4. Mystery Solved
4
MYSTERY SOLVED
“ T alking to Tori?”
Raina looked up from her computer screen to see him standing in the doorway.
“Eavesdropping, Hyde?” Raina asked.
“Not really,” he said. “I was at my desk and saw you fly by my door while you were looking into offices and were on your phone. Then you turned and walked back just as quickly as if you figured out some mystery.”
Raina laughed at him. He expected her to be snarky or give him a Medusa glance turning him to stone.
Not that she’d ever done that before, but knowing what she might now, he was expecting it.
“Mystery solved,” Raina said, smirking.
“So that was Tori?” he asked again. “May I?”
He gestured toward the chair in front of her desk.
“Yep,” Raina said. “We should talk, though I hate getting into the middle of things.”
“I’m putting you there more than anything,” he said.
“That was Tori on the phone,” Raina said. “How did you find out who she was?”
“I saw her leaving the office with you a few weeks ago,” he said. “When I was coming back from lunch. I asked Ryder who she was.”
“I figured as much,” Raina said. “Does that change the way you spoke to her at the bar or even now? I have to admit I’m kind of surprised to find out it was you who insulted her that night.”
“What did she tell you?” he asked, his shoulders dropping. Were his actions forever going to haunt him?
“Are we going to play that game?” Raina asked. “He said, she said.”
He sighed. “No. She was probably spot on. I’d had more to drink than I should have and didn’t even drive home that night. No excuses. What I thought I was saying and what came out of my mouth weren’t the same thing. I hadn’t expected her to bite my head off though.”
“I think you might have had it coming from what I heard,” Raina said. “But again, I will acknowledge that I only heard one side of the story.”
“She turned her back on her drink. She should never do that. But I shouldn’t have said it the way I had.”
Raina just stared at him for a minute. He couldn’t understand what she was doing, but it seemed as if she was processing things.
“Tori is the last person you need to say that to,” Raina said. “Or me. Had you approached it in any way other than what you had, things would have been different. Trust me on this. We know from experience.”
He frowned. “Care to explain that? Any of it.”
“I don’t tell this to many. Or I didn’t. But since I’ve spoken to other college students about the issue it’s not a secret. I don’t do it much anymore, just when I was going back for my degree nights. Tori and I were roommates in college. Not around here. We went to a fraternity party one night. She was with a date and went off to talk to a few other people. Someone spiked my drink, and I didn’t know it. I remember little of the night other than waking up in the ER. Tori and her date came looking for me. They found me in a room, thankfully fully dressed but drugged. I had only been out of her sight for about ten minutes and there’d been an investigation and medical exam and nothing happened to me. Thanks to her finding me and getting me out of there. So trust me when I say, we know all about watching our drinks. Had you not been insulting, she would have just struck up a conversation with you and things would be much different than they are now with you both acting like someone else.”
He felt like even more of an idiot.
“I’m glad to know everything was okay with you and sorry that happened.”
“You learn from it,” Raina said. “My life changed that night in several ways, but I’m beyond it now. I think that night changed everything for Tori and brought her into a career she didn’t think she’d do.”
“What does she do?” he asked.
“She’s a program director at a not-for-profit, but she oversees all the counselors and prevention educators. She’s spent her career helping others and counseling them. Teaching them to look out for what happened to me and so on. My point is, you didn’t need to do what you had, but your reasons are yours.”
“They are,” he said, not sure he could have felt any more shameful. “I tried to apologize today.”
“Oh,” Raina said. “I don’t think she thought that.”
He snorted. “I doubt it. I got another lecture out of it. We seem to rub each other the wrong way. I don’t normally act that way and you’re saying she doesn’t either?”
“She doesn’t,” Raina said. “I’m not going to tell her this conversation even though I want to. I told her I was surprised to learn it was you. I wouldn’t have expected it from you from what I know of you and our dealings and I didn’t expect it from her either.”
He nodded. “You’re not going to tell her this conversation at all?”
“I’ll tell her you sought me out. She said if you did, she’d deal with it, to not get in the middle. That is what I love about her. She takes care of things on her own.” His phone went off in his pocket and he so wanted to take it out and look but didn’t. “You’re shaking with the temptation to see who that text is from.”
He sighed. “It’s a horrible habit of mine.”
“Yep,” Raina said. “But it’s a common one.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll try to apologize when I see her again. Hope she doesn’t avoid coming to see you because I’m here.”
“She won’t,” Raina said, laughing. “Tori doesn’t back down from much in life.”
He nodded again and stood up to leave, then went back to his office and shut the door.
He looked at his phone and saw the text from his mother just checking in on him.
He hadn’t talked to her in a few weeks. It’s not like they talked often but did have several texts a week since his family was close.
“Hi, Hyde,” his mother said on the first ring. “I didn’t expect you to call me. Is everything okay?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess.”
“I guess doesn’t sound like it is,” his mother said. “What did you do now? Did you get in trouble at work again?”
He heard the humor in her voice. She was only laughing because his mother knew damn well that if he messed up here, Grant Fierce would kick his ass as if he was a step-in father.
Grant was aware he’d been terminated from his last job. He’d been honest with Ryder’s father when he interviewed. He didn’t want him to find out during a reference check and he didn’t want the Fierces to just hire him because of his past relationship with them.
But he didn’t tell them the exact reasons he was having personal problems either.
“No,” he said. “But I put my foot in my mouth a few times with someone.”
“At work?” his mother asked.
“No,” he said. He explained what happened a few weeks ago in the bar and then earlier today.
“Hyde James!” his mother said. “I thought you stopped drinking like that.”
He sighed. “I did. I have been good. I wanted a beer, but it was a bad day. It was the anniversary of Shana’s death. I don’t know. I got in my head.”
“At least you didn’t drive home,” his mother said.
“Never. I wasn’t that drunk. I knew what I was doing. I wasn’t even hungover. I went home and had dinner and went to bed.”
Even if he wanted to keep drinking when he got home, but he didn’t.
That didn’t solve a damn thing.
“That’s something at least. And to be honest, it sounds to me like you had everything coming to you from this woman. I’ve told you more than once to stop being rude when it comes to your phone.”
“I know,” he said. “I feel like shit about the whole thing. It’s like whenever I’m around her I just act like an asshole.”
There was a pause on the other end, and then his mother asked, “Why is that?”
“I wish I knew.”
He only knew he found her attractive.
In his past life, he would have been drawn to someone, but he thought he couldn’t have them because they wouldn’t like his history. That was before he changed everything about himself.
Changing didn’t seem to make much of a difference though and he felt as if he should just give up.
“There has to be something to it,” his mother said. “Does she remind you of Shana? That you feel you’ve got to protect her or something? Or maybe try to make up for what you think happened to Shana?”
He snorted. “Trust me, this woman can protect herself. She’s got a sharp tongue on her even if Raina says it’s not like her.”
“What’s her name?” his mother asked. “Stop saying this woman. That is rude too.”
He was getting his share of the lashes today. “Sorry. Her name is Tori. And I don’t think she needs anyone to protect her.”
“My only advice to you is if you see her again, apologize if for no other reason than to put your head on the pillow a little easier. If she doesn’t accept it, then she doesn’t.”
“I planned on doing it,” he said. “I feel like it’s hard to avoid her here. I work with her best friend. I’m best friends with her best friend’s brother-in-law. Which isn’t a big deal if she wasn’t in the same building as me.”
“You’ll figure it out, Hyde. You always do.”
“Just not so well,” he said, sighing.