Chapter 12
Chapter twelve
Clay
Bar noise invades the peace of the office as the door opens, but I don’t look up from the accounting book, not even when it’s Louisa’s smoky voice that asks, “Are you going to sulk in the office all night?”
“I’m not sulking.” In truth, I’ve been hiding, and I’ve been doing it with a surprisingly high degree of success for the past two days. “I’m working. Something that would be more easily accomplished if you’d update to a system from this century.”
In theory, I’m going over profits and expenses from the past year.
In reality, I’ve been sitting here staring at numbers because I’m unfit for public consumption.
Pulling myself back together after the sauna has been a challenge.
I can’t stop wanting her. She’s all I can think about, and I’m distracted, irritable because of it.
I’ve never felt this pure, animalic hunger before.
“It’s busy. We agreed to share the work equally,” she says.
I don’t need to look up to know she's standing with her hands on her hips. Guilt twists my stomach. I can’t leave her to pick up my slack, but I won’t be able to hide out there. Everyone will see something's wrong with me.
She’ll see.
She probably already does. I’m too chicken to look up and find out.
“I’ll be out in a minute,” I say, pretending I’m engrossed in the numbers in front of me.
“Christ,” she swears, closing the door a little. “It was just a hand job. Nothing to have an existential crisis over.”
I shove the chair back and slam the book shut.
“I am not having an existential crisis.” I try to push past her in the doorway, but the scent of her perfume catches my attention and sticks my feet to the floor.
I lean into her space, drawn in by the hint of dark, boozy cherries.
It isn’t enough. It’s never goddamn enough.
Louisa pats my chest in sympathy. “Says the man having an existential crisis.”
I growl at her and stomp off into the bar because apparently, this woman renders me into something feral.
The bar is packed, and I immediately want to demand that everyone go home so I can go back to my suffocating solitude. But I push all that aside and throw myself into the tedious work of bussing tables.
Briar gives me a shocked look when I stay on the other side of the bar, but it’s far safer out here than it is to work so close to Louisa.
Keeping busy helps. Talking to the customers—when I have to—annoyingly also helps. I barely have time to notice Louisa as she pours beers and flirts with patrons.
Almost no time at all.
The cloth I’m wiping down a table with is already forgotten in my hand as her head tilts back as she laughs at something someone says before leaving with their drink. There’s still a ghost of a smile on her lips as her eyes scan the bar.
I don’t look away fast enough, and our eyes meet. The noisy bar fades under the pounding of my heart as seconds tick by. Louisa’s smile brightens, and she blows me a kiss with those perfect red lips before she turns to the next customer.
Christ. I draw a shaky breath and jump when someone touches my elbow.
A pretty blonde twenty-something is smiling up at me as she asks me a question, but my thoughts are slow to move from Louisa’s lips, and it takes me a moment to understand what the blonde wants.
Her car needs a jump—could I help her?
“Yeah.” I need to get out of here, so I motion for her to lead the way, then cast a glance back at the bar.
Louisa’s eyes flick away from me, but I catch the furrowed brow before it disappears as her attention returns to the customer talking to her.
But her fingers slip up the stem of the wine glass as she pushes it toward the woman, and I feel that touch from root to crown.
It would be bad enough if the effect were limited to my dick, but I want things I have no business wanting, things I can’t even put a name to. A massive, pressing desire for more than just her hand around my cock again. I want to know her inside and out, as thoroughly as I know myself.
The night air is fresh and cool compared to the booze-scented heat of the crowded bar, and I suck it into my lungs as I follow the blonde into the parking lot. She’s still talking, but I can’t focus on a word of it.
Am I having an existential crisis? Fuck, I think I am. The most I ever feel toward someone is a mild curiosity. This thing with Louisa isn’t mild, and it isn’t going away—it’s getting stronger. This isn’t normal. It isn’t me.
“Where’s your car?”
I blink hard at the question. There are jumper cables in my hands. A small car with the hood up is in front of me.
The pretty blonde tilts her head as she repeats her question.
My car? I glance from the red clamp in my right hand to the black one in my left. Shit. I don’t know how to jump a car—what the hell am I doing?
Movement in the shadows catches my eye as someone walks by—someone with a man bun.
“Milo!” There’s a desperate note in my voice I don’t like, so I clear my throat as he stops and turns. “Can you jump this lady’s car?”
He hesitates, but I’m already in front of him, shoving the jumper cables at him, glancing around for the truck he shares with Gina. “Did you walk? Here.” I grab my keys from my pocket and push them into his hand. “Use my car. It’s over there, put it back when you’re done.”
Milo starts to say something, and the blonde is protesting about not wanting to bother him, and into the chaos, my phone chimes with a notification that makes my entire body freeze.
My Google alert on Tristan Hunting.
“Thanks, Milo,” I say quickly, already walking away.
“Can I give you my number?” the blonde calls after me.
I’m too distracted to lie to myself that fucking her might solve this existential crisis. “No,” I call back as I pull my phone from my pocket and head toward the picnic table by the lake.
I drop onto the seat, then glance up to make sure I’m alone before I unlock my phone with a shaking hand.
It’s a news bulletin updating a previous story.
The identity of a man who fell to his death last night has been confirmed as that of Tristan Hunting, forty-five, of New York. The wealthy financial advisor—
I don’t bother to read the rest. The laugh bubbles up from deep in my chest, and I tip my head up to the stars and let it out, not caring that it sounds half-mad. It’s grief for my sister. Closure, loss, and relief for me. Something dark I don’t want to look too closely at for Tristan.
He’s dead.
I push my hands through my hair and laugh again. The stars above twinkle coldly—so many more of them than I’ve ever seen before.
It’s over. I won.
I had taken a cigar off Tristan before I’d even won a dollar off him at the poker table. He had laughed when I told him I’d wait to smoke it until I’d taken everything from him, so confident that he’d win because he always won, that his proximity to some powerful people made him invincible.
The cigar is gone. I threw it away after Louisa left the rest of it in that hideous old ashtray. I’m glad I got rid of it. I’d feel ridiculous sitting out here smoking it, celebrating destruction like some billionaire villain on a yacht. What a fucking cliché.
A shooting star streaks across the sky.
“I’m sorry, Grace,” I whisper into the night.
While I doubt she still loved the man she married in the end, she wouldn’t have wanted him dead—that’s not who she was.
No, his death was for me; the money is for her.
I’ll keep enough to live off, but the rest will go to the women’s shelters she fundraised for.
Since there’s a breeze keeping the mosquitoes away, I sit in the dark a little longer, listening to the lap of waves on the lake behind me, watching people come and go from Gallo’s.
Eventually, I read the rest of the story about Tristan’s death. Authorities suspect Tristan had fallen off a balcony after too many drinks at a party in a high-rise—an accident with no witnesses. Pushed, jumped, or fell, it doesn’t matter to me. It’s finally over.
I pocket my phone and head back to the bar, feeling calmer and lighter than I have in days, existential crisis extinguished. The reminder of what I did to Tristan and my life before Havenwood is enough to put me back on track.
Whatever I’m feeling toward Louisa Gallo, it’s under control again.