Make Me (Broke and Beautiful #3)(6)

Her hum reached him down the line, warming his ear. “There’s a gas leak at the building across the street, and they’re evacuating us. Maybe the whole block.” A commotion in the background, the din of voices. Abby’s high heels clicking. He knew that sound too well. “They’re telling us to go home.”

“Okay.” A door slammed loudly in the background, and he swallowed hard. “Don’t take the train. If something happens with the leak, you shouldn’t be underground. Walk west and hail a cab.”

“On it.”

By unspoken agreement, they stayed on the line. Russell walked away from the job site, toward the street, looking downtown. From his vantage point, he could see the massive group of flashing red lights. Several people were stopped on the sidewalk beside him, watching the far-off scene as well. For some reason, that made him twice as nervous. “You still there?” he said into the phone.

“I’m—”

He saw and heard the explosion simultaneously. Like fireworks they’d watched less than forty-eight hours ago, white light shot out and tracked down in sweeping arches, moving in slow motion. No. No . . . Abby. Fear hit Russell with the force of a cannonball, propelling him backwards several steps. His work boots crunched on gravel from the worksite, a ringing resonating in his ears. He yelled into the phone, but nothing. There was nothing on the other end. I didn’t do enough. I let her down. Can’t take another loss. Not when it’s her. Not her.

Something banded around his arm, and he spun to find Alec right in his face, mouth moving, but no sound. Jesus, was she hurt? Worse? He tried to breathe, but the air had been sucked out of the atmosphere.

Having grown up with his brother, Russell should have seen the right hook coming, but his head was filled with visions he couldn’t deal with, flashbacks of his early home life—that one day he wanted to erase, along with all the shitty ones leading up to it—merging with new, even worse images, crowding out logic. A second after Alec’s fist connected with his face, the world snapped back into place. Sound and color rushed back in.

“There you are.” Alec shook him. “What the f*ck, man?”

“I need the truck,” Russell managed.

WHEN ABBY WAS twelve, her father had remarried after a whirlwind courtship with his business partner. Abby’s mother had given up custody in the divorce when Abby was too young to remember, moving back to California with her sizeable divorce settlement. Looking back, she recognized that her father and stepmother had distracted her from thoughts of her mother, sending Abby to music and language lessons. Dance class, painting courses, minivacations. One summer, her parents—father and stepmother—sent her to “gifted” summer camp. One of her tutors had recognized her aptitude for numbers and suggested the trip, and since her stepmother had been in the middle of her let’s-rediscover-my-Italian-roots phase, she’d been all too eager for a two-week sabbatical from parenting not only Abby but her own similarly aged son. She and Abby’s father had gone to Florence, and Abby had been shipped off to Camp Einstein, while her stepbrother had stayed home with the housekeeper.

Camp had started off well enough. She’d made friends with her bunkmate, Patty, who didn’t seem to mind Abby’s quiet awkwardness or that she always got picked last for kickball. The food wasn’t the calorie-conscious fare served at the Sullivan house. Plus, she got to wear T-shirts and khaki shorts every day instead of the pressed slacks and blouses of which her usual wardrobe consisted. Three days into camp, however, Patty had found the cool girls who used the F-word a minimum of three times per sentence and boys had been discovered on the other side of camp.

Abby could still remember sitting in the mess hall, harboring the distinct feeling that she had no idea what was going on around her. Secrets were being told in hushed tones, spots were being saved—was she in someone’s saved spot?—and girl who’d been her friend mere hours before no longer even glanced in her direction.

Camp Einstein had set the course for the next twelve years. Private school had been a concentrated version of summer camp, alliances being formed and disbanded so quickly she couldn’t keep up. Any type of misstep or flaw could earn you a get lost card from your group of friends. She might have been able to overcome her fear of making friends and losing them, but her home life had only amplified the one fact she’d lived by her entire adolescence. Screw up and you’d find yourself eating alone. Often even living alone. Before meeting Roxy and Honey, that feeling she’d had sitting in the mess hall had never seemed to go away. That feeling was what had driven her toward the reliability of numbers and tempted her to hunker down and never come up for air. That, and the responsibility she had toward her family.

But right at that moment, with paramedics rushing past her on the sidewalk and chaos blooming around her, the insecurities she’d been trying so hard to suppress came circling back, leaving her unsure how to proceed. Should she try to communicate to someone that her ankle hurt or should she just go home? Was she required to give a statement? She couldn’t see any of her coworkers amid the confusion. Thank God her father hadn’t been in the office. Then again, her father hadn’t been to the office in a month.

Oh, no. What if she had to answer questions about his absence? Finally encountering the sense of urgency she needed to take action, Abby tested her ankle and winced. Probably not sprained, though, or it would feel far worse. Using the stone building at her back for leverage, she rose slowly, but her foot slipped in the sooty sidewalk, sending her back down onto her bottom.