Chapter 5
There’s nothing like being a nameless face in a fancy bar.
Exhausted, irritated, Kara wanders down a few blocks towards her favorite place to sit and drink after parting with Derrick. There’s something about it, the act of sitting down at a vacant stretch of a bar in an elegantly decorated establishment. It always feels better than sitting home alone. That, and she keeps no alcohol in her apartment.
She’s well aware that the habit is slightly dangerous, considering her past. Once upon a time, she didn’t drink to let loose; she drank because she would feel down and wanted it all to go away . Now, these days she’s in a better place mentally. She’s been fine to have one good drink and stop there. The urge to continue drinking no longer speaks to her.
Her father always drank vodka and to this day she can’t smell it without feeling her heart race in dread. Yet, she always orders a martini, because she’s not here to drink beer after beer. Indeed, there’s something about sipping from a martini glass, knowing everyone else knows you aren’t fucking around.
It’s all in the act, when everyone else is ordering a Stella Artois and Kara lays down the dirty, because she’s not fooling. She wants to feel her lips and face go comfortably numb before she goes home. One drink is all it takes to fade the edge.
The black hole in her stomach has been quiet lately, now that her father is far away. Mostly. She doesn’t feel the urge to drink until she’s nothing and can’t feel the anger burning in her breast, until she doesn’t feel like a human anymore. She’s traded alcohol for nightmares; a fine trade in her opinion.
Stepping into the dimly lit bar, Kara sets her work tote on the back of her chair and sits down, ordering her usual. The bartender gives her a nod and smile of recognition. When he brings her drink, the first sip burns terribly, the way it always does.
She embraces that, loves how vile a dirty tastes on the first sip.
Swirling her dirty martini with a tired glower, Kara eventually senses a presence hovering just beside her. She tilts her head slightly, looking out of the corner of her eye. Her gaze catches on a fine-tailored navy suit, on shiny cufflinks that look like they cost a pretty penny.
“Mind if I sit?”
Kara barely refrains from letting her eyes widen in surprise. She’s been listening to that voice all day with gritted teeth, after all. Stay cool, she thinks to herself, focusing her stare on her drink intently, conveying disinterest, pretend that you aren’t shocked he’s here, standing next to you.
Her skin crawls with awareness, a strange anxiety fluttering in her jugular. Her body seems to remember what powerlessness feels like, even if Kara refuses to come to terms with it.
With a blank face, void of all feeling, Kara turns her head to face where he stands by her left shoulder. He’s leaning against the bar casually, his suit coat open, revealing the lovely gentle blue button-down underneath. The watch on his wrist is a black metal, with a small diamond on the artfully blank face.
He’s taller than she thought he was in court, now that he’s towering over her seated form with that smug look on his clean-shaven face. Standing over her, using his body to intimidate, to show power. His eyes are the color of the lake just before a storm, a biting blue-grey. No longer an electric tropical color, more subdued in the darkness of the bar. Those eyes seem to always be laughing, like he knows everyone’s secret and is gleefully thinking them through.
There are laugh lines around his eyes, slight ones, but they hint at an age nearing closer to forty rather than thirty.
The light brown hair on his head is short, styled artfully. It has the look of a professional job. He has the money for it, no doubt. There’s a slight smirk on his lips, not exactly ill-mannered, but not kind either as he waits for her to acknowledge him.
He’s standing there, looking like a perfect Adonis in his perfectly fitted attire, with his stupidly perfect face and strong jawline. Fuck, he just disgusts her, his ego floating around him like a ghost.
Nicholas Havenwood-Calais drips money from his goddamn veins.
“Oh, it’s you .” She musters as much disdain as she can into her tone. “Have you come for another supreme verbal thrashing?”
The corners of his eyes crinkle slightly at her dismissive tone. Ah. He doesn’t like being treated as uninteresting. Not used to that, are you, Nicky boy? Do all the ladies fall at your feet? Is that what you expected me to do? Tough luck, sauce-box.
“A verbal thrashing?” He asks instead, adopting a falsely confused expression. “Is that what you thought today was? I must have been in a different courtroom.”
Oh, boy. That sounds like a headache in verbal form and Kara is not fucking interested. Not today. Not with her head already in a whirl from… that night . “Listen. I don’t like to talk about work when I’m drinking my special drink,” Kara drawls, sipping from her martini with forced laziness. “You’ve said your hello, I’ve acknowledged you, so shoo now, if you don’t mind.”
A muscle ticks in his jaw, but he maintains his ersatz grin, frozen in place. It doesn’t match his eyes, those haunting eyes. For a moment, it almost looks like he’d love to backhand her and tell her to shut her smart mouth.
Her skin heats at the thought and again she’s thinking about that night, the one that didn’t happen. Stop, stop, stop, don’t think that way.
Or maybe that’s just Kara pushing her own imagination onto him, because the muscles in his face relax in the space of a minute. The cut of his strong shoulders eases and he gestures to the bartender, ordering some sort of swanky cabernet. The way he gracefully ignores her dismissal is vaguely irritating.
As the bartender starts pouring the glass of red, Kara scowls at the unwanted man beside her. “What part of what I just said sounded like I was inviting you to get a drink with me? We are opposing counsel in case you didn’t realize.”
When the glass is set in front of him, Calais rolls the red liquid around in the wide glass languidly. Ignoring her words once more, he instead asks, “Are you new to Benson’s firm? I’ve never seen you in court before.” The words are carefully crafted, hiding whatever his actual goal is in asking her. He swirls the wine in his glass, waiting for her answer all while not looking at her.
Like he doesn’t actually care what the answer is.
Everything about him is slightly enraging to Kara. She imagines he must have had a nice life, with a pleasant, normal childhood. Rich parents who gave him whatever he wanted. She wants to drag her nails down his face, because he’s smug, and he likes-
Games
She decides to keep it short, giving him as little info about herself as possible. “I’m an associate.”
“Clearly. Isn’t this case just a little bit too advanced for a junior?”
He would think that, wouldn’t he? “Maybe I work hard for opportunities like this,” Kara replies curtly, sipping her martini.
She wants to ask him to kindly fuck off and leave her to her eternal brooding.
Havenwood-Calais gives her a thin smile, as if her words are pathetically entertaining to him. His perfect white teeth flash in a shark-like grin when he says smoothly, “Or maybe you’re screwing him.”
Kara stiffens, her fingers flexing around the stem of her glass.
His tone is casual, like he’s talking about the weather instead of gravely insulting Kara’s character.
She nearly slaps him, but physically assaulting the opposing counsel off the clock is generally frowned upon. Kara’s flabbergasted, knows her mouth is open in shock and probably looks like a fish out of water. The absolute nerve of this man to…insinuate something of the sort. “I’m not sleeping my way to the top, you horrid knob. Derrick is married .”
Calais gives her a look, like he thinks she’s a na?ve baby. He scoffs lightly, blue eyes cackling with unheard laughter. “Oh, I’m aware. But that’s never stopped anyone before, has it?” Oh, he’s one of those .
“You’re a pig.” She won’t entertain his vulgarities whatsoever. “Just being near you makes my drink taste like filth.”
He drinks from his wine glass, eyes still on her. Assessing her with that odd look of his, like he knows something that she doesn’t. “You’re a firecracker, aren’t you?”
“Oh, buddy, you have no fucking idea,” she rasps, chomping on a blue cheese stuffed olive with righteous fury.
She should, by all means, stab him with the little olive skewer in her drink. It would be considered justified, wouldn’t it? He did call her a corporate slut, a ladder climber. Unforgivable. As if she’d lie on her back just to get ahead.
Kara fought hard to get where she is today, fought through all the shit she left behind, fought hard to rise above it. Perhaps that’s her giant fault; she’s happy to work herself to death, but healthy human relationships are foreign ideas to her.
Objectively, she knows what a healthy relationship should be. She’s watched enough movies, seen enough television. Romance flicks are grossly foreign to her, cringe worthy in their warm fluffiness. None of it ever displayed the reality she’d lived. Every time she came across a ‘nice guy’, she blew it, because it never felt right, it felt too good to be true.
It always felt like a lie .
Her father had always been able to pull off nice and sweet…until he didn’t. He’d been able to wear a mask to pretend, just long enough to reel the unsuspecting in to fit his needs. To meet his ends.
This man though, he’s still leaning against the bar to her left, picking her apart with his words and staring her down with his piercing eyes. He makes her feel like a child, makes her feel small and vulnerable. Kara doesn’t like feeling that way, doesn’t like how it makes her think of-
-that night
Frowning, Kara turns in her seat a bit more to face him fully. More head on. To seem in control, to appear tougher than she actually is. When she focuses on him, she narrows her eyes and tries to understand what he wants. A man like him is always out for something. Men like him don’t waste their time on girls like Kara. Broken, angry girls that come from messed up homes. “Why do you keep looking at me like that?”
The corner of his mouth quirks at her tone, his eyes glittering with far too much ego for Kara to digest. “Looking at you like what?”
“Like you know me.”
“Do I?” Airy, drawling. He’s got this…this husky sort of voice, with a rasp in the undertone. Despite that, it reeks of culture and money. And it’s-
Mocking .
Irritation growing, Kara takes a deep sip from her martini, gesturing for the bartender to refill it. She shouldn’t ask for a refill, but she does. Extra-dirty, she tells the gentleman behind the bar before whirling to face her opposing counsel. “I don’t know, Mr. Havenwood-Calais. Do you ?”
There. Right there. Something in his eyes goes dark, wicked. In that moment, Kara knows he’s likely the most untrustworthy scumbucket she’s ever had the displeasure to meet and her heart pounds in her chest like the thunder of horse hooves, her stomach twisting.
His expression is blank, but those eyes speak in spiteful volumes.
“Sorry, junior associate. I do not.” Calais tilts his head at this with a certain sarcasm. “I don’t think we traverse the same social circles, as it were.”
That sounds like a roundabout insult. In Kara’s ears, she hears the past echoes from childhood, from anytime a school friend mentioned that they weren’t allowed at her house, that their parents said ‘no’. The whole, my mom saw your mom at the ER last week, cuz my mom works there…she thinks it’s better if you just come to our house instead. Is that okay, Kara?
Just thinking about it causes a vein to throb in her temple. Scowling at this rich boy turned man, she says, “Are you…insulting me again, you goddamn bell end?”
Those stormy eyes flash with cruel amusement. Like he finds her to be such a peasant , but a precious one that entertains him, like a court jester of sorts. Absurd. He leans forward with a wicked gleam in his eyes and Kara inhales without thinking, because he smells so-
sophisticated, which is wrong because he’s a swine and-
His words brush her ear as he speaks, “Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it, sweetpea.”
It’s like ice, crashing down from a mountain, stabbing Kara straight through the chest. For a moment, she can’t breathe, can’t think, can only stare at him in a strange sort of horror. The word, the tone of voice, it echoes in her head and she can barely breathe.
The words he says are almost meaningless, like she’s trying to make sense of them and phantom pain blossoms on her jaw. Ridiculously, her eyes drift to the hand holding his wine glass, notes the strength in it and the way his watch glitters ominously on his broad wrist.
A soft pat on her head, fond. Pleased. ‘Good girl, sweetpea.’
Kara feels her hands shaking and she clenches them in her lap under the bar. Her words are cracked, barely above a whisper. “What did you say?”
For a minute, he pauses before leaning back against the bar a safe distance from her person, looking away. With his profile exposed to her, she watches as he scoffs slightly, as if cursing himself mentally, perhaps even laughing at her expense. There’s a flash of his teeth, perfect white, aggressive. Oh, he’s thinking something.
Probably thinking of how stupid Kara is.
Because she’s an absolute idiot.
Kara feels ill, feels the world burning, because he smells of sweet tobacco, coffee, and spiced rum.