“You tell that bitch mother of yours that she’s bit off more than she can chew with Beckett King. That boy isn’t going to roll over the same way his daddy did.”
Journey opened her eyes. Questions bubbled up. What the hell do you know about Beckett King? What did Lydia do this time? How do you have anything to do with it? She didn’t voice any of it. Questioning her father was like feeding internet trolls—once he got a little taste of power and attention, there was no getting rid of him. Better to ignore his bullshit until he found someone else to terrorize. “You’d be better served to sleep that drunk off than calling me issuing threats. Don’t call here again.” She hung up.
Her hands shook so hard when she reached for her coffee that she abandoned the motion halfway through. Fuck me. She shot a look at her open door, half sure she’d heard her mother’s heels clicking down the long hallway from the elevator to her office. But no, it was all in her head.
It was just a phone call. The man was two time zones away. There was absolutely no reason for her heart to be kicking in her chest like she’d just run a marathon. She wrapped her arms around herself, but that only made her shakes worse. Damn it.
Before she could talk herself out of it, she grabbed her cell phone and hurried to shut her office door. Journey locked it for good measure, but it didn’t make her feel any less exposed. Stupid. Irrational. Crazy. She shut the blinds next, blocking out the lightening sky. It wasn’t enough.
Her chest hurt, and no amount of trying to count her way through her inhales and exhales helped. It got tighter and tighter, until the only thing she could do was huddle on the little sofa situated in the corner farthest from the door. She pulled her knees to her chest and rocked back and forth. He’s not here. He can’t get to you. You are not this fucking weak. Get ahold of yourself. It didn’t help.
It never did.
She unlocked her phone with numb fingers, even as she told herself it wasn’t necessary, that it was wrong to call her big brother. It didn’t stop her this time any more than it had stopped her every other time. The phone rang and rang, the seconds spiraling away from her in a whirlpool she could almost see.
“Journey?”
“Anderson.” Her voice was barely a whisper of an exhale.
The background noise faded and she could hear him moving away from wherever he’d been. Probably an important meeting that your crazy ass is dragging him away from. A door closed and then he was there, extending a lifeline through the phone to her. “What’s wrong?”
“It was him.” No need to specify. There was only one him in their lives.
“He’s not there.” Anderson spoke sharply, as if he could command his words to be the truth rather than the inquiry they actually were.
She shook her head. “No. He called. I…I’m sorry. I should be able to handle this on my own.” She was so damn capable in so many damn ways, but one call from Elliott Bancroft and she was a whimpering mess reaching for her real-life teddy bear.
“Don’t be sorry. I’m here. Do you need to talk, or do you want me to?”
The question felt just as formal this time as it had every time before now, starting when she was a little girl who would hide in her big brother’s room to escape their father. “Can you? Just for a little bit.” She loathed the weakness, loathed leaning on him. “Wait—Anderson, don’t. I’m okay. I…I’ll be okay.”
He ignored her pathetic attempt at bravado just like he always did. “I’m hoping we’ll wrap up the last of these meetings today and reach an agreement with Senator McMurphy. He’s coming around, but he’s taken a disliking to Bellamy, so it’s hampering the progress.”
“Poor Bellamy.”
“No ‘poor Bellamy.’ The first thing he did when he saw the good senator was to drop the names of both the man’s mistresses in conversation. He’s so damn smug I want to toss him out a moving car sometimes.”
She cracked a smile. “Poor Anderson.”
“That’s right. Poor Anderson. And you’ll never guess who I saw yesterday…” He went on like that, talking about nonconsequential things until her panic retreated and she finally stopped shaking.
Journey inhaled deeply. “I’m okay now.”
“Do you need me to come back?”
He would if she asked. To hell with their mother’s plans and the important business meetings and political agendas. If Journey told her big brother she needed him, he’d be on the next flight out of DC and winging back to Houston to save her.
I need to be able to save myself.
“I’m fine. I’ll see you next week?”
“Yeah, we should have things wrapped up by then.” He hesitated. “Hang in there, Jo. I know that asshole doesn’t call often, but if you need me to…”
He didn’t have to finish that sentence for her to know where he was going with it. “No.” She straightened and put as much of a command into her voice as she could. “No, Anderson. Don’t you dare.” Her brother had been protecting her for too long, and she’d be damned before he put another stain on his soul on her behalf. “I’m fine.”
“I know.”
It couldn’t be more obvious that he didn’t believe the words any more than she did. She had to get off the damn call before he changed his mind and did come back. “I’ll call you soon—a real call. Not me freaking out over nothing.”
“It’s not nothing.”
“Yes, it is,” she said firmly. One of these days, it might even be the truth.
Not today, though.
Today, nothing was fine at all.
What the hell had her father meant about Beckett and her mother?
As the plane touched down, Beckett reluctantly turned his phone back on. It was tempting to tell the pilot to keep circling or, better yet, to fly him
