Return to Me (13 page)

     She perched on one of the high back chairs that graced the room and punched in Guys’ number, listening as the line rang once, twice, three times.

      “Hello?” A sleepy voice came through on the line.

    
“Hailey?”
I’ll kill him.

     “Who is this?” Her old friend sounded more alert in an instant.

     “It’s Paige. Where’s Guy?” She demanded.

     “He’s sleeping. Why?” Hailey snapped.

     “Well,” She began in a thoroughly irate tone, only to pause as Erik walked through the front door with a cup of take-out coffee in each hand.

     “I-“ She began again, as a terrible thought began to take shape in her mind.

     “Paige.” Erik murmured, standing stock still in the entryway. His eyes met hers.

     “Hailey. Has Guy left the house since last night?” She asked without breaking eye contact with Erik.

     “Not that it’s any business of yours, but Guy spent the night right here in his own bed last night. Why?” She sounded more curious than angry now.

     “Thanks, bye.” Paige murmured, snapping the phone closed and swallowing against the sudden dryness in her throat.

     “Paige…” Erik set down the cardboard drink holder and held a hand out to her, pleading for an understanding that he wasn’t entirely sure he deserved.

     “It was you, wasn’t it?” She whispered.

     “Last night?”

     “Yes.”

     “Yes.” He confirmed with a nod, still watching her carefully.

     “Why?” She uttered the one word that delved straight to the crux of the matter, the only question that really mattered right then.

     “Because I love you-“

     “Oh don’t give me that!” She exploded, throwing her arms up in frustration. “Don’t you dare do this to me.”

     “I do, I always have.”

     “Erik you can’t just…just do this to me. You lied to me.” She murmured,
struggling to absorb what she could plainly see. “You’re not gay.”

     “No, I’m not gay.”

     “
Were
you? I mean, have you ever been…”

     “No.” He said after several long, tense moments.

     “I see.” She exhaled before turning on her heel and stomping past him toward the kitchen.

     “No, you don’t.”

     “Hmm. Well it looks pretty obvious to me, Erik. You’ve been lying to me for years about your sexual orientation. And last night you-you-seduced me, and let me think I was making love to another man. And now-“ She paused, taking a breath and feeling like she was on the verge of hyperventilating. “What the
hell
, Erik.” She swore vehemently, years of memory playing through her mind in a big, humiliating slideshow. The things she had said and done in front of this man…Paige cringed before turning her back on him.

     “I am in love with you.” He insisted. “I know you don’t want to hear that, but I am and I was all those years ago, the night I told you I was gay. I was going to tell you how I felt about you, and then you dropped that bombshell about Denmari’s mob associations and I knew I had to do something or end up forced away from you. So I pretended to be gay, yes, but I did it to protect you, mostly.”

     “You did it for yourself.” She scoffed, raking him with a lethal gaze.

     "Fine," H
e sighed after several long, tense moments, "I can’t talk to you when you're like this anyway. I'll be back tonight and then we are going to talk."

    
"No," She told him without bothering to turn around, her stance remaining rigid. "I'll call you if and when I decide that we should talk. Now
get out
.” She yelled, placing both hands on his chest and shoving for all she was worth.

     "
Stop it
!" He exploded. "You can’t just shut me out of your life as easily as you shoved me into the wall a minute ago-which is something I highly suggest you don’t try again. Ever." The warning was deceptively soft spoken. Like a panther, he looked dark and lean and lethal.

    
"Take your warnings and shove them up your ass." She spun around and extended one arm toward the door. "And while you're at it shove the rest of yourself out the door. What don’t you get about me not wanting to talk to you? In fact, I don’t want anything from you at all." Which may or may not have been the truth, she was honest enough with herself to grudgingly acknowledge the fact that she was still too angry to admit to Erik.

    
Then again, screw it-who set him to judge her character? It wasn’t as if she owed him her undying honesty. Not after the years long wool he had pulled over her eyes. "Get out," She repeated the terse order one final time and prayed he gave up being argumentative and just followed the command, for now at least.

    
She would deal with later when it came. For now, she avoided looking him in the eye. The intensity she found in their blue depths was disconcerting.

   
"Damn it, Paige." He swore, shaking his head and marching to the door, flinging it open with what Paige could only assume was pent up rage and frustration.

    
Cold, clean night air washed into the kitchen and she greedily drank it in, welcoming the frigid winter offering. "Goodbye Erik." She managed, pressing her back to the wall by the shiny chrome sink and daring a final glance at his retreating form.

    
"I told you I'll be back tonight."

    
"I don’t want you back here."

    
"Funny but you didn’t find my presence so repulsive last night." His boots crunched over frost that had accumulated on the threshold to form a thin crusty layer. He was leaving.

    
"Because I thought you were Guy!"

    
The instant the heated words left her lips, Paige knew she had gone too far. What on Earth had possessed her to say such a thing? She knew a moments dread when he stopped just past the doorframe, in the act of closing the door behind himself, and slowly turned. His eyes honed in on her pale face, narrowing when the full impact of her admission registered. A muscle ticked dangerously in his jaw, and Paige recognized her own harsh statement for what it was-the final blow to his already wounded pride.

    
Not that she necessarily felt obligated to feel overly concerned with his masculine ego. Still...the hastily blurted statement had cut him deep, that much she could see. And she hadn’t meant her scathing comment the way he'd obviously received it. She hadn’t meant...

     "Erik I'm sorry." S
he wet her lips. "I didn’t mean it like that."

    
"I don’t know about you," He ground out, slamming the door and stalking over to where Paige stood clutching the sink. "But I for one am sick to death of hearing about that son of a bitch! You want him? Fine. He can have you. I am done. Do you hear me Paige? I'm done."

    
She jumped when his hand slammed onto the counter a foot away from her. He's all you've ever given a damn about anyway, though for the life of me I’ve never understood why."

     "Now wait just a minute," S
he broke in, chagrined despite the wary way she was now watching Erik.

    
"No, you wait! I've got something else to say to you, beyond the obvious need to point out that you're in love with an ass that couldn’t care less about you. He forgot about you in high school and he's forgotten about you now-this time with the help of your old best friend."

    
"How kind of you to point that out.” Her lips thinned.

     "And another thing," H
e pressed on, moving to stand directly in front of her, his mouth inches from her own. "Before you paint me to be the bad guy who lied to you all of these years, know this-I've turned my entire life upside down and inside out for you Paige. My family thinks I’m gay, for Christ’s sake. Do you even know what that's been like for me? The entire city of Helena thinks I'm gay." He bellowed.

    
"And just how in the hell is that my fault?" She shouted right back, anger taking the place of apprehension.

    
"You know what? It’s not your fault at all. It’s mine, for being dumb enough to want to protect you. And for being foolish enough to love you in the first place." He finished on a bitter note.

    
"I never asked you to love me." Her voice shook.

    
"No, you didn’t, did you?" He regarded her in silence. "You’ve never been able to see past Guy, have you? And you've never stopped trying to punish the world for what Denmari did to you."

    
"You don’t know what you're talking about." She scoffed, tossing his earlier words back at him with an angry shake of her head.

     "Oh, yes I do." H
e whispered vehemently. "Did you know that after you left that summer, I was called 'queer' and 'faggot' for months?"

    
Paige pressed her lips together but remained silent in the face of his tirade. Words hard as stone fell around her, some more uncomfortable than others. Combined with his uncharacteristic anger, it was enough to serve the dual purpose of diffusing her own rage and throwing her decidedly off balance. She had seen him angry before, but never in their long acquaintance had she been on the receiving end of his cold rage.

    
"Do you know how many times my car-and my parents’ house-was vandalized after I 'came out'? Did you ever bother to ask? Did you ever give a damn about anyone else other than yourself?" He demanded when still she remained silent. "Forget it," He muttered without missing a beat, "I'm out of here."

    
Paige winced as the door slammed violently behind the man who had been the only constant in her world for as long as she could remember. All that was left to do was breathe; breathe and grit her teeth against the pain and the tears and the sickening sense that something had just been irrevocably, totally, and completely broken.

Paige spent the night tossing and turning-and sometimes crying-in the den. She briefly considered dragging her pillow and blanket up the stairs to her room, but by the time she finally rolled off the coach to make good on the plan, the sun was practically up. She sighed at the delicate pink rays that streaked across the mirrored finish on the wood floor. There would be no point in going to bed now.

     It was Thursday, the day Erik’s parents were supposed to come for dinner. Well, it was pretty clear those plans were in the toilet now. She pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger and rubbed gently as she made coffee, leaning one hip against the counter while she waited for the brewer to hiss and spit out the last few drops of the precious liquid.

When the phone rang a few minutes later, she sprinted into the hallway to grab the cordless desk phone.

“Hello?”

“Paige, it’s Guy.”

“Oh.”

“I’m happy to hear from you, too.”

“Sorry,” She apologized without further explanation. “What’s up?”

“The department will probably be in touch later today or tomorrow, but I wanted to give you a heads up-we’ve got a suspect in custody.”

“Oh?”

“We think he’s the one who planted the shark in your pool.”

“Oh! Are you sure?” She gripped the phone tighter.

“He hasn’t given us a full confession exactly, but he’s admitted to being an old enemy of Denmari’s and made reference to the shark as a hypothetical situation. We’re fairly certain we’ve got our perp.”

“I see.” She sighed, nerves tightening in her stomach at the thought of random mobsters coming after her for no apparent reason.

“But you shouldn’t have any more trouble. He was surprised to hear of Denmari’s passing.”

“So he’s not after me?” Her spirits lifted.

“Nope, at least he says he’s not.”

“Oh, good.”

“Yeah, it’s great news.” He agreed. “Well, I’ve got to get going, but…”

“Okay, well thanks for letting me know, Guy.”

“Yeah. Take care, okay?”

“You too, bye.” She murmured, disconnecting without making any mention of Hailey or the brief conversation she’d had with her the previous day. Maybe
Hailey hadn’t even mentioned it to him. Not that it mattered either way.

    
She chugged the remainder of her coffee and headed into the kitchen to start cleaning. Later, she promised herself, she would start packing and making preparations to return to New York, though for some reason the idea didn’t hold the same appeal that it did before.

So she held off on the packing, instead she spent the morning and much of the afternoon on the second floor of the house, windows open and the radio blaring as she went from room to room, giving each her personal attention until they all shined.

     A radio announcer started talking about five o’clock traffic and Paige remembered that it was almost time to eat dinner. She wasn’t very hungry, but the chili she’d started hours earlier would be done by now and she needed to at least head downstairs and turn off the stove.