Seamless (36 page)

Stella fumed.
Of course.
Patrick threw the blonde the bottle of water. She caught it and gaped at Stella.

“Answer my fucking question,” Stella demanded.

“You don’t get to tell me what to do. Do you?”

They continued to stare at each other, making everyone else in the room decidedly uncomfortable.

Patrick shrugged. “I’ve been busy,” he relented.

Stella stepped into him and hissed, “See, I
was
right. I can’t trust you to do what you say.” She turned on her heel and stomped away, making it to the den before she felt his hand grab her arm hard, stopping her in her tracks.

“Fuck. You. Stella!” Patrick yelled into her ear.

The force of his words knocked her sideways and she closed her eyes. She felt like she’d been slapped across the face. Although it was unfair, Stella was hoping they’d be able to stay friends. It wasn’t fair to either one of them to think that way, but she didn’t want to lose him. She’d lost him anyway. Stella didn’t turn around, but looked at Billy, whose face showed disbelief. She ran through the den and out the door as fast as she could.

George was sitting on his hotel bed drinking whiskey straight from the bottle when his phone dinged with a Voxer message. It was Jesse.

“Sweaty Balls, you okay? I haven’t heard from you.”

“Plays with his Balls, not close to okay.” George’s voice was lifeless as spoke into the app. His phone rang immediately. “Hey, man.”

“Dude, your voice sounds…sad.”

“I am sad,” George admitted. He probably wouldn’t normally have shared that with anyone, especially a guy like Jesse, but he’d consumed almost half of his bottle of whiskey.

“Well, have you talked to her?”

“Yes,” he sighed into the phone, “it didn’t go well.”

“What do you mean?” Jesse asked.

“Well, she apologized for leaving.”

“Sounds promising…”

“It was, until I told her I couldn’t keep losing her. Every fucking time things get hard or she needs someone, she runs. And she doesn’t run to me—she runs to you, or to Patrick. That’s not how relationships work. You’re supposed to run to each other when you need someone.”

Jesse was silent.

“She ripped my fucking heart out, Jesse, leaving me with all her things in my house like she didn’t even care about anything.”

“But don’t you see, George? She didn’t give a shit about anything except running,” Jesse protested. “Jamie’d been killed right in front of her. Shit, from what I heard, his face exploded on her and all she thought about was that she destroys everything she loves. She told me she didn’t want to destroy you.” He sighed. “Now, I’m not saying that shit isn’t crazy. I’m just saying she wasn’t in her right mind, you know?”

“She ripped my fucking heart out,” George repeated.

Jesse chuckled. “Yeah, I got that.”

The whiskey still burned as it went down his throat, but it was getting smoother the more he drank. He’d been drunk since he read Stella’s note. “I think about her all the time. I wonder if she’s okay; if she’s hurting as bad as I am…”

“She is,” Jesse confirmed.

“You’ve talked to her?”
Of course he’d talked to her.

“Yeah, man.”

“I told her I couldn’t keep losing her.”
Where is this verbal diarrhea coming from?

“I know.”

“I called her a fucking liar.”

“I know that too.” Jesse sighed.

“Jess, she lied to me. She told me she was going to be with me for the rest of her life, then she ran. She fucking ran to fucking Patrick.”

“So what’s pissing you off more, that she ran or that Patrick found her and you didn’t?” Jesse laughed.

“Patrick,” George admitted.
Fuck, he really didn’t want to tell anyone that
.

“I guessed that one.” Jesse chuckled again. “You know he’s gone right?”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s driving down to Atlanta now. He got transferred down here.”

“So…is she still staying with Millie?” George asked. He hadn’t asked her anything on the phone, just let her apologize and then yelled at her for ten minutes before throwing his phone against the wall.

“Yep.”

“I wanted to kill him, you know,” George said, then took another gulp of whiskey. “I would’ve fucking killed him myself.”

“I’m aware,” Jesse placated him.

“If they find out who killed him, I’m going to shake his fucking hand. The FBI and ATF are being hush-hush about the whole damn thing.”

Jesse was quiet for a beat. “They’re reporting fucking Jack Ryder died. I can’t believe how fucked up this whole situation is. I mean, no one’s even acknowledging Jamie Rivers.”

“I don’t fucking care anything about him or his family. He destroyed our lives. His fucking sister drugged El.”

“I know…I know. I just wonder how they’re keeping all this shit secret, you know?”

“I don’t want it to end like this,” George confessed quietly, hanging his head.

“How do you want it to end?”

“When she and I are old and gray and our minds are the only things working anymore.” George’s words were starting to slur together. “When we’ve had 50 years together, holding hands and
fucking
.”

George willed himself to not cry, not to feel the shattering of his own heart. When he’d read the note she left for him, his entire world broke apart and fell at his feet. Then every fucking morning when he woke after passing out and he realized she wasn’t there, his heart shattered all over again. He was working so hard to think of something else besides the curve of her ass and her obnoxious laugh.

“George! Call her, talk to her,” Jesse commanded. “Make it work.”

“I told her it was too hard to be with her. It was too—”

“Fucking call her, man, you’re miserable,” Jesse interrupted.

“You know what she said, Jesse? She said that if things weren’t hard, they weren’t worth shit. I’d told her that before about us. I’m beginning to think that she was right, though. We just weren’t meant to be.” He knew he was telling himself that because he just didn’t know if he could get over the fear she’d keep leaving him.

“That’s bullshit and if she’s got you thinking that, I’m more worried about her than I was before.”

“Hey, man, I have to go and finish the rest of my whiskey. I’ll start slurring soon, so…”

Jesse laughed. “You’re already slurring, man.”

“Thanks, Jesse. I appreciate you calling.” George disconnected and took a long pull from his bottle. He hoped he’d pass out soon.

She’d skipped her appointment with Denise while she was at the beach, so this was her first session after Jamie was killed. Stella sat cross-legged in the arm chair, her black ankle boots on the floor where she’d kicked them off when she walked in. She found she was able to think better with her shoes off. She examined her black and white striped tights instead of looking at Denise.

“Stella. How are things today?” Denise asked.

“Things are…” Stella couldn’t answer. She didn’t know how to put her emotions into words.

As if Denise knew the problem, she asked, “If you had to describe your mood with a color what would it be?”

“Brown,” Stella answered automatically.

“Okay, brown? Why?”

“Brown is ugly and has no redeemable characteristics.”

“Some people like brown,” Denise countered. “But, so that’s your mood?”

“My mood is devastated.” She ran a finger down her leg to scratch her foot; the white lines of her tights curved when they reached her calves. “It’s surreal. I’ve been barely functioning for the last year, but on the surface, people see a professional who’s good at what she does. You see me engaged to someone I love. You see me handling all these things in the media…”

“You
do
appear to be moving through all these things seamlessly.”

“Seamlessly?” Stella’s laugh escaped her mouth and it was bitter and hard. “That may be an appropriate statement, because in order to look seamless, you must need to have an entire world of shit going on under the surface. I don’t see this seamless outside, but I’ll tell you I’ve never felt more lost inside.”

“Stella, you’ve been through more than any one person should go through in a lifetime. It seems like the threat is over and you deserve to be happy. Will you allow yourself to be happy?” This was the first time Denise had ever even referred to their off the record conversation.

“I don’t even know how to be happy anymore,” Stella confirmed.

“You need to change how you look at yourself. Don’t be the person you were, be the person you want to be for yourself. There’s nothing holding you back, Stella. Cut the anchor that’s been holding you down and swim to the surface as fast as you can.”

Stella took that in. Denise really believed that she could simply decide to be different, be better. She wondered what Denise would think about her real actions, about her betrayal of the man she loved. There were times where the admission was on the tip of her tongue, where she almost begged for forgiveness. She didn’t know if she
could
be better. She wondered if telling Denise everything would make her feel better.

No, she didn’t deserve to feel better. She’s the one who made all of the decisions that changed her internal makeup. She wasn’t the broken victim anymore, she wasn’t the heartbroken girl anymore—she’d changed her own story.

She’d rewritten her story to be the master of her own decisions, to do evil, and to fight for her life. She’d won, right? She had to live with these lies and her actions everyday of her life, but it was worth it. She’d have to be okay with that.

He’d been drinking since noon. It was Sunday, the week before Christmas, and he’d flown into DC late last night; he was taking the entire week off and not completely sure he was looking forward to it. He was sitting in his office at the bar, drinking by himself.

George didn’t like coming home anymore because it was
their
home, not
his
. Fuck, it even still smelled like her. Her favorite cereal was still in the pantry and her fucking shampoo was in their shower—she was everywhere. Her closet was still mostly stocked with her clothes and shoes, minus the pile of stuff Millie had taken to her house in some sort of covert operation. It was torture. Pure, unadulterated torture.

George unscrewed the bottle of Jameson and poured it into a glass with a few ice cubes and looked at the picture he’d put on his desk a few weeks ago. It was them in Aspen on top of the mountain, both of them with enormous grins and Stella with his ring on her finger where it should be.
Or not
. He didn’t even know if that’s what he wanted anymore, if she was so ready to leave him. He leaned back in his chair and tried to figure out what he wanted. Again.

Smiling, he thought back to the girl he’d first met at the park when Brutus and Cooper were playing. There’d been something about her, the sparkle in her eye and her sexy southern accent drew him to her. Her ass hadn’t hurt his eyes either. She was a different person than she was that day, and she’d turned into an entirely different person since she first started coming to the bar. She went from a girl crushed by her circumstances to a woman that could move fucking mountains at will. He didn’t know what she was now, only that she
thought
she wasn’t good enough for him.

He pulled a piece of paper from his printer and took a gulp of his whiskey. Then he wrote.