“Why won’t you talk to me?” he asked. “You know you can. I won’t tell anyone. Not even Shiv.”
“Because I fucked up, Ward.”
“You know I’m going to ask you to marry me one day, right?”
“You are?”
“Count on it. Are you going to say yes?”
“Of course.”
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 56
OceanofPDF.com
THE BLAST ZONE
Chase
The more I told Dallas, the more tense his posture grew.
Halfway through the recap of my conversation with Luke, he leapt off my bed. “Holy shit,” he said, interrupting me. “Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”
Good question.
“Uh, kind of been in shock over here. My life went from normal to a living nightmare in the span of twenty-four hours. Still not thinking clearly, in case it wasn’t obvious.”
I circled back to detailing the sordid chain of events. By the end of my story, Dallas was pacing the floor of my room, nearly as distressed as I was.
“You didn’t do anything wrong.” He turned on his heel and made another lap. “I remember how upset you were the next day when you told me Kristen pulled that stunt.”
He was right. But I was still pissed at myself for trusting her in the first place.
“That doesn’t change the situation I’m in now.”
Dallas shook his head, raking a hand through his dark hair. “You have to tell Bailey.”
“Didn’t you hear what I said? Morrison is going to blow up her entire world.”
He meant well, but I’d been second-guessing and agonizing over that very decision for the better part of the last three days. If it was as simple as telling her, I would have already done it.
“How would he know if you told her the truth?”
That was the million-dollar question. But the price if he did was far too high—Bailey losing everything she’d worked three years for. Her future. Her shot at a career she deserved. Being financially independent, which mattered to her more than she’d ever admit.
Not to mention the blowback in her personal life. I had skin thicker than an alligator hide, but Bailey didn’t.
“I don’t know,” I said, prickly unease washing over me. “Morrison knows all kinds of shit he shouldn’t. How does he even know about her internship? It’s creepy as hell.”
When I met Stewart’s PI, Vincent, yesterday, the first thing I asked him to do was make sure Luke didn’t have a tail on Bailey. Vincent told me to sit tight, so I’d been obsessively watching my phone and waiting for an update since. Waiting to hear whether he’d gotten a hold of the full tape, knew who else might have it, anything.
So far, no word. I couldn’t even contact Stewart again until Vincent gave me the all-clear.
Sitting, waiting, losing my goddamn mind.
“Maybe you should let Bailey decide what she wants to do,” Dallas said.
“You don’t think I want to? Giving her the choice might be the same thing as making it for her. If I tell her, and Morrison finds out, he’ll go nuclear. Game over.”
The fallout played in my head like a horror movie on repeat: that fucking email going to her friends, her family, everyone affiliated with her scholarship and internship. Bailey’s life falling apart like a house of cards, all because of me.
Morrison could pull the trigger at some point anyway, with or without dragging Bailey into it. God willing, it would be without. At the end of the day, I could own up to the things I’d done, even if I hadn’t intended them to be public knowledge.
Whether Bailey would want to be with me once she knew about the tape, though? The answer to that question scared me.
“If you don’t tell her,” Dallas said, his voice quiet, “you could lose her.”
It winded me like a hockey stick to the stomach. Again, he was right, but I couldn’t accept that as a possibility. I couldn’t be the reason her dreams went up in smoke, either. Hence the hellish purgatory I was trapped in.
I itched to pick up the phone. Better yet, to go over there and see her. I missed her more than anything in the world. The distance I’d put between us was literal torture. Like I was missing a limb, and it had only been days. How much more of this could I take?
“I’m trying to keep her out of the blast zone. I don’t care what happens to me, but I can’t let her get dragged into this shit. What would you do if it was Shiv?”
“I’d protect her,” Dallas admitted. “At all costs.”
“Exactly. Priority number one was pushing her out of the path of an oncoming freight train. If you have any ideas beyond that, I’m all ears.”
Beside me on my bed, my phone lit up.
“You going to come to my first NHL game?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
The hours I had to wait to meet with Vincent felt like a fucking eternity. Dallas tried to stay with me, but his anxiety level was feeding into mine, so I finally forced him to leave the house and keep his original plans with Shiv.
In the meantime, Vincent gave me the go-ahead to talk to Stewart. What I’d hoped would be a constructive conversation turned out to be destructive, because Stewart and I agreed that he’d pre-emptively inform Los Angeles about the situation. There was a chance I was about to blow my contract to bits and ruin my future hockey career, but Stewart assured me that getting ahead of it was the best way to go. I had no choice but to trust him.
It was after eight by the time I met Vincent. The grimy pub we were meeting at for the second time was located on the other end of town in an industrial park. Vincent claimed it was “a secure location,” but the area was more than a little shady. He obviously knew what he was doing, though, so I kept my mouth shut. Maybe the cockroaches moonlighted as security.
I headed to the back corner and slid into the booth across from him. He was dressed in head-to-toe black, with hard features amplified by a jagged scar down his left cheek. How he blended in easily enough to be a PI was a mystery, but Stewart said his nickname was the Ghost. Hopefully, he’d live up to it.
Vincent laced his fingers on the table, looking at me over his half-empty pint of beer with a grim expression. He was a brand-new addition to my shortlist of terrifying people—one notch below Stewart. I got the feeling if I asked Vincent to have Morrison offed, he’d give me a price and initiate plans.
I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t considered it.
“Before we go any further,” Vincent said, “we have a don’t ask, don’t tell policy with sources. Which means it’s not admissible in court.”
“That’s fine.” My foot landed on something sticky on the floor beneath the table, and it made a ripping sound as I repositioned my legs. “I need to know.”
“As we discussed, I have a copy of the full video,” Vincent said. “Or rather, I have both clips, as it was digitally split into two.”
Nausea brimmed in the pit of my stomach. “Can I see the second one?”
From across the table, he stretched his arm out, offering me his phone. I accepted and adjusted the volume to its lowest setting, hesitating briefly. Revulsion bowled into me as I hit Play.
Clip 2 of 2