13. Knox #2
“He was nice to me.” Her voice cracks. “For one night, somebody was nice to me and didn’t know anything about me and didn’t need anything from me, and you took that too.”
I wait for the guilt to show up. It doesn’t. I hate to see her upset, but I don’t feel bad for what I did. I’d do the same thing again, given the chance.
“Go home, Knox.” She unlocks her car and opens the door. “Go home to your fiancée. Leave me alone.”
She gets in, slamming the door.
“Sawyer, talk to me,” I yell loud enough that she’ll hear me through her closed windows. “Come on, don’t go.” I move behind her car, leaning on the trunk, and peering through her back windshield. She’s still in park but she revs the engine. “I’m not moving!”
The engine revs again, louder, like she can drown me out with noise instead of words. I don’t move. I’ve stood in front of scarier things than a Civic with bald tires and a check engine light that’s been on for years. She won’t—
The car jerks backward, her bumper catching me low across the thigh, more of a shove than a hard hit, but enough that my leg buckles and I’m grabbing for the trunk to keep from going down on the asphalt.
“Jesus, Sawyer!”
She keeps her hands on the wheel, staring at me through the rearview with a smirk, deciding whether she needs to hit me harder.
Message received. I limp back a step, then another, giving her the room she’s been asking for since I came over here.
She backs up and throws it into drive, rolling her window down. “If I tell you to move, you move. I won’t ask twice.”
“You could have fucking killed me,” I say, knowing it’s a lie but needing to get to her.
“Leave me alone, Knox. I mean it.”
She guns it out of the lot and onto the empty street before I can respond.
I stand there in the empty spot, thighs throbbing, watching her taillights until they’re gone.
I feel nothing but satisfaction. She’s going home alone and that prick won’t talk to her again. I’m a piece of shit and I know it, but I don’t care.
Sawyer can run me over with her car every day if she needs to. I refuse to give in.
I throw myself into work because it’s the only thing in my life that keeps me occupied enough to not think about Sawyer.
It’s been over a week since I set my eyes on her at the bar.
I haven’t tried to see her since…not because I’ve let her go, there’s no fucking way, but because showing up again right now while she’s this heated would be a mistake.
I need to give her room to breathe. And I’d bet money that she’s thinking about me too.
The office is empty this early. No one shows up before seven, so it’s the best time to get work done.
I scroll through the Wonder World Phase II folder photos for the third time this week. There’s permits, contracts, invoices. The same boring mess I’ve already gone through over and over and found nothing in.
When my eyes start to glaze over, I decide to print everything out. It’s risky. My father could catch me with the literal paper trail, but maybe holding it in my hands and searching on actual paper will help.
Linda, my father’s part-time assistant, comes up behind me when I’m halfway through printing and scares the shit out of me.
“You’re here early, Knox,” she says.
“Linda, hi.” I crowd my body closer to the printer so she can’t peek. I love Linda, but she’s my father’s eyes and ears in this place. “Couldn’t sleep…figured I’d get a jump on some paperwork before everyone needs something from me today.”
She raises an eyebrow, but it’s friendly, not suspicious. Linda’s worked for my father since before I was born, back when there was an actual building full of people instead of this glorified storage unit. If anyone alive knows where the real bodies are buried in this company, it’s her.
“You sound just like him,” she says, nodding toward my father’s empty office. “Up before the sun, working himself half to death.” She pats my arm on her way past, headed for her desk. “Don’t burn out like he did, sweetheart. There’s coffee in the back if you want it.”
“Thanks, Linda.”
I don’t take a full breath until she’s gone.
The printer spits out the last page and I organize the stack, tapping it with unsteady hands.
It’s forty-something pages, most of the fields handwritten. I’m especially curious to go through the ones with David Thorne’s signature on them.
What could the company have to do with Wonder World? Clearly we were involved in the construction somehow. Is that why we’ve always gone there every summer? Was it some kind of perk?
I hurry back into my office with the stack before Linda comes back. There’s something here, I know it.
I spread the pages across my desk in some semblance of order…
permits first, then invoices, contracts last, and start working backward, searching for something between the lines.
David Thorne’s name shows up more than I expected.
So does my father’s, on documents dated years before the scandal broke.
My phone buzzes before I can dig in.
Tyler R: hey man a bunch of us are thinking about doing something for owen this weekend…like a memorial. you should come.
Fucking Tyler R. One of Owen’s high school football buddies. Why does he even have my number?
Tyler R: no pressure just figured I’d ask.
What kind of thing are they talking about? There was already the spectacle of his funeral. I swipe the text away and put my phone on the desk. Back to the documents…but now the numbers blur together and my jaw hurts from grinding my teeth.
My door opens without a knock.
“There you are.” It’s my father, still in yesterday’s shirt, looking like he slept in the living room armchair instead of his bed. His eyes drop to the desk before I can cover anything. “What’s all this?”
“Nothing important,” I say, picking up the pile and tapping it so it’s all squared.
He grunts in lieu of a response, and turns to leave. Before he’s out of the doorway, he asks, “You eat today?”
I’m taken aback. He never gives a shit if I eat or not. Hell, I don’t think he cares about anything related to my well-being.
“Not yet.” I can see him thinking, his mouth forming words. “But I have plans with Ella.” I pretend to check the time on my phone. “Running late, actually.”
I’m up, holding my messenger bag in one hand and the stack of paperwork in the other before he can say anything else.
He waves a hand in dismissal and heads into his office, calling for Linda. Once I’m in my Jeep, I finally release a breath.
Ella’s home when I get there, which throws me, because she’s usually out doing who knows what all day.
She turns from her spot on the couch, dropping her phone in her lap. “You’re home early.”
“Gotta change my shirt…coffee stain.” I head straight for the bedroom, not stopping to elaborate on my lie. I need to find somewhere quiet to go through these documents. But apparently that’s not happening here.
She follows me in.
“I tried calling you this morning.”
“Phone was on silent.” I swap shirts fast, keeping my back to her. “What did you need?”
“Nothing. Just wanted to know where you were.” She leans against the doorframe, arms crossed. She looks different than normal. Her jaw is set, eyes steady, no softness to be seen. “Linda said you’d already left the office when I called there.”
I think for a second before turning to face her. “I went for a drive after.”
“A drive,” she repeats, tone flat.
“I needed to think.”
“You always need to think.” She pushes off the doorframe and steps into the room. “Or you need to work. Or drive. Or do anything that isn’t being here with me.” She crosses her arms again. “I’m not stupid, Knox.”
“I know you’re not.”
“Then stop treating me like I am. Tell me what’s going on. Or tell me there’s someone else. Either way, I’d rather know.”
I know I should lie. Placate her. Say something to keep her from spiraling and calling her father.
My mind is blank.
I grab the bag off the bed and my keys from the dresser. “I have to go.”
“Knox—”
I’m already past her, down the hall and at the door before she finishes whatever she was going to say. When I walk out, I don’t look back.
I drive without a plan, windows down, letting in the scent of freshly cut grass and humidity, music loud enough to drown my thoughts.
It’s not until I pass the second highway sign for Lake Mercer that I realize where my hands have been steering me the whole time, like a silent passenger deciding where I need to be.
I turn up the music and let it lead the way.