Barely even friends, p.3
Barely Even Friends, page 3
“Thank you, Bl8z3.” Oliver’s voice dropped another octave, not sounding an ounce grateful. Bl8z3 was lucky it did not have a corporeal form at that moment. Unfortunately, I did.
“Well, if you are the owner, we will need your permission.” Normally I did not placate people, but there was something burning in my chest with the knowledge he was living here. I had unknowingly invaded his retreat, leaving me conflicted.
“Adrian Killington is the owner of the estate. Oliver Killington will inherit at his demise and is the only Killington on the property.”
We were unable to meet each other’s gazes at Bl8z3’s blunt recitation of the facts. Questions demanded to burst out of me. Why was he staying here in this house, which had seen better days at least a decade ago? And why did my presence seem to offend him so much? You know, light conversational topics. Thins he surely wanted to share with a stranger.
We needed this job but Oliver was the only Killington here. He could make my job miserable. Hold this up. Handling this project alone meant handling him. Lucky me.
I forced myself to speak gently; explaining the parameters of the project was something Dad typically handled. “Houses this old need to be maintained. I’m still walking through and need to consider the blueprints. I plan to ask the staff what will make it more functional for them, and I’d appreciate your input as well. This is your space.” I tried to put myself in his shoes as his gaze darted around, snagging on the door behind me, his jaw clenching. I had to assume his aggression was due to the love he had for the property, which created blind spots to what it truly needed.
This time, he sized me up. I attempted what I hoped was a neutral expression, resisting the urge to bounce on the balls of my feet. So much rested on this moment, and I needed to somehow exude confidence and an ability to do this job. Any expressions of sympathy would not benefit me.
“Fine.” He stepped back, leaving me colder. “Work on the house. But stay out of the west wing. It’s off limits.”
I mean, this place was humongous. Were we really going to refer to it as having actual wings? It was a bit much, considering there were areas with crumbled walls, vines intertwining with wires. If it weren’t for the age of the estate, the family backing this, the historic value, and the challenge, the discussion would center on tearing it down. It must be nice to have so much money, to have no guilt ordering people to do as you please.
“The west wing?” I wanted to humor him, but there was no way to remodel the rest of the house and ignore an entire section. Not in good conscience, and not in practicality.
He stepped forward again, hand reaching out, grasping the handle of the door I’d just picked open, slamming it shut hard enough that it shook my bones.
“This area is off limits.” He clipped each word, his warning clear. “Stay out.”
I gaped. “You’re really going to be all ‘You shall not pass’?” Without a staff in hand, I stomped my foot to emphasize my point. Why wasn’t he a reasonable recluse?
“Excuse me?” Oliver’s eyebrows twitched. His gaze bore into mine. The darkness in the hallway made the whites of his eyes brighter, the rest of him a blur of shadows.
“You shall not pass.” Not an ounce of guilt rose when I stomped my foot again and it landed squarely on his.
“What is …?”
Honestly, he struggled with suspenders, and now a basic movie reference? “Lord of the Rings, Gandalf?”
There wasn’t a spec of recognition on his face.
“Elevenses, ‘my precious’—anything?” I’d understand not having seen the director’s cut, but never watching any of the movies? They’re on TV all the time. Modern classics at their finest.
“Has anyone told you you’re strange?” His tone implied he thought it was more than a bit.
“Oddly enough, you are not the first.” Nor would he be the last. But I liked who I was, suspenders, dorky movie references, and all.
“Stay. Out. Of. The. West. Wing.” His voice reverberated through my chest, a growl punctuating each word. From the blueprints I knew that the door led to another section of rooms, but whoever had been supplying Dad with information hadn’t given anything on this area before we were unceremoniously fired.
I’d work with this, for now. “Fine.” My voice was a squeak compared to the low rumble of his. Maybe I should practice deepening my voice for intimidation or authority.
It wasn’t lying. For the time being, I wouldn’t go inside the west wing. Eventually I would have to break our agreement. But that was a future Bellamy problem. Right now, I intended to keep my word—let him have his secrets. Whatever he was trying to hide in this mysterious west wing wasn’t any of my concern.
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his pants, but he didn’t step away. “So where are you planning on staying?”
I couldn’t tell if he was intentionally being difficult or hadn’t seen my luggage yet. “Here.”
“Excuse me?” The growl was back, but all it made me want to do was roll my eyes.
I refused to allow his height, shoulders, and thick thighs to intimidate me. “You want me to repeat myself? I’m living here during the entirety of the project.” I spoke each word slowly, ensuring they landed.
My particular brand of snark was failing. His jaw didn’t twitch. Though his reaction may have been hidden beneath his wild beard.
“Live here? With me?” Oliver’s tone was flat, his eyes narrowing on me, expectant. “Don’t you know what they say about me?”
I shook my head. I hadn’t even known he existed until yesterday.
He blew out a breath, taking a step away from me, an ominous chill filling the air. “That I killed my family.”
CHAPTER THREE
A shudder trembled down my spine, tempting me to sprint down the hallway—until I truly considered him. The vacant look in his eyes as he rubbed at his chest screamed something more akin to broken soul, but I wasn’t exactly an expert on emotions. If you needed a consultation on how to restore wallpaper, I was your girl, but if you wanted to have a deep meaningful conversation about your feelings? I would never be your first call.
I recognized the urge to push the world away. Not let anyone new in. You’re never in one place long enough. You don’t know how to set down roots. You’re not a commitment kind of girl. The world can hurt you in a million distinct personal ways, and it had hurt Oliver in one of the worst possible.
I leaned against the door as he stared back, stone-faced, the uneven wood poking my spine as I ignored the impulse to reach out, comfort him.
Guilt and pain were coming off him in waves, but none of it screamed killer to me. He felt responsible for whatever had happened, but I had zero belief he had anything to do with it. Or my sense of self-preservation was off.
Instead, I shrugged, refusing to give him what he wanted.
“You’re going to stay in this house with a murderer?” Oliver took a step forward, shaking his head.
“You said it’s what people say about you, not that it’s true.” We were playing semantics now, but I refused to be scared off. This didn’t change how badly my family needed this project; I would not meekly walk out the door with my tail between my legs. But the eerie hallway, lack of light, the whole crumbly, potentially haunted estate was really working for him.
He didn’t appreciate my humor, his shoulders bunching. “Says something about you.”
I have a dream and refuse to let you bulldoze over it?
“Well, I don’t think murderers warn other people that they’re, you know, a murderer. They just kill them.” My extensive listening to true crime podcasts had prepared me well. “The murderer doesn’t tell you his plan unless it’s a Netflix show. Or he’s dumb.” Oliver didn’t appear stupid to me. Controlling, definitely, but there was intelligence behind his gray eyes.
He grunted, leaning against the opposite wall. “Know a lot of murderers?”
“I’ve worked on quite a few different houses. I’m sure some of those were sites of a murder. Probably haunted too.” Sebastian, my best friend, would say, statistically, there was always a chance.
But with him standing here, his broken heart beating from his eyes, I couldn’t believe him. It wasn’t my place to change his mind about himself. I wasn’t here to save him, but his home. “All I care about is the estate.”
It was tempting to offer him human solace. The picture of why he was here in this crumbling place was a little less fuzzy, leaving a funny feeling in my stomach. What he had gone through, though, I wasn’t naive enough to believe the answers were as black and white as he was presenting them.
But I had a job to do and zero interest in further entanglements with whatever this was. “Listen, I’ll stay out of your way.”
“Good.” His eyes narrowed as he shoved his hands into the pockets of his joggers. With that warm welcome, he turned and disappeared into the estate.
“With all the construction, it’s probably best you visit your family’s other properties anyway,” I called out, but he didn’t even acknowledge me.
My stomach sank, his final expression haunting me. I was still tempted to enter the west wing, but I had plenty to consider without tackling that portion of the mansion yet. And even more questions that I needed answered.
* * *
Rather than continuing to explore, I almost sprinted back to the room I had been assigned.
Sebastian picked up after the first ring. We had been best friends since freshman year, ending up on the same floor and hating our roommates. The moment we could, we moved off campus, and the rest was history. We couldn’t be more different. He was tall, worked out constantly, enjoyed eating eggs raw for the protein, and was madly, undeniably in love with his boyfriend, Finn.
“I’m at the site—” I halted, unsure how to explain my experience so far.
“Good. I was worried about you after the weather last night. Don’t worry, we already called your dad to check on him.”
Of course he had. My shoulders lowered incrementally. “Thanks, I appreciate it. How is he?”
Sebastian chuckled darkly. “Rushing me off the phone to get ready for someone named Betty to come over. He asked me if I had access to any Viagra.”
I shoved my face into my pillow and groaned. Some things a daughter did not need to know. “Betty is his nurse.”
“Ah.” Sebastian coughed, doing a poor job covering up his laugh.
“I knew Maurice had it in him,” Finn called out.
Finn was short, fat, and perpetually happy. And nothing made him happier than sexually dominating Sebastian. I tuned out the details, but they were the happiest, most functional couple I knew, and never complained about my third-wheeling ass following them around.
“You think he could get her to write me a script for—”
I cleared my throat to stop Sebastian from completing his thought.
“Not the time, not the time, understood. But the house—how is it? This is the big one, right?”
“That’s actually what I was calling you about.” I released a shaky breath. “The mansion has a resident, and I was hoping you could tell me more about him. Oliver Killington?”
There was some mumbling in the background. But no one yelled, “Get out, he’s a murderer!” so probably a good sign.
“Oh, you may be right there, dumplin’,” Finn cooed.
“Don’t ruin my persona in front of Bells,” Sebastian warned, without any bite.
“She knows all about how I like to ruin you, sweet cheeks.”
“If you guys need some alone time, I can hang up.” I was all for sexual freedom, but that didn’t mean I wanted to imagine the people I loved doing whatever with their sweet cheeks.
“No, we’re fine.” Sebastian sounded pained, reminding me why phone calls and not video chats were safest with these two. “Finn was advising me of something.”
I purposefully held off mentioning the whole “I killed my family” thing. Sebastian was overprotective, and he’d be in his car, on his way here, before I’d even get the sentence out.
“We were thinking maybe he’s the missing Killington grandchild?” he offered.
That made me sit up on the bed. “He’s not missing—he’s right here.” What exactly had I wandered into here, some sort of movie of the week?
“Oh, I forgot you don’t watch the news.” Judgment deepened his tone.
“I avoid it at all costs, yes.” There was nothing wrong with steering clear of the constant depression and doomsday on cable news. It was possible to be informed without watching whatever they tried to sensationalize next.
“Well, my ignorant friend, about a decade ago, it was all over the news. The heir to the Killington Empire was in an accident with his wife and eldest child. The parents died, the son was injured too—if I recall correctly, he had a massive football scholarship, a lot of bets on who would draft him. They called him … Do you remember, Finn?”
“Beast, I think.” The higher pitch of Finn’s voice made me miss them even more. He could deliver the worst news and you would smile by the end, thanking him. “He was an animal on the field. Unstoppable.”
“Yes, that was it. Beast,” Sebastian murmured. “But the accident ended his football career. After he left the hospital, everyone thought he would take over his father’s place in the company, but he was never heard from or seen again. There were a lot of rumors.”
I placed them on speaker so I could do some sleuthing of my own. “What rumors?” This information was not at all ominous.
“Well, some people believed Oliver planned the whole thing so he would inherit the company.” The skepticism was obvious in Sebastian’s voice.
I snorted at the ridiculousness of that. “Probably not smart for him to be in the car, then.” It seemed especially cruel for people to say he planned to kill his own parents.
“Exactly. The other rumor was about some sort of curse. His family, his football career, the dip in the company stock after that happened—it took a while to rebound. You know how people are when tragedy happens, and no one steps forward to overshare about their experiences. They fill in their own details and make it as gratuitous as possible. Thus …”
“A curse,” I finished.
“He’s technically the heir now, with his dad having died, but his grandfather won’t confirm who is next in the line of succession. Articles are written about it every couple of years. How unwise it is, shaking stockholder confidence—that sort of thing. Guesses on who will take over. His sisters both work for the company, but no one believes it’ll be them. One of the last few family conglomerates out there—it’s a market event naming the successor.”
My head hurt with all this information, struggling to figure out what this meant for the restoration. “You know way too much about this.”
“Actually, this makes sense. There have been rumors they’ve been seeking to diversify with the latest stock drop, looking to get into newer technology. I was reading this article yesterday about—”
“Sebastian!”
“Sorry, but information is power.” Sebastian was a market analyst, practically a walking stock ticker. Despite our many, many differences, our friendship fit, like him and Finn.
“Back to the issue at hand. You think the heir to a multibillion-dollar conglomerate is living in a crumbling estate like some sort of gothic horror show?” It was impossible to hide my disbelief, even as my internet search confirmed Sebastian’s story. Oliver was who he said he was, and more.
“Or he could be the prince in the tower, waiting for someone to save him,” Finn said. I could picture him clutching his fists to his chest and fluttering his eyelashes. The day that I finally fell in love was something he had been dreaming about, believing it was only a matter of time, eager for all the double dates we would go on.
“Well, the prince told me to get the fuck out, so I don’t think he’s searching for a savior.”
“He has to want to get saved first.” Finn huffed as if it was obvious, and I was being purposefully difficult. While he was a hopeless romantic down to his bones, I didn’t have the same optimism for my love life.
“Okay, let’s step away from fairy-tale land and return to reality, please. The one where I am trapped in a crumbling home and”—I took the phone off speaker, leaning it on my shoulder, not that it would prevent me from being overheard—“there’s some sort of advanced AI system that controls the house.”
I was met with silence.
“You realize,” Sebastian whispered back, “that makes no sense. You said the place is falling apart. Who puts advanced technology in a shack like that?”
“I know,” I hissed, glancing around the still-darkened room. “None of this makes sense. Maybe I was kidnapped.”
“Oh my gosh,” Finn screamed. “Have the aliens taken you? What’s the code word?”
“The code word?” Sebastian and I asked at the same time.
“Yes,” huffed Finn, “to prove that it’s you and not the alien that has invaded your body.”
“Wouldn’t we need to have established a code word for this to be effective?” I scrubbed my hair, getting my fingers stuck in the tangle of the thick strands.
“Ms. Price?” Bl8z3’s sudden question caused every cell in my body to jump. “Breakfast is being served in the kitchen this morning.
“Um, thanks?” Paranoia gripped me. Had it overheard the conversation? “Guys, I have to go.”
It took a few minutes longer for me to assure them I would keep them updated and, if I learned any market information, that I would not commit it to writing.
I dramatically collapsed onto the bed, relishing the brief silence. A crumbling house with an AI system. A grumpy, trust-funder with control issues. A multimillion-dollar estate allowed to go into ruin.
I took a single fortifying breath.
Then I got to work.
* * *
My newfound information did not deter me from the mission ahead. I needed to finish walking through the mansion, sketch out my plans, and ultimately get them approved. Oliver’s presence changed nothing.
