The Beginning of Always (44 page)

Alistair ignored me, but faced forward again. The car picked up speed.

“Why? Tell me why. I want to know why you won’t even consider trying again.”

The highway narrowed from four lanes to two, one each going in opposite directions. There was no center divider, just a dotted yellow line that rolled ahead. Opposing traffic charged past us, the cars so close that each vehicle’s draft hit and shuddered against our own car ever so slightly.

It was like being in a wind tunnel, the scenery outside blurring and nothing but white noise quickly building around me.

“This is not the time to talk about this,” I repeated. I fought to keep my voice calm. The situation was escalating and I didn’t want to make it worse. My skin was growing cold and clammy, and I was holding my breath at each car charging towards us in the opposing lane, my heart skipping slightly each moment they barely missed us.

“This is exactly the time to talk about this. All you do is avoid and skirt the issue. I don’t think there can be any better of a time to talk about this.”

“It’s just not right—it’s just not the right time.”

“That’s bullshit. Don’t give me that timing crap.”

Alistair roughly jerked the steering wheel to the left to bypass a slower minivan coming up ahead. He entered the opposite lane to take advantage of a gap in incoming traffic and pressed hard on the accelerator.

In the distance, a large pickup truck was driving straight towards us, and it was getting larger and closer with every breath that I took.

“What are you doing? You’re going to get us both killed!” I cried out.

Alistair yanked the steering wheel to the right and barely squeezed in in front of the car he took such a risk to pass. The minivan swerved to the side, inches away. The truck that was coming towards us narrowly missed, his horn blaring loudly as he sped away behind us.

“Pull over! Stop right now! I’m not kidding, pull over!”

Alistair reached over and gripped me tightly around my upper arm. I flinched at his touch, jerking back, but he held fast. His fingers bit into my flesh, palm rough and angry.

One hand on the steering wheel and one holding on to me, Alistair tugged at me.

“Be honest, Florence. Tell the truth for once. Tell me you don’t love me anymore, tell me what this is all about, how you keep fighting against what I know you feel too. I love you! And I know you still love me too!”

Another car, now a large cargo truck, was coming up in our lane. Alistair wasn’t slowing down.

“Don’t make assumptions about my emotions!” My heart thundered between my ears, I needed him to stop the car.

Alistair’s grip tightened, fingertips digging into my skin until it was as if he was crushing my bone in his grasp. “We aren’t liars, not to each other!”

Our old promise surged through me. It had been spoken; it had achieved life. It was cruel for him to use that now, for him to use those words we’d once whispered to each other in such confidence. With such love. With such faith. I hated him for that, hated him for breaking it out of the past and dragging it, dirty and dusty and ruined, into the present.

My terrified gaze darted between Alistair and the car quickly approaching closer and closer.

Tears slipping down my cheeks, I yelled, “I’m scared, okay? I’m scared! You scare me! This scares me! Now stop the goddamn car!”

I caught the fleeting edge of Alistair’s victorious expression before he pulled at me roughly. I fell towards him, my last glimpse of view outside the front window one of the cargo truck’s license plate and a worn bumper sticker so close I could read the number printed on it.

Alistair pressed me against his body, his arm tightly circling around my shoulders. He yanked the steering wheel to the side and braked hard, the motion tossing me. But his grip held firm, fighting the momentum that’d propel me out of his embrace. The seat belt retracted, working to jerk me back, biting into my shoulder and across my chest. I screamed, my grip flying to his belt and tightening there. The sharp change in speed confused my sense of balance and speed and time. The side of my head knocked against the edge of the driver’s seat, sending a thin ringing sound through me and scrambling my vision.

And as suddenly as it happened, it all stopped. We came to a skid upon sand, a narrow shoulder running parallel against the highway. The engine stalled, sputtered forward half a step, then died.

Alistair was breathing hard, his body hot and flushed around me. He dropped his hand from the steering wheel and leaned back, his chest expanding and contracting, the buttons of his dress shirt straining with his labored breaths.

We remained like that for several minutes, Alistair motionless in this seat with his arm around me, my own body shaking, curled up against him.

Finally, I slowly extracted myself away, my hands visibly trembling as I straightened up. Alistair’s hand slid up to touch the back of my neck. “Florence,” he murmured. “You don’t nee—”

I broke from his hold, snapping his arms away from me, pushing him back. I refused his comfort. I refused his words.

“What in the hell is wrong with you?” I screamed, my hands shooting out of their own accord and striking Alistair hard on his shoulder. “What is wrong with you?”

Alistair let me get a couple jabs in before he responded by deftly gathering my wrists in one hand and yanking them roughly down, pressing them against the center console. I glared at him, all anger and fear and rage coalescing into this singular moment of emotion. It couldn’t be called anything but the cocktail of so many things that Alistair made me feel. It was so many things. Frustration. Anger. Fear.

His own expression mirrored mine, one of ferocity.

I jerked my hands back and he let go. I bent over, burrowing my face into my palms, fighting to right my breathing, to center my world.

Everything was off center, everything was wrong.

“I don’t even know anymore,” I murmured into my hands. “I don’t even know.”

I exhaled and took a deep inhale, my breath shuddering despite myself. My entire body shook with adrenaline and anxiety; I was dizzy with all the different sensations that had surged through me in the last fifteen minutes.

I gave a choking sob. “Just ignore me. Just pretend I’m not around.”

A long silence followed, punctuated by both our heavy breaths and the sounds of nonstop traffic flying past behind us.

“Don’t you think I’ve been trying?” Alistair said. His voice was laced with defeat, quiet and sullen, all previous anger gone. “I’ve been trying to do nothing but.”

Alistair struck the steering wheel again, cursing.

I had to give it to Alistair—he was as good as his word. He ignored me the rest of the day, pretended I wasn’t around. And I was still royally pissed about this morning’s fiasco by the time we rolled up in front of the Santa Monica hotel, where Train, Gertrude and Thomas were staying. But one look at Thomas and Gertrude’s faces made me decide to shut up and act as if nothing had happened between us.

Status quo and denial—hello, my old friends.

Train kept me company while the five of us flitted around Los Angeles— Westwood, Beverly Hills, a long, traffic-filled jaunt to the downtown region. Thomas rode with Alistair while Gertrude and I accompanied Train, me in the front seat while Gertrude held snappy court on the phone in the backseat.

A totally average, very productive day. They met mostly with property owners, working on running through possible leads on available buildings. Whoever had planned the day (Gertrude) did a good job packing it full of activities, to the point where, by the time Train took us back to the Malibu house, the sky was already dark and my body and mind were exhausted.

We slid along the now-familiar—and what had been this morning the utterly terrifying—highway. Low R&B radio came from the dashboard and Train hummed along, tapping his fingers lightly against the steering wheel. Gertrude had fallen asleep in the backseat, snoring quite loudly, to my smug satisfaction.

I watched the blackened scenery whiz past. I guessed I could see Alistair’s point, how he mentioned he had traveled but never seen much. The day was replete with the inside of empty buildings and sterile conference rooms, lots of handshakes and stern conversations about numbers and contracts.

It was enough to drive anyone mad.

“Alright, here we go,” Train said as he rolled into the long driveway. The garage door was open and lit, Alistair’s gray Porsche of death already parked inside.

“Huh,” Train said. “They left after us. Guess Boss is a fast driver. They got here quick.”

Oh, you have no idea
, I thought to myself as I exited the car.

“Should we wake Gertrude?” I asked Train when he fell into step with me up the walkway.

“Naw, we’re not going to stay long. We have one last meeting in Beverly Hills, so we got to haul ass to make it there in time.”

“Isn’t there a dinner in Malibu?” We entered through the garage, weaving between the cars. I threw a second angry glance at the car from this morning.

Train pushed open the door leading indoors. “Yeah, but Boss is going by himself.”

Which meant I was going with him. Fantastic.

Thomas and Alistair were talking in the kitchen. At the sound of the door slamming shut behind us, their voices quieted.

“Train—oh, good, you’re here,” Thomas said. “Let’s leave in a second.” He turned back to Alistair. “The proposal is outlined here, so all you have to do is to hear what they have to say and make the decision. If you want, we can debrief tomorrow morning.”

“We don’t have any meetings lined up until early afternoon. Why don’t you, Gertrude, and Lucas get some brunch, and then we can meet up afterwards?”

“Lucas?” I asked in a confused tone.

Train jutted a thumb at himself. “That’s me.”

I jabbed him good-naturedly in his ribs. “You never told me your first name.”

Train shrugged congenially. “You never asked.”

“So why do they call you Train?”

Train pumped a closed fist in the air, miming the action of tugging down on a train horn pull chain. “I like trains. When I was a kid, I always wanted to be a conductor.”

I laughed. “Well, that’s a disappointing explanation. I thought you’d tell me something along the lines of being a railroad superhero.”

Train guffawed and threw a giant palm against my upper back. Air rushed out in a huff and I almost laughed again, except that at the impact of his hand against my skin, there was a sudden sharp prick of pain that shot across my right shoulder.

“Ouch!” I cried before I could stop myself. The eyes of all three men in the room suddenly homed in on me.

“Oh no! I’m sorry!” Train said in a rush. “I hit you too hard!”

Alistair motioned to take a step towards us, then caught himself and stopped.

“No, no, it’s okay,” I said, patting away Train’s apologetic gestures. “I accidentally bit the side of my mouth, that’s all.”

“You … bit yourself?” Thomas gave me an incredulous look.

“Yeah … uh, I was chewing gum.”

“You were chewing gum,” Thomas repeated slowly.

“But I just swallowed it. Right after I bit myself. That happens to everyone, right?”

“No,” Thomas and Train said in unison.

“Okay. No worries, Train, that wasn’t your fault!” I backed away to the direction of my bedroom, excuses coming out a mile a minute, my palms flapping up and down in an effort to placate him. “Thanks for the ride. I have to go get ready. Really, I’m okay!”

Train sputtered and lumbered after me halfway to the bedroom, but I kept my reassurances on a constant flow until I finally shook him off. He gave me a hurt, confused look before I stumbled around the corner, calling back after him, “I’m fine, I swear!”

When I got back to the bedroom, I slammed the door shut and raced to the mirror above the vanity. I yanked the collar of my dress over my shoulder and hissed out a breath. The seat belt from this morning and the odd angle of my body during the sudden stop had cut my bra strap into my flesh, leaving a very mild but still pink bruise. I yanked down my bra to expose my entire shoulder, grumbling internally at what I saw. The elastic had actually made a long, thin cut over the arch of my shoulder and there was dried blood dotting the fabric.

Stupid Alistair
, I thought.

“Are you okay?”

Speak of the devil. Alistair was standing in my open doorway. In the two minutes since we had last seen each other, he had removed his tie and unbuttoned it from the collar down to the base of his clavicle. Hard angles hinted below his shirt. I averted my eyes from his neck down.

I was too annoyed, even if I could secretly admit to myself that he was heart-wrenchingly handsome—tousled hair, a shadow of growth along his lower jaw, straining muscles in a half-done suit.

Damn him.

No. I was still angry.

“We need to seriously work on your knocking skills,” I said and shot him an irritated look over my shoulder. After a pause, I added, “Yeah, it’s fine. Just a slight bruise.”

“Is that blood?”

“No.” I tugged at my bra strap and shrugged the top of my dress back up, but I didn’t bother to button it closed. I needed to change soon anyway, and after all that had happened, covering myself would be pedantic at best.

“What do you want?” I seized my duffel bag and threw it on the bed, tearing open the zipper to rifle through it.

“I’m sorry about this morning.”

“What were you trying to do, scare me?”

“No. Look, I just got … it just got out of hand.”

“That seems to happen a lot between the two of us.” I sighed, really not wanting to get into all this again. “I have to get ready. What time is the dinner?”

“At eight thirty. It’s with investors interested in the downtown high-rise.”

I nodded in understanding as I turned my attention back to my clothes. “Yeah, Train told me.”

“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

My fingers stilled and I dropped the dress I was considering. “I don’t want to play games anymore. I’m here to do the article. I have to attend these things. I’ll be a good girl and I’ll go. I won’t even drink. I’ll sit quietly, take notes—you won’t even know I’m there.”