Chapter 17 Jessiah
The woman waiting for me on the street said something about having seen my pickup being hit, so I hurried over with her to where it was parked.
But the damage she’d seen was from a couple months back, when I’d stupidly parked on a corner outside a client’s venue in Harlem and a taxi had bumped me.
The repair had fallen so far down on my long to-do list that I’d forgotten about it.
I thanked the woman anyway for her trouble and went back to my building.
The door to the apartment was still open, but I walked in and found Helena’s seat at the counter empty, as well as the pasta dishes. Helena was nowhere to be found. Had she left already? I couldn’t imagine she would, not after the conversation we’d had. Maybe she was in the bathroom?
“Helena?” I called.
I heard a whispered curse word, and something banging. Had it come from the storage closet? Dread filled my bones as I crossed the room in a few purposeful strides. The second I opened the door, Helena almost ran into me.
“What are you doing in here?” I asked.
She stared at me in shock, a dark blue hoodie in her hands that seemed vaguely familiar. It had been among Adam’s things—it was a Columbia hoodie, although he’d gone to Cornell. And then suddenly it dawned on me.
“Was that why you came here today?” I asked coolly.
“Jessiah, I wan—” she began, but I cut her off.
“Is that why you’re here? To get Valerie’s hoodie?
” I stared at her, bewildered and furious—and then just furious when I saw in her eyes that I’d guessed correctly.
“So you come here, acting all friendly and serving me up some fake apology, just to steal something from my apartment? Did you pull that stunt with the car to trick me into going outside so you could look around in peace?”
She took a few steps away and put the hoodie back in a box, presumably the one she’d found it in. “The apology wasn’t fake,” she said, but she sounded so guilty, it confirmed my suspicions that everything else was true. So the whole thing had been a setup. And I’d totally fallen for it.
“Did it ever occur to you to just ask me for it?” I asked angrily. “Oh no—you Westons wouldn’t do that. Everything neatly behind closed doors, that’s just your style!”
Helena raised her chin, and I saw that familiar anger in her eyes again—her go-to emotion when it came to me. “As if you’d have just given it to me, after how things went down at Tough Rock.”
“Of course I would have!” I snarled. “Do you think I want to keep anything that belonged to her?” I pushed past her, picked up the hoodie, and pressed it roughly into her hands. “Here, take the damn thing. Before I set fire to it.”
She grabbed it, her fingers touching mine, and for a second we both paused. There was so much left unsaid, along with everything that had passed between us today. But then I pulled my hand away, went straight to the front door, and opened it. “I think you got everything you wanted.”
She didn’t meet my eye as she picked up her jacket and stuffed the hoodie into her bag.
“Thank you for the pasta,” she said quietly as she passed.
“It was in no way a pleasure,” I replied darkly, closing the door behind her. I leaned back against it and swore loudly.
Fucking hell. How could I have been so stupid?
I knew what that family was like, how the Westons went about things when they wanted something.
And yet I hadn’t seen it coming, and had let her make a complete fool of me.
There was just something about that girl that made me let my guard down in the vain hope that she felt the same way I did.
In that moment, one thing was for certain, I swore grimly to myself: it would never happen again. Helena Weston was dead to me.
Once and for all.