The Love Triangle (BWWM Romance) (24 page)

I kept thinking about the past, kept replaying everything in my mind that had already happened, because it was easier than looking toward the future. It was all the opposite of what it used to be.

When I’d woken up in the hospital with a big gap in my life, a black hole where the most important decision of my life had been swallowed, the future was all I could look to.

Now I avoided it and kept looking back because the truth was I just didn’t know where I was headed anymore. Where was I going to go? My career was over at Magna Solutions. It didn’t take a lot to figure that one out. With Elijah in jail – or heading towards it, at least – I wasn’t sure what was going to happen to the company. But I was sure of it that my job there was done. If I didn’t quit first, which seemed like the logical thing to do, then Elijah would make sure that I was fired.

And what was his favorite line? Make sure that I never worked in this country again.

I took a deep breath and blew it out with a shudder.

When Justin woke up, I didn’t know if he would still want me. If any of this would change what he thought of me. I’d done a lot of wrong things during our relationship. Elijah had hurt me, but I was really the villain most of the time, leading two guys on because I just couldn’t make up my mind.

And now that I’d decided, there was a chance that he wouldn’t want me at all. And I was going to be in this world alone, with no career lined up and no one to love me despite my lack of independence. It wasn’t just depressing, it was heartbreaking.

I moved out of the mansion. I wasn’t going to get an apartment, I probably wasn’t going to be staying in Fort Atkinson. I moved into Shonda’s place. I should have done this from the start. Shonda travelled a lot for work, and her place was empty most of the time.

Maybe the idea of being left alone for so long had scared me. Or maybe it was just the fact that I still hadn’t been able to choose who I was going to be with. And being without a man sounded worse than being with someone that scared me. Even if I didn’t know why.

She’d been terrified of Elijah when he’d gone there looking for me. It was the face of a tyrant, she’d told me. Apparently he’d barged into her place and scared her half to death, threatening to hurt her if he found out that she was hiding me.

Why had it taken an abusive maniac to help me make up my mind, when the perfect guy had been waiting and willing for so long? There were so many stories about women that didn’t take the guy they could have, but instead ended up with the jerk. I hated the fact that I was now in that group.

Evelyn came to visit me four days later. I was alone at Shonda’s place, and when I heard the car in the driveway I assumed it was Shonda coming home. The knock on the door made me jump. My heart beat in my throat and for some reason I was scared it was Elijah, out to get me.

But he was behind bars. He’d been denied bail, and he was going to stay locked up until his trail.

I walked to the door and opened it, and Evelyn stood on the porch looking like she might be intruding.

“Come in,” I said and stepped aside. She walked into the house and stayed just inside the door, like she was nervous to be there at all.

“I just wanted to see how you were doing,” she said.

“I’m doing alright, considering. It’s much better than it was before. I remember everything, and even though what happened was rough, it’s better knowing why I struggled.”

Evelyn nodded. When I’d run to her after leaving Elijah, I’d told her everything. I’d needed someone to listen to me. I needed to be able to get it all off my chest.

“What are your plans now?” she asked before I could return the question and ask after her well-being.

I shrugged. “I have no idea. I want to stay until Justin wakes up, and then I guess it’s finding a new job. The joys of relocation and all that.”

She frowned. “So you don’t want to be with him anymore?”

I looked down, tried to force away the lump that had risen in my throat. My eyes burned with tears but damned if I was going to cry now, after everything had happened and I’d been strong enough to get through it.

“I want to be with him, but to be honest I’ve hurt him more than enough. Don’t you think?”

I sighed, turned around and sat down on the couch. Evelyn followed my example and sat down opposite me.

“Do you love him?”

I didn’t answer her straight away. I looked down at my hands, inspected the way the curve led from my thumb to my forefinger.

“I’ve always loved him,” I finally said. “Even when I decided against him. Even when he told me that we weren’t together anymore. Even when I’d told him to go to hell. It’s not about if I love him, though.” I looked up at Evelyn. Her face was impossible to read. She looked at me, her gaze measured, her lips pursed in a thin line. She sat opposite me, wanting to know if I was going to rip her brother apart again.

“I just don’t think he should be loving me.”

There it was. I’d said it, the thing that had been nagging at the back of my mind since the ambulance had taken him away from the ranch after Elijah’s hitman shot him.

Evelyn looked suddenly angry. There was a white line around her lips, and her eyes were a deep ocean blue. They looked so much like Justin’s eyes right then it made my heart constrict.

“Don’t you think you’ve fucked with him enough?”

Her sentence was so straightforward and so raw it caught me off guard.

“That’s why I think it’s wise for me to go,” I said and my voice was thin. I felt like I was a child reprimanded by an adult.

“If you’re going to leave now, after all of this, you’re an idiot,” she said. “If you leave him after he’s sacrificed so much for you, you’re a damn idiot. If you didn’t love him then fine, I would have accepted that. I would have said that you were a cold-hearted bitch that played my brother and I would have been happy to see you go.”

I took a deep breath to answer her, but she held up her hand, asking me to wait until she’d finished.

“But if you love him, and you leave him again, I don’t think he’s going to make it.”

“But how can he still love me, after all of this?”

Evelyn shook her head and she looked annoyed. “I don’t know. I’ve tried talking to him so many times, tried telling him that being with you isn’t the right thing. I’ve never thought you were the right girl for him, I think he can do so much better.”

“Wow,” I managed to get out. I’d heard a lot of times that Evelyn was straightforward and not scared to speak her mind, but she really wasn’t even candy-coating it for me.

“I know. That’s what I thought when he wouldn’t give up on you. The problem here is that he loves you.”

My chest got tight when she said that, my heart beat faster. My hands felt sweaty and I rubbed them on my thighs.

“It doesn’t matter what I say to him, he loves you, and even if you’re the worst person in the world, which I thought for a very long time you were, I guess that makes you the right person for him. It doesn’t matter who he’s with, if he doesn’t love her, it’s not right. And dammit, I can’t help it, but he does love you.”

Somewhere in the middle of her harsh speech I’d started crying. Tears ran over my cheeks.

“So don’t you dare leave until you’ve spoken to him and told him about how you feel. If, after that, he doesn’t want you then fine. Go. But until then I don’t want to see you running from this. You made this mess so clean it up.”

I nodded. She was right. It was hard to hear and I thought she could have said it all differently.

I nodded. She got up and so did I. I expected her to walk to the door and leave. But instead she walked to me and hugged me. She didn’t say more than that, just walked to the door like I’d thought she would, and disappeared.

I took a deep breath and looked at my wristwatch. It was still a while until visiting hours at the hospital. But there was one place I had to stop off first before I went to see Justin.

Chapter 23 - Elijah

It turns out that it doesn’t matter how much money you have, the moment you’re stamped as a criminal you get treated the same as any other piece of scum on earth. The paramedics had patched up my leg like they had to, they really didn’t look like they wanted to. I was still a person, dammit!

After they’d made sure I wasn’t going to bleed out, they stuck me in a holding cell with a bunch of other men. They were from all walks of life, and they looked terrible. Some of them looked like they’d been picked out of the garbage. They’d taken Kyle away at the same time they took me, but he wasn’t in the holding cell with me.

I wrapped my hands around the bars and pressed my face through as far as it could go, the cold metal bars pressing against my cheekbones, and I shouted.

I shouted for my lawyer. I shouted for a better cell. Didn’t they know who the hell I was? I kept shouting. At first some of the officers tried to get me to shut up. They threatened me and one even came to me, waving his baton and hitting against the bars, so close to my face that I felt the vibrations go into my skull.

When I wouldn’t be quiet, they gave up. I kept shouting until my voice was hoarse. The other people in the cell didn’t pay any attention to me. They just sat there, staring at the floor or the ceiling, whichever was less depressing.

After hours I finally sat down and did the same. I chose the floor. Someone was going to come. I was going to get my phone call.

When I got it I phoned Tyler Lawrence, a man that had handled my personal belongings for years. It had crossed my mind to phone Grace, she was the best damn lawyer in the country. There was a reason I’d wanted her, and paid her that much to come work for me so that no one else could match the money and scoop her up.

But she wouldn’t work for me. If anything, as my lawyer, she would work against me.

Lawrence was second best. When I spoke to him he was positive that he could get me bail.

I was moved the next day to a courthouse in Dayton where I waited in the cells underneath the court for my appearance in court the next morning. That was where Lawrence finally found me. When I saw him coming to me, I got up and walked to the bars, hands in my pockets. I was still wearing the same suit I’d gotten arrested in. They hadn’t even given me new pants, so I wore the same ones with the bullet hole and rusty red patch where I’d bled out of the bullet wound.

“Jesus, Elijah. You look terrible,” Lawrence said when he stopped in front of me. He wore a midnight blue suit with a whiter than white shirt and a butter yellow tie. I wondered who’d chosen it for him.

“You have to get me out of here,” I said. He nodded and sat down on the bench opposite my cell.

“Aren’t you going to get me out of here, don’t we even get a room to talk in?” I asked. In the movies they always sat at a table in a small room with their lawyers. I thought about all the people in the cells next to mine, how much they would hear, if they would care to listen at all.

Lawrence shook his head. His hair was slicked back with oil and he had that smooth lawyer face plastered on. I suddenly wondered how many times he’d delivered bad news with that same million-dollar smile.

“We’re going to have to talk here, Elijah,” he said. “I’m not going to play around. You’re in a lot of trouble. You’ve got so many charges against you, you’re making some of the other inmates here look bad.”

“Cut the crap,” I sneered at him. “Just get me the hell out of here. You know I’ll pay whatever they need, and make sure you’re taken care of, too.”

Lawrence nodded his head, looked at me with his gunmetal gray eyes, and spoke the next words smoothly.

“I’m going to try my best in there, but I don’t think I’m going to get you bail. You’re up for different counts of attempted murder, among other things. The judge doesn’t like killers walking loose in the streets while they wait for their hearings.”

That made me angry. The rage burst through me like a furnace, burning all the way down to my fingertips.

“I’m not a killer!” I shouted. Lawrence lifted his eyebrows. He wasn’t intimidated by me. I didn’t know if that was because of the fact that he would get his money regardless of what happened to me, or if I was behind bars. Either way, the calm on his face just upset me even more. This was my life. It was just his job. Did he not know the difference?

“There is a way we might be able to approach this,” he said. “We can get a psychologist out, and if he can declare you mentally unable to stand trial you might be able to get out of this one.”