Wrong Side Girl (The Girl Series Book 1) (18 page)

Weird.

I opened the flap and looked inside. Looked like a stack of smaller papers or cards. I pulled out the first one and looked at it. When I realized what it was, my heart stopped, then started again at a much faster pace. It was an ultrasound picture with Courtney Miller’s name on the top. Courtney Miller, Cole’s ex-fuck buddy and my childhood arch nemesis. My hands were shaking so hard I dropped the photo. With a lump in my throat that was threatening to choke me, not wanting to know what else was in the envelope but needing to at the same time, I upended the envelope to see what else she had sent. More photographs fell out.

Of her.

And Cole.

Together.

At a coffee shop. A restaurant. A parking garage.

In almost every picture she was touching him, smiling at him. The worst one was one of her leaning over the hood of Cole’s car in nothing but high heels and sexy lingerie with Cole stalking towards her, what looked like in a hurry to get to her.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

This couldn’t be true. It had to be some kind of ploy or bad joke.

Courtney was a vindictive bitch who was definitely capable of something like this. I needed to talk to Cole, needed to see his face when he looked at the pictures, needed to see the truth in his eyes. I needed him to tell me that this was a lie, that Courtney was scheming against us somehow, that those pictures were not what they looked like. I grabbed the letter and the photographs with shaking hands and shoved them back in the envelope, then grabbed my keys and ran out to my car. I heard people calling my name as I ran through the common room, but I didn’t stop.

I had to get to Cole.

Only he could make this right. Only he could take away the pain that was waiting at the sidelines, waiting to overwhelm me, to drown me. And he better do that quickly or I would rip his balls off if any of what the pictures implied were actually true. Who was I kidding? If any of that turned out to be true, I’d curl up into the fetal position, lock myself away somewhere, and drown in self-pity.

I got in my car and raced across the city to Cole’s office building. I parked in the garage and had to close my eyes at the realization that this was the one from the pictures.

Get to Cole
.
You promised you wouldn’t shut him out. Talk to him. He’ll explain everything.

I raced toward the elevators, got on, pushed the button for his floor, then stared at the numbers on the screen until I finally got out on his floor. I had only been here once, but had no problem finding his office in my determined single-mindedness. Again, I could hear someone talking to me, but I again didn’t pay them any attention. I opened the door to Cole’s office, eyes going directly to his desk and stopped dead.

There she was.

Sitting on his desk.

Naked.

And Cole had his hands on her hips.

I blinked. This couldn’t be true. My mind must be playing tricks on me, being in panic mode. Having just seen the photos of her with him, I must be confused, my mind conjuring up images of my worst fears. But after I blinked a couple more times, she was still there, sitting naked on his desk, his hands holding her hips.

I looked from her naked body to Cole. His eyes were on me, filled with terror.

Terror at being caught.

He pushed away from the desk and rose from his chair, not taking his eyes from me.

“Lizzy, this isn’t what it looks like,” his voice was careful, soothing, like he was talking to a frightened animal or a child. He was walking toward me. I stepped back, staring at him through my tears.

“Liz, baby—” Pain and hatred shot through me at him using that endearment. It killed something inside of me.

“Don’t you ever call me that again.”

Cole stopped at hearing the tone of my voice. It didn’t sound like me at all.

It sounded dead.

Exactly like how I felt.

I tossed the envelope at him, then turned on my heel, ran from the office, and caught the elevator just as it was about to close. I could hear him shouting my name, could hear his running footsteps following me, but he was too late. The doors closed before he could reach me and I was gone with a finality that tore my heart apart. I couldn’t breathe. I was choking. Choking on my own sobs, on the betrayal, on the pain slicing through me, on my heart breaking into a million little pieces. So many pieces I knew they could never be put back together again.

I should have known.

Good things didn’t happen to me.

Or at least I didn’t get to keep them.

I should have been happy with the way things were instead of asking for more. Dreams were just dreams and should stay just that. Every word Cole had said to me in the last weeks, every promise he had made, every gesture, every touch, every kiss had been a lie. I had seen the proof with my own eyes. Pictures that proved he had been lying, that he had been seeing Courtney. Her naked body in his office for some coffee-break action. His hands on her. And she was pregnant. Pregnant with Cole’s baby. That hurt so much I had to curl up into a ball to keep the pain from consuming me.

I don’t know how long I stayed like that, curled up in my car seat, crying and sobbing silently. I didn’t even have the slightest idea how I ended up in my car. I was trying to escape into my head, to block everything out so the pain would go away, so I could be numb and not feel anything. But it didn’t work. How could I be so unbelievably happy one second and completely devastated the next? My life was in shambles. In one short moment, I had lost both the love of my life and my best friend at the same time. I wouldn’t be able to recover from this, I knew. I would never love again, could never trust again to let myself fall. My mother and all those people in our shitty town had been right.

I wasn’t worth people’s attention.

I didn’t deserve to be loved.

Somehow, I was driving. I must have lost some time back there because I had no idea how I got here or where I was headed. My phone was ringing, but I didn’t check to see who was calling me. There was nobody I wanted to talk to, nobody that could help me.

I was lost. So very lost.

Unsure of what to do next, I just kept driving for what must have been at least an hour. I stopped when I realized I was close to the beach. I loved the beach. The soft movement of the water against the sand could give me peace. I could sit there and just be, look out over the water and forget everything else. Yes. That was what I needed.

I parked my car in a deserted parking lot. It was the middle of the day, but too cold and windy for people to want to be at the beach at this time of year. I was grateful for that. It meant I would be left alone. Nobody would ask me if I was okay, nobody would try to interrupt my thoughts. I could sit in the sand, letting it run through my fingers, thinking of nothing but the feeling of the sand crystals on my skin until I was ready to face the facts.

Just like I had done so many times during my childhood.

Escape.

Cole

Fear so raw it threatened to cripple me; that’s what I felt when I saw the elevator doors close, cutting me off from getting to Lizzy.

Fuck!

This was not happening! It couldn’t be happening!

How the fuck did this happen?

The look on her face when she saw Courtney sitting on my desk… I couldn’t think about it without the pain of it piercing my heart.

Betrayal and pain.

Then her eyes had gone dead, as had her voice. My sweet and fiery Lizzy was looking at me with dead eyes. I had seen her hurting before, lots of times throughout the years of her childhood and as a teenager. But never like this. Even when I had been an asshole to her that night at the bar, when my words had cut her deeply, she hadn’t looked like she had a few seconds ago. She had looked at me like she was gone, like I had killed a part of her, a part of her soul, the light and fire in her eyes extinguished.

And it was all my fault.

“Fuck!” I shouted as I reached the elevator. I punched my fist against the wall beside the door, splitting open my knuckles. I watched the numbers indicating where she would get off. The parking garage. Shit! By the time I got down there, she could be anywhere. I had to find her and explain. Tell her that Courtney had been a problem for a while now, that she had been stalking and harassing me. I had to tell her how I had taken care of it.

Fuck!

I should have told her. Then all of this could have been prevented. The pain I had caused her because I had wanted to keep her out of it…

It was eating me alive.

I realized I was still holding the envelope Lizzy had flung at me before she ran. This must be important, maybe the reason why she would come to my office in the first place, because she wanted to show me something.

The first thing I saw was an ultrasound picture. Lizzy was pregnant? She had come here to share the most precious news with me and instead of that being one of the happiest moments in our lives she had seen another woman sitting naked on my desk?

Oh God!

That would make her feeling betrayed by me that much more painful. Elation about having a baby with her mixed with dread about not being able to fix this warred inside of me. I looked at the picture again more closely. And stopped short. Courtney’s name was printed on the top right, as was a date. Lizzy wasn’t pregnant. Courtney was. And she had sent this to Lizzy to make her leave me. I took out the rest of the pictures and glanced at them. Photos of when she had stalked me. At the coffee shop, the restaurant and, fucking hell! Her lingerie clad body on my hood in the garage of this very building. I was going to kill her!

Fuck!

Lizzy had seen these and had come to me. I could only imagine what she must be thinking right now. That I had kept Courtney on the side. That I had lied to her this whole time. And I didn’t blame her. The photos were compromising. They didn’t show how I pushed Courtney away, how furious I was that she kept following and touching me. But still, Liz had come to me to show me the pictures and ask for an explanation instead of taking them at face value and running from me. This was a set up. Courtney must have known Lizzy would be on her way. And someone had been taking those photos of us. This whole thing was a set up from the start to break Lizzy and me apart.

Panic overcame me.

Panic and fury.

Fury at myself for underestimating the situation with Courtney, for letting it get so far that it hurt the one person whom I never wanted to hurt, whom it was my job to protect. And fury at the woman in my office, who had instigated this play to inflict the worst kind of pain on the woman I loved. She would pay. I would make sure she would pay dearly. But first, I had to find Lizzy to make things right.

I found the number I needed and made the call. It connected on the second ring.

“Yo.”

“Max. Shit just hit the fan. Lizzy is gone. I need you to find her.”

“Talk to me.”

“It’s Courtney. That fucking bitch had someone take pictures of those times I ran into her I told you about and sent them to Lizzy this morning in the hopes to make her believe I was cheating on her.”

“Fucking hell.”

“It gets worse. She included an ultrasound picture. Lizzy thinks Courtney is pregnant with my child.”

“Is she?”

“No! It’s not possible. The last time we had sex was over five months ago. There is no way that kid is mine! But Lizzy doesn’t know that! Fuck!”

“Okay. Calm down. I’ll run her plates, check her credit cards, we’ll find her.”

“It gets worse.”

“Shit.”

“She came to my office, I guess to show me the photos and ask for an explanation, and found Courtney sitting naked on my desk in front of me. That bitch had it all planned. She came into my office only a minute or so before Liz, dropped her coat on the floor, and was naked as a jailbird underneath. I was about to push her away and call security. I had my hands on her hips to do exactly that when the door opened and Lizzy saw us. Shit, Max! I need you to find her!”

“And I will. Where do you think she would go? Does she have any places where she would go to think or hide out? A friend? Family? Anything?”

I tried to think. Who would she go to? Where would she escape to?

“She has a friend at work who she’s close to. Her name is Marie. Her best friend Katie is out of town, so she wouldn’t have gone there. No family she would turn to. She had a thinking place back home, but I doubt she would go there. Too many bad memories in that town. Fuck! I don’t know!” The panic was rising, making it impossible for me to think clearly. All I could see was that hideous look on Lizzy’s face.

That and her dead eyes.

“I’ll put an alert on her credit cards in case she uses them. I’ll go to your house to check if she went home. You meet me at the shelter so we can talk to that friend of hers. See if she knows anything. I have a guy who can run a trace on cell phones and get him started on that, but it could take a while.”

“Okay. I’ll keep trying her cell. Maybe she’ll pick up. I’ll see you at the shelter. And Max, a heads up. I want you to destroy that bitch. Dig deep and use anything you can find on her. If you can’t find anything, make shit up and throw it at her. I don’t care what it costs. I want her to hurt.”

“Consider it done. Out.” I had dead air. I hung up and called Liz but got voicemail. I tried again. Voicemail again. I left a message.

“Please call me, baby. That baby isn’t mine. The whole thing was a set up. I’ll explain everything to you. There is nothing going on between Courtney and me. I can prove it to you. Please, Liz, call me so we can talk.”

On my way back into my office I turned to my assistant. “Sam, I need you to clear my schedule for the rest of the day. There’s a family emergency I have to take care of.”

“Okay, Mr. Brooks.”

“I’ll let you know later today if I’ll be back tomorrow.” She nodded at me and started making calls. I would get flak for this. Today was an important day, but I didn’t give a shit. All I cared about was getting to my girl and taking away her pain, bringing back the light to her eyes.

Courtney was still in my office, lounging on my couch, a self-satisfied smile on her face. Thankfully, she had put her coat back on.