32. William
32
WILLIAM
“ Y ou’ve reached Kristin Boyd! Leave a message at the beep.”
I ended the call and tossed my phone into the empty passenger seat. A week had passed since I’d last seen Kristin. The image was burned into my mind: her standing in the ballroom, staring at me as her world crumbled down.
She was a fucking vision in that red dress.
I shouldn’t have gotten on that stage. I shouldn’t have taken the microphone.
But I did.
I walked away from Kristin and walked on that stage.
Elena roped me into her game and, like a fool, I played the role of dutiful businessman. That was a role I had grown to despise when Elena and I had been involved. But it was also the role that brought Kristin into my life.
Kristin’s stubbornness was something that I admired. It was a survival technique that helped her fight to see another day. Struggling to keep food on the table and a roof overhead required an iron will. At the moment, though, I loathed that particular quality. I wanted to drive to her house, stomp inside, and demand she hear me out.
I had tried to text Logan and Kylie to ask if Kristin was okay. Much like every other effort I had made to reach out, the texts went unanswered.
When I left my house and hopped on Highway 70, I didn’t even bother stopping in Havelock to see if she was home. I took a left at Kyle Kingsley’s car dealership and headed down 101 to Jokers.
I counted it a small victory that I hadn’t been kicked out of the poker club group text just yet. I laid low, hoping they’d just forget I was in the thread.
It was girls’ night. If there was one thing Kristin never missed, it was that. She would be looking to blow off a little extra steam after recent events.
Jokers was fairly empty. I didn’t mind. I loved the off-season. Kristin’s car wasn’t in the lot yet, so I parked on the other side of the poorly lit ramshackle building. I didn’t want her to see my truck and hightail it back home.
I locked the doors, shivering as a gust of cold air whipped around me. Warming up with a little whiskey sounded like a damn good idea.
I prepared myself for the hell storm that was going to rain down the moment I set foot in the bar. Steve and Chase would beat me to a pulp, Luca would fillet my body, and Isaac would pay off all the witnesses.
God only knew what the girls would do to me.
I put my hand on the wobbly door knob and exhaled, watching my breath fog in the chilly air. Ready as I’d ever be, I twisted the knob and pulled.
Nine heads spun from their spots at the bar and looked at me. If anyone else walked in, they would’ve thought it was a funeral. Hell, I’d been to a few wakes that were livelier than the poker club tonight .
“Oh,” Mel said with a sigh.
Hannah Jane gave me a disappointed, but sympathetic smile. “We were hoping you were Kris.”
Where was the war party? The tar and feathers? The mob with torches and pitchforks? I thought I would be walking into my own execution.
I cleared my throat. “Who, uh, who talked to her last?”
Steve lifted a finger off his beer. “Me.”
I looked back at Hannah. “Has she been at work?”
“Seems like something you should know, boss man ,” Mel clipped.
The tension radiated between the ten of us like waves of heat off of pavement.
“Is someone gonna call her to see if she’s coming?” Bridget asked.
“She ain’t gonna show if she knows Richie Rich is here,” Chase muttered.
Steve cut his eyes at Chase. “She ain’t gonna show because of all of you. Not just him.”
Hannah Jane slid off her barstool, high heels snapping against the scratched wood floor. “Whatever. I’m going to Havelock and I’m gonna talk some sense into her. She’s been avoiding me at work all week and I’m sick of it.”
“No, you’re not,” I snapped.
Isaac flew off his seat and charged me like a bull. “Just who the fuck do you think you are talking to Hannah like that?”
My eyes never left his as he stormed toward me. He stopped short of putting hands on me. Isaac was a big guy, but I had two inches and twenty pounds of muscle on him.
Steve, Luca, and Chase slowly eased away from the bar, ready to throw down at a moment’s notice—like vultures circling their prey. The morose mood suddenly turned morbid.
“I can fight my own damn battles, thank you very much,” Hannah Jane said, turning and staring Isaac down. “Kristin’s pissed at all of us.” She paused to glare at me. “Some more than others, so why don’t you start talking and explain what the hell happened last weekend.”
Hannah Jane punctuated her statement by pushing her lithe hands square against my chest, shoving me down into the booth across from the bar. She wiped her palms on her skirt and hopped back onto her barstool to finish off whatever cocktail she was nursing.
“Yes, ma’am,” I mumbled.
Isaac smirked and slowly walked backward to the bar.
“I was engaged to Elena Callaway,” I began.
Hannah Jane’s glass fell from her hand and shattered across the wood floor.
“Oh, for the love…” Bridget sighed and shook her head as she grabbed a broom.
“You what ?” Hannah shrieked. “Kristin never told me?—”
“Kristin doesn’t know. It never came up.”
Erica waved her arms in the air before settling her hands back on her pregnant belly. “Hold on, fill the rest of us in. Who the hell is Elena Callaway?”
Steve raised his eyebrows. “Did you just say hell ?”
Erica glared at him. “Well, I’m pissed! I didn’t lie to Kristin. I didn’t know any of this. But she’s mad at me by association because of your lying asses, and I didn’t even get any of the gossip!”
Maddie sing-songed hormonal under her breath.
Erica shot her a deadly glare. “You just wait, blondie. One day you’ll be the one feeling like a fucking beached whale, unable to eat cold cuts and sushi, even though that’s what the baby’s making you crave. It’s insanity!”
Holy shit, what the fuck was happening? Erica was the nice one. I couldn’t remember hearing her swear. Ever.
Was Mercury in retrograde or something? What was happening ?
Bridget finished sweeping the broken glass, then slipped behind the bar to make Erica a drink. It was a Shirley Temple. Virgin. Luckily, the drink seemed to appease her … for now.
“What do you want to drink, Solomon?” Bridget asked, eyeing me cautiously. “I have a feeling we’re all gonna need something strong to get through this conversation.”
I wanted to get blackout drunk on whiskey, but it wouldn’t take away the heartbreak. It wouldn’t take away the utter desperation eating away at me from within. All it would give me was a hell of a hangover. The heartbreak would still be there when I sobered up.
I sighed. “Just a beer.”
Bridget popped the top on a brown glass bottle and handed it to Luca, who handed it to me. He didn’t spit in it, so that was good.
I took a long pull from the bottle, then hunched forward on my elbows. “Elena Callaway is the representative for Allegiant Holdings—the company that bought the Taylor Creek Inn.” I looked at Steve and Erica. “Which I own, amongst other things.”
“And by representative, he means horrendous bitch beast from the pits of hell,” Hannah Jane provided.
I shrugged. “Fair.”
“So, you were engaged to her and she still works for you?” Mel asked. “Seems pretty stupid, Einstein.”
“Well, it wasn’t at the time,” I said, cutting my eyes at her. “Firing her after we broke up carried a lot of legal risk. Opening myself up to an expensive lawsuit seemed pretty stupid, too. Besides, she was good at her job and I don’t have a lot to do with the company I own.”
“Understatement,” Luca scoffed.
Steve glared at Luca. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean, DeRossi?”
Luca sighed. “Will also happens to be one of my investors for DeRossi Hospitality. A big investor. ”
Steve clenched his fist, knuckles paling at the strain. “So, what—you knew from the get-go, too?”
Luca shrugged and looked at me. “We had never actually met in person until the night Kris brought him to poker for the first time.” He turned to Isaac and narrowed his eyes. “But you knew everything from the start and still kept it from all of us. Even your girlfriend.”
“Because I signed a fucking nondisclosure agreement!” Isaac shouted, slamming his glass on the bar. “Solomon would’ve fucking sued me if I told Hannah!”
“I don’t care what shit you signed,” Chase said, inserting himself into the shouting match. “Kristin has every fucking right to be pissed at y’all, because this—” he motioned between all of us “—is family business. And you don’t keep secrets from family.”
Mel shot Bridget a searing glare, which Bridget returned in equal measure.
Maddie scowled at Chase. “You knew, too. You and Bridget both did. And Bee told Mel. Any of y’all could’ve told Kris.”
“It’s on me,” I bellowed. “I’m the one who should have told her what I was doing there.”
“And what exactly were you doing?” Bridget asked with a sneer. “Prowling around, looking to pick up a vulnerable woman? Need someone to stroke your ego?”
“ Goddammit!” I bellowed and slammed my beer bottle against the table, leaving a ridged dent in the wood. “I didn’t… Fuck—” My voice cracked on the last syllable. “I didn’t mean to hurt her.”
Bridget’s demeanor was ice cold. “You don’t get a ‘get out of jail free card’ just because you didn’t mean to hurt her. You did the shit; you pay the fucking price. The poker club doesn’t lie to each other.”
“That’s rich,” Chase snorted.
Flames blazed in Bridget’s eyes as she slowly—terrifyingly— turned her head to Chase. “And what the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Get off your high horse, Bee,” Chase barked. “You fucking lied to all of us when you got engaged to that jackass you’re pretending to be in love with. And you weren’t gonna say a damn thing about it until he came traipsing in here like he owned the goddamn place!”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Bridget shouted, her words laced with sarcasm. “Forgive me for not parading my relationship around like you and your one-night-stand turned whatever she is!”
All hell broke loose as the poker club unraveled. All nine of them shouted accusations at each other. Friends going at each other over little things they’d swept under the rug for years. Some of the drama—like Chase and Bridget—I was privy to. Other allegations were news to me.
I was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
What the fuck was I supposed to say? I pulled the small velvet box out of my pocket and opened it up, staring at the diamond intended for Kristin’s hand. I’d been carrying it around since the Christmas party. I kept hoping that maybe—just maybe—she’d open the line of communication.
But every call and text had gone unanswered.
I wanted to go to her house and sit outside until she let me in. She would’ve had me arrested for stalking, though. I was sure of it.
“Holy shit!” Erica shouted over the ruckus. “That diamond is the size of a fucking walnut!”
That got everyone’s attention.
“Oh my God…” Maddie clasped her hand over her mouth. “You were going to propose?”
“In the courtyard at the inn,” Hannah Jane said wistfully as she cooled down from her shouting match with Isaac. It wasn’t clear if that particular argument was fury or foreplay. “It was a really pretty set-up. Kris would’ve loved it. ”
“Do you propose to every girl you date?” Steve sneered, his lip curling with disdain behind that thick beard.
I sighed, snapping the ring box closed and shoving it in my pocket. “No. And for the record, I’m the one who broke it off with Elena.”
“What’s the story there?” Mel asked.
Bridget handed me another beer.
Lord knows I’d need it for this story. “Elena and I met right after I graduated from MIT. We were both in the same hiring class of computer engineers at a company that did defense contracting. We worked together for a few years, but didn’t start dating until I joined a different company.
“I hated living up north, so when I got an offer from a contractor out of North Carolina, I jumped at the chance to move back. We did the long-distance thing. When it got serious, I proposed, and she quit her job to move down here. Elena’s smart, but she didn’t like the work.
“I quit that job after I filed a few patents and sold some tech to the Navy. I wanted to diversify, so I used some of my earnings to start a few different companies. If one industry went down, I’d have money in another.”
Isaac nodded in approval. “Don’t put all your chickens in one basket.”
Chase rolled his eyes. “It’s don’t count your chickens before they hatch , dumbass.”
“It’s don’t put all your eggs in one basket ,” Bridget clipped before adding, “Dumbass.”
“Oh my God, you two,” Erica yelled at Chase and Bridget. “Either go in the back and fuck each other or shut the hell up. I’m so done with your drama. You’re grown ass adults who should be able to work through your feelings.”
“We don’t have feelings for each other!” Bridget and Chase shouted simultaneously .
Hannah Jane rolled her eyes and snorted. “Yeah, okay.”
“ Anyway ,” I growled. “The point is, I’ve done well for myself financially, and Elena had dollar signs in her eyes. She hated engineering, even though she was good at it. So, I gave her a job at one of my companies. But that work didn’t appeal to her either.
“She wanted to be a southern socialite, throwing garden parties and shit. I loved her—or thought I did—so I went along with it because it made her happy. But truthfully, I hated everything about it.”
Luca’s brow furrowed. “Honestly, I thought you were a myth. You were a huge investor for me, but you never made public appearances.”
I shrugged. “Yeah, it pissed her off too. Eventually, I had enough and couldn’t put up with her shit anymore. When I broke up with her, I didn’t want to be petty and fire her. It would have blown up in my face in more ways than one, so she stayed at Allegiant. It was never a big deal, though. Like I said before, I don’t have a lot to do with those companies when it comes to day-to-day operations. I didn’t even know that she’d been put on the Taylor Creek Inn acquisition until it was too late.”
Hannah Jane sighed. “God, the staff party was a shit show. I can’t believe Elena outed you like that. I mean, I knew she was a bitch, but damn .”
I shook my head. I should have known better. Elena had always been like that. And me? I tried to see the best in everyone. To a fault, apparently. I was too trusting to run with guys like Luca and Isaac, so I stayed in my lane and kept to myself.
But Kristin changed everything. She never expected anything from me the way Elena had.
“I fired her,” I said, looking up from my beer. “Personally. I mean, H.R. was there, but she breached her confidentiality agreement.”
“Does Kristin know that?” Steve asked .
I shook my head. “I’ve tried to talk to her, but she won’t answer.”
“She didn’t show up for poker night on Monday,” Luca said glumly. “She’s never missed one before.”
Steve sighed. “She probably just needs time.”
Time. That’s what I was afraid of…
On one hand, maybe time would help her cool down before having it out with me. On the other hand, time would give her a chance to throw her walls back up.
Higher this time. Impenetrable.
Time wouldn’t heal all wounds—not if they were deep enough. Left unattended, wounds could kill a person from the inside out.