Page 7 of Rush of Jealousy

“What does a suspension mean?” I demand, my teeth grinding together.

“You get the benefits of being under my employment but without the ability to actually work. Call it a paid vacation.”

I stand up on wobbly legs. “We are over,” I say coldly.

I leave Graham in the office and walk through the door I entered. I fish my cell phone out of my bag and dial 9-1-1 without hitting the call button. When I get to the final exit door that leads to the outside world, the security officer from before blocks my way—coming out of the shadows. Shit.

“Do not even think about stopping me,” I say harshly. I am so sick of this.

“Miss McFee, I am—”

“Listen! Let me walk out of this building on my own two feet,” I demand, “or I’ll have the police here to file charges against you for holding me against my will.” I hold up the screen of my phone to show how serious I am and hover my thumb over the call button.

With a frown, he steps off to the side, mutters something into what I am assuming is a hidden earpiece, and lets me leave.

I push the glass door open with more force than what is necessary and welcome the cool breeze that travels through my loose coat. Freedom. I look both ways along the sidewalk and decide to just turn to the right and figure it out from there. I just need to get away from this hell.

“Miss McFee.”

Collins. “You have got to be kidding me!” I yell in frustration, throwing my arms up toward the sky. “Is this real life?” I ask a fluffy cloud before turning around to stare into the eyes of Graham’s henchman.

“Just here to offer you a ride, ma’am.”

I huff out air from my lungs. “Yeah, one back to Graham, I’m sure.”

“I promise to take you wherever you want to go. I have the car parked at the curb.”

I look to where Collins points and see the idling vehicle he is referencing. I look back to Hoffman Headquarters and dread fills my heart. Everything is so out of control, and it’s hard to keep my emotions anchored to the ground. I just need some distance, a chance to think.

“I just want to do this on my own. Please respect that. It has nothing to do with you, Collins. You have been nothing but kind to me.”

Except of course if he was the one in charge of taking compromising pictures of me. Then he can go on the two-person shit list along with Graham. Someone working for Graham was assigned that task. I can’t imagine him selecting just anybody. However, that is something I do not want to address right now. Right now, I just need to distance myself from everything that reminds me of the man who shattered my heart.

Collins tips his head in understanding and steps off to the side toward the shadow of the nearby building. I feel his burning gaze on me as I walk aimlessly down the sidewalk on the busy downtown Portland street. I glance behind me and verify that I walked far enough to no longer be tracked. And for that, I am relieved.

I hear the buzz of my phone and the sound of incoming text messages. I reach into my bag and shut it off. I want to shut out the world and learn to just breathe.

2

As much as I could use Claire’s company and inappropriate sense of humor right now, I’m not ready to go home. My knee-jerk reaction is to curl into a ball and go into self-preservation mode, where I just zone out all of the bad stuff and act like nothing is bothering me. I want to pretend that my heart is not shattering into a million little delicate pieces. That is what I have done in the past. The old Angie would give up and avoid feeling.

As much as my past antics are comforting in the short term, I know that everything will come back to bite me in the long term if I don’t sort through my feelings now. The new and improved Angie knows that in order to move forward the fastest, I have to face the pain at full strength and not try to cope by numbing it.

So much has gone off course that it’s no longer possible to see the road. Graham warned me numerous times in nonflowery language that he was dangerous. I can now see that there were no truer words. I should have listened.

Now I am standing alone on the sidewalk, walking aimlessly without a direct path. The only person who got me here is myself. I can try to place blame on others. That would be easy. I can convince myself that I was dealt a bad hand. But in truth, I have a habit of choosing wrong. It is a curse. It is the horrible flaw of trusting the wrong people.

I follow the sweet scent of chocolate and coffee to a corner café called Ground Floor. I have seen it in passing multiple times before, but today is the day I enter. Once inside the warmth, I am drawn to the unique décor of the cozy shop. All of the walls are painted with black paint, and colored chalk is available in cups on the tables where customers can write their thoughts on the makeshift blackboard. Some people draw pictures, while others write poems; some even put their email address out for anyone to see. I suppose it is a cool way to try to pick up dates. Bonding over a need for caffeine and mutual desperation.

I order the bottomless Colombian coffee and settle into a two-person rounded booth. I am completely outside of my comfort zone. Sitting alone is not one of the things I typically do—ever. I avoid it at all costs. But today may be the turning point for embracing loneliness. I scoot back into the cushioned seat and notice that underneath the cup of chalk rests a small stack of books that are available for customers to peruse. I sip my coffee and shuffle through a teenage romance book, then a nonfiction book on glassblowing, and then I find a classic. When my hands touch the battered cover ofWhere the Red Fern Growsby Wilson Rawls, I start to tremble. This was James’s favorite book. I bring the book up to my nose and inhale, as if the smell alone will bring back the good memories of a time when my life was still intact. I peel back the cover and flip to where the first chapter begins and start reading.

I go through the motions without much thought or attention to details. It isn’t until a worker offers me a refill that I realize I have drained my entire mug of coffee—and have finished the entire book. Granted, I skimmed some of the middle parts, but the memories that were once dormant have filtered back into the forefront of my mind.

James would beg Dad to read from this book every night, and would follow with the pleas for us to have a dog. He would even recruit me—thinking that I had the whole daddy’s girl appeal going on—and make me hound and whine. He would convince me that since I was the baby, by a mere seven minutes, I had special powers that daddies couldn’t resist so I had to work my magic. Through dedication to research and experimentation, I discovered that apparently my manipulation tactics worked on any male above the age of forty. It was all in the eyes. I would use a mirror and make my eyelids get as droopy as possible without cutting off all my vision. I would practice for hours and try out the cheesiest phrases in the mirror.

“But Daddy, don’t you want us to learn responsibility?” I would try. Or, “Please, Daddy, this would mean the world to me.” I do have to give credit to James; that boy never backed down from any kind of challenge—even if he knew the chances of success were slim.

And when Dad was just about to crack and give in, Mom was first diagnosed with cancer and everything changed. I would have given anything to keep my childhood unbroken by believing that a puppy could fix the world’s problems—or just ours. But in that moment, I grew up. Fast. And being ten was suddenly harder than anything my mind could have ever dreamed.

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