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“Fine.” She wiped at her eyes, smearing her mascara over and around her eyes. “I just need to freshen up. Is there a bathroom back here?”
“If you need help—” Caroline began again.
Helena forced a smile. “I’m sorry you heard our little fight.”
“That was an attack.”
Helena’s mascara-rimmed eyes widened. “No,” she said firmly. “I forgot to tell him that I’d planned a quick trip up here. I just forgot . . .”
It was a lie. She’d heard the way the man on the phone barked the word ‘permission.’ He controlled her. Whether he hurt her physically or just used his words, it all amounted to the same thing—abuse.
“You don’t have to go back,” Caroline said.
“Yes, I do,” she said.
And maybe Helena was right. Maybe she did need to return to Ashford. Maybe leaving him wouldn’t solve anything. After all, running away had delivered Caroline to world of new problems.
“I can’t leave,” Helena continued, but this time her voice broke over the words. “He’d come after me. He’d stop sending money to my mom. And . . . he doesn’t hurt me.”
“Helena?” Ryan’s voice called from the front. “There’s a limo waiting outside for you.”
“Be right there,” Helena called back, her tone suddenly light and upbeat.
She should have stuck with acting, Caroline thought.
But rewriting the past was impossible. And in some cases, so was moving on.
Helena’s gaze darted around the room. “The bathroom?”
“Over there.” Caroline pointed to a door on the far side on the room near the desk. “Take your time,” she added. “I’ll tell them you’ll be out soon.”
“Thank you,” Helena whispered, the falsely positive note gone from her voice.
Caroline shook her head. “You don’t need to thank me. I don’t think I’m helping you.”
But Helena had already locked herself in the staff bathroom.
“WHAT THE HELL happened to her?” Noah demanded when Ryan marched through the employee entrance to the bar.
“A designer clothes explosion,” Lily murmured.
“I haven’t seen Helena since before I left for basic training,” Noah continued. “But I swear, if I saw her walking down the street, I wouldn’t have recognized her.”
Caroline closed the dishwasher and set it to run. Then she turned and headed for the group surrounding the air force officer. Noah, Dominic, and Lily had left Josie in charge of the now open bar to have a ‘serious conversation’ with Ryan after he returned from walking Helena out to meet her limo driver.
“She sure as shit isn’t the same Helena we knew in high school,” Dominic said. “I know people change. Hell, we all have. But not like that.”
“She died her hair blond,” Lily added. “Her beautiful, long brown hair. And I couldn’t even see a single freckle beneath all that makeup.”
Because her husband told her to, Caroline thought.
The group of old friends stood near the door leading to the employee parking area. A wall lined with beer cases and kegs, some filled and others empty, occupied the space beside the group. And the desk, covered in stacks of paper, lined the far wall by the door leading to the employee bathroom Helena had used to pull herself back together.
But no one was looking at the mess—or even sparing her a glance. They were all focused on Ryan, waiting for his answer.
Ryan shook his head. “I don’t know. But I’m planning to go to Palo fucking Alto and figure out what the hell is going on. I should have gone years ago when she stopped visiting her mom. Or letting anyone go down there to see her. I called her mother after she rushed out of here and jumped in that damn limo. Helena’s mom hasn’t been down to see her in four years. It’s never a ‘good time’ for her husband.”
“Shit,” Noah said, shaking his head.
