“Paisley,” Jeremy gasped. “Jesus. I—Paisley.”
I didn’t know what to say or what to do. I wasn’t sure Icoulddo anything anyway. My eyes met Jeremy’s, and I momentarily forgot about the young woman in the corner yanking a shirt back on, her eyes to the floor, cheeks flaming red.
“I—” my voice trailed off, and I abruptly turned away, stumbling blindly down the quiet hallway as Jeremy chased after me, calling desperately, his bare feet sounding oddly thick as they slapped against the tile floor.
“Just let me explain,” he called, but I was already rushing through the unlocked doors and into the darkness. My tears streamed, blinding me, hands and fingers shaking with rage until I managed to get into the safety of my car. At some point, Jeremy had stopped chasing me, and that was all the motivation I needed to keep going.
I drove and then kept driving, my heart racing in my chest, still trembling with hurt, rage, and angst. Emotions choked me until I could barely breathe, could hardly piece together what I’d just seen. In the seat next to me, my phone was ringing. And ringing. And ringing. But I didn’t look over. I couldn’t bear to pick it up and hear Jeremy’s pathetic pleas on the other end of the line, begging me to come back, to understand that it wasn’t what it looked like. That the woman with his dick in her mouth was nothing more than a fluke, some sort of sick joke.
I didn’t even realize I’d been driving towards the station until I pulled into the lot and parked the car. It was dark out, but the kitchen light lit up part of the lot. Inside the building, I could see familiar figures moving about. I sat and stared for a while, tears streaming silently down my face. I couldn’t go in there, not now, with how I looked, and not after what had happened. It wouldn’t just be unprofessional but also pathetic, and I wasn’t about to get into more trouble for bringing my home life to work. I had to get out of there and have a meltdown elsewhere before I really was fired.
Wiping frantically at the tears that stained my face, I turned the engine over, but before I could back out of the lot and escape, there was a tap on the window.
Shit.
“What in the hell are you doing here?” Korbin asked as I cracked the window. He leaned down, peering at me from under his baseball cap. “You’re still off shift, Hill.”
“I—” my voice cracked, and I turned away, too ashamed to face him. I hoped he couldn’t see me well in the dark because I knew damn well that I looked like a swamp creature from a phony horror movie. “I left something in my cubby,” I finished lamely.
“You haven’t gotten out of the car since you’ve been here.”
“Were you watching me?”
“There was nothing else to watch,” he said with a shrug. “So why didn’t you come in?”
“I don’t know.” I swallowed, wiping the tears again from my face as quickly as I could, but there was no fooling him.
“What’s going on, Paisley?” he asked softly. “Get out of the car, come in, and have some dinner.”
I realized that was the first time since Korbin had known me that he’d called me by my first name, and that itself almost made me forfeit, almost broke me down into a blubbering mess on the fire department floor.
“No, no, thank you,” I mumbled, holding back another mountain of tears. “Nothing is going on, Korbin. I—I just—I have to go.”
“Go where?”
“To drown my problems in booze,” I joked, trying to lighten the mood. I shoved the car into reverse and backed out, ignoring Korbin’s raps on my window.
“Paisley,” he called, but I was already driving away.
Humiliated even more for thinking that stopping by my workplace was a good idea, I drove and drove some more until I finally came to another stop in front of a popular college bar. It was the middle of the week, so the place was empty, and that’s just how I liked it.
My phone rang again in the seat next to me, but I didn’t answer it. Instead, I silenced it and stuffed it into my purse, fixed the mascara stains from under my eyes, and went into the bar for a stiff drink. Maybe ten.
Chapter26
Hansen
I found her sitting alone at the campus bar, one hand wrapped around an amber glass of whiskey as the fingers on her other hand tugged mindlessly on her bottom lip, deep in thought. She wore a stunning black dress with a slit up the leg, but her hair was in disarray, and even from where I stood, I could see the mascara stains beneath her eyelids.
“Is this seat taken?” I asked Paisley, nodding at Joe, who filled a mug for me. I couldn’t tell how many drinks she’d already consumed, but I figured it was plenty enough. She looked up from where she’d been staring aimlessly at the wall behind the counter, surprised to find me standing beside her.
“Feel free.” She reached over to move her bag, dropping it on the ground. Then she focused on the wall again, as if I wasn’t even there. I slid onto the barstool and took a drink of my beer.
“Rough night?” I asked.
“What makes you think that?” Paisley said, her eyes still on the wall.
“Korbin Hansen, for one,” I told her, turning on my stool to face her. “I was enjoying a perfectly relaxing night off at home when he called me and said he thought you might do something stupid. Said that you looked pretty out of it when you stopped by the station.”
