“You don’t have to,” she shakes her head.
He doesn’t argue back—besides he always gets what he wants. He waits for her to fill her tote bag with her items and follows her to the elevator. They ride down in silence, but she doesn’t protest as she follows him to his black Mercedes Benz. He holds the door open for her and he swears he can see her blush at the simple gesture. Crawling into the leather seat of the drivers side, he reeves the engine—showing off only slightly—before driving into the night. He already knows where she lives, but he asks her anyways. He knows the neighbor and knows that it is a piece of shit apartment building, run by a piece of shit landlord who charges too much for rent.
Quickly looking at her, he sees her from a profile view. Her nose has a bump in the middle, he wonders if it is because she broke it. She has high cheekbones that are rosy and eyes rimmed with long dark lashes.
Parking in front of her apartment building, he wishes she would invite him in. But she thanks him for the ride and disappears leaving him with frustrating feelings. Next time he’ll drive her home he’ll work up a conversation, one that will get her to slowly start trusting him. Only in time will his plan work.
His apartment is big, expensive, and lonely. The eerie quiet of no one to come home to is deafening. The only company the penthouse knows are the weekly house cleaners, the cook, his siblings once in a blue moon, and the girls he takes home that only spend a few hours that night. Lately there has been no company. Just him waking up early to work out, showering, getting ready for work, and working until he is forced to come home from exhaustion and overexertion.
Turning the light on in his master bedroom, he nearly has a heart attack. Sitting on his bed is his brother, Liam. A large grin plastered on his too-charming face. Annoyed at his brother’s antics and already thinking Olive has put him up to whatever this is, he asks, “What are you doing here? Don’t you have a club to be at?”
“I’m glad you brought that up because who was at the club last night,” he pauses for Alexander to answer. “Scarlett. I know what you’re doing and it needs to stop. She is innocent.”
“She will lead me to her father.”
“And she will hate you for it.”
“I don’t care,” he hisses.
“You don’t care about ruining that girls life?”
His jaw ticks. “I seem to be the only one in this family who cares.”
“Jesus Christ, Alexander. We all care, but we are moving on with our lives.”
“Well, I can’t.”
Alexander walks into his bathroom and begins running the water in his kiddie pool sized bathtub. Normally he uses his shower, but his overworked and sore muscles could really use a long soak in warm water. Liam follows him in the bathroom sporting the same worried expression Olive had just hours earlier. He loves his siblings more than life itself, but he really wishes they would lay off him. Their constant need for checking up on him, has him on edge. The late night phone calls just to make sure he got in okay and the uninvited visits in his office just to make sure he made it to work, make him want to explode. He feels like a child who needs ababsitter, not tomenion they make him feel incompetent.
Isn’t it the older brother who is supposed to check in on his little siblings, not the other way around?
“Her father is all she has left,” Liam says quietly.
Alexander ignites his brothers attempts at making him changing his mind, but his plan is already embedded in his mind—it has been for years—and there is no way he’s altering or dropping it. Taking off his clothes he throws them in the hamper and steps into his tub slowly soaking and moaning as he does so.
“She lost just as much as you did.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” A crease forms between Alexander’s eyebrows. .
“You’re not the only one who hired a private investigator.”
Liam walks out of the bathroom leaving Alexander more puzzled when he should be feeling pleased now that his brothers absence left much needed privacy and silence for his soak.
***
Scarlett was flustered the entire car ride. She could see him stealing glances at her through the corner of her eyes. His car was expensive, more than her entire apartment and everything in it put together. The car smelled like him, the musky citrus cologne that makes her want to bury her nose deep into his chest and inhale him.
Realizing how ridiculous she sounds, she shakes the thought of her boss from her head. The only thing she should be worrying about is her father. Ever since he called she’s been worried. She left her nomadic life with her father because she wanted to stay in one place and actually make friends and keep a job, but she has always worried about his mental health. He travels alone and sometimes she fears he isn’t eating right or maybe he ran out of money and had to sleep on a peak bench.
Him not having a cell phone is what worries her the most. He always used payphones or phone booths to make his calls. Always afraid that someone was tracking him. Many times she told him to see a doctor, but he doesn’t trust doctors. Once when she broke her nose her father refused to take her, only buying her ice to put on it.
She doesn’t want to feel like she abandoned the only person she calls family in her life. As crazy as he is, Scarlett would do anything for her father loving him more than she has ever loved another soul.
Tristian and Jo are making out on the couch when Scarlett enters through the apartment door. They don’t seem bothered by her entrance even though she purposely slams the door to get them to stop. Sometimes she wishes Jo wouldn’t bring someone home just so she has someone to talk to at night. Lately either Tristian is over or she wants to go to the club. She just wants to sit on the couch with Jo, wrap up in her favorite fluffy pink blanket, put on an episode of The Golden Girls, and confide in her best friend.
Even though she’s never had a true home, she’s been feeling homesick lately, missing her dad. Hearing his voice today made her heart soar, but it was quick and she didn’t even get to tell him everything she wanted to.
Stepping into her neat room, she can hear Jo’s giggles from the other room. Scarlett lays down on her bed, tired with an aching headache. Her worrying hasn’t subsided and she stares at her phone waiting and hoping for her father to call.
The next morning she was surprised when the black Mercedes Benz that took her home last night is still in front of her apartment building. The windows are too darkly tinted to tell if anyone is sitting is the driver's seat. Until, the window goes down revealing her boss.
“Did you get any sleep last night?” Scarlett teases. “Or did you wait here all night?”
He chuckles. “I figured since you don’t have a car, I would pick you up.”
“That’s very nice of you but…” she bites at her lower lip.
“But?” He raises an eyebrow.
“I don’t have any gas money to give you.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t need gas money. Now get in, or we’ll be late for work.”
Smiling, she walks around the nicest car she has ever seen and sits in the passenger side. She’s never owned a car, her and her father always took the bus or sometimes they’d have enough money to buy a train ticket. As she got older all her job money went to paying off some student debt, bills, and buying clothes. Never did she have enough money to afford even the cheapest of cars. A subway pass she could afford.