Chapter 14
Sunny: You know that vase you love?
Pepper: Is it broken?
Sunny: Define broken.
Pepper: As in, no longer in one piece.
Sunny: Well, technically it is in one piece, but it’s going to be more of a decorative vessel from here on out.
Pepper: Why is that?
Sunny: Because of the gaps.
Pepper: Why does it have gaps?
Sunny: Because I smashed it and glued it back together again.
PEPPER
Something is wrong. Very wrong. I don’t know what, but I can tell it’s bad from the way Chase’s face turned pale and an iron guard slid over his features.
“Stay here,” he bites out, flinging open the door to his town car. He’s out of his seat and the door is slammed in my face quicker than I can respond, and I blink in confusion after the towering frame in a cut three-piece suit as he strides across the road and toward a house.
Dappled light filters in through the canopy of honey locust trees above, sheltering its well-to-do residents from the hustle and bustle of the city. With Fifth Avenue a stone’s throw away, I dread to think how much these classic New York City brownstones go for. Eyewatering springs to mind.
The silence settles around me in the dark car interior, and that familiar itch that steels over me from being alone with my thoughts for too long starts to pull at my strings.
The ghost of hot breath warms my cheek and that tilting feeling I get sometimes takes over my stomach.
I bite down on my lip, glancing back over to Walker and then down to my watch.
“Fuck it.” I throw open my door, quickly exiting the vehicle and trotting over to the man now scaling wide stone steps.
He pauses with his hand on the door, catching me in his periphery. The look he shoots me could almost be considered scathing, but some instinct deep inside my gut tells me it’s not aimed my way. Rather something rotten that has turned inward, haunting from within.
“Misery loves company?” I offer tentatively, wanting him to understand I’m not looking for a fight…for once.
He opens his mouth to speak, but a crash of glass loud enough to be heard through the door cuts the tension, drawing both of our attention as muffled shouts follow.
Chase opens the door and the decibels increase by a hundred, the sounds of someone pleading reaching us in the short hallway that leads to a runnered staircase sweeping up one side of the room.
“Please, Mom!”
Another crash and we bolt forward, heading for the door that turns left into a grand sitting room, bedecked with cream embellished wallpaper and an amber glass chandelier hanging from the crown molded ceiling.
An intricately carved wooden mantelpiece sports an eclectic mix of picture frames above the fireplace.
Next to it, a chalky-faced young woman stands to one side, her dark glossy hair flowing down past her shoulder and tears staining a face that I recognize. Not that I’ve ever met her, but I’ve seen her image on nearly every designer makeup campaign and fashion show for years.
“I just want to be left alone!” an elegant and austere older woman cries from the other end of the room, swiftly followed by the crashing tinkle of another piece of china bursting into a thousand pieces against the mantle.
“Mom!” Chase’s voice booms across the room, rumbling from within my bones. The older woman stops, the glasses shoved into her salt and pepper hair dangling haphazardly. Esther Walker takes one look at her son’s face and starts to cry, rapidly shaking her head.
“Chase, help her,” his sister Emily pleads from the other side of the room, her voice frayed at the edges and her striking ice-blue eyes scrunched at each corner.
The six feet and six inches of man standing in front of me turns to stone, his eyes flattening to near pools of black.
The older woman shakes her head again, beginning to back away from him.
One of the champagne silk scarves she wears becomes tangled with the lamp that sits on a side table, and it slithers to the floor.
Chase slowly holds his hand out. “It’s me, Mom. It’s Chase. I’m not him.”
I’m not him? Some of the shadows beneath the older woman’s eyes lift, and she bats long eyelashes slowly—as if drugged.
“Chase?” Her voice is frail and…confused.
“Stay where you are, there is glass on the floor,” Chase warns, taking a step toward her, his shoes crunching the remains of undistinguishable crystal and china.
“Pepper,” he says quietly over his shoulder as he reaches his mother and wraps an arm around her. “Please see to my sister’s hand, if you can?”
I start, so entrenched in the storm cloud of tension in the room that I only just now feel guilty for barging my way in on this.
I shouldn’t be privy to this—it feels wrong.
I frown at the woman in question who still stares at her mother and brother, and realize that the hand she cradles at her abdomen is steadily dripping blood.
“Of course.” I rush forward and Emily Walker notices me for the first time. “I’m sorry,” I whisper instinctively as I reach her. “I’m sorry for intruding—please let me help you?”
A faint crease appears beneath perfectly sculpted brows and her aqua gaze tumbles to her hand. The abrupt rush of breath into her lungs tells me that she hadn’t truly noticed she was bleeding either.
“O-okay.” She nods, and allows me to gently turn over her hand.
The quiet sounds of Chase comforting his mother accompanies soft, sniffling sobs, and something inside my chest cracks with the heartbreak that lives in this room, bombarding from every angle.
A distinct slash of red graces the center of Emily’s palm, and I squirm internally.
It brings up another memory of blood coating my own hands, beginning to crust between my fingers.
I shake it off quickly, and glance around for something to try and stem the bleeding. Unless I want to use heavy damask curtains or a throw pillow, I’m screwed for options. “Do you have a first-aid kit here?”
Emily nods, swallowing roughly. “Downstairs, in the kitchen.”
She turns and walks shakily to the door, leading me across the threshold and the black and white checkered tile, and then down a flight of stairs into the lower level where a large full-service chef’s kitchen is stationed.
The tall glass doors at one end lead into a garden that looks distinctly overgrown.
“That black box on top of the refrigerator.” The woman sniffs, tugging down the hem of her workout top with her uninjured hand and seating herself of one of the molded steel chairs situated around a large wooden sleeper table.
I silently retrieve the box and flip a steel bowl lying face down on the drainer, running cold water into it from a metal faucet over the sink.
“You might need stitches, but we will clean it up and do what we can for now,” I say gently as I take a seat next to her and start pulling supplies out of the box. Gauze, wipes, bandages. “Is that okay?”
The woman nods and I’m struck by how entirely flawless she is in real life, too. You expect it on a billboard, but perhaps a small and insecure part of me hoped it’s Photoshop. No, Emily Walker boasts the same polished good looks as her brother, even if she does still look half dazed.
She nods, and I gently take her hand and sink it into the clean water.
Her face crumples into a grimace as scarlet wisps dissolve into the water—thankfully I can’t see any glass in the cut.
She seems to come to somewhat, giving her head a sharp little shake.
“I’m sorry, I don’t even know who you are. ”
I offer her a small smile. “I’m Pepper, I’m…” I pause as I gently dry her hand with some gauze, searching for the best word to use. One that doesn’t invite too many questions. “A friend.”
The woman lifts one arched eyebrow, and color floods into my cheeks. “Not that kind of friend,” I rush to correct.
For one wild moment, my brain freefalls me into what that might look like. What would it be to bed a man like Chase Walker? To have all of that laser focus pinned on me, that powerful body, those lips—holy fucking cow, what am I doing?
“Well, that’s a turn up for the books. A woman he hasn’t managed to bang.” She sighs, flexing slim shoulders. “Good for you. So, are you gay?”
Her big blue eyes blink at me like she hasn’t just asked an incredibly personal question to someone she met thirty seconds ago. “Not gay.” I shake my head, and then as an afterthought add, “Unfortunately.”
Life really would be simpler.
“Amen to that.” Emily lets out a low hum of agreement, some of that faraway expression returning to her gaze.
I reach for the tube of antiseptic cream and decide that I need to keep her talking, because this is going to sting like a bitch. “Are you?”
“Gay?” She snaps back into the room, her glacial blue eyes trained on me.
I nod, squeezing a glob of cream onto some padded gauze.
Hey, if she can ask, so can I. She twists her lips contemplatively.
“I’m gay in the same way vegans eat chicken wings when they get drunk.
” She lets out a snort and I choose that moment to flip the padding into the open wound, effectively pressing antiseptic into the slice.
She hisses, shoulders bunched and teeth clenched.
“Sorry.” I offer her a sheepish grin and set about distracting her again while I wind the bandage around her hand. “So…predominantly a beef steak diet, but sometimes you fancy the trout?”
“Correct!” she announces loudly, a small chuckle breaking from her lips. We both hear the sound of footsteps moving upstairs at the same time, and her smile fades. She flips her thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the stairs. “I’d better go see what’s happening.”
But before she can vacate the stool, the sound of heavy footfalls coming down them creaks old wood.
Chase appears at the door, somehow having lost his suit jacket since I last saw him.
The cuffs sit roughly rolled at his elbows, corded forearms sprinkled with masculine dark hair.
Something about seeing him be so soft with his mother flips him up the Scoville scale.
Think less bird’s eye and more Carolina Reaper. His face appears guarded.
“Do you need a doctor?”
“Nah, I’m good.” Emily waves the hand that is now bandaged to the best of my ability.
“Are you sure?” He strides over, picking up her hand and examining it intently.
The woman scoffs, rolling her eyes in a way that reminds me of Sunny. “I’m fine, will you relax? Where is Mom?”
Chase lets out a noise that could almost be a harrumph, and swipes a large hand down his face. “Upstairs for a nap—I said you would go and help her get changed.”
Emily nods and stands, reaching for her brother’s arm. “Why didn’t you tell me it had gotten this bad, Chase?”
I sink my eyes to the table and start gathering the discarded wrapping, feeling again like I’m prying into something I shouldn’t be.
“I didn’t want to worry you, kid.”
I hear something along the lines of, “Big idiot,” as I pick up the bowl and take it to the sink, followed by a light rustle that could be a hug.
By the time I’ve busied myself for a few seconds tipping out the water and rising out the bowl, she’s left the room. I turn, wedging my lower back against the sink and facing him. My skin tingles under the weight of his stormy gaze.
He walks toward me, something dark rolling off his tight shoulders.
Suddenly, he’s right here. Looming over me, pressing me further back into the sink with the bulk of his body.
A large hand snatches my chin, my heart pounding and adrenaline spiking.
Fear steals over me, my hands gripping the porcelain on either side of my back.
It’s not the same. It’s not the same. It’s not the same.
I tattoo the hastily erected mantra repeatedly into the back of my eyelids, forcing myself to keep a firm hold on the present—using the woodsy musk scent that is all I can smell.
The worst thing I could do right now would be to give in to the fog tempting me backward.
“If I catch even one whiff of this in the tabloids, I swear on everything I hold dear that I will bury you in litigation for the rest of your life. Got it?”
I attempt to pull my chin out of his grip, but long fingers keep me pinned in place, my own irritation flaring hot and fast. “I would never do that!”
“Oh really, so you didn’t leak my company’s private information to the press?
” The thinly veiled sarcasm in his words stings for a reason I can’t quite pinpoint, and this time I’m successful in tearing my face out of his hand.
I slip out from the small space he has me confined in and square my shoulders at him.
“This is different. This is your family.” I tip my chin and muster up what dignity I can, reminded of just who he is and why I’m here.
“Perhaps I’m not the asshole you think I am—have you stopped to consider that?
” I throw his words from earlier back at him like poison-coated darts, and then begin to march toward the stairs.
“Pepper,” he calls out when I reach them. I pause with one hand on the wrought steel banister and look over my shoulder, seeing his features pitched into a frown. “Thank you.” He shoves his hands into his pockets. “For bandaging up my sister.”
I nod, and then hesitate. “I’m sorry your mom isn’t well, Chase.”
The clock ticking slowly on the wall is the only sound in the gleaming kitchen, its beat becoming hypnotic as I pitch headfirst into warm, molasses eyes. With every second that passes I’m convinced he’s going to say something about the inconvenient energy that crackles between us.
“I’ll have Norman take you home,” is all that comes out of his mouth, and although I know I should be relieved, some small part of me feels disappointed.