22. Ruth
Chapter twenty-two
Ruth
Ruth
M y name over the mic resounded in my ears in an amplified echo. I felt, rather than saw, Cal rotate a look down to me, and I gripped my simple black clutch with numb fingers. The presenter peered at a notecard he had in his hand, pulling up a pair of reading glasses from a chain around his neck. “At least I think that was the name. My eyes aren’t what they used to be.”
The crowd murmured a laugh, but I barely registered the words. My mind was taking what he’d said and fitting it into a nasty puzzle box that had demons waiting to jump out from the lid. Your husband would appreciate it.
“Yes, Ruth Coldwell. Best of luck, Ruth! Now, that taken care of, once again, welcome!”
The crowd clapped, and it filled my ears with a jarring cacophony of tinny buzzing. I fumbled with my purse, pinching open the clasp and pulling out my phone. Cal bent his head, angling to face me better. “ Who’s looking for you?”
My phone screen lit up, and the partial messages from the unknown sender cluttered my home feed. I stood on shaky legs. Lying to Cal was impossible. I didn’t want him to worry, but I didn’t want to betray his trust, either. “I’ll go find out.”
As he stood, I put a hand on his shoulder and did my best to smile through my fear. “No, stay. It could be Gemma messing with me. I don’t want you to miss Laura’s award over that.” Not a lie, but not entirely the truth. God, he couldn’t really have done that… could he?
Cal’s eyes traveled over my features, and I knew in that microsecond that he saw through me. He wasn’t going to let me handle whatever this was on my own. Because he was Cal. He was protective and caring and all the things I’d longed for but didn’t deserve.
“I’ll go with you. Just in case.”
“No, really,” I sighed. “Give me… ten minutes. I’ll go see if it’s Gemma, and if I’m not back, then you can come check. Okay? I’ll be in the lobby just out there.”
“Are you sure?” Cal asked with wary concern.
“For our first award…” The presenter began the ceremony, and my heart beat uncomfortably loud in my ears.
“I really wouldn’t forgive myself if you missed this,” I hissed. “Please?”
Cal looked like he would rather insert a breadstick into his nasal cavity than let me go alone, but he relented with a reluctant head nod. “Ten minutes.”
“I’ll be right back,” I promised in a rushed whisper. I made my way across the enormous room, and blue LED lights striped over my dress as I crossed in front of a projector light. I wove through tables, and as I did, I pulled up the messages.
Unknown Sender:
Last chance. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Unknown Sender:
I know what Gemma did to get you this job. Do you?
Unknown Sender:
Meet me in the lobby. Your friend’s job is on the line.
That gasping, panicked monster of terror deep in my heart burst through the surface of my emotions like a zombie hand in a horror movie. It clutched at my lungs, pinching them so tightly, I couldn’t draw a full breath.
Vaughn was here. He’d called the actual event center to get my attention, and now he was threatening Gemma. I had to put an end to this.
With the awards ceremony well underway, I found myself alone as I exited the packed ballroom and headed back to the grand foyer at the front of the building. Deserted as it was, it felt like traversing a haunted castle on my own, with art deco accents in the arched doorways and an aged patina to the sandy brick walls and copper inlay veins that ran through the floors. My high heels clacked loudly as I walked at a fast clip, and as I rounded a corner, I found myself in the domed entranceway.
Entirely alone, Vaughn leaned against one of the brick walls with his hands in his khaki pockets. Above him, the rounded ceiling stood in stark, contrasting grandeur to his casual appearance with a reproduction of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel painted along its curved surface. Vaughn pushed off the wall, walking past polished walnut tables and meeting me near the arched entrance. “You got my message.”
Behind him, the two-story-high entryway spanned four doors across and up to the Sistine Chapel painting like they were bending to heaven. I didn’t give him the satisfaction of feeling smug about his stunt. I went to the heart of the matter instead, folding my arms as I stood in front of him. “You’re blackmailing me into taking a job?”
“Absolutely,” Vaughn said with easy confidence. He fixed a lock of brown hair that had escaped his side-gelled hairdo. “And as I’ve clearly shown, I’ll follow you anywhere and do anything to make sure you see some sense.” He still wore one of those tropical, short-sleeved, button-down shirts he seemed to prefer, and it made him look like a tourist in a turn-of-the-century museum. “You aren’t thinking this through logically, Ruth. You’re thinking about perceived insults from me to you—”
“Perceived?” I asked incredulously. “You think ditching me with no job after begging me to get a hyper-specific PhD is a perceived insult?”
“You’re thinking with your emotions, not your head,” Vaughn insisted calmly. His rectangular glasses glinted from the muted lights overhead as he looked away, clearly agitated. When he returned his gaze to mine, it was agate hard. “You will take this position. You’ll sign the papers, come back to Denver with me, and we’ll go to Italy together in two months. You’ll be paid well for your work, and you’ll further your career the way you were always meant to. This,” he said with a gesture toward the ballroom down the hall and behind me, “is not you. You are not meant to be some doctor’s housewife, and you’re certainly not a matchmaker, for God’s sake. You’re a scientist.”
“A housewife?” I echoed. “Is that what this is about? Cal?”
“He’s clouding your judgment,” Vaughn snapped. The lights around the domed ceiling were meant to give it an ethereal glow, but they cast sharp shadows and angry, slashing lines over Vaughn’s time-softened features. “You are more than this.”
“I am whoever I choose to be,” I seethed, tightening my folded arms. “And you don’t get to dictate what that is.”
Footsteps echoed through the hallways softly, and I looked over my shoulder in alarm. A tall, blond-haired man in a navy-blue suit walked by, and his gaze swiveled around like he might be looking for the bathrooms. Then he looked down at his phone and tapped away at it, apparently sending a message as he paused just beyond the foyer. It was Rook, my fake doctor. I turned back to Vaughn and whispered, “You need to leave.”
Vaughn glared. “I’m not leaving unless you’re coming with me. I have the resume your friend submitted to your boss to get you this mockery of a job. I have proof that would get her fired, but more importantly, would end your tenure with this circus.”
My heart sank. Gemma hadn’t told me she’d lied to get me this job. But, oh, that was so Gemma. It was absolutely what she would do to protect her best friend—she’d put anything and everything on the line for the people she loved. It was why she had lied about me having a husband, too, and I could just throttle her for all of it. Except she’d done it out of love for me, and now she was in danger because of my past. I couldn’t formulate a response to the idea that Vaughn might ruin everything Gemma had worked so hard to build. It was too unfair. Too cruel.
Vaughn sensed my fear. His brow fell over his dark eyes, and he took a step nearer to me. Frozen with terror, I couldn’t even find the will to back away from him as the scent of his cologne washed over me in a burning wave. He grasped my arm and pulled me against his soft body. “I will burn all your bridges, Ruth. I’ll destroy everything you think you’ve built here if it means you have only one place left to go.”
My lips trembled, despite my earlier resolve to end this lunacy. “You sound insane right now. You know that right?” Rook glanced up from his phone as he started walking again. Blue eyes danced over me like he might recognize me, and then he was past the foyer and down the hallway toward the restrooms. I turned my focus back to Vaughn again, whose flaccid features were growing red with frustration. “You can’t ruin Gemma’s job over this. I won’t let you. ”
Vaughn released me and held up his phone with Kiss-Met’s website pulled up on the browser. His thumb hovered over Janice’s phone number. “I can leave a message for your boss. How do you think that will go over? I’ll start with Gemma, and when she’s lost her job, and you’ve lost your fake position there, I’ll move on to your new boyfriend.”
My face blanched. “Empty threats. You have nothing on him.”
He paused, thick eyebrows raising. “How confident are you in that? Should we test it?”
Every stubborn nerve in my body seized up in rebellion. I wouldn’t allow this reeking asshole to dictate what I did or didn’t do with my life. I stared at him, my brows falling slowly into a scowl. My brain raced through my options, thumbing through a catalog of probabilities.
I knew Vaughn, and I knew he didn’t bluff. Lie? Yes. Cheat? Clearly. But bluff? I didn’t think so. There was no reason for him to not get me fired, especially because kindness obviously was not something he held in any kind of esteem. Also, the grant for this research was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Vaughn’s salary alone was well into the six-figure range, which for our field, was coveted. It was worth taking risks if he met the criteria for the grant and received the money he thought he deserved.
So, all the facts considered, he would absolutely do everything in his power to get me fired. That meant he was more than willing to make that phone call right now. And if I allowed him to do that, Gemma would get fired. Janice wouldn’t have a choice, ethically, but to hold her responsible for lying. That would logically lead to my termination as well, and that would leave us both jobless. I couldn’t live with myself knowing that I’d lost Gemma the one job she had truly loved and excelled at.
If I went with Vaughn right now, Gemma would be safe. I would be indentured into five years of a working relationship with him, which felt impossible to comprehend. Even now, my heart wanted to beat out of my chest and my breaths were growing thin and strained. The idea of battling panic attacks every single day—out of the country no less—weighed on me like a stack of medieval tomes on my chest.
But Gemma.
I could tell him I was going to do it, and that might buy me time to work something out with Gemma. Perhaps we could speak with Janice. But that still put Gemma at risk of losing her job, and the second Gemma knew Vaughn had returned and was blackmailing me, she would summon her own personal arsenal of loathing and spite. She’d probably resign and then do something completely out of pocket to get back at Vaughn—most likely something not legal—and that would put her in even worse shape than if I’d simply vanished quietly.
Which left me with the only fair option. And Vaughn knew it. From the tilt of his smug smile to the twitching eyebrow above his dark brown eyes, every micro-expression on his face told me he had already worked through the conclusions. And he knew which path I would take. Vaughn lowered the phone, clicking off the screen and slipping it into the pocket of his khaki pants. “Give me some credit, Ruthie. I know you.”
My glare turned arctic. “Yes, you’re very clever.”
“You’re just as clever, which is why I’m going to insist that you come with me now.” Vaughn watched me closely, his expression guarded. “I suggest you tell that doctor of yours that you’re changing your mind and leaving here with me tonight.”
The oxygen in my lungs seemed to dry up completely. “Now? I didn’t think you meant literally—Vaughn I’m in the middle of a—” I faltered. A what? A date? Jesus, Ruth. You fucked him twice—one and a half times?—and you think that turned into something substantial?
“I mean, make sure he knows you want to go, Ruth. Otherwise, you’ll have a knight in shining black tie close on your heels, and our entire plan here will go sideways.”
Cal would definitely try to rescue me if he knew. He’d do something rash like tell Gemma or Janice… he might even take it out on Vaughn directly. I was fairly certain that award-winning practices didn’t like doctors who decked people in the face or landed themselves with battery charges. Especially not at the awards ceremony. I ground my teeth. “Fine. Yes. I’ll make sure he knows I want to go.”
“And to make extra sure you aren’t planning to concoct something behind my back,” Vaughn went on, pivoting to put an arm around my waist and hook me to his side, “I suggest you text him , Ruthie. No need to make a scene.”
“This feels dangerously close to a kidnapping. For humanities research of all things,” I said icily, pushing at his arm.
“It’s for our careers,” Vaughn said easily, and his clammy hand stuck to my bare arm like a wet starfish. “And you’ll thank me for it eventually.”
He guided me toward the doors, but I resisted him. “I’m not going with you right this second. I’ll speak to Cal and inform him of what we’re doing first. Get off me, Vaughn.”
“Stop it,” he snapped. We stopped just in front of the doors, and he tightened a vice-like grip around me. Looking down with nothing but anger to be found in his expression, he hissed, “You’ve caused me enough trouble without adding a public breakup to the list. We’re flying out of here Wednesday, and you can send your apologies via email.”
I panicked. I wasn’t sure what I had expected from him, but it wasn’t to be trundled off in silence without telling Cal. Without explaining… something.
I didn’t know what I would say to convince him that I wanted this, but I had to give him some justification. Cal and I both knew what it felt like to be abandoned, and it would hurt him deeply. It wasn’t that I thought he was in love with me or in any way reliant on me, but Jesus . I’d slept with him and laughed with him and opened up to him. I’d bared my soul to him and he to me, and now I was going to walk away like he didn’t matter to me?
Like my thoughts had reeled him in, footsteps echoed through the dark hallway, approaching the foyer. Cal rounded the corner. At first, he drew up short, his expression surprised and bouncing over me, Vaughn, and then his arm around my shoulders. Then confusion pulled his features inward, and he started toward us again. His vibrant eyes latched onto me with worried intensity. “Ruth?”
I stared at Cal in tight-lipped horror. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t pretend that being in Vaughn’s embrace, that being stuck to his side like an unwilling barnacle was anything I actually desired. What I desired was Cal. I wanted his kindness and buoyant personality. I wanted his teasing smiles and teaching kisses. I wanted all of him. I wanted it so much, I suddenly considered giving up everything—everyone—for the chance to stay in his presence for however long he would let me.
But then Vaughn held out a hand to Cal in greeting, effectively popping my bubble of panic. “Cal Reed? We were just talking about you. I’m Dr. Hormel.”
Cal ignored his hand and kept his gaze trained on me. “What’s going on?” The silky black of Cal’s suit set off his bright green eyes, which were slowly darkening with anger as he turned them on Vaughn. “Get your hands off her.”
I swallowed against a dry throat. “Cal.”
Vaughn dropped his outstretched hand and gave me a convincingly wry, amused look. “Oh dear. I thought you told him, love.”
He lied so smoothly. It shouldn’t have surprised me, but it only made my insides twist tighter. They wrung themselves together like a wet knot of ribbons in a dryer. “I…” I couldn’t find the words. Cal’s expression was falling from cautious and angry to downright murderous, and my panic cinched tighter. “I—I couldn’t tell you,” I admitted to Cal with some truth.
“You couldn’t tell me what?” Cal asked. The line between his brows had deepened, and he flicked a cold glare at Vaughn before returning it to me. “You have three seconds to explain this before I remove his hand for you.”
“It’s about her job,” Vaughn rushed to explain, like that should have been obvious. He dropped my shoulders, too, and held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “We have an assignment in Italy? Didn’t you tell him about that at least, Ruth?”
Numbly I shook my head. I couldn’t look Cal in the eyes. It was torture. Burning, shaming, gut-wrenching torture. “I couldn’t tell him.”
“You… do have a job in Italy?” Cal clarified with a dubious tilt to his voice.
I nodded, staring at my high heels. “Always did,” I mumbled. “I just couldn’t… I lied.”
“Ruth,” Cal said, and the sound whipped through the cavernous foyer with a sharp intensity that caused me to look up again. He reached for me, but I stumbled away, closer to Vaughn. And then my heart turned to lead because I couldn’t believe I’d done that. I couldn’t believe I’d avoided Cal and his warm hands, his safe hands, to get closer to Vaughn Hormel. But I had to get away from Cal. I couldn’t take the fury and hurt. I couldn’t stand to reject him the way I’d been rejected. I knew that was exactly what I was doing right now, but I wished more than anything that I could be done with this moment and lock it in the basement of my nightmares where it would undoubtedly haunt me for the rest of my life.
“Hey, buddy,” Vaughn said, taking my limp hand in his and tugging me away from Cal. “Listen, I know what she told you, but it’s not what it looks like. Ruth is my girlfriend. And she gets a little… carried away when I’m gone. Ruth,” Vaughn muttered, like he was genuinely embarrassed. “This is your thing. Are you seriously not going to explain yourself?”
My twisting insides snapped like weathered bone. Girlfriend. I forced the tears in the corners of my eyes to hold at bay. “I’m so sorry, Cal. He’s right. I didn’t mean to hurt you, but…” I trailed off, hating myself with a deep kind of loathing that I knew would stain my soul.
“Excuse me?” Cal asked, clearly enraged and incredulous. “This makes no sense. Ruth, if you’re in some kind of situation—”
Vaughn barked out a laugh. “Right. Let me guess; she was abandoned by her PI and boyfriend. Right? And she told you that I left her all alone and jobless.” Vaughn shook his head, looking up at the ceiling like he was praying to Saint Michael for patience. “You didn’t even change your story this time? Really? Did you not learn from this the last time?”
I wanted to die. I truly, ardently, wished I could cease to exist because this story Vaughn was so effortlessly spinning rang true . It was filled to the brim with half-truths and expertly twisted miscommunication. And it was the only—the easiest—way out of this without the possibility of Cal putting his hands around Vaughn’s neck and getting himself arrested. And the look of agony on my features didn’t need to be hidden. Because it fit either way.
I put a hand to my face. “Oh, God.”
“What are you saying?” Cal asked, and his tone cooled. His body language angled away from us.
Vaughn waited like I might explain. It gave him the illusion of deferring to me. Fuck, he was smart, and I loathed him for it. I hated him so much, I was sure it would seep from my pores and coat his clammy hand in poison. Finally, he sighed. “She does this when I’m on location for a few weeks. She gets lonely, and then she tells a sob story about being abandoned or whatever so she can reel in a new lover.” He chuckled mirthlessly. “And I’m the idiot who keeps coming back. Right?”
I wrenched myself away from his hand and slammed into the door behind me, swinging it open. “I’m sorry, Cal. I have to go.”
“Sorry, man,” Vaughn said with an apologetic wave. “Really, I am. If she and I didn’t work together… well, never mind. It is what it is. Sorry again.”
“Hold on,” Cal said angrily, and the warmth had returned to his voice. He took a step toward me, but I knew. I knew if I stayed, if I let him touch me or truly look into my eyes, he would see through me. And I couldn’t risk that. Not for him and not for Gemma. I hurried away, tripping into the lingering heat that clung to my skin and filled my lungs with thick moisture. The gray clouds overhead hung heavy with impending rain like an omen of emotions to come, and as tears blurred my vision, I stumbled down the stone staircase.
Vaughn caught up to me, and as he snared his arm around me again, he bent down to whisper in my ear. “Well done, Ruthie. Your doctor is safe, and so is your friend. Now let’s leave this all behind and start the rest of our lives together.”
The rain trickled down from the burdened sky, and I turned my face to it. Where my tears began and the rain ended, I couldn’t tell. It was all the same at that moment, and neither could wash away my burning regret.