Page 9 of Come in with the Rain
“He looks right through you and then yells at you for needing his attention. What kind of man does that?”
Her mouth pops open, the bow shape of it emphasized against the pink of her tongue, the one that peeks out to wet her bottom lip. I’m frozen, watching it disappear again. “Who even are you? You don’t know anything about Mickey.”
I grimace. I know he refuses his long-term girlfriend affection and then lets some random woman dry hump him in his office. “I know enough.”
She’s right in front of me, so much shorter than me that she has to tilt her head back just to jut her chin out in a way that she thinks is intimidating, but all it does is make me want to grab on to her, plunge my hands into her hair, and bend down to kiss her.
“Mickey is a good man.”
I take a step toward her, feeling this secret I’ve been holding take its toll on me, like an egg under the heel of a boot, cracking slowly. “If you think he’s such a great guy, maybe you don’t know him as well as you think you do.”
Her eyes go wide and her cheeks go pink, her face so close to mine that I can see every sliver of color in her irises, every freckle along her cheeks that she’s tried to cover with her makeup. When her breath puffs out on my face, it’s on a tremble.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
I don’t know what to say next, but does it even matter? I’ve said too much to take it back now. We stand there in silence for too long, neither of us backing down. She’s not walking away until I give her an answer.
“Watch the security tapes from last Tuesday.”
She stumbles back a step, like I pushed her. “What the hell are you talking about?”
I can’t take the way she’s looking at me, the gentle tremor of her chin. I’ve buried a fear in her that I can’t take back, don’t know if I should even want to take back. Because what’s worse: putting that look of fear in her eye or letting her go on with that bastard, completely oblivious?
I put my hands up, more because I’m trying to keep myself from touching her than anything else. “Watch it or don’t watch it. I’ve got to get to work.”
It kills me to leave her out there. I don’t even know why I did this. I don’t know what I was hoping to gain. But now, whatever damage Mickey did, whatever I thought I could make better when I went out there, I’ve only made it worse. I feel like a zombie as I move into the kitchen, where all the guys are watching me. Shawn looks sick to his stomach, and my boss is glaring at me with a vein in his head pulsing out a heavy rhythm.
The balcony door opens, and everyone’s eyes go over my shoulder, but I don’t turn to look. I hear Stella come into the condo, hear the shuffle of her feet as she moves through the living room and down the hallway. Her bedroom door slams.
“Lake,” my boss growls. “Outside. Now.” He stomps to the front door and wrenches it open, and I follow behind with my jaw clenched tight because I know how this is going to end and there’s nothing I can do about it. As soon as the door closes behind us, he’s twisting to face me, the skin under his thick mustache red and his hands on his hips, curled into meaty fists. “Pack your shit and go home.”
I know it’s useless, but I open my mouth anyway. “Sir—”
“No.” He puts up a hand to stop me. “I don’t know what the fuck makes you think you have any business butting into the lives of our clients, but if you just cost me this job, I’ll do more than fire you. Get off my job site. I don’t ever want to see you again.”
I do what he says, feeling a slow rage boiling under my skin—at my boss, at Mickey, at myself. Because he’s right. This is none of my business. Who am I to step in and try to break up a relationship? And is that what I was doing? Trying to break up their relationship? For all I know, Mickey Kline does this all the time. For all I know, Stella is perfectly fine with it.
But I think about the way she stepped away from me when I told her to check the tapes. She didn’t know. I’m sure of it.
CHAPTER12
STELLA
My hands shake as I attempt to navigate the security recordings. The menu lets me scroll through the dates for the last thirty days, and I click on last Tuesday, but I have no idea what I’m looking for as I skip forward through the dark hours between midnight and when Mickey rolled out of bed. I watch the day go by in double time. I only need to pay attention to the hours that Adam would have been in the condo. On the screen, the contractors arrive minutes after I leave early in the morning to spend the day with Abby. I scan as many of the cameras as I can at a time, watching the contractors work, watching Mickey work. Then the contractors leave, and all that’s left is Mickey, alone in his office.
I slump back on the bed, feeling relief spread through me like a warm drink on a cold day. I don’t know what Adam was talking about, but whatever it is, he was wrong. Nothing happened last Tuesday. His past self has already walked out of the condo and gone home.
But then, after several minutes tick by, a woman appears on the screen that shows the hallway in front of the door. She’s dressed like she’s ready for a cocktail party, in a slinky strapless dress, and she doesn’t even knock. She comes intomyhome like she belongs there. Downstairs, I can see Mickey still working on his computer until the woman makes her way down to his office to join him. She knows exactly where the stairs are, where his office is. She’s been here before.
Mickey pulls his attention away from his computer to watch her come into the room, the way he never does with me. I can see their mouths moving as she heads in his direction, but I don’t turn up the volume. There are still contractors in the hallway right now, and the last thing I need is for them to hear anything humiliating. I feel like a teenager watching dirty movies with their parents in the next room. The woman perches on the edge of Mickey’s desk while they talk, and then she reaches out and runs a hand through Mickey’s hair, and instead of pulling away, Mickey leans into it, his mouth pressed to her wrist, and I feel bile rise up in my throat.
Something catches my eye as my finger moves to turn the whole thing off. Adam. He appears at the front door, knocking and waiting and then knocking again before he lets himself into the condo. He rushes through, going straight to the bathroom and grabbing something before heading back to the living room. And then he stops dead, looking at the security footage playing out on the TV. He marches out of the condo. Just like that, the moment over. I go back and watch the whole thing again as Adam watches with me, like he’s sitting right next to me on the bed, whispering in my ear,maybe you don’t know him as well as you think you do. I watch Mickey smile at the woman as the tears start. I watch her kiss him and watch him not fight her. I watch her climb onto his lap, and I shut off the screens.
It takes me forty-five minutes to pack my things. At least, the things that will fit in my suitcase and duffel bag. The rest doesn’t matter. Most of what I have Mickey bought me, stuff I won’t need for a life without him, the fancy clothes I needed for social outings and the expensive jewelry that came on every birthday and holiday.
When I find Mickey in his office, I can’t stop thinking about the way that woman, a complete stranger, pressed her hip to the edge of his desk, the way her body language said she owned the place, and maybe she does now. I certainly don’t.
“Just a minute,” Mickey calls to me from the other side of the room when I come in. He’s bent under a tall machine that I couldn’t identify the use of if I had a gun pressed to my head. After some clanging, he emerges, and when he sees my face, wet with tears, his shoulders slump.
