Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
BLAKELY
Dear Diary,
It turns out, if you take a chance. Sometimes it works.
Sometimes…not so much.
I hummed along to the music in my head as I walked through the empty building on Avalanche Street. I knew it was named Avalanche for the hockey team, and not an actual Avalanche, but that still worried me some. Cage enterprises had been looking at numerous places for their next endeavor on my project list, and we were thinking of purchasing this one.
We.
It was so odd that I was a we now but I was going to lean into it for the time being
However, the building that I now stood in was a little older but was going to be the home of a future business that one of our loan recipients was going to use. The best part, it was going to be a multiple loan partner establishment. The women had come together with a proposal, and the Cages were going to be the ones that helped fund it. I was really excited to see what they did, because it was going to help the community. However, I probably should have waited for Aston to drive me to the place, rather than meeting him here. The clouds overhead were getting dark, and while there hadn’t been any rain in the forecast, it was Colorado. And that meant weather had no reason.
Aston had texted saying he was on his way, so hopefully we’d be able to get back to his place before the storm.
Everything just felt spectacular. Which probably meant that I needed more sleep. But for the past week, we hadn’t been getting much sleep. Between meetings, each other, the business, and countless other things, I had been too wired and now here I was, bouncing on my feet as I waited for Aston to come.
I still couldn’t quite believe that things were working out. I loved him. And he loved me. And if I kept saying that, I was going to become a Disney princess and start twirling around even though I wore jeans and a top. I was pretty sure Disney princesses wore jeans these days. It was all in fashion.
I rolled my eyes, knowing that I needed to focus on my checklist, before Aston got here. Lightning crackled in the sky, but it was far enough away. I checked my phone, but he hadn’t texted any updates. That meant he was driving.
I really hoped that it didn’t start raining while he was driving. If anything, we could just wait out the storm here.
I bit my lip as worry slid through me, hoping he wasn’t driving through the rain. When the door opened, I smiled brightly, turning toward it, but it wasn’t Aston.
Instead, Meredith stood there, her eyes wide, and I stiffened, wondering if I needed a weapon.
The last time I had seen this woman, she had tugged on my arm and said horrible things. And then she had thrown herself at Aston, and we hadn’t heard from her since.
While he had said it was out of character for her, I didn’t know her enough to know what was in character.
“Excuse me? We’re not open.” Which should have been obvious since the place was empty and full of cobwebs. There was only the master lock on the outside, so I hadn’t locked it fully. The neighborhood was safe enough, but now I was kicking myself for leaving it at least somewhat open.
Meredith looked around the place, and licked her lips, before holding up both hands.
“My office is across the street, and down a few buildings. I saw you walking in, I swear, I wasn’t stalking you.” She winced. “Although, you don’t have to believe me. You can look me up on my profile to see where I work so you can see the address. Or ask Aston.” She paused. “Not that he would want to hear from me either. ”
“Is there something I can do for you Meredith? Because we’re not doing this. I’m not going to continue whatever this drama is you think that we have.”
The other woman swallowed hard, her face paling. “I’ll leave. I promise. I just wanted to say.” She sucked in a deep breath. “I just want to say I’m sorry.”
My eyes widened, and I wasn’t quite sure I had heard her right. There were only a few feet between us, and yet I could practically sense the nerves rolling off her.
“I’ve just had a really shitty year.” She let out a hollow laugh that held no humor. “And I realized that my shitty year shouldn’t have affected you. But it did because I made it so. I tried to fix my old mistakes from before, and just ended up making more.”
“I’m really not following,” I said, wondering exactly why she was here apologizing. While I appreciated it, it felt off.
“I thought I could step into the person that I had once been, and fix things, but it turns out that I can’t do that. And I’m so sorry, Blakely. I’m sorry that I hurt you in the process. Because I did. Some part of me wanted to, because I was hurting, but the real me wouldn’t have wanted to.”
Everything she said sounded true, I heard the sincerity in her voice, but I was still so confused. “You see, when Aston and I were engaged and we were trying to plan the wedding, my family was trying to make it this event . In the middle of things, my mom and his mom were fighting, his dad was ignoring us.” She paused. “Which in retrospect makes a little sense. He was really good at ignoring things.”
I laughed with her despite myself. “So it seems. I never had the chance to meet him.”
A splash of humor filled her gaze before she blinked it away. “You weren’t missing anything. He never liked me. Of course, he never really liked anyone. Though he might’ve liked his other family.” She paused. “But I’m off-topic here.” She let out a deep breath, rolling her shoulders back. “As we were planning the wedding, I found out I had cancer.”
Of every single thing she could have said, that hadn’t even crossed my mind. “Meredith…I’m so sorry. That’s terrible. I want to ask if you’re okay now, but I don’t want to pry.”
She wiped away a tear and rolled her eyes. “I need to stop crying. I’m trying to apologize to you and explain. This is not about me. But I’m fine now. I had to deal with a few things and turned my pain inward. I pushed everyone away, not knowing what I wanted. Yes, I broke up with Aston. I didn’t want him to see me like that. Which makes no sense because I know he would’ve been great.”
Part of me wanted to reach out and hold her, to help pull that pain away, but I knew neither one of us would truly welcome the action in that moment. “He would’ve stood beside you. He’s a good man.”
“The best. But he didn’t love me. Just like I didn’t love him.” She shrugged, that sad smile on her face. “And he would’ve stayed with me throughout all of it, and then when could he have walked away? He couldn’t leave the sick woman, and then the woman who bravely fought and beat cancer. I did beat it. I’m in remission. I have wonderful doctors and thankfully my body reacted well to treatments.”
“I’m glad to hear that you’re okay. That must have been so scary. Do you have anyone?” I couldn’t imagine pushing everyone away in that moment. Though, in the end, I couldn’t imagine her pain at all.
A small smile covered her face. “My mom. When she’s not planning a wedding, she’s pretty great. She didn’t understand why I pushed Aston away, and when I was sick and trying to just wonder exactly what I was supposed to do, she kept prying into why I would let a good man go. But that’s the problem, he was a good man. Is a good man. And somehow, it twisted inside me that he was such a good man that I made a mistake by letting him go. And I’m not going to have any excuse other than when I realized my mistake I tried to fix it. Only I hurt a lot of people along the way. I’ll apologize to him too. In fact I was trying to do that first, I just don’t know how to contact him without sounding like the horrible reject that I am. Blakely, I’m sorry. Everything that I did was unlike the person that I was, but that means it’s the person that I am now. And I don’t want to be that person anymore. So I’m sorry.”
It took me a moment to get through everything that she had said, and while part of me didn’t want to believe her, because it was such an outrageous story, I saw the sincerity in her eyes. She was scared and was now owning up to it. “I can’t speak for Aston. But I’m sorry you went through all that. That you didn’t have anyone really to lean on for it.” At least at first.
“I made my own mistakes, and I’m living up to them. I lost a lot of people because I didn’t want them to know. Which sounds ridiculous. I’m sorry for being a jerk. And honestly, I can see you two are great together. I’m oddly just not good at not winning? Which is not the greatest thing to know about myself.”
“He’s not a prize to win over.” I pause. “Which makes me sound like I don’t like him. I love him.” I paused. “I do. I love him.”
“I’m glad. And I can see he loves you. I’m sorry. So sorry for what I did.
“Well, I’m going to head back to my office and then try to forget that I’m such an idiot. Or maybe I should remember that way I don’t do it again.”
I moved forward without thinking and wrapped my arms around her. She stiffened for a second, before she hugged me back, laying her head on my shoulder.
“You shouldn’t be the one comforting me.”
“I think, you’re the one who needs this more.” And I squeezed her tightly, before letting her go. I hadn’t even realized I was letting tears fall before I wiped them away, and she did the same.
“I don’t want to be the terrible ex. I don’t need to be your best friend, because I realize that would get tricky, but I promise to never stand in your way. And if I ever see some woman making cat eyes at him, I’ll block the way for you. ”
That got a laugh out of me. “I can do that myself, but you really can’t help them. Aston’s beautiful.”
“I want to say yes, but since I just tried to say that I was doing better, I’m not going to put my foot in my mouth anymore.”
Laughing, I shook my head. But before I could say anything else, a huge crack of lightning shattered into the sky, the sound eliciting a scream from both of us. Meredith reached out and gripped my hand, as the electric pole in front of the building snapped.
In an instant, I tugged at her arm, and we dove back behind the lone counter in the room, as the pole slammed into the sidewalk, shattering the glass fronts.
“Cover yourself, Blakely!” she shouted, as we covered our faces from flying glass. Smoke filled the building immediately, and the scorching sound of fire from the transformer hit my ears.
“We need to get out of here.”
“Is there a back door?” Meredith asked, and we each coughed, both of us looking around.
“I think so. I don’t know this building. We were just checking it out.”
“Okay let’s go,” she whispered, and I realized that she had glass in her hair, and a cut on her face. Since my face hurt as well, I figured we each looked the same.
We gripped each other’s hands, bending down so that way we were as close to the ground as possible. Getting out the front way wasn’t going to work, so we had to use the emergency exit. Only when we pressed the back door, it wouldn’t budge .
“No no no no no,” I shouted, alarm spreading through me.
“Is it not opening?” Meredith asked, coughing.
“Help me push it. It’s either rusted shut, or something’s blocking it. But we have to get out.”
“Okay, we need to call 911.”
“Yes. And let’s just keep pushing,” I said, knowing that we needed to get out of here quickly. If we didn’t, the smoke was going to get us before anything. I wasn’t even sure that the flames were coming into the building, but it wasn’t raining yet, just lightning on this side. And that was dangerous in any weather.
“I can’t get it,” Meredith said, kneeling down.
I pulled out my phone and dialed 911, but the busy signal was the only thing I heard.
My brain went oddly blank before calming, as if I knew pure panic would break me. Because I was indeed panicking. “They’re going to be able to see the fire. They’re going to get us. We just have to keep pushing,” I said, trying to remember everything that my dad taught me, and keep calm. But there was nothing calm about this.
Meredith and I shoved again, each one of us pounding on the door and screaming, and all I could do was think about the moments that would never come. I tried to push those thoughts from my mind, but there was nothing.
Just screaming.
And then the door was being pulled open from the other side, and I fell into Aston’s arms, Meredith coming with me. I only saw Aston’s shocked face for an instant, before he was pulling us both out of the building, other people shouting around him. Smoke billowed behind us and I tried to suck in clean air even through the rain.
“Blakely? Meredith?” As Meredith tried to pull away, he tugged her closer as well, moving us toward where an ambulance was pulling in.
“What the hell happened?” he called out over the rain.
I tried to catch my breath and answer, only I coughed loudly instead.
“We need help over here!” Aston yelled, as I threw my arms around him, hugging him tightly.
“You saved us.”
“Blakely. My God. How did this happen?” He looked over my shoulder and stiffened as he looked at Meredith, and I realized that he was probably thinking the wrong thing. He hadn’t realized who had fallen into him at first and now he leapt to the wrong conclusions. I pulled away and gripped Meredith’s hand.
“A transformer blew because of lightning and somehow the whole place caught on fire. The door wouldn’t open and I was so damn scared. We had just been talking before. Setting things straight. We’re good now. I promise.” And I promptly burst into tears as Meredith hugged me. Aston looked between us, confused as he held my shoulder, before moving to the side so the paramedics could check us out. When he took my hand, he didn’t let me go, and I just looked over at Meredith, realizing that perhaps trauma could bond you more than I thought. Because I was never going to forget today, even as the paramedics poked and prodded .
“Blakely?” a deep voice asked, and I looked over to see a familiar firefighter from my dad’s old station.
“Mr. Snow?”
“Oh hell. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Really.” I coughed, making that a clear lie.
“Keep the oxygen on your face,” the paramedic warned, and then pointed to Meredith. “You too.”
Fireman Snow looked between me and the building the firefighters were currently working on and let out a breath. “I’m calling your father.”
I groaned, knowing that soon the entire station was going to be checking to make sure Baby Blakely was fine, but that didn’t matter. I just leaned into Aston’s arms as he held me, my other hand still in Meredith’s.
“I love you so much. Never do that again.” He kissed the top of my head, as we tried to explain what had happened.
It turned out Aston had finally made it to the street to meet with me, only to see it catch on fire. He had run around the back as the front was blocked. He’d used a crowbar to get the door open as the authorities pulled up. When we explained that Meredith had been there to apologize, he just shook his head, listening. I knew we’d have to explain again, because I wasn’t going to let him blame Meredith. It was literally lightning. But for that one moment, he had been scared it had been his ex. But it hadn’t. No, it had been a single storm that still raged around us.
“Okay, so we’re not going to buy that building,” he said with a laugh. But again, no humor in that .
“I don’t think so.” I held onto him, the shakes finally hitting my body from the adrenaline.
“It was not up to code,” Meredith said in her most prim voice, and somehow, I was laughing and coughing, holding onto Aston, and wondering exactly how this was my life. But then again, the man that I loved was holding me, and we were safe.
And I was never going to take that for granted again.