21. Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-One
Carrington
I ’ve spent most of the morning since leaving Thea’s switching between reaching out to my contacts in Seattle, staring at my phone, and pacing the length of the hotel room. My head is a mess. Last night was perfect, so much better than what I remember. Watching her let go with me, come with me. It was everything. Everything I’ve been missing the last eight years. Everything I haven’t been able to find in someone else and thought I could live without.
There’s a knock at my hotel door in the late afternoon, and I don’t think too much about it before I sling the door open. My stomach bottoms out when I see the woman standing on the other side.
“Hi, Care Bear!” she says with an easy smile.
“Wh–what are you doing here?” My tone is tight, and my throat suddenly feels raw. I immediately see her face fall, replaced by hurt.
“Excuse me? I thought I’d at least get a hello after not seeing you for two weeks.”
“I—Hi! I’m—I’m sorry, I’m just a bit thrown. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”
“I guess that answers my question of if you were reading my texts…” she says, pushing past me into the room, wheeling a small suitcase behind her. “I tried calling you a few times yesterday. I sent you my flight information. This wasn’t a surprise trip, I just wasn’t giving you the option to say no anymore.”
Fuck .
I try to calm my heart. It’s galloping like a fucking racehorse, and my mind spins. She turns, looking at me with an expression that’s equal measure expectant and pissed off.
“I’m sorry,” I say again with a sigh and pull her in for a hug. “I just wasn’t expecting you, and it surprised me. I’m… glad you’re here.” She slowly melts into me and buries her face into my neck.
The hug is nice and familiar, but her smell is all wrong—the expensive Tom Ford perfume she asks me to get her for Christmas every year—and she doesn’t fit into my body perfectly—just a few inches too tall. I’m suddenly hit with a huge wave of guilt. Guilt for what I’ve done to her, and the lies I’ve told Thea.
Thea .
On the heels of the guilt is sheer panic. Fuck. What do I do? I was hoping to go to Seattle on Friday and end this. I knew I’d have to talk to Thea about it eventually, but I was hoping to have things settled there first. Who am I kidding? I was hoping I’d magically figure a way out of this with minimal hurt feelings and fallout.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. My heart still feels like it’s beating out of my chest, and I taste bile climbing up the back of my throat.
“I have to go,” I say suddenly, pulling away. Her eyes are bewildered, the confusion is clear on her face. I don’t blame her. I’m acting crazy.
“Wh—where are you going?”
“Uhh, I have to go to the restaurant. I have to prepare some stuff for tomorrow’s memorial-slash-Thanksgiving dinner.”
“Oh, can I come with you? I’d love to see it and grab a bite to eat.”
“That’s not a good idea,” I say quickly. Too quickly. “I have a lot to do, and I won’t be able to give you a tour. You’ll be bored. I’ll show you around tomorrow.” The stress in my voice is evident, and I’m at such a loss for what to do. All I know is I have to get out of here, find Thea, and try to explain… somehow. Any way I think about approaching this, it doesn’t end well, but I have to try. “Just relax here for a bit. Rest. I’ll come back later, and we can talk.”
I leave her still looking perplexed at my behavior and step outside of the hotel room. I lean back against the wall next to the door and run my hands back and forth through my hair, feeling my nails on my scalp.
I feel like I might be sick. I pull in a few deep breaths and take off down the hall, out the front door of the hotel, and to my car.
When I don’t find Thea at home, I race across town over to RED. One of the servers directs me to the distillery, where I find her alone, taking stock of inventory in the back room. As soon as I see her, my panic ebbs a bit. She’s the calm to the storm raging inside me. Although being in her presence calms me, it still feels as if there is a fist clenching around my heart.
“Thea,” I say, my voice tight. She snaps her head up and gives me the biggest smile. My heart squeezes tighter, and air seems hard to come by.
“Hi, baby,” she says. I haven’t heard the endearment from her in over eight years, and it actually makes my knees weak. She makes her way over to me, into my arms. Stepping up on her tiptoes, she kisses me gently, and for a moment everything feels right. “I missed you this morning. I was hoping to wake up with you.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I had some stuff to take care of.” I take a deep breath. “I’m leaving for Seattle on Friday.”
“Friday?” Her eyebrows shoot up, and her voice is a whisper. “Are you—” she clears her throat, stepping away from me, “are you coming back?” I instantly feel the loss of her body heat. Her eyes have hardened, guard up.
“Yes. Yes, definitely. I just… I have a lot to do there,” I stutter out. “Listen, we have to talk—” Before I even finish my sentence, she’s turning away and grabbing the papers she was working on before.
“If you want to talk, you’ll have to walk and talk. I have a lot to get done,” Thea clips out, already making her way out the door. I hurry to follow after her. Clearly, I’ve said something wrong, but I don’t have the ability to figure it out right now. I just need to tell her… something. I need to get ahead of everything, so when it undoubtedly blows up in my face, I can find a way to salvage this.
Her pace has picked up, and she’s speed-walking away from me toward the main restaurant. I rush to her side and catch up as she’s walking through the doors.
“Please, just slow down. I need to—” I freeze just as we get to the bar. Thea notices my sudden stop and turns to look at me and then follows my line of sight to the woman sitting on one of the stools, drink in hand.
All the ways I could have prevented this moment flash through my mind, none of them are helpful in kick-starting my heart or brain. I’m frozen in place and at a complete loss at what to do.
“There you are,” she says from where she’s seated, her smile as warm as ever.
“Here I am,” says Thea, confused.
Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. I still can’t get myself to do anything. This must be a lucid nightmare.
“Wait, oh my God. You’re the girl from the coffee shop.” Thea’s confusion has turned to delight, which in turn makes me scrunch my brow.
“Iris,” says Iris, now approaching. When she reaches us, it’s as if time slows down and everything around the three of us fades away. In exquisitely painful clarity, I watch as Iris slides her arm around my waist, fitting herself into my side with a sweet smile on her face. My shoulders are bunched, but out of pure habit, my arm comes up and encircles her shoulder, holding her to me. My eyes make their way to Thea’s face, her eyebrows are at her hairline in confusion and disbelief.
“Oh,” Thea breathes out. It’s more a sigh than a word. “You—you’re— Cary’s your fiancé?” Now it’s my turn to be confused. How does she know that?
“You know?” I say to Thea. She holds my eyes for a long moment. She’s pulled her lips between her teeth. Her face is blank, but I see the hurt in her eyes. I see her chest moving rapidly with her breaths. She’s almost vibrating with emotion.
She clears her throat and forces a smile, shifting to look at Iris. “Yeah, I met your fiancée this afternoon. I ran into her at the coffee shop. She didn’t catch me at the best moment, I must say.” Her tone kills me. Iris isn’t catching the tension in her voice because Thea is an expert in hiding her hurt, but I know she’s dying a little inside.
“I had no idea you were Cary’s manager, Thea,” says Iris in her usual gregarious way. “He’s told me about how well you’ve been running things here. The restaurant is beautiful.” I wince.
“Manager… right.” The tone in her voice drives a stake into my heart. I silently will her to look at me, but she’s avoiding my eyes.
Ripley chooses this moment to stroll in from the back. He sizes up Iris cuddled into me, and as soon as his eyes shift to Thea, he’s at her side. The way she molds herself to him has me clenching my fists and my teeth. I know I have no leg to stand on, but it’s taking everything in me not to rip her out of his arms. He turns and whispers directly into Thea’s ear, and she nods as he continues to speak to her.
I turn to Iris and quietly say, “What are you doing here? I asked you to wait for me.”
“I just wanted to grab a bite to eat. I drove straight here from the airport. I promise I won’t be in your way,” she says sweetly, but her face is tinged with hurt and confusion because of my cold reception.
“And who do we have here?” Ripley says in his usual easy tone. His mossy eyes shift from Iris to me and harden.
“I’m Iris,” she says, holding out her hand for him to shake. “Cary’s fiancée.” Her words take him by surprise based on the flash of emotion on his face, but he quickly schools himself and takes her hand for a firm shake.
“Quinn Ripley. But everyone calls me Rip. Thea, here, is my girl,” Rip says, squeezing Thea even closer to him.
“Oh, you must be the one I heard all about,” she says looking over to Thea, who gives her a half-hearted smile.
Once they let go of the handshake, a silence falls among us while the restaurant continues to bustle. Thea still won’t meet my gaze, but her face is ashen, and her brown eyes are dull with hurt and disbelief. Rip’s mouth quirks up on one side, and I can’t tell if it’s because he doesn’t notice the tension or because he revels in it.
“Well, this is fun,” he says with an instigating tone. “This is a great surprise, Iris. I don’t think we were expecting you.” The way he’s looking at me tells me he knows something is going on, and he’s about to make my life worse. Much worse. “I’m sure I can speak for both Thea and myself when I say that we’d love to get to know the woman that’s swept good ol’ Cary-boy off his feet.” At that, Thea’s head snaps to him, and she tries to quietly get him to stop whatever he’s about to do.
He looks at her with a wide smile, turns back to us, and hammers the last nail in my coffin. “You should join us for our traditional night-before-Thanksgiving dinner. Brooks should be along shortly… probably.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea. I wouldn’t want us to impo—” I begin to say.
“Oh, that sounds great,” says Iris. “I’d love to get to know all of you. Did you guys grow up with Care?” At Iris’ words, Thea sinks more into herself, and her eyes start to well.
“Thea,” I say, my voice tight.
“I’m sorry,” she says quietly as she slips out of Ripley’s hold. “I have to finish the inventory. Travis should have dinner ready for us in about an hour.” She swallows thickly and motions with her chin to the back corner by the wall of windows. “I have the back table reserved… I’ll ask Tiff to put out another setting.”
“Thea, you don’t have to do that,” I say.
“Yes,” she says and finally looks me in the eye. “As the manager , it’s the least I can do.” She finally lets the anger and pain shine through in her gaze before she turns and walks out. Ripley excuses himself with that damn smirk in my direction, which seems more like a challenge than anything friendly, before following Thea.
Fuck. Me.
By quarter after seven, we’re seated in the back corner with the gorgeous view of the lake spread out beyond the wide expanse of windows. My gaze is zeroed in on Thea’s, sitting across the table from me. Her face is blank, but her eyes are simmering in rage. I was hoping the hour she spent in the back with Ripley doing inventory—or whatever she ran off for—would have calmed her down a little, but all it seems to have done is transform her hurt into utter fury.
I spent the time before dinner at the bar with Iris, drinking more than I should to try to tamp down my panic for what’s to come. Iris hadn’t caught on to the tension between Thea and me. She gave me a rundown of her life over the last two weeks and complimented RED as well as what she’s seen of the town. I guess I nodded and hummed in all the right places because she still seems content and even excited to spend time with “my staff.”
I wish I could just melt into the floor and disappear. Everything that’s happened over the last few hours is definitely the worst case scenario that I could have imagined. Probably even worse. My mind keeps going back to the look on Thea’s face when Iris asked if she grew up with me. She was gutted. I deserve nothing less than the shitstorm this dinner is bound to turn into.
The table has been filled with various small plates meant for sharing that smell delicious but seem to do nothing but nauseate me. The servers have been keeping our drinks fresh—thank God. Votive candles cast a warm glow over the table. It would be lovely if I didn’t want to claw my skin off.
Ripley and Iris are carrying the conversation for the table, discussing everything from the whiskey conference Ripley just returned from to Iris’ sister’s upcoming baby shower. Brooks, of course, is a no-show. Even Iris didn’t seem surprised by his absence. I guess I’ve done a good job setting her expectations when it comes to him.
Besides perfunctory answers to questions sent in her direction, Thea has remained silent. Silent and stewing.
I tried to plead with her when we first sat down to step away and talk to me under the guise of something to do with the restaurant needing attention. She shot me down quickly with a clipped, “It can wait. Wouldn’t want to be rude to your fiancée.”
With a resigned sigh, I sat down across from her and maintained her angry stare for the last half hour.
I don’t know what Thea told him, but Ripley seems to have shaken the tension from earlier and is acting as if nothing is amiss. He’s cracking jokes and engaging Iris in easy conversation. That doesn’t surprise me though. Iris is easy to like and get along with. She’s one of those people who makes friends wherever she goes. She draws people in because she is just so effortlessly cool. I wish I could produce a laundry list of her flaws after six years together—it might make this a tiny bit easier—but the only one I can find is that she’s not Thea.
“So, Iris,” Ripley says conspiratorially in between bites. “Cary has been very hush-hush about you. Why don’t you tell us how you guys met?” Ripley’s eyes flash to mine, and I know his untroubled demeanor is all a lie. The fucker . He knows exactly what he’s doing. But he’s just as big of an asshole as I am; he must know that stirring this boiling pot of shit that is tonight is going to hurt Thea just as much as it’ll hurt me.
Iris turns to me with a giggle. Her cheeks are flushed after the two glasses of wine she’s already had. I give her a half-hearted smile before I bring my eyes back to Thea, hoping she can read my apology in them.
“Oh, he’s never been great at talking about that kind of stuff. He’s so private, I think he’d keep me a secret if I’d let him,” says Iris, giggling again.
Thea scoffs in the middle of a sip of her wine, choking on the liquid. Ripley gently slaps her back as she coughs.
“That definitely sounds like our Cary here,” says Thea, finally breaking her silence. I run my hand down my face as my stomach roils around the many drinks I’ve already put back.
Iris shoots her a bemused look. “I’m the food distributor for Cary’s restaurant. We met on the job years ago. He was this new hotshot chef making some sort of award-winning custard dish during one of the country’s biggest egg shortages, and I just so happened to personally know a few chicken farmers who weren’t affected. I hooked him up… and then we hooked up,” she says cheekily and leans a shoulder into me affectionately.
I swig back the rest of my drink.
Suddenly Brooks appears beside the table. “Well, look at this. I show up a little late and you give away my seat,” he says too loudly for the inside of a restaurant.
He’s swaying slightly where he stands. And he looks like shit. He has a fresh black eye marring the same side of his face where his cheek was split a few days ago. Although I don’t see any fresh cuts, he has a few drops of blood on his open and wrinkled button-down shirt that he probably pulled out of a drawer somewhere in the back.
“Are you drunk?” I say between my teeth as I stand up to his level.
“Ah, Cary. No need to worry about that, baby brother. I’m here now. Let’s get this shit started.” He claps me on the shoulder before stepping around me and planting himself in the seat at the end of the table between Ripley and Iris. He turns to Ripley, but points to Iris on his left with his thumb. “You brought me a date? Who’s she?”
“I’m Iris. Cary’s fiancée. It’s so great to finally meet you,” says Iris, radiating that damn perfection. Brooks glances around, and his eyes land on me. He shoots me the biggest shit-eating grin as I lower myself back into my chair.
I don’t know who I’m going to punch first tonight, Ripley for all his fucking smirking or Brooks for what he’s no doubt going to say as the night wears on.
“No shit?” He’s still smiling at me, but it has an edge to it, and I know I’m going to hate the next words out of his mouth. “Ex-girlfriend and fiancée at the same table. This is your worst nightmare, huh?” I fix him with a dead stare as my stomach lurches, and I seriously consider making a run for the bathroom to vomit.
“What?” says Iris, her smile slowly fading and her eyes darting around the table. I’m saved from trying to salvage the moment by Tiffany, who appears as if by magic at our table.
“Hey, Brooks,” she says to my brother with a salacious smile, and then to the table, “How’s everything? Anyone need anything?”
“Can you bring me a double of… anything?” says Thea, rubbing her thumb and index finger on her forehead as though massaging a headache. Then she adds, “I’m going to need more than wine to get through this fucking night,” so quietly I don’t think anyone else but me heard it. Brooks orders a drink as well, and Tiffany slips away.
An uncomfortable silence falls around the table. Thea won’t meet my eyes, Ripley’s smiling and sipping his drink, and Brooks busies himself with clumsily buttoning up his shirt—the bomb he dropped seemingly forgotten.
I feel Iris’ stare on the side of my face. I can’t bring myself to look at her though. I’m not ready to deal with whatever she has to say right now. I wish the ground would open up and swallow me whole, and I could just stop existing.
Minutes tick by at our silent table. Ripley and Brooks are the only ones eating the many appetizers spread before us, and still no one says a word.
“Care,” says Iris after Tiffany drops off the drinks we ordered. “I think I need you to explain.”
Before I even open my mouth, Brooks pipes up again, “Oh, he didn’t tell you? He and Thea go way back. High school sweethearts and all that.”
“I… don’t understand,” says Iris, looking around the table, and then her gaze lands on me. I can’t bring myself to meet her eyes, so I just keep staring at the drink in my hand. I use my fingers to turn the tumbler round and round, watching the whiskey leave legs on the side of the glass. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Oh, it’s probably ‘cause it’s a sore subject for him. She left him in Seattle right as he was about—”
“Brooks!” I cut him off before whatever else he was going to say falls out of his dumb fucking mouth. I glare daggers at him, but he just smiles at me. There’s no humor or warmth in that smile. Brooks is looking for a fight tonight. “Just ignore him. He’s still pissed that our parents didn’t leave RED to him. He needs to move the fuck on and stop moping about it,” I say, speaking to Iris but continuing to look at Brooks.
Brooks laughs humorlessly. “ I need to move on?” He pauses and just stares at me. “Tell me, brother, should I move on like you did?” When I don’t answer, he continues. “Why don’t you tell Thea the name of your restaurant,” he says.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” I sweep my eyes from him to Ripley on his right. His eyes ping-pong around the table from one face to another. He seems to be enjoying this, you’d think he’s watching his favorite sport. All he needs is a bowl of fucking popcorn.
“Oh, but I do,” says Brooks. “I looked you up, baby brother. Tell her.”
“What did you call it?” asks Thea quietly, finally looking at me. The silence at the table stretches on for an impossibly long time.
“It’s called Carina Cove,” supplies Brooks, his smile is all teeth.
“What… what does that mean?” Thea questions.
I can’t find words. Or air. I keep my eyes on Brooks, slowly shaking my head from side to side in disbelief. I thought we had gotten to—not exactly a good place, but at least somewhere we could start rebuilding our relationship. In ten minutes’ time, he’s ruined any chance of that, and I just watched my entire life implode around me.
I finally chance a glance at Iris, and she looks devastated. She studies Thea for a moment and says, “He’s the ex, isn’t he?”
Thea averts her eyes and sucks her lips between her teeth. I guess that’s answer enough for Iris because she slowly nods without a word, picks up her purse, and gracefully makes her way out of the restaurant.
After another minute, Thea stands up and walks away too.
“Who needs reality TV when you have small-town livin’?” says Ripley with a smile. He and Brooks clink glasses. I swallow the rest of my drink and lift my fingers to signal Tiffany to bring me another.