It’s been two days since I’ve slept.
Forty-eight hours.
“It doesn’t change how I feel about you though.”
“And it changes everything about how I feel about you.”
She used me. She fucking used me.
Scarlet. The girl I thought was in it for me used me because she thought, what, that she could get back at me for not remembering?
Do you see that guy? The one with the bloodshot eyes and his heart pounding in his chest. Look closer. He’s losing his fucking mind because why’d he let himself believe a woman could be honest with him?
Did you see it coming?
Why didn’t you warn me?
Why didn’t Willa?
Well, because she had been in on it. Hell, she was the mastermind behind the whole thing.
I’d been at the house for the last two days going back and forth between fits of rage and moments of self-pity. Finally, I realize I need an explanation, and there is only one person I want it from. Willa.
I need answers, and I’m not going to ask Scarlet. While I’m not happy about Scarlet keeping it from me, in many ways, she played a part she was hired to do. My real problem lies with Willa.
After banging on the door for what seems like hours but is probably only a couple of minutes, Willa throws open the door with a look of pure anger on her face and a crying baby against her shoulder.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
A small surge of guilt rushes through me. Lost in my need to get answers, I forgot that the baby was probably sleeping. My eyes widen. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
Willa rolls her eyes patting Berlin’s back tenderly. It does nothing to calm the baby. Only makes her cry even louder. “Obviously.”
She turns, leaving the door open which I take as an invitation to come in. Walking into the living room, Willa sits on the edge of the couch, slowly rocking Berlin while humming in her ear trying to calm her cries all the while still giving me the coldest “eat shit and die” stare you can imagine.
“I really am sorry. I should have considered the baby might be sleeping.” But she should have considered my feelings before she hired Scarlet to tease the crap out of me, shouldn’t she?
Agree with me here, even if you don’t.
Willa sighs and I can see the exhaustion on her face. Usually always made up and ready to go, I notice that she has dark circles under her eyes, her hair in a ponytail and it looks like it’s been there for a while.
“What do you want that was so important you had to piss off my daughter?”
And then I remember why I came barreling into her condo in the first place.
“Why did you do it?”
Do you see the way she looks at me with complete confusion? Now watch as the realization hits her. It’s as if her memory finally kicks in and she knows exactly what I’m talking about. That’s when Willa, the professional public relations representative begins to surface. She straightens her stance and squares her shoulders ready for a fight. “I did it because it’s what you needed me to do.” There’s certainty in her voice, leaving no room for doubt. “And take off your damn sunglasses. I can’t see your face.”
But I have doubt. It’s all I have lately. What I needed her to do? What the fuck is she talking about?
“Are you sure you want to see my face at the moment?” I stare at her, shaking my head slowly and lift my sunglasses to hold them in my hand, trying to keep my voice down for the baby nearly asleep. “Has motherhood fried your brain or something? How can you sit there and tell me you paid Scarlet to lie to me because it’s what I needed you to do?”
Willa sweeps Berlin’s hair to the side, her lips touching her daughter’s forehead as she speaks softly. “Shade. . . you needed her in your life. I knew when I met her, I just knew, you needed her. But not as a one-night stand. Not some pro ho who you used for a night and then threw back into the crowd. No, you needed her to be a friend. Someone who could help lead you out of the darkness Rhya’s death threw you into.”
Okay, I do see her point. A little bit.
“But it was all a lie,” I tell her, looking at her as if she’s lost her mind. “She wasn’t my friend. Not like I thought. I liked her Willa. A lot.” I shake my head, feeling completely defeated. “And now I feel like all of it was a big joke and I was the punch line.”
“It’s not like that and you know it. Scarlet never lied to you.”
“Keeping something this big from me is the same damn thing and you know it. Don’t try and twist it any other way.”
Willa’s eyes soften and she frowns. “No, it’s not, Shade. She didn’t tell you because it was irrelevant. What good would it have done? You didn’t even remember her. How do you think that made her feel?”
I sit there for a minute, processing what she’s just told me before looking away.
Truth is, I haven’t thought about how Scarlet felt since I heard the words “obsessed with him” come out of Tom’s mouth. I didn’t want to believe she was another fanatical fan because, for the first time in a long time, it was nice to have a friend, not some chick just trying to get close to me. The way I saw it, when I met Scarlet, she was someone Willa hired to do a job, not an obsessed fan who snuck into my hotel room with the sole purpose of fucking me.
I guess I was more hurt than anything because I didn’t see it. I wanted so badly for Scarlet to be different. I wanted her to be the girl I fell for. The wild-haired blond who put me in my fucking place every time she opened her mouth, not a pro ho who only wanted the image she’d created of me.
That girl, that Scarlet who led me to believe she couldn’t care less about who I was on my bike and was more focused on the guy who was hiding behind the different shades of his lifestyle.
Fuck. How could I have been so stupid?
Who am I kidding? Truth is, I know exactly how I could’ve been so stupid. If I’m totally honest, I’ve only ever had one person in my life I thought I loved. I’m not talking about the love you have for your family. No, I’m talking about the kind of love you carry with you even though you know it’s slowly killing you. The kind of relationship where you would drop everything for that person knowing that it was only going to lead to more heartache
I’ve never known love in the sense of a healthy relationship.
I know destruction and impurity. I knew the kind that ate you whole and then spit you out into the depths of darkness but left you strangely hungry for more.
But then Scarlet happened. Or at least I thought she happened. Did I love her? I don’t know, but I sure as hell thought I fucking wanted to find out.
Willa sits there for over an hour talking with me, sometimes I’m listening and sometimes I’m lost in my own mind scrolling through the feelings of hurt and betrayal.
Eventually Willa sets the baby down and sits on the coffee table in front of me, attempting to make me look at her. “Shade. . . honey, listen to me.” When I refuse to make eye contact with her, she takes my face in her hands and forces me to like she did when I was a smart-mouthed kid pitching her shit about not wanting to do my homework on the road. “Do you think it was my dream to become yours and your brother’s personal assistant and PR rep?”
I shrug and hang my head. “I don’t know.”
“It wasn’t,” she admits. “I was originally hired by your grandfather to help Ricky. After your dad died, Ricky was stuck with three very high-strung and devastated little boys. All of which were under ten years old. Ricky was twenty-three years old, at the height of his Supercross career, and then suddenly he had three kids to take care of. He thought he would have to give up everything he had worked for to give you boys the life he knew Dawson would have wanted you to have. But me, I was placed in his life as kind of a life preserver. It was my job to make sure Ricky knew he could still have a career and be a guardian to you boys. Was this the job I always dreamed of when I graduated college? No, it wasn’t. I didn’t even like Ricky in the beginning. I knew that Supercross star I saw at the events and on TV but I didn’t know Ricky Sawyer, the scared kid behind the cocky attitude and good looks. The one trying to raise his older brother’s kids because he couldn’t stand to see them go to foster care.”
I didn’t know any of this. I was four when my dad died, and while I knew Ricky eventually decided to retire once my brothers and I started to gain attention in our careers, I didn’t know Willa was a part of it back then.
“Do you know why I decided to take your grandfather up on the offer? Because it sure as hell wasn’t because I was excited to help raise you boys.”
“No,” I admit, watching the tears slip past her cheeks. She cries so easily these days. Baby hormones I’m sure. “I did it because I was that girl. The one on the sideline cheering for Ricky when he was a star. I grew up in the world of dirt bikes.” I knew that. Willa’s dad raced flat track, which eventually led him to being a sports announcer. That’s how she got into the sport. “I was in love with the image of him and thought, hell, I’d love to be the one to help this guy realize he could have it all. To help him find his way back to being a star. What I didn’t know was he’d become my life and those boys, that I’d love them like my own kids and do anything for them, even if it meant lying to them when they’d lost their way.”
Do you see my face? I feel bad. She really was looking out for me, wasn’t she?
“I did this to save you, Shade. The path you were on, it was taking you to a really dark place, and every day I was scared that this might be the day you couldn’t come back from.”
Her voice is shaky, and I look at her and see fear and worry in her eyes. After Rhya died, I lost myself in guilt, hate and hurt. I never gave a second thought to how the people around me felt or what it was doing to them. Looking at Willa now, I see that my reactions back then were not only destroying me but those who cared for me as well.
Willa had been in our lives for so long I never gave much thought to how she got there. But now, thinking back on it, there are very few memories I have without her in them. We were her life. There were no other clients, no other jobs. Just us. It had always been us. A family brought together by the death of our father.
“Okay, I get what you’re saying. And I’m sorry,” I tell her softly, hanging my head. “I really am. Nothing I did was ever meant to hurt you, but that doesn’t justify you continuing to lie to me. Once I got my shit back together, you should have come clean to me.”
Willa laughs. Actually laughs. “And say what? Oh, hey Shade, by the way, the girl I hired to work with you, yeah well, you fucked her once when you were so drunk you didn’t even remember.” She moves from her place on the coffee table, back to the couch and picks up a sleeping Berlin to place her in her crib next to the chair in the living room. “I mean seriously, what did you want me to say?”
I don’t reply because I don’t know what I would have wanted to hear.
“I hired Scarlet to do a job,” she goes onto say, standing with her arms crossed over her chest. “But I asked her as someone who loved you not to cross the line. I knew if she could just be friends with you, she would be what led you back to us. And I was right, Shade. After she started working with you, it was like a light had been turned back on inside you. Slowly you came back to us, and because of that, I don’t regret a damn thing. So you can sit there and be pissed with me all day long, but the truth is I will never apologize for doing anything and everything to save someone I love.”
Again, I’ve got nothing.
But then she lays into me again. “And as for Scarlet, you’ve got no right to be angry with her. Yeah, she was a fan, and yeah, she fucked you in a hotel room one night, but she never did anything to lead you to believe she wasn’t truly genuine in her friendship and her concern for you since she walked through your front door all those months ago. She never betrayed you Shade. She saved you.”
Willa motions down the hall. “Now if you’ll excuse me, my kid is finally sleeping. I’m going to shower. Do not slam the door on your way out. You wake this baby again and I will rip off your dick and shove it down your throat.”
Fuck, motherhood has changed her a bit.