Chapter 20

Becka

The next day, I woke up with the world’s worst hangover. I couldn’t believe it; it was so much worse than it had been the first night. I also felt empty. I missed Oliver, and there was no trying to hide it anymore. Seeing Lisa and Dex together had only reminded me more of Oliver and how much I wanted to be with him. The whole weekend had done that, actually.

I sat up, my head in my hands, and reached for my phone. With my hand shaking, I turned it on. I let it ping for a good minute with the missed calls and texts, then I dialed Oliver.

“Hello?” a voice said. It took me a moment to recognize the familiar voice that was not Oliver’s.

“Ethan?” I asked, confused. My head was throbbing. “Where’s Oliver? Did I… did I call him?” I looked at my phone screen; Oliver’s picture was there. I had definitely called the right man.

“Oh, he’s right here,” Ethan said. “Where are you? You sound terrible.” His voice was mild, unconcerned.

“Why are you there? Where is Oliver?” I demanded, my voice getting stronger.

“I said he’s right here,” Ethan repeated. “As for what I’m doing here, well…” he paused. “If you want to know, you should come over.”

“I’m out of town,” I mumbled. “How about if you stop being an asshole and tell me?”

“Now Becka, there’s no need for that kind of language. There’s some stuff going down here, and if you’re curious about it, I suggest you get over here. Simple and easy.” And, he hung up.

I stared at my phone for a moment, shocked. What on earth was going on at Oliver’s house? I couldn’t imagine; I could barely think at all. But, I knew that I needed to get over there, and I needed to do it right now. The threat of the investigation suddenly exploded in my mind and I had a vision of Ethan standing in Oliver’s house with the police behind him, waiting to arrest Oliver.

“Lisa!” I yelled. “Lisa! We have to go back home right now!”

Becka

Ethan’s words echoed in my mind as I threw my clothes back in my bag, forgetting about the bar, forgetting about the guys Lisa and I had been connecting with. The only thing on my mind was Oliver and the sound of Ethan’s voice. There’s some stuff going down here, and if you’re curious about it, I suggest you get over here. Simple and easy.

That’s what he’d said. I could hear his words with the rhythm of the pounding of my head. I had the worst hangover, and I was hoping against hope that Lisa didn’t, because one of us needed to drive back home. I thought if I ended up driving I might get sick.

“Lisa!” I called. “Are you ready to go?” I could hear her banging around in the kitchen, tossing the remaining bottles of wine and booze into the bags we’d brought, along with the food we hadn’t yet eaten.

She was, and we loaded up the car, got in, and drove out of town. I had to give Lisa credit as a friend; she hadn’t asked a single question about what was going on when I’d told her we needed to leave immediately. She’d nodded and said that she would pack up the groceries and her bag, and I just needed to focus on packing my bag.

“I’ve got everything else,” she’d assured me.

As we drove, Lisa at the wheel and me in the passenger seat, my head was spinning. I really hadn’t talked to Oliver since we’d made love on his desk after his fight with Ethan. Nothing substantial. I felt guilt move through me with the memory of how I’d tried to avoid him by turning off my phone and not telling him goodbye. What if something had happened?

“Do you think I should call the police?” I asked Lisa suddenly.

She glanced at me. “You haven’t told me a ton about what’s going on,” she said carefully. “Which is fine, I’m not asking you to. But, I think that’s a better question for you to ask yourself. Do you think you should call the police?”

I did. I knew that I would feel better if there was a cop on his way to Oliver’s house while Lisa and I made our way back to town. But, I took a deep breath as a warning jab of anxiety pressed through my ribs. The investigation. If Oliver and I were being investigated for anything, calling the police would lead them right to his door and give them all of the probable cause, motive, whatever it was they needed, to break into his house.

What if they were able to arrest him based on what they found? Then it would be my fault that he went to jail, and he’d never forgive me. I’d never forgive myself.

“No,” I said miserably. My voice, even to me, said that I was lying. “I think we just better get there as fast as we can.”

“I’m going about as fast as this car will go,” Lisa said, her voice calm as she tried to reassure me. “But, we’re in a little bit of a jam because we’re almost out of gas. Did you see the last sign? Is there a town coming up?”

I hadn’t seen the last sign, but I shook my head and put my head in my hands. “No, no, no,” I said. “We’re in that stretch of, like, sixty miles where there’s no town, no rest area, no nothing. We cannot run out of gas right now!” I scolded myself yet again for thinking of my packing and not that we needed to have a full tank of gas before we left Rockell.

“Unless we get to a station in the next twenty miles or so, we will,” Lisa said. “We’re in the red. Once we get to the red, I think I have twenty-five miles before I’m on fumes.” She let off the gas. “I’ll try to conserve as much as I can.”

“Do you have AAA?” I asked hopefully.

“I let it lapse,” she said, rolling her eyes. “But, we can call my insurance if we do run out, not that we for sure will. I think I have a clause in there or something that says that they’ll come get me if I’m stranded in the middle of nowhere.”

We continued to drive. I looked at my phone and willed Oliver to text me to let me know he was okay. I tried to calm myself down. Ethan was Oliver’s brother; he wasn’t going to do anything to harm him.

Ethan needed Oliver, and Oliver needed Ethan. They had existed for years that way, in a weird parasitic relationship where they both required energy from the other. Not to mention, Ethan could be a real jerk sometimes, but he wasn’t physical. The fight he and Oliver had had in Oliver’s office was mutual combat, and neither had done any significant damage to the other.

Still.

When the car began to sputter and jerk, I closed my eyes. This could not be happening. Lisa slowly guided the car to the side of the road and cruised on our speed alone to a stop on the shoulder.

“Well, shit,” she said, her hands still gripping the wheel at ten and two.

“Call your insurance,” I demanded, taking her phone out of the central console and handing it to her. She clicked her password in and looked at me, her eyes wide.

“Do you have bars?” she asked, holding up her phone. “I don’t have any bars here.” I looked at her phone and, sure enough, she was out of range. I looked at the phone in my hands, hesitating to even click it out of sleep. I did it without looking and, wincing, I looked down.

I heard my exhale and it sounded exactly like it felt; endlessly deflating. I didn’t have any bars. I couldn’t have called the police, Oliver, or even Ethan if I’d wanted to. We were stranded.

Ethan

I hung up the phone with Becka and sat at Oliver’s kitchen table, a bottle of wine open in front of me. The same bottle of wine, in fact, that I had shared once upon a time with Becka. Her voice had sounded so sweet on the phone, so concerned. Did I feel badly about worrying her? Luring her back to Oliver’s house? A little. But, she wasn’t answering my calls, emails, or texts. It pained me to admit it, but the only way to get her to respond was to bring Oliver into it.

I thought about how beautiful she was; her jet black hair that seemed unnatural against her brown eyes, yet there’s no way it wasn’t her natural color. It was a little shorter than what I liked, but she made it work; she had a way of making it look both professional and tousled as if she’d just gotten out of bed at the same time. Her curves, her body, sexy and full… I had wanted to kiss her so many times, but we were always getting interrupted.

I cursed Oliver for all of the things he had told Becka about me, all of the ways he had tried to turn her against me. She was such an unexpected part of this entire process. I thought back to the first night I’d gone to sit in on her class at the college. I knew her name, of course, but I hadn’t seen her.

For some reason, I had in my mind a much older woman, someone in her fifties or even sixties, stodgy, with no sex appeal at all. A true stereotype of a scientist. But when I saw Becka, and, more importantly, when I saw her look at me, the connection we had, it had changed my game plan completely.

I took another sip of wine and glanced at my watch. It had been about twenty minutes since we’d gotten off the phone. I knew she was hours away, but I also knew she’d rush to get here, worried about her precious Oliver. I winced as a streak of jealousy shot through me like heartburn. I knew I had some work I could do while I waited.

I strolled around Oliver’s house and felt, for a moment, regret over what could have been. Brothers can have a very close, unique relationship. Unfortunately, both Oliver and I chose paths that necessitated a lot of independence and, at times, had required us to sever ties with the other.

We’d never talked about it, of course, but it was ironic to me now that, after everything we had been through, the future for both of us rested on a woman. A woman that we were both drawn to, and who was attracted to both of us.

I walked back into the kitchen and made myself a sandwich, then headed to the pool in the back yard. I ate my sandwich, and then I cranked up the hot tub and stripped down to my shorts, easing myself into the warm, bubbling water. I sighed as the water began to work at my muscles.

I had been spending extra time at the gym the last few weeks, partly to keep my mind occupied, and partially to keep myself in shape. If Oliver was going to attack me again like he had in his office, I realized bitterly, I’d need to be able to defend myself.

I stretched out and sighed again, making a mental list of things to do in my head. Becka was at the top of that list. I thought about the layout of Oliver’s house and I entertained the fantasy of taking Becka in every room. Feeling her soft lips against mine, then feeling those sweet lips move down my body, Her fingers on my flesh, my hands cupping her breasts, her ass…

My phone rang; it was one of my business partners updating me on the police investigation into Neurotova. I looked around, realizing that it was entirely possible that Oliver’s place had cameras or microphones. It would be just like him to do that.

“I can’t talk now,” I said as I answered. I listened to my partner’s concerns, all of which were relating to the investigation and aspects that were arising that we hadn’t considered. The media involvement had happened faster than we’d anticipated; that’s the internet at work, my partner had said.

I had also needed to deal with some ramifications from my fight with Oliver. I had known in the moment that it would cost me to lose control like that, but the heat of the moment got to me. His righteous attitude, his cockiness, it was all just so Oliver I couldn’t take it anymore.

But, I’d reminded myself later, short term satisfaction often costs more in the long term. “Just handle it,” I said quietly into the phone after he went through a laundry list of things that needed to be done as soon as possible. “I trust that you’ll get things done to meet the goal that we all have. We know the destination and we’ve laid out the map.”

I reminded him that I was going to be busy for the next several hours, possibly, if I had my way, even into the next day, and that I was not to be disturbed under any circumstances. “If there’s an emergency, handle it,” I said firmly, and I turned off my phone.

I leaned back in Oliver’s hot tub and put my feet up on the bench across from mine. Oliver’s house wasn’t bad, I thought as I looked around. His pool was a good size, and the hot tub and sauna were incredibly state of the art. After I felt myself beginning to sweat, I got out of the hot tub and jumped into the cold water of the pool.

The water shocked my system, a sensation I loved, and I felt my breath spasm in my lungs. I got out of the pool and wrapped a towel around my waist, then I headed back into the house and upstairs to one of the bedrooms. I had some clothes in here somewhere, I knew; even if I didn’t, Oliver and I were close enough in size that I could pick out something of his.

I walked by the bedroom that was the stage for my night with Becka, checking it over again. Candles, roses, lingerie. We would talk during the evening, of course. Mental foreplay. We’d drink wine, she’d drink too much, and we would talk about the attraction that we have to one another.

I smiled as I saw the entire scene play out perfectly in my mind. Though I’d spent the greater portion of my adult life getting things that I wanted, Becka was something truly unique. A beautiful, intelligent woman… and she was just as drawn to me as I was to her. It was perfect.