STORM: A Standalone Romance (61 page)

Or he could have his claws in me. Was Roland really blind to the fact that Dan and I had dated, that he could have manipulated me easily during that time and had? I was sitting right here in this room, witness to all of this lunacy, and all I could was watch and hope their attention remained on each other.

“You need me to run this company,” Dan was saying. “You lock yourself away in this office, or up in the penthouse when you’re feeling extra sorry for yourself, and you rely on me to present a good face—or at least a whole one—to the public. Without me, there wouldn’t be Shepard Shipments. There’d be an ugly old man locked away in a tower.”

“The only thing you are, Dan, is a face,” Roland said tiredly, and I realized this wasn’t the first time they’d had this argument. I didn’t understand why, but that revelation made me really sad. Roland had talked to me about this—one of his uncomfortable truths about his brother—but I still didn’t like the obvious fact that they’d actually fought each other about it. “You have no substance beyond what is on the outside. You’re not a savvy businessperson, and you’re not a great person, on the whole.”

I didn’t want to be in this office any longer, watching two brothers tear each other down. I couldn’t do it. I was casting around, searching my brain for some kind of an excuse to leave, when Dan’s response froze me where I sat.

“At least I’m smart enough to know who I can trust.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Roland demanded, as my eyes slowly crawled upward to meet Dan’s. His stare was boring its way into my head, and I knew this was where he was going to make his final stand. That day had come at last, the day when Dan was going to lay all of his cards on the table in an effort to wrest control of this company from Roland just for some twisted idea that he could do it better. He had no idea what he was doing. All he saw was something shiny that he wanted, not a goal he could actually achieve.

He would burn this entire place to the ground if he thought it would benefit him in some way, and I was going to be a party to that.

It finally dawned on me—and maybe I’d always sort of known—that Roland was going to find out the truth of everything that had been going on, right underneath his nose. The only thing that was different was that it would be better—so much better—if he heard it from me. The blow would still fall heavily, and it really might break him, and there wasn’t a thing I could do to protect myself anymore, but at least it wasn’t a blow landed by his brother.

“Roland, I’m Dan’s contact.”

Now both brothers were staring at me, their eyebrows raised to an identical height. Had it not been for Dan’s beard and Roland’s scar, it probably would’ve frightened me just how much alike they looked.

Roland gaped at me wordlessly, and I could smell the bullshit brewing in Dan’s brain, so I plunged forward.

“He’s been blackmailing me for a while now, since that day I didn’t show up to work,” I explained, “the day I said I was sick.”

Roland’s eyes narrowed, now, and his mouth snapped shut, but I wasn’t about to be interrupted, not when I was on a roll. If I stopped, the truth would never get out in the way it needed to.

“I’ve been feeding him information about the conferences calls,” I continued. “Not everything, not about the new contacts in Oceania, but enough to keep him satisfied, to keep him thinking he was completely informed.”

It was Dan’s turn to narrow his eyes. When he pursed his lips, I pushed myself to go on. The only way to defeat him was to turn myself in. I knew that now.

“He was blackmailing me because there was something I wasn’t telling you,” I said, holding Roland’s gaze, unwilling to look anywhere else. I had to do this. There wasn’t any other way around it. “There’s something you don’t realize about the wreck, the one that killed my parents and your fiancée and Caro, my friend, the girl who was driving the car that hit you all.”

I took a deep breath. It was now or never.

“I’m the one who’s really responsible, not you,” I said. “You were just in the wrong place, at the wrong time. I’m the one at fault.”

“That’s impossible,” Roland began, but I held my hand toward him, willing him to hear me out. I had to finish this.

“I was in the passenger seat of the car Caro was driving,” I said. “I was at the wreck. I was in it. I lost consciousness, just like you, at the moment of impact, but, unlike you, I was just fine when I woke up. Just a concussion. I was the luckiest one to walk away from that, and I’m the one who caused it.”

I paused to take another break, and Roland didn’t try to interrupt me. I held his gaze helplessly, his blue eyes wide. I did the only thing I knew to do, and that was to continue to explain, to tell the story completely.

“My parents were going out on their date night that day, and they wanted me to stay at home so they didn’t have to worry about me,” I said. “I wanted to go to a party instead, and lied to them. Caro and I went to the party and got drunk. After the police busted it up, we decided we didn’t want the night to end, so I told her we should go driving. I’m the one who put her behind the wheel of that car, both of us drunk. I’m the one who sent us careening down those dark roads. I’m the one who’s responsible for Caro dying, for my parents dying, for your fiancée dying, and for your scar. I’m the person who’s responsible, not you, and now you know the whole truth of it. Dan can’t blackmail me anymore.”

“He was going to tell me what I didn’t know about the wreck,” Roland said faintly. “To gain control.”

“Yes,” I said. “And he was going to call the cops on me and say I wasn’t stable, that I needed to be locked away for my own safety in one of those places like…like the one I had to spend some time in after the wreck.”

That was difficult to admit to, but there it all was, out there for both of them to see. Roland looked like he was going to be sick all over his lap, and Dan looked faintly disappointed that I’d stolen his thunder.

“Well, I might as well call them now,” Dan remarked, retrieving his phone out of his jacket pocket. “Looks like your assistant’s having a psychotic break, Roland. You should probably get security in here to escort her out. I wouldn’t trust her to leave by herself.”

“It’s over, Dan,” Roland said quietly, not looking at either of us.

“What?” Dan looked up, his fingers pointed over his phone.

“I said that it’s over.”

“What’s over?” Dan was just as puzzled as I was over Roland’s cryptic remarks.

“I’ve known you my entire life, and I know when you’re scheming away at something,” Roland said. “I know that Beauty is telling the truth, and I know that you’ve been the puppeteer at the strings with her. It’s over. You’re fired. I’ll always be your brother; there’s nothing, to my great chagrin, that can change that, but you’re done with being vice president of Shepard Shipments. It’s over.”

“You can’t just fire me,” Dan protested, but Roland cut him off with a sharp slash of his hand through the air.

“If you want to discuss it further, you can wait for me upstairs,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the staircase that went into the penthouse at the top of the building.

Dan gave me a long, withering stare as he stalked across the office and up the stairs. I didn’t care to think about what that meant, but in spite of everything, I was happy that his carefully laid plans had blown up right in his fucking face. He deserved every bit of the vitriol I was sure Roland was saving up for him later, when they’d hash it out alone. I was thankful that I wasn’t going to be a part of that conversation.

But then, as the door slammed shut at the top of the stairs, Roland and I were alone. and I realized that all was not well. There was still the fact of my having been a participant in Dan’s plan to sabotage his brother—a participant against my will, but a participant all the same. Dan wouldn’t have been able to get as far as he had without my help, and Roland had to know that.

For a few long moments, I had a perverse hope that maybe Roland would protect me now. It was completely unwarranted. I didn’t deserve any help or protection at all, not after everything I’d done. It was wrong to hope for something like that, but I hoped all the same in that vast, silent room, alone with the man I’d just confessed everything to.

Roland had banished Dan to the upper level, the penthouse where he lived, vanquished, for now, and soon to be put out of his misery. Maybe, for my honesty, Roland could keep Dan from exacting revenge on me, enacting the remainder of his plan for the blackmail, which would have me running from the cops for the rest of my life or back in a health facility on suicide watch, thanks to Dan tipping them off to some lies he’d concocted that were too close to the truth of my past.

Roland looked at me, and I opened my mouth in a bid for the right thing to fall out of it, to make all of this better again, to mend things as best I could, but he shook his head minutely, and I stayed silent. It was probably for the best. I didn’t think I knew what to say anymore.

Instead, I waited for him to speak, for him to tell me what he thought of all of this, willing him to say something, anything to relieve me of my dread. Still, that stupid hope resided in my heart, wishing he’d forgive all, pretending that everything was going to be just fine.

Roland opened his mouth and closed it again, working it in a way that made me realize that he didn’t know a bit more than I did what to say or do to make any of this better. It was a horrible situation. I’d lied to him. I’d gained his trust. I’d kept the truth from him. I’d betrayed him to his own brother. And I’d freely—though under duress—admitted to all of it in front of the both of them.

I held Roland’s gaze because I couldn’t do anything more or less than that, just looking into the eyes of the man whose life I had trampled on, unknowingly the first time, and then willingly a second time.

I held that murky blue gaze until those eyes fell, and then the rest of his face with them, his head hanging down into his chest.

Then, I knew all was lost.

I had broken Roland Shepard, and I had lost him.

Where do you go when you’ve finally ruined everything? Even my lizard brain hibernated, aghast at everything I had done, offering no insight on how to keep surviving. I was thoroughly on my own.

Telling Roland the truth, particularly in my most recent incarnation as spy and betrayer, had seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

So why did it hurt so much now?

I walked out of his office, closing the door gently behind me, and sat down at my desk for only as long as it took to compose myself. If I ran weeping through this office again, everyone would assume that I was the beast’s latest victim.

I was the one who was the beast. Things had come around full circle.

When I’d first started working here, I’d believed what everyone said, that Roland Shepard was an animal and a monster and a beast. He was hideous to look at and his rages were legendary throughout the entire company.

But the more I got to know him, the more I realized that everyone was wrong about him. He hid himself away and kept himself marred by the past because it was the penance he thought he deserved. The rage he directed outward was only because the rage he directed at himself overflowed its boundaries. The only person he was angry at was himself.

Then I’d thought that Dan had been the true beast, back when Roland continued to show me more and more humanity and Dan had shown me his own claws and fangs. Dan was willing to do anything—exploit me, betray his brother, ride the company into a hole—in order to get in on some piece of the action he was afraid he might be missing. And sure, maybe Dan was still pretty much a beast.

But I was the real beast. I’d been complicit in Dan’s conniving agenda against Roland, afraid of Roland learning the truth even though the truth had come from my very mouth today. If only I’d told Roland what I knew back on that first night when I’d gotten drunk on fine bourbon before vomiting it right back up after he told me he’d been a part of the wreck. Roland had been honest, then. He didn’t have to be, but he was. He decided that telling the truth was the right thing to do and did it, regardless of the consequences, aware that I might hate him afterward.

I should’ve told him then; I should’ve assuaged all the fear and guilt he felt and told him that I was the only one who deserved to carry that burden of blame. Instead, I’d kept it inside, and Dan had exploited my fear to weaponize that truth against his brother.

I was the beast because I could’ve stopped all of this so long ago just by being brave enough to be honest.

I stood up, my face blank, and got my purse. Part of me wondered if Roland was watching me on that ever-present camera, wondering at my lack of tears. I wished I could tell him that it was the last favor I could do for him, to walk out of this life dry-eyed so that no one would think badly of him anymore, but there wasn’t any way I could think of to convey this.

And anyway, he probably wasn’t watching. If he was, I liked to imagine him shaking his fist at the screen in rage. I deserved all of his anger. I always had.

Then, I turned my back and walked out, not speaking to or looking at anyone, keeping my steps measured and controlled. I wanted nothing more than to sprint out of there, but if I lost control now, I didn’t think I could get it back. I needed to keep breathing—in and out—and put one foot in front of the other.

“You’re not leaving early, are you?” Sam asked, making me turn around while waiting for the elevator.

How did I tell someone that I was leaving forever without arousing suspicion? There wasn’t a way, so I lied.

“I’m off on an errand,” I explained, my voice sounding weirdly wrong inside of my own head.

Sam cocked her head. “Everything all right?”

“It will be,” I said. Another lie. The only thing I could do to make things right was to get the hell out of Roland Shepard’s life and hope he tried to live it again now that he knew he wasn’t at fault for all of the horrible things that had happened, all of the people who’d died. That was the only thing I wished for out of all of this mess—that Roland could find some way to be happy and whole again. Maybe he thought he’d had feelings for me. Maybe he’d even thought he loved me. But now, he could shake himself free from all of that. All it would take was time.

“I have to tell you,” Sam said, snagging my elbow as I waited for the elevator to lumber up to this floor. “I mentioned in passing to Dan that you’d asked about my time as his assistant, and he wasn’t happy at all.”

So that was what had set him off. Sam—not knowing what she was doing, or the seriousness of it—had tipped Dan off to the fact that I was snooping around and gathering information. That was what had caused him to charge into Roland’s office, ready to do battle.

And that was what had caused me to lose everything imaginable.

“I don’t think it really matters anymore,” I said, stepping into the elevator. And it didn’t. Dan wasn’t involved with the company anymore. His anger affected no one. “See you later.”

Time was fickle. The elevator went slow, but the walk to my car went fast. I blinked to find myself in front of it, holding the key out, having no memory of getting there. Maybe I was in shock. Maybe I shouldn’t get behind the wheel.

It had been years since the wreck that had ruined my life, and though I hadn’t wanted things to get better, they had—incrementally. Things had been bad for a long time—through college and during my more than a year on the road, living in my car—but they’d gotten better. Seattle had been good for me, as had holding a steady, respectable job that required more of me than just shaking my ass for money. I’d learned to use critical thinking skills in the workplace, and I’d been interested in what I was doing—passionate about it even. Not many people could say that about the lines of work they’d trained for and studied. I’d been told that my thoughts and opinions mattered, and I’d begun to believe that maybe I mattered, too.

Hell, Roland Shepard had been good for me, too. Maybe we hadn’t started off on the right foot, and maybe he’d been too hard on me at times, but I’d grown and bloomed under his tutelage. Right until I’d proven myself to be nothing but poisonous.

There wasn’t going to be another Roland Shepard out on the road. I was going to drive across the country aimlessly until my money ran out, and then I was going to do something else, somewhere else. But there wouldn’t be anyone willing to take a chance on me, or take me in like Roland had, valuing me for anything other than my body and how much they could sell it for.

But in the end, that was what I deserved, wasn’t it? That was exactly what I deserved. All those years ago, that night when I’d convinced Caro to get behind the wheel of that car, I’d valued the risks so little, placed so little importance on our own lives and the lives that we could affect that I deserved to be nothing now.

If Roland could impose a punishment on himself that was as extreme as refusing the proper treatment for a horrific wound and secluding himself away from the world, allowing everyone to believe that he was nothing more than a beast, then I could come up with something similar. I was so much worse than he was. I could drive my car out into the woods and live there among the trees, eating moss until I slowly withered away. It would probably be a much more peaceful ending than I deserved.

I deserved to be unhappy and lost, to drive through these tears splashing down my face, mirroring the rain that pelted my windshield. I deserved the way my heart ached. I deserved to think about what Roland looked like when his face fell at the realization that I was a horrible person.

The rain intensified as I parked in front of my building, but I didn’t care. I got out in the heaviest downpour, letting it soak my clothes through almost immediately, like standing under a showerhead wearing a full outfit. I squelched up the stairs and to my apartment, shivering in the cool air, wondering if this was how you got pneumonia, hoping that pneumonia was a more gruesome ending than starving to death.

Without bothering to even take off my wet clothes, I fell face forward into my bed and laid there, breathing hard, willing something to happen, for me to just start crying or start breathing or go to sleep so I didn’t have to feel the way I was feeling right now.

The old itch was back, the part of me that wanted to get back in my car and go, and yet I didn’t answer it. Seattle had become my home, and I was just going to have to find a way to be miserable in it. The rain was a help, the rain and my wet clothing. I didn’t want to go anywhere else because this city felt like something I used to have, and I wanted to have it again. I wanted it both helplessly and hopelessly.

I’d ruined my chance at finding a home again. I would never learn how not to hurt people and myself in the process. Roland had felt like home to me, the way my body fit with his even though I didn’t deserve it, even though I was strangling whatever life we could’ve had together with my utter cowardice. I hadn’t wanted to tell him the truth, but the truth had needed to be said this whole time. There was no other way forward than the truth, but I hadn’t been able to understand that.

Maybe I could’ve salvaged this situation a long time ago, when Roland had first told me about his role in the wreck, but that ship had long since sailed. If I’d told him, right off, how I’d been the one who was responsible, he probably never would’ve stopped to think that he might have feelings for me. He probably would’ve even fired me on the spot, especially since he only hired me as a gesture of pity for what he thought he’d done.

Given the chance to do it all over again, I didn’t know what I’d do. I would’ve liked to think that I could’ve done something better, but right now, I was just so emotionally exhausted, and so cold, and so tired of feeling sad and conflicted that I wanted to close my eyes and sleep for as long as possible.

There was one thing to be said about how it all went down. At least I wasn’t hiding anything from anybody anymore. Things had gotten shittier, sure, but at least they weren’t as complicated.

I suspected I slept; it was hard to tell with my turmoil playing on loop, but I sat up suddenly. My bed sheets were damp and my clothing was slightly less sopping and I listened for something I thought I’d heard.

There it was. My intercom buzzed again, and I heaved myself out of bed, wandering over to the device, wishing I could so much as feign an interest in who could be asking for me. However, I felt dead inside, utterly adrift. Everything had come crashing down.

“Who is it?” I asked, but there was no one there. Just as well. There wasn’t a single person in the world I was expecting, not a single person I cared to see.

I was alone, yet again, and as always, because of my own stupidity.

I shuffled off to lie back down in bed when there was a knock at my door. Again, utter apathy. I shuffled back over to the door, flicking a lamp on, since the light outside had deepened into evening and the rain continued to fall.

I didn’t so much as check through the peephole. It didn’t matter who was out there because everything was over. I twisted all of the locks and threw open the door.  Standing there in my hallway was a dripping wet Roland Shepard.

“I have to know one thing,” he said, his chest heaving so hard I wondered if he ran all the way here from the Shepard Shipments building.

“Okay.” I felt slow, thick, like this wasn’t really happening. What was a dream and what was real? Was I still asleep in my wet clothes, over in the bed, wishing that Roland had come through the rain to talk to me at my apartment? It had to be a dream. He hadn’t left the penthouse in nearly five years. What reason would he have for leaving the fortress of solitude now that everyone he’d trusted had betrayed him?

“Your feelings for me,” he said, casting his eyes on the ground. I realized that this was the first time I was really seeing Roland since I’d been here. The lighting in my apartment building’s hallway wasn’t great, but it was much better than how dimly lit he kept his office, and up until this point, that had been the only place I’d known him. The scar was thrown into greater contrast, now, but it was better, somehow, to see it like this, fully illuminated, instead of hiding in the shadows, becoming something worse than it actually was.

“Were the feelings real?” he demanded, looking at me piercingly. “You said you were falling in love with me. Was that part of the scheme my brother cooked up? Or was that real?”

“It was real,” I said, my face screwing up, the tears I’d wanted earlier falling now, fast and of their own volition. “I’m so sorry, Roland, for everything else. But that was real.”

“Okay,” he said, and nothing else. Then, he put his arms around me and kissed me—true and deep and hot in spite of the cold rainwater dripping off of him, pooling around our feet.

“You’re shivering,” he said, almost angry about it. “Beauty, these are the clothes you were wearing at the office, and they’re still wet. You didn’t change out of them?”

“I guess not,” I said, numb, still convinced that this wasn’t happening, that it was just a dream. “And you’re wet, too.”

“This is how people get hypothermia,” he fussed, closing the door behind him, walking me backward toward the bedroom, keeping me in his arms. “It’s freezing in here. Didn’t you realize it?”

“Not really.” I was still crying, my tears dropping onto my ruined shirt.

“Stop that crying,” he admonished gently. “Let’s get you warm. Come on.”