Chapter 6
SIX
brITTON
In my attempt to slip by Nina’s cubby without her seeing me, I’d taken the extra long route through the employee lunchroom and out the far door. But, it seemed, nothing short of an invisibility cloak was going to do the trick.
“Brit, wait,” Nina squealed.
I froze and smiled weakly back at her over my shoulder.
She’d changed her hair color yet again, this time opting for a dark red henna color.
It didn’t seem to be working with her fair complexion, but who was I to judge?
I’d been walking around with a pixie haircut for three months.
It had been a drastic attempt to change the way I looked.
One impossibly hard thing about losing an identical twin was seeing that person’s face in the mirror every morning.
The wheels on Nina’s chair squeaked as she nearly leapt from it. I liked Nina. She was my closest friend in the office, but I wasn’t ready to talk to her about the weekend. I’d told her I was going down to the beach to clear my head.
She shuffled toward me in her ridiculously high heels.
“I’ll follow you to your cubicle,” she said.
“I want to hear all about your weekend.” She stopped suddenly and looked me up and down.
“Shit, you look like you just stepped out of a clothes hamper. Wait, weren’t you wearing that skirt and blouse on Friday? ”
I took hold of her arm and led her to my cubicle. I didn’t need everyone in the office hearing our conversation.
She dropped into the chair next to my desk. “You didn’t go home, did you?“
I stuck my purse under my desk, sat in my chair and turned on the computer.
Nina was waiting for an answer. She knew that I was having a hard time adjusting to life without Perris, but she had no idea that I’d been out trying to find Damon.
I’d told her some of the important surface stuff, but that was all.
I didn’t need her to know more. She was one of those people who tended to give way too much unwanted advice.
“Brit, where are you staying?”
“Around. Look, I couldn’t stay at home anymore.
I need to find a place of my own. Every day that I’m there, I lose a little piece of myself.
” I took a deep breath. “Let’s drop the subject.
I’ve got to get started on the reports, Nina.
” I looked at her. “Please.” She was usually pesky about getting info from me, but she also knew when she’d stepped into a topic I didn’t want to dig through.
She reached forward and took my hand. “If you need a place to stay just let me know. Our house is small, but my mom won’t mind and she’s a great cook.”
Her generous offer made me feel guilty for cutting her off and dismissing her so quickly. “Thanks, but I’m fine. Meet you in the lunchroom at noon?”
“Sure thing.” She left looking more than a little hurt, but there wasn’t one moment of the weekend I could tell her about.
It had started with my insane plan to point a gun at Damon’s brother and had ended in a motel bed with a complete stranger.
I was still having a hard time convincing myself it had happened.
I leaned back in my chair and waited for my desktop to load.
My reflection, Perris’s reflection, stared back at me in the monitor.
That was the hardest part. Not being able to pick up the phone and dial my sister’s number to tell her about my weekend with the incredibly hot guy who saved me from getting pulverized and who had me pressed up against the wall of a motel room for the best sex I’ve had in a damn long time.
I didn’t have that option anymore. Nina was a friend and we could talk about a lot of things, but I’d only ever told my deepest secrets to Perris.
Now I had to keep them buried deep inside.
Tanner from accounting knocked on my cubicle.
His arms were filled with reports, data that I had to enter into the system.
“Here you go. I’m afraid it’s a big pile for Monday.
” He looked down at me. He was one of those guys who had more fashion sense than most women, and it was obvious he spent a lot of time in front of the mirror.
“You all right? You look like you were out late.”
Everyone in the office had their nosy parker hats on today. “I’m just peachy, Tanner. Anything else?”
“Nope. Just wanted to make sure you were all right.” Everyone knew that my twin sister had died and that I’d taken it extremely hard. In truth, they’d all been really supportive.
He turned to leave, looking just as hurt as Nina.
“Wait, Tanner.”
He turned back around.
“I’m sorry for sounding bitchy. I didn’t get much sleep last night. But thanks for asking.”
“Sure thing, Britty. Let me know if you need some help with those.”
I opened the first of many folders and sighed at the pile in front of me.
My mind had been anywhere but work lately.
As I pulled up the first report, my phone buzzed.
I glanced at it and sighed again. The good thing about texts was that they could easily be ignored.
I put the phone down and got to work. Three minutes later, it rang.
I knew who it was before I picked it up.
“I’m at work,” I said sharply.
“You didn’t come home last night.”
“Told you I wasn’t going to come home.”
“Damn, Britton, we need to talk. What the hell are you doing? Are you still out chasing fucking ghosts? She’s gone and there’s nothing anyone can do to bring her back.”
I blinked back tears. “I’ve got work to do and as always, Ryan, thanks for being so damn understanding.” I hung up.
Two seconds later the phone rang again, and I was pissed enough now to answer it. “And another thing—”
“Britton?” The deep voice was familiar, but I couldn’t place it at first. “What the hell are you up to? Two of Kyle’s friends just got arrested.”
“Damon?” I sat forward. I could feel my pulse pounding in my ears. “Where are you?”
He laughed. “As if I’d tell you.”
“I just need to talk. I need to know. And I want to collect her things, her diary, anything that meant something to her.” I heard the edge of hysteria in my voice but couldn’t stop it.
“There’s nothing to talk about. Why do you need her stuff?”
“Because you are a fucking douchebag, and I don’t want you near anything that belonged to her.”
“I’ve got it in a box. I was going to dump it.”
“Holy shit, you’re such a fucking asshole.” A few heads turned from surrounding cubicles, and I shrank down in my chair. “You never deserved her.” My voice broke.
“Yeah, you’ve told me that before. But the truth is, Britton, you just don’t want to face the fact that your sister was a drug addict. And she died of an overdose because that’s what junkies do.”
His words were so cruel, so harsh, that I had a hard time absorbing them. He’d left me frozen with hatred. I wanted so badly to see him hurt. I wanted him to suffer like my sister had, like I had.
“Now, leave my brother alone. He’s just lucky he wasn’t with his buddies when they went after your friend.”
I sat up. “What friend? What the hell are you talking about?”
“You’re little stunt Saturday night triggered some ugly retaliation against your tattoo boy. He embarrassed Kyle’s buddies in their usual hangout, and they were pissed. They went after the guy.”
My hands were shaking so much I nearly dropped the phone as I sat forward. “What do you mean? What the hell are you talking about?” My coworkers were trying hard not to pay attention, but it seemed everyone’s ears were turned my direction. I lowered my voice. “What did they do?”
For a second, it seemed he might hang up on me. “Damn it, Damon, I won’t go near Kyle again. What the hell did they do?”
“Heard they stabbed the guy.”
I braced my free hand on the desk to keep myself upright.
Every drop of blood drained from my face, and the Plexiglas cubicle walls seemed to swirl around me.
From the corner of my eye, I could see Nina walking toward me.
I was sure I would puke right there on my desk and on the day’s stack of files.
Nina stepped inside and looked down at me with worry.
I lowered my face and voice. I didn’t want her to know anything that had happened. “Tell me, tell me right now, is he dead?”
The word ‘dead’ made Nina gasp.
“Don’t know. I just know they arrested Kyle’s buddies. Now stay the hell away from me.” He hung up, and the phone slipped from my hand and bounced on the floor.
“My god, Brit, who was that? Who’s dead? You look awful.”
I tried hard to slow my heart, but it was thumping wildly in my chest. It took me a second to gather my wits.
“Uh, sorry to scare you, Nina. That—that was my mom in Iowa. My Uncle Charlie had a stroke.” Part of the story was true.
My uncle had had a stroke—three Christmases ago.
I couldn’t tell Nina the real truth without her thinking me horrid.
And I was horrid. I’d pulled an innocent man into my insane obsession.
I forced a smile, but I wanted to curl up into a fetal position on the floor of my office and weep.
“Thanks for being worried, but I’ll be fine.
He’s not dead, and the prognosis is good. It was just a shock to hear, is all.”
She didn’t look the slightest bit convinced.
“Really, Nina, I’m fine.” I put my shaky hand on the stack of files. “I need to get back to work.”
Reluctantly, she turned and walked back to her desk.
I yanked the monitor around so that no one could see what I was doing.
I searched for local news stories, and the first one to come up was the stabbing of a local fisherman.
Again, I felt the room sway as I clicked on the article.
I nearly melted into a puddle of relief when I read that he was recovering from the attack in a local hospital.
I wrote down the information and jammed the sticky note into my purse.
I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes, hoping the dizziness and nausea would slow. Poor Slade. He’d stepped in to help, and he wound up in a hospital bed. When the hell had I managed to let my life get this out of control?