3. Knox
Knox
The CVS on Oak Street has a parking lot with those tall concrete pillars. I’ve been parked behind one for the past fifteen minutes, Radiohead crooning low through my speakers.
I left Ella asleep in my bed, threw on clothes, picked up my keys, and opened the app before I reached my door.
I’m done telling myself a story or making excuses.
I needed to go out anyway. I was in the area.
Nope. I’m here for one reason and one reason alone.
To watch Sawyer. Even if the closest I can get to her is a parking lot a hundred feet away.
Finally, she comes out through the automatic doors, holding a small paper bag in one hand and her keys in the other. She’s wearing jean shorts and an oversized T-shirt, her hair pulled up and sunglasses on despite the sky being overcast.
I’d bet my paycheck she hasn’t been sleeping. It’s in the way she’s walking—the slow steps, the set of her shoulders.
And why would she be able to sleep? She had the rug pulled from her less than two weeks ago after experiencing the most traumatic, gut-wrenching heartache of her life. And it’s all been my fucking fault.
She gets in her car.
I wait thirty seconds and follow.
She drives across town without rushing, staying five under the speed limit, much to the annoyance of the asshole driving a Tesla directly behind her. If I wasn’t so goddamn out of my mind, I’d tailgate his ass to piss him off and give him a taste of his own medicine.
But I stay two cars back, clenching my jaw and gripping the wheel too hard.
Her blinker goes on and she pulls into the lot for Ashford Community College. Interesting. What could she be doing here? Instead of getting out right away, she sits there, peering out the windshield. I can’t see her well. Her details are fuzzy from the tint and the glare.
But finally, she comes to some kind of decision and gets out.
I move to a closer spot along the street and watch her cross the lot holding some paperwork. Her hips sway with each step, and there’s a slight change in her posture from before. Like she’s forcing confidence into her stance.
She takes a turn and heads into the admissions building.
I turn the volume down on the radio and sit there in the quiet.
Is she registering for classes? Moving forward, rebuilding, doing the thing I’ve never been able to do. Is she starting over without me?
I’ve spent weeks sending unanswered messages and stalking her across town like a lost soul.
I try to remember the last time I did something that was purely for myself.
Something that had nothing to do with my father or the company or the performance of being an Aldrich in Ashford.
I sit with that question for the full twenty minutes she’s inside and the only answer I can come up with is her.
Being with Sawyer, for the brief amount of time I was given. That was for me. Purely. Wholly.
And now even that’s been taken away.
When she crosses the parking lot, she’s still holding the papers, but this time there’s a slight smile pulling at the corner of her lips.
Good, I think. It’s a gut reaction to be happy that she’s happy. Then my stomach sinks when I remember she’s happy because whatever she did in there is pulling her further away from me.
I put the car in drive before she can spot me and pull back onto the street, turning the volume up. Thom Yorke fills the silence again and I let him.
Ella’s awake when I get back home. She’s at the kitchen table in one of my T-shirts, dark hair loose, eating burned toast and scrolling her phone with her knees pulled up on the chair. She looks up when I come in and smiles. I bet she smiled at my brother like that. Did she wear his shirt too?
“Hey. I made coffee.”
“Thanks.” I pour a cup and keep my back to her a beat longer than I need to.
“Where’d you go?”
“Out. Needed some air.”
She nods, not pushing for more. That’s Ella. She gives me room with a patience I haven’t earned and don’t deserve, and honestly it makes me feel worse than if she gave me shit.
“My stepmom called,” she says. “She wants to do an engagement dinner with the extended family. Sometime next month.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
When I turn around, she’s watching me with a brow raised. Probably trying to get a read on me and my sour mood. Ella is sharper than I give her credit for. “That’s all I get?”
I make myself hold her gaze. Is she hitting her breaking point? As much as I don’t want to, I adjust my tone. “It sounds good, Ella. Whatever you guys want.”
Her expression softens. She nods and looks back at her phone.
“Okay,” she says, quietly. “I’ll tell her.”
I take my coffee to the window. The streaks of sun coming out through the clouds earlier are covered now.
It’s gray and thick, matching my mood. Out there somewhere, Sawyer’s going on with her day.
Maybe she’s getting ready for work. Or stopping at the grocery store to pick up a few things.
Has she been eating? I know when her stress levels are high, she barely eats.
Fuck.
I sip my coffee and internally groan. It’s somehow watery and burned all at the same time.
“Oh, I almost forgot.” Ella sets her phone down and reaches for her mug. “I have lunch plans today.”
I hold back the eye roll. Why the hell should I care?
“With Sawyer.”
My hand stops halfway to my mouth.
“Sawyer Thorne?”
“Of course,” she says before laughing lightly. “What other Sawyer do we know?”
“Why?” I ask, keeping my voice careful when all I want to do is spring fifty questions on her.
“She reached out, emailed me, I don’t know, maybe a week ago. Maybe more. We’ve been meaning to get together forever, you know how it is. I figured with everything that’s happened it would be—”
My phone rings. I pull it from my pocket and sigh.
My father.
I stare at his name for a second, jaw tight, the questions I haven’t asked yet sitting right behind my teeth.
What exactly did she say in that email? Did she talk about me? What does she want?
Sawyer doesn’t do anything without a reason, especially this. And whatever her reason is for reaching out to Ella weeks after watching me propose, it has nothing to do with wanting to casually catch up over lunch.
My phone keeps ringing.
“You should get that,” Ella says, glancing at the device in my hand.
I jab at the screen.
“I’ll be there,” I say before my father can utter a word.
He pauses, probably caught off guard, then says, “Good. Don’t be late,” before hanging up.
Fucking appointment with our lawyers. The last thing I want to be doing, especially now.
I slip the phone back into my pocket and look at Ella, who’s gone back to scrolling, completely at ease. Unaware of the storm that’s brewing in my head.
“Have fun at lunch,” I say.
The words come out in a normal tone. I almost impress myself.
The drive to Harris and Associates takes twenty minutes.
I spend nineteen of them in a spiral thinking about Sawyer sitting across from Ella at whatever restaurant she picked, smiling but hiding venom in the back of her throat.
I spend the last minute sitting in the parking garage talking myself out of texting her. It doesn’t work.
Why are you having lunch with Ella?
Thorne, talk to me.
You can’t avoid me forever.
Fuck.
This shit is what I deserve but I still can’t let go. And what if she tells Ella about us? Moretti will chop off my cock and shove it down my throat.
I wish Owen was here. He’s the only other person who could even slightly understand what I’m dealing with.
Then I laugh, probably looking like a maniac to anyone passing by. Owen may have been privy to the arrangement with Moretti, but he’d never have understood what I’m going through because everything always went right for him.
He even got away with fucking Ella while having Sawyer. I still don’t have proof, but I’m close.
I check my phone again. Still on delivered. And pound my fist on the wheel to expel some of this pent up anger.
I get out of the car before I decide to toss the phone at the windshield.
The lawyer’s office sits on the outside of town, occupying the entire fifth floor of the older building. There’s marble in the lobby, gleaming polished fixtures, and top-of-the-line computers. They’re trying too hard to look like Ashford money without paying Ashford taxes.
My father’s already waiting when I get off the elevator and sweeps his gaze over me from top to bottom, his lip curling.
“You look like hell.”
“Good morning to you too.”
Then there’s silence. I wish I could say it was the peaceful kind, but with Richard Aldrich, the silence is always weighted. I won’t be the one to start a conversation, not with him and not right now.
I take a seat in one of the leather chairs but he stands there, straight backed, hands fisted at his sides until our attorney, Jeffrey Harris, comes to collect us five minutes later.
The conference room runs the length of the back wall, floor to ceiling windows overlooking the east side of Ashford. On a clearer day, you could probably see the Hudson from up here. I’d much rather look at that than the faces of these old fucks in front of me.
Harris takes his seat at the head of the table. Two of his associates flank him, laptops open, legal pads and pens stacked next to them. They’re eager as fuck, and why shouldn’t they be? They’re sitting on a goldmine.
My father and I sit across from them. I pour water from the pitcher in the center and stare at the condensation ring it leaves on the table while Harris opens his folder.
“Let’s get into it,” my father says, all business as usual. This man can’t be in a room without thinking he’s running the show.
Harris clears his throat and opens the folder. “We’ve had movement on the civil side. Wonder World’s insurance carrier came back with an updated figure, still below where we’d like, but it opens the door for negotiation.”