All work lets play, p.1
All Work, Let's Play, page 1
All Work, Let's Play
Rosyln Faulk
Copyright © 2022 Rosyln Faulk All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Cover design by: Delaney Rain
Contents
Foreword and Trigger Warnings
. Chapter
Dedication
. Chapter
1. Chapter One
2. Chapter Two
3. Chapter Three
4. Chapter Four
5. Chapter Five
6. Chapter Six
7. Chapter Seven
8. Chapter Eight
9. Chapter Nine
10. Chapter Ten
11. Chapter Eleven
12. Chapter Twelve
13. Chapter Thirteen
14. Chapter Fourteen
15. Chapter Fifteen
16. Chapter Sixteen
17. Chapter Seventeen
18. Chapter Eighteen
19. Chapter Nineteen
20. Chapter Twenty
21. Chapter Twenty-One
22. Chapter Twenty-Two
23. Chapter Twenty-Three
24. Chapter Twenty- Four
25. Chapter Twenty-Five
26. Chapter Twenty-Six
27. Chapter Twenty-Seven
28. Chapter Twenty-Eight
29. Chapter Twenty-Nine
30. Chapter Thirty
31. One Month Later
32. Chapter Thirty-One
33. Chapter Thirty-Two
34. Epilogue
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Also By
Foreword and Trigger Warnings
For anyone that is familiar with, studies, or practices law, please suspend your disbelief. The trial that takes place in this book is not meant to reflect an actual court case. It is only meant to build the story.
I have taken extreme liberties with the case, its pace, the evidence, and the witnesses. This is not meant to depict how the justice system works. Simply, the case brings the best and worst out of those involved in this book. Again, please suspend your disbelief and enjoy this incredible work of fiction.
Content Warning and Triggers: This book speaks about terrible foster homes, child abuse and neglect, and murder(of adults) all in the past and off page. If that content is sensitive to you, please do not read or read when you are no longer affected. Your mental health is important.
In case no one has told you today, you matter. You're important. You're loved. You're needed.
Believe that.
Chapter One
Today is supposed to be the happiest day of my life. The day I marry the woman of my dreams, devoting my life and future to her. The day I pledge to be there through sickness and health, richer or poorer, ‘til death do us part. But something is wrong. The wedding march has played, and no one is walking down the aisle. Red flag number one.
I look at her wedding party, and they look as confused as I am. Her bridesmaids are looking back and forth at each other, trying to ask with their eyes, ‘Where’s Joyce?’
My stomach drops to my feet. I look around at those gathered and see the ten people on my side of the church, including my boss, whom I don’t even remember inviting. He’s insufferable, so seeing him here doesn’t help my jitters. My eyes land on his, and he raises an eyebrow. Ugh. Even on my wedding day, he’s an ass. I lock eyes with my foster sister, Candice, and she shrugs, letting me know she doesn’t have any clue what’s going on.
I seek out Joyce’s brother, Max, and he’s got his perpetual glare trained on me. Like I’m the one late for the wedding. I narrow my eyes at him, and he rolls his eyes at me. What a dick. Her mother and father are nowhere to be seen. Red flag number two that something isn’t right. She couldn’t decide which she wanted to walk her down the aisle, so she asked for them both. So where are they?
Feeling like I have to do something, I turn towards my meager guests and Joyce’s overflowing side and announce, “Give me a moment, everyone. I’ll go check to see where my bride is.” Soft smiles, some sympathetic, are sent my way, and I feel sick.
I straighten my jacket and trot down the aisle, feeling ill at ease. There should be no reason for any kind of delay. Joyce scheduled everything down to the minute, and according to her schedule, we’re ten minutes behind.
I get to the suite in the church where Joyce and her parents are supposed to be. I knock on the door and don’t get an answer. I knock again and still, nothing. I’m about to turn the knob when I hear Max’s voice behind me.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” His angry voice is making my upset stomach worse.
"I’m checking on Joyce.”
“Like hell. You probably did something to make her upset. Move.” He brushes past me and shoves me away from the door. Before I can follow behind him, he slams it in my face. I press my ear against it, hoping to hear what’s going on, praying for some kind of answer. I hear nothing. Not even a whisper. I pace the hallway, walking back and forth, waiting for Max to come out and tell me what’s going on with Joyce.
When the door flies open, Max looks at me with rage in his eyes. In his hand is a folded piece of paper. He walks over, slams it against my chest, and walks back into the church proper. I follow him with my eyes, wondering what all that was about. Sure, he doesn’t like me for whatever reason, but he’s never put his hands on me. What happened? What did she say?
With shaking hands, I unfold the paper in my hand and see it’s a letter, written in Joyce’s flowery script. I smile, thinking it’s a cute note she wrote me, and Max is pissed that she asked him to be the delivery boy. The smile is still on my face when I start reading, but it steadily drops until it’s a frown.
Gage,
I know you’re standing at the front of the church, in front of our friends and family, looking as handsome as you want to be. I wish I could lay eyes on you. Look to see how cleaned up you got for our special day. That’s what makes this harder to say than it should be. I know you’ve done everything I’ve asked of you for our special day, but I can’t go through with it. I can’t marry you. I’ve been avoiding telling you for months that I’m not in love with you anymore. I don’t think I’ve been in love with you for a while now. You’re such a good man, I didn’t want to give you up. But I can’t marry you. I can’t see a future with you. You’re a nice guy, a good man, but you’re boring. You hold no excitement for me. You offer security, but you don’t set my soul on fire like I deserve. The future I see with you is unhappy and depressing. So I’m leaving. Scott is my future. He’s who I should be marrying. I wish things could be different.
I wish I had told you months ago before things went too far. Maybe you’ll find the woman of your dreams one day soon. Someone that likes your boring and laid-back ways. But that woman is not me. Good luck. I hope you end up as happy as I am.
Yours,
Joyce
I read and reread and reread the letter again. This can’t be happening. This can’t be real. It’s our wedding day. Everything she’s planned. All of her friends and family. Everyone is here. Why would she do this? Why would she wait until our wedding day? Why wouldn’t she tell me she was unhappy? Why? Why? Why?
I walk into the room Joyce was supposed to occupy, holding the letter against my chest. I sit down at the vanity she should be using to do her makeup and put the letter down, smoothing it until there are barely any wrinkles.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how I will tell everyone that there is no wedding. That my bride, my ex-fiancée now, I guess, walked out on me. After spending $15,000 I couldn’t really afford on the wedding of her dreams. How she left me for the office manager of the dental practice she works at, the one who she always told me not to worry about. How am I to reconcile that she had been so unhappy? That she thinks I’m boring? So boring, that she only saw negativity in our future. So boring in fact, that she thought our future together would be depressing.
It hurts. It hurts more than words can describe. Joyce is the love of my life. The woman of my dreams. When I went down the checklist of what I wanted in a woman, she has it in spades. Beautiful, sweet, caring, kind, dedicated, focused. Everything I want, everything I see in myself. I thought we made a great team.
I know I should go out there and tell our guests there will be no wedding, but I can’t move. I can only stare blankly at the letter, not really seeing it. The words are permanently embedded in my brain anyway, so there is no need to read it for a fourth time.
Gazing at myself in the mirror, I see I’m pale under my medium brown skin. Looking clammy and unwell. How am I going to face our guests like this?
After an indeterminable amount of time, I feel a presence behind me. I look up at the mirror and see my boss, of all people. I turn around with a scowl on my face, not ready for any of his overbearing shit today.
“What do you want, Mr. Newman?” I barely keep the words contained, my voice trembling with anger and hurt.
“Wanted to see how you’re holding up, Mr. Archer.” He never calls me Gage. Always Mr. Archer. And in such a condescending way, like he knows I hate that shit.
I sigh roughly. What e lse can I do? “I’m fine, Mr. Newman. What do you want? And why are you here? I didn’t invite you.”
He raises an eyebrow at me, with a small smirk on his face. “Joyce mailed me an invitation. Figured you asked her to.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t. I’d like you to leave. I have to address my guests.”
He runs his hand over his close-cropped beard, smoothing it. “Your brother-in-law —”
“He’s not my anything,” I snap.
He inclines his head. “In any case, he told everyone that there will be no wedding. I’m the last one here, as a matter of fact.”
“Why?” I grit out. Why is he here? He doesn’t like me and I don’t like him. He only keeps me around as a legal researcher because I’m the best and he knows it. If it weren’t for that, I’d have been out on my ass years ago.
He sighs and rubs his beard again. The only sign that I know he’s irritated. I roam my eyes over him, trying to figure out his angle. His face is stoic, his hazel eyes blazing. His light brown skin is slightly flushed red, displaying his discontent at my bristling tone. His thick, six-foot frame is towering over me, and he’s looking at me with what I think is sympathy. His full lips quirk up, like he wants to say something scathing, as he usually does, but he holds back. “I know you have a month off for your honeymoon—”
“I don’t feel like hearing this shit right now, Caleb,” I spit out at him, knowing he hates when anyone who he feels is beneath him uses his first name. He narrows his eyes, expressing his distaste, but doesn’t address it. “I’m taking the month off, so if there’s nothing else.” I turn my back on him, but I know he hasn’t left. I can feel his presence behind me as well as catch his reflection in the mirror on the vanity.
“If you’re finished acting like a petulant child, you will let me finish what I came to say.” He gives the tone that’s reserved for the courtroom, when he’s eviscerating a client on the stand. I whip around to him, ready to tell him to fuck off, when he steamrolls right over that. “If you want to take that month off, it’s yours. If you don’t, if you want to keep yourself busy to take your mind off your current situation, give me a call.”
He doesn’t deserve my anger. That should be directed at Joyce. But he’s the one standing in front of me, so he’s the one that gets it. Besides, he’s a well-built man. He can take it. “Does it look like I’m thinking about a fucking vacation right now, Caleb? I don’t give a shit about a fucking month off. Get the fuck out of here before you really piss me off.”
His eyes flare with irritation, but he does as I say. He walks backward, keeping his eyes on me until he’s out of the door.
It took everything in me not to break down while he was here. The tears have been pricking my eyes since I read that letter the first time. Thinking about the month I was supposed to be spending on our honeymoon road trip, seeing the sights and traveling the states with the love of my life made it harder and harder to hold the tears in. Now that Mr. Newman, Caleb, is gone, I let them fall.
This always happens. I’m always left behind. First, my father, when my mother was pregnant. Then my mother, after realizing that she wasn’t the motherly type apparently, giving me up to the system when I was five. Bouncing around foster home after foster home until I got to the Archers when I was fifteen. They left me too, but through death when I was eighteen, due to a terrible accident on their way home from a movie one night. The only one who hasn’t left me is Candice, because we were at the Archer’s together and they adopted us, making us brother and sister. It didn’t hurt that we got closer before the process was finalized.
Now Joyce. Now my hope of having a complete family, gone. Now my hope of being whole, of having something for myself, dashed. God, this hurts. I lay my head on the vanity in front of me and let the tears flow. This is about so much more than Joyce. This is about me never being good enough for anyone. Not my parents, who didn’t give enough of a shit about me to keep me. Not for my boss, who always has something to say about my work. Not for my brother-in-law, who’s never liked me for a reason only he knows, even though I’ve always tried hard to get along with him. Not my fiancée, who thinks because I like to enjoy my peace, that I’m boring. I’ve had too much ‘excitement’, growing up in abusive foster homes that now, all I want to do is protect my peace and not do anything I don’t want. I’ve earned the right not to be forced. Never again. It didn’t help matters that she never wanted to do the things I wanted.
I cry until I feel wrung out, until I feel like I can’t squeeze out another drop and I lift my head, wiping my face. I look at myself in the mirror again, just to see Max standing at the open door. Where I was angry with Mr. Newman for talking, I feel defeated that Max bared witness to my breakdown. I’m not sure how long he was standing there, but I’m sure it was long enough to at least catch some of the tears I shed. I look down at the note and see it wet with the distinct small puddles of my pain.
“What, Max?” I ask, suddenly tired. I don’t have the energy anymore.
“What did you do to my sister?” he seethes.
I laugh. A maniacal, insane laugh, but a laugh all the same. It’s not funny, but I find it ridiculous that he had to have read the letter before I did and he still finds a way to find me at fault.
“What did I do? What did I do, Max? Your sister pretty much said she cheated on me in this letter and you’re asking me what I did? Fuck you and fuck her too!” I shout, losing my temper all over again. “It’s obvious this whole family ain’t shit, since your parents are MIA too.” I stop, taking a deep breath. “I’m not in the mood for your shit right now,” I tell him as I get up to leave. I button my tuxedo jacket, trying to give myself a bit of dignity after being left at the altar. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to get the fuck out of here and you’re in my way.”
I step to the door and he blocks my way. “Tell me what happened,” he grunts at me, his face a mask of fury. Something breaks inside of me. I’m not a violent person, not after being beaten so much in foster care, but I won’t be blamed for something I didn’t do.
I push Max into the wall, following him across the hall. When his back makes contact, I lean into him and put my hands around his throat. His eyes bug out and he scrambles to remove my hands, but I hold tight. “I said get the fuck out of my way!”
I hold on until I feel hands on my back, scratching me through my jacket. Then I hear Candice. “Gage, stop! Let him go. Please! Gage! Stop!”
I peel my hands off Max’s throat and he drops to the floor, struggling to take a breath. I stand over him, immediately regretting my actions. I might be in pain, but that’s no excuse to put my hands on anyone. Even a dickhead like Max. Before I can apologize, Candice drags me back and I let her. I turn away from Max, leaving him to get himself together on his own and walk out of the church with my sister. She puts her head on my chest and holds me as I try to keep it together.
Chapter Two
One Month Later
Slamming my hand in the direction of my nightstand, I blindly grab my phone to shut my alarm off. I shouldn’t have had that last drink before I crashed. I knew I had to be back to work today, but I haven’t been able to go to sleep without a drink all month.
It’s a struggle to sit up, my head spinning and stomach rolling. Shit. I don’t know how I’m going to make it today. It will be a test for sure.
I stand up and almost lose my balance. Definitely shouldn’t have had that last drink. Candice cut me off when we were out at the bar I dragged her to, but I came home and finished my bottle of Jack. The last glass was what did it. I took that one straight. No Coke in sight. It tasted good going down, since my throat was numb by then. No burn as I tossed it back. Now, not being able to stand without swaying, I promise myself not to drink that much again. I’ll continue to self-medicate with alcohol, just not so much.
Staggering into the bathroom, I turn the light on and squint. The brightness almost makes me want to shut it back off, but I force myself to get used to it, blinking back the tears that have gathered in the corners of my eyes. I turn on the water at the sink and cup some in my hands, splashing my face. When I’ve rubbed the sleep from my eyes, I glance up at my reflection. I look fucking horrible. The only thing I’ve done is keep my hair cut and shape up intact. I usually cut off my beard, only leaving a mustache, but over the past month, I’ve let it grow. And it's out of control. It’s grown in evenly, but it needs a trim. I think about cutting it all off, but I think I like the look. I decide to leave the beard and mustache and just trim it down.
