Forced induction, p.10
It Would Have Been You, page 10
JUST IN CASE
The chatter from the living room starts up again behind us, but I can’t make out any of the words over the sound of my own thundering heartbeat.
Cameron leads me back to the front of the house, then down the left wing, where I originally heard the garage door opening earlier. He stops at a room with double doors, pushes both open, and holds out his arm for me to go in first.
I inhale deeply at Cameron’s scent, savoring its potency inside the confined space, then scan the room. In one corner sits an imposing wooden desk with certificates and degrees framed behind it. A few books and shiny plaques cover the bookshelves on either side of his desk, and stacks of those deposition transcripts he mentioned earlier lay strewn haphazardly across the top.
The room is tidy yet lived in, just like the rest of the house, but my jaw nearly falls to the floor as I lay my eyes on its best feature yet: rows of backlit custom shelving displaying hundreds of vinyl records. My instincts override my manners, and I make a beeline for the vintage gramophone, humming my approval for Aretha Franklin’s Amazing Grace album that sits on the platter.
“A very frantic man named Scott is on the phone for you,” Cameron says, breaking my trance. “I told him that you made it here safely, but he insists on speaking to you directly.”
“Oh.” I retract my outstretched hand that was just millimeters away from touching the gramophone’s shiny brass horn. I think back to the car ride from the airport as I take the phone from his outstretched hand. I know for a fact that I told the group chat when I was safe in the car, but I must have forgotten to check in when I arrived.
“Hi, Scott. I’m so sorry—”
“Drew? Oh, thank God,” Scott interrupts, hysterical. “I don’t know whether I am more relieved or furious to hear your voice right now.”
I hold the phone away from my ear to keep from suffering hearing damage as he launches into a lecture at the top of his lungs about how they all thought I was kidnapped, or hurt, or any number of bad things. I try to interject a few times but give up when he does not stop for air for a solid two minutes.
I sneak a sideways glance at Cameron to give a silent apology, and my breath hitches at the sight of the tension that radiates off him. His eyes are ablaze as they meet mine, as if he is just waiting for me to say the word so that he can jump in and save me from this conversation.
I turn away from him to face the shelves again. Cameron protecting me from a real threat is a delicious thought but saving me from my annoying brother is completely unnecessary. I force my way into Scott’s one-sided conversation to try and wrap it up.
“I’m fine. I’m so sorry that I didn’t call when I got here, but I’m alive and well, I promise.”
“I’m happy to hear it, Drew. But you, of all people, should know that you can’t just go off grid like that. You can’t even imagine the scenarios that we considered when the driver said that you never showed.”
“What are you talking about?” I say, risking a glance back over my shoulder. “Cameron picked me up from the airport just like Gabe asked him to.”
Cameron pushes off his desk at the mention of his name but pauses his forward motion when I hold my hand up for him to stop.
“Gabe hired a local driving service to pick you up, and they called us back a half hour ago to say that you never showed, and we haven’t been able to get a hold of you since. We were about to call the cops and file a missing person’s report, but Monika went all true-crime and told Gabe to use his real estate background to find the phone number attached to the sale of Ravenwood. I’m not sure if what he did is even legal, but since we were able to get a hold of the homeowner to demand to speak with you, I decided not to ask questions.”
I keep my eyes on Cameron as I respond to Scott, posing my response to both of them. “Wasn’t Delaney’s phone number listed in the paperwork? I’ve been with her almost the entire time since I arrived. Why didn’t you just call her?”
“She isn’t answering her phone!” Scott roars, and I wince at the decibel he managed to reach.
Cameron’s shoulders rise and fall with a frustrated breath, but he stays where I stopped him just moments ago. I turn away again so that I can focus on de-escalating Scott and stop being distracted by how attractive I find Protective Cameron.
“We called Delaney’s phone a thousand times, so I almost started to worry about her too,” Scott says, which is strange since she claims she left us to work on the group chat. Maybe she was just ignoring his calls so that she didn’t mess up on entering one of our numbers.
Scott is positively fuming, but I can’t help but laugh at the entire situation.
“What part of this is amusing to you?” he demands.
“Pretty much all of it,” I admit, failing to stifle more laughter.
“Drew, it’s not funny. You have no idea—” Scott starts, but this time, I interrupt.
“For someone who insists that I am not bad luck, you sure jumped to the worst-case scenario rather quickly.”
The other end of the line is silent for a few seconds, and when Scott speaks again, his voice is cautious. “You aren’t bad luck, Drew. I was just worried about you, like any big brother would be about their little sister going on a solo trip.”
“I’m twenty-eight, not eighteen, and you are the one who set it up,” I say. But after I am met with even more silence, I decide to take mercy on him. “It’s going good so far, by the way. I just ate the best meal of my entire life.”
“Really?” he asks, his voice brightening.
“Really. And I drank this fancy coffee called a chocolate-covered strawberry latte on the way over too. It was delicious.”
“I am guessing the curse is obeying, then? Nothing crazy happening so far?”
“Other than this conversation?” I tease, but quickly add, “The curse seems to be behaving, mostly. Nothing I can’t handle.” I discreetly knock on one of the wooden cubbies of the record shelves, though, just to be safe.
“How about the house and the other guests?”
“House is incredible,” I say, but lower my voice to whisper the next part. “I’m not too sure about the other women yet, though.”
“Eh, it’s only a few days. Try and make the most of it.”
“I will. Any baby news? Is the mother in labor yet?”
“Not yet. But keep your phone on you from now on, just in case.”
“I will, I promise. I need to go, though. We have a reservation for wine tasting, and I need to get changed out of my travel clothes.”
“Okay. FaceTime us later, please.”
“I will as soon as I can. Love you.” I hit the red end button and turn back to face Cameron. I can’t help but blush at the concern that etches every part of his face.
“Sorry about that. I forgot to check in when I arrived, and my brother can be a little extreme at times.”
“Your brother,” he echoes, setting his phone down on the desk behind him with a thud, his eyes never leaving mine.
“Yes. There must have been a mix-up, I thought that my family hired you to get me from the airport, but I guess they hired someone else and . . .” My words trail off under the weight of his full, undivided attention.
The charged moment stretches on between us as the rational half of my brain loses its edge to the half that is driven by the most basic of human instincts.
In the silence, I admire how his stubble perfectly accentuates his square jaw and imagine what it would be like to feel it against my skin. His eyes roam my face in return, but the awareness of his view compared to mine helps to sober the moment enough for me to clear my throat and finish my original thought.
“Why did you pick me up, anyway? And Val? I don’t remember airport pickups being in the itinerary.”
He considers my question for a moment, and when he speaks, his tight shoulders lower a bit. “Remember how I told you that my parents died six months ago, when we were talking in the car?”
I freeze at the unexpected nature of his answer but manage a solemn nod.
“They were driving too fast on a slick road less than a mile from here. When the storm rolled in, I asked Delaney for everyone’s phone number and arrival times to personally offer a ride, because I wanted to make sure everyone got here safely.”
The sorrow in his voice is painfully familiar. The loss of both of my parents makes facing each day feel nearly impossible, even after all this time. The thought of losing them both at the same time and so recently . . .
“What are you thinking?” he asks and dips his head to maintain our eye contact when I try to look away.
“Nothing,” I say, not wanting to use the I understand card, because I always hated it when others used it with me.
“Tell me. Please?”
I swallow at his eagerness to hear what I, a complete stranger, am thinking, and feel terrible that I am not in a place right now to join the conversation that he so clearly wants to start.
Besides, our grief is not the same, because there’s no way this man is personally responsible for his parents’ deaths like I am for mine. I came here to try and put everything that holds me back from being in my future nephew’s life behind me, so rehashing it is the last thing I should do right now. So, I lie.
“It’s stupid, but I was thinking about Leah, one of the guests, and how she was complaining earlier that she didn’t get to ride with you from the airport.”
The way his face falls shoots a pang of guilt straight to my heart. Cursed Drew would jump in to try and fix his hurt feelings and be selfless enough to talk about our parents even though it’s not what’s best for her right now, but Epic Drew keeps a tight hold on things and simply suggests that I wait it out.
“Leah drove herself down from Jersey, so I didn’t reach out to offer,” Cameron says.
I nod at his explanation, and then the room falls silent again. A glance at the clock shows that I have less than thirty minutes to get ready for the wine tasting, and that I need to leave right now if there is any chance of me getting in a shower, but I find myself pointing a thumb over my shoulder towards the records instead. “Do you mind if I take a look?”
“Be my guest.” He takes a few tentative steps in my direction, but leaves a comfortable distance between us while I flip through a few displays.
It’s probably rude to shut down his attempt at making a genuine connection and then ask to look at his records, but I doubt I’ll get the chance again, so I selfishly dive in. It’ll only be a minute.
I recognize most of the albums, although the covers to his are in much better shape than the ones I have that are now collecting dust in boxes somewhere. When I was younger, my dad used to take Scott and me to shop at thrift stores for well-loved vinyl, which he always argued sounded better than the brand-new ones.
I loved our record hunts because we would celebrate a good find with a tub of ice cream and eat it straight out of the carton on the floor of our tiny apartment while the new record played. It was our family ritual for years, until the time I decided to surprise my dad for his fiftieth birthday with a rare record from a collector that was unopened, still in the plastic.
I’ll never forget how nervous he looked after he opened it, and we sat down with the tub of his favorite ice cream to listen. His nervousness made sense, though, when the needle met the unblemished record and Scott and I learned, contrary to what Dad always told us, that new records sounded exactly the same as our used ones, if not better. Clearly, he told us that white lie because we couldn’t afford the luxury of new vinyl on a single income living in Los Angeles, and the truth of it only made me love him more for managing to bring so much magic into our lives on a tight budget. Treasure hunting was never quite the same after that, and I hate that I ruined such a great tradition, even though it was completely unintentional.
Such is life, and such is my curse.
Just as I accept the resurgence of the memory as a fair punishment for being too selfish to talk to Cameron about his grief, I am pulled to a cubby that houses holiday albums. A bit of hope flickers inside of me as I flip through them to see if Cameron has a copy of my dad’s favorite one that we listened to every Christmas until the grooves practically wore out. I lost it somewhere while we were moving his stuff out of the old apartment after he died, and even though it’s mid-March, the idea of listening to it one more time is too tempting to pass up.
“Are you looking for a specific album?”
“Yes,” I say as I thumb through the last of the cardboard sleeves, and my heart sinks when I pass the last one. “But it doesn’t look like you have it.”
He frowns. “Which one? My mom was obsessed with collecting Christmas albums—”
The shrill beeps of a smoke detector in the distance interrupt his words and pull both our attentions towards the door. Cameron returns to his desk to grab his phone just as it speaks in a loud, robotic voice: Smoke detected in the kitchen.
Chapter eighteen
CALM DESPITE THE CHAOS
“Stay here,” Cameron says, and slips out his office doors to head down the hall.
I do as I am told for a total of ten seconds, until the sound of shouting joins the chorus of shrill beeps, and I can’t help but go after him. The smoke hangs in the air like a haze, and the acrid smell of burnt sugar grows stronger with every step that I take.
I turn the corner into the kitchen and find myself right in the middle of Delaney and Judith’s argument that has escalated to a screaming match to overcome the high-pitched alarm.
“Not only was this rude and unjustified, but it was incredibly dangerous—”
“I told you that the cookies were done—”
“And I assumed that meant you had taken them out of the oven! Never in a million years did I think—”
“I’m a guest here, Delaney. Not your personal assistant. And I—”
“I asked you to watch the cookies for one second while I opened the door—”
“While you catered to the more affluent women—”
“That’s not what happened! Not even close—”
They continue to go back and forth while Cameron removes the charcoaled cookies from the oven and drops the smoking pan on the stovetop. He waves the towel in front of the smoke detector to try and get it to turn off, and I run to open the glass accordion doors to help his efforts. Val and Leah appear in the kitchen a moment later.
“What is going on?” Leah yells, covering her ears. Val takes in the scene with wide eyes and immediately does a U-turn, leaving the room as quickly as possible.
Delaney and Judith shout over each other to retell their version of events, but both pause when the alarm finally stops.
Leah takes her chance to add her two cents. “Judith, that was completely uncalled for. Delaney asking you to watch the cookies for a second does not mean that she thinks less of you.”
“Exactly! Thank you, Leah,” Delaney agrees, her hands accentuating the point. “I’ve hosted hundreds of retreats, and I’ve never—”
“Dealt with a woman who paid her own way? I can tell. Drew and I are the only working women here, and you singled us out from the get-go by making us work in the kitchen.”
I pale as everyone’s attention turns to me. I would hardly consider Delaney telling me where the dishwasher was when I was already putting my plate into the sink as work. And I didn’t use my own hard-earned money to come here either because Scott, Gabe, and Monika footed the bill. Saying either of those things would only add fuel to Judith’s irrational fire, though, so I keep my mouth firmly shut.
“Wait a minute,” Leah jumps back in, pushing her long curls behind her shoulders. “We are all hardworking women here. I am a teacher, and Val is an entrepreneur—”
Judith rolls her eyes so hard that her head moves along with the motion. “I’d hardly consider Val’s job hard work, and judging by the size of that diamond on your finger, you’ll quit teaching the second your millionaire husband’s first batch of kids turn eighteen, and he finally lets you pop out a few of your own.”
“How dare you—” Leah shouts, but Cameron steps forward and puts his arms out like a referee at a boxing match.
“Okay, that’s enough. I’m sorry, Delaney. I know you asked me to stay in my lane, but this has officially gone too far.”
“I’ve got this. Back off,” Delaney warns Cameron through gritted teeth.
He remains calm despite the chaos and addresses Delaney directly. “I’d like to walk Judith to my office so that everyone can have some space, and so that we can adjust her travel plans for her to leave first thing in the morning, unless you have an objection to that?”
Judith interjects before Delaney can answer. “I’m local, so there isn’t any travel to adjust, but I’ll happily go with you so that we can discuss a full refund.”
“Of course,” Cameron says, calmly.
Delaney’s eyes continue to burn red with rage, but it’s hard to tell if she is madder at Judith’s antics or Cameron’s interference. It makes me feel strangely protective of him, so I take a few steps forward to insert myself into the conversation.
“How about we let Cameron handle Judith so that we can get on with our night? I am still looking forward to the wine tasting, but I need to run upstairs to get ready.”
“Me too,” Leah says, following my lead. “I only have mascara on one eye because I came running when I heard the fire alarm.”
Delaney looks back and forth between Leah and me. I hold my breath as I prepare for her to start yelling at one of us next, or to storm out of the room.
“You really do only have one eye done,” she finally says, visibly deflating.
“I know.” Leah smiles. “Let’s all go get ready and pretend this never happened.”
“I’m still standing right here,” Judith snaps, but the tension has already dissipated.
“Fine,” Delaney concedes, ignoring Judith.
Leah leads the way out of the kitchen, and Delaney follows in step behind her. As I bring up the rear, I look to Cameron to mouth a silent thank you, just as he does the same thing to me. We both grin at our accidental jinx, and my stomach does a full somersault. I speed up to get out from under his gaze and remind myself for the tenth time that getting close to Cameron is a terrible idea, just as the doorbell rings.
