Crushed (Crystal Brook Billionaires) (3 page)

“Claire,” Gwen nearly shouted. “Where are you going?”

I grabbed the end of the banister. “Just, uh, upstairs for something.”

“I should go,” Owen said, turning and looking right at me. His hazel gaze pierced my face and traveled to the soles of my feet, pinning me in place. “It was nice to meet you both. Sorry about the mix up.”

Gwen waved her hand, her giant engagement ring sparkling in the light coming through the back window. “Don’t worry about it. It’s pretty funny, actually.”

Owen laughed. “I really can give it a go if you want.” He still faced me as he spoke, even though Gwen was the one who was more interested in the conversation.

“No,” Gwen smiled. “Someone will be here soon. Thanks. It’s just ridiculous that we need AC this early in April.”

“Agreed.” He clapped his hands together. “Well, I’ll see you around, I’m sure. It was nice to meet you both.”

I lifted my hand in a half-ass wave.

“Nice to meet you too,” Gwen said. “Bye.”

Owen left, shutting the front door gently behind him.

“So,” Gwen cheerily said, turning to me. “What do you want to do? Mom’s gonna be back any minute, so if we want to bust out of here, we should go soon.”

“I don’t know. I’m feeling pretty tired.”

Gwen’s lips twisted, but she didn’t say anything. I stood still and just stared back at her. Out of anyone in my life, Gwen understood what I was going through the most. She had, after all, had her heart broken not too long ago. She hadn’t lost someone in the exact same way I had, but she’d spent a crazy number of months walking around with the pain of heartbreak dangling like a chain from her neck. Meeting Jason had helped her break free from that chain.

“I, uh…” I struggled to think of something else to add to the excuse.

“It’s all right.” Gwen smiled. “I’ll be down here if you need me.”

My heart cracked down the middle — this time out of gratitude and not from pain. “Thanks,” I rasped, emotion clogging my throat.

Desperate to not spend any more time conscious than was necessary, I turned and fled back up the stairs.

Claire

T
he rain came in waves, falling on the rooftop and street outside like there was a brigade of Gods tossing down buckets of water. I closed my eyes and listened to its heavy drumming combined with the other sounds around me. The softly playing jazz in the other room. A car going down the street, water flying up from underneath its wheels. Peter’s breath, rising and falling next to me.

His inhale and exhale came out evenly, slipping into an odd rhythm with the noises outside. The bed creaked, and before I even knew he was moving, I felt his hand on my waist. His fingers trailed along the bare space between my shirt and pants, lightly sweeping across my warm skin.

His lips brushed across the nape of my neck, so gentle that his breath was the harsher touch. They moved along my jaw and across my cheek, coming to rest on my lips.

Our mouths hovered together there, not kissing, just being. Existing in the same space. Breathing the same air. Having the same experience in every way possible.

A lightness washed over my body, and it felt like I was being lifted up by my heart. I became less and less solid, more and more gaseous. No. Not that… I became more like light.

I was the light shining down from the sky, and I was the light beaming out of everything. I was the up and the down of it all, the awesome and the insane. For the first time, I saw things clearly. I saw the miraculous in each and every moment, each blade of grass, and each supposed catastrophe. I saw the blessings cloaked beneath it all, saw how everything — whether it happens or doesn’t happen — as a gift.

I became one with God… and I knew that no matter what happened, I would never lose that knowing.

*

Voices woke me up. It was Mom and Dad, but they were far enough away that their voices were muffled. I let out a whimper of pain and sat up, rubbing my head. Apparently sleeping too much can be just as bad for you as sleeping too little. My temples pulsed, pounding out an aching rhythm. I’d drawn the curtains in the hopes of being able to fall back asleep, so the exact time was impossible to know. It could have been twenty minutes since I’d escaped back to bed and it could have been the next day.

The thin hum and the refreshing crispness in the room said the air conditioner had been fixed. Presumably not by Cat Boy — although maybe someone looking for a missing dog had come by and gotten it taken care of.

I swung out of bed and grabbed the jeans I’d dropped on the floor.

Mom and Dad’s voices were coming from behind their cracked bedroom door. I peered at it as I grabbed the banister and hit the first step towards the downstairs. Secret conversations taking place in my parents’ bedroom were never a good thing — unless it was Christmas time. My family was about as open as it went, and Mom and Dad had brought us kids up to not keep secrets from each other. If they had locked themselves away in order to have a conversation, it meant the matter was serious.

Were they talking about me?

If so, I didn’t want to know.

“Hi!”

I nearly tripped over the next step.

Gwen grimaced. “I’m sorry. I thought you heard me.”

“No,” I gasped. “What time is it?”

“Um, I think it’s almost, uh… five.”

“Jesus.” I rubbed the side of my face. “My head is killing me.”

“You need some coffee.”

“That’s your answer to everything.”

Her eyebrows wiggled “And sometimes it’s true.”

I smirked. “Right now it is.” I went past her and down the rest of the steps. “I don’t think coffee is going to make everything better though.”

“What if there’s Bailey’s in it?”

I turned to look at her still perched up on the steps. “Okay, you’ve got me there.”

I waited outside for Gwen while she informed the rest of our family where we were headed. The sun slanted down through the tree branches across the street, elongating not just shadows but the whole world. I felt as if I’d walked onto an alien planet. The last time I’d slept all day I’d been sick from a crazy sunburn. Even then it hadn’t been a real sleep, just a kind of sporadic half dazed existence.

Presumably — since I hadn’t actually gone outside yet that day — the earlier heat had been stifling, but now it was hovering around the simmering point. August — every single August in North Carolina — would bring it up to a ferocious boil. Though it felt hot at that moment, I knew the temperature was only a hint of what was to come.

Gwen came out, a light green army jacket draped over her arm.

“Why do you need that?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Just in case we stay out late. It could get cooler later.”

“Are you planning on getting crazy and pulling an all-nighter?”

“You never know.”

“You wake up at, like, three in the morning,” I bluntly stated. “Twenty dollars says you’ll be yawning by seven o’clock.”

Instead of answering, she looped her arm through mine and led us down the sidewalk. We were quiet as we ambled down the street towards the local watering hole. The dream I’d only just awoken from swirled around inside of me, gaining momentum. It churned deep in my stomach, at one point making me feel as if I might throw up.

“Oh,” Gwen said. “Before I forget. Danny wants us to bring him back some spicy wings.”

“Okay.”

Spicy wings. Damn cock sucking spicy wings. I hated them simply because they existed. In a world of tragedy and loss, how could my brother even be thinking of bar food?

Oh, that’s right. The world was still turning. Some people were still getting up and doing the same things they did every day, going to the same jobs, having the same conversations, thinking the same thoughts, and eating the same food they always ate. Honestly, sometimes I forgot.

Downtown was only a few minutes’ walk from the house. When Gwen and I were teenagers, we regularly snuck out of our bedroom and climbed down our mom’s trellis in order to scurry downtown to meet our friends in the courtyard there. In some ways, I missed those days. Being a teenager meant that I was full of hope. Not only did I believe everything in the world was possible, I believed it all belonged to me. Loss and disappointment were never possibilities. When you’re that young and you look to the future, for some reason you can only see all the things you’re sure will go right, not any of the parts that could ever possibly go wrong.

But there I was. Less than a year shy of thirty and feeling nothing like what I thought I would.

The top of the bell tower peeked between the trees’ canopies. Lush and green, the trees were practically singing with joy over the early arrival of Spring. I stared at the bell tower, intuitively feeling that if I only gazed at it long enough, it would dissolve and be replaced with something that could actually comfort me.

Gwen cleared her throat. “Do you… want to… talk about anything?”

I let my eyes fall from the bell tower. Inches away, Gwen gazed at me with anxious eyes. Surely she knew I’d been caught crying in the bathroom at work. Thea had found me, which led to her calling our boss, who then insisted I take a break. And I was sure our boss told his fiancée about nearly everything, because Jason and Gwen were that kind of couple. Even if they weren’t, it would probably have been Jason’s duty to get in touch with my family and let them know I was on the verge of a breakdown.

And most of my existence took place right dab in the middle of that couple. Sometimes it was like a really weird and awkward love triangle — one involving my sister and no romantic feelings whatsoever on my part.

I took a deep breath and tried to express my thoughts the nicest way I could.

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

I hadn’t meant for the words to sound so bitter. I exhaled sharply through my nose and tried again. “I mean, I’m fine. Thanks.”

“Wow. I didn’t expect you to say that.”

I snapped my eyes at her. A little breeze kicked up and lifted the hair around her shoulders. “Huh?” I asked.

“You’re not fine. Don’t even try lying to me, Claire. I’m not a dumbass. If you were fine, you wouldn’t be here, sleeping the entire day away.”

I pursed my lips. She had me there.

We stopped at the corner and waited for the light to change. Ahead and down the block to the right lay our destination, Pit Stop. Nearly every seat out front was occupied. My insides curdled at the sight. For some weird reason, I had just assumed it would be a quiet night downtown.

And yet it was Saturday… so, of course, any town in America was anything but quiet at that moment.

“There’s really nothing I can say.” The words came out hollow. The light changed and the cross walk sign came on, but Gwen didn’t make a move to cross the street. Neither did I.

“I get that,” she quietly said.

And I knew she did. For all intents and purposes, Gwen and I were not twins, like so many people thought. But we did, on rare occasions, find ourselves with the ability to intuitively know the way around each other’s hearts and heads.

“I can’t stop playing it over in my head,” I whispered, breaking down before I even knew it was happening. A hot tear slipped from one of my eyes, and I felt other ones there just waiting to come out, but I put all of my energy into holding them back. We were in public, for God’s sake.

Gwen’s voice came out equally low. “What? Finding out?”

“That,” I rasped. “And everything afterwards… everything before… everything that could have been.”

I choked on the last word, the weight of it too heavy in my mouth for it to properly escape. I thought about reaching up to wipe away the tear on my cheek, but there was a family only a couple yards away and I didn’t want anyone to catch onto my crying.

“I know,” Gwen said.

But did she? For as much as Gwen might know me, and as connected as we might be in other ways, could she really understand the agony of losing the last person you thought you were supposed to?

“I don’t want to say it’s unfair,” I said, looking at her shoulder and watching as the edges of it blurred and faded away. “Because that’s implying that the world is supposed to be fair to begin with. And obviously it isn’t, because if there were some expectation to be met, then there would have been a time when things were that way… an ideal to live up to… to get back to.”

“The Garden of Eden.”

I looked back at her face. “Yeah.”

“The light’s changing again.”

I let out a shuddering breath. “Let’s go.”

We made it to the table at the end closest to us just in time for two seats to clear up. Sliding onto the communal bench, Gwen waved at someone before folding her hands and placing them neatly on the table.

“Some things don’t change,” I murmured, half to myself.

“Huh?”

“This place is the same as it was the day I first started coming here.” I nodded down at the corner of the table, where someone named J.R. had carved their initials years ago.

“Is that good or bad?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

A bartender with a beard, who I recognized from the last few times I’d been in town but whose name I didn’t know, came out for our orders.

“Bailey’s and coffee,” I said.

He nodded and looked across the table. “Gwen?”

“Uh…” Gwen’s eyes flicked over at me. “Sparkling water?”

I let out an irritated sigh. “Gwen! Come on!”

“Yeah,” the bartender agreed. “Really. One drink won’t kill you.”

“Okay, fine!” She grinned. “I’ll take the same. But just one. I’m opening in the morning.”

He nodded and left, the heavy wooden door swinging shut behind him. Left with a lull in the conversation, an uncomfortable sensation floated over me. It quickly heightened and then turned into pain. It would happen every few minutes — particularly when I wasn’t being distracted by talk or a task. Or sleep.

I wrapped my arms around myself and whipped my gaze around at the other tables, trying to find something to place my attention on, even if it was only for a moment.