Losing Control (9 page)

We got to the apartment and there was something waiting for us at the door, well for me to be exact. It was a big pile of roses with a sorry note attached to it and signed Nick Jones. I crumpled the note right away and stepped through the pile of flowers to get to the door and unlocked.

“Let me guess,” Penny said, closing the door. “Mr. Dick of the century realized he had to use every hook in the cheesy romance movie plot to get you to forgive his sorry ass.”

I went straight to the fridge and filled myself a glass of boxed wine. “He can try all he wants, it’s not happening.”

“How could you love someone that unoriginal?” Penny said, getting a glass for herself. “I would have shot myself in the head a long time ago.”

I laughed, despite myself. “You’re right,” I said, going to sit on the couch. “He’s not exactly rocket scientist material, is he?”

“I just wish he’d stop being stupid, though.”

“Me too.”

“What a waste of extremely good roses.”

“Penny?”

“Yes?”

“Do you want to bring them in?”

“Kind of.”

“Well then, just do it.”

“You’re sure?” she looked at me. “It won’t be weird?”

“Weirder than having my ex send me flowers? I seriously doubt that.”

I couldn’t sleep the whole night. I sat in a chair next to the bed where Lane was sleeping and I constantly had the urge to check on him every fifteen minutes to see if he was breathing. That would make me relax for a few more minutes before I would start panicking again. At some point, I think I dozed off because I lost track of time. When I opened my eyes, Lane was stirring. And then he got up, sat on the edge of the bed and started rubbing his eyes. I felt relief for the first time. Lane saw me and knew something was wrong.

“What happened?” he asked, because he obviously couldn’t remember.

“I found you in that rotten place,” I said. “Brought you here. You can’t remember because you were barely conscious.”

Lane looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry.”

I wanted to say so much.

“How long have you been going there?”

“Thorne—”

“
How long Lane?
” My voice came out shaking and loud.

Lane said nothing.

I felt rage.

But I also felt powerless, incapacitated.

I got up from the chair and went over to him. “Lane,” I said and couldn’t help that tears were forming in my eyes. “You need to stop, man. You…you need to stop this shit! This isn’t you! You need to stop—” the sentence wasn’t finished when Lane stood and hugged me.

“I’m sorry,” he said and I could tell he was choking up on his words too. “I won’t do it again, I promise.”

I couldn’t think.

The sight of him with those people in that place, it kept coming back to me and I couldn’t stop the hurt. “Lane—”

He pulled away and looked at me. “You have to trust me,” he said and I could see the sincerity in his eyes, in his voice. “This won’t happen again. I’m sorry.” And then he hugged me once more.

“Can we go get breakfast?” he said. “I’m starving.”

I pulled away. “Of course.”

He rushed to the bathroom.

“Where do you want to go?” I asked.

“Same place.”

I felt a strange wave of anger. Lane stopped and turned to me. “I really do like that place,” he said. “You’ll be with me. I won’t go anywhere, I promise.”

I wanted to trust him.

“Okay,” I said. “We can go.”

I couldn’t make some place my weakness. It was just breakfast. I would be with him the whole time, and I doubted that friend of his would come near us again.

There was nothing to worry about.

Training was finally over, and we were actually getting some work done. It wasn’t easy and there were things that kept bothering me. Someone’s attitude, some task that I couldn’t manage to finish, lack of creativity when there was dire need for it—yes, it’s hardly perfect. But there was something about immersing myself in work that was fulfilling in a different kind of way. I know it wasn’t even going to last that long, which was why I gave it my all because I really wanted things to work out. Needless to say, there were also plenty of late nights and frustrating moments where nothing seemed to go right but because I was really happy with the job overall, I let it all slide.

I was even better friends with Alex and Tristan and they actually did turn out to be nice people, even though they were as judgmental about everyone still as they were the first day I met them. I think it was some kind of self-defense mechanism—they judged people before other people could start judging them. Thorne was just the high profile CEO we barely got to see. Sometimes we crossed paths in the elevator or walking towards our floor. A man in his position could have made my life miserable, considering he was my employer and I kind of turned him down, but he was incredibly professional despite everything that happened. In fact, he didn’t even look too concerned or interested in me anymore. So basically, he wasn’t hiding a grudge and he wasn’t trying to flirt with me: both good things and more than I could hope for because I was still trying to stay away from men in general.

It was Sunday and we were at a breakfast place on our street that Penny loves so much. I was outside, trying to search for my phone in my purse which was never easy, as I’ve mentioned before. I had to call to Tristan and when Tristan was waiting for someone’s call and they didn’t call, he got ugly. And he tended to get annoyed which meant I would have to spend the next two days trying to get him to like me again, and I was not looking forward to that at all. But my phone had suddenly become some invisible object that may or may not exist.

“Elena,” someone said so I looked up. I was staring right down at this person’s face, a roundish shape and hazel eyes. I couldn’t even find words to respond with, I was just standing there, speechless.

“Elena? You okay?”

“What the hell are you doing here, Nick?” I finally managed to find my voice. And with that, my anger was riled back up again.

“You wouldn’t talk to me,” Nick said. “What was I supposed to do?”

“Stay the fuck away, Nick! That’s what!”

He grabbed my arm in an obvious effort to threaten me. “Don’t do this,” he said. “Don’t make this a whole public insult thing. I just need to talk.”

I tried to break free but his grip on my arm was vicious. “Nick!” I yelled. “Let go of me.”

“Not until you agree to come with me,” he said, fingers digging deeper into my skin. “Come on Elena, don’t be a bitch.”

I was about to say something rude when our conversation was interrupted. “She asked you to leave her alone,” said a familiar voice.

I turned to see the speaker, and ended up being just as confused as Nick, because it was Thorne Ryker, standing there, wearing casual clothes that I had never seen on him before. There was a lanky teenager standing right next to him, and he looked a lot like Thorne.

“Who the hell are you?” Nick said to Ryker.

Nick was even more mad, but Thorne wasn’t about to let this go either. “I’m a friend of Penny’s,” he said to Nick. “And next time, I’m not going to ask you to let go of her.”

“This is none of your business Penny’s friend,” Nick said, to my utter disappointment. “I suggest you let her deal with her own problems. She’s my fiancée. I just want to talk to her.”

“Nick I told you before, I don’t want to talk to you. Now let me go, please!”

But Nick’s gaze wasn’t on me anymore. He was eyeing Thorne with contempt. Thorne didn’t even flinch. “You heard her,” he said. The threat was there in his voice, even though he wasn’t saying it. We all heard it and Nick must have heard it too. Which was probably why he let go of me. I guess he must have decided it wasn’t worth taking the risk of being punched in public and losing the fight. “Elena I will see you,” Nick said, and that was supposed to be some kind of threat but I couldn’t care less. Then he turned to leave.

“Thanks,” I said to Thorne, as soon as Nick was gone. “He’s not usually like this. I don’t know what’s going on with him.”

“That’s alright,” Thorne said. “Guess he’s having trouble getting over you.”

I had no idea what I was supposed to say, so I did the next best thing. “Thanks,” I said. “For telling him you were Penny’s friend and not being weird about it.”

“No problem,” he said.

“You’re here,” I said. “In these parts?”

He grinned. “This is my brother Lane,” he pointed to the teenager and the teenager gave a nod of his head, and a shy smile. “He loves this place for some reason. I’m pretty sure he’s after some girl, but we don’t know that yet.”

The teenager flushed. “That’s not true,” he said. “I really do like the food.”

“Nice to meet you, Lane,” I held out a hand and he shook it.

Then, we were all just standing in an awkward silence. It seemed like it would never be over, when Thorne filled it with words. “I should probably go inside,” he said and I started smiling like an idiot, I was probably overdoing it, I was certain.

“Sure, yeah!” I stammered.

“I’ll see you around,” he said, and I’m pretty sure his eyes said things that his words didn’t say.

“Yes,” I managed.

And then he was gone, disappeared inside the crowd of people in the breakfast place along with his teenaged brother, and I was left standing outside, with my mouth open.

“What the hell was that all about?” Penny asked, jolting me out of my fantasy state.

“Nothing,” I said.

I felt tired even though it was just morning and I had woken up less than an hour ago. I was tired because I wanted this thing with Nick to stop. I wanted it to go away. But the way Nick had behaved today it was more than a little obvious that he wasn’t about to just sit back and wait for his heart to move on. And of course there was this other little inconvenience—Thorne Ryker. What the hell was I doing getting all excited over him? He was my boss, this could get complicated! But I couldn’t help that every time I saw him I felt something, deep down inside me, an urge, a thirst, a craving if you could call it that—something that I’d never felt before and it was annoying the way every time Thorne was around, it resurfaced. I needed to make more of an effort to kill that stupid feeling.