“Maybe it would help if you told me exactly what you were looking for so I’m not stumbling around in the dark quite so much.”
“Rose,” he stated simply.
Okay, was I still drunk or was this conversation going around in circles?
“You already—”
“Sheknows.” His regal, arrogant exterior fractured with the slight trembling in his mouth when he spat the word ‘she.’ He cleared his throat and brushed imaginary lint from his collar, and my gaze sharpened at that rare loss of composure.
There was something he wasn’t telling me.
“She’s the one who can ruin the Cleary family,” he continued, “but I need solid evidence, like pictures or proof that she’s at drug rehabilitation. Maybe you can visit her.”
“Pretty sure they don’t just let random people by for a visit. It’s not a pet store.”
“Maybe you can go with Sam. You two are together now, so...” He smiled and waved his dusty fingertips at me as if he wanted me to finish that sentence for him.
“He doesn’t know I know where Rose is. He and Riley are very tight-lipped when it comes to her, so I doubt a daytrip is going to happen anytime soon.”
“Are you screwing Sam?”
His words reverberated through me like a slap. “Fuck you, Rick.”
He chuckled and pushed himself off the desk. “The offer’s always open, honey.” He sidled closer, but I refused to shrink away from him. His two dirty fingertips slid up my bare arm toward my shoulder, and a bitter shudder rolled up the twin dust trails behind them. “Just say the word.”
“What we did was wrong,” I said, voice airy because I was trying to breathe through the nausea that multiplied under his touch and the too-sweet smell of his cologne. “The pictures, the sex... It won’t ever happen again.”
Rick’s eyes narrowed. “Why does it sound like you’re blaming me? You’re the one who climbed into my bed...” He leaned in, his fruit punch-infused breath hot on my ear. “Naked.”
“I’m just as much to blame as you, but you could have said no, that it wasn’t right.”
“And continue to watch you prance around in your short shorts and tight T-shirts? Honey, if you wouldn’t have offered when you did, I would have taken it.”
Bile climbed up my throat in one swift wave, and I choked it back down. I wrenched myself out of his grip and threw myself at the door, panting, silently pleading for his spoken words to morph into something tangible. Something real. Something I could use against him.
“So you’ll get me what I want, then?”
No, I wanted to shout. The word perched on the tip of my tongue while I stared at the doorknob. Tears blurred it into a useless silver blob, but I hung on to it anyway, allowing the cool metal to strengthen my resolve. I could still turn this all around on him, but I needed more time. Not just to save my internship, but to save me from the burden of guilt I felt about all of my secrets. To saveHerfrom the hundreds of mistakes her mom made.
“It won’t happen overnight.” My throat, burned with bile and the rest of my tears, made my voice sound like I’d gargled with knives. “Give me time to get Sam to tell me about Rose on his own, and then we’ll go see her.”
“Good.” He rubbed his hands together, the sound filling my head with images of flies with papery wings and scars on their chins. “And remember we’re looking for physical proof , anything incriminating.”
“Not just incriminating against the Clearys?” I narrowed my eyes over my shoulder.
He cleared his throat. “You can look at it however you want to, Paige. Just get me something. I’ll give you two weeks.”
“Fine.” Two weeks? That likely wouldn’t be enough time, but I needed out of here. I turned the knob and shot straight into a muscled wall with a scowl etched into his face a mile deep.
I tensed, not from the ungraceful rebound, but from the immediate angry charge that emanated off Sam. From the thick forearms crossed over his chest and the twin blue eye-bullets zeroed in on Rick, it was hard to tell one way or the other if he’d heard anything over the excited voices carrying down the hallway.
Rick sauntered up behind me, and everything that had just transpired in this room, the truths that had been laid bare, shook an uncontrollable tremble through me with him coming closer.
Sam’s cold gaze flicked to me then back to Rick.
“Thanks for keeping me up to date, Paige. I’ll be in touch.” His voice dripped with a political version of innocence, which didn’t sound innocent at all.
He sidestepped around me in the doorway to face off with Sam. “It was good to see you, Sam, but I’m afraid I can’t stay to catch up with you.” When he angled himself between Sam and the doorframe, he chest-bumped Sam’s shoulder, then clapped his hand there as if to make it look like an accident.
