I felt rage.
But I also felt powerless, incapacitated.
I got up from the chair and went over to him. "Lane," I said and couldn"t help that tears were forming in my eyes. "You need to stop, man. You...you need to stop this s.h.i.t! This isn"t you! You need to stop-" the sentence wasn"t finished when Lane stood and hugged me.
"I"m sorry," he said and I could tell he was choking up on his words too. "I won"t do it again, I promise."
I couldn"t think.
The sight of him with those people in that place, it kept coming back to me and I couldn"t stop the hurt. "Lane-"
He pulled away and looked at me. "You have to trust me," he said and I could see the sincerity in his eyes, in his voice. "This won"t happen again. I"m sorry." And then he hugged me once more.
"Can we go get breakfast?" he said. "I"m starving."
I pulled away. "Of course."
He rushed to the bathroom.
"Where do you want to go?" I asked.
"Same place."
I felt a strange wave of anger. Lane stopped and turned to me. "I really do like that place," he said. "You"ll be with me. I won"t go anywhere, I promise."
I wanted to trust him.
"Okay," I said. "We can go."
I couldn"t make some place my weakness. It was just breakfast. I would be with him the whole time, and I doubted that friend of his would come near us again.
There was nothing to worry about.
ELENA.
Training was finally over, and we were actually getting some work done. It wasn"t easy and there were things that kept bothering me. Someone"s att.i.tude, some task that I couldn"t manage to finish, lack of creativity when there was dire need for it-yes, it"s hardly perfect. But there was something about immersing myself in work that was fulfilling in a different kind of way. I know it wasn"t even going to last that long, which was why I gave it my all because I really wanted things to work out. Needless to say, there were also plenty of late nights and frustrating moments where nothing seemed to go right but because I was really happy with the job overall, I let it all slide.
I was even better friends with Alex and Tristan and they actually did turn out to be nice people, even though they were as judgmental about everyone still as they were the first day I met them. I think it was some kind of self-defense mechanism-they judged people before other people could start judging them. Thorne was just the high profile CEO we barely got to see. Sometimes we crossed paths in the elevator or walking towards our floor. A man in his position could have made my life miserable, considering he was my employer and I kind of turned him down, but he was incredibly professional despite everything that happened. In fact, he didn"t even look too concerned or interested in me anymore. So basically, he wasn"t hiding a grudge and he wasn"t trying to flirt with me: both good things and more than I could hope for because I was still trying to stay away from men in general.
It was Sunday and we were at a breakfast place on our street that Penny loves so much. I was outside, trying to search for my phone in my purse which was never easy, as I"ve mentioned before. I had to call to Tristan and when Tristan was waiting for someone"s call and they didn"t call, he got ugly. And he tended to get annoyed which meant I would have to spend the next two days trying to get him to like me again, and I was not looking forward to that at all. But my phone had suddenly become some invisible object that may or may not exist.
"Elena," someone said so I looked up. I was staring right down at this person"s face, a roundish shape and hazel eyes. I couldn"t even find words to respond with, I was just standing there, speechless.
"Elena? You okay?"
"What the h.e.l.l are you doing here, Nick?" I finally managed to find my voice. And with that, my anger was riled back up again.
"You wouldn"t talk to me," Nick said. "What was I supposed to do?"
"Stay the f.u.c.k away, Nick! That"s what!"
He grabbed my arm in an obvious effort to threaten me. "Don"t do this," he said. "Don"t make this a whole public insult thing. I just need to talk."
I tried to break free but his grip on my arm was vicious. "Nick!" I yelled. "Let go of me."
"Not until you agree to come with me," he said, fingers digging deeper into my skin. "Come on Elena, don"t be a b.i.t.c.h."
I was about to say something rude when our conversation was interrupted. "She asked you to leave her alone," said a familiar voice.
I turned to see the speaker, and ended up being just as confused as Nick, because it was Thorne Ryker, standing there, wearing casual clothes that I had never seen on him before. There was a lanky teenager standing right next to him, and he looked a lot like Thorne.
"Who the h.e.l.l are you?" Nick said to Ryker.
Nick was even more mad, but Thorne wasn"t about to let this go either. "I"m a friend of Penny"s," he said to Nick. "And next time, I"m not going to ask you to let go of her."
"This is none of your business Penny"s friend," Nick said, to my utter disappointment. "I suggest you let her deal with her own problems. She"s my fiancee. I just want to talk to her."
"Nick I told you before, I don"t want to talk to you. Now let me go, please!"
But Nick"s gaze wasn"t on me anymore. He was eyeing Thorne with contempt. Thorne didn"t even flinch. "You heard her," he said. The threat was there in his voice, even though he wasn"t saying it. We all heard it and Nick must have heard it too. Which was probably why he let go of me. I guess he must have decided it wasn"t worth taking the risk of being punched in public and losing the fight. "Elena I will see you," Nick said, and that was supposed to be some kind of threat but I couldn"t care less. Then he turned to leave.
"Thanks," I said to Thorne, as soon as Nick was gone. "He"s not usually like this. I don"t know what"s going on with him."
"That"s alright," Thorne said. "Guess he"s having trouble getting over you."
I had no idea what I was supposed to say, so I did the next best thing. "Thanks," I said. "For telling him you were Penny"s friend and not being weird about it."
"No problem," he said.
"You"re here," I said. "In these parts?"
He grinned. "This is my brother Lane," he pointed to the teenager and the teenager gave a nod of his head, and a shy smile. "He loves this place for some reason. I"m pretty sure he"s after some girl, but we don"t know that yet."
The teenager flushed. "That"s not true," he said. "I really do like the food."
"Nice to meet you, Lane," I held out a hand and he shook it.
Then, we were all just standing in an awkward silence. It seemed like it would never be over, when Thorne filled it with words. "I should probably go inside," he said and I started smiling like an idiot, I was probably overdoing it, I was certain.
"Sure, yeah!" I stammered.
"I"ll see you around," he said, and I"m pretty sure his eyes said things that his words didn"t say.
"Yes," I managed.
And then he was gone, disappeared inside the crowd of people in the breakfast place along with his teenaged brother, and I was left standing outside, with my mouth open.
"What the h.e.l.l was that all about?" Penny asked, jolting me out of my fantasy state.
"Nothing," I said.
I felt tired even though it was just morning and I had woken up less than an hour ago. I was tired because I wanted this thing with Nick to stop. I wanted it to go away. But the way Nick had behaved today it was more than a little obvious that he wasn"t about to just sit back and wait for his heart to move on. And of course there was this other little inconvenience-Thorne Ryker. What the h.e.l.l was I doing getting all excited over him? He was my boss, this could get complicated! But I couldn"t help that every time I saw him I felt something, deep down inside me, an urge, a thirst, a craving if you could call it that-something that I"d never felt before and it was annoying the way every time Thorne was around, it resurfaced. I needed to make more of an effort to kill that stupid feeling.
THORNE.
"What was that about?" Lane asked when we found a table.
"What?"
"Elena," Lane said, and he looked at me in a strange way. "You like her, don"t you?"
"What? That"s absurd!"
"No, it"s not," my brother was adamant. "You were threatening the guy like he had really p.i.s.sed you off and I don"t remember you standing up for people at your workplace before."
"That guy was being an a.s.shole."
"To her. I noticed."
"Lane, could you shut up about this?"
Lane grinned. "No."
Even my brother"s teasing couldn"t get me to relax. That guy, Nick, sounded like trouble. I couldn"t help but think what would happen if he tried to do the same to her when she was unprotected. I should get her to file a restraining order, really make sure he stays out of her life.
"What would you like to have, sir?"
ELENA.
The next day at work I was back to avoiding Nick"s calls. This time around there were more texts, stupid, annoying, threatening and he still kept trying to call. I had to leave my phone aside and forget it even existed in order to distract myself. But he had been at it since the previous night. Why couldn"t he just give up? Couldn"t he see I was not the same person who had been staying with him all those years? He probably didn"t realize that moving on had changed me in ways that he couldn"t imagine, and made me understand how stupid I had been and I was not about to repeat that stupidity. But of course, there was no way I could have explained that to him. I just hoped that soon enough he would find someone else to follow around, and charm into a life with him and I would be history. Until then, I was going to have to accept this frustration and annoyance as part of my life. In an effort to forget about the incident I didn"t even tell Tristan and Alex about what went on outside the breakfast place, even though I had gotten into the habit of discussing things with them the minute they happened. Sometimes they knew things before Penny did because we worked together and they were always nearby. Perhaps I should have called in sick; I was too distracted to work. But calling in sick at a job you"ve just begun, it hadn"t seemed like the best way to handle things. So here I was, trying to focus on the task at hand, but unable to concentrate, hoping that people won"t notice. When the beautiful young brunette came towards my desk I thought that I must surely be in trouble.
"Mr. Ryker would like to see you in his office," she said in her usual professional monotone. I recognized her as Thorne"s a.s.sistant, the gorgeous woman everyone thought he was sleeping with. Actually most people thought Ryker was having s.e.x with every female he could get his hands on. Somehow it didn"t seem like a fair judgment of him, but what did I care. So what if he was the man-wh.o.r.e everyone kept talking about? It wasn"t my problem.
"Mr. Ryker?" I repeated, just to be sure. That had never happened before, he had never called me into his office, and in fact he hardly ever met people there. If Ryker had to meet someone it was usually in the conference room. Most people knew to stay away when he was locked up in that office of his, because half the time he was in it, he wasn"t a very pleasant person. Naturally, I was concerned that it might be my turn this time, and that he would be rude to me as well. On a day like today, that would be just awful. But the a.s.sistant didn"t even respond to my question, she just turned and went back to her desk, leaving me no option but to do as I was asked.
When I stepped into his office, Thorne was immersed in some files on his desk. There was a pen in his hand and he was actually writing with it, instead of having someone else do it for him.
"Hi," I said, wondering if that was the appropriate greeting for the boss.
Thorne looked up from his papers.
"Please sit," he said, in a tone that was clearly business.
My legs started shaking uncontrollably for no reason at all. My fingers started fidgeting and I had to stop myself. Thorne closed the file and his attention was on me, his eyes calculating, watching my every move. "How"s work?" he asked.
Small talk? Seriously?
"Work is great," I stammered, as if I could say anything else considering how new I was and how that was never the right response to your employer"s generic questioning, he was obviously just trying to be nice. Besides, there was nothing major to complain about.
"Are you sure?" he said. "Because I doubt any kind of work can be great."
That"s when my mind went haywire. Was everything okay? Why was he asking me about work? Did he know something I didn"t? Had someone said something about me? Registered a complaint perhaps? What if that was true? What if he had called me in here to tell me my a.s.sistance was no longer required? What if he really didn"t like getting involved with the whole thing with Nick yesterday? I mean, that had to be incredibly unprofessional right?
"What I mean is," I began. "Things are good. I think I"m getting along well...unless you"ve heard something?"
He looked at me for a second, not getting what I was trying to say at first, but then he understood. "No," he said. "Nothing like that! I"m sorry...there"s nothing to be afraid of. You"re fine...we"re happy with your performance. Really, there is nothing to worry about."
Relief swept through me.
"Glad to hear it," I said.
"I just wanted to make sure you were okay," Thorne said. "I hope that guy didn"t bother you again."
Oh, I thought.
That guy, I thought.
"No," I said. "I"m fine. It"s fine...I mean Nick; he"s not dangerous or anything. He was just angry and I know he went overboard, but I know him. He"s not going to hurt me, at least not in the way you think."
Thorne didn"t seem convinced.
"Look I can get you help," he said. "A lawyer... security detail, anything you need. I can talk to some friends of mine at the precinct if you want."
"No! That"s fine. Really."