Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (14 page)

“No, Elijah.”
 
She was going to continue, but she knew
it was useless.
 
He wasn’t listening
anymore.
 
He was lost in his own world,
and she didn’t really understand how it had happened—but everything
between them seemed to have come apart in an instant.

***

That night, Elijah
slept on the floor.

She’d told him not to
be silly, that she didn’t mind sharing the bed—but he’d refused, and then
she’d given up.

In the end, Caelyn
was too tired to keep fighting, especially when she had no idea what they were
even fighting about.

Before bed, she’d
gotten another text from Alicia.

I’m still worried about u.

Sighing, she texted
back hastily:
Don’t worry I got a job waitressing
on the island. It’s all good.

But was it all
good?
 
She didn’t know anymore.

She’d fallen asleep
sometime later out of sheer exhaustion, sleeping through until the next
morning, when she was woken up by Elijah talking on the phone.

He was standing just
outside the motel room, but she could still hear him through the paper-thin
walls.
 

“I’m coming back,
that’s all you need to know,” he was saying, as Caelyn blearily opened her
eyes.

She saw that she had
to get ready for work anyway, so she sat up and tried to piece her thoughts
together.
 

Elijah’s pillow and
blanket were lying in a messy pile on the floor.
 
She felt sadness well up inside her at
the sight of it.
 
She’d wanted him
next to her last night.
 
She wanted
to be talking and cracking jokes with him right now, instead of this.

Hearing him say he
was ‘coming back’ sent a chill down her spine. Did he mean back to Boston, back
to those bad friends he’d been alluding to?

“Give me a couple of
days,” Elijah said.
 
“Don’t worry
about it.
 
Just tell them what I
told you.
 
No, this last part.”
 
He laughed, but it wasn’t the same laugh
she was used to—it was bitter.
 
“Yeah.
 
I just got caught up
in some stupid shit, brother.
 
I’ll
hit you up later when I’m on the road.”

A moment later, the
doorknob turned and he re-entered the room, slowing down when he saw she was
awake.
 

“Hey,” she said,
softly.

“Hey.”
 
He looked at her.
 
“You sleep well?”

“I guess.
 
You?”

He shrugged.
 
“Doesn’t matter.
 
I’ll be okay.”

What did that even
mean?
 
What did any of it mean?
 
She was so frustrated, she wanted to
scream at him.
 
But somehow, she couldn’t
find the words.
 

She was scared that
he was leaving Florida and going back to Boston.
 
She was scared that she’d never see him
smile again, hear him laugh, feel his fingers stroking her hair.
 

But she was also
scared to tell him any of those things, because ever since last night he’d been
unreachable.
 
He seemed angry and
distant, like he was finished with her for some reason.

“I guess I’m going to
shower and get ready for my first day at the restaurant,” she said,
smiling.
 
“What about you?”

He bent down and
picked up the pillow and blanket, tossed them on the bed.
 
“Guess I’m going to hit the road.”

Her stomach
dropped.
 
“Where to?”

“Don’t know just
yet.”

“Boston?”

He glanced at
her.
 
“Maybe.”

“I thought you said
you needed to get away from…bad influences.”

“Maybe I did.
 
Maybe I’m going back anyway.”
 
His eyes met her as if challenging her
to say something to sway him.

She wanted to tell
him that he should stay, that she wanted to see him again.
 
But she got afraid once more.
 
The truth was, he didn’t want to stay
and she couldn’t bear to hear him say it to her face.

So she just smiled
again.
 
“Will I see you when I get
out of the shower or are you just going to—“

“Nah, I should get an
early start,” he said, cutting her off.
 
“You take care, though.”

She felt tears spring
to her eyes and turned away, moving toward the bathroom.
 
“Have a nice trip, Elijah,” she muttered,
as she closed the bathroom door and heard him readying his things.

She didn’t shower for
long—maybe five or ten minutes.
 
And then she got out of the bathroom fast, hoping to catch him before he
left.
 
But he must have been more intent
to get out of there without seeing her.
 

She stepped out of
the bathroom and found the room key sitting alone on the table with a
handwritten note next to it.
 

I paid for an extra night in case that other room
doesn’t work out.

-Elijah.

She sat on the chair
and read it, feeling the ink on her fingertips.
 
Tears were rolling down her face.
 
She wished she could have at least
gotten his phone number or something.
 

Now she knew she’d
never see him again.

***

Something strange
happened when she got into work.

The waitress who had
introduced her to Kenzie was working behind the bar, setting out freshly dried
glasses.
 
When she saw Caelyn walk
into the restaurant, she grinned widely.
 
“Hey, you.”

“Hey,” Caelyn
said.
 

“Ready for your first
day?”

“As ready as I can
be.
 
A little nervous.”
 
And sad, she thought, but saw no reason
to mention that.

“Your name’s Caelyn,
right?”

“Yeah.
 
What’s your name again?”

“Rosemary, but
everyone just calls me Ro.”
 
Ro
smiled again as she set another glass on the bar.
 
“Well, Caelyn you must be popular,
because someone already called for you.”

“Really?”
 
Caelyn frowned.
 
“Who?”
 

Ro shook her
head.
 
“I don’t know.
 
He didn’t say.
 
He just asked if you were waitressing
here today, and I said I thought so.
 
I told him you weren’t in yet and asked if he wanted to leave a
message.
 
He said no thanks and hung
up.”

“Weird.”
 
Caelyn felt an odd thrill run through
her body.

It had to have been
Elijah looking for her.
 
Maybe he
wanted to apologize for the way he’d left things.
 
Perhaps this meant that she was going to
speak to him again after all.

The thought picked
her mood up and she was able to start her day of training with renewed
enthusiasm.

Before Kenzie
arrived, Ro showed her some of the ropes—showed her the schedule and gave
her a quick tour of the restaurant.
 
They only had a skeleton crew on until about noon, when more of the
staff began arriving.

But everyone was
incredibly friendly and made her feel welcomed.
 
Once Kenzie and the rest of the staff
showed up, everything kicked into overdrive.
 
Customers were beginning to appear and
be seated, food was being prepared, a few folks sat down at the bar.

Caelyn’s duties were
mainly to follow Ro around and help her as she watched her do her job, learned
the menu and the procedures of the restaurant.
 
Even though she wasn’t waitressing, it
was still hectic, as she was running food to tables, getting drink orders, and
dealing with customers the whole time.

She was breaking a
sweat, but basically enjoying herself.

It was a lot
different than sitting in class all day, but she wasn’t sure it was a bad
thing.

The hard part was
when she occasionally allowed herself to envision what it would be like at
night, going back to a room with nobody waiting for her.

And it wasn’t even
that she missed her roommates in the dorms.

She missed
him
.

Elijah.

He’d left so
suddenly, and she was still hung up on wondering why.

It wasn’t until the
evening, just a few hours before her shift ended, that everything turned
completely upside down.

Up until then, she’d
been doing her job, hustling, learning everything as fast as possible.
 
Ro seemed happy with her, and Kenzie was
happy if Ro was happy.

At around eight
o’clock, Caelyn took a break.
 
She
grabbed a Diet Coke and stood out back with some of the other servers and
kitchen staff, most of whom smoked.
 
They all talked while smoking, and she drank her soda.
 

Then she went inside,
dumped her drink at the bar, and went to the bathroom.
 
The woman’s bathroom was towards the
back of the restaurant, and there was a long hallway leading up to it, that
hooked around a corner.

Caelyn was coming out
of the bathroom when someone familiar rounded the corner.
 
It took her a moment to place who it
was, because she had no way of imagining that this person could show up there.

When she saw him, it
was as if her entire mind just shut down.
 

She almost seemed to
go deaf, and her vision narrowed.
 
She stumbled a little.

He smiled at
her.
 
“I’ve been looking for you,”
he said.

She tried to swallow
but it was like there was a boulder in her throat.
 
“What are you doing here?” she asked,
but it barely came out of her mouth.

Jayson smiled
wider.
 
“I came to find you,
babe.”
 
He reached out to touch her
and she stepped backwards.

“How did you know
where I was?”

“Lucky for you, your
friends really care about you.
 
Alicia told me you got a waitressing job out here, and it didn’t exactly
take a genius to track you down.”

“Why would you track
me down?
 
Obviously I left for a
reason.”

He cocked his head as
if it had never occurred to him that she was trying to get away from him
specifically.
 
“Because I couldn’t
figure out why you just stopped responding to me.
 
I thought we were together.
 
I thought there was really something
between us.”

She looked around,
but the hallway was empty.
 
She
thought about screaming, but didn’t know what she’d say if people came running
to help.
 

Say that he raped you.

No, she couldn’t do
that.
 
She couldn’t open that can of
worms.
 
She’d run to Florida to
avoid this very moment, and here it was, happening anyway.

“I need to get back
to work,” she said, trying to walk by him.

Jayson blocked her
path.
 
He was a very large guy.
 
He wasn’t as cut and muscular as Elijah,
but he was bulkier and taller.
 
And
he was much, much stronger than her—she knew that already.
 
“Come on, I flew all the way out here to
see you.
 
Doesn’t that get me some
brownie points?” he chuckled.

“I can’t do this
right now.”

His smile disappeared
and he reached out and grabbed her wrist.
 
“Listen,” he told her, his voice dropping to a lower register.
 
“I want you to come home with me.”
 
His hand tightened.
 
“I like you.
 
And I want you in Boston with me.”

“I don’t want to go
anywhere with you,” she said, finally meeting his gaze.

But his eyes were the
same as the other night—there was nothing in them but coldness and
blackness.
 
“I get what I want,” he
said.
 
“I think you saw that
firsthand, didn’t you?”