More Than Words
Page 49

“This isn’t a good time, Jessie.”
“We have to talk, Callen. I have to explain what happened earlier and—”
“Jessie,” he said, the tone of his voice startling me so that I jumped. “I have company.” Company? For a moment I didn’t process his words, and then a blonde stepped from the bedroom into the sitting room behind him, craning her neck to see me. She was wearing a white bikini and a towel tied around her hips, as if they’d just come from the pool. The pool. The laughter.
Oh. Oh God.
My stomach dropped to my feet, and I brought my arms around my waist, hugging myself.
“Callen?” the girl called. I recognized her now. She was the same woman he’d been sitting next to in the bar the other night, the same woman I’d seen him with the first night I’d arrived here. The one who’d whined about him not joining her in the hot tub. Seemed she’d gotten some water time with him after all.
“Don’t do this,” I whispered, my voice full of all the anguish I felt, my heart aching.
“Sorry.” He started closing the door, and desperation raced through me. I raised my hand, pushing at the smooth wood.
“Please! Please don’t do this!” I repeated on a desperate cry, banging my hand on the door one more time.
For a moment he looked startled, but then he smiled coldly. “Turning into your mother already?”
I stumbled backward as if he’d hit me. It felt like he had. I shook my head, a denial, but of what?
I hurt everywhere.
My skin.
My bones.
My soul.
Callen closed the door in my face and my heart shattered.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CALLEN
The door clicked shut and the world fell out from under me. I clenched my eyes closed, taking a moment to get my bearings before turning to the girl—I still didn’t know her fucking name—who smiled and began approaching me. But whatever was on my face caused her to halt, her smile slipping.
“You need to go.”
A flash of irritation lit her eyes. “Go? I just got here. I thought you got rid of her for a reason.”
Her.
“Yeah, well …” I narrowed my eyes in concentration, trying to remember the girl’s name so I could use it. Laura? Lulu?
She must have realized what I was doing because she bit out, “Layla.”
“Right, Layla. I changed my mind. I want to be alone.”
I want to get drunk and pass out.
I want to be numb.
Layla put her hands on her hips and glared. “Think hard before you throw me out, Callen Hayes.”
I massaged my head. A wicked headache was pounding in my skull. “I’m not throwing you out, Layla. I’m asking you to leave.”
Get out of here.
As much as I hadn’t wanted to be alone earlier, I now craved it badly. I was tempted to pick her up and chuck her out the door. The restraint I was hanging on to was the last bit of patience I had left in my body.
“Fine,” she growled. “But this is it! If I see you around the hotel tomorrow, I’m going to ignore you.”
Promise? “It’s the best thing to do, trust me.”
“I see that now.”
She marched to where she’d dropped her pool bag on the floor next to the love seat and picked it up, swinging it onto her shoulder. Without a word, she walked toward the door, bumping me as she passed by. I took a step backward and then watched her open the door and slam it behind her. Thank God.
I walked the few steps to the love seat and sank down onto it, leaning my head back and gripping the hair at the front of my scalp. I stared at the ceiling, unseeing. Now that I was alone, in the quiet of my room, the alcohol buzz beginning to fade, the anguish crept back in like a prowler slipping through an open basement window.
I clenched my eyes shut as the memories of the interview assaulted me, the humiliation and shame I’d felt at being exposed in front of a roomful of strangers, in front of the world eventually. And there was nothing I could do. “Sue that man!” Nick had said as he’d followed me from the room. But for what? Defamation? What he’d said was true. And what did it matter now anyway? I’d seen the reporters in the front row, scribbling furiously on their notepads, writing down each detail of my stupidity, my now very public shame. I’d spotted the cell phones held discreetly as guests recorded the moment. I could try to sue Cyril Sauvage not to air the interview, but what would that achieve? More press. More attention. More humiliation.
Why did you do it, Jessie? Had she confided my secret to Larry because it was a way to force me to address it? Had she seen him as an ally in her efforts to make me try again to learn to read? And did it even matter? Whatever her reason, I had been able to tell she hadn’t wanted it revealed that way. The look on her face … she’d been almost as horrified as I was. Almost. She hadn’t meant to hurt me publicly, and yet that had been the result. Tonight, because of her, in front of a roomful of strangers, I’d been that same little boy sitting at the kitchen table, being told to read—just read—when I couldn’t … I couldn’t.
She’d told fucking Larry I was illiterate. Larry of all people. She’d stood in this very room and seen the hatred in his eyes toward me. Was that why? Did she feel some sort of warped connection to Larry, the betrayed spouse? Did he represent her mother in that scenario, and I, her father? Yes, I’d been the villain that day—even I admitted it—but Larry was no prince.
But neither was I, and really, wasn’t that what it kept coming back to with me and Jessie?
I’d watched her from my balcony this past week as she’d sat in the sunshine with that guy she worked with. They’d laughed and talked as they ate lunch, sometimes flipping through a book and reading aloud to each other as my gut clenched with jealousy and the despondency of knowing I’d never have that with her no matter how hard I tried. And then today it’d looked as if she was crying (over me?) and he’d taken her in his arms for a moment. It’d made me sick, and I’d turned away. And yet still … still, I’d held on to the morsel of hope that maybe we could work something out. But what? In reality, what? She wanted more from me than I could give, and she was right to want more.
Maybe what she’d done hadn’t been entirely purposeful, but the wound was deep and excruciating and it would bleed for a long, long time. It had told me exactly what it would feel like to saddle Jessie with a fraud like me, to place her in what would now be a public spotlight surrounding my illiteracy. And so I’d made a point to be cruel and vicious, and there was no turning back from the way I’d dismissed her tonight.
Jessie and I were over.
I couldn’t stay here another day. I sat up and pulled my phone from my pocket, tapping the phone icon next to Nick’s picture.
“Hey, Cal.” Nick sounded grim, tired.
“Would you be against checking out tonight?”
There was a beat of silence. “If that’s what you need, buddy.”
“Yeah, I … It’s probably not a good idea to be in a place where the press know how to find me. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a horde of them in the lobby tomorrow morning.”
“You’re probably right.”
Of course, they’d know how to find me in L.A., too. I wanted to dig a hole and burrow deep into the darkness like a frightened squirrel. “We could bum around Paris for a few days.”
“I’m with you, man, anywhere I can get Internet access.”
The emotion I’d suppressed for the last couple of hours flooded into my chest, clogging my throat. “I don’t want to take advantage of you, Nick. I—”
“You’re not, Cal. I’ll tell you if I need to get back, okay? I’ll call for a car. See you downstairs in half an hour?”
“Yeah, okay.” I let out a shaky breath. “See you then.”
After a few minutes I peeled myself off the couch and went to pack my suitcase, throwing things in with no concern whatsoever, even the damp swim trunks I’d taken off and left lying on the bathroom floor when I’d changed only a little while ago. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. I felt like an empty shell that somehow still had the ability to ache.