Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter
Forty-Four
Beulah
“I’d like to say that I’m glad you’re who Mack brought to dinner tonight and not another mindless bimbo,” Shay announced opening the third box of treats she had brought.
We had finished the meal. It had been delicious even if I hadn’t been hungry. Marty might make a huge mess, but he was a talented cook. [
“They aren’t mindless. Ask Beulah. She had a neighbor who was a stripper who needed to put herself through college and take care of her kid,” Mack shot back at her.
“Yes. Well, that kind of stripper isn’t the kind you bring home. The last one thought that chocolate milk came from brown cows,” Shay said before putting a cream filled tart in her mouth while looking pointedly at him as if daring him to explain that.
“She was kidding,” he muttered.
“No, she was serious. She also didn’t know Hillary Clinton was once the First Lady. She had no idea who Bill Clinton was,” Marty reminded him. “But she did look good in the dress she had on, so I can understand why you missed her lack of intelligence.”
Mack let out an annoyed huff as he reached to slide one of the boxes across the table. As he peeked inside, he said, “In her defense, Clinton’s last year in office was four years before she was born. I hadn’t expected her to even know who Hillary was. She would have been like ten or something when Hillary last ran in the presidential campaign”
Shay began to laugh as if that was hilarious, throwing her head back and cackling loudly.
“WHAT!” Mack barked at her.
She covered her mouth, trying to muffle her laughter. Marty was grinning too. “Dude. We didn’t know she was that young. I’d have kept that to myself. I’m not sure that is legal.”
Mack shoved a cookie in his mouth without responding.
“Dinner was great,” I told them. “Can I help clean up the kitchen?” Hopefully, my subtle change in the subject would lead them away from discussing Mack’s dating life.
“Both of you are running off Beulah. Can’t y’all shut the hell up?” Mack said as he stood up with another cookie in his hand. “Sorry about them. But no. You don’t touch the kitchen. That’s his job. If he needs to destroy it, then he can clean it. Or Shay can help him since she didn’t bring me the one thing I asked for.”
“You’re enjoying those pastries just fine,” she snapped at him.
He held up both hands as if he was done with her. “Because that’s all we fucking have!”
Marty sighed, then turned his head to me. “It’s a damn circus around here.”
Today had been a long one. I wanted to talk to Stone and make a decision, but leaving without seeming ungrateful would be tricky. If he still hadn’t come home, I could text him. Maybe writing the words would be easier than saying them.
Glancing around at the others, I knew I wasn’t going to explain all that to them. However, I didn’t want them to think I was leaving because they were fighting, and honestly, it was keeping me distracted. I had enjoyed myself and their company.
“You can go. No harm done. I’d leave if I didn’t live here,” Marty said. I started to explain that wasn’t the case when a loud knock on the door stopped me. It also stopped Mack and Shay’s arguing.
“I’ll get it,” Mack said, stalking from the room.
“He’s such an ass,” Shay muttered.
“Mmmmhmmm,” Marty replied, but he grinned like he didn’t believe her. I had to agree with him. She almost seemed to enjoy the constant word battle with Mack, as if her not bringing the pie had been intentional.
“It’s for Beulah,” Mack called, and I stood quickly at the sound of my name.
“Stone must be looking for you,” Marty said.
Would he come here looking for me? It seemed unlikely. I figured he’d be curious when he got home and saw my car out front and wasn’t in the apartment. But he could have called. Oh, no he couldn’t have since my phone was in my purse, and completely dead. I’d forgotten to charge it last night. I blame the alcohol—I was drunk.
When I walked into the entryway and saw him standing there, his eyes locked on me. I wondered if I should explain or apologize. Did he even care? Had he tried to call?
“You’re not answering your phone,” he said, sounding angry.
“We were loud—” Mack had started to make excuses for me, but I interrupted.
“I forgot to charge it last night. It’s dead.”
Stone held my gaze a moment longer. His expression was unreadable. I couldn’t tell if he was angry, concerned, or annoyed.
“You weren’t home when I got here. And—”
“I asked her to have dinner with us. I’m sick of Shay and Marty. Needed to change it up a bit,” Mack explained for me before I could say more. I glanced at Mack, and he seemed relaxed. “There’s plenty left if you want to come in. Shay brought some expensive ass shit for dessert from the Elswoods.”
Stone shifted his focus back to me. “Are you finished?”
I nodded. But I was nervous. Unsure of his mood. I didn’t say anymore.
“I’ve already eaten,” he said to Mack. “But thanks for the offer.”
“Anytime,” Mack replied, then turned to look at me. “Glad you could come tonight. You’re always welcome.”
“Even more welcome if I bring the peanut butter pie,” I said with a smile.
He chuckled. “Yes. Anyone is welcome if they come with that in hand. Fuck knows Shay isn’t gonna get one.”
“Good night,” Stone said abruptly as he stepped back from the entrance to the dining room and looked at me as if I were supposed to move first. So, I did. I thanked Mack and Marty again, then made my way to the door and left the apartment with Stone following at my heels. The door closed behind him. I kept walking toward the stairs. There was tension, and I didn’t understand why. Did he not like Mack and Marty? Was there a problem with me having dinner with them?
I didn’t ask.
Instead, I waited. Stone would tell me when he was ready.
When we reached the top of the stairs, I paused as he stepped around me and unlocked the door. He waved his hand for me to go inside first.
The lights came on as we walked in, and I scrambled for the right words to say. If I had just come up here when I got home, I would have had time to prepare my thoughts. But now I was nervous and unsure how to broach last night’s subject.
“Good night,” Stone said simply, then headed down the hallway to his bedroom. I stood there speechless as I watched him leave me standing there. He’d come to get me as if we needed to talk. But he was going to bed? Seriously?
“You came to get me to make me go to bed?” I asked, unable to stop myself.
He stopped walking and stood there for a few moments before turning back to me. “No. I came to get you because you’re na?ve. Mack is a known womanizer. He’s not like Jasper. He’s a professional at using women.”
With that explanation, he continued to his room. He was gone before I could think of something else to say or formulate more questions to ask. His door closed firmly behind him.
And I was left alone. We hadn’t discussed anything. Not about me leaving or how long he expected me to stay here. Nothing.
For the next week, Stone wasn’t home when I left for work in the morning or when I got home in the evening. Geraldine had even asked about him. Wondering why he hadn’t been by to visit. She’d asked if I had decided on his birthday gift since I had asked her for ideas before things got weird between us. I hadn’t. I feared my moving out may be the gift he wanted. I had typed out so many texts to him, then deleted them, I’d lost count.
The studio apartment I had found wouldn’t stay available forever. I knew I had to discuss it with him before it was gone. I’d spent my evenings searching for somewhere I could afford on my phone. That had been the only place I’d found that was in my price range and not too terribly far from Geraldine’s and Heidi.
The apartment hunt had kept me busy while I had sat alone in my bedroom each evening, trying not to worry about Stone’s disappearance and my possible role in it. I lay awake at night, listening for him to return, anxious about what I would say if he did.
Seven days after my last interaction with Stone, I pulled into a parking spot in front of the apartments and found Jasper standing there. His hands were tucked in his front pockets. His head down. His shoulders were slumped slightly as if he were defeated.
The sight of him made my chest hurt. I didn’t like seeing him like this. With him out of sight, I was able to block out my fear that he would take Heidi from me. That she was legally his sister, not mine. He could be considered the villain in my story if I let myself dwell on it too long. I worked up all kinds of what ifs where Jasper and or Portia took her from me.
Seeing him there, however, made that impossible. He looked wounded not evil. Nothing like his parents. He’d been a victim as much as Heidi had. His parents had lied to everyone. Heidi would never know or understand their actions, but Jasper did. He had to live with that knowledge.
I turned off my car and got out. His head lifted to meet my gaze. He seemed broken. The gleam of playfulness in his eyes was gone. His easy smile that once made my heart race was no longer there. He seemed older. The easygoing guy I’d thought I had fallen in love with was gone.
I stepped onto the sidewalk and stood there. I was several feet away, waiting for him to explain why he was here. I wondered at the same time if I should have gotten out of the car. Our last confrontation hadn’t gone well, and Stone wasn’t here to run interference. Was I strong enough to handle speaking to him alone?
“I’m not going to pursue finding out the truth about Heidi. You’re right. She had a mother and a family. You’re her family. You’re what she knows and loves. My need to prove the truth will just cause more pain,” his voice sounded beaten down and hollow.
“Thank you,” I replied with relief. The weight on my chest lifted. I’d been living with that fear since this all began unraveling with Portia’s lies. It had haunted me when I allowed it to take over my thoughts.
“I won’t be back. I leave for Manhattan tomorrow. My things are already set up in my place there. I’ll be running things from the main office. Away from this town, Portia, and,” he paused. He closed his eyes tightly and exhaled. “You.”
That should have stung. But it didn’t. Even though I now understood that the emotion I had felt for Jasper hadn’t been love but a strong affection. My need to be wanted, to belong, to not be alone anymore had made me think I was in love because he filled all those holes. Having never fallen in love it had been an easy mistake. But I still wasn’t sure how I’d feel watching Jasper move on with his life. If he was here and I saw him with other women. Would that hurt? I didn’t know. His leaving was a god thing. There could never be an us.
“What about your Savannah office?” I asked because I didn’t know what to say. I had no idea what response to give that wouldn’t hurt us. I wanted him to walk away with closure.
“It was a waste of time. I have enough to handle with my father gone. I need to focus on what was already built. Being here was never meant to be permanent but then it had become something I wanted. Portia’s lies and the truth I face daily in this town make it the last place I want to be now.”
He could start over somewhere else. Make a new life. A life I wouldn’t have to witness by accident when I ran into him someday in town. His moving away made it easier for me to heal from the lies.
“You’ll be happy there. This will become the past, and you can forget it all,” I finally said.
A sad smile barely tugged on his lips. “Yeah. Sure.”
“Thank you for everything, Jasper. For being there when I needed someone. For paying for Heidi’s care. You have been more than I could have asked for.”
A frown creased his brow. I didn’t know what I’d said that had upset him. He looked concerned and apologetic.
“Shit, Beulah, I didn’t pay for Heidi’s care. I was going to, but I forgot. With all this shit going on, I never got around to it. I’ll do it today. I want to do it.”
He was still talking, apologizing. I didn’t hear his words, though. They were muffled by the pounding in my head. The knowledge that I knew was there. The truth. And what that meant. I shook my head, trying to grasp the reasons behind this. One name repeating over and over in my mind.
When I realized he wasn’t talking anymore, I focused on him. “You never paid it?” I asked for confirmation. Still in disbelief.
“No. But I will, I swear. I won’t leave that on you,” he replied. His expression determined.
“It’s paid. You don’t need to,” I said the words before I could think about it. Before I could weigh if it was the right decision to share that knowledge with him.
He tensed, his shoulders straightened, and his back went rigid. The hardness in his expression wasn’t directed at me, but the way his eyes changed, I knew he was fighting a mixture of emotions. Anger was the first, while a flurry of others danced vividly with every breath he took.
He stepped past me and started for his car. He was thinking the same thing I was. It was true. And Jasper wasn’t okay with it. Yet, he had forgotten all about Heidi’s care until I mentioned it.
“Goodbye, Jasper,” I said, realizing more and more just how different we truly were. Stone had been right from the beginning. I would never fit into that world. One where others were solely focused on themselves and how they were affected.
He opened the door to his car and inhaled deeply before swinging his gaze back to look at me. “You’ll need me one day. When that day comes, call me.”
Then he was gone. His car door closed, and he pulled away from the apartment. He left with nothing more than those dark words that I knew he meant as a warning. I stood there for a long time after he was gone. I thought about him, all that we had said, and Stone. It always led back to Stone.
He had made the payment for Heidi’s care. I didn’t have to ask him. The payment had come moments after I left him on the street while I was falling apart. He never mentioned it. Never asked me if the payment had been made. He had taken care of it and not wanted any of the credit.
That couldn’t have been for Jasper’s sake. Could it? If so, wouldn’t he have just reminded Jasper to pay it? Or asked Jasper to pay him back? The home Heidi lived in cost a small fortune.
“Hey!” a male voice called behind me, and I turned.
Mack or Marty was standing at the entrance of the building, waving me inside. “Come eat with us. Stone won’t be back for days. When he leaves for the Manhattan offices, it’s always longer than a week.”
Manhattan? He was out of town? When had he left? Had he been gone all this time? My emotions were so tangled that I couldn’t face anyone right now—especially Mack and Marty. I needed to be alone.
“Thanks, but I’m exhausted. I’m going to bed early,” I told him, hoping my smile looked sincere and didn’t reflect the turmoil inside of me.
“You gotta eat,” he shot back.
“I ate with Geraldine.”
He sighed, then nodded. “Okay. Are you coming inside?”
There was no reason to stand out here waiting for no one. I walked toward him, and he opened the door wider, allowing me to pass him and enter the building.
“The Van Allan guy. He upset you?”
I turned to look up at Mack or Marty and saw the look in his eyes. This was Marty. The flirty gleam that was always in Mack’s gaze wasn’t ever-present in Marty’s.
“That was closure,” I told him.
He studied me for a moment but didn’t ask anything else. He simply nodded and patted my shoulder. “Go enjoy the quiet. Tomorrow will look brighter.”
Would it though? When my chest was this ball of confliction? How did things look brighter? Stone didn’t want me here or to even be around me. Yet he paid for Heidi’s care, refused to discuss my leaving, gotten me a wonderful job.
And if I was honest, the fluttering in my stomach when I thought about Stone was stronger with every new thing I learned about him. I caught myself often replaying the times he would give me a rare smile or when he had calmed me down from the panic attack at Geraldine’s. The man that I saw in those moments, he was the one that I feared I was growing to need.