4. Fury
CHAPTER 4
FURY
(DECLAN)
Jazz’s message takes roughly thirty seconds to blow up my phone. The messages come through on our group chat thick and fast.
Daisy: Is that real?!
Brooke: What the fuck, Ben?????
Teddy: You cheated on Tiff?
Ben: It’s not what it looks like. Whoever took that pic set me up.
My entire field of vision turns red, and my jaw tightens. I know my motivation in taking the picture wasn’t a hundred percent pure, but I didn’t put Ashley on his lap to take it.
Ben: I’ve already spoken to Tiff.
Jazz: Yeah, and told her your a cheating fucking asshole.
If I didn’t know Jazz was pissed, the fact she didn’t fix her typo tells me a lot.
Jazz: *You’re
I give a bitter laugh at her next message because it’s so absurdly normal for Jazz to correct her message. I don’t want to find anything funny right now, though.
My hands tingle as I clench and unclench them, and heat rises in my body. Ben’s apartment is one floor down from mine, and I have the strong urge to pay him a visit.
Ben: Everybody makes mistakes, Jazz.
I’m out of my seat and stalking toward the door before I even realize it. I don’t bother with the elevator, yanking open the door to the stairwell and taking the stairs three at a time down to Ben’s floor.
I pound roughly on his door when I reach it, my breathing is rough, and I struggle to refrain from attempting to kick his door in .
“Fuck off, Dec,” Ben’s muffled voice calls from the other side of the door.
“‘Everybody makes fucking mistakes?!’” I yell, not bothering with the fact that he shares this floor with another penthouse and his neighbors might be home.
“Leave. I know it was you who took that picture.”
I pound on the door again, needing to hit something . “A mistake is getting the wrong coffee order. Not fucking someone who isn’t your fiancée.”
There’s silence in response to my words, and I pound on his door again.
“Fuck off. This is between me and Tiff. She’ll get over it.”
I kick his door twice, but it doesn’t do anything other than give me a satisfactory outlet for a tiny speck of my anger.
“You don’t deserve her,” I snap, then spin on my heel and head back to the staircase.
By the time I’m back inside and pick up my phone, the latest message on my screen gives me zero satisfaction.
Ben Littrell has left the chat.
I click the latest message before that, one from our friend Emily, and check who’s seen it. I scroll the list, and nearly everyone in our group chat is there, but not Tiff. I frown, concerned because Ben said he’d spoken to her.
I open our messages and smile at the last one she sent me. It was a joke about how she was going to take a pillow and blanket to the office so she could just sleep there to save time.
Dec: Are you okay, Sexy?
I pace back and forth in front of the windows displaying New York City as I look down at my unlocked phone approximately every five seconds. Tiff hasn’t seen my message, and after an interminable five minutes, I send another one.
Dec: I’m worried about you.
There’s no response, and my heart aches as I think about Tiff alone and hurting. I turn to stare at the city we grew up in, one where everyone knows everyone else’s secrets. This will be hot gossip, that’s for sure.
I stride into my bedroom and pull out a weekend bag, stuffing clothes into it with little care for what I put in there. I only take enough for a few days because I know Tiff, and I know that even with her life blowing up, she won’t want to be away from Carter Group for long.
I’ll consider it a win if I can convince her to come away with me for even a day. I just want to give her a chance to escape for even a little while.
I grab the keys to my family’s Hamptons house and the ones for my Ferrari before I head down to the garage underneath my building. It’s only a short drive to Tiff’s, and I type in the key code on the pad to enter her secure parking area.
As I pull into one of her parking bays, my stomach is in knots. I still haven’t heard from her, and a part of me is worried that somehow she’ll blame me for this. Mostly, I feel guilty that I’m glad their relationship is over.
I’m about to turn the car off when my phone rings, and Daisy’s name is displayed on the screen. I press the button on the steering wheel to answer her call.
“Hey, Daisy.”
“Oh my god, can you believe Ben cheated on Tiff?”
She sounds astounded, but as much as I’ve seen the cracks in their relationship over the years, it’s only because I’ve had a vested interest in looking beneath the veneer they present of being a perfect couple.
“Sadly, I can. I took the picture Jazz sent,” I admit.
“Holy shit.” She gasps loudly. “Wait, is that why you got kicked out of the club?”
“Pretty much. Ben and Ashley didn’t give a fuck about him being a cheating asshole.” I grind out the final words, gripping the steering wheel so tightly that my knuckles turn white. “I wish I’d put him in the hospital. At least then he wouldn’t have had a chance to cheat on Tiff.”
Daisy sighs. “Beating Ben up would only have caused issues, Dec. Violence isn’t the answer.”
“No, but it’s what he deserves,” I scoff.
“What he deserves is for Tiff to break up with him, which Jazz told me she did.”
Despite myself, my heart beats faster in my chest. I’ve had plenty of women in my bed and even had a couple of relationships, but no woman has ever held a candle to Tiff. She was always with Ben, but now she isn’t. I know there is no way I can hook up with her, though. What she’s going through is too fresh, and I would be a complete dick to take advantage of her at a time like this.
“Hmm,” I say, hating that she’s right because it still feels like Ben hasn’t suffered enough for what he did to Tiff.
“Want to come over and hang out tonight? I can make waffles,” she says in a singsong voice, and I laugh.
“As enticing as that is, I’m actually at Tiff’s right now. I want to check on her.”
“Bring her with you,” Daisy says quickly. “She can drown her sorrows in maple syrup.”
For a second, I rethink my plan for the Hamptons. It’s probably safer to take Tiff somewhere other people will be. I remind myself that I’m just her friend. At the same time, I know Tiff too well, and I know that as much as she loves my sister, I’m pretty sure she’ll want to be alone tonight.
“I was thinking about taking her out to the Hamptons. Mom and Dad are in Italy, so she’ll be away from everything. I’ll try and get her phone off her so she won’t have to see any gossip for at least today.”
A pause before Daisy responds makes me wonder if she has more of an idea of how I feel about Tiff than I’ve ever tried to let on.
“I mean…” Daisy sighs. “Yeah, I suppose that makes sense. Wouldn’t it be better for her to be with Jazz, though?”
“You know there’s no way in hell she’ll leave the city if someone isn’t here for Milton. Hell, she might not even want to leave because of his heart attack.”
“Fuck. I’d totally forgotten about that,” Daisy says with a groan.
“I figured. Look, I’ve gotta go. I’ll let you know if we end up heading upstate.”
“Cool. Okay. I’ll talk to you later.”
I press the button to end the call before she’s even finished the final word. I stare out of the windscreen, watching blindly as a couple waits for the elevator to go upstairs. The shorter woman reaches up on her toes to kiss the taller woman, who wraps her arms around her partner as their lips meet.
It’s strange watching people so clearly happily in love when I’m about to see the woman I love who’s just had her heart broken. I need to set aside my feelings for her and just be her friend.
I pick up my phone and check to make sure she hasn’t replied to my messages. There’s nothing, so I make my way up to Tiff’s apartment. I can’t count the number of times I’ve made this journey. Either visiting for dinner parties she threw with Ben or just hanging out.
As I stride toward her door, I get a wave of guilt. It’s inappropriate for me to be the person visiting her, mostly because everything in me is screaming that I love her.
I knock on her door even as my brain tells me I should walk away and get Jazz to come to visit instead.
I’m relieved when she doesn’t come to the door, but my stomach churns as I still unlock my phone and dial her number despite being sure this is a bad idea.
As it begins to ring, the door opens, and my heart shatters at the sight in front of me. Tiff’s face is streaked with tears. Her beautiful eyes are red and puffy, while her hair is a mess on one side, telling me she was lying down before she came to the door.
Seeing her hurting like this is painful, and I can only manage to say, “Oh, Tiff.”
“Please don’t, Dec.”
Her voice cracks on my name as her eyes well with more tears. She wraps her arms around her stomach, and her body begins to shake when the tears start to fall .
I step into the room and close the door before I pull Tiff into my arms. I hold her tightly to me, inhaling her sweet scent and wishing I could take away all the pain she’s feeling. I’d give anything to make her happy. All I want is for her not to be as miserable as she is right now.
My inability to do anything to change her circumstances makes me feel so useless. I hate Ben with every fiber of my being because he had the power to not let this happen, and he chose to hurt her.
My anger coils into a tight knot in my stomach, and I spit out, “I’ll kill him.”