Sweet as Candy - Karla Doyle Page 0,78
Please, open the door.”
The door remained closed. A solid, silent fuck-you. One he’d earned.
He stared at it, focusing on the small window. Barely blinking. Desperate for even a glimpse of her face, to catch sight of her hair. Anything that’d prove she hadn’t walked away. Maybe it was wishful thinking.
He had to know. The rage that’d propelled him to this place had died down to a low, flickering flame, but it still burned. He’d gone about this totally wrong, but he hadn’t been alone making the mess.
“You could’ve told me. You should have told me. Everything. Not waiting for the right time. The right time was immediately. I would have understood. I would have been fucking overjoyed that you chose to get out of there.”
Still nothing.
Shit. He wasn’t leaving here until they fixed this. He laid his fist to the door again, this time in hammer mode.
“Hey,” a husky male voice called. “Get away from that door, or I’m calling the cops.”
He turned toward the source of the threat, Candace’s neighbor to the right. “I am a cop.”
“Then I’ll call a better one.” The neighbor, a burly, bearded man in his fifties, at least, stepped outside to continue the conversation. “Cop or not, no man has the right to behave that way toward a lady.”
Shame wrapped around him like a wet blanket. And not only for his behavior while outside the door. Inside had been worse. “You’re right. Thanks for giving me a verbal slap.”
“Hope I never have to do it again.”
“You won’t.” He backed away from the door, saluting the neighbor guy while turning toward the street. “Thanks for looking out for her.” Something that should be his job, but might never be again.
Jake
“What?” he asked, when his buddy stared at him from the other end of the barbell, instead of settling onto the bench for the next set. “You want more weight on there, is that what you’re waiting for?”
“No.” Curtis cursed under his breath. “I can’t believe I’m doing this. What’s on your mind, Campbell? Because it’s sure as hell not your workout.”
“What’s wrong with my workout?”
“You’re blindly going through the motions. Not focusing. Not pushing yourself. Not—” A look of actual pain crossed his face. “Talking.”
“We rarely talk while working out.”
“Incorrect. I rarely talk. You rarely shut up.”
“Awe, thanks, man. So nice to know you care enough to notice.” Jake opened his arms and took a step toward his broody-faced partner. “Can I get a hug to go with that compassion?”
Curtis raised one arm, warding him off with a pointed elbow. “Not one step closer.”
Annoying the shit out of his permanently intense friend lifted Jake’s mood. Enough that he jumped on the offer to talk. “Candace broke up with me.”
“Sorry to hear it,” Curtis said while getting situated beneath the bar. “So, what’d you do to fuck it up?”
“What makes you think I did something?”
A patented Lawler snort left Curtis’s mouth. “You’re an impulsive hothead, of course you did something to fuck it up. Again. Question is, what was it this time?”
Sharing the details of his stupidity might earn him more than a snort or pained expression. If he went ahead and told Curtis what he’d done, how he’d treated Candace, there was a very real chance his friend would punch him in the face. He certainly deserved one. Hell, maybe he even wanted one. Might knock some of the guilt away.
“There was a guy at the gala on Saturday night. Some rich-as-fuck, bigshot businessman, there with his wife. They started talking to Candace because they know her. Turns out they’ve got a kid in her daughter’s kindergarten class. I could tell she was uncomfortable, so we exited the conversation pretty fast. She let me believe that was the only way she knew them, but it turns out, the guy is one of her regulars. Has been for a couple of years.”
“Ouch.” Curtis switched to a sitting position on the bench. “How’d you find out she lied to you?”
It’d be easy to let her hang for this. Frame what’d happened in a way that made her seem like a liar. He couldn’t do it.
“She never actually lied, she withheld details.”
“Pretty fucking important ones. You’ve been through that shit before. Once was one time too many.”
“Exactly how I felt when I found out. But this is different. Anna was a lying, conniving bitch who used me. Candace wanted to spare me some of the ugly truth about her job. She thought it wouldn’t be an issue, since