Entice (Hearts of Stone #2) (29 page)

Even as the ache for Owen presses against my ribcage, I almost savor the pain.
 

You're hurting? Good
, the voice in my head taunts.
This is what you get. This is what you deserve
.
 

That voice has grown increasingly loud over the last week, since I stopped drinking. It whispers things that make me feel small. And somehow, the mean voice stirs awake another instinct in me. The instinct to fight. A fierce anger that wants to silence the voice. Prove it wrong.

I'm in a battle with myself. Stubbornness and pride versus weakness and listlessness. I'm not sure who will win, but both forces are equally relentless.

All of this? What I'm feeling? It has nothing to do with Owen and everything to do with me. With something that's wrong with me. Something I've yet to really put my finger on. And that's what I remind myself in order to find the willpower to set my phone down every night.
 

I can't fix things with Owen. Not until I fix me.

Every morning, Elizabeth, my boss, walks by my office and seems increasingly less frigid toward me. And when Friday morning rolls around, nearly two weeks since the day I missed work over my drinking, Elizabeth stops at my door. I meet her critiquing stare.
 

The woman carries herself like someone with a steel rod for a spine. For some reason, her posture alone intimidates me. Her perfectly manicured fingers close over the doorframe as she addresses me from the threshold. "You've been coming in earlier than usual."

"Yes, I have."

"Staying late, too," she adds.

I nod.
 

"You've been doing a great job here, lately. I just wanted to let you know I notice."

"Thank you," I say, unsure how else to respond.

"Keep it up." She gives me a small smile, possibly the warmest gesture since the incident.
 

I pour myself into work partly as a distraction but mostly because I'm truly enjoying the work. When I close my office door at the end of the day, I don't feel worn thin or my abilities underestimated the way I did when I worked for Bernstein. In this job, I get to be a small part of securing the ground-breaking research going on at the university. And though the work is paperwork intensive and often tedious, my colleagues make me feel like it's significant and, therefore, worth every painstaking ounce of effort.
 

Friday night, I get home and I clean, the way I've done every night this week. I find it hard to sit still, like my thoughts live under my skin instead of in my head. Of all nights, I'm dreading this one the most. The end of the week. The start of a weekend without my job as a distraction. The first weekend since Owen and I broke up.

Sometime after eight, just when I'm starting to feel exhausted by my futile attempts to avoid my own thoughts, I get a call from Amelia. I haven't spoken to her in a few weeks, aside from the stray text message where we check in on each other. She's been busy with work as well.

Amelia invites me out for drinks. The urge to say yes is overwhelming. But the words 'I can't' leave my lips, instead. And that simple act cuts off the head of one of my demons. I've just resisted temptation.

But Amelia has no idea what's going on with me. "You can't?" she asks, concerned. "Why not? Did something happen? Did you get fired again?"

"I can't because I apparently have a drinking problem."

She laughs, but quickly falls silent when I don't join her. "Seriously?"

"Yeah. Seriously."

Silence.

"Damn. Emily, I didn't know."

"Yeah," I say, loosening my grip on the phone a bit. I'm relieved she isn't dismissing what I've revealed. Somehow I feared having to defend the realness of my issues, as ridiculous as that sounds. "I just recently got the memo, myself."

I hear rustling over the other end of the phone.
 

"You want to come over?" Amelia asks, her words washing me with a deep sense of gratitude and relief.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Amelia lives in the Golden Hill section of San Diego, just south of Balboa Park. Her apartment building is an old, two-story Victorian manor that now houses numerous apartments. As I cross the road from my parked car, I glimpse the way B Street slopes downward, cutting through the residential neighborhoods and disappearing toward downtown.
 

I adore this area. The merger of the cold, modern architect of downtown, a mere collection of lights this time of night, with the more rustic, historic feel of the houses lining this portion of the road, their windows glowing amber.
 

It reminds me of San Francisco, but even if I weren't so enamored with the loft, I wouldn't really consider an apartment down here. Even if it would mean a shorter commute for me to UCSD. Moving back to San Diego County reminded me of how much I love Carlsbad. It's a slower pace in the northern cities of the county, more laid back.
 

Amelia meets me at the front door. I expect there to be an awkward strain between us, after my recent confession. But she's her usual, aloof self, dressed in loose fitting clothes and making small talk as she leads me down the wide hall and up the stairs to her apartment.
 

We settle in front of her flat screen television, which casts us both in a bluish light. Our eyes train on the tense, overwrought scenes playing before them. Landscapes, yielding to shots of an empty home. Room by room. Eerie music in the background. We both lose interest fairly quickly and talk whenever the actors are busy sharing ominous glances or creeping slowly down darkened hallways.
 

It's small talk at first, everything but the real reason I was relieved she invited me over. Amelia doesn't push the conversation, allowing us time to settle in comfortably, allowing it to unravel organically.

"Whatever happened with that guy you were dating?" she asks, eyes on the movie. "The mobster from the bar?"

The phrase turns up my lips. "Shut up. He's not a mobster. He's a cop." My smile melts away, as the movie's soundtrack kicks up into a frantic, eerie pace. "And we broke up."

Amelia grabs the remote and pauses the movie, right as the actor's hand closes over a doorknob. "Shit. What happened?" She puts a few pieces of popcorn into her mouth.
 

Reluctantly, I give her a summary of the past few weeks. She listens and when I reach the end of my story, she waits for more, eyebrows rising in a silent prod for me to continue.
 

I put my hands up, signaling I'm done.

"That's it?" She frowns. "That can't be it."

"That's it."
 

"So, now what? He'll just sit on your shelf for a while?"
 

Having no clue what she means, I merely squint in response.

She pushes the bowl of popcorn toward me and I reluctantly pick up a few pieces and fling them into my mouth.

"I told you," she says, "you put your problems up on shelves. And now? You're shelving Owen. And for what? You think he'll be waiting for you when you're ready?"

I chew instead of answering, though her words make my throat feel too tight to swallow. Of course I don't expect him to wait for me. A part of me counts on the fact that he won't. Because Owen's everything I don't deserve and I'm everything he shouldn't want right now.
 

"I don't really see how we can work out. I'm not right for him."

Amelia gives me a weird look at this. "Because of the drinking thing? Okay—Fill me in on this whole drinking problem. What's that about?" Her tone is unassuming, the way it always seems to be even when approaching a potentially serious topic. It's as though we are talking about the issues of a different person, who isn't even in the room with us. The topic isn't weighted by judgment or impending disappointment, and I find I don't mind talking about it for once. The way I mind talking to Lex about it.

 
"I don't know. I guess I have a predisposition for addiction, or something." I think back to when Owen used the term, realizing now that he was throwing me hints. "But honestly, it's not so much the drinking I enjoyed. It was the…knowing I shouldn't have been drinking. Knowing it was growing too frequent. Knowing it was a bad idea." I rub my eyebrows. "I know…that doesn't make sense."

"Maybe it does. You were drinking because you knew it would fuck everything up? Because you secretly wanted to?"

Gathering my thoughts, I run my hands through my hair, collecting it up and twisting it only to let it fall again. Fidgeting. "Fucking shit up is apparently my specialty so…yeah. I think so. But even now, even after I stopped drinking…I don't feel like I'm getting better. I still feel…like something's wrong with me."

Amelia considers me in the beat that follows, her eyes softening with sympathy. Then she sits up the way she does when she gets an epiphany. "I had this roommate a few years ago. She had this constant headache and she kept popping aspirin to dull it. Because the pain was a symptom of the headache, right? So, every day, she treated the headache with pain killers, going through bottles like you wouldn't believe. One day, I tell her, 'Mia, you really should get that checked out. It's not normal. You could have a brain tumor or something.' Hang on—" Amelia holds up a finger at the way I snort at this. It's so like her to assume the worst, a headache being brain cancer. "Listen to this. So she went to the doctor and guess what? She had some sort of severe vitamin deficiency and the headache was just a symptom of that." Amelia points at me as though drawing me into her explanation. "The drinking? Maybe it's a symptom. Of something else, unrelated to alcohol. So treating it—cutting out the alcohol—it helps with the headache, but doesn't treat the root of the problem. The deficiency."

There's an innate truth to her theory, I feel it in my bones. In the way the room swells slightly. Or maybe I shrink where I sit. All I know is I try to keep my voice from revealing how important my next question is, and how badly I hope she has the answer. "What's the deficiency, then?"
 

"You're asking me?" Amelia pulls her eyebrows in. "How am I supposed to know?"

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

This place doesn't bring me comfort anymore. The bell over the door makes a shrill sound that sets me on edge. Yet I come here every morning, if only for a few minutes. It would be easier to get my coffee at the shop on campus. Easier for the part of me that sinks in disappointment every time the new guy greets me from behind the counter, instead of Owen. Caleb, I think is his name.
 

It's Friday again, going on two weeks since I last saw Owen. Two weeks and not a word from him. Not a word from me, either.
 
It's ridiculous I keep expecting to see him. Ridiculous I hold my phone in my hands every night willing myself to call him and warning myself against it all at once.

I shouldn't hope to run into him, anyway. Seeing him, having to pretend we are friends—or worse, strangers—would just twist the dagger in my stomach.
 

When I come up to the register and put in my coffee order, I don't bother to glance in the direction of the stool where I used to sit. But a head of dark hair catches my attention from the corner of my eye.

"Landon?"

The kid swivels his seat to face me and if he's surprised to run into me, he doesn't show it. I walk over to him, sensing his presence here is no coincidence. He hasn't been back since Owen returned to work. I suspect Landon was forced to come to the diner every morning, probably so Owen could keep a closer eye on him.
 

"Hi," he says. "So you and Owen broke up?"

"Cutting right to the chase, are we?"

He tilts his head to me as though recognizing my aversion tactic. "Answer my question."

"We did break up."
 

"Why? He won't tell me why."

I hesitate. "Reasons, kid. Sometimes people realize they aren't a good fit. Thanks, Caleb," I say, as the new guy hands me my cup of coffee.
 

"That doesn't make sense," Landon says.

Pulling sugar packets from the stack in front of Landon, I flavor my drink. Quicker than I normally would. Speaking to Landon makes my stomach clench but I don't want him to think it's because of him. "Why doesn't it make sense?"

"You two are perfect for each other."

The packet of sugar slips between my fingers, landing inside of the coffee. "What makes you say that?" I ask, peeling back the soaked paper.

"He's better since you two started dating. Easier to talk to. Not as serious, I guess. And that morning he picked me up from your place? I don't know what you said to him, but he's been so much better since then. We're not fighting so much anymore."

"I'm glad to hear that," I say, ignoring the first half of his statement.

"You two are perfect for each other," he repeats, slower this time as though making sure the meaning sinks in for me.
 

Concern is etched in Landon's light-brown eyes. So intense it takes me off guard. A question leaves my lips before I have a chance to stop it. "You really care about your dad, don't you?"

"Of course."

"He has a lot on his plate, you know? Make sure you tell him you love him every once in a while."

A beat.

"You should tell him, too."

Damn. This kid, he sees right through me. His words wrap around my heart, squeezing tight in pulses opposite to my natural beating rhythm.

Clearing my throat to segue, I change the subject because I'm getting ready to leave but don't want to seem harsh about it.

"How are things with the girl?"
 

It's been a while since we talked about it and I don't even know her name, but I'm sure he'll know whom I mean.

"It worked." He glances down and I think it's so I don't see the smile in his eyes. I wait for him to elaborate but he doesn't.
 

"That's awesome." I don't push the subject, securing the lid on my cup and taking a breath to prepare my parting words.