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“W-Why?” she spluttered.
Sabrina gave her an impatient look. “Shawna, you know I can’t discuss details with you. The nature of their employment or lack thereof is private.” Unfortunately. She’d like nothing more than to reveal the lying scum they truly were, but it would also come with a confession of her own that she would rather put firmly behind her and move on from.
Swallowing, Shawna tipped her head in a brief but sharp nod. “Yes, ma’am.” She pointed the pen at the paper. “I’ll get right on this.”
Gripping the edges of the desk, Sabrina stared at the empty space Shawna left behind and felt her shoulders slump. She’d managed to get through the first hurdle. She could do this, she told herself. She could get through this day, one step at a time.
She didn’t even get to the next step because, before she knew it, Oliver was standing in her doorway looking every bit like a kicked puppy.
She almost folded like a deck of cards then and there. Why was it that Oliver was the one who pulled at her heartstrings the most?
“Shouldn’t you be putting in applications?” she quipped, feigning strength and perseverance when she truly felt weak and seconds away from crumbling into a useless heap.
Maybe she wasn’t ready to return to work after all. It might have benefited her to spend a few extra days alone coming to grips with herself before throwing herself back into the grind.
“Can I come in?”
She looked down at her laptop screen and clicked around to open a few browsers, pretending to be busy and not at all interested in anything having to do with him. “Seems you already are.”
He took that as the invitation it wasn’t and entered the room fully, and Sabrina’s heart pitter-pattered at an alarming rate, quickening in direct relation to his every step closer to her.
“I heard you spoke with Conner last night.”
“Briefly. It wasn’t enlightening.”
“He said you didn’t give him much chance to say anything.” He stopped to stand behind the basic wood and upholstered office chair that offered visitors a modicum of comfort—just enough to feel comfortable for a time, but not enough to overstay their welcome. Gripping the back of the chair, he said, “There’s a lot that needs to be said here, and if you give me or us the chance, I think you’ll find that—”
“Nothing is what it seems,” she interrupted. “I’ve heard it all before. Honestly, you guys have to come up with some original material. A girl gets bored.”
“Sabrina, please, be fair.”
“Fair?” Her voice rose. “That’s rich, coming from you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She spluttered through her indignance. He couldn’t be serious. The writing was on the damn wall. “Fair would have been telling me that you didn’t want more than a romp in the sack. Fair would have been telling me that you didn’t intend to take our relationship to the next level. Fair would have been telling me not to get attached because nothing was going to come of this. Instead, all three of you encouraged me to trust you, to try for more. I put myself on the line for you, and you let me down!”
She hadn’t meant to shout, but it couldn’t be helped. This was definitely not the time nor place to get into an argument over personal matters, but she wasn’t about to risk any one of them coming to her place or her to theirs to hash it out. Better to flesh it out now, lay out all the cards, then burn them with a thousand matches and a gallon of butane, because she was done.
“You have it all wrong, ‘Brina.”
“Don’t!” She paused, squeezing her eyes closed and taking a deep breath to control her temper. When she spoke next, her words were tempered but no less strained. “Call me that.”
Oliver’s expression was pained, but he acknowledged her request with a tip of his head. “We were just as broadsided by what your father said as you were last week.”
“Oh, you mean you didn’t know about your father’s plan to make me look like a complete idiot?” she sneered.
“Of course not! It was the first we’d heard anything about it.”
“Then why didn’t you say anything?”
“You didn’t give us a chance.” He tilted his head, sadness in his eyes.
“You could have told my father after I left. You could have straightened it out then.”
“We didn’t know how much he knew. The last thing we wanted to do was throw you under the bus. We wanted to speak with you first. But then you went off the grid. No one could find you.”
“Then they didn’t look very hard.” Sabrina wasn’t in a forgiving mood. She didn’t want to hear all of the logical excuses that she knew could and would change everything—assuming they were true. To be fair, which she also wasn’t feeling inclined to do, not many knew about Janet, and those who did, like her parents, had only cursory knowledge of her, which was half the reason she’d chosen to seek shelter with her in the first place. Janet was a safe harbor that she could be relatively certain wouldn’t be found.
