CHAPTER 33
After the drop-in from Shane and Flynn, things got pretty quiet. Cecily focused on her classes, although she found herself more interested in designing fake driver’s licenses and packaging for surveillance devices than in the glossy corporate brochures and shampoo bottle designs created by her classmates.
She and Allison fell into the sort of pattern Cecily wished she’d had right out of college, before things started to go off the rails with James. Ally was a great roommate and was turning out to be a great friend. They never, ever talked about the Hudson Kings, and the only thing Cecily noticed was that Ally liked to listen in on Cecily’s phone calls with Dex.
Cecily was really proud of pulling herself together—if only the constant nagging of her heart calling out for Shane would leave her alone. But it was a tough road, and as she pushed through her school’s doors, she wasn’t thinking about the color wheel; she was replaying her last conversation with Shane in her head for the thousandth time in the week since she’d last seen him.
In this version of the fantasy conversation, the answer she gave him was “Yes, let’s try again,” which was why she had an enormous smile on her face even as she exited the building and stepped out into a blast of the summer season’s first really unpleasant humidity.
That smile didn’t last.
James Peterson stood in the central square next to a massive mirrored sculpture that made it look like he was carrying a thousand bouquets of flowers instead of just the one. He was working at a smile that flickered on and off like a faulty fuse, and his eyes said he didn’t know how she was going to take this.
She took it worse on the inside, where he couldn’t see, and automatically touched her jeans’ back pocket, confirming her phone was there.
“Hi, Cece,” he said quietly, coming toward her. “I know your brother doesn’t like me, but I had to explain myself.”
She blinked, a silent scream going off in her head. A scream full of anger and embarrassment and confusion and fear. “Hi,” she managed. “I think it was made pretty clear what would happen if you came around again. And my brother’s supposed to pick me up again. He’ll be here any second.” She looked desperately around for Shane, but he wasn’t there. He’ll come. He always comes.
Neither of them moved closer, but James awkwardly thrust out the mixed bouquet. Cecily eyed the flowers and forced a smile back on her face, trying not to panic as her pulse began to race. She wished to god her voice didn’t shake when she said, “It’s really not necessary. Thanks, but I’d rather not. How did you know I’d be here now?”
James shrugged. “Figured I’d just wait.”
Oh, god.
“It was made pretty clear what would happen if you talked to me again,” she said, forcing herself to stay calm, be smart. “It’s not going to be just words.”
“Look, Cece, I messed up. I messed up big-time. But you should know that I thought about what I did, how I acted.”
James’s reminder of all that helped steel her spine even more. You’re a liar. You don’t care about me at all. You only “messed up” because it was too hard pretending to be a decent guy for so long. You were never my boyfriend. You were acting. But if I say it, I’ll give everything away.
Cecily stared at James’s pretty-boy looks, his slender frame, his pricey banker clothes. So different from Shane in every way. “I had to run away from you, James. I literally had to take a suitcase and run to get away from your head games and your moods and your threats. You hit me, remember?” The details were snowballing back. The memory of James faking everything, isolating her in a Minneapolis suburb while he asked her a curious number of questions about what her brother said on the phone and wrote in e-mails, and becoming obsessive about what she did and how she spent her time, suddenly made her want to be sick. Once upon a time he seemed and looked like such a nice person, a golden boy—“You’re not a nice person,” she blurted.
James blanched. “I want you to know that I’m in counseling. I was taking pills—you didn’t know that. I stopped drinking, I stopped the drugs. I’m in counseling.” His voice was low, careful, his eyes never leaving her face. “I know how I treated you was wrong, and I’m sorrier than I could ever say. I want to make it up to you . . .”
He went on and on, but all Cecily could think was that he probably had a gun on him, just like Shane. Maybe something else too. Cecily didn’t know what she was going to do if she couldn’t shake him.
“Stop,” Cecily said softly. “Stop right there. I can imagine accepting your apology, but I need more time to decide what I want, if I can ever imagine being with you again.”
Biggest lie ever. She never wanted to see him again; she was terrified of him, because she knew that everything she went through was him acting with restraint. James without restraint must be off-the-charts scary, and she could see he was getting desperate now. She could see it. Oh, man, her cell phone felt like it was burning a hole in her pocket; she had to get a message to the Hudson Kings. “Will you please just . . . leave. Leave me . . .” Alone. “To think?” she asked, hearing the strain in her own voice.
Something flickered in James’s eyes before leveling out again. Something not sorry. Something not nice.
Cecily gripped her laptop hard to keep her hands from shaking. She hadn’t seen this particular act, this level of contrition, but she’d been on the receiving end of his apologies before, enough to recognize the whiplash that played inside his brain, making him contrite and then rebuilding the flame of bitter anger if she didn’t accept his humility with gushing smiles and hugs. There was definitely going to be anger, and she sure as hell didn’t want to be around when it struck.
God, there was more she’d like to say to James, but she was too afraid. Too much of a show of strength, and his instinct would be to prove he had more. Anything that sounded even vaguely like a threat, and his instinct would be to prove he could get around it.
Did he really think they would ever get back together? Did he think he still had a chance to get information about Dex and the Hudson Kings from her? Did he truly not know his cover was so blown it wasn’t even funny?
I wish Shane were here. But he was gone, back to his regular-scheduled programming, his real life, with Cecily not more than a pixel in his rearview mirror. “I have to go,” Cecily said, turning away from James and starting across the courtyard toward her subway stop.
“Cece!” James was right on her tail.
She stopped and looked over her shoulder. “I—I’ll think about it. Okay?”
James stood there with an expression that was more grim than sorry, a trail of petals in his wake, the flowers forgotten but still gripped in his hand. Cecily fought the urge to panic. “Please don’t follow me, James. Really, don’t.”
“Cecily, I love you!”
Those three words weren’t supposed to sound scary. Cecily ran down the subway steps and swiped in, ran toward the closing doors of a 2 train, jammed her purse inside to make the doors open again, and sandwiched herself into the standing crowd. Sweat plastered her clothes to her body, and she could scarcely breathe watching James jump the turnstile.
The subway doors were still open.
He saw her. And he came for her.