13. Aspen
Chapter 13
Aspen
“ H ow are things going at your job? Are you enjoying the new position?”
I glance across the deck at Harvey, our eyes meeting for a brief second. “Good.” I smile reassuringly back at Harper. “It’s a lot more busy than I expected but it makes the day go by faster.” The guilt of lying isn’t missed. I try to comfort myself with the reality that I do actually enjoy my job. It’s my dream job; it’s the boss I hate working for.
“Whatever you’re doing, you look fantastic,” she adds. “Seriously, you’re glowing and you just seem so much happier.”
“That’s what I told Jules,” Blaire agrees. “You look like you have more of a pregnancy glow than the two of us.” She elbows me. “Is there something you need to tell us?”
My face flames. I can feel Harvey’s eyes burning through me right now, but I refuse to look at him.
“Not unless we’re talking immaculate conception.” I laugh, then my voice catches in my throat, a memory of that night with Connor flashing across my brain. I flinch. An image of him standing over me while I lie on my bed. He’s saying something but I can’t make it out. It sounds garbled, like a microphone being held under water.
An eruption of laughter from the group burst through my memory, bringing me back to the present. I smile, joining in the laughter. I glance around, trying to understand what was said when I see Harvey staring at me. His face is twisted slightly, like he’s upset. His hands are folded in front of him.
“The crazy thing about Aspen’s job is, we’re currently working a private security contract for the CEO of her company, her old boss.” Jimmy says.
Blaire looks at her husband. “Why does he need security?”
“He’s going through a divorce and wants to cover all his bases, I guess. You know these high-powered types.” He winks at her, planting a kiss on her cheek before standing to refill her water glass.
“Private security because of a divorce?” Jules looks around at the women. “How bad did you screw up that you think your spouse is going to off you?”
“Wouldn’t want to be him,” Luka adds with a laugh.
“I think the security is a red herring,” I add, staring down at a ladybug that’s crawling across the planks of the deck. “He’s doing it to make himself look like he’s the victim because when the truth comes about what he’s done, about who he really is, he’s going to need to put the blame on someone else, let them take the fall for it. And when people try to blame him, he’s going to point the finger at the other person, claiming they were crazy, stalking him. That they—” I stop when I realize everyone’s gone quiet and they’re staring at me.
“Or whatever.” I shrug. “Maybe I’ve seen too many thrillers lately.” I laugh, attempting to lighten the mood, and it works. Jules says something that Luka comments on and just like that, we’ve moved on to a different subject… everyone but Harvey, that is.
I can feel his eyes on me like they’re boring a hole, but I ignore them. I know I’ve said enough tonight that once we leave here, he’s going to have questions and he won’t stop until he gets answers.
My focus is on the group, trying to stay engaged, but my mind keeps going back to that night.
“You couldn’t possibly think I wanted you.”
The phrase sounds so familiar. I repeat it over and over in my head as I try to recall anything else he said to me that night. I remember lying on my bed, my eyes unable to stay open. Every time I would blink, I would try to hold my eyes open past two seconds, but it was impossible, like when you take a sleeping pill.
I felt my body being shifted, tugged, and pulled as items of clothing we’re removed and then, it went silent and that’s all I remember. When I woke the next morning, I stumbled out of bed, groggy and confused in only my bra and panties. My shoes were in two different rooms. My cardigan was by the front door, my skirt in the hallway like a couple who can’t keep their hands off each other after a date.
But that’s not what happened… I know I’m not crazy. I remember him taking my clothes off in my bed as I lay there limply.
“What do you think, Aspen?” I glance over at Harper who’s asking me something.
“Hmm?”
“About the Hamptons next summer?”
“Oh yeah, totally,” I agree enthusiastically, having zero clue what she’s talking about. “It’s beautiful up there.”
“That’s what I said and since Blaire’s family’s house sits empty pretty much empty most of the year…” Luka sticks his tongue out and nods his head. “Nice having a billionaire in the family.”
I glance back up to where Harvey’s been sitting but his chair is empty.
“I’m sorry, guys, but I think it’s time for us to head out.” Jules slowly stands up with the help of Alex.
“I’m ready for a nap,” Blaire yawns, stretching her arms overhead.
I say my goodbyes to everyone, glancing around, still trying to find Harvey, when he finally reappears around the corner of the house.
“Hey, I think everyone’s heading out,” I say, walking over to him.
“Okay.” He walks around me, tossing his empty cup into the trash. “Let’s go, then.” He pulls his keys from his pocket and I turn to follow him to his car.
“What’s going on?” I finally ask, breaking the silence that has hung between us the last few blocks. He looks over at me, then slowly turns his attention back to the road.
“I think you’ve got better answers than me.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do I mean?” He shakes his head, clearly frustrated. “What happened back there, Aspen? Something happened in that head of yours that took you someplace that you didn’t want to be.”
“I was just day?—”
“Don’t fucking lie to me,” he cuts me off abruptly, his tone icy. “I know I said I would give you time and I’m trying, but you’re holding back from me.” I recoil, the reaction on his face telling me he noticed it. “Fuck!” He hits the steering wheel.
I stare straight ahead, my hands in my lap, my shoulders square. We ride the rest of the way home in silence but once we exit the elevator to our hall, he reaches his hand out and grabs mine.
“Please tell me.” His eyes are pleading. “I can’t help you if I don’t know how.”
I pull my hand away slowly. “I need to do this on my own,” I say softly and his eyes darken again.
“Your own?” He steps closer to me. “You’re not doing this on your own, Aspen. There’s no way in fuck I’m letting you?—”
“Letting me?” My brow knits together. “Harvey, I’m not asking you to… I’m demanding it,” I say calmly. “I’m not saying I’m doing this all on my own, but right now, I am. You asked me to trust you and that’s what I need from you right now.”
“Fine, but you’re not leaving that apartment.” He points toward my door. “How long?” He starts walking me toward it. “How long do I have to be without you?”
I look up at him, my knees threatening to give out the way he’s looking down at me right now. He runs his lips over mine gently, back and forth a few times before kissing me. The kiss grows instantly heated. His hands in my hair, his hard length pressed against me as he commands every aspect of my mouth. When he pulls away, we’re both panting, our foreheads resting against each other.
When he unlocks my door and opens it for me, I step inside, offering him a small smile before closing the door behind me. I close my eyes and lean against it, taking in several deep breaths.
“You’ve got this.” I nod my head. “You can figure this out.”
I lock my door and walk back to my bedroom, falling to my knees to open the bottom drawer of my desk where I stuffed the thumb drive.
“Why would he incriminate himself like this?” I stare down at the drive, rolling it over in my hand. “He wouldn’t, there’s no way.” I slowly pull myself up to sit in my chair, signing in to my computer before picking the drive back up. I hold my breath, praying that I’m right as I plug it in.
I scan it for viruses first but it comes back clean. There’s only one folder on the drive. I open it and see a video. My stomach drops and rolls. I grab my trash can just in case but I can’t walk away. I can’t let this man have control over me. I have to know what did or didn’t happen to me.
With a shaking hand, I slide my mouse so my cursor hovers over the video, then I hit open.
The screen is black but I can hear the sound of shuffling over the microphone. Slowly, the black fades to a flesh color when I realize that someone’s hand is covering the lens and they slowly begin to pull it back. The image comes into view, a man fuzzy and out of focus and then just as quickly, it adjusts and Connor is sitting in a chair, somewhere I don’t recognize. He has a smile on his face, that slimy one that stretches wide and shallow across his face.
“I bet you wondered how I was going to get away with it, didn’t you? You didn’t actually think I handed you a video of myself committing a felony, did you? Actually”—he leans forward in the chair, chuckling—“let me rephrase that… You didn’t actually think I touched you, did you? That I wanted you?” The way he says it is filled with disgust.
“No, no, no.” He shakes his head. “You were just an easy pawn. I knew the second you looked at me you were my mark.” His laughter is cruel. “All I had to do was merely suggest it to you and you were too scared to open the drive, weren’t you?” He stands up slowly. “In the end, I’m not the one who actually committed a crime here. It was you and now”—he walks right up to the camera, crouching in front of it so his face is right in the screen—“you have no leverage. There’s no video, no assault, no trail.”
He fiddles with the image of the camera, the screen going black before he comes back one more time. “Oh, and before you wreck your brain trying to figure out why, I’ll at least spare you the courtesy of that and tell you. It’s just business, nothing personal.”
The screen goes black and the video ends. Tears spring to my eyes and my stomach continues to swirl and flip-flop. I’m relieved and confused at the same time. Anger rushes up through me so fast and hot I’m afraid I’m going to scream so loud the entire building will hear it.
“Think, think!” I stand up and pace my room, my brain running through multiple scenarios, trying to figure out what I can do with this information, this video.
I’ve got to have him by the balls now. He didn’t expect that I would watch that video. I laugh out loud to myself. The asshole is so arrogant he actually thought I would be too scared to even open the drive, let alone fight back.
“Jaxson,” I whisper his name. A name I haven’t said in almost seven years. “No, I can’t. I can’t involve him again. I promised him after things with my mom…”
My entire life I’ve been quiet, shy, reserved. All things that are true about me, but they weren’t things that came naturally… They were beaten into me from a young age by a man who should have protected me.
My father.
The only person who knew, the only person who got to see the real me, the side where I wasn’t afraid to be confident, to be myself was Jaxson. We met when I was nine. He moved into the trailer next door and for the first time, I didn’t feel like I had to explain my situation to him because like my family, his was also dysfunctional and broken. His dad was barely home and when he was, he was drunk, stumbling around trying to pick fights with the authorities when they’d show up and try to talk him off another ledge.
But unlike me, Jaxson didn’t have a mom to try and protect him or pack his lunches. It was just him and his dad, so most of the time it was just Jaxson all alone in that trailer. That’s where I’d find him, lying on his back on the living room floor, watching one of those lights that turns your ceiling into the sky.
We learned about the constellations that way. We also learned that we had a lot more in common then, confessing some of the trauma that we currently experienced at home. Nothing was off-limits with us. For the first time in my life, I finally felt like I was understood.
That’s when I learned about computers, codes, hacking, and so much more. Jaxson would show me everything he’d learned in after-school program he was fortunate enough to get into. Neither of us had computers so we’d sneak away to the local library, practicing things we learned until finally at twelve, we both got banned for hacking into the main system of the library.
We’d also confide in each other about our dreams of running away some day and our even bigger dreams of going off to college. Actually, that was Jaxson’s dream. I wasn’t brave enough to dream that big. Kids like us didn’t go to college… but somehow, we both managed to do just that.
I sit back down in my chair and try to think through how I can do this on my own. I know I can’t just march into his office with the drive, telling him the jig is up and I won’t be helping him with his financial fraud after all… Then again, why couldn’t I just do that?
What’s stopping me from marching into his office and confronting him face-to-face on Monday morning?
I smile at the thought, imagining the look of shock that would register on his face when he realizes he doesn’t have the upper hand anymore. But it seems too simple.
“He would fire me,” I say to myself, thinking about the mountain of medical debt I’m still paying off since my mom’s death. There’s no way I could find a job that pays as much as this without any experience, or at least experience I can put on a resume. My only saving grace with getting this job was that like Connor said, I was a pawn so it didn’t matter to him that I was coming in with no experience. I’ve barely been in the job for four months; a company would wonder why I left so abruptly with no references and that’s if Connor didn’t retaliate in some way.
“Fuck!” I shout the word and it feels good. I do it again, making myself laugh at the ridiculous nature of the embarrassment I usually feel when using the word. A hang-up from my father that I’ve yet to let go.
There’s only one person I know who would have an immediate answer as to how I can use this against Connor, a clever one that would destroy him. But the day my father was arrested and everything came crashing down was the last day I ever spoke to him.
“I’ll miss you, bug.” He attempts a smile, the same one he always has when he calls me that. “Promise me something.” His face grows stern. “Promise me you’ll learn to trust again and you won’t hide away forever. He’s locked up for good; he’s not getting back out. You’re safe now.”
Anger burns in my chest. I thought the day my father went to prison for decades of hidden physical and emotional abuse against me and my mother I’d be set free, but here I am, seven years later with my back up against the wall.
Only this time, I don’t have Jaxson to save me. This time, I have to save myself.
I leap out of my chair and fly through my apartment, yanking open my door and running out into the hall. I pound my fist against Harvey’s door and seconds later it’s jerking open.
I hold out my hand toward him, the drive in my palm.
“What is it?” Confusion furrows his brow.
“The recording. The one Connor Blake is using to blackmail me.”