CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
PAIGE
I rarely got drunk. I didn’t enjoy the out of control feeling alcohol sent through my system. I wasn’t a giggler by nature or someone who could toss inhibitions to the floor and dance on the tabletops or jump on stage and belt out a karaoke tune.
The fact I’d used alcohol to wash away my fears last night wasn’t the worse thing I could do, but I still felt guilt on top of fear on top of an unceasing pounding inside my skull while I climbed into the shower.
I dropped my head in the shower spray, the water pounded against my neck and down my back. I closed my eyes against the onslaught of watery needles sluicing down my sensitive skin.
Last night’s memories flickered through my brain like a slideshow. That horrible moment when you try to piece together missing bits of information, jamming wrong puzzle pieces into leftover holes.
Drinking wine with Melanie in my room.
Pulled downstairs when pizza that Mike ordered was delivered.
Waiting on pins and needles for Beaux to return so we could talk.
Melanie’s ridiculous idea of playing the card game Bullshit. Jaxon’s glare as we shoved him into a chair.
Laughing. The constant, crazy cackling as Melanie and I wiped the floor with Mike and my dad, and then later Beaux. Although as I replayed the memories, the looks Beaux and my dad gave each other, I pounded the shower wall with my fist.
Those freaking men didn’t lose to us.
They threw the game to us, something I most likely would have noticed if I hadn’t been seeing three of Beaux by the time the game ended.
“That little turd,” I muttered and turned my back to the shower. Squeezing the shampoo into my hand, I worked up a lather and went at my hair, scrubbing my scalp and rubbing my temples as the memories continued.
Beaux carrying me upstairs.
Puking.
Good Lord the amount of liquid I expelled into the toilet was obscene.
A warm washcloth on my forehead and my neck. Water.
More puking. And through all of it, Beaux was there, my silent protector and supporter and encourager and comforter.
I finished my hair, washed my body, and picked up a razor, the memories dimming, but still coming.
Helping me brush my teeth, leaving me alone, stripping out of my clothes like a newly born giraffe, all long-leg and wobbly as I stumbled to the bed and then in it.
“Oh shit!” I cried out as I cut my knee. Blood rivulets formed immediately. I stared at it, blinked away the last memory of the night.
“I didn’t,” I whispered the phrase repeatedly, watching my knee bleed from a poor shave and set down the razor.
I didn’t need a razor.
I needed a time machine.
“I did,” I whispered. I swayed in the shower, threw out a hand to the wall to stop me from falling and closed my eyes.
“Go to bed drunk girl. I got you.”
I curled into him, inhaled his cologne. God, how did he smell so good, cuddle me so hard when I probably reeked of vomit.
“Beaux—”
“We’ll talk in the morning.”
“K.” I yawned, shoved my body to his, aligning us from shoulder to hip and threw a leg over his. “I love you.”
“Ah, hell.”
I did.
I totally told Beaux I loved him.
And worse?
I couldn’t remember if he said it back.
“Damn it,” I cursed again, slapped off the water and grabbed a towel I’d draped over the shower curtain. “He didn’t say anything,” I told the cloudy mirror as I dried off. “He didn’t say a thing and he didn’t bring it up this morning.”
How utterly, horrifically embarrassing.
I could take it back. Blame it on being drunk, out of my mind, thinking of something else. Maybe someone else. Like my dad. Or Mike.
But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.
Telling someone you love them wasn’t the most embarrassing thing I’d ever experienced, even if it took me awhile to remember I said it in the first place, but I wouldn’t take it back. I wouldn’t diminish how I felt in that way.
I swiped the mirror again until my hazy reflection stared back at me.
“I’ll just pretend it didn’t happen,” I told myself. Then I nodded, needing the agreement from the woman in the mirror. “Yup. Pretend it didn’t happen. Move on. Forget it.”
Yup.
Brave, independent girl, I was. That was totally my game plan.
I finished drying off, moisturizing the crap out of my dehydrated body, and it wasn’t until I was done I saw the Advil Beaux had dropped off on my small and cluttered vanity top.
Tossing them back, I pretended they were confidence pills. Forgetful pills. Time-rewind pills.
Those would be awesome.
But since I didn’t have magic beans or special little red pills or a time machine, I hurried to my bedroom, feeling slightly more human and less zombie like, threw on a pair of pale blue cut-off sweat shorts and gray Tarheel’s sweatshirt.
Then I headed downstairs. And saw a view that was eerily similar of last night.
Melanie, Beaux, and my dad were sitting around the table, but instead of playing cards in their hands, they were chowing down on eggs and toast … and was that biscuits and gravy?
My stomach grumbled.
Yes. Grease, grease, and more grease. It was exactly what the doctor ordered.
“Hey,” I mumbled to everyone. “Good morning.”
“No it isn’t,” Melanie mumbled. She looked almost as bad as me and I winked at her as I passed.
“Feeling better?” Beaux asked, pushing back from his chair.
I stopped him with a hand. “Yeah. Need coffee though. You stay, I can get it.”
He watched my every movement as I poured a cup of coffee, filled a plate with biscuits and gravy and halfway to the table, he reached out and took the plate from me.
“You’re still tremoring,” he said, grinning at me. “Let’s not have this gravy all over your floor.”
Not a bad idea. I took the seat next to him and dug into my breakfast fully aware everyone’s eyes were on me. Well, except for maybe Melanie. But the way she was eating with her head propped up on one hand I figured she was just trying to stay awake.
“God, this sucks.” She groaned and pushed away her food. “I’m so sick to my stomach, I can’t even finish this. Now I’ll never get to say I had Beaux Hale cook me breakfast.”
“I cooked it for Paige and Sam, not you.”
“Yeah, but I’m like family now, so I’m included.”
“No.” He grinned. “You’re not.”
“Says you,” she grumbled playfully and stuck out her tongue.
Melanie moved from the table and refilled her coffee mug before re-joining us.
As she returned, I wiped my mouth with a napkin. “You made this?” I asked Beaux. “It’s really good.”
He pointed at my dad. “I had a good instructor.”
“That Yankee wouldn’t have known what to do without my help.”
“I dunno,” Beaux said. “I think maybe I was meant to be a southerner in my bones. Good people, no snow, all this deep fried food and BBQ. I was made for this place.”
My dad laughed, and while they bickered about who was the Yankee and who could cook better, I focused on eating my food. Just enough to feel better, not too much my stomach would revolt again. It was always a tricky line and one I’d crossed in my early college days more than once.
Beaux refilled my coffee when it was empty and as he returned to the table, the front door opened and Jaxon appeared.
Once again, he was dressed in all black, his sunglasses tucked into the collar of his black T-shirt.
“Yum,” Melanie whispered.
She wasn’t talking about the food she was still trying to eat. I bumped her knee with mine and shushed her.
“Dear Lord, woman,” she whisper-hissed back. “If I can’t touch, at least let me look. Rambo Sexy Pants is the best cure for a hangover, even in visual form only.”
“We can all hear you,” Beaux said, his shoulders shaking with laughter. “You whisper as quietly as an elephant stomps.”
At the head of the table, Jaxon didn’t make any movement or give any indication he heard her. I was certain he was part robot.
Maybe more Terminator than Rambo.
Regardless, he arched a brow at Beaux. “You tell her yet?”
And…that was the sound of evading and pretending life wasn’t a shitstorm coming to an abrupt halt.
“What is it?”
“Finish your food,” Beaux said. “We’ll talk then.”
I wanted to argue, but I did what he said. What were a few more minutes to pretend we were just hanging out, enjoying a random morning of family and fun?
***
“We found cameras outside the garage of your work.”
That came from Jaxon. He was now standing in my living room and all of us assembled gave a freaky deja-vu feeling to yesterday.
Unlike yesterday, Beaux was sitting next to me on the couch. Melanie was on my other side. Mike had shown up after breakfast and he’d pulled a chair up next to my dad’s recliner.
Jaxon had taken the position at the front of the room like we were in some professional debriefing. I supposed we were.
Didn’t mean I liked it. Especially once he crossed his bulging arms, biceps and ink popping all over the place, looked directly at me, and gave me that beautiful nugget of information.
“Cameras?”
“No audio and they were basic. Not top of the line and not live-streamed.”
I’d had less than a day to process the fact someone was following me. Once Melanie and I started drinking, I’d done my best to avoid thinking about this at all.
But some woman had cameras on me? At our garage?
I shook my head as if to shake it free so what I’d heard would make sense. “Where else?”
“Nowhere we’ve found yet. But you need to know we left the cameras.”
“What?” I gasped.
“Listen,” Beaux said, holding me tight against him even as I tried to wiggle away. “Just listen.”
I scanned the room, and my blood turned cold. Everyone was watching me like a wounded animal, afraid I’d jump and flee.
Yet none of them seemed surprised. “You all knew?”
“Jaxon told us last night,” Dad said. “It’s why I told Beaux to back off when he suggested you stop drinking. Figured you earned it whether you knew it or not.”
“But, cameras…?”
“And we’re going to keep them,” Jaxon said.
My dad’s jaw popped and Beaux tightened his grip on me. Still, none of them were surprised. Their faces were masks of frustration and anger, but not shock.
“Excuse me?”
“They’re not streamed cameras. Means whoever put them up has to come collect them at some point. I’ve got two men on the building after hours. Don’t know when they last collected them, but if Beaux’s been getting a letter a week and that last photo she sent to him was a week ago, figure it’ll happen any day.”
“Unless she shows up and stalks me or the garage, and somehow she’s already seen you.”
Jaxon blinked twice. I was certain that was Rambo-man speak for “don’t think I’m stupid and didn’t think of that.”
I flung my hands out. “So, what? That’s the big plan? To sit around and wait? Hunker down behind a few hydrangea bushes and wait for some psycho to come get a video camera?”
“Unless Raleigh PD comes back with evidence, it’s one of them, yeah.”
“What’s the other?” Because that first idea sucked. It meant waiting. Going to work and knowing I was being watched and followed and some psycho who’s threatened my life could sit back and laugh at the absurdity of it all, all while plotting my death and clearing her path to Beaux.
“Draw her out,” Jaxon said. “You two spend more time in public. We’ll be watching. Figure you get enough attention, that’ll set her off and she’ll make her move.”
“Which I’m still adamant about absolutely not doing,” Beaux growled. His fingers dug into my shoulder, his arm vibrating with the same intensity as the tone of his voice.
My dad shook his head.
“I think I prefer the wait and see plan,” I muttered.
I wasn’t brave. I also wasn’t stupid. Being watched on a camera seemed way safer than being a sitting duck in the middle of the open.
Jaxon dipped his chin, but somehow, it seemed like I’d disappointed him.
He might be Rambo, but I wasn’t. I was just a silly, silly girl in love with the man next to me, hoping like hell we made it out of this, and this person was caught without anyone getting hurt.
So, no thank you, be disappointed all you want, Jaxon. No way was I putting myself in the line of fire so he could have more excitement to his job.