Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 94546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
When you’re meeting your new boss outside of work for the first time, the last thing you want to do is leave a bad taste in his mouth.
The same can be said for bringing home a date for the first time, Tivy.
Confident I can clean up the mess before Jack wakes, I set to work on returning my unworn clothes to the freestanding closet and set of drawers.
I have most items packed away when I spot Jack’s trousers on the foot of my bed. They’re the same trousers he wore when poo whipped around us like confetti, and when I gather them in my arms, it dawns on me why he didn’t switch them out. Not only is a reputable designer’s name woven in the stitchwork, but they’re also free of ‘secretions.’
Not a single brown dot can be found.
Just as I hang Jack’s pants over the chair of the vanity desk, where I apply my makeup in front of each morning, a vibration darts up my arm. The ringtone is barely audible since it’s muffled by two layers of expensive material but loud enough for Jack to stir.
Happy for him to continue sleeping until I’ve finished tidying up, I snatch his cell phone out of his pocket, then search for the silent switch. His phone is a little different than I’m used to. It is a flip phone, but it isn’t outdated and old like the ones my parents used when they started dating. It has a sleek compressed glass appearance, and when it’s folded out, it is larger than the most current iPhone.
When I fail to locate the silence button, I hit the mute button on the screen before snapping his phone in half. I almost place it back into his pocket, but two messages popping up on the main screen stop me in my tracks. One states he missed a call from Elaine, but it is the second one I pay the most attention to. It is advising Jack of a scheduled meeting Monday afternoon.
Usually, confirmation of a business meeting wouldn’t make my skin clammy and my pulse dull. I handle them numerous times throughout the day in my position as Mr. Pott’s assistant. However, this is different. The name of the attendee is extremely familiar, and it has my chipper mood circling the drain even faster than my race into Caleb’s room.
“Where are those documents? The ones I begged you to place into storage.”
Caleb peers up at me with wide, sleepy eyes. “What?”
“The documents! The ones you should have destroyed. Where are they?”
He scrubs the sleep from his drooping eyes while asking, “The depositions?”
I nod so fast, a salty blob trickles down my cheek. “Yes. Where are they?”
“In the broom closet next to the bathroom. Why?”
I’m out the door before the concern in his voice registers.
Half of the contents in the box that exposes every single one of my family’s secrets fall to the floor when I yank out the water-damaged box with more force than required. After pulling a shirt over his heaving frame, Caleb gathers the hundreds of sheets of paper from the floor while I sort through the remaining stack still in some sort of order.
I don’t know what I’m looking for. I just know it could be in this box.
Caleb dumps a stack of papers next to the ones I’m rummaging through before asking, “What are you looking for? No good will come from looking at this shit—” He eats his words when I thrust the screen of Jack’s phone into his face. After cursing under his breath, he mutters, “Do we have a name to work off or…”
He sounds as dirty as I feel when I answer, “Jack. He introduced himself as Jack.” My breaths rattle my ribcage when I confess, “I don’t know his last name. I don’t even know if that’s his real name. God, Caleb, what if—”
“Calm down,” he suggests when a near panic attack steals my words. “It could mean anything. It doesn’t necessarily mean what you think it does.”
“He has phobias about touch, Caleb.” Tears fling off my cheeks when I mutter, “He didn’t want me to touch him.”
With his curse word hidden by a grunt, he pulls out a chair from under our four-seater dining table, spins it, then straddles it backward. Only three years ago, we promised to never peruse the documents again. They caused a ton of pain without a solution to lessen the hurt, so we figured it was best to act as if they didn’t exist.
We can’t do that today.
Only a heartless person could do that today.
Several painful minutes later, Caleb mutters, “I’m not seeing anything. I can’t see anything that resembles a Jack. I don’t think he’s in here.” As the confidence in his deep voice falters, his index finger stops gliding down the printed court transcripts to snatch up a slip of tattered paper to its left. “Shit…”