Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (17 page)

“So trust me, then,”
he said.
 
“I’m there with you, right
now, right this second.
 
I’m talking
into your ear, I’m holding you in my arms.”

She was relaxing now,
somehow.
 
His voice was melting her,
allowing her to feel safe and secure, allowing her defenses to come down.
 
But something even stranger was
occurring.

Caelyn found herself
getting turned on.

One moment, her eyes
were closed and she was smiling, imagining Elijah running his fingers through
her hair.
 
The next, she felt her
entire body getting hot, aroused by his voice.
 
She realized suddenly that she wanted
Elijah to talk about more than just holding her close.

“What else?” she
asked, feeling impatient.

“What else?” he said,
a little laughter creeping into his voice.

“I just—I like
hearing you talk like that.”

He sighed, but it
wasn’t a sigh of boredom.
 
Rather,
Caelyn thought that he sounded exasperated that they had to be so far apart
right now.
 
“I keep thinking about
that night in the hotel, and how you came out of the bathroom in your towel.”

Caelyn giggled and
put her hand over her face.
 
“Oh my
God, that was embarrassing.
 
I
practically fell on my face after running into you.”

“It’s okay.
 
I liked it.”

“You did?”

“I did.
 
A lot.”

She felt her cheeks
flush even more.
 
“That makes it a
little less awkward to remember.”

“All this time
sitting in a cell, the only thing I can seem to think about is how I should
have kissed you that night.”

“Elijah—“

“No, let me say
it.
 
I regret that I didn’t even
try.”

“I like that you were
trying go slow.”

“I know, but now it
might be a long, long time…”
 

“Remember to stay in
the moment,” Caelyn said.
 
“Like you
told me to do.”

“Shit, I never was
very good at following my own advice.”

Caelyn rolled onto
her stomach.
 
“If you were here
right now, I’d kiss you,” she told him.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.
 
I would.
 
Definitely.”

He chuckled.
 
“Maybe some day we can reenact that
night.
 
You can run out of the
bathroom in your towel and see how it turns out.”

Caelyn tried to
picture it—her coming out of a steamy bathroom, towel wrapped around her
torso, not covering any of her quite well enough.
 
And then Elijah, standing
there—his shirt would be off, his bare chest and biceps would be rock
hard as she fell into him.
 
And then
they’d look into one another’s eyes, their lips slowly moving closer…

“You have no idea
what I would do to you, Caelyn.”
 
His breathing was deep and his voice was soft, promising.
 
It wasn’t a threat, it wasn’t scary at
all.
 
She wanted to find out.
 
She wanted to find out more than she
could even stand to bear.

“I think I might have
an idea,” she replied.

And then there was a
beep beep beep on the line and a series of clicking sounds.

“Elijah?” she called
out, sitting up in bed, eyes wide open.
 
“Are you still there?”

But he was gone.

It was over.

The room was now
empty, too quiet, and everything felt grungy and moist from the Florida
humidity.
 
The sense of loss was
even more intense now, as if she’d had another chance with Elijah and he’d been
stolen suddenly from her again.

It didn’t seem
fair.
 
It didn’t seem right.

All Caelyn knew was
that she had many sleepless hours to go before she’d leave this awful, lonely
room, and not much to do to pass the time but think and regret.
 

The night stretched
out before her as a long, lonely road that she had to walk alone.

***

It was early the next
morning when her flight landed at Logan Airport.

Caelyn had tried to
sleep on the plane, but she’d been sitting in front of a little boy who enjoyed
kicking the back of her seat once every two or three seconds.
 
Between the seat kicking and him asking
his mother what every single thing on the plane was called, Caelyn had remained
very much awake for the entire flight.

So now she was
exhausted from not having slept well, and worried about seeing her parents on
top of everything else.
 
But despite
her anxiety about coming home, she still couldn’t stop thinking about
him
.
 

Even though they’d
only spent a relatively short amount of time together, Caelyn could picture
every feature of Elijah’s face so clearly—especially that sneaky little
grin he used when giving her a hard time.
  

The plane pulled up
the gate and the passengers began the slow process of filing out and into the
airport.

The stewardesses
smiling faces were an unwelcome sight to Caelyn.
 
As they said goodbye and thanked all the
passengers for flying with them, all she could think about was that nobody
should be happy right now.

It didn’t seem
real.
 
Outside, Boston skies were
heavy and metallic gray, which was in tune with how Caelyn felt.
 
Her world had become foggy and the
people around her seemed as insubstantial as those in a dream.

When she arrived at
the gate, they were there; Mom and Dad, their faces tight and anxious, like
their skin had been pulled back, forcing them to grimace slightly.

She walked slowly
towards them, willing herself not to break down and cry.
 

You need to be strong right now,
she told
herself.
 
You need to remember why you came back.
 
Be strong for Elijah, the way he was for
you.

Once she reached her
parents, Caelyn’s mother threw her arms around her and hugged her like she’d
just come back from the dead.
 
“Oh
my God,” her mother said, into her ear.
 
“You had us scared half to death, Caelyn.”
 
And then she began sobbing, shaking as
she held Caelyn tighter and tighter.

“It’s okay, Mom,”
Caelyn said, wondering how things had gotten so turned around that she was
somehow consoling her mother.

Her father wasn’t
nearly as emotional.
 
He gave Caelyn
a big hug and then looked her in the eyes.
 
“Are you all right?” he said.
 
His lips were pressed together and his eyes were more serious than she
was used to.

She nodded.
 
“I’m okay.”

“Do you want to talk
about it?” he said.

She shook her
head.
 
“Not now.
 
Later.”

He frowned,
subtly.
 
Caelyn knew he didn’t like
her answer.
 
Better get used to it,
she thought.

The three of them
walked together, her dad carrying Caelyn’s bags and her mother leading them
toward the parking lot where the car waited.

The attendant waved
them through, and they drove out of the short-term parking lot and onto the
highway.
 

Her father’s eyes
glanced at her in the rearview mirror.

Caelyn turned her
face to the window, watching the highway—all the cars heading to unknown
destinations.
 
She wondered where
Elijah was this exact second in time?
 
Was he thinking of her?

“It’s okay if you
need to take a couple of days off,” her mother said, after a long bout of
silence.
 
“We understand that the
pressures of an Ivy League education are probably much more stressful than
you’re used to.”

“Anyone could get
overwhelmed,” her father added.

Caelyn had to repress
a smile.
 
So they were assuming that
she’d freaked out because of her school workload or something.
 
She couldn’t really blame
them—after all, she hadn’t told them anything, so they were forced to
come up with possibilities on their own.

“You’re right, it’s
been very stressful,” she said.
 
Making them feel that she was giving them answers without really telling
them anything—that was the key right now.
 
Of course, she hated them believing that
she was having trouble handling the academic pressure, but it was still better
than telling them the truth.
  

***

After getting home, Caelyn’s parents
allowed her to take some time alone in her bedroom, and she used it to get
online and do some research about parole violations in Massachusetts, and what
some of the possible outcomes were.

It wasn’t good news.
 
Leaving the state was an automatic
violation, and that alone could easily lead the parole board to decide to put
him back in jail.
 
What made things
even worse was that going back to prison was pretty much automatic if you were
convicted of a crime while out on parole.
 

Jayson bringing charges against Elijah
was going to almost certainly mean that he would be going away for a long
time.
 
She didn’t even want to think
about not having a chance to spend time with Elijah for two, three
years—maybe even longer than that.

How could her relationship with Elijah
survive him spending years in jail when they’d hardly been together in the
outside world for more than a couple of days?
 
It would never work.
 
She would be in school, graduating,
trying to make a career for herself, and he would still be sitting in a cell.

But worse than that—Elijah wouldn’t
get a chance to be the man she knew he was capable of being.

After reading all of that stuff, she
didn’t want to come out of her room.
  

Nothing seemed worthwhile to her but
trying to hide from what her life had become.
 
She didn’t want to see her family, or
talk to anyone, or think about the hard decisions that had to be made.

But then there was a knock at her door.

“Go away, please,” she said.
 
“I’m sleeping.”

“Mom wants you to come eat,” her younger
sister, Deena, called from the hallway.

“I’m not hungry.”

“She made eggs and toast.”

“Not interested.”

“You better come,” Deena replied, a hint
of warning in her voice now.

Caelyn sighed deeply, got up from her bed
and opened the door.
 
Deena was
standing there with a self-satisfied smirk on her face.
 
She was wearing a sweater, jeans and her
light brown hair was pulled tightly back in a ponytail.
  
A junior in high school, she
seemed older than her years.

“Can you just tell Mom that I don’t feel
well, and that I look awful?”

“You do look awful,” Deena said.

Caelyn smirked and nodded at her younger
sister.
 
“Thanks.”

“You said it first.”
 
She looked Caelyn up and down.
 
“You know, you really freaked Mom and
Dad out.
 
I heard them talking all night
last night, and Mom was crying.”

“I wasn’t trying to freak them out.”

“Did you even bother to think about
anybody but yourself?”

Caelyn glared at her.
 
This was exactly like Deena, to try and
turn this situation into something that could elevate her and turn Caelyn into
the bad sister.
 
Deena, for some
reason, had always seemed to resent Caelyn for being a high achiever, had always
looked for ways to bring her down and outdo her.

Caelyn didn’t feel competitive with her
sister, but somehow, Deena must have gotten all the competition genes, because
it never seemed to stop on her end.

“Dee,” she said, purposefully using
Deena’s childhood nickname that she knew annoyed her, “I wasn’t trying to upset
everyone.
 
I have my own problems
and my own life, and it’s not really any of your business anyhow.
 
It’s between me and Mom and Dad.”