Crushed (Crystal Brook Billionaires) (17 page)

A long respite followed our words. All around us, the town puttered on, ringing in the weekend with night time strolls and the occasional drunken shouting coming from Pit Stop.

“What’s it like?” I asked. “At your new place?”

Owen chuckled. “It’s falling apart.”

I barked out a laugh. “You don’t say? So then why did you get it?”

“It’s a challenge. And I liked that. I tell you though, once that house is back on its feet, it’s going to be beautiful.”

“Oh yeah?”

His dark profile bobbed. “It’s got a giant backyard, a great pool, this awesome fireplace in the master bedroom. It’s a conglomerate of three different houses. They were all put together over two hundred years ago or so.”

“Wow,” I breathed. “I wonder if it’s haunted.”

He laughed again. “Should we do a séance some time?”

“I’ll bring my Ouiji board and Gwen. Stuff like that scares her shitless. Trust me, it’ll be hilarious.”

He laughed harder. “You’re really funny.”

“You sound surprised.”

Instead of answering, he made a murmuring sound.

A realization hit me. “Oh… right. I guess when we met I wasn’t…” Instead of going on I just sighed.

“It seems like it comes and goes,” he quietly said.

“What, sadness?”

“Yeah.”

I nodded. “It does just come and go. And not just day to day. It’s minute to minute. Sometimes I go a whole twenty minutes without thinking about him and then, bam, something reminds me and it’s like I get knocked over.”

“That sounds normal.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “And I know that it hasn’t been that long…” I trailed off, not sure what else to say.

“How did…?”

I looked at him even though I couldn’t properly see him.

“Sorry,” he said. “Never mind.”

“It’s all right. Were you going to ask what happened? There was a car accident.”

Owen inhaled sharply. “I’m sorry… again. I’m sorry again.”

“Thank you for those flowers you sent.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Why didn’t… how come there wasn’t a note? The card just had ‘to’ and ‘from’ on it.”

Owen ran his hand over the top of his head, a gesture I was beginning to think signaled some level of discomfort in him.

“I’m not…” He blew out a heavy breath. “I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to write ‘Sorry for your loss’ or something, but it just didn’t seem good enough. It seemed cliché and so insincere. And we didn’t really know each other either, so there was nothing I could say that was… intimate, I suppose. So yeah, no words seemed adequate.”

My eyes fell to the ground, my heart suddenly so full of a dozen different emotions I didn’t know what to feel.

“That sounds stupid,” he continued.

“No,” I quickly said. “It doesn’t. I think I actually understand it. And, you know… those flowers made me smile.”

I snickered as the memory came back.

“What?”

“It’s just…” I chewed on my lip, wanting to share the story but also afraid to. “They made me more than smile. I think I even laughed a little bit. When I got those, I assumed you were trying to impress me. You know, make a move. I didn’t know… that you knew about Peter. I didn’t know that Gwen told you.”

“Ah. Wow. I don’t know whether to laugh or feel really, really bad.”

I chuckled. “There. I’m laughing for you.”

“Okay,” he laughed. “Now I feel slightly better.”

I pulled my phone out. “I need to text my mom and let her know I’m okay.”

Owen shifted his weight forward like he was about to stand up. “I didn’t mean to keep you. I can take you there if you want.”

I waved my hand. “It’s all right. I’m not missing out on anything. My parents are probably halfway to bed, and my little brother is at that age where he really doesn’t care whether I’m in town or not.”

“Ouch.”

“It’s a phase.”

I typed out a quick text, telling Mom I was hanging out with a friend, then put the phone back into my pocket.

“Do you think Gwen is still at Freddy’s?”

I rolled my eyes. “She’s probably got plans to sleep there tonight. That place is like her baby. She stresses about it non-stop.”

“Should we go and throw rocks at the window?”

“Hmm… I was thinking maybe we could scratch at it with branches and then hide in the bushes and play videos of voices whispering. You know, get her Halloween themed wedding started early.”

Owen laughed. “My house probably is haunted, by the way. It’s more than old enough to be.”

“Don’t tell me that! Now I’m never coming over.”

I heard him inhale, then blow out a long breath. “Do you want to?”

My heart stopped. “Um, what?”

“Do you want to come over? I mean now. I can show you around and then I’ll drive you home. Or did you drive?”

“No,” I answered slowly, drawing out the word. “My mom dropped me off. I was going to just get Gwen to take me to the house.”

“Or I can do that now.”

“That’s nice, thanks, but actually, I would like to see your place.”

My hands began to shake as I said it. Me. Owen. Alone at his place.

Why did that scare me so much?

Because I didn’t trust myself.

It’s fine. Nothing is going to happen. I’m not even really falling for him. Not hardcore.

It was true. Owen was cute and sweet. He was one of the easiest people I knew to be around. But none of those circumstances hit the fast forward button on my “healing” as my therapist, Tracey, referred to it.

Although I was probably jumping ahead a bit… and making assumptions. Maybe there was nothing to be worried about. Owen had, after all, been at the bar with a girl. A pretty girl at that.

Owen stood up. “I walked down here. Is that all right? After we walk back to my place, I’ll give you a ride home.”

“Okay.” I stood as well and followed him as he headed across the courtyard.

The way he took was familiar, thanks to my having spent the majority of my childhood running up and down the neighborhood streets. Glendale was well known for boasting historical houses mostly built in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The tally of historical houses was arguably Crystal Brook’s claim to, mild, fame.

The streets grew quieter as we got closer to Glendale and soon the only other souls on the sidewalks were dogs and the humans walking them.

The girl in the red dress was still on my mind. I’d managed to go quite a while after leaving the bar without thinking about her, but now that she’d popped into my mind, I couldn’t get her out. I counted my steps to try to stop from asking or bringing the topic up.

By the time we’d hit Glendale, though, I could no longer resist.

“So what were you doing at the cocktail bar?” I asked as casually as I could. “Were you meeting a friend?”

“No. I was just taking a break and getting a drink. I spent the whole afternoon putting up drywall.”

“Oh.”

So he was lying. He didn’t want me to know he’d been with a girl because that would hurt his chances of getting with me. Right?

But then where was the girl? Why had she left after such a short amount of time? Maybe Owen had seen me and Gwen sitting by the window and had told the girl to beat it.

The theory was starting to get long and twisted… and quite possibly slightly insane.

“Hm.” I gazed in front of me while we walked, way too awkward to look directly at Owen. “Gwen said she thought she saw you sitting with someone.”

There. Put all responsibility on my sister, make it seem like she was the one who cared about what Owen did and who he did it with.

I could feel his eyes on me. “When did Gwen say that?”

“Um… before you said hi to her. I mean, she didn’t think it was you at first.”

“What do you mean?”

I put my mind’s gears into warp speed. “We were sitting there, and she said she thought she saw someone who looked like you sitting with a girl in a red dress.” I took a deep breath. “Then she thought she’d made a mistake, and it wasn’t you. Your back was turned to us,” I quickly added. “So that’s what made her question herself.”

“Ah… that’s funny that she thought it wasn’t me.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, still partially holding my breath. Had he bought the story?

“I don’t know who that girl was.”

I looked at him for the first time in two blocks. “What?”

Owen shrugged. “Yeah, she came in and sat down next to me. We chatted a bit.”

“So she was just some girl.” I realized how cold that sounded and bit my tongue. “I mean, you’d never met her before?”

“No.”

I couldn’t resist asking the only thing on my mind — I no longer cared how much the question exposed me.

“Was she hitting on you?”

Owen chuckled. “Uh, I don’t know…”

“So that means yes.”

Even in the dark, I could see Owen trying not to smile but failing. “Sure… I guess so.”

The amount of relief that washed over me probably should have made me feel bad. It wasn’t as if I had plans to seduce and keep Owen all to myself, so there was no reason to be jealous of other women. I couldn’t help it though. I hated the mere thought of a girl on a bar stool cozying up to him. To even think of some random person putting her hands on him…

Stop it,
I commanded myself.
No more of this nonsense.

I cleared my throat. “I’m sure you get that a lot.”

I wanted to slap myself. Since when had I grown a second brain — one that was in direct conflict with the first one?

Owen laughed. “No, I don’t think so. There aren’t a lot of young people in Crystal Brook.”

“So it’s mostly the old ones that hit on you?”

He laughed again. “My house is right up here.”

“I’m going to take that as a yes.”

“I’m not answering that.”

The first noticeable thing about Owen’s property was its front yard. It was massive, with two old oak trees near the road, but behind them enough space to host the entire Lawrence family reunion. A light had been left on in the front of the house, but the upstairs was completely dark. Now that I stood in front of the property, I recognized it. The main exterior part of the house was covered in boards with peeling yellow paint, but the west wing was made from wooden logs. We ambled up the gravel driveway and to the front of the wraparound porch. The boards creaked underneath my feet, and I nervously looked down.

“This won’t give out, will it?”

Keys jingled in Owen’s pocket. “Who knows?”

“Hey,” I said, trying to sound serious despite the real nerves I felt. “Don’t joke about that.”

Owen unlocked the door then held it open for me. I slowly walked into the living room, which probably felt more massive than it actually was on account of the only furniture being a couple of folding chairs. The light that had been left on was the overhead one, and it was turned to dim, but illuminated enough of the room that I could quickly take everything in. A massive white brick fireplace sat on the far wall, and to the right was a row of windows looking out onto the porch. Three more doorways opened in various directions, and a staircase sat to my left.

“Wow,” I breathed. “This room is huge.”

“Yeah.” His voice came from only inches behind me, and I jumped. “Sorry,” he murmured, closing the door and walking around me and into the room. “This is the biggest part. All of the other rooms are pretty small.”

“Are you living here?”

“Some nights.” He grabbed the staircase’s banister and swung around to look at me. “I have a bed set up, but other than a coffee pot and some towels, that’s about it. I stay at my parents’ most nights, but if I end up working late, then I just crash here.”

“Cool,” I said for lack of anything else to say. “It’s like camping out.”

Dumb, Claire. Real dumb.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Want to see the place?”

“Sure.”

“You can set your bag down anywhere if you like.”

Tentatively, I slid my purse off my shoulder and set it on one of the folding chairs. Doing so meant I was committing to staying for a while, and I still wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

Owen led me down a hallway, flipping on switches as he showed off the different rooms. He hadn’t been lying about their sizes. They were all considerably small compared to the living room, but the quantity of them more than made up for their sizes. Downstairs alone there were two bathrooms, a second living room, a dining room, a kitchen, and two bedrooms. They were all in various states of distress, most with tape along the bottom of the walls and cans of paint waiting to be used.

Owen took me across the living room and into another room, which he’d set up as his temporary bedroom. The iron-wrought bed held a thick quilt with several plush pillows. There was a floor lamp in the corner and underneath that a few books in a stack. Other than that, the room was empty. A second door opened outside into the backyard.

“That’s it for downstairs,” Owen said. “Other than the kitchen, which is next to the living room.”

“What’s out back?”

“Let’s go see,” he grinned, as if he didn’t know.

He walked across the room, and I followed, trying not to look at the bed again.

The door opened onto a little patio with a couple of chairs and some solar lights on it. Beyond that sat a backyard ringed with trees. A bit of light was visible from a house on the next street, but for the most part, the yard had been sequestered by greenery. The most noticeable thing, though, was the pool. Lights on its walls lit up its sparkling depths.

Slowly I walked forward to take a peek. “I see this is all set up,” I commented.

“Yeah,” Owen replied from somewhere behind me. He sounded a little bashful. “It was the first thing I got going.”

I laughed. “I don’t blame you. Trust me. August in North Carolina is no joke.”

I turned around and looked up at the second roof of the house. Even in the dark, the big patch missing tiles was noticeable. Outside the kitchen windows, the gutter hung down, scraping the ground. And those were just cosmetic details. I didn’t know shit about houses, but I knew that if it looked bad on the outside, there were probably more problems inside.

“What’s upstairs?”

“More bedrooms. There are some window panes up there from when the house was first built. You can tell how old they are because the glass is wavy.”