Chapter Fifty #2
They figured me for asleep - and to be fair, I was ninety-percent there—when the car finally pulled to a park, their voices low as they addressed each other. "Why don't you head in, pack up?" Brock suggested. "I will sit here with her."
Barrett headed out.
And there was only a short silence before Brock spoke again.
"I'm in the mood for a story..."
"I'm sleeping."
"You gotta get up anyway. We got three people and three cars."
Ugh.
I forgot about that part.
I really did not want to have to drive.
But the lure of home was too strong to fight. I could do it. With a large coffee with three shots and enough sugar to cause a perfectly healthy person to have a diabetic episode.
"Fine," I grumbled, slowly sitting up and ignoring the ache in my ribs. "Where do we start?"
"Why Barrett was acting like you two were a thing when it's clear you're not."
"We might have been a thing. If Barrett hadn't offered to help give me the experience I need to eventually get my own investigator license. But once he did..."
"It would get messy if you two... got messy together."
"Something like that."
To that, Brock nodded, then shot me a wicked smirk. "I give it... oh, three weeks."
"Are you going to tell everyone?" I asked, knowing that while Barrett would likely never admit it, the approval of his brother did mean a lot to him. He didn't like looking foolish in front of him. And a fake dating scheme? It was a little silly.
"I think it will be more fun to watch it all play out," he told me, shrugging. "Watching you two pretend to be all over each other while denying yourselves what you both clearly want? That is some popcorn-worthy shit right there."
"Did you tell Barrett that you knew?" I asked, not sure if I had dozed in and out on the ride.
"Nah. I think it will be more interesting if he doesn't know I know."
"How so?"
"Oh, I don't know. Maybe I will drop by the office more often, watch you two kids scramble to act like a couple."
"You're evil," I declared, already dreading the possibility. Having to have Barrett's hands on me—full of promises he wouldn't come through with. The disappointment was visceral, and it hadn't even come to pass yet.
“I figure after enough time, maybe you two will get your heads out of your asses and realize that what you have going on is worth exploring.
I know you haven't known Barrett as long as I have, but he's not exactly the sort to get interested in anyone.
In cases, in mysteries, yeah. Women? Not so much.
But he's into you. He invited you into his life.
He doesn't want anyone in his life. That means something.
And you look at him like you'd gnaw off one of your limbs if he would promise to run his fingers over the remaining three. Denying it? That shit is stupid."
"Says the resident relationship expert, huh?" I asked, shooting him a brow raise he could see in his rearview.
"I haven't found my Clarke yet," he told me, shrugging.
"Would you even notice her if she arrived?"
"Honey," he said, turning over his shoulder with one of those panty-melting smiles of his that was completely lost on me. "I notice every woman."
"You know what I mean."
"Guess we won't know until it happens, huh?" he asked.
That was that.
We sat in contemplative silence for what felt like entirely too long to just pack up our belongings.
"Alright, beautiful, you're up," he declared, jerking his chin toward where my car was parked beside Barrett's, the man in question standing between them. "I'll see you back in Navesink Bank."
"Do me a favor?" I asked, reaching for my door handle.
"What's that?"
"Give me a few days to recover before you start coming in and making life harder."
"Sure, I can give you a few days. I'm sure Barrett will take real good care of you until then."
To that, I had nothing to say, hobbling my way across the parking lot in my bare feet. One of my heels had been lost in the trunk of the car. The other was likely in a bin at the hospital.
And good riddance to them both.
"Alright, hop out," I demanded as I got to the driver's side of my car.
"I'm driving your car back. I will pick up mine some other time."
"That's silly. I can drive it, so you don't have to come back."
"You're not driving."
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine. You're bruised and achy and tired. So stop arguing, get in the car, and let me get you home."
With that, he slammed the door, cutting off any argument.
There was a part of me—even a large part—that did not like the idea of him driving my baby. But the other part, the bigger part, didn't want to drive, and was charmed by his insistence to, in a small way, take care of me.
So I slid into the passenger seat, strapped in, and let him take over.
At some point, I passed out, knocked out so deep likely from the adrenaline, stress, pain, and the fact that it had been well over a full day since I last got any sleep.
So deep that even when external triggers tried to pull me out of sleep, I barely got to the surface before I was pulled back under, before everything was inky nothingness.
It was the dream that eventually woke me up.
You know the one.
The one no one talks about.
The one we all have.
Where you have to pee.
But can't find a bathroom.
Entire malls seem unequipped with them. The ones in houses aren't working.
You finally find an empty stall and the fire alarm starts ringing, and you have to run.
You get so desperate that when some shady dude tells you there is a toilet in a closet for some reason, you willingly go into the dark. And lo and behold, there is a toilet.
You made it.
And just when you are ready to relieve the pressure in your bladder, you wake up.
Okay, so maybe not everyone has that dream.
But I have that dream.
Invariably, when that dream strikes, it is because in real, conscious life, I have to go too.
Unlike usual, though, I did not wake up staring up at my skylight in my tangled sheets, arms and legs wide, taking up all the space.
Neither was I half falling off my couch in my living room.
Or in the spare bed at one of my girlfriend's places.
Or in my childhood bed.
Nope.
I had no idea where I was.
I would like to lie and say this was a phenomenon that had never happened before in my life. But while I was never a one-night-stand enjoyer, I had been a 'have one too many drinks and crash on someone's couch' type of person when I was younger.
That said, all of that was a lifetime ago. I had left my couch-hogging and over-drinking days far behind me.
So waking up in unfamiliar surroundings was, momentarily, incredibly off-putting.
The bed itself was firmer than what I would pick, too sparse in pillows and blankets.
The nightstand—there was only one even though everyone knew that a bed not pushed up against a wall required two nightstands for aesthetic reasons—was piled with a haphazardly stacked supply of books, pens, notepads, and three coffee mugs.
It was the coffee mugs that did it.
Sure, there were other people in the world who kept their mugs scattered around before they brought them to the kitchen for washing. That said, Barrett was the only one I knew personally.
So this was where he, occasionally, slept. When a job wasn't making him burn the candle at both ends, creating those deep, purple-tinged circles under his eyes.
Bladder forgotten, I pushed myself up in the bed, feeling the ache in my ribs, but it was more of an annoyance than a hindrance.
I'd seen Barrett's office. Hell, I knew exactly how much dust, dirt, and skin cells accumulated in the corners in a week's time.
Since he spent the lion's share of his time in his office, there was some intimacy to being there.
But that said, it wasn't his home. This was where he kicked off his shoes—of which he had about ten identical pairs, judging by the pile behind the closet door.
This was where he read his books before sleep, where he brushed his teeth with his sweet mint toothpaste, where he unwound after a hard case.
This was his space. His personal space that - I imagined - next to no one got to be situated in.
The walls were white. I didn't expect any different.
I didn't figure someone like Barrett—so lost in his own mind—thought of things like beautifying his space.
This was also evidenced by the fact that his windows had blinds but no curtains, the wide-plank hardwood floors were in desperate need of refinishing, the white dresser didn't match the pine dresser.
His closet door was half open, displaying a giant assortment of those pants I had come to know him for—heavy-duty yet somehow soft at the same time—and I got the feeling that he treated clothing the same way he did mugs. He bought new items instead of washing the old ones.
Maybe others would find this wasteful, but as someone who would absolutely buy new underwear when I ran out of clean pairs and was feeling lazy, I understood.
It was a small room with a bad view and a door to the hallway.
I had a feeling the rest of the place would be small too.
Intimate. Somewhere he had likely lived since he moved away from home, and it was all he could afford.
A creature of habit, I doubted it even crossed his mind to think about moving, getting more room.
This was his safe space.
This was where he could be himself without anyone else judging him for it.
But he'd brought me here.
He had my keys.
He could have gotten me back into my own apartment.
But he'd brought me to his sacred space instead.
I couldn't help but think that meant something to him.
It sure seemed to mean something to me.
Hearing nothing, no signs that he was heading my way, and deciding the bathroom was almost at the point of emergency, I carefully climbed out of bed, holding onto the wall for a second to wait for a small bout of dizziness to pass before padding across his floor to the door.