Don't Speak (A Modern Fairytale, #5)(80)

The door slammed shut.

“Fine!” he bellowed, leaning back in his chair and spinning it away from the door. He stared out the windows at cold, gray Raleigh. The sun had almost set, and cheerful Christmas lights started to dot the dark and murky cityscape below, which pissed him off.

Christmas was over. Christmas lights after Christmas just looked pathetic, celebrating something that was already long gone.

Move on. Move on. Move on.

“Fuck!” he muttered, turning back to his desk and placing his fingers on the keyboard.

***

In a last-minute decision that surprised and delighted his staff, Erik sent out an e-mail advising that the law offices of Rexford & Rexford, LLC would be closed from December 29 through January 2. Then he went home, packed a bag, walked to the Enterprise Rent-A-Car office around the block from his condo, rented a car, and pointed a shiny new Porsche Cayenne SUV east to the Outer Banks.

With downed trees and icy conditions reportedly worse near the coast, the usual four-hour drive would take him twice as long, especially in the dark, but he felt a responsibility to observe and manage the damage to his family’s property. Someone had to do it. And truth be told, the week between Christmas and New Year’s was an especially quiet time of year. It made sense to check on things, didn’t it? Of course it did. It was the sensible thing to do.

He was not going back to the Outer Banks to “purge demons” or “say good-bye” to lost loves or anything else so patently ridiculous. Absolutely not. He was merely going as a property agent for his parents, and once his business there was finished, he’d return to Raleigh.

Realizing that he’d have nowhere to stay upon his late arrival prompted him to call the only year-round hotel establishment he knew of in Buxton, the Pamlico House Bed & Breakfast, which also had nothing to do with “facing the past” and everything to do with sleep.

Fuck Hillary’s harping.

Fuck Hillary, who was fat and happy in her blissed-out state with Pete.

Fuck anyone who thought he knew what love was, and woe to him who trusted it.

“I thought I knew too,” he muttered, pressing harder on the gas.

The first year had been the hardest, of course. Even though his heart had hardened against Laire when she didn’t show up at Thanksgiving, by Christmas his resolve to forget her had weakened, and he was desperate to see her face again. His devotion to her, as much as he had fought against it, hadn’t died.

The day after Christmas, he’d driven out to the Banks and chartered a boat to take him through the icy Sound from Hatteras to Corey Island. Although he hated her mightily, he needed to see her, and he needed to know why she had pushed him away.

Walking up the dock to King Triton Seafood, his hands sweat, despite the whipping wind of the thirty-three-degree day. When he stepped into the little shop, a redheaded man in his early twenties looked up from the counter.

“Help you?”

He didn’t mince words. “Is Laire here?”

The young man, surely a relation of hers, judging by his hair color, had leaned toward Erik, his eyes narrowing. “Who’s askin’?”

“I am.”

“And you be . . .?”

“Erik Rexford.”

Fire leaped into the man’s eyes, and his fingers, resting on the counter, curled into tight fists. “You’re goin’ to want to leave here, sir. Right fuckin’ now.”

“Come again?” Erik asked, scanning the man’s face.

“Laire’s gone. And she ain’t comin’ back.”

“What? Why?”

“How do you people sleep at night?” growled the man. “How d’you fuckin’ sleep w’the way you treat people?”

“I’m sorry but I don’t—”

“Get the fuck out. And never show your face on Corey again, or I swear to Judas, I’ll kill you myself.”

Erik took several steps back, shocked by the fury in the man’s voice, wondering what the hell he was missing.

He quickly reviewed the facts as he knew them:

He and Laire had had an amazing summer.

They’d had an amazing night together.

Her father got sick.

She broke up with him.

She broke up with him. Not the other way around. She broke up with him without explanation, then stood him up at Thanksgiving. She was not the innocent fucking party in this equation. He was. So why the fuck was this punk threatening him?

He turned to the door, reaching for the handle, when his confusion and brokenheartedness overcame him. He pivoted back around to face the redheaded man again and cried, “I don’t fuckin’ understand!”

Vaulting over the countertop with surprising grace for so squat a person, the man lurched at Erik, one fist catching his cheek while the other uppercut him in the chin. Slam bam, and Erik stumbled back against the door, pushing it open with the force of his sucker-punched, reeling body. The wind caught the door, and it swung wide open, leaving nothing to break Erik’s fall. He tripped backward over the welcome mat and landed on his ass, with the redheaded man looming over him.

“Now do you understand, you fuckin’ cocksucker?”

Erik looked up at the man—her cousin?—and shook his head. “No.”

“Well, that ain’t my fuckin’ problem. Now git.”