Chapter 23 #2
Denis ran a hand over his thin, straw-colored hair as he stared at me, his lips parted and his jaw working as he searched for a sharp response.
Those didn't come quickly to him. Eventually, he said, "I'm unimpressed with your behavior today but I do require a minute, Rose, as you have something of mine.
" He glanced at Ash. "In private. At the minimum, you owe me that much for everything I've done for you. "
I didn't understand how I'd wasted years of my life on this man. How I'd ever looked at him and thought, this guy is going places and I want to go there with him. More than that, I didn't understand how I'd accepted the ever-shrinking box he'd fashioned for me without complaint.
"I owe you nothing," I said. "You shouldn't have come here. I don't even understand how you found me."
Denis held out his hands, offered a stiff shrug. "You really must learn how the world works, Rose. Airline tickets, credit cards, cell phone tower pings, email logins. Very simple to track."
I stomped my foot on the floor. "How did you find me here?"
"You really don't understand anything, do you?" he mused.
"What did you say?" Ash boomed. "No, don't repeat it. Just get the hell out of my office."
Denis eyed Ash again, this time with unshuttered suspicion. If I had to bet on it, I'd say he was trying to figure out what Ash was getting from me. There was no other purpose to keeping me around.
Denis replied, "All I had to do was ask my brother to run some checks down at the station. Your new boss doesn't waste any time getting you paid, does he?"
That damn cop brother of his. There wasn't an ethical bridge he wouldn't burn. The arson extended to legal bridges as well.
"Since you weren't returning my texts or calls," Denis continued, "I had to come here for myself. Considering you left town in such a rush and with some critical documents in hand, you left me no choice."
"That's not true," I argued. "I have no reason to keep a single thing of yours."
Denis brought his fingertips to his forehead and muttered a string of ripe profanity, banishing the refined professor act as he curled his hands into fists.
It was then I realized this man scared me.
Perhaps it hadn't always been that way and perhaps I'd felt this cold tingle before but I'd scribbled over that reaction and renamed it something more innocuous, something less dangerous.
He'd been passionate and zealous, short-fused and sensitive.
He was a whirlwind, a great, dusty mess of a man.
And I'd believed him every time he insisted I didn't comprehend, I wasn't intellectual, I didn't have the acuity for academic work.
Oh, and by the way, did I mind gathering all his research, revising all his work, and ultimately drafting his papers for him?
Because those little things would really help and what good was I if I couldn't at least help him with the enormous undertaking of it all?
Denis was all of these grand and overpowering things, and I couldn't bear the sight of him anymore because he'd used it against me and then he'd used me.
I didn't know much for sure but standing in front of a person who borrowed the most advantageous bits of you for his personal benefit while you both knew the truth was almost as awful as letting yourself be used in the first place.
"She asked you to leave," Ash said. "She was more courteous than required." He reached for the telephone on my desk, tapping out an extension before leveling Denis with a glare. "I'm not asking and the security officers won't be courteous."
Ash kept that glare on Denis while he spoke in hushed tones to the security office.
I could feel Denis's temper sparking and everything inside me screamed to move, to go, to get the hell out of the way before he blew up.
I knew what that was like and while he had never put a hand on me, words had the power to be just as violent as fists.
But I couldn't move. I wasn't convinced I could breathe.
Ash dropped the headset into the cradle. "You have about ninety seconds to leave before you're forcibly removed. I'd recommend you take this time to exit my office and this building, and never contact Miss Besh again unless you'd like to find yourself the recipient of a restraining order."
I knew the minute the tide turned in Denis.
I'd seen it a hundred times if I'd seen it once.
The professorial demeanor vanished and in its place was an irritable man who felt the world owed him everything.
"This doesn't involve you," he snapped at Ash.
"I didn't invite you into this conversation but since you're here, you should know she lied to you.
She doesn't know shit about accounting."
"You're vitally incorrect on each of those four points," Ash replied. "Not that I could take you seriously when you've spent the past five minutes on blatant intimidation moves."
Denis shifted and took a step toward me, his hands outstretched and those old familiar eyes of his, the ones that asked for everything and promised the moon in return, flashed hot and desperate. "I know you have it. I'm not leaving until you give it to me."
Ash gave a beastly growl as he blocked Denis from advancing on me. "You must not want this to end peacefully, do you?"
"I don't have it, Denis." A shiver moved through me. "I left everything for you, all of it, even my notes and annotations. The entire outline is there. I put it all on your desk. There's nothing else for you to take from me."
"But it's not finished," he roared. "What the fuck am I supposed to do with half a dissertation?"
I hugged the files to my chest as if they could block his words from permanently lodging in my soft tissue. "You're going to have to write the rest by yourself. It's about time you earned something without me."
Propelled only by the power of speaking these words to Denis, I turned and marched back to the records room.
With my back against the closed door, I dropped the stray files to the floor and welcomed the velvet rush and sting of blood flow back into my arms. Raised voices filtered through the door though I resisted the urge to listen.
I couldn't do that, couldn't go there. Not when the shock of Denis's appearance still flickered in my chest. Tears warmed my eyes but I wasn't crying now because I had more important things to do.
There was a cabinet in need of order and then a wedding to get to and muffins to sample next week and perhaps a new, larger pot for Kirby the cactus after that.
Fifteen minutes later, the drawers of the disemboweled cabinet hung open and knee-high stacks of files sat around me like beige toadstools.
It was a haphazard mess and I'd invented new work but it was better than beating myself up one more time over past decisions.
Not that it would help anyway. I already knew all the missteps I'd made with Denis.
It took me far too long—years too long—to see those missteps but I saw them now.
There was no reason to relive any of it.
By the time Ash edged the door open, I was plopped down on the ground and busy alphabetizing the tallest of the toadstools. He started to speak but stopped himself as he surveyed the damage. "What the hell is this?"
"I don't know who you had keeping your records in order, Ashville, but they weren't in any generally agreed-upon type of system and now I'm correcting that."
He sawed his teeth over his bottom lip. "Right," he murmured, shifting the piles with the side of his shoe and stepping toward me.
"I have this under control," I said.
"Of that I have no doubt." He held his hands out to me. "Come here. Please."
"I need to finish this. You asked for the Castavechia file and I found it but I don't know where it is anymore."
"Zelda. Love. There isn't enough space in here for us both to sit down so I need you to take my hands and come with me."
Reluctantly, I set the stack aside and allowed him to help me up from the floor. He led me into his office, his arm swung around my shoulder. His posture was concrete stiff though he held me as if he was truly concerned I'd shatter under anything more than the lightest touch.
That wouldn't happen. Even if Denis's appearance had acquainted me with the very real and very shitty emotions he generated in me, I could survive this. After all the cliffs and unpacked parachutes of the past thirty-one years, I could survive anything.
Ash sat me in one of his guest chairs and dragged its mate closer for himself. When he lowered himself into the seat, our knees wove themselves together.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
There was no mistaking the weight of those words. He wasn't only asking about this present moment but all the ones before too. "Yeah." I nodded quickly. "Yes. I'm all right."
"You're sure? You're not hurt? You're—you're okay?"
Another quick nod. "Yes."
Ash stared at me a second before shooting out of the chair. "Then please explain to me what the fuck I just witnessed because I can't make sense of it."
"I'm not still with him."
"Obviously."
"Obviously?" I echoed.
"You wouldn't be in my bed if you were still with him." He lifted his shoulders, inviting me to disagree. When I didn't, he continued. "Why did he call you Rose?"
"It's my middle name."
"My brother's middle name is Wolf and even though he could carry it off, no one calls him Wolf."
"Maybe we should give it a shot," I said. "See if it sticks."
"Zelda, for the love of god, save it for later. You know, when I'm not in a blind, murderous rage. Okay?"
"I mean, if that's going to make you happy, sure," I replied.
Ash blinked at me, his brows gathered in tight slashes and his hands on his hips. "But why did he call you Rose?"
I ran my palms up my forearms. "He said I couldn't be taken seriously in higher ed with a name like Zelda. Rose was better."