Chapter 38 #2
“Ellie McCain’s a liability to your company and your reputation, Ken. You need to fire her.”
“What the fuck did you do?” Ben snapped his head toward Craig.
“Me? Nothing!” Craig looked like he was actually surprised and confused by Ben’s questioning. “She’s been acting fucking cra—”
Ben ripped his arm back and punched Craig, connecting with the side of his face and knocking him straight to the ground.
“BEN!” Ken screamed.
“I quit,” I said. I was breathless, like I had been punched in the gut.
“What is happening?!” Ken asked, but I didn’t answer.
I don’t know if I ran, but somehow, I was gone, already through the emergency exit, and Ben was with me.
As I made my way down the stairs, Ben grabbed my waist and picked me up like a feather.
It felt like I was flying. When we got to his rental car, he opened the door and set me inside, then got into the driver’s seat and peeled out of the private parking lot before either of us could buckle up.
“Ellie, what happened?” Ben implored, driving quickly through Beverly Hills down Wilshire Boulevard. I couldn’t speak. “Jesus Christ! Ellie, give me your phone!”
I was clutching my phone, unable to open my hand.
It was as if I were experiencing rigor mortis.
Ben pulled it from my grip and punched in my four-digit code.
9178. He remembered. He went to my call history and pressed the screen when he saw Rory’s name.
Ben put the phone on speaker and set it on the dashboard as Rory’s phone rang on the other end.
“What’s up, babe? Are you late to work?” Rory answered, without saying hello.
“Rory. It’s Ben. I’m with Ellie.” Ben’s voice was clipped.
“Uh, hi . . . ? Is everything okay?”
I could imagine Rory sitting straighter, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling. Ben calling him from my phone and saying we were together would have been, to say the least, surprising.
“No, dude. Everything is not okay,” Ben answered. His eyes jumped between the road and me in the passenger seat.
“Give Ellie the phone,” Rory ordered.
“I can’t. She’s not talking.”
There was a beat. I could almost hear Rory shaking. “What the fuck is going on?”
“Something happened at her office.”
“Okay . . .”
“I came in to meet Ken Caplin. She and I were catching up on my way out, then she got called away by someone. Something happened between them. Now she’s having a panic attack.”
Rory was silent. His brain was likely firing in a thousand different directions.
Ben gave him a couple of seconds to catch up before asking, “You still there?”
“Take her home. Get her head under cold water. Give me your number, and I’ll text you the address.” Rory’s voice was cutting.
Ben gave Rory his phone number. There was an immediate ding from Ben’s back pocket.
He pulled out his phone and tapped in his passcode.
9178. His eyes flicked over to me for the briefest of seconds.
I blinked, then was flooded with a lost memory of us making our passcodes the same, back when we were together and living at Grayrock.
Neither of us had changed it since. I wasn’t sure either of us even remembered we had done that until this very moment, when Ben’s muscle memory kicked in.
Ben mapped out the directions to my address, then placed his phone on the center console.
“Who was she with?” Rory demanded.
“Someone named Craig.”
The silence on Rory’s end of the phone was so thick the car became suffocating.
Ben continued, “Then he said some shit about her to Ken. It wasn’t pretty.”
“Can you put me on speaker?” Rory asked.
“You are. You’ve been on speaker the whole time.”
“Ellie, you’ve got to talk. Tell me what happened,” Rory said.
We pulled up to a red light, and Ben turned to look at me, waiting for a response. “Come on, buddy.”
I wanted to talk, but I had forgotten how to find my thoughts.
They were there, but I couldn’t catch them.
Rory and Ben had both seen me suffer through panic attacks.
It wasn’t a common occurrence, but they knew when it did happen, I would find my voice eventually.
But I knew they needed to hear it right away.
I put my elbows on my knees. The fact that I was moving at all was a good sign.
I pressed my eyes into my palms and kept them there as I strained to grab my words.
“He . . .” I started. I kept my face in my hands. “Kissed me.” I pushed out the rest of my sentence through sheer force. “Shoved my hand down his pants.”
There was nothing but silence on the other end of the phone. The light had turned green, but Ben wasn’t driving. We were being honked at, so Ben pulled off to the side of the road and turned on the car’s hazards. Rory and Ben were both quiet, waiting for me.
I finally lifted my head and met Ben’s eyes. If looks could kill. “I don’t know how it happened.”
“Okay. Ellie, can I hold your hand?” he whispered, but loud enough so Rory could hear.
I nodded through my fog, barely noticeable. Ben picked up my phone from the dashboard, composed. He held it to his mouth, though it was still on speaker. His other hand took mine. “Rory?”
The sound on the other end of the phone changed from deafening silence to the drum of city life when Rory finally barked, “Yeah.” His angry voice sounded strained.
He must have put himself on mute. I could imagine him holding his phone with two hands, bent over and screaming “FUCK!” as loudly as he could while standing on the sidewalk of a busy New York street.
“I’m on my way to the airport. I’ll probably get in late.
Ellie, baby, when you wake up in the morning, I’m going to be there. ”
I nodded.
“She’s nodding,” Ben said, taking over for me. “Hey, Rory, I think you should know that I punched him.”
“You did?” Rory sounded surprised.
“Yeah. I hit him pretty hard.”
Rory cleared his throat. “I’m glad you’re there, Ben.”
“I’ll take her home, but I’m going to stay until you get here. Is that okay?” Ben was asking Rory but looking at me.
“Whatever she wants. Whatever she needs.”
I nodded.
“Okay, she’s nodding,” Ben confirmed to Rory.
“I love you, Ellie.” Rory’s voice was heavy.
I nodded again.
“She loves you, too. See you when you get here.”
Ben clicked the phone off, and we drove the rest of the way to Highland Park in silence, with him clutching my hand.