Chapter 21
K aplan’s staring at me, anger and pain etched in his every feature as resentment drips from his lips. “All this time?” he questions, his voice eerily low and rough. “It’s been you all this time?”
“Yes.”
A hard swallow, his hands meeting his hips, his face cast down toward the floor as he breathes heavily. “You fucking lied to me.”
“Not exactly.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” he snaps, his eyes pinning mine once more, his voice shredding the air.
“I didn’t lie about not recognizing you in the car and I didn’t lie about not realizing who you were until after your mother gave me her last name and showed me her business card. I didn’t lie about not knowing you were going to be my new boss.”
His hands meet the back of his head and he’s breathing hard, a war of emotions battling through him. “Do you have any idea what this…” His eyes close for a beat as his voice trails off.
“I was going to tell you. It’s why I texted you saying that we needed to talk in person. I tried yesterday, but you got paged right when I started.”
“Yesterday?! You should have told me sooner!”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe!” he roars, his hands falling to his sides.
“Yes,” I shoot back. “Maybe. Because you treated me like shit from day one here. You had no idea who I was and not only did that hurt like hell, but I was already furious with you.”
“Me?” he snaps, jabbing a thumb into his chest. “What on earth could you possibly—”
“Because you left me!” I scream, flying around the desk until we’re inches apart.
“You completely ghosted me. You were my friend. You were important to me. Maybe that makes me childish and stupid, but that’s what I believed.
But then one day you were gone. You stopped returning my texts, phone calls, and emails.
I lost Forest and then I lost you without any explanation. ”
Silence like a heavy weight falls between us. Tears, hot and painful, burn my eyes, but I don’t give them freedom to fall. He steps forward, his eyes a stormy green, an impending tornado ready to destroy what’s left of me.
“Losing Forest the way I did was practically the end of me,” I cry.
“Nightmares and guilt lived in my every breath. All anyone ever told me was how it wasn’t my fault.
That there was nothing I could have done differently.
But you listened as I cried without trying to fill my head with useless words that offered no comfort.
You helped me make sense of what happened.
Get through it. I told you things I’ve never told anyone.
Thoughts and feelings I had. I thought you did the same with me. I thought our friendship was special.”
Kaplan was my salve and then… just gone. I shake my head, clearing my thoughts and shifting gears.
“Ava told me that you showed up at my eighteenth birthday party in Colorado. That you were there, took one look at me in my bathing suit, and left. Is that true?”
“Yes. That’s true.”
Agony rips a hole straight through me, robbing me of my breath. I swallow, falling back a step and landing on a nearby desk. God, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe that’s why he stopped being my friend.
“Please leave,” I beg, on the last shred of my composure, about to lose my mind and not wanting him as an audience when I do.
He makes no move to go, and I can’t do this. I thought I could, but after that…
Forcing myself off the desk, I return to mine and gather my things. I’m done here.
I didn’t drive today, I walked, so instead of heading toward the back door where the parking lot is, I’m forced to go out the main entrance, past him. A hand reaches out, grabbing my right forearm, stopping me, but I don’t look at him. I can’t.
“Have you had dinner yet?”
“Dinner?” I bark out an incredulous laugh.
“Yes. Dinner. You texted me this morning saying we needed to talk, and I came here tonight with the intent to buy you dinner.”
I shift my weight onto my left foot, my head bowing.
“Have dinner with me, Bunny. Please. You’re not the only one who has things to explain.”
Reluctantly I twist and stare up at him. I’m terrified to hear what he’s going to say, but I think my heart needs to hear it anyway. We’ll call it closure if I have to. He called me Bunny. The pain of that is so exquisitely ruining.
“Okay. Dinner.”
His hand slides down my arm until his fingers are intertwined with mine, then he’s leading me to the back exit, down the stairs, and out to his car. He helps me in, shutting the door behind me and I fall back on the seat, my mind racing. Wrecked.
We’re silent as he drives us through the dark Boston streets.
Wordlessly he pulls into an alley, parks the car, and hops out, leaving it running and me inside.
A few minutes later, he returns with a white bag filled with who knows what and then we’re off again.
It isn’t until we’re parking in his spot that I realize he’s taking me to his place.
I would have preferred a restaurant. Someplace public.
But I guess this isn’t exactly the type of conversation I can have out in the open with someone like Kaplan Fritz.
Hell, my cousin tried to blackmail him tonight.
Me too. I do still have all those conversations saved on my computer.
And truthfully, even though they were one-hundred-percent innocent in nature, they could be construed wrongly.
She could do some serious damage if she wanted to. I just hope she doesn’t take it that far.
The passenger door opens, bathing me in light and I numbly get out of the car, ducking my head and covering myself with my coat as we walk the short distance to his condo.
I don’t know if he’s still being followed by the press.
If there’s anyone out here lurking, but I don’t want to be seen or recognized.
Kaplan flips the lights on, locking the back door behind us and setting his alarm. “We weren’t followed, and no one is here,” he says as if reading my thoughts. “I checked my cameras when I was inside grabbing our food.”
“Good.”
Walking through the first floor, he switches on lights as he goes, setting the white bag down in his kitchen and taking what appears to be subs out, setting them on the counter.
I’m not hungry, so I weave through his massive family room, staring out at the inky water and Boston skyline beyond, but something catches my eye first. On the large built-in bookcase that separates what was likely the original division between what was once two townhouses there are shelves of pictures I hadn’t explored when I was here the first time.
Pictures of him with his siblings ranging from childhood to present time.
His parents. Him at his medical school graduation.
Sailing on a stunning white boat. His niece Stella.
And Forest. The two of them in college from the looks of it, arm over arm, both shirtless with cigars hanging from their dopey grins.
My fingers touch the glass of the frame, gliding over Forest’s face.
He looks so happy there. This must have been before his mind started to turn on him.
He came home before the end of his junior year and at first, I didn’t recognize him.
He’d spent weeks in a hospital while they sorted out his medications and my mom and Elijah hadn’t let me go see him.
Every day I’d come home from school, and we’d play video games together. Some days were good days. Some days he’d mumble to himself or get in arguments with people I couldn’t hear or see.
On the day he died, he had a smile on his lips when I came home.
He told me to give him fifteen minutes before coming up.
That he wanted to shower first. I made myself a snack but then I heard the crash, and I ran upstairs and found him hanging from a beam in his bedroom, his body thrashing.
He kicked me away when I tried to go to him, and I ran and called 911.
By the time I returned, he was blue and limp, and I was able to climb up using the chair he’d used to tie himself up and release him.
He fell with a heavy thud. A sound I’ll never forget as long as I live and then we were in the ambulance.
He knew I’d find him. He counted on it because he didn’t want it to be his dad and Ellis wasn’t living at home by that point since both boys were so much older than me.
I was nearly catatonic until his funeral.
Then everything inside me broke open and the one holding me up, crying with me, feeling the same guilt I was, was the man now standing behind me.
“I miss him every day.”
“Me too,” I croak, wiping at the tears I hadn’t realized were falling.
“You knew what my tattoo was.”
“I drew it. The image Forest tattooed on his back; I drew for him. My mom and Elijah were starting to fight, and I knew how that always ended for her. I loved Colorado, my life, and my friends there, Forest. I didn’t want to leave, so I drew a picture that reminded me of the forest that surrounded our home there. His name.”
“He never told me that.”
I shrug, still staring at the picture because I’m not sure what else to say to that.
Strong fingers glide through my hair, twisting one of the long strands around them.
“I didn’t recognize you, but somehow, the more time I spent with you, the more you reminded me of Bunny.
I didn’t remember your face much and I had your eye color wrong in my head.
But there was something about you, Bianca, that had my mind straying to Bunny.
I never knew your real name. Did you know that?
” He chuckles as if it’s the most ridiculous thing ever, which maybe it is.
“Instinctively I knew it wasn’t Bunny, but that’s what everyone called you, never anything else.
My mother has a friend who goes by Bunny, but her real name is Barbara.
It’s a blueblood thing, I think, so I didn’t give it much thought. ”