Page 75 of Bleeding Hearts Duet

Chapter Twenty-Four

I’d thrown myself into my projects over the last two weeks, spending hours on end in the sewing room.

Ryland would stop in from time to time, trying to find some semblance of conversation in the ocean between us. It wasn’t working. This time, I didn’t know how to fix the distance. I didn’t even know if I could.

I was angry. So fucking angry. At him, at Brayden, at Norma-Jean… and everyone else who had ever lied to me. I’d never felt so much anger in my life, and quite frankly, I wasn’t sure what to do with it.

So I bedazzled. I tore apart fabric with scissors and sewed it back together. Then I bedazzled some more.

“I have to go to a business dinner.” Ryland’s voice carried from the doorway. “I’m assuming you’d like to take a pass on joining me?”

I didn’t reply. I couldn’t even look at him, and I was thankful he hadn’t tried to touch me either. Because he knew. He knew I was about to implode. So he’d left me alone. Did I want to go to a business dinner with him? Hell fucking no, I didn’t.

I heard him sigh as he padded away, and the click of the front door a few moments later. It resounded through the apartment like the sound of a prison door shutting. Closing me in. Because that’s where I was. Imprisoned in a game where I didn’t know the rules. Where I didn’t know who to trust anymore. Where I lost everyone I ever loved.

I was still feeling sorry for myself an hour later when Nicole popped her head in and surprised me.

“What is all this?” she asked as she stepped inside.

I hadn’t told her I was sewing because I’d been too wrapped up in my emotions to have a real conversation with anyone.

“It’s just a place for me to putter around,” I said.

“This is really cool…” Her voice faltered when her eyes fell on the black sewing machine in front of me. For a moment, she looked like she was in pain.

“Nicole?”

She straightened her spine and walked back towards the door. “I brought you some dinner.”

“Oh.” I blinked. “Thanks?”

“Ryland told me to,” she admitted. “But I wanted to check on you myself and see how you were doing.”

I stood up and folded up the piece I’d been working on, deciding I’d punished it enough for one evening.

I followed Nicole out to the breakfast bar and sat down as she pulled out containers of Sushi. She handed me one, and I chewed through a California Roll in record time, not tasting a single thing.

“I don’t know what to do,” I blurted, my eyes burning with unshed tears. “I can’t handle this anymore, Nicole. There are things I want to tell you…”

Her eyes widened, and she coughed as she took a drink of water.

“But I can’t,” I went on. “Or at least, I’m not supposed to.”

She weighed my words carefully before reaching her hand towards me.

“Brighton, there are things I want to tell you too…”

Ryland’s home phone rang out, scaring the hell out of both of us. I’d never even heard it ring before. He usually handled everything on his cell phone.

“He must have diverted his calls here by accident,” Nicole said nervously.

I let it ring out, six times in total before the machine picked up. A shrill voice came on the other line, echoing through the apartment.

“I’m a little short this month,” Norma-Jean blared through the speaker. “I’ve got my son home now, so I need some of next month’s payment in advance.”

She sniffed into the phone, her voice growing more agitated and desperate by the moment.

“I need it now. It’s real important that I get it now,” she persisted. “Or I might have to ask Brighton, and you wouldn’t want that would you?”

---