Unrequited (Chosen #3) (9 page)

SIXTEEN - NICK

I awoke to the sound of dishes clamoring. Was that bacon I smelled? I covered my head with my pillow to block out the noise and the smell. Both were making my hangover even worse. I wanted to hurl. I wanted a new head. I wanted Lizzie. I pulled her pillow towards me and inhaled deeply. Then it hit me. Sam made Lizzie leave. I scrambled out of the bed, ignoring the throbbing pain to the left side of my head and swung my door open. Sam was sitting on the couch sans smile. She looked numb, just like I remembered her after Conner died.

“I thought my making breakfast would wake you up,” she stated.

“
You
made her leave?” I questioned, holding back my anger for fear I would cause my hangover to take over completely.

She nodded her head and motioned for me to sit down on the chair opposite her. I followed her lead and slowly settled into the chair. I didn’t understand anything. She clasped her hands together and a resigned look came over her face.

“The night that Conner died, I told him I was pregnant. He was excited,” she smiled as she paused, recalling that memory. “I wasn’t as excited. I was scared. I mean, really fucking petrified. My father has always wanted me to marry the great and wealthy Nicholas Sawyer.” She raised her hands like she is preaching to the heavens. I rolled my eyes.

“Sam, you know the whole childhood romance facade our parents set up was bull shit. Everyone does that when they have kids the same age. My parents got over that when I was a teenager. They knew we were just friends. There was never anything romantic between us,” I stated firmly. “I mean, Lizzie thinks that Niall is going to marry a girl from his playgroup. It’s ridiculous. We live in the twenty first century. We marry people we are in love with, no matter their backgrounds or their current social status. At least I would have.” I looked out the window and saw the rain pouring down. Would Lizzie ever come home again?

“Yeah, well, Daddy didn’t get that memo. He sent me here when he realized your philandering was coming to an end. He basically had a coronary when he found out you were engaged to Lizzie,” she continued. Sam blew out a deep breath and closed her eyes. She was clearly distraught about talking about Conner. She still loved him. She wasn’t over his death.

“But anyway, I couldn’t have a baby with Conner. I would have been disowned by my family, Nick. He proposed to me that very night. He said he would take care of me and when I told him about Daddy’s plan, he yelled at me to pull the car over. He was so upset. He was crying and yelling and Jeremy was basically telling him to chill but he was so drunk. I don’t think he even knew what we were arguing about. He knew you were in love with Lizzie and well, he was madly in love with me. But I couldn’t choose him and I started to cry right along with him. When I wouldn’t pull the car over, he grabbed the steering wheel. I tried to correct the wheel but I swung it back too hard and that’s when we went over the
median.” I tear fell over her cheek and she continue to twist her hands.

I looked at her stunned. “The baby?”

She shook her head. “I lost the baby that night. I wasn’t far along so it wasn’t very painful, but it was heart wrenching. I would do anything to be carrying Conner’s baby right now.”

“So, you will continue to live your life based on what your father tells you to do. You will sacrifice the lives of people for one man’s wishes? How pathetic is that? When did you become a dog that waits for their next command?”

She shrugged. “I have always been his pawn. I don’t know what he would do to me if I went against his wishes but he was not very happy when I didn’t secure your love last time I was here.” She looked down at the floor like she was ashamed.

“He wants you to move back to Texas and he wants you to invest in a software company. If I don’t get you to marry me, then I will be an outcast. He has told me from a young age that you are to be my husband. When he sent me here, I had to make Lizzie leave. So I did. Except last night, when you kissed me and you called out Lizzie’s name, it was horrible. I don’t ever want your hands on me again. I want Conner back. I want to take everything back,” she whimpered. “But I can’t. So I needed to tell you the truth.” The words rushed out of her mouth but it took me a long time to process what she said. I sat back in the chair and stared at her for a long time. “I kissed you?” I asked horrified. She nodded. “Oh fuck,” I
muttered as I put my head into my hands. She started to cry. I didn’t care. She started to sob. Good, let her.

“I don’t know how to tell you how sorry I am,” she cried.

“How? How did you make her leave?” I asked angrily.

“I told her that losing her job the way she did would cause your career to deteriorate. I told her that she wasn’t wife material to a successful man like you. I told her that having a baby out of wedlock was a disgrace to your mother.”

“What about my mother?” I screamed.

My voice was loud but it felt so good to let it out. “My mother already loved Niall. She adores him. She is going to be fucking devastated when she finds out that they left me. I feel so ashamed, I haven’t even called them. Do you know what that fucking feels like?”

“Well, Lizzie was pretty devastated, too. She packed right away. She doesn’t feel comfortable about the money, does she?” she asked. “I could tell she wasn’t with you for the money. She probably hates this lifestyle. She feels like she doesn’t belong so all it took was one person to tell her what she was already thinking and she ran.” Her sympathetic smile made me want to puke.

“She never even knew about my money until the night of Conner’s funeral,” I defended. “She wouldn’t even use the credit card I got for her until…until she bought the dress for the party.” I got up and went to our bedroom. I threw open the closet and immediately tore the garment bag from the rack. I
very gently unzipped it and gasped. It was so fucking beautiful.

It was a dark green evening dress with black stitching that was… Oh my god, the stitching was made to look like butterflies. I hugged the dress and tears welled up in my eyes again. I had never cried this much in my entire life. She wanted to be my Butterfly Girl that night. Didn’t she know she was my Butterfly Girl every night?

“You need to get the fuck out
now
,” I said loud enough for Sam to hear me. I heard rustling and I could hear her sniffling. When the elevator doors finally closed, I lay back down on my bed with the dress beside me. My brain is on fire with thoughts. They burned and crackled. I tried to compartmentalize the info I just received.

As I started to understand what happened, my heart began to harden. I made Lizzie move into my world. I pushed her away. We were so happy in
her
apartment but here, we haven’t been the same couple. She wasn’t comfortable and of course she gave up when Sam pointed that out to her. Lizzie was so used to being left behind that she will never trust any man. That shit is going to change now. I needed to make a list of all of her wonderful attributes. She had to see that I needed her in my life just as much as she needed me.

I placed the dress back in the closet. I put the photos of us back on the shelves. I took a long shower, shaved and dressed up a bit in a dark v neck sweater and gray pants. I looked outside at the sunny day while I drank a cup of coffee fresh from our maker. Lizzie used to make the coffee every morning. She was so considerate. I pulled a piece of paper out
of a drawer and wrote “considerate” down. I stuffed it in my pocket and looked in our address book for the addresses I needed. This hangover was going to make it a long ass day but shit needed to get done so I could get my girl back.

I grabbed my sunglasses now that the rain was gone and the sun was shining. I grabbed a to-go coffee cup and headed out into a beautiful Boston day. Today I would drive the Benz. Today I would get a little closer to bringing my family home forever.

An hour later, I stood facing a gravestone in Newton. 

“Hey man. I haven’t been here in a while. I am so sorry.” I placed the flowers down on Conner’s gravestone and sat down. Lizzie always left flowers but they have long since been picked up by the groundkeeper. They did a good job here, I thought. Graveyards were always so quiet. Mitch was the only other gravestone I had ever visited but I was drunk and I yelled at him for hours. I woke up lying next to his stone that next morning.

“Did Lizzie come to see you before she left town? I guess she needed some space. God, Conner, I love your sister. I love your nephew. This whole thing is just messed up. I can’t believe what happened to you and Sam and your baby. I know if you were still here with us, you two would be together even still. That breaks my heart because I could see it in her eyes how much she loves you.”

I put my fingers over Conner’s name and traced the letters with my finger as I pictured him on stage singing for Sam and
Sam alone. I saw the way they looked at each other. They were in love like Lizzie and I are in love.

“You know, someone has to have their happily ever after. I know, in my heart, that if anyone deserves it the most, it should be Lizzie. She is worthy of a happy ending, brother.” I put my head down between my crossed legs and closed my eyes.

“I am sure she misses you,” an older female voice said from behind me. I turned around to see Lizzie’s mother. I jumped up and enveloped her into a hug. She felt so small and weak. Frail.

“Mrs. O’Malley! It is so wonderful to see you,” I said into her ear.

She nodded her head. She took a step back and carefully turned to look at Conner’s gravestone.

“I don’t come out here often enough. I feel like he isn’t here,” she said numbly.

I turned my head slowly to look at her and then back to look at the grave alongside her.

“There is so much I want to know,” she said. “I need to finally know what happened that night. Lizzie said she has no idea.”

I closed my eyes and wished I were anywhere else but here. Damn it, out of all the places and people to run into, it had to be Mrs. O’Malley. How could I lie to her knowing what I know?

She must have noticed that I clammed up. Maybe my silence gave it away.

“Do you know what happened, Nicholas?” she asked with tears in her eyes.

I slowly nodded. “Mrs. O’Malley,” I whispered. “I can’t tell you the story. It isn’t mine to tell.”

We both didn’t speak for a few minutes. I turned to her and saw a hollow woman. She couldn’t move on. She was dead inside.

“I promise that you will know. I will try to bring you the person that can tell you the story about that night. You just have to be patient,” I said.

Her eyes looked up to me and something sparkled in them. There was a flash of promise and then she said, “Lizzie misses you. She told me on the phone yesterday. Before you ask, she still won’t tell us where she is, but that girl can find her way anywhere but she always comes home to the ones she loves.”

“Will she come home soon?” I practically begged.

“Soon,” she firmly answered. She faintly smiled and took my hand. We let the wind blow through our hair and the sun shone down on our faces for over an hour. It was the first time I felt content in a week. It was the first time I felt loved since Lizzie left.

SEVENTEEN
- SAM

I sat down on my hotel bed and stared at the abstract piece of art on the wall. God, it was ugly. Why would anyone buy that? I looked around at the spacious suite and thought about how incredibly suffocating this room was. It smelled like funk. It smelled like disaster. It reeked of failure. I needed to find another place to stay tonight. I needed to call my father and tell him that Nick would never marry me. I needed to find out how to secretly transfer money into a different account so I can live financially while my father seethed and then eventually disowned me. I lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. I couldn’t move. I just lost the last few pieces of my dignity, the purpose in my life. There was nothing left for me. I couldn’t feel any lower than I do now.

The phone rang. I knew it was Daddy. I will never answer that phone again. I needed to find another place to stay. I needed to fall off the face of the earth. The phone stopped. Silence. Then the phone rang in two short shrills. Why would the front desk be calling? I leaned over and grabbed the receiver. “Yes?” I shouted.

“Sam, it’s me. Let me come up,” Nick said. He didn’t sound mad.
Why was he even here?

“Ok,” I answered with a questioning tone. I heard him click off and I looked at the phone in disgust.

I stayed on the bed until a few quiet knocks on the door made me sluggishly get up and answer. I pulled open the door and went back to my spot on the bed. As I looked up at the ceiling again, I heard Nick sigh as he sat in the chair next to the bed.

“This is a nice room,” he said.

“Yeah, it’s fucking awesome,” I smirked. “Why are you here, Nick? I think you said everything you had to say just by asking me to leave.”

“I am mad at you, Sam but I think that you were a victim of many things. I can’t comprehend everything that was done quite yet but I realize things are different. I honestly don’t think you are a terrible person at the core. I believe you have been manipulated and groomed into being someone you really are not. I will eventually forgive you for what you did to Lizzie and my relationship.” He sat back in the chair and stared at me. “Just not quite yet.”

“You shouldn’t forgive me for any of it. I ended Conner’s life. I ended our baby’s life. I made Lizzie go away,” I demanded. “I could go on because there are a lot more things I have fucked up.”

He shook his head. “You didn’t make anyone
do
anything. You were following your father’s instructions and Conner didn’t
have
to pull on the wheel that night. Lizzie didn’t
have
to leave. In fact, she shouldn’t have left. She could have come to talk with me about what you said but she just gave up,” Nick sighed.

“People can persuade others to do what they want them to do but ultimately, it is up to the person to decide. Yeah, maybe a gun to the head would make someone do something desperate but even then, it’s the person with the gun to their
head that makes the final decision. Give up or fight. Lizzie didn’t fight for me.”

“I didn’t give her a chance to fight, Nick. I mean, she might have had a few good points but she was tired. Are you really upset about that?” I asked wearily.

“Yeah, a little. More than that, I think she and I need to get on the same page in life. There are a lot of issues in our lives that are still unresolved. First, I need to find the little brat,” he smirked.

I laughed. “You call her a brat to her face?” Nick’s face lit up instantly and he laughed. I was mesmerized by his expression. Conner used to look that way when I walked into a room. Nick was so beautiful, even though we had no chemistry. He made any old shirt look sexy, just like Conner had. If Nick wasn’t so financially successful, he could sell his beautiful face as a second career.  Photographers would eat him up. Women all around the world would fawn at how beautiful his eyes, his hair, and that perfect body are.

When Nick smiled, it still made me feel special. He was just that good looking. I am sure Lizzie missed his body alone. She had to. I thought about how long she would last being away from him. It had already been over a week and still she was standing her ground. She really was an obstinate ginger.

“Oh, we are much worse. She and I are ridiculously juvenile with each other. I have never had more fun with anyone in my life. She is something else. She is a smart ass and I love it. I love her for making light out of serious
situations. Our method of communication is picking on each other instead of arguing. Sometimes laughter is better than yelling. We seem to get more accomplished through innuendos than straight out hollering.” Nick put his hand on the back of his neck and shrugged.

“But I guess that wasn’t enough communication. Maybe we should have taken our life together
more
seriously. That’s not to say that if I saw Lizzie right now I wouldn’t strangle her. She probably would let me, too.” He laughed. “And then she’d make me change Niall’s shitty diapers for a week.”

“Gross,” I gagged.

“Yeah, but it’s awesome. He is amazing.” He smiled to himself and laughed, like he was remembering something about Niall. “I miss him.”

“I am glad you found the one, Nick,” I whispered. “I shouldn’t have come back to Boston. I hope I didn’t destroy your relationship. I really do wish for you both to be happy. My father is…well he is a pompous asshole that I really don’t care to ever see again. I don’t even want to tell him that I am not going to pursue a marriage to you anymore. He will disown me.”

“Yes, he is a manipulative bastard but you need to be here now more than ever. I came here to see you today because I need you to grow a real spine and help me with Lizzie’s family. I saw her mom a little while ago and she is ready to hear the story of the night Conner died. She
needs
to hear it.” He pointedly looked into my eyes. He was serious.

My heart started to race and I couldn’t take deep breaths anymore. I sat up and clutched my chest. My head became foggy and I thought that I was going to collapse and die right now. Nick was next to me in seconds.

“Put your head between your legs and try to breathe deep,” he said, rubbing my back slow and precise. I did. When I started to breathe deeper, I slowly sat up.

“I can’t, Nick. I can’t tell them. They will know that he was going to be a father,” I cried.

His lip turned up in a sympathetic smile and sat quietly. He couldn’t make me do it. He knew that. He wasn’t here to talk me into doing it. He was hoping I would make the choice to.

“I will give you some time to think about it,” he said. “In the meantime, there are a few other things I need to do. I need to either help Lizzie get accustomed to our lifestyle or I have to adjust to hers. What should I do?”

He was asking me for relationship advice after everything I did? This was so bizarre but I wanted to help. I was starting to feel better. Maybe I
was
back here for a reason.

“I don’t know. She is very artsy, right? She loves music. Conner always talked about getting a large house in Cambridge. He said he and Lizzie talked about colorful houses to live in, near the main strip with all of the music bars.” I shrugged. “Maybe you should buy something real nice over there. Best of both worlds, you know?”

“Oh my god! That is brilliant! Yes!” Nick’s whole face brightened up and he stood up to pace. I could tell he was already making a list in his head. I giggled at his excitement. I realized I hadn’t giggled in months and damn, it felt amazing.

He sat back down and took my hand into his. My eyes started to water as I felt his compassionate touch.

“I will make you a deal.” He looked serious and determined.

I nodded. “I will explain that there will never be anything between us to your father if you give Conner’s mother one hour.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. It would be amazing and satisfying if Nick told my father off so I didn’t have to. My part of the deal? That was intimidating as hell.

“The offer is on the table,” he said. He pulled his hand away and got up.

He kissed me on the cheek and left the hotel room. I was left with a decision that would change people’s lives forever. Could I be that person again? At least this time, I would be honest.