5. Death by Decaf
DEATH BY DECAF
JUNIE
It’s taken me a week, but I’ve finally developed a non-work-related routine here at The Haven.
Wake up. Stare at the ceiling of the garage apartment that, for some reason, always smells like lavender and old wood. Avoid the mirror because the bags under my eyes have their own zip code. Drink copious amounts of coffee. And my favorite, plot psychological warfare against Cole Whittaker.
It’s the last part that gets me out of bed each morning.
And today, my sabotage is a three-pronged attack.
First, I swapped his coffee for decaf. The man drinks a full pot before nine and still looks as though he hasn’t slept since the Obama administration, so this should be interesting.
He won’t notice the switch because I bought the same brand and resealed the bag with a hair straightener.
Spite requires attention to detail.
My second and third objectives will hit him when he least expects it.
Hudson would absolutely chew me out for my antics, but a girl’s got to survive her first heartbreak somehow. Petty revenge is harmless fun, and it’s what’s getting me through this forced proximity with Cole.
By the time he wanders into my conference room, I’m settled at the table with my laptop open and an expression of complete innocence. Since this room is technically a formal living room, it’s open on one side, and I can hear every move he makes.
“Morning,” he says.
“Mr. Whittaker.” I don’t look up, but I do use the tone I reserve for men who think their very existence warrants a fan club.
Cole takes a sip of his coffee and frowns. He pulls the mug to eye level as though it personally offended him, then takes another sip.
I bite my lip so I don’t give myself away.
“Does this taste—”
“I wouldn’t know. I brought my own.” I lift my Grounds for Celebration cup as evidence. As much as I planned to avoid this shop on principle alone, they sucked me in like a moth to a flame, and now I’m slightly addicted.
He drinks the coffee anyway, because Cole Whittaker’s allergic to admitting that anything in his vicinity is out of his control. He would sit in a burning building and call it a warm draft if he wasn’t the one to find an extinguisher.
Tucking that observation into a vault of things I shouldn’t know about him, I open the next spreadsheet.
“Mail’s here,” Nana Mae says with a bright smile. “Oh, Cole. Natalie sent another—”
Cole aggressively snatches the mail from Nana Mae’s hands. That’s when I register her words.
Natalie. As in, Cole’s ex and the biggest bully of my entire life. Because why wouldn’t life throw those two things at me in one bitter package and not expect me to turn out as I have?
I don’t know the exact trigger, but somewhere around my fifteenth birthday, Natalie went from silently glaring at me to a full-time bully who thrived in the shadows of my home.
“Natalie?” My voice croaks. “You’re still—”
“No.” Cole cuts me off. “Natalie and I haven’t been together since I was in Boston. But she sends me updates on her little brother sometimes.”
He stuffs the letter into his back pocket and storms into the kitchen, taking his lie-coated excuse with him.
Nana Mae tsks but says nothing as she hands me a stack of bills, then makes her way outside.
Fucking trauma triggers, and fuck Cole for never seeing the truth. I slam another folder open on the table and take all my anger out on numbers…because numbers never lie.
By eleven, I think I’ve found another problem.
Not a mistake. Not an oversight.
A possible pattern.
Devin—Mae’s nephew, and former CFO whose filing system I can only describe as what happens when a weasel earns an MBA from a diploma mill—didn’t just mismanage The Haven’s finances. He dismantled them. Methodically. Over months.
Yesterday, I found what I think are forged signatures and invoices paid twice to a company I can’t prove even exists. Today, I found something…worse.
There’s a line item labeled “community enrichment” that appears to be siphoning $4,000 a month into an account I can’t trace from here. Four thousand freaking dollars. Every month. For the last year!
That’s $48,000 that should’ve gone to maintaining homes, the clubhouse, common areas—all the places these people live and love. The places they’ve entrusted Cole to protect.
Leaning back in my chair, I press my pen against my lips until I’m sure the cap has left a mark.
It’s all here, just waiting for someone to put the pieces together. I can feel it. I just can’t see it yet, and that pisses me off.
But the worst part of it all is, if I’m right, Devin built every breadcrumb to look as though it leads right back to Cole. It’s in his name. It’s his approvals on documents I’m betting he never saw. If anyone audited The Haven right now, they wouldn’t find Devin’s fingerprints.
They’d find Cole’s.
And he knows it. I read it on his face when I told him there was a pattern of behavior. He wasn’t surprised, he was…relieved? Resigned? He looked as though he’d been carrying the weight of it, just waiting for someone to finally confirm it.
So why hasn’t he done anything about it?
Standing from my desk, I plan to do some digging.
I find him near the coffee and smirk. He’s already on his second pot, and it’s not even noon. The decaf is clearly doing its job because there’s a slowness to his movements that’s new.
Good, I think. Then immediately feel like a jerk. But only a small jerk. Medium jerk at most.
“When did Devin actually leave?” I ask, leaning against the wall with my arms crossed. I keep my posture intentionally professional.
Cole jumps and uses two hands to steady his coffee. He can’t already be going through caffeine withdrawals, can he?
The pinch of his brow and the shakiness of his hands indicate he might be. And if that’s the case, then I’m actually doing him a favor. Caffeine addiction is one he should curb anyway. It totally messes with your nervous system.
“Six months ago.” His eyebrow twitches as he speaks.
“Why did he leave?”
“It didn’t work out.”
“Cole.” I wait until he looks at me. “If what I’m seeing is correct, it isn’t just not working out. It’s a felony. Multiple felonies, actually. Why haven’t you gone to the police?”
A shadow clouds his eyes—like he’s holding a grenade and choosing to absorb the blast rather than let anyone else get hit.
“It’s complicated, Junie.”
“It’s theft, Cole.”
“I know what it is.” His voice has dropped to a register I’ve only heard him use twice before. Once the night Nolan told him my mom was gone, and once when I overheard him ask Nolan if I was okay after he left.
Every instinct I possess is fuming, screaming at me to push him now because that’s what I do. I pry and dig and shove my way through until the truth is laid bare and bloody on the floor.
But there’s something in his body language, his voice, that stops me. He’s known to be a martyr, but why is he standing in this wreckage all alone?
“There’s a county tax assessment coming up,” I say instead, pulling back to the facts that don’t require emotional involvement.
I’ve been there, done that, and ended up in tatters.
I can’t—I won’t go there again. “If these books aren’t clean by then, it won’t just be your reputation on the line.
The residents could be assessed penalties, Cole.
Property values could drop. The empty homes won’t sell.
Some of these people have planned their retirement around your community standards.
Not everyone will be able to absorb these costs. ”
His knuckles go white around his coffee mug, and fine, a tiny glimmer of guilt lodges itself in my throat.
“How long do we have?”
“Six weeks. Maybe eight if I can stall by filing an extension.”
He nods. Just once. “Well, then, Viper. I guess you’re stuck with me for at least eight weeks because I’ve spent the last two months trying to find a way out of this clusterfuck and I couldn’t do it.
” His gaze darkens, burning through my existence as if he’s searching my soul for something he won’t name. “I need you, Junie.”
I should hate how relieved that makes me. I do hate how his words incinerate the spite I thrive on. “Don’t flatter me now, Whittaker. You need me to fix your spreadsheets, sure, but me, as a person? You left her behind six years ago.”
He sucks in a breath I pretend not to hear as I scurry to my makeshift office. Maybe I should work at the clubhouse from now on.
The more space I can put between me and Cole, the better, because he doesn’t need me. He needs someone, but not me.
Apparently, he still has Natalie in his life, and that alone is reason enough to keep my walls heaven-high.
The next morning, I skip the breakfast I was invited to at the clubhouse. Not on purpose—not really. Making friends has never been my thing, and everyone here wants to be a friend.
I also woke up at the crack of dawn and got lost in the vendor files I snuck into my apartment late last night and promptly forgot that community meals are monitored events around here.
My mistake announces itself at 8:45 when I hear a strange rumble.
Not thunder or a roaring engine, but a pack of semi-electric golf carts that have been…optimized for maximum speed.
Pulling back the curtain, I count eight of them idling from the base of my stairs all the way down Cole’s long driveway in a formation that would make any marching band director proud.
Stanley is front and center with his walkie-talkie while he fights with Marley, who’s holding a clipboard in the air like a weapon.
What in the fresh hell is this?
“Juniper!” Stanley shouts to the heavens. “This here’s a Safe Haven Wellness Committee check. Please confirm signs of life!”
He—this—he’s joking, right?
Behind him, Cole’s front door opens, and he stands there in a button-down, holding a steaming mug of caffeine-free coffee.
And he flashes a blinding, infuriating grin toward my window. He didn’t even give me one goddamn warning, and I know for a fact that he went to the breakfast this morning because I may or may not have watched him leave.