Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
EVERLEIGH
I stand to the side talking to Ryan, but my body is on high alert with Brock right there not too far from us. As if it knows, I stop talking to Ryan only when I feel him moving away. “Brock, are you going to do the contract?” His eyes look at me.
“You’ll be doing me a favor by taking that off my lot. Ryan can discuss what he charges.” He doesn’t give me a chance to say anything. Instead, he walks back to the side where the gate is, closes it behind him, and locks the lock. And I stupidly watch him do it as if he has a spell on me.
“Well then,” Ryan says, and I turn my head toward him.
“Well then, indeed,” I reply. “What do you think it’s going to cost to do all of that?” I ask him, and we walk to the side of a truck that is the exact copy of it. “I would love the side to flip up so there is some shade there if it’s too sunny,” I say, and he nods.
“It’ll be easy enough to just cut through it and hinge it on top. I think you should even put windows in,” he suggests. “You can maybe open one of them when it gets too hot in there.” I nod. “Or close it if it’s raining outside.”
“What about putting a little counter in front of the window?” I ask. “We can maybe put napkins and stir sticks and all of that on there.”
“That we can do. I can take some metal from inside and weld it.” He thinks out loud, and he smiles. “This might be my favorite project.”
I smile at him. “Well, that makes me feel better for being thrown on to you.”
“Nonsense. Ms. Maddie is the bomb and so are her donuts. I’ll do whatever I need to help her.”
“Thank you,” I say softly, “that means a lot to me.”
“Have you any thoughts about what you wanted inside?” He stands with me as I pull up ideas I took down last night while on the couch.
“I’m going to need a counter for sure.” He nods. “I want to put in two coffee pots, maybe even three. I’m going to make the donuts at home, so I would need a couple of racks to store them.”
“I have a couple of ideas,” he offers. “How about I draw them up and run them by Brock, and then we can sit down and see what you think?”
“If it’s not too much trouble for you,” I state, leaving out Brock’s name.
“No trouble at all, Everleigh.” He turns, and I follow him into the garage. “I’ll probably get all of this done this weekend, and then we can sit down maybe on Monday.”
“Are you sure?” I ask, and he nods. “Why don’t you take my number down? If you have any questions, you can call me and not bother Brock.”
“That sounds good.” He takes out his phone, and I give him my phone number. “If I need anything, I’ll let you know.”
“Sounds good,” I reply and walk through the garage, and my eyes do a sweep to see if Brock is there. I see a station at the corner near the door to get to the waiting area is empty, the stool pushed back. I know it’s his station because he has a picture of Saige right in front of the wall, facing the chair. I swallow down the lump and walk out the door, feeling eyes on me but never turning around. I hated that even for a minute, it was as if nothing had ever happened. It felt like it did before everything happened. Before he made decisions for both of us without even talking to me about them. I had him back for those couple of minutes, but then I had to remind myself he really isn’t who I think he is.
Instead of heading back to the bakery, I make my way home. Taking my time, I enjoy the sounds of the lawnmowers off in the distance as well as a couple of people outside sitting on their front porches. A few lift their hand and wave at me, and I smile and wave back. It’s such a big difference from where I was less than a month ago. In the middle of Chicago, I never even met my neighbors and had no idea what they even looked like.
The company I worked for had lots of subcontractors, so there was no office to go into. Everyone would work in their own space. I knew their faces through Zoom calls we had once a month to discuss contracts coming in. I finished up the last contract I had with them two days after I arrived and gave the next one I would be working on to someone I worked with occasionally. I also took myself out of the rotation for the upcoming contracts. Because I technically work for myself, there was no one to talk to about it.
I walk up the steps toward the house and turn the handle, stepping inside and finding my mother lying on the couch. Her body is to the side, and the smell of something cooking in the kitchen fills the house. I put my stuff down quietly, walk over to the kitchen, and find the crock-pot working its magic. I pull open the fridge before grabbing some sweet tea and then walking upstairs to answer several emails.
One of the graphic designers has gotten back to me with an idea about branding. I go through a couple of the mock-ups she sent me and send them back with a few modifications. I only close my computer when I hear movement from downstairs.
I see my mother in the kitchen, and she looks over at me. “Hey, baby,” she says softly, “how was today?”
“Good.” I tell her about getting a truck, but I don’t tell her I went to Brock’s place. I’ll tell her if she asks, but I’m not bringing him up. It’s like he’s the big elephant in the room, right next to Oliver, who we aren’t talking about.
We have dinner together, and after dinner, I start making the dough for the donuts I want to try making the next day. I place the bowl in the fridge and go sit outside in the darkness, watching the stars. I get up, and my feet start making their way to the trees that line the back of her yard.
My head is down as I hear the sound of the creek, knowing I’m only hurting myself by going there. The memories and dreams that come after I leave there are torture. It’s like I’m trying to hurt myself.
Making my way over to our little spot, I never think in a million years that he is going to be here. I stop when I see him sitting down, looking at the creek. His head turns to the side to see me. “Jesus, fuck,” he hisses out, making me angry.
“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” I snap as he turns and gets up to his feet.
“Great, it’s like I can’t fucking escape you.” He exhales deeply. “You’re fucking everywhere.”
“Trust me, if I knew you were here”—I shake my head—“I would have stayed far, far away from here. Away from you. The last thing I want to do is be in your presence.”
“Good, at least the feeling is fucking mutual.” He laughs. “At least we have that in common.”
“Trust me, we have nothing in common.” I don’t even know why I’m answering him. I should just leave.
“What do you want from me?” he asks. I don’t know why, but I finally ask him what I wanted to ask him all those years ago.
“Not a damn fucking thing,” I snap at him. “Actually, I have a question for you. Why?” I ask the question as my heart beats so hard in my chest I’m sure he can even hear it. “Why did you do it?”
“What?” he asks, his voice in a whisper, and I know the last thing he was expecting was for me to confront him on this. I see his thumb and forefinger rub together, a little thing he does when he’s nervous.
“Why?” I ask him again, my voice going higher than it was before. “I want to know why you did it.”
“Everleigh,” he says, his voice broken when he says my name.
“No, I kept playing things over and over in my head. Wondering and thinking about the whole thing, and for the life of me, I can’t find a good enough reason.” I shake my head, the tears running down my cheeks, and I don’t even try to hide them. “I want to know fucking why.”
“I had no choice.” The four words he repeated when he broke my heart, four words that he confessed to me a month after the accident. When whispers started that Waylon wasn’t to blame. There was no way he could have done what he did. How people who looked at me as if I was doing something wrong when all along Brock had a different story. His story was making us all look like we were crazy. Like we didn’t remember that night like he did. “I was out of my mind, worried about you and where you were.” His voice sounds just as broken as I feel inside me. “He said all I had to do was tell everyone that Waylon was not reckless. That the accident wasn’t his fault and he was struck head-on by another car. That the truck came into our lane and not the other way around.” Every single time, it’s like a kick to my stomach, feeling like I’m struggling to even breathe. “That he was not drinking, which I thought he wasn’t. I handed him a beer that night, and he said no. I thought he was fine.” I shake my head. “They had our future in the palm of their hands. They made me a promise they would help me open my own firm, and that all future plans would be with me. They even dangled taking away the contracts my father had with the construction company in my face. They would take away all their business from him. He would have gone belly up if that happened.” He shakes his head. “I couldn’t let that happen. Not to him. Not ever.” He shakes his head as he lays it all out for me like he should have done all those years ago. “All I had to say was he was driving perfectly fine and the other car hit us.”
“But he wasn’t!” I yell out. “He was reckless, and in the end, he killed four people.”
He throws his hands up. “What the fuck would you have done? What the fuck was I supposed to fucking do?” he roars. “I made a fucking deal with the devil, and in the end, I lost. No matter what, the Cartwrights had everyone in their pocket. It wouldn’t have changed anything,” he says as if he believes it. Like if after all this time he wasn’t wrong. Like what he did, didn’t fucking destroy us.
“It changed fucking everything,” I sob. “You changed everything. You didn’t once think about us.” My voice goes low. “You never once thought about me.” I hit my chest, hoping to stop the pain that is soaring through me.
He takes a step back as if I struck him. “How can you say that to me? You—” he says the words like he’s in pain. “You were the only fucking thing I thought about. You were all I ever thought about.” His voice trails off, and then softly and slowly, he turns and walks away from me.