If I Break THE COMPLETE SERIES Bundle (96 page)

“Sorry,” I say to the woman quickly following Lauren who’s walking down the long corridor so fast there should be a tailwind behind her. She doesn’t stop until we reach an opening revealing Dexter sitting on a sofa with a glass in hand and Helen sitting beside him. Lauren stops as soon as she sees them. She seems frozen in place. Helen stands.

“Christopher,” she says acknowledging me, her eyes linger before falling on Lauren. I notice her hands clasped together.

“Lauren. I have been anticipating this day for a long time,” Dr. Lyce says smoothly but her voice reveals tension. Lauren doesn’t say a thing. She still has that same expressionless stare she wore in the car.

“We know there are a lot of questions that you both want answered,” Dexter says coolly, shifting his drink from one hand to the other.

“There are,” I say as I fold my arms across my chest. Lauren is standing like a statue but I can see her breathing is distressed from the way her chest his heaving up and down.

“If you both would like to come sit in the dining room,” Dr. Lyce says gesturing towards a room.

“Lauren,” I say quietly, she still hasn’t moved or said a word. I think this is about to get really bad.

“I understand how you may be feeling now,” Dr. Lyce’s tone is calming.

“You don’t understand!” Lauren says bitterly.

“I thought you were my friend,” she adds quietly.

“I am your friend, Lauren,” she says approaching Lauren apologetically. My eyes see Lauren’s hand sort of twitch and I’m not fast enough to stop it when it swings back and slaps Dr. Lyce’s face so hard that she stumbles backwards. Lauren pounces on her. I pull Lauren off her as Dexter quickly goes over to help his wife.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Lauren?!” Dexter shouts.

“It’s okay,” I hear Dr. Lyce say as she gets up from the floor.

“What’s wrong with me?! What is wrong with you people? You think that you can play God, manipulate people’s lives, lie and deceive them and then have the nerve to say, to actually think, that you are our friends!” she screams hysterically as she writhes and struggles to get out of my arms.

“Get out!” Dexter roars angrily, pointing to the door.

“Gladly!” Lauren spits back as I carry her out of the room. We manage to make it out of the building before Dexter changes his mind and has security stop us. I don’t feel completely relieved until we’re back in the car and driving out of the security gate.

“I can’t believe them,” Lauren mutters angrily. I don’t say anything. I wish she would have kept her cool in there. I actually think they were about to tell us something that could shed some type of light on this whole situation. No one knows more about me as Cal than Dexter and Dr. Lyce. Now Lauren has effectively burned that bridge.

“Can you believe them?” she asks, finally looking at me.

“How could they sit there all solemn and holier than thou? How could she say that she was my friend after everything she’s done? It’s insulting!” she fumes.

“You didn’t have to hit her,” I interject

“What?” she asks in disbelief.

“You didn’t have to hit her. I’m angry too. She was my doctor and she kept the truth from me. Dexter isn’t innocent in this but did I haul off and knock him out?”

“I can’t believe this,” she huffs.

“I can’t believe you, Lauren. Is that how you handle things?” I ask her honestly. I glance at her. She’s shifted her body towards me and is looking at me like I’m speaking a foreign language.

“You’re taking their side?”

“I’m not taking their side but you didn’t have to do that back there. You could have gotten arrested for assault.”

I don’t understand her. How can she not see that she was wrong?

“You’re taking their side,” she says angrily.

“No, I’m not. But look where that got us? Nowhere. We left without knowing anything more than when we did when we got there. And, now you just pissed off the two people that could give us a little guidance,”

“I wouldn’t trust anything either of them said, if their statements came notarized,” she says defensively. I shake my head. She doesn’t get it. I’ve never seen this side of her before. Well, I have, but I didn’t think it was one that shows up often. There’s an awkward silence in the car. She’s furious and I’m kind of annoyed.

“You know what Chris? Sometimes people don’t think, they just act. They feel and don’t think about the consequences. I’m sorry that I’m human and not a perfect stoic saint. You should try it sometimes,” she says bitterly.

Now she’s mad at me! That’s great.

“You remember what you said earlier about me always having a choice?” I glance over at her. She’s not looking at me anymore.

“You’re right. You always have choices, but when you grow up you learn that your choices have consequences and not all of them are good. I try to think rationally because I’m an adult. I have responsibilities and I’m not a self-absorbed asshole.” I’m trying to make a point but who am I kidding. She probably likes that quality. She married Cal – a selfish asshole – if ever I knew one. She looks at me a long time before turning away. I see surprise, anger, and disappointment all rolled in one in her expression. This trip definitely did not go the way I imagined it would.

The next day is a long one. I had planned to take the day off, but after yesterday’s fiasco I jumped at the chance to teach when they called. Anything to stay busy, to keep me from brooding over everything. That’s worth more than the money. The tension in the house is high. My dad’s not thrilled about Lauren possibly moving to town. I don’t know if she’s even still contemplating it after what happened last night. My mom is sad that there are only three days left before Caylen leaves.

I don’t know what to make of Lauren’s anger. She’s beyond angry, she’s enraged. At breakfast she barely said a word to me other than a short good morning and I don’t think she would’ve even said that if my mom hadn’t been at the table. It’s different from when she stopped talking to me the week before. This time it’s like daggers shoot at me whenever her eyes light on me. I feel like I should apologize to her for what I said but I’m really not sorry. I told her how I felt, which is exactly what she told me to do. I guess she probably had something different in mind and that wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

Cal’s annoying commentaries have been silent. It’s the one time I wish he would share how to get back into her good graces. I’m almost home when I get a text from Jenna telling me she wants to see me. I haven’t spoken to her since the dinner debacle. It’s almost six o’clock by the time I arrive at her house because I had to fill in for one of the coaches for practice today. I stopped at Olive Garden and grabbed some dinner hoping to share a quiet, peaceful evening the way we used to. I ring the bell and hear her call that it’s open. When I see her on the couch my heart starts to beat faster. Her hair is piled up messily on her head and there are tears running down her cheeks. I put the food down on the table next to the door and go over to her.

“Jenna, what’s wrong?” I ask squatting down in front of her. She continues to cry and hands me her tablet. When I look at it my stomach drops. I see pictures of me but I quickly realize that it’s not me. It’s Cal and Lauren on their wedding day. There are loads of them.

“Where did you find these?” I ask her carefully.

“On the internet. Turns out their wedding was apparently a big event,” says wiping her eyes.

“Keep going there’s more,” she says, taking the tablet from me and going through dozens of photos of Cal and Lauren. They look normal. They look happy. Worst of all they look like they’re in love. I take the tablet from her and she lets it go without a fight before covering her face with a pillow. I try to think of something to say to comfort her but I’ve never been good with words. I rub her back. I feel sick. I’m the reason she feels like this, that’s why she’s crying, why she’s hurt.

“I didn’t want it to be real,” she wails. “I didn’t want what they had to be real. It’s one thing for them to have a child. People have kids all the time and aren’t in love but this… This makes it real,” she sputters.

“Tell me,” she squeaks out sitting up.

“Tell you what? I’ll tell you anything, to make you stop feeling like this,” I say putting my arm around her.

“Tell me you don’t love her,” she says looking me directly in the eye and I think my heart almost stops.

“Those pictures aren’t of me, Jenna. I don’t remember any of that,” I say, taking her hands, trying to comfort her.

“That’s not what I asked you. I’m not talking about Cal. Tell me
you
don’t love her. You, Christopher. Tell me that you don’t have any feelings for this woman,” I look into her watery blue eyes and I want to tell her what she needs to hear. I want to say anything to make the pain she’s feeling go away. I want to tell her the feelings I have are Cal’s, not mine. But if I did, it would be a white lie. There are a lot of reasons I have feelings for the woman in those pictures and Cal isn’t one of them.

“I—I can’t.”

I
want to be mad at Chris. I really do but it’s hard to stay mad at someone when you replay their words in your head and they make absolute sense. That and the fact that when you scowl at them their eyes smile back at you as if they were never mad at you in the first place. I know he was mad. That’s the first time I had ever seen Chris angry at me.

He was right, of course. I probably shouldn’t have gone at Helen the way I did but that was Lauren breaking free of all the emotions that I kept neatly tied up in a pretty little package. I hadn’t been that person in so long, I wasn’t sure she still existed. I don’t think Chris liked what he saw. He looked at me with such disappointment. It’s the only way I could describe it. But the next day it was gone, as if it had never happened. Cal could hold a grudge as long as I could. And our fights didn’t end easily. Most of time they culminated in angry sex.