Chapter 4 #2
I didn't want to react to their words, to their cackles. Didn't want to tear this door off the hinges and tell these women where they could shove their opinions. Didn't want to rescue her. Hell, I didn't even want to be here tonight.
But I'd dug myself into a hole and now I couldn't leave without Audrey's help.
I must've telegraphed my desire to make them repeat those comments to my face because Audrey's elbow found its way between my ribs again and she whispered, "Don't."
It was then, probably a result of every muscle bracing for impact, that I fully registered all the places where her body had melted into mine.
And I realized the true danger of holding her this way was that it made me think I wanted this.
That I wanted her. All because my body recognized her in a way that never should have survived years apart, sending heat and memory straight into my bones.
One wrong move and I wouldn't just lose my purpose for being here—I'd lose myself, plain and simple.
I'd known from the second I laid eyes on her that she'd grown and changed over the years but feeling it was a different thing altogether.
She was still tall, still lean, but she seemed solid, as if she'd traded in her long, elegant ballerina strength for something more durable.
Her hair wasn't the straight column of platinum silk I remembered.
She had highlights and layers now, and maybe she'd smoothed it out for tonight but I couldn't find the near-permanent crimp from where she tied her hair into a tight bun every day.
I wouldn't admit to the number of times I let my cheek pass over those strands or the amount of slow, deep breaths I took to swallow down her scent tonight. She smelled the same as always—soft, warm, expensive—but there was something new in there, something I hadn't been able to pin down.
But the real change was the armor. She was tough, weathered in ways she'd never been before. I knew from the hard, slicing gaze and how her jaw ticked with the barely contained desire to verbally whip these old "friends" of ours that she'd come by her steel honestly.
It was about time. She'd needed it. As the women on the other side of the stall door made obvious, there was no surviving this cage match without growing some bulletproof hide.
Laughter followed them out into the hallway but we didn't move until long after the door swept shut and their voices faded into nothing. We stayed in that tiny stall, every inch of Audrey gathered in my arms. Like no time had passed at all.
But then the tension cracked open and she let out a low, self-conscious chuckle that cut as hard as one of her vicious elbows. "I really should've taken Jamie's advice and done this drunk. Or at least popped a gummy."
Shrugging out of my hold, she flipped open the latch and exited the stall. I trailed behind, watching as she leaned close to the mirror. A finger skimmed under her eyes, over her brows, into the corners of her mouth. She fussed with her hair, the stall door clanking behind me.
I didn't care—not at all—but I couldn't stop myself from asking, "Who's Jamie?"
Her reply was smooth, like she'd rehearsed it enough times that she believed the lie. "You're not entitled to that information." She met my eyes in the mirror, her gaze dropping to where I had my hands propped on my hips. "But she's one of my best friends."
There was no reason to examine the relief I felt at hearing she and best friend, so I barreled ahead. "We need to talk. Let's get out of here and—"
"No."
It took me a second to fully absorb her response.
Funny how I still couldn't comprehend her rejections in real time.
"Don't tell me you want to stay here. Not after—" I motioned to the door like I could summon those women.
"Come on. We're leaving. I know you don't want to be here. I'll buy you a drink. Or three."
Audrey leaned back against the sink, her shoulders loose and her arms folded over her waist. The look in her eyes told me she didn't give a single fuck if I got my way and—and maybe I'd miscalculated. Maybe I'd read this all wrong.
"Thanks but I think the toilet stall abduction put me over the limit for tonight.
" She nodded to herself. "Yeah, you've made quite a splash with this whole surprise appearance of yours and let's give them a show and then stalking me halfway across the campus and barricading me in the bathroom while listening to the true confessions of law moms. Don't you think you've done enough? "
"Don't you think you owe me a real conversation? For once?"
Color flooded her cheeks and I knew I'd finally hit the one weak spot she'd never learned how to protect—guilt. No armor there.
"I'm not leaving until we talk," I went on.
"Then I hope you have a pleasant stay in Connecticut." She pushed away from the sink and moved toward the door. "I'm done with these games for tonight."
It took me a minute to recover from the satin slap of her words and say to her back, "Then you'll meet me tomorrow at ten. The usual place."
Her spine straightened and her chin lifted, and she didn't turn around or meet my eyes when she asked, "Why now?"
The truth was an option but not a good one. Not if I wanted her to show up tomorrow. Instead, I went with something on the inside of honest. "It's time. Don't you think?"
Audrey exhaled the whole world and I knew I had her.
"Ten o'clock." Her gaze still trained on the door, she held up one finger. "There will be no performance art, no kidnappings, no moving to second or third locations. Understood?"
"Sure, just as long as you understand I won't let you run away every time you don't like a question."
Her shoulders lifted. "And remind me what gives you the right to all my answers?"
My phone sounded in my back pocket and I knew my time was up. I wouldn't win this round, not in the way I wanted to. I was probably a fool—a desperate fool—for thinking I could. "I'll tell you tomorrow."
She scoffed as she shoved the door open.
There was a pause when she stepped into the hall, a beat before I heard her heels hammering the marble floors, and I let myself believe she was waiting for me to follow.
More likely, she was straightening her dress or cursing me in five different belief systems, but that stupid, stubborn part of me that didn't know how to let go had a different explanation.
I slumped against the wall and pulled out my phone.
Percy: call me
Jude: can you give me 5 minutes?
Percy:
Since I didn't care to be accused of stalking again tonight, I took the long way through campus back to the parking lot.
Music and voices filled the thick night air and my palms itched with the memory of her skin.
I wanted to dunk myself in freezing water and wait for frostbite to take over. Give myself something new to feel.
When I reached the rental car, I pulled the door shut with more force than necessary and took a minute to breathe.
This…hadn't gone as planned. But in truth, it never went as planned when Audrey was involved.
All I knew was that woman fucked with my brain chemistry.
I never wanted to see her again and I wanted her back more than anything else in the world, and that was a real fucking problem.
And I already had too many problems. No room in my life for another.
I grabbed my phone and opened a video call with my favorite problem. Percy answered in a dark room, the light of the screen reflecting off his glasses. An infantry of stuffed animals surrounded him.
"What's up, buddy?" I asked, trying like hell to chase the tension out of my tone. "Everything okay? You're up late."
"Grandma fell asleep in her chair again," he signed.
"Maybe she's just resting her eyes," I said while firing off a text to my attorney. "It's not easy keeping up with an almost-five-year-old. You're a high-energy kid."
He responded with a glare that my mother would call a taste of my own medicine.
He climbed out of bed and crept down a short hallway, muffled television sounds increasing with each step.
With a flip of the screen, I found my son's grandmother asleep in her recliner, a stainless steel tumbler in the crook of her arm, and a pair of reading glasses perched on top of her head and another pair sliding off her nose.
A rage-bait cable news show blared in the background and a knee-high pile of newspapers teetered next to the recliner.
"She's been asleep since after dinner," he signed.
I pressed a fist to my mouth to keep from yelling, Are you fucking kidding me, Brenda?
At least he'd eaten this time.
"Okay, man, take me to the front door. Let's see about these locks."
We went on a journey locking the doors, checking that the kitchen appliances were off, and getting Percy's teeth brushed.
I kept one eye on him between blowing up my attorney's phone about this custody agreement and searching for flights to Saginaw.
I'd meet with Audrey in the morning and still have time to drop in on Brenda by the evening for a chat.
Percy returned to his bedroom and spent several silent minutes rearranging his stuffed friends until he was satisfied. When he climbed into bed, he settled his tablet against the wall and flipped the screen back to me, signing, "When can I come home?"
I felt those words like a hatchet to the chest. "I'll talk to Grandma. We'll make it better."
"I want to go home," he replied, his motions sharp. "Don't make me stay here."
Nothing hurt like watching tears roll down my son's round cheeks. Even Audrey couldn't hurt me like this and she'd ripped my heart in half—twice. "I will fix this. I promise," I said. "Have I ever broken my promises to you?"
His lips pressed into a pout as he shook his head.
"I'm not going to start now," I said. "Let me work on it. I'm going to make this better for you. In the meantime, it's far past your bedtime, sir. Hell, it's past my bedtime."
"You don't have a bedtime," he signed.
"Believe me, I do and you'll love your bedtime when you're my age.
" His watery laugh filled the rental car and everything in me ached.
I just wanted to get my boy, take him home, and shield him from all the shit that kept turning his little world upside down.
"You know you can call me anytime. Grandma knows it too.
And you know you can go next door to Miss Maddie if you ever need help. "
He nodded and clutched a stuffed wolf to his side.
"I love you," I said.
"I love you too, Dad," he signed.
"I'll stay on with you until you fall asleep. Do you want a story?"
He shook his head. "It's okay. You can go."
"If you think I have more interesting things to do than watch you try to fight falling asleep, you're wrong."
Another soft laugh, then a sniffle. "I'm sleepy."
"Then take off your glasses and put your head down. I'll be right here."
I started the car and pulled out of the lot. From what I could tell, the party under the tent was still going strong. If I knew that crew—and unfortunately, I did—they'd go hard until the booze ran out. And then order the underlings to fetch more.
Audrey wasn't in there. No one had to tell me how good she was at disappearing when the air grew thin. Good at slipping into the cracks when nobody else was looking. She'd live in those cracks if the choice was hers.
If I were smarter—or maybe just meaner—I'd have let her. Let her dissolve into the background until she was nothing more than a ghost of my past. There were times when I wanted that more than anything…and there were times when I fucked myself into situations I couldn't solve without her.
I leveled a glare at the tent one last time, the gulf between the resentment I had for this place and the energy I wanted to waste on it growing wider as my son's breathing evened out.
I'd watch him until I reached my hotel near the airport.
Longer, if I couldn't get the rumbling panic of being seven hundred miles away from my functionally unsupervised child out of my chest.
I swore under my breath as I turned onto the main road. I wouldn't get another second chance after tomorrow.