Beautiful Mistake(70)

“I’m okay. But I think I should go.”

“Oh. Okay. I understand. Let me just tell Riley, and I’ll grab my purse.”

“No,” I said, probably a little too quickly.

“No?”

“You should stay. I don’t want to ruin your evening. Is your sister able to drive you home?”

“I guess so…”

“I’m sorry. I’ll see you tomorrow in class, alright?”#p#分页标题#e#

“Yes, okay.”

While her words said everything was fine, Rachel’s face conveyed a whole different story. I wasn’t sure she was even buying my sick act, but I needed to get the hell out of here.

After a quick apology and goodbye to Riley, I was out the door. Feeling off-kilter, I questioned whether it was a good idea to get behind the wheel. When I arrived home, I realized it had definitely been a bad idea. I didn’t remember driving from Rachel’s sister’s place to mine.

I poured myself a stiff drink and paced back and forth for a while, remembering the last time I’d seen the little girl from the church—the day I’d followed her home. After everything that happened, my parents had sprung into action to protect me—calling in favors from everyone and anyone, local politicians and police. So much of what went down that day was a blur by now—except one thing. I’d lied to the little girl I now knew as Rachel for months, instead of doing what I could to get her out of that hell as soon as possible.





Rachel



After ten minutes, the class was getting antsy. I texted Caine, then decided I’d better start the lecture or the students would begin leaving any minute. There was an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. He still hadn’t responded to the text I’d sent last night when I got home from my sister’s—even though I could see he’d read it.

I lectured for a while and then took a break to play the class a few pieces we would analyze. As the music filled the room, I checked my phone from behind the podium. Nothing. Yet the text about class had also been read.

At first, I’d been concerned that Caine had gotten much sicker, maybe had even gone to the hospital or something. But if he was able to read my texts, why wouldn’t he be able to respond?

After about an hour of the ninety-minute lecture, I was so distracted, I cut the class early. Caine wouldn’t be happy about it, but that wasn’t my immediate concern. Anxious, I dialed his number before the classroom had even emptied. It rang once and went to voicemail.

When a cell is turned off, it goes immediately to voicemail. When someone is unable to answer it, it rings a bunch of times before dropping to voicemail. But when it goes to voicemail after one ring, the recipient is hitting ignore. What the hell?

I left a message. “Caine, it’s Rachel. I’m worried about you. You haven’t responded to my texts and didn’t show up for class. Can you please let me know everything is okay so I don’t start calling emergency rooms like a crazy person?”

I wanted to drive over to his apartment and check on him, but I had to be at work in an hour, and there wasn’t enough time to get there and back. Tuesday was also the only day I worked alone. I opened for Charlie because he did his grocery shopping and went to visit his wife’s grave every week like clockwork. No way was I going to interrupt that because my boyfriend wasn’t answering my calls.

Is he even my boyfriend? The entire drive to O’Leary’s, I found myself debating anything and everything to do with Caine. One little hiccup and my mind was a frenzy of paranoid observations. By the time I parked, I’d come full circle. The man wasn’t avoiding me—he simply didn’t feel well. Unfortunately, when I checked my phone, that theory was obliterated.

Caine: Feeling better. Thank you for covering class.

That’s it? No damn explanation? The knot I’d had in my stomach all morning wrenched into anger. I deserved more than that. Tossing my phone into my bag, I unlocked the front door at O’Leary’s and sprang into my opening ritual on autopilot. I flicked the lights on, turned the oven on in the back, unloaded the dishwasher, and brought out the first crate of glasses to stock behind the bar before counting out the register. Promptly at twelve, I turned on the open sign. Then I checked my phone again. Nothing.#p#分页标题#e#

The hours dragged by after that. Ava popped in at four—an hour before her shift started—to visit me, and I was ripe for a verbal explosion. She took a seat at the bar. There was just one other patron at the other end, a retired cop friend of Charlie’s who didn’t say much and only required a beer an hour.