My phone buzzes in my fist and another flash of warmth rushes through my body. I slip the phone onto the table and a swirl of vertigo hits me. For a brief second, I had forgotten about the texts. I grab onto the edge of the table and fight the sudden urge to sit down. If I don’t stay here and find the paperwork I need, my career is over. Even if I email the headmaster of the school, my reputation is not getting out of this unharmed. How am I supposed to leave and find the offshore bank account information at the same time? A thousand scenarios flip through my mind, but I can’t see my way out of this. I can’t leave without what I came for, but I can’t stay much longer either. I don’t know what to do. If I could just find the accounts…
The bastard is still behind me, watching my every move.
“Turn around,” he rumbles.
I don’t. I start packing my mother’s stuff. A bunch of cotton shirts, all size medium. An apron with No bitchin’ in my kitchen written across the front pocket. A pile of folders I flick through quickly, that are nothing more than recipes and bits and pieces of her life here. I slow down and focus on each item, trying to figure out why she chose this life over being with me.
“Claire.” His voice has lost its venomous tone.
Caught off guard by its softness, I peek back over my shoulder. Such a stupid thing to do. Something in his steel-gray eyes make me feel like the floor is falling away from my feet. My entire body lights up like I’m fifteen again. I turn my back to him quickly and throw the next object in the box. I think it’s a small statue of an elephant. I hear it crack when it hits against something else in the box and I almost lose it.
He takes a step closer to where I’m standing. My mouth goes dry. I feel too vulnerable. I’m rummaging through dead people’s things trying to find money that isn’t mine to give it away to someone I don’t know. Sweat breaks out across my forehead. Jesus, this makes me feel like a criminal somehow. I’d be horrible if I ever had to rob a bank. My head turns and my eyes flash up to his again. The way he’s watching me is unnerving, and something else fumbles out of my trembling hands.
This feels way too dangerous. What if he grew up to be a lunatic? What if he finds out I’m trying to get his father’s back account information and he chops me up into little pieces? Ten years ago, I would have said Vaughn would have never hurt a fly. But with the way he’s looking at me right now, my heart should be exploding in my chest and I should be dropping dead any second.
I want to explain that I’ll be out of his hair in just a few minutes—that I just need to go through the rest of my mom’s stuff to find some of her financial papers or something, but my mouth doesn’t seem to want to work. The truth is I don’t want to talk to him, I’m way too embarrassed by the whole situation. I want to pretend he’s not here and find what I need to get on with my life.
He shifts his body and now he’s next to me, leaning his weight against the table, facing me. He smells amazing. Whatever expensive cologne he’s wearing is worth every penny he’s paid for it. I can’t stop myself from taking full deep breaths of it.
I suddenly, desperately want to look up at him, to study every line and nuance of his face. I want to see how he’s changed and to learn what kind of person he’s turned into. It’s confusing but understandable. I mean, how can I not want to see him, to gawk at him for a few moments? This was someone I thought I once loved. He was the boy I lost my virginity to, the boy I foolishly thought I would end up marrying.
How naïve I was then, how naïve we all were.
I sought him out twice on social media over the last ten years, trying to sneak a peek into the life of a boy that was once my whole world. There was always a beautiful girl on his arm, smiling next to him for the camera. It’s warranted, of course, he’s absurdly gorgeous. Just from the quick peeks I’m sneaking I can tell he’s a thousand times better looking than when he was a teenager. Because of course he is. Chiseled perfectly as if by a sculptor commissioned to create the ideal of a flawless man. Precise, perfect features, angular and hard. Soft dark hair and expressive, slate-gray eyes that would concentrate on you with an irresistible possessiveness, able to talk you out of your deepest secrets. His build is powerful with broad shoulders and the sort of muscular arms and chest that stretch the fabric of his designer dress shirt and make you instantly fantasize about what he’d look like with it gone.
For his sake, though, I hope his personality is nothing like his father’s.
A cheater. A liar. A womanizer.
It’s right after this thought I realize Vaughn and I are standing face to face, eyes locked on each other’s. Silence raining down around us, heavy and suffocating, promising to stretch into eternity.
He swallows. I watch the bob of his Adam’s apple and try to ignore the growing tightness in my chest.
“Claire? I don’t understand. What’s really going on here?” His dark gray eyes flick down past me to what I’m boxing up. “What are you doing here?” His voice is no louder than a whisper.
I can’t answer him. I feel so guilty, like my mother’s sins are stained to my skin. It makes me feel filthy. My eyes well with tears. I can’t do this—I cannot break down in front of him, but the pressure is building. My mother killed herself because she couldn’t live without his father. I have nothing to say to make this better. There’re no words to make the weight of this any lighter. The explanation stalls on the tip of my tongue, they are disgusting hateful reasons, that I cannot bear to say—because if they come out and Vaughn hears them, there’s no coming back, there’s no redemption. I pay for their indiscretions, like I have in the past. There’s what they did to me and my life, over and over, even in death. I’m not someone who falls apart easily, but right now it’s too fresh of an open wound and he’s here to witness and rub his salt deep inside me. This humiliation is unbearable, it can’t be seen or touched, explained or put to words, it’s felt deep with the shattered pieces of my broken heart. My eyes glance to the pictures of them on the wall. I want to smash each one with my fist, again. Instantly, his gaze follows mine and darts around the room, over the pictures, flittering past the things that were kept hidden of them for so long.
“Oh my God—” he doesn’t say anything else for an excruciatingly long time, but I can see the exact moment he realizes, the very moment he knows our parents’ sins. He stops breathing for a second, his body stills and tenses, then his eyes brimming with unadulterated hatred rain down on mine. “You’ve got to be kidding me! Does your mother live here? With him? They were together? All this time? And you lived here with them?”
He swipes his arm across the table and the box of my mother’s belongings crashes down, spilling all its contents across the floor. “How could you?” he rages, spinning around wildly. “How could you do this, again?” He slams his palms on the table. “What is wrong with the both of you?”
And here I am again, thrown back into the gutter, lower than dirt, even more worthless than the shadow of Libby Radcliffe that’s held me captive for years. It’s here where I can hear my heart, my soul, everything I am made of straining under the weight of all the sins I did not commit. And I don’t know how I’m going to survive through this hell once more.