“Um…well, I guess that I don’t. I don’t know that many people here in Detroit,” I explained.
Both his eyebrows climbed. Like his hair, they were blonde, and his whole effect was kind of Scandinavian Hulk. “You want to get to know me better? Really, sweetheart?”
“Don’t call me that. Never mind.” I started to close the door, but he didn’t move and blocked it. “Thanks for coming to warn me and I’ll be careful. Goodbye,” I hinted, and pushed it gently against him.
“Sure. Stone.” He pointed at his chest again. “That’s my name.”
“Really?Just ‘Stone?’”
“That’s my last name,” he qualified. “Get out your phone and call this number.” He recited ten digits that started with the three-one-three area code, and I did dial it. He took an ancient flip phone from his pocket and answered. “Hello, Camille,” he said. “This is your new buddy.”
Despite everything else he’d said tonight, I laughed.
“You can call me again if Dax comes by and tries anything.”
I stopped laughing and swallowed. “Ok. I appreciate that.”
“All right.” Now he did leave, and the floors and walls trembled slightly as he stalked toward the stairs. I watched him go and then went to the window, where I also watched him emerge onto the street. He walked directly to another guy who had been loitering across from my building and next to my car, and they had a short conversation before the other man held up his hands and nodded, and then both of them went in opposite directions. I wondered where the bouncer—Stone—had left his own car and I hoped it was still there, tires and all. It really wasn’t a great neighborhood.
That made me nervous and what he’d said had made me feel worse. What if Dax did come over here? He had never, in thenine years of our relationship, been violent with me, but I also knew that he had a temper. He had thrown things and broken them, yelled really loudly, and sometimes threatened to do terrible things to other people in the club world. Once, during a bad argument, he’d even threatened me…but he really hadn’t ever been violent, and I told myself again that he wouldn’t start acting that way now. I knew my ex-fiancé better than some giant bouncer guy did.
Stone, Mr. Flip Phone. I had eaten an energy bar hours ago at my desk but it wasn’t holding me now, so I got a few cookies and sat on the couch as I thought more about what he’d said. Then I put down the cookies and got back up, and I dragged a table in front of the door. I looked at that for a moment and before I sat again, I piled two chairs on top of it. I knew how important Dax’s image was and how he was trying to build his brand, and I could imagine that it had taken a hit…
But there was no need to imagine, because I could look at his social media. Since the scene at Château Moderne, I had avoided that, but now I eagerly re-downloaded the apps and opened them. I saw that he was at a different club tonight, one that I had visited with him. I had thought it was kind of sleezy, but I’d also known that he had to start somewhere and again, it was really hard to break into his business. He had posted the usual videos for promotion and underneath one of them, a few comments caught my eye.
“LOL heard about your girl” and “bro going out tonight but bigger fish to fry at home” were at the top, and those had gotten reactions. So had other comments mentioning rings anddiamonds. This was definitely the most attention he’d ever attracted about an event, except it wasn’t the kind he wanted.
I wondered if I should text him. We needed to discuss what he thought I’d taken so we could straighten it out, and I wanted to understand why he seemed to be making threats. When people had been gossiping about me at work a few months before, I had told him how upset I’d been, and I thought about writing now to remind him of that. I didn’t want him to go around the city talking badly about me, even to strangers.
It was so easy for arguments to go in circles without resolution when you sent messages, though, and I really preferred to speak to him face to face…I had actually gotten up and off the couch before I knew what I was doing. Yes, this was a good idea. Rather than sit in fear and worry in my apartment, I would discuss things with the man I’d known for nine years. I had ignored all his messages and voicemails, but why was I taking the coward’s route? It wasn’t how I’d gotten myself to where I was today, an attorney and—
I stopped midway through zipping up my dress. Thinking about those messages and voicemails had led to another memory, this one of Stone, Mr. Flip Phone. When I’d first seen him at Château Moderne, he’d been looking at a totally different device. He’d pretended to hunt up the list of guests for the VIP area on a normal and modern phone, while he’d actually checked the weather forecast. So he was even weirder than I’d thought, him with his “sweetheart” and reading my actions the wrong way. He had said that I’d wanted him to come back here to guard thedoor because I’d known that I’d cave and forgive Dax! What a load of crud!
Ok, no. Maybe he’d been right about that.
And maybe he had been right about Dax’s anger, so I shouldn’t go see my ex right now. He wouldn’t be happy to talk to me. In fact, he had never been glad when I’d shown up at one of his nights at a club, not unless he had asked me to come for a specific purpose, such as when I’d gone to meet his new friends. He was always too busy to hang out with me...he had been busy when I’d gone to Château Moderne the other night, although he hadn’t been working. I remembered his satisfied smile when he’d walked out of the closet and the woman he was with had spat on the floor.
I had to stop crying. He wasn’t worth it.
I took off the dress and put on a T-shirt and shorts. Then I went back into the living room, pulled a side table in front of the door, got the box of cookies, and went back to the couch with them. I had never slept too well with Dax, because he wasn’t very quiet when he came in from work. He had also sometimes woken me up to give him the same satisfied smile that he’d had at Château Moderne, after he’d been with that woman named Deb.
But I hadn’t been sleeping well with him gone, either. I kept jerking awake again and again, thinking I heard weird things, but it was only somebody yelling in the street, a big fight, a party in the unit below mine, or more police cars racing to another crime. It all made me tired. Now I turned on the TV and cuedup a good movie, and then I settled in with my cookies. I had to stop crying, and this was going to be another long night.
Chapter 3
“Just for the weekend. It’s not too long a drive.”
It was about eight hours in the car from Detroit, Michigan to my hometown on the border of the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the Volunteer State, Tennessee. That was what my dad said and also what the map on my phone told me, but it always seemed to take much longer.
Anyway, that wasn’t my excuse. “Mom, I really can’t,” I said. “I have to go meet with Beckett at his house this weekend.”
“You’re going to your boss’s house for a work meeting?” She sounded extremely skeptical until I explained that his new wife Juliet would also be there. Munir and Rashelle, our paralegals, had to go as well, and maybe the other attorney in our department—but when we’d discussed it, Octavia had shaken her head and mentioned prior plans that she wasn’t able to change. She had to clean her lizard’s habitat and she also had a different meeting scheduled with what she called her “society.” Munir had looked up that group and had read claims that it wasall about aliens who walked among us. He’d had more to say, but I told him that I preferred not to know too much about her private life.
“I think my presence is necessary but since I can’t attend, Rashelle will come over to my condo later with hard copies of her notes,” she had stated. I’d said no, but that we could email anything pertinent instead.
I was glad that my mom was the only person questioning this meeting; it had been months since anyone at the office had participated in the humiliating rumors that I was having a relationship with Beckett, the general counsel at Whitaker Enterprises and our superior. It had really helped when he’d gotten engaged and then married to Juliet, a woman who used to work in our office and who was one of the first people I’d gotten to know in Detroit. Her ring was absolutely gorgeous, huge but somehow not in the way that you immediately thought of a disco ball (like what had been suggested about mine). And I had no doubts about the authenticity of the diamonds and the authenticity of Beckett’s love for her, which had been a beautiful thing to witness.
Oh, no. I was not going to cry.
