The Girl with my Heart (Summer Unplugged #8) (13 page)

Park won’t take me to my truck. He says I’m in no condition to drive and because of this, he chauffeurs me to my apartment complex. Everything looks the same, almost. Bay’s blue car is gone and we park in her spot.

I am an emotionless zombie as I take the stairs up to the second floor, put my key in the lock and turn. The first thing I see is my iPad on the kitchen table. The screen is shattered, a simple yellow sticky note waits in the center of the screen for me.

I can’t believe I trusted you.

Bayleigh’s handwriting is rushed, pained scrawls across the note. I don’t want to look, but I do anyway. I turn on the iPad and it’s open to my messages that sync with my phone. Natalie’s unsaved phone number is at the top, followed by her message.

“She saw it,” I say, my voice barely a whisper. “She thinks it’s true.”

Park stands next to me, a solid force of pissed anger. “I’m going to kill this bitch,” he says, his hands clenching into fists.

My knees shake and I drop onto a nearby barstool, unable to hold up my own weight under all of this heartbreak and anger and shame. I know it’s useless but I try to call my wife. My call goes straight to voicemail.

I call her again and again and get the same reply. Finally, I try Becca. My heart jumps when she answers the phone. “Jace?” she says.

“Yeah, I need to talk to Bay.”

“You’ll never talk to her again,” she hisses into the phone. “I can’t believe you, Jace.”

The call ends.

I’m crying again.

“I will kill her,” Park mutters to himself as he paces the space between the kitchen island and the wall. “I fill find this bitch and end her.”

I shake my head. “No need for first degree murder. This is my fault. This is all my fault.” I slam the iPad across the room and it soars until it crashes into the wall, leaving an indention in the drywall.

I can’t live without her. I can’t do it. I can’t go on day after day without my girl by my side. How could I have done this? What the fuck was I thinking?

“I know you might not want to hear anything right now,” Park begins, sliding into the barstool next to me. I feel the rush of air when he sits but I don’t look over. My eyes are full of tears, my head resting in my palms. I don’t think I could move if I wanted to.

Park continues, “I have an idea that might get to the bottom of things. Bayleigh might understand.”

“She’ll never speak to me again,” I say.

“You don’t know that. She’s pissed, yeah, but she needs to know that you didn’t purposely cheat on her.”

I shake my head. “She moved out, Park. In like two hours’ time, she’s gone. My life is over.”

A long moment passes. Park rises to his feet and slaps his hands on the counter, making me startle. “I’m going to fix this. Natalie will admit exactly what happened and Bayleigh will take you back.”

I look up at him, incredulous. “Do you have a fucking time machine?”

“No, but I have the next best thing.” His eyes are alight with a fiery plan. He nods, more to himself than to me. “I have a video camera.”

The sun shines unrelentingly bright on the long glass windows of the abandoned Dairy Queen on the outskirts of Mixon. My truck is parked on the other side of the parking lot. This is the meeting place. It’s isolated and has everything Park needs. We got here an hour early and the time has dripped by slower than cold lava.

My heart is lodged in my throat, my palms sweaty appendages at my sides. No amount of rubbing them on my jeans will dry them. My heart has surpassed its usual thumping like a jet engine and is now hovering somewhere in the dangerous zone. I might fall over dead at any minute from how hard I’m panicking about this.

But Park swears it’s going to work. And right now he’s all I’ve got.

It’s a few hours after I came home to find that Bayleigh had left and she hasn’t answered any of my calls. Her mom has blocked my number and as soon as Becca realized her boyfriend is with me, she swore not to talk to him until he got away from me. For all I know, my texts to Bayleigh have been deleted unread.

Still, I send another one because I can’t not tell her.

I love you honey. I love you with everything I have.

I swallow back the pain and the fear and stare at my phone.

I have no idea if Park’s plan will work, but I squeeze an ounce of confidence out of myself and send her one final text.

I will prove it to you. I promise.

When my phone beeps a minute later, I swear I must have imagined it. But there it is, right there on the screen—Bayleigh’s name on a new text message. I almost don’t want to read it as fear overwhelms me. But I find the courage to open it and tears fill my eyes.

Bay:
My heart will never heal from this. Don’t text me again.

I think I’ll cry but there are no more tears in my body. I put the phone in my pocket, an act so familiar and frequent that it brings back two years’ worth of flashbacks. Putting my phone away after phone calls with Bayleigh, putting my phone away after texts from Bayleigh. Smiling like crazy when she sends me dirty photos and I’m at work, with only a second to look at them before hiding my phone back in my pocket.

Please God, don’t let this be the last time I read a message from her.

“It’s almost time,” Park says, appearing from the other side of the abandoned fast food restaurant. “Everything is all set up.” He points to a faded red picnic table which was once part of the outside dining area when this place was in business. “Stay near the table. Try to get her to sit if you can. The entire area will pick up any sounds but my camera will only pick up that table area. Stay by it.”

I nod.

“And Jace?” he says, stepping forward and grabbing my shoulder with a firm hand. “You’re an actor right now. You’re fucking Leo DiCaprio, okay? Don’t break character.”

I nod again. I have never been an actor in my life. But I draw in a breath and steel myself. I will act for her. I will get to the bottom of this and win my girl back.

Not that I deserve her.

But I need her if I want to live.

Park takes an envelope out of his back pocket and licks across the top of the flap. He folds it over and seals it closed with his fingers. Then he slides a pinky under the flap and rips it open. He takes out the folded paper inside, gives it a shake to wrinkle it up and puts it back in the envelope. “Here,” he says, shoving the paper into my hands.

“Guess that single college credit in graphic design has paid off,” I say dryly.

He smirks. “Some guy online helped me, actually. Not much graphic design involved. Alright, I’m out of here. I’ll stay in the backseat of your truck until she leaves, okay?”

I nod. “Will you be listening to the video in there?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t have that kind of technology, dude. It’s just a helmet cam but it’s uploading to the cloud so we’ll have a copy no matter what.”

“Okay.”

He gives me a flat smile. “Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

Park disappears around the corner of the building and I start pacing on the old concrete, stepping over weeds that have sprouted up between the cracks. Bayleigh and I came to this Dairy Queen once before it closed. She got an ice cream cone that was nearly as big as her head and I got tacos and she laughed, saying she didn’t even know they sold tacos here. They were the best tacos I’d ever eaten.

Footsteps catch my attention, pulling me out of my memories. I turn around and find Natalie approaching me. She’s wearing a pair of ripped up jeans and a Mixon Motocross shirt that’s been cut up the sides and retied to make it as skimpy as possible. We stare at each other silently and I square my shoulders.

“Did you bring the money?” she asks.

I step closer to her, putting myself right in the view of Park’s hidden camera. “Sit down,” I say, pointing to the picnic table.

She folds her arms across her chest and lowers her chin. “Why? It takes two seconds to hand me the money. So do it.”

“I have some questions first,” I say, shoving my hands in my pockets. I am Leo DiCaprio. I am not afraid. I am not thinking of my heartache. “Sit down and answer them if you want the money.”

She rolls her eyes and huffs, but she sits at the table. I join her on the other side, knowing the camera is facing both of us now. “What the fuck do you want, Jace? You knocked me up and you need to pay for your mistake. There’s nothing to talk about.”

“I want to know every detail about that night,” I say, lacing my fingers together on the table. They do not shake. Every shattered piece of my soul is hidden beneath this façade. “I was too drunk to remember. I don’t even remember seeing you that night. So why am I supposed to believe you?”

She rolls her eyes. “We left the bar. We had sex. You fell asleep and woke up the next morning, realizing what you had done. You should have seen the look on your face,” she says with a snort. “It was priceless. But you wanted me that night. I know you did.”

“No I didn’t.” I say it as if I’m bored. I need to catch her in this lie. I need to know the truth.

“You did.” She holds her hand palm up on the table. “If you don’t want your wife to know then fucking pay me now.”

I take the envelope with the fake clinic letter out of my back pocket and put it in her hand. She scowls. “This doesn’t look like twenty five thousand dollars.”

“It’s not. But it’s something you need to see.”

She lifts an eyebrow and takes the paper out of the envelope, unfolding it carefully while watching me. She glances at the paper quickly then back up at me. “What is this?”

I keep my voice flat. “It’s my STD results. You gave me herpes, Natalie.”

Her face is emotionless for a beat. And then she starts laughing. Definitely not the reaction I had expected. “Wow,” she says, slapping the table. Her smile stretches across her entire face. “Just, wow.”

“Is this how you react to knowing you have an incurable disease?” I shake my head. “You purposely set out to ruin my life. Why? Because I fired you? Because I ignored your advances?”

She shrugs and drops the paper, leaving it in the envelope. “You should have hooked up with me when you could. Obviously that wife of yours has been cheating on you left and right.”

Oh my god, this might actually work. I lean back on the bench seat. “Why do you say that? And why aren’t you more worried? If I have herpes then you do, too.”

A gust of wind blows her blonde hair into her face and she pushes it back. “Nah, I’m not worried. I mean I did give you a blow job but it didn’t last long.” She runs a hand across her mouth, then shrugs, looking pleased with what she feels on her lips. “I don’t think I caught anything from you. But you need to talk to that wife of yours, because if you aren’t cheating on her then she’s sure as hell cheating on you.”

My heart leaps for joy. This is it. She’s admitting everything. I play it cool. “What the hell are you talking about? Are you saying we didn’t have sex?”

She rolls her eyes. “Did you even bring the money?”

“No.”

She heaves a sigh. “Dammit. I can’t even go blab to your wife either. She probably doesn’t give a shit about you.”

“So you didn’t know you had herpes?” I ask, trying to keep her confession going. Of course she didn’t know. Because she doesn’t actually have them.

“I don’t have any STDs, Jace. You do, but I don’t. I’m not pregnant, either. I just needed the money.”

“What did we do that night?” I ask, my voice low and demanding.

“Who cares?” she says, pushing up on her hands.

I grab her wrist and hold her down. “You’re not pregnant. You said we didn’t have sex. So what did we do? Why did you con me into cheating on my wife?”

She glares daggers at me and then she drops back into her seat, twisting her wrist out of my grasp. “You sure you wanna know? I mean, it’ll be embarrassing for you.”

I grit my teeth. “Tell me.”

“Fine,” she says, tossing up her hands. “I took you to the back room at my friend’s store and I would have given it all to you. Of course it’s good I didn’t, since you’re diseased.” She rolls her eyes. “You’re just a pussy, Jace Adams. You had a sure thing with me and you wouldn’t do it. You kept babbling shit about your stupid baby and you kept calling me Bay.” Her lip curls. “I am so
sick
of that name.”

“So you saw that I was too drunk to function and you tried hooking up with me. When it didn’t work, you faked being pregnant to get money. Do I have the details right?”

“Why the hell does it matter?” she says. “I won’t say anything to your wife. I have worse problems right now, like how to come up with this money.”

“Try working for it,” I say standing up. “Because you obviously suck at being a conman.”

“Enjoy your herpes,” she says, rising from the table.

“About that,” I say, grabbing the envelope. It doesn’t really matter now, but I don’t want her spreading shit on the Internet. I hold the paper up in my fist. “This is a fake letter. I don’t have any diseases. I just wanted to see your reaction when I told you.”

Her eyes narrow. “Why would you even say that?”

“Your reaction would tell me if we actually hooked up. I knew we hadn’t.”

She lets out a long, resigned sigh. “Bravo, you’re a genius. Who cares.”

“Bye, Natalie,” I call out as she stomps away, heading back toward her car. I turn around and face the wooden fence, looking right into Park’s helmet camera. “That’s the truth, Bayleigh. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

I swallow, walk over to the camera and turn off the recording. I’ve done everything I can to clear my name, but I know it’ll never make up for the heartache I’ve caused my wife. If she hates me forever, I’ll understand. But I had to do something.

As I walk back to my truck, the camera in my hand, it feels like a million pound weight has been lifted from my chest. Confidence flows back into my heart, knowing that I would never purposely cheat on her. I would never hurt her. I knew it all along, but now I am sure of it. I have proof.

I only hope it’s enough proof to get her back.