Chapter 8 Sloane
Sloane
My fingers fell on the keys of my piano, playing the chord again while I hummed along quietly.
The notebook page in front of me was sparse, and I tried to keep my frustration at bay.
This song had been rolling around in my head for days, and the only thing I had to show for it was a few hastily scrawled lines.
Your lips were poison, making me believe all the horrible things they said.
I was having trouble focusing. Every time I sat down to write, I found myself distracted.
Despite my new apartment and my fresh start, my attention refused to settle on the present.
Instead, it bounced between the future and the past—what I wanted to happen and the way things had gone down back in California.
It may have had something to do with the incessant ringing of my phone.
Each noise it made drew my attention toward it, and it felt like cold fingers wrapping around my throat, squeezing until it was hard to breathe.
It started after the movers had left my old apartment in LA—just a random call here or there.
But the phone calls and texts were increasing in frequency, and I just needed them to stop.
It didn’t help that Monica had demanded I come to her office to meet with her today. Which meant stepping foot outside of my apartment with Kolton by my side. All I really wanted to do was figure out the rest of this song, but between my phone and my impending trip, I couldn’t think straight.
As if the Universe was saying a big fuck you, a knock sounded at the door.
My hands slammed down onto the piano keys as I threw my head back and stared at the ceiling.
The door slid open, and the alarm beside it made a quiet beep before my bodyguard reached out and effortlessly turned the damn thing off.
“Gah!” I hated this. The stupid bodyguard and the stupid alarm and the stupid writer’s block.
“Morning, Diva,” Kolton said from behind me as he shut the door and armed the security system once again.
Turning, I glared at him. Everything was so effortless for him. Installing the stupid security system, hooking up pretty much every damn piece of electronics in my living room, and playing video games with my sister like he’d known her for years.
He spent hours the other day walking us through how to arm and disarm the alarm—or rather, walking me through it, because no one else had any trouble picking it up.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, Mama insisted he stay for dinner, and he was sweet and kind and caring, and it made me want to hate him more.
Why couldn’t he have something wrong with him? Why couldn’t he give me a reason to hate him beyond the fact that I hated that he was here? It would make me feel better, having something I could latch onto.
Instead, he acted like he didn’t have a care in the world.
I hated that too.
“You ready for today?” He had this shy way about him that I wasn’t sure I could trust. Most men I’d come across were ready to railroad me into whatever they wanted, and I was sure Kolton would do the same thing.
Hadn’t he already snapped at me when he found out I’d gone swimming without him?
It was just a matter of time before he became just like them, controlling my every move and trying to turn me into someone I didn’t want to be.
“Nope,” I responded before turning back to the keys and playing that blasted chord again. But nothing new came out—just like the past couple days. It was useless. Pointless.
I dropped my head into my arms on the keys, letting out a groan and not giving a damn that I looked like a dramatic fool.
“Oof.” The sound was quiet but close, and I tensed when I realized Kolton was standing beside me. “That hits.”
I turned narrowed eyes his way. He flinched and took a step back. “What hits?”
He ran his fingers through his hair, messing it up and only making himself look better for it. Then he gestured to my piano.
“I hate that.” For a second, I thought he meant the musical instrument that was my pride and joy, or the words I’d scrawled on my notepad.
When he continued, though, with his chin tucked and his broad shoulders turning in, confusion swirled inside me.
“They make you believe it and it shakes your confidence, and even years of therapy doesn’t keep their voice from whispering that poison in your ear every time you do something wrong. ”
He glanced up at me, and something flickered inside his eyes before he gave a smile that looked almost painful.
“Sorry. I’ll just…” He gestured with both thumbs over his shoulders and stepped back. “We’ve got about ten minutes before we need to go.”
“Right.” I narrowed my eyes at him, though he couldn’t see it.
He walked away from me, ducking around the corner of the living room and out of view.
He was back a few seconds later, long enough to disappear behind the other wall before he appeared with one of the dining room chairs. “What are you doing?”
I rose from my piano bench, ready to chase after him and my chair, but Kolton popped his head back into the room.
“Just gonna sit down out of the way. Don’t mind me.”
When he disappeared again, I shook my head, turning my attention back to my notepad.
Your lips were poison, making me believe all the horrible things they said.
My fingers found the keys, and once again I played the chord.
You shook my confidence, made me think everything I did was wrong.
The words hit me like a brick, perfect for the song. I grabbed my pen and jotted them down. But nothing else came, not after my phone rang in the other room. My hands slammed against the keys before I pushed away from the piano and closed the lid.
“Stupid phone. If you’d just shut up,” I murmured as I stormed through the living room.
“Is everything okay?” Kolton’s voice startled me, and I spun on my heel. He was sitting in the corner, his back straight and his entire body on full alert.
“What are you—?” I shook my head and waved him off. “Fine. I’m fine. I need to get ready.”
Without another word, I rushed to my bedroom.
I changed out of the sweats I’d been wearing, pulling on the pair of baggy jeans and crop top I’d set out earlier.
In less than five minutes, I was dressed and ready, but when I opened my bedroom door, I found Kolton there, hand raised like he was ready to knock.
“Shit!” He jolted back. “You scared me.”
“What are you doing?”
He held out a phone. My phone. Which was ringing again.
“Someone’s really trying to get a hold of you. It’s been ringing since you left. I found it stuffed between the couch cushions.”
I tried grabbing it from him only to knock it from his fingers. When I reached for it, I caught his hand instead.
“Sorry. That’s my fault.” He held onto my phone until I untangled my fingers from his and had the stupid thing in my grip. He let go, cleared his throat, and stepped back, his gaze pointed toward the floor.
You shook my confidence, made me think everything I did was wrong.
“It’s fine,” I told him, my chest squeezing tight. “It wasn’t your fault at all.”
His nod was slight, and I caught sight of his teeth as he bit his lower lip. “We need to get going.”
“Ugh.” I brushed past him, heading toward the kitchen when my phone rang again. I tossed the stupid thing on the counter before opening the refrigerator and taking out a bottle of water.
“Are you going to get that?”
“Nope.” I opened the bottle and took a drink before turning to face my bodyguard.
“You’re just going to let it keep ringing?”
“Yep.”
“Why?”
Sucking in a deep breath, I let it out without looking at him. “Because I have no desire to speak to either of them ever again.”
“Okay.” He dragged the word out, and the sound made my skin itch. “Have you tried blocking them?”
My eyes narrowed before I could stop them. “Why would I do that?”
It was hard to believe him when he looked so unsure of himself. “So they can’t call and text you anymore?”
I’d cut you out of my life for every time you cut me down.
I’m better off without you.
And you’re nothing without me now.
On the counter, my phone stopped ringing, but then it chimed with an incoming text. I grabbed it and typed in my passcode before holding it out to him. “Show me.”
One dark eyebrow lifted, and he slowly took my phone from my hand. “Who are we blocking?”
“Manwhore and Witch.”
Kolton pulled up the contact for Manwhore—Beckett—then tilted the phone toward me. I scooted in closer, more under the guise of figuring this out myself than anything. “You push here, here, then here. It’ll ask if you’re sure, just in case it was a mistake.”
You were my biggest mistake.
“It’s not a mistake.”
His finger touched the screen, and I let out the breath I’d been holding. My eyes burned at the edges. “Show me again.”
“Witch?” When I nodded, he pulled up Brooklyn’s contact.
“Here.” Kolton shifted behind me, and his arms wrapped around me as he held my phone in front of us.
I felt safe. I felt right, the weight of the world lifted from my shoulders as tension I hadn’t realized I was feeling left my body in one quick wave. “Let’s do it together.”
The heat of his body so close to mine had the hair on the back of my neck rising. When he lifted my hand from the counter to the phone, my heart pounded in my chest.
“Push here,” he said, his voice a whisper across my neck as I did what he said. “Here, and here.”
Hesitation lined my insides when the prompt came up, asking if I was sure.
Brooklyn had been my best friend since we were little kids. We did everything together. Shared everything we had.
That was never supposed to include my boyfriend.