I shake my head but can’t contain my chuckle. “Ol’ girl” is Tracey Morley, the new admin assistant hire. According to Lena, the younger woman barged in on her first day, “showing her ass” and trying to run things, and the two had been taking verbal swipes at each other ever since—a whole two weeks. Sometimes I wonder if they’ll make it to week three without bloodshed.
“And you callmepetty. There’s a coffee pot right there in the office,” I point out.
Lena shrugs a shoulder. “Must’ve forgot.”
She didn’t forget shit.
“So are you here biding your time until you have to return to the scene of the crime or did you drop by with a purpose?" I cross to the far side of the room and start straightening desks and picking up any stray pencils and papers left behind.
"Both,” she says, grabbing a desk closest to her and mimics my actions, helping me out.
Which I’m grateful for. The sooner I clean up in here, the sooner I can head home and…hide.
God, I hate that my brain supplies that particular word to describe me turning off my phone, throwing a frozen pizza in the oven and curling up in my bedroom with wine, the remote and about three locked doors between me and the outside world.
I hate even more that the word is appropriate.
But that’s what one glimpse, one conversation with King Sullivan has reduced me to. A shaken woman battling hermithood.
Giving myself a hard mental shake—and an even harder slap for letting my thoughts drift tohimfor the hundred-and-eleventh timetoday—I focus on the here and now. On Lena. Much less stressful and devastating. Much less dangerous.
“So,” I clear my throat and slide the vocabulary test Miles left behind in his desk, “I get the first reason. What’s up with the second?”
“I wondered if you heard King Sullivan is back town.”
Her tone is casual, nonchalant but the simple statement seizes me in a crushing, implacable grip. My fingers clench around the edges of a desk, and it’s a wonder the thing doesn’t crumple like an accordion under my hold.
I stare down at it as if each grain of the wood on the desktop is worthy of careful inspection, so I don’t have to glance over at my friend.
“Yes, I have heard,” I say, careful to keep the chaos roiling inside me at just the mention of his name out of my voice. “Dad mentioned it last night.”
“Huh.” A scrape of metal against laminate fills the room as Lena adjusts another desk. Then quiet. “How do you feel about it?”
Still refusing to look at her, I compel my body to move. To finish up this task so I can be free of this conversation I didn’t ask for. These questions that are going to crack me right down the middle if they continue. After last night… After seeing him in the flesh… After hearing him speak about his son with such love…
“What’re you talking about?” I force out a short laugh, but even to my ears it sounds too tight, serrated. Especially for someone who’s only supposed to have a passing acquaintance with him. “How am I supposed to feel about it? I’m more of an Imagine Dragons girl than a Bloody Sunday fan.”
“Really, Len? Is that what we’re doing?” Lena quietly asked.
The use of my nickname and the solemn note in her voice has my head snapping up and my gaze crashes into hers. Concern darkens her hazel eyes, and I slowly straighten, a sinking feeling of dread bottoming out my stomach.
“I don’t understand…” I haltingly begin, but she cuts me off with a slice of her hand through the air.
“I’ve been your best friend since the fifth grade. There isn’t much about you that I don’t know. Including” she cast a quick glance toward the open doorway and the empty hallway, then crosses over to the door and shuts it, “including the truth about you and King Sullivan,” she concludes, retracing her steps but not stopping until she’s sitting on a desk across from me.
Shock snags me by the throat, and I’m barely able to get out my ragged, “Lena…”
“Don’t bother trying to deny it. You really believe you could keep anything from me?” She tsks as if I’ve disappointed her. And I don’t know. Maybe I have. “Hell, it was me who dragged you to that party where you first met him. You couldn’t keep your eyes off him. Then, after that night, you suddenly started disappearing. And Pike’s End is only this big.” She snapped her fingers. “I cut through the park one night on my way home from sneaking out and seeing Derrick. I saw the two of you,” she murmurs.
“You never said anything,” I say, astonishment still ricocheting through me.
“I almost did. But in the end, I decided against it. Len,” she tilted her head, her hazel eyes both kind and piercing. “I hadn’t seen you that happy in years. Not since your mom died. You hadn’t said anything to me about King for a reason. And to keep that smile on your face and that joy in your eyes, I respected your decision. Even if I was worried that you would get hurt.” She pauses, her gaze searching. “Which you did. And I’m assuming it’s because he left.”
“He promised to take me with him. We planned it.” The confession pours out of me as if a rusty valve had been twisted deep inside me and the truth is gushing forward, unstoppable. Sinking down onto a desk, I let it all go. “After I graduated, we were going to leave for L.A. a week later, but he disappeared the night of graduation. I tried to contact him—we had to email because you remember how Dad was back then.”
“Still is,” Lena grumbles.
I huff out a short, dry laugh. “True. But since he monitored the phone bill, we couldn’t risk it. And I would’ve done anything for him. I was ready to give up my only remaining family and the only home I’d ever known for him. I loved him that much. But I was nothing but a temporary diversion for him. Because as soon as he finished with me, he left Pike’s End and I never heard from him again.”