Out Of The Ashes (21 page)

I refused to look back at her as I crumbled the note and placed it in my bag for safekeeping.

White-hot rage shot through me like a geyser. How dare this girl treat me like this? She didn’t know me. She definitely didn’t know the tragedy I went through when my family died. And she had the nerve to joke about the fact that I’d been burned in a deadly fire? What a bitch. And I’d had enough. It was time to put her down.

I vowed then and there not to let her ruin my relationship with Clay. What we had was beautiful. Neither of us was perfect alone, but we fit perfectly together, like two halves of a jagged broken heart being made whole again.

I was almost sick at the way I had blown him off yesterday. Me losing Clay was exactly what Hannah wanted, and I wasn’t giving in. I was going to text him after class and apologize for pulling away from him. It wasn’t going to happen again.

So I walked out of the building when class was over, thanking my stars that the professor hadn’t actually bored me to death and pulling out my phone. As I pulled up my contacts, I walked smack into someone heading up the building stairs.

“Whoa,” he said, catching me before I fell down the steps.

I looked up and straight into the impossibly blue eyes of my boyfriend.

“Clay!” I exclaimed. “What are you doing here? I was just about to text you.”

“Oh, that’s good,” he said, smoothing a hand over his hair in the familiar gesture.

He didn’t let go of me, keeping both hands on my waist as he looked down into my eyes.

“Because I was worried you’d be pissed I decided to ignore your request for space. I missed you too much.”

I looked up at him standing there in a plain gray tee shirt and jeans, looking for all the world like a Calvin Klein model. The fluttery wings of butterflies in my stomach erupted at the sight of him. I just wrapped my arms around him and squeezed.

“Thanks for coming,” I sighed into his shoulder. He smelled like fresh air, pines, and Downy.

“If I’m not with you, I’m always on my way to you,” he said simply, dropping a kiss on the top of my head.

“Well, if it isn’t the lovely couple,” Hannah’s voice could have cut through diamonds as it came from behind us at the top of the steps.

“Ignore her,” Clay told me, lifting my chin and looking into my eyes. “She mess with you in there today?”

I nodded, patting my bag where I’d stashed the note. “Just a nasty note. Nothing compared to exploding cupcakes.”

His face contorted with anger; he glared up at Hannah.

“Guess a firework in a dessert wasn’t enough to show you two how wrong for each other you are. Man, I hope nothing worse happens,” Hannah drawled.

“Got something you want to confess to, Hannah?” Clay asked.

“Nope. Just one of the onlookers, like everyone else.”

“Sure you were,” he spat.

He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and turned us around. As we moved down the steps we heard Hannah shriek behind us.

“Don’t you walk away from me, Clay Forbes!”

Satisfaction radiated through me like sunbeams as we continued to glide away, hand in hand.

Clay

Walking away from Hannah when all I really wanted to do was yank that flaming hair of hers until she screamed took an enormous amount of strength and willpower. But I knew Paige wouldn’t want me to try and intimidate Hannah with physical force. I normally would never even consider hurting a female, but Hannah was pushing my buttons in ways I’d never imagined possible.

“Do you have to work today?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Paige.

“Okay if I walk you?”

“Of course,” she replied.

She stopped walking, turned around on the patterned brick sidewalk, and wrapped her arms around my neck, pulling my face down to hers. She kissed me freely, and I realized I hadn’t even known she was holding something back before. Her lips were as tender as always, but there was no tentativeness, no uncertainty in their pressure.

I pulled back, studying her face. “What’s changed?”

“I have,” she answered. “I had an epiphany today.”

I pulled out a strand of her dark hair, letting it slide between my fingers. “You did, huh?”

“I did. I’m not going to let anything stand in our way anymore. I want you, so I’m going to have you.”

“Oh, I like this epiphany. This may go down in history as the best epiphany ever.”

She threw her head back and laughed, and all the sunshine in the world was aimed at my face at that moment.

“So we’re okay then.” I just wanted to make sure.

“We’re better than okay.”

I kissed her again, just a meeting of our lips for a brief moment. Then I took her hand comfortably in mine and walked her to work.

We stopped outside the office door.

“Can I see you later tonight?” I asked.

“I can make you dinner. Maybe you can bring Drew to surprise Gillian.”

I laughed. “And would that be a pleasant surprise for Gillian?”

The door opened suddenly and Paige’s boss, that creepy professor, was standing there.

“I thought I heard you out here, Paige.”

His booming voice about knocked me against the wall.

“Oh, hi Professor,” she said. “I’m not late, am I?”

“You won’t be as long as you come on in here and get to work! I have a lot of favors for you to fulfill today.” He shot a meaningful glance in my direction.

What was this old guy’s deal? He was jabbing me about my girlfriend? Really?

“Oh okay,” Paige said, glancing at me. “See you later tonight?”

“Absolutely.”

“Come on then,” Dr. Schilling crooned.

With one last look at me, she entered the office and the professor slammed the heavy door shut behind her.

I stared at the door a second. I should nonchalantly suggest to Paige that she look for a different job. I doubted that would go over well. But I was going to keep an eye on that greasy professor.

I walked home, my steps lighter than they’d been earlier. When I walked into my apartment, the smile on my face dissipated when I saw my mother sitting on the couch next to Rob.

Thirty

Clay

“Mom?” I picked my jaw up off the floor long enough to croak out a greeting. “What are you doing here?”

My relationship with my mother was complicated. She was in an extremely unhappy marriage with my father. They fought constantly, when he was home long enough for them to spark a disagreement about something. When my dad wasn’t home pressing my mother’s buttons or working in his home office, he was out with one of the revolving door of women he cheated with. So, needless to say, my mother focused all of her energy and attention on my sisters and I. Particularly me. It was because I was the youngest, and her only son.

“What are you doing here?” I repeated, my voice a little stronger.

“Oh honey,” she began. “I just had to come. That lovely girlfriend of yours—Hannah--called and told me you were having a hard time staying on the straight and narrow. She felt that you might need your mother, so I jumped in the car and drove nine hours just to make sure everything was alright.”

I looked at Rob, feeling helpless. He shrugged and put both hands in the air in a “don’t look at me” gesture. Then he placed one finger by his head and waggled it in a circle. He quickly dropped his hand to his chest in faux scratching gesture when my mother looked at him.

“Robert? Is everything okay?” she asked, aiming an ice cold glare at him.

“Oh, yeah, Mrs. Forbes, everything is fine.”

She stared at him a minute, then focused her attention back on me. I coughed deep in my throat.

“So?” she asked.

“So what?”

“So where is that lovely Hannah? I haven’t seen her since Thanksgiving of last year.”

I closed my eyes briefly in order to count to five. Last Thanksgiving, I brought Hannah home with me for the holiday to shut her up. She asked repeatedly if she could go home and meet my parents and I had managed to refuse her for two years. But I finally obliged her, caving one drunken night when I wanted the goods and she refused to give anything up unless I gave in.

What an imbecile I was back then.

In the Pre-Paige period of my life.

“She’s not here,” I told my mother.

“I can see that, Clay. Why isn’t she? She sounded so upset on the phone. You should have heard the things she was telling me! I came right down. You know the pain and suffering your father has caused me, Clay, and is still causing me. Over my dead body will you start going down the same adulterous road he chose.”

I looked at Rob again, panicked.

He cleared his throat. “Um, Mrs. Forbes?”

“Not now, Robert. I’m speaking with my son. You should run along now, don’t you have classes or something? And I plan on giving your mother a call as soon as I get back home…”

Rob quickly made himself scarce.

Pussy, I thought.

“Mom, we need to talk. I don’t know what Hannah told you--“

“Oh, she told me plenty. Is it true you asked the girl to marry you, Clay? Now I liked her when I met her, you know we got along nicely, but for you to propose marriage to the girl without your family knowing a thing about it. Your father is an important man, Clay, and you can’t just spring things like this on us--“

“Mom!” I exclaimed, exasperated. “Just slow down a minute and listen!”

She stared at me, openmouthed. I’d never raised my voice at her before.

“Just listen, please,” I said in a more respectful tone. “I’m not engaged to Hannah. She is bat-shit crazy.”

“Clay Matthew Forbes!” my mother shouted. “Don’t you dare use that language in front of your mother. Have you lost your mind?”

“Well, she’s nuts, Mom. We’re not even engaged. I’m actually dating someone else now--“

“Dating someone else?” my mother’s eyes narrowed. “You haven’t bothered to say anything about her to me? Have you been talking to your sisters?”

My head fell into my hands. So this was what Hannah had planned next. Get my mother on my back about her and Paige, so I had less time to spend with my girlfriend. I was already going to have to cancel dinner with her tonight. There was no way I was going to expose her to my mother. It would be like tying up a lamb in a lion’s den.

“Mom,” I sighed. “Just listen. I have a new girlfriend. I love her. Like, for real. I’ve never felt this way before. So I told Hannah I would have to stop seeing her.”

That was sort of how it had gone.

“And now she’s acting like the scorned woman. She’s gone completely insane. Threatening Paige, pulling pranks on me. She’s crazy.”

“Hmph. I don’t think I can believe such a thing about that sweet girl you brought to Ohio last November. Whoever this new girl is must be tainting your perception. Confusing you, muddling your mind with all the sex.”

“Mom!” I grimaced when she said the word “sex.”

“It’s not like that with Paige.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what your father says about his current mistress.”

I wasn’t going to win this argument. I wasn’t going to be able to make my mother understand what Paige and I had, not with Hannah’s testimony already in the bank. And that’s what Hannah was counting on. She was hoping my mother would talk some sense into me, push me back in Hannah’s direction.

To hell with that.

“As long as I’m here, Clay Matthew, I expect you to spend some time with me. Take your mother somewhere decent to eat tonight before I retire at my hotel. “

“Of course, Mom,” I said, pulling out my phone to look up a restaurant that would suit my mother’s expensive tastes.

By the time I showered, changed into something that my mom considered presentable, driven behind her to the hotel, waited on her to shower and change into something she considered more presentable, and picked a restaurant, the meeting time Paige and I had agreed on had come and gone.

Paige

I set my phone down on the counter beside me as I stirred the marinara sauce bubbling happily on the stove. Clay was late, but I wasn’t worried. He had been so happy this afternoon that I was no longer giving him the cold shoulder. He’d be tearing my door down in a few minutes.

Twenty more minutes ticked by, and I was scooping out long strands of spaghetti from the strainer in the sink onto plates. I ladled generous servings of marinara sauce on each plate and carried them to the small kitchen table in the eating area just off the kitchen.

I sat down, checking my phone again.

Fifteen minutes later found me sitting restlessly on the couch, flipping through television channels without seeing any of the programs flashing across the screen. I kept glancing at the now-cold plates of pasta on the table, biting my lip.

When Clay was an hour and eleven minutes late, I marched to the table, picked up the plates, threw the contents in the trash, and shoved the dishes in the sink, swiping angry tears away from my face.

If he couldn’t make it, why wouldn’t he at least have the consideration to send me a text? I thought of the dinner I had slaved over and my anger intensified.

When Gillian came through the door around eleven, I was curled up on the couch in my PJs, watching a Lifetime movie.

She stopped short when she saw me. “Uh-oh. Lifetime? What happened? Where’s Clay?”

I took in her appearance. She was wearing short black shorts, black patterned tights, short black boots, and a skin-tight lacy shirt that glowed a soft, shimmery pink in the light of the television.