Chapter 44
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
SEVEN VIRTUES, NORTH CAROLINA
I heard if someone ghosts me, I’m supposed to treat them like they’re dead.
By using that logic, that would mean I should ignore Beckett Miller.
Nah…
—Sexy And Social, All the Scandal You Can Handle
Where can he be?
It’s been two days since we last spoke. With one hand, I slip my phone from my pocket so I can check to make certain I haven’t missed a call because the ringer is required to be off while I’m visiting my mother.
Nothing.
In fact, I open our text string and frown when I realize the last I heard from Ethan was after I stumbled into bed last night when I was done with my shift at Devil’s Lair.
“Where is he?” I mutter under my breath so I don’t disturb the hand I’m holding in her hospital bed, and then I send him a text.
Fallon:
Is everything okay, E?
Ethan:
Fine. Why?
A two-word response after five years of texting non-stop where our messages ranged from the nonsensical How do I cure this hangover? to fierce arguments over Ethan’s place in my life and mine in his.
We’ve rarely gone more than a night in five years without speaking to one another except when he made me feel disposable when I concluded I was nothing more to him than a dirty little secret. For that, I gave him exactly what he deserved—silence.
A silence that stretched for two weeks while he pleaded with me to explain the complicated mess bouncing around in his enormous brain.
Now, I’ve been treated to two days of silence; however, unlike when I ignored him, I have no understanding as to why.
I review the two words he texted me back and search for hidden meanings buried in their simplicity, giving up when I find none. They’re two words he could have sent to anyone—a colleague, hell, a total stranger. These are not words he’s used with me ever
Fine. Why ? Those aren’t words you reply to someone with after passion-filled nights and whispered dreams cemented what your heart already knew—you were born to be his. And you’re only sorry you were born decades later than he was and he had to wait for your hearts to find each other.
Those words aren’t what you expect after worshiping the other’s body after years of subtle jealous texts leading up to the realization where you can’t imagine a future where your complicated emotions are free to burst forward instead of being locked deep inside your heart.
My heart leaped for joy at the idea of being able to hold him again—sooner than expected . We can fix what’s wrong, make this work, I vowed fiercely. There would be no before and after version of the man whose body, heart, and soul I desperately need now more than ever.
I just can’t understand why I’m being frozen out.
What happened? What did I do?
Part of me wants to jump on FaceTime and blast him. I’m not certain what kind of games he’s playing but I have more pressing priorities right now, including the hand barely clasping mine after the last injection of poison into their system. Assuring myself I’ll deal with my man and whatever his issues are later, I shove my phone back in the pocket of my sweatshirt, wishing the nurse who promised she’d grab me a blanket would hurry back.
It might be summer, but inside this damn hospital, the temperature’s dropping.
Just like my hope that sacrificing what might be left of my morality for love was worth the cost.
Later that evening, after I’d been reassured my mother would rest comfortably for the night, I sit in Florence’s office at Devil’s Lair. Scrubbing my hands over my face, I share her prognosis with Florence and Becca. “The treatments aren’t working the way the doctors hoped.”
Florence reaches out and squeezes my shoulder, empathy clear on her face. “Do you need the night off, Fallon?”
Becca chimes in. “Taking calls here on a regular basis is exhausting on a normal night.”
“No, I need to keep my mind busy.” I offer them both a wan smile. “But if I duck out early, you won’t be angry?”
“Never that, Fallon. We appreciate the burden you’re balancing between spending time with your mother, your day job, and working down your debt.” Becca’s voice is sympathetic.
Becca speaks no less than the truth, but despite my desire to go home and just cry, I need this job. The contract I signed when I agreed to work at the Devil’s Lair means I’m not being paid a formal paycheck. Instead, I bring them any medical expenses my mother has accrued to keep her in the best cancer treatment facility with the hope of beating back this awful disease. I refuse to let her die when she told me how ill she was. I went to her doctors personally and confronted them about treatment options with her permission.
At the time, I was told her coverage wouldn’t include certain medications which offered her a chance.
A chance to live.
A chance to continue to love.
It seemed so easy when Florence approached me with a solution—work for her and join her cadre of phone sex operators at Devil’s Lair. Boy, was I both right and wrong.
Yes, Florence put her money where her mouth was, and she opened my eyes to a whole new world, one I’m still not certain I wanted to know existed. It was all about selling a fantasy.
A fantasy that we charged by the minute for.
Something I’m apparently damn good at according to the review Florence and Becca just gave me.
Although I’m not technically being paid, in the short time I’ve worked here, I’ve garnered the highest number of requests for repeat clientele, ranging from household names to the sick and deranged. Not to mention him —Whiskey. My brows draw down when I recall Becca’s assurance Whiskey came up perfectly clean. “We used our normal investigators, Fallon.”
“Are they reputable?” I demanded.
She nodded. “It’s a large firm out of New York City.”
“And you trust them?”
She hesitated before nodding, “Florence does. She has a…family member who works there.”
I pressed a hand to my stomach. “Okay.”
With that assurance I resumed accepting calls from Whiskey. After all, since the incident, I’ve since learned even more about Devil’s Lair. Even though I’ve never had it officially confirmed, Becca’s face lit with amusement when she’d listen in on my calls and I’d ask after if certain callers were in fact celebrities, politicians, or—swoon—a member of a royal family way down in the line for the throne. “And now you know why your NDA is so ironclad,” Becca smirked.
Since that confirmation, I’ve never questioned the identity of my callers. I don’t want to know. In fact, they’ve just become another facet of the disease ripping through my mother’s body.
I twist my face toward Florence and Becca and admit, “I thought it would save her. I thought I was giving her a chance to live.”
Florence smooths her hand over my back before reminding me, “You tried. It’s just that someone else is fighting to end her suffering.”
I fling my arm around to encompass the sins occurring around the call center in Devil’s Lair. “Should I move so I’m not shocked when God sends that lightning bolt?”
Her lips twitch. “I think ‘Oh god’ is heard more in here than in the church on the Seven Virtues campus.”
The three of us toss our heads back and laugh at her blatant blasphemy. For just a moment, I’m thankful I have this group of edgy men and women at my back when my world’s falling apart. Even though they know they’re a means to an end and that I have other plans for my future, I hold them in the highest esteem. I know how ridiculously difficult their job is and how much they care for one another.
When I started working here, the team at Devil’s Lair offered me a glimmer of light at the end of a long, dark tunnel as I stared down the odds of my mother beating her cancer. Now, even as that tiny bit of light is flickering out, they still support me even amid their own personal nightmares.
Because in a town like Seven Virtues, no sin can hide, at least not for very long.
Lifting my headset, I say. “Let me get to work so I can get out of here.”
Florence and Becca step away. Becca warns, “If you need to leave, just let me know. I’ll take your calls, Fallon.”
Warmth surges through me. “Thanks. Hopefully, after I’m done here, I’ll be able to go home for a few hours and crash before I need to head to the hospital.”
Once I walk back to my station, I give myself another moment before I log into my system. Then, I accept my first call. Reading the brief—a couple looking for a third for a virtual polyamorous three-way with a woman—I accept the call with a husky, “Devil’s Lair, this is Filla. Would you like to have some pleasure this evening?”
Soon, I’m guiding the couple on the phone to a happy ending as I talk the woman through what it would feel like if I sucked on her tight nipples and her throbbing clit while her husband thrusts up into her until they both orgasm in my ear.
Once they moan in completion, some twenty-five minutes later, I disconnect the call and check my cell phone. Nothing from the hospital and nothing from Ethan. I mutter, “At least someone had a happy ending.”