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19
Theo
This Hurts Worse
For hours after my meeting with the Bishops, I push my hands into my hair and tug as I pace my hotel room. I need to calm down. I need to tear these fingers of anxiety from my stomach, and rid my body of something I never realized would clutch on after meeting them.
“I will not go to that wedding.” I shake my head, and pass Libby for the millionth time while she sits on the end of my bed. “Absolutely not. No chance in hell am I going to that shit.”
“Okay.”
“I will not go, Elizabeth! I will not be their friend.”
Libby’s lips creep up into a small grin. “I said okay.”
“I said no! Fuck.” I stop on the spot for a mere second, then I rush into the walk-in closet and yank my suitcase from the storage section on the top shelf. “It’s time for me to leave.” I tear my clothes from the drawers. Jeans. Shirts. Laptops.Why do I have so many laptops? I look up as I toss things into the bag and a shadow fills the doorway. “I’m leaving.”
“You’re leaving?” Lib’s voice gives a tiny crack that barely registers in my busy brain. She was smiling. But now she’s not… “You’re going back home?”
“Yep. I came here for a reason, and that reason was completely nullified today. So now I go home.”
“But what about…” She leans against the doorjamb and draws a deep breath. “That’s it? There’s nothing else keeping you here?”
I shake my head and dump my sweaters on top of the pile. I packed with precision when I left my apartment, but now I toss things in without a single care for where they go. “Nope. I have a company to run. My email inbox is overflowing. My assistant can’t do her job without me there. She can do it for a little while, but it’s been two weeks, Lib. It’s time for me to go home. A wedding between people I don’t know isn’t reason enough to stay here.”
“Right.” Libby wears the jeans and shirt she changed into this morning. The very same jeans I took down and unfolded a week ago. They’re like a second skin and frame her perfect body, and right now, one leg folds over the other in my peripherals as I close the lid on my case and try to zip it up. “I guess it’s done then, huh? You came here for the Bishops. You met them, you reached a kind of agreement, and now you’re done.”
“Right.” I tear the zipper around my case until it’s closed, then I stand and blow through the door and toss it to the bed where she was sitting only a moment ago. “I don’t wanna stay here and play make believe with these guys. Sophia wants to force something that’s not real. She wants a new, powerful ally in Griffin, but she calls it something else. She calls it–”
“Brotherhood?” Lib presses.
“It’s a lie. The guys have it right; blood doesn’t make us family, and she won’t find her ally in me.”
I cross the room and stop at the desk I’ve been using to keep up with my work while away. I tear charger cables from the power sockets in the wall. I fold a Griffin Industries wireless keyboard that weighs a mere fifty grams. It’s the most powerful and intuitive keyboard on the market, so sensitive that it almost reads your thoughts and types them for you. Retailing at only four-hundred and ninety-nine dollars, they come with a lifetime replacement warranty.
Yes, Griffin Industries expects you to pay up to prove your loyalty, but in return, we guarantee a product that will never stop working.
I toss the expensive contraption into my laptop bag, and send the mouse right behind. Libby slowly wanders into the room behind me. Her silence should worry me, but my mind refuses to focus on anything other than a Bishop wedding and women who think bridges can be built so quickly.
“I’m going to have Olly drive me to the airport.”
“No time to waste, huh?”
Libby’s voice trembles, and when I turn, I find her fussing with a shirt I’ve caught in the zipper in my haste. She slowly peels the zip back with care not to ruin my shirt, then she tucks it in and refastens the closure.
“No time to waste. I have meetings to attend on Monday, so…” I shrug and tear my laptop bag closed, then I take my cell out of my pocket and dial. “It’s time to head out,” I say as soon as Olly answers. “Pack up and get ready to leave in an hour.”
“An hour,” he asks, only for the same question to echo from Lib’s mouth.
“An hour?”
“Yeah.” A flash of red catches my eyes. My sweater. The dinosaurs that mean so much to both people in this room. I move across the luxuriously carpeted floor with Olly’s voice pulsing in my ear. He speaks, but he goes ignored as I pick the old material up and hold it in my hand. The last time I owned this sweater, my hand was much smaller. The red was redder, the dinosaurs brighter. The zipper was functional, and the hem wasn’t frayed. This was my most beloved possession besides my pencils.
And now it’s nothing more than worn fabric.
Libby’s breath catches when I bring the sweater up to my face. I draw in a long breath as though to bring back the boy I once was. To trade Theo for Gunner. If my mom and I never went to that club that day, would she still be alive? Would I trade Griffin Industries to be that child again?
I would probably always be broke.
