Page 14 of Take the Blame (Seaside Mergers #3)

Banging the keyboard, I quickly exited the tab, hopefully erasing the evidence of me snooping on Alta and turned in an exasperated huff. “Yes, J?”

She was looking at me weirdly, her palm cupped over the receiver of the shop landline phone as she leaned into the room. When she met my eyes, she raised an eyebrow. “Phone. ”

“Alright,” I sighed, my heartbeat fluttering wildly. I pressed a hand to my chest as I started toward her, arm outstretched. “Don’t sneak up on me like that next time.”

She snorted, “I knocked .”

“Yeah, yeah. Get back to work,” I said, taking the phone as I followed her out. Best to leave thoughts of the girl that was making me so jumpy locked behind my office door.

Pressing the phone to my ear, I grunted. “Yeah?”

“Augustus?”

Air stalled in my lungs at the sound of the soft, breathy voice on the other end of the line.

My legs didn’t know what they wanted to do, but it was somewhere in the middle of giving out completely and propelling me into a run.

They settled on an agitated few steps before I had to press a fist against the wall to keep my balance.

“Augustus are you there? I just heard you,” she said.

“How did you get this number?” I asked, voice gruff and accusatory right away.

“Auggie, please . It’s very important that we speak with you,” she said.

We .

I noticed her voice sounded tired and maybe a little broken. Still, I saw red. Maybe even redder because the sound of her voice still placed a large lump in the middle of my throat. The sound of her voice could still get me after all these years.

“Have you found your daughter?” I asked my mom in not so nice a voice. I thought I knew the answer, but I had to check to make sure. Her silence said all I needed to know. “Don’t ever call this number again.”

“Aug—”

I hung up before I could hear it again. That name only her and my sister used.

Still, it didn’t stop the immediate rage that spread throughout my body.

The immediate nostalgia of bitterness and anger.

It had been ten years and still her voice could go straight to my heart.

Her neglectful complacency landed there too.

I moved to the front counter in a daze. I wasn’t sure if I had yelled or whispered on the phone, but the shop was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. I could feel everyone staring at me, but I could feel the thundering of my heartbeat pulsing throughout my entire body even more.

With great care to be gentle, I set the phone down on the counter in front of me. It still snapped against the marble surface, causing Jules to jump.

“J?” I said, my voice a croak.

“Yeah?” she answered cautiously.

“Can you block that number for me, please?” I asked.

“Y-yeah!” she said immediately.

I nodded, thankful. “And don’t answer any more Connecticut phone numbers again, alright?”

“None of?—”

“None, Jules,” I said sternly. “Promise me, okay? I don’t wanna have to worry about it.”

“Okay, yeah. No Connecticut numbers. Got it,” she said hastily writing herself a sticky note. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I pushed out too quickly.

Slowly, sound and shapes and regularity came back to me. I stopped feeling my heart beating in my throat and felt cool air hit it instead.

“Who was that?” Lana asked from behind me. Only the girls were ever brave enough to pry.

“No one important.” Not anymore .

Blinking, I took in the shop window. Large and clean, the Ink and Mar logo shone inky black on one side. On the other, there was a cheeky little neon sign that read, “Kinky” only the “K” was purposefully hanging off, so that it said “Inky.”

I inwardly smiled. That one was a gift from little miss sunshine herself. And since she brought it in, the sign alone had attracted tons of interested parties to the shop. Some just wanted to take a silly photo, but others actually ventured inside and eventually got work done.

She was smart, and she knew her stuff… and I really needed to apologize. What I said hadn’t come out right, and if she would just come back I could tell her so.

Motion outside the window caught my attention, making me blink. I had the urge to wipe my eyes again, convinced they were playing tricks on me. Conjuring images that I wanted to see, rather than reality.

“You look ashen, Gus. There’s no way that was nobody important,” Jules insisted. “Who was it?”

I waved her off, hardly registering her concern. In a few short moments, what I saw through the window went from being an image I wanted to see to one I was quickly learning I didn’t.

Jutting my chin in that direction, I said. “Never mind me, J. Who the fuck is that ?”

Everyone followed my gaze out to the sidewalk where the girl who’d been haunting my thoughts since the last time she walked out that door stood.

Touching some guy.

I don’t know if she looked more angelic than she usually did or if I was simply suffering withdrawals, but for some reason she seemed more dressed up in her calf length pencil skirt the color of sand and blue button down that I could see from here wasn’t buttoned nearly far enough.

Her hair fell loose around her shoulders and she was also propped up on heels.

She looked good. Really good . I mean, she usually came in here sporting one form of business casual or another. Sometimes she even dressed fully casual with jeans and one of her frilly little tops or even sundresses when the weather was warm. But today she looked dressed to impress .

The clothes were just an addition, though. She looked great in anything. What I really wanted to know was why she was suddenly so dressed up for some dark-haired business suit wearing guy she had her arm looped through as she pulled him along the street.

“I don’t know, maybe her boyfriend?” Quis said from behind me.

“No way,” I scoffed, but secretly I wondered if I was just telling myself that. “She wouldn’t go for a guy like that.”

He didn’t look disinterested exactly, just there. He certainly was not as interested as she was as she smiled brightly at him while he remained one note.

I didn’t like that. If I ever got that kind of smile out of her… well there’s no telling what I could do with a gift like that.

My eyes narrowed on the attitude guy as I grumbled. I noted the way he walked with her. They were strolling, talking comfortably as they made their way along the street. I could see her pointing around at something every few steps, his eyes following the trajectory of her attention.

“Her boss?”

I grunted. Could be, but there was something about the two of them together that looked annoyingly right. Symmetrical in a way that was hard to understand, even from this angle.

Aside from them obviously touching as they walked arm in arm, they didn’t seem to be close like that . Yet, as a biker zoomed by on one side, he put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her out of the way. So he obviously cared about her.

And I don’t know why, but that irritated me.

What made me angrier was watching the way he treated her. As she spoke with him animated and clearly having the time of her life–something that was already aggravating enough as it was–he had the audacity to stop and pull out his phone.

Pulling away from her, he paused their steps to answer whatever was on his screen.

Alta just stood there patiently waiting, looking around herself as her foot tapped.

Soon her patience ran out, and when she said something to him, he shut her down with what looked like the insistence to finish his correspondence.

I really didn’t like that . Who was he to ignore her like that? Who the hell did this guy think he was?

“He’s totally ignoring her,” I said, arms folding over my chest. “What an asshole.”

“She seems to be okay with it,” Ryan pointed out. To punctuate the fact, we all watched as Alta pulled her phone out too, typing away as she waited for him.

I ignored Ryan and focused on the bad. This guy was a tool, and I didn’t think he was right for her. Was this seriously what she blocked off her day for? Was this the “personal” things she found important enough to cancel all her appointments to prioritize?

Was he so special?

Finally, he pocketed his phone, but they didn’t resume walking. Instead, he pointed over his shoulder and started turning them in the direction they’d just come. Only, Alta resisted. Pointing the other way and shaking her head as if she disagreed with him.

“Trouble in paradise?” Jules asked, leaning her chin against her hand as she watched.

“ Don’t call it that, ” I hissed at her, but I found myself gravitating closer too. Entirely too invested as we stared.

Too angry.

How anyone could deny her when she was being so adamant, I didn’t understand. Or maybe I understood all too well, because I had just done it and was now suffering for it later. It seemed even more egregious coming from him though, making me angry on her behalf.

Angry enough that before I knew it, I was stepping out of the shop door and headed straight toward them.