t know where to go from here.”
“How?” he asked, and he still hadn’t picked his jaw up from off the floor.
“Just one thing led to another and, you know… we ended up…” I rolled my eyes and gave him a pointed look and said, “You know.” His eyebrows went up.
“It was all supposed to be just some no-strings-attached fun, but believe it or not, he’s really not what he seems and we really just misunderstood each other and then this morning—”
He gasped. “This morning?” he demanded. “We’re staying out late on school nights now?” he leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms over his chest and I rolled my eyes.
“My power went out at my place from the severe thunder storm, and my bedroom ceiling sprang a leak and then my bedroom ceiling collapsed and now I’m supposed to move into the apartment above his carriage house just until I can figure something out and anyway, this morning we had sex, and I asked him if it would be such a terrible thing, him and I together and all he said was ‘no, it’s not,’ but then he got all distant and cold as we got ready for work and I think I fucked up and now I don’t really know what to do about it, and I’m afraid things are going to be so awkward living so close together and that’s not really what’s all consuming my brain – it’s that I really want to be a part of his life and I want him to be part of mine and it came out of nowhere and I feel so stupid, but I can’t help how I feel and—”
“Savannah!” he barked and I snapped my mouth shut. He tsked, sighed, and shook his head.
“Girl, I take my eyes off you for a second and you get in bed with Corbett-fucking-Prescott?”
He looked at me pitying for a second, and then sighed and said – “I mean, if he were gay, I would have already tried; let’s face it, the man is gorgeous, but he’s also an asshole and Bright Eyes, you deserve much better than that.”
I smiled faintly, I couldn’t help it, and said, “That’s what he calls me, too.”
“Oh.” Fabian looked dubious and then said, “Oh!” like it meant something.
“What?” I asked.
“Oh, Girl – pet names and I have to ask, were those his exact words? ‘No, it’s not’ or did he say ‘No, it wouldn’t’?”
I played with the necklace that Corvus had given me, and said, “Trust me, I’ve been playing those words over and over in my head since he told me this morning, he said ‘no, it’s not’; why?”
“It may be nothing. It may be something…” he looked thoughtful.
“What, Fabian? What could it possibly mean?” I hated how desperate I sounded.
“It could mean, either A, he has it just as bad for you as you do for him but he’s got commitment issues.
Or, B, he really loves the sex but doesn’t feel the same way about you that you do about him, at all – from the sounds of it and the lack of past tense…
I want to lean toward option A, but honey, I don’t know that I would get my hopes up. ”
I sat back in my seat and rubbed my forehead as much to hide from him as to try and ease the burgeoning headache I was giving myself, worrying myself sick over the whole situation which was honestly stupid.
“Why do feelings have to be so hard?” I complained.
“I ask myself the same question, too…” he said. “Now moving past the whole Corbett Prescott bombshell – your ceiling collapsed? What’s that about?”
In for a penny, in for a pound… I thought to myself.
“About that…” I said, reluctant to get into all of my business all at once; but honestly, Fabian was the only one I felt like I could talk to about any of it.
I’d done a pretty good job of isolating myself out of pure ambition since moving here – part of that was out of necessity.
I had lied like a rug on my resume to get my foot in the door here a little over a year ago just to get the chance to prove myself.
I had – don’t get me wrong – but I actually liked Mr. Beauregard and my other coworkers here, and I didn’t want to devastate them.
“Nope!” Fabian stood. “It sounds like you’ve got it handled, and honestly, I think I can handle only so much in one afternoon or you’re liable to send me into all sorts of airs and graces. Speaking of… you’re clear to leave early if you need to go handle things at your place. I can’t imagine…”
“Thank you, I know there’s an all-hands staff meeting—” Fabian held up his hand and retrieved his folio from the floor.
“I will send your most sincere regrets at your inability to attend, and I will take copious notes. That is what I’m here for, after all – but you owe me drinks and a whole lot of explaining by Friday, if you please.”
He gave me a baleful look and I had to laugh.
“It’s a deal. I have a thing on Thursday night…”
“A thing, or a date with a certain competitor?” he asked.
“That,” I said biting my bottom lip.
“Your secret is safe with me,” he said and I breathed a little easier.
“Thanks.”
“I want all the chisme, though – I mean it.”
“You’ve got yourself a deal,” I said meekly.
“And I mean all the dirty details,” he sang over his shoulder as he exited my office and I felt myself turn beet red as the door softly thumped closed.
“I don’t know if I want to go that far,” I muttered to myself, thinking about this morning and the way he’d held me down with his body and by my hair as he thrust into me with absolutely no mercy.
I was more than a little surprised to find I liked it rough…
I sighed and packed up my briefcase.
I had to go and see what was salvageable out of my place and what was a total goner.
Honestly, I was worried about seeing it in the bright light of day. It was bound to be worse than what I’d glimpsed in the dark the night before.
I pulled into the driveway to a whole circus out front. The county and city inspectors’ vehicles, a box truck, several motorcycles, and my landlord.
I put the Jag into park and got out.
My landlord glared at me, but the inspectors were keeping him so busy he could do no more than that.
I slunk across the yard and to my door to see several bikers taping up boxes of my belongings, the prospect, Spooky, straightening up from one and saying, “Hey, there you are. Corvus called, said you needed some help… so uh, here we are… helping.”
One of the other bikers guffawed and said, “Prospect, shut the fuck up.”
“Rude!” I blurted, and all of them cracked up like I’d said the funniest thing.
I scowled at the one who’d spoken last and he threw up his chin in greeting, “I’m Fear, that’s Requiem, and pretty sure Reaper’s in your bedroom going through your underwear drawer. It’s kind of his thing. Grim ought to be in there with him. Hangman’s the one out in the back of the truck.”
A man with his back to me, stuck up a hand and waved from over by my mock fireplace.
“Oh, I didn’t even see him outside,” I turned around and sure enough, a bearded man was coming in my front door.
“You Savannah?” he asked.
“I am,” I said. “Um, nice to meet you.”
“You, too. We got this handled, if you have shit you have to do,” Fear said and I turned back around.
“Actually, this is all I have to do for the rest of my day… I had no idea you’d be here.”
“Corvus is a control freak like that,” Requiem said, standing up and turning around.
“Oh,” I didn’t say anything beyond the sound of recognition. He’d been the one Corvus had been talking to, at the top of the stairs the night that… well, the night that Hal Lindstrom had been, ah hem, disappeared…
He gave me a silent but intense look and I nodded faintly, my hand on my chest as I glanced toward my bedroom doorway, which had a thick sheet of plastic hanging over it.
“How bad is it?” I asked.
“Bad,” Hangman said flatly. “Your bed’s a goner – I wouldn’t trust it after being soaked with whatever toxic mold soup came pouring out of your ceiling.
Other than it, everything else seems salvageable.
We already got the dresser and nightstands in the truck, Grim and Reap were just finishing up boxing your things from the closet and the dresser. You got a shit ton of shoes.”
“Also, probably Reaper’s thing…” Fear mused out loud and I tried not to snort.
“Is it safe to go in there?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t,” Requiem said. “The boys have respirators on just in case. Handy things you find in a funeral home.”
“I’m sorry?” I said confused.
The plastic sheet was pulled aside and the other two men from the Lindstrom showing stepped out. I recognized the one by his round blue hippy glasses and the other by his dark hair.
“Grim, Reaper, meet Savannah,” Fear said.
“Yeah, we heard,” the one with the dark hair said from behind his mask, “and fuck you, for the panty and shoe comments.”
Frear laughed and gave Grim the finger, and Grim gave it right back.
Reaper was holding a couple of boxes and staring at me rather pointedly, so I suddenly had doubts about whether Fear had actually been joking about the whole panty-sniffing, shoe-obsession thing.
Reaper just gave off a creepy, intense vibe.
The one that would make a woman suddenly cross the street if she saw him coming down the sidewalk at her.
I swallowed hard and asked, “So what can I do?”
“Nothing,” almost all of them chorused at once. Spooky had moved into my kitchen and was boxing up my things.
“That hardly seems alright,” I said and couldn’t help but blush.
“You want to do something, take some of these boxes in your car and head on over to the fuck studio – er, I mean your new place,” Fear said.
“Smooth, real smooth,” Grim said and he sounded genuinely irritated with him. I mean, if looks could kill. I swallowed uncomfortably and said, “It’s alright… I uh… I kind of already knew that part of the apartment’s history. Corvus already told me.”
The guys all exchanged a look at that, and all I could really do was stand there and flame with the awkwardness of the moment.
“Why don’t Reap and I carry some of these out to your car for you and you can, uh, head on over,” Grim suggested. I nodded quickly and couldn’t make eye contact and said, “Um, sure.”
I went back out, Grim and Reaper in tow, each carrying boxes from my bedroom to the back seat of the Jag.
“You’re in heels,” Grim observed.
“What?” I looked down. “Oh, yeah… I came straight from work.”
“One of us should go with you,” he looked to Reaper who nodded.
“Oh, no, that’s okay, really,” I said with a nervous laugh.
“I insist,” Reaper said, his voice quiet, reserved, and sort of unexpected. I gathered he didn’t talk much and that Grim did most of the talking for him.
“Cool, you go, I’ll stay, we’ll be there with the truck and the rest of this… stuff, as soon as we can.”
“It’s okay,” I said with a little laugh. “Most of it is cheap shit that I rescued off the curb and re-did myself or bought from a bargain basement website or whatever. Plus swearing never did bother me much.”
“Well alright then,” Grim said. “For curb rescues, you did a great job.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Reap’s going with you to unload for you, and help with whatever you need. He doesn’t talk much, but he’s a good guy. Loyal like a motherfucker.”
Reaper and I exchanged a look and he gave a slight nod.
“Okay,” I said with an uneasy laugh.
My final thought as we both climbed into the Jag was, what was I getting myself into?