A Light In The Dark: The Broken Billionaire Series Book 1, page 11
He looked right into my eyes as he said this, and I observed that there wasn’t much color in his cheeks. He’d clearly suffered as a result of me, and this made me terribly culpable under his gaze. He deserved so much more than the indifference of my heart, and if I could wish it to be true, I would wish to love this man, this humble, honest man, such a rarity in this day and age. In a logical world I would love him and give him what he deserves. But the human heart is not swayed by mere logic; it does not do as it’s told.
“I’m sorry that I made you worry,” I said.
“It’s okay,” he replied with a weak smile. “Plus, everything’s worked out good; the doctors say you’ll be perfectly fine. When do you reckon you’ll be back in the office?”
“Maybe another month. Dad’s been giving me some paperwork to look at while I’m housebound. The painkillers zap me out a little, so I’m not able to concentrate for long, but I can still be useful. I should be back in the office after my next operation in three weeks when they remove the pins.”
Karl allowed himself to grin.
“I’ve missed you, you know,” he said.
“This is the fifth time you’ve seen me since the accident eleven days ago!” I exclaimed.
“It’s not the same. Half an hour or so isn’t the same. I miss the whole day with you in the office, close beside you.”
“I’ll be back soon,” I said with an embarrassed smile.
“I miss you every time I go home at night,” he confessed. “Every time I draw the curtains and go to my lonely bed. I miss you all the way up until I walk through the doors of your father’s—”
“Karl, please,” I snapped, interrupting his flow. “We talked about this, you have to stop thinking like this.”
“But how can I help it when all day long all I see in my head is you?”
“You just do. We were friends for six years and together only three months. You’re one of my best friends, if not the best. I can’t lose you, Karl. You’re like the brother I never had.”
“Brother!?” he indignantly burst out. “You say that for six years we were friends. Well, I felt more than mere friendship to you. For six years I longed for you and then for three months I got you, only to lose you suddenly. I don’t think of you as my sister, Sarah, I think of you as my darling, my lover, my wife.”
This last word echoed around the room and we both sat in silence for nearly a minute afterwards, Karl’s eyes shining mercilessly at me from across the table.
“Please, Karl, understand that we can’t,” I pleaded when his gaze became unbearable.
“Why not? We were good together. Why suddenly stop? I just don’t get it. I see it in your eyes sometimes when we’re at work. I see that you still have feelings for me.”
“You have to stop talking like this. I told you, we’re better off as friends.”
“But why?”
“Karl, please don’t make me answer that.”
“I deserve an answer, Sarah. I deserve one.”
I closed my eyes to this. I searched deep inside and found nothing for him. I simply didn’t think of him like that; I simply didn’t love him.
But he was right, he did deserve an answer.
“I just don’t love you,” I stated clearly. “I thought I could. I thought I could love you. But after those three months, I just felt that it wasn’t right; I felt I was leading you along, that I was leading us along.”
“I can’t believe that,” he said, his voice trembling.
“You have to. I just don’t feel like that about you. And I don’t think I ever could.”
“Please, stop,” he muttered weakly.
“No, you have to listen to me. I’m sorry that you worry so much about me. I’m sorry that I dragged your heart into something that I couldn’t reciprocate. I truly am sorry for that. You’re a good man, Karl Leonard, a good, good man. But I just see you as my friend and colleague; not my husband.”
“And what about Josh Kelly?” he suddenly put to me in a bitter tone, taking me by surprise.
“What about Josh Kelly?” I said frowning.
“You’ve been to see him.”
“He saved my life, Karl. I went to thank him.”
“But I heard Kay talking to Lucy about it in the office. Apparently you’re planning on seeing him again. Why?”
“I might not. Our first meeting ended a little badly.”
“But you want to see him again. I see it in your eyes.”
“I feel some connection,” I said, wanting to be honest with him.
“Another lost cause, eh, Sarah?”
And he winked when he said this, pronouncing the words with such venom that a ball of fury opened up in me and I flashed my angered eyes at him.
“Yes, just like you were,” I replied wrathfully, regretting it terribly the moment I’d said it.
This appeared to drain the last of the color from his face and I was sure that he was going to cry, his moist eyes staring blankly across the table, my own still flashing. However, he didn’t cry and merely got up from his chair. Having not touched his coffee, he turned to me and said, “If you do happen to see him again, ask him about Heather Todd.”
Then he left the house, not even waiting for me to reply to his comment. When the sound of the door shutting behind him reverberated in my ears, I shuddered and let out a sad sigh. I wondered who Heather Todd was, what her connection to Josh could be, and what motive Karl had for dropping her name like that. His bitter tone told me that whoever she was, she would be a part of Josh’s dark past.
JOSH
Life at the Peaks fell into a mundane routine, and I slipped into it as a foot into a well-worn shoe. Only one thing stuck out, and that was my constant hope of a call from Sarah. But as the days went by, and I didn’t receive one, I found myself wandering around in a kind of restless dream, one day evaporating into the next, my hope of a second visit slowly dissolving like the days.
On top of this, I found that I couldn’t sleep, and all night I would go over things in my head; things I hadn’t considered for a long time and that I’d made a habit of consciously hiding away in the deep forests of my mind. Something of Sarah’s visit had triggered a kind of self-analysis to begin inside of me, like the blooming of a flower, and I’d spend my time lying awake going over all the sordid details of my existence.
I went over all the women I’d spent time with in my life, and there were plenty. Amy Houston and a whole troupe of fuck buddies came quickly to mind. Then there were the faceless many, the casual lays that melted into one seamless picture-show of debauchery. I would lie there wondering what had been the point in any of these transient, carnal pleasures. All of it had been nothing but pure sensuality with no real feeling, a meeting of genitals rather than souls. I realized then—as perhaps I’d always realized—that I’d never given myself over to any of these women except one.
Only one girl had ever been able to write her name upon my heart. Only one girl could I say with any certainty had been my girlfriend. And only one that had ever induced love in me.
Heather Todd.
I met Heather at St. Christopher’s, a mixed-sex boarding school for the privileged, when we were fourteen. She was another side of me. But not like Amy. There was something more with Heather—not just a recognition of similarities between us, but an actual mirror reflection of the other. We were both intelligent, but also stupidly dangerous. We were both beautiful, and yet could be terribly ugly. We enjoyed pushing the boundaries of life from an early age, and if I was fire, then Heather was gasoline.
The first time I saw her, she was hanging out the back of her dorm. It was night and she was smoking a joint, her brown hair swaying in the breeze and adding to the ghostly aura given off by her pale white skin that appeared to glow in the moonlight. The second I spotted her, I knew I had to have her. She looked so unreal as she blew the thick, cottony smoke into the air, her big brown eyes staring out after it as it flowed upwards. Only a few of the guys in our year dared to smoke weed, of which I was among, but no girls. Not one. Here, however, was this chick toking on a fat joint.
Amazed at what I saw, I approached her and asked the girl for a pull on the blunt. She just smiled and handed it over.
“You’re Josh Kelly,” she’d said to me as I took a drag.
“Yes, I am,” I’d answered casually. “Or at least that’s what they tell me.”
This corny joke of mine made her giggle, and for the first time ever I saw the dimples light up on each of her cheeks and the instant pang of something touched my heart. Yes, even at fourteen, I felt a spark illuminate in me just from being by her side.
After that we began dating. Not that we ever mentioned it. Neither of us asked the other out in any formal manner and everything happened in an unspoken way. A word was never uttered, but we both understood without exception that we were meant to be side by side, like day and night. When I looked at her face, I felt that I was looking into the eyes of another side of me, the missing half of my soul. We each instinctively opened up to the other, as though we were a single mind and when we talked it was the same as thinking to ourselves. She told me things about herself that she’d never told anyone. Things she’d only dared to think and never to utter. Like how her father had abused her ever since she was twelve and how she hated going home. She told me that the pig would feel so guilty about his secret crimes that he’d attempt to buy her forgiveness. That was why she always had so much cash; the dirty old man was paying for her drug habit in order to appease the guilt he felt from having soiled his role as a father, as well as a human. I, in turn, shared my soul with her and told her all about my mother’s murder.
For four years we shared everything of ourselves and lived as one.
That is, until her tragic death. In a single flash, I lost her forever. And ever since, I’ve been haunted by her, driven to despair by the phantom of her image showing itself in my dreams and attacking my unguarded thoughts.
The first time I rolled through the doors of Withered Peaks was shortly after her death when I was eighteen. I was suffering a complete breakdown; my glass heart smashed into a billion splinters and my mind not far behind. Every one of my life decisions since her death has had her image stamped into it somewhere. All my limited triumphs and all my endless defeats, have her signature carved deep in the heart of them. She chases me through life, both within consciousness and unconsciousness, the secret of her appalling death buried deep within my withered heart. I actually thought that perhaps Sarah was the first person in my life that I could bring myself to talk to about this appalling event. But when the days accumulated into weeks without so much as a call from her, this dream began to fade.
SARAH
For over a week, I saw and heard nothing of Karl. When I’d visited the offices, the first time since the accident, everyone had shown me such love, handing me a bouquet of flowers and being so sweet. The only one missing among them was Karl. He'd apparently been called away to a meeting and couldn’t join. But I knew the real reason for his absence and it saddened me to think that a wedge had been driven between us. Our friendship was as good as over. I just hoped that we could remain professional at work.
As for Josh, I thought about him every single day, even though I was yet to decide if I ever wanted to see him again. I’d searched the name Heather Todd on the internet and found that she’d gone missing while on holiday in Mexico with her boyfriend, Josh Kelly, seven years ago. The newspapers, including the local Mexican ones, stated that she’d disappeared during a party at an island villa owned by Josh’s father and that her body was never found. The reports were all pretty short and merely stated that people at the party had noticed her missing at around midnight, that she had a history of attempted suicide and had been diagnosed with manic depression. There was a beach close by and her clothes were found in a pile on the sand the next morning by police. It appeared she’d committed suicide or had gone for a late-night swim and come across trouble, either by drowning or attacked by a shark. The police didn’t suspect foul play and the girl’s parents had wanted to be left alone to grieve. Apart from that, I found nothing.
I wondered if Karl actually knew more, or if he was merely trying to plant some seed of doubt in my head regarding Josh. It was clear that he was jealous; the way he’d suddenly dropped Josh’s name in the kitchen, so clumsy and obvious. What he had to be envious about, I didn’t know. I’d been to see Josh just once and wasn’t even sure if I’d do so again. There was clearly nothing for Karl to be jealous about, and I felt myself in an impossible position. Even when I had told him straight that I didn’t love him, I still saw that blazing comet of hope shining in his eyes. This situation gave me much to think about in the proceeding days and only came second in my mind to my thoughts of Josh, which plagued me like a swarm of locusts.
To keep my mind off of both problems, I was going through all the tenancy contracts of the clients we had in the Miller Building, as well as all their correspondences with the landlord, Langley Holdings. I was also going through every inspection document from the City’s Buildings Commission and checking through things, liaising with Holcher and Sons. We’d also had a team of specialists go into the building and investigate the mold and the damp in the apartments. They’d recently come back with their lab results and Karl was going through that with several of the others in the offices. We were slowly building a very strong case. If it hadn’t been for all this work, going through miles of paperwork, I would have gone insane in those weeks trapped at home.
The only real company I had in all that time was Lucy and Troy. Lucy had practically become his full-time caretaker now, and it was something she seemed naturally born to do. Every so often she’d have to run an errand and I’d look after the boy. I found this to be a welcome break in both my work and my thoughts of men. We’d either watch cartoons or Troy would wheel me out into the garden and I’d watch him play with the new swing set and trampoline my father had purchased for him. His breathing was getting so much better now and his inhaler was only ever needed after long periods of exercise. It was so good to see him spreading his wings.
Three weeks after my accident, I went to see his mother, Theresa, for the first time since it had happened. The meeting had had to take place in a local cafe, as I was unable to reach her seventh-floor apartment without the elevator. In general, the mother was doing well, glad her son was fitter than he’d ever been and pleased that the court case against Langley Holdings was progressing. I saw much less despair in her eyes than I had before.
It was during this meeting in the cafe that Theresa casually mentioned Josh. We were sitting drinking coffee, talking about the accident, Troy and Lucy also at the table.
“I was real worried when I heard the news,” she was saying. “I prayed for you, something I haven’t done for a long time.”
I smiled and thanked her for her concern.
“I was,” she stated, as though she thought I didn’t believe her. “Real worried. You’re a good person, Sarah. Like a guardian to people or something. You and your father and sisters,” she added, turning sideways toward Lucy.
“You’re embarrassing me,” I said, blushing.
“It’s true. But I won't embarrass you further. I’m just pleased you’re okay.”
She turned to her son and put her arm around him, hugging him warmly.
“Just look at my Troy,” she said. “He’s never looked better. It’s like a different boy. And it’s all because of you. I just thank God that Josh Kelly was around when you was hurt.”
His name immediately brought the color rushing to my face and I felt my heart shudder. Hearing his name had such an effect on me that I could say nothing for a second or two.
“He’s your savior,” she went on. “Have you seen him since the accident? The news said he’s holed up in some rehab place.”
“He is,” I stammered. “I’ve been to see him once.”
“Lucky girl,” she remarked with a cheeky grin. “Is he as gorgeous as he is in his photos?”
My face went redder.
“I couldn’t really say,” was my stumbling reply. “He’s certainly handsome,” I added as an afterthought.
“He certainly is,” Theresa let out softly, picking up her mug and taking a sip.
“He was very rude to her,” Lucy suddenly interjected.
“Rude!?” Theresa exclaimed. “Why was he rude?”
“We got into a discussion,” I said, “and we had a disagreement.”
“About what?”
“Just about his attitude to life, I guess. He’s very cynical.”
“Well, I did read in one of them papers that he’s a bad boy. Most of them rich boys are. I hear his girlfriend killed herself when he was eighteen and ever since he’s been in and out of trouble. His big old rich daddy always fixes it for him.”
“Yes, he doesn’t have much liability in his life,” I stated.
“I wouldn’t mind having no liability in my life from time to time,” Theresa remarked. “I guess that’s what a billionaire father affords you.”
“Yes,” was all I said to this.
I was glad that the subject of Josh Kelly was dropped after this and the conversation took on topics that weren’t so close to my heart. We talked about Troy, about the case and about Theresa’s hopes for the future.
However, after I left the cafe and returned home, I couldn’t help thinking of Josh. As I said earlier, I still hadn’t come to any decision regarding seeing him again. It seemed that every time we met, an argument ensued, and there was too much conflict between us. He appeared to fight me in everything and it hadn’t escaped my notice that some of the things I said to him in the garden had profoundly annoyed him. This persistent cynical attitude of his told me that once he was done at Withered Peaks, he would resume his former lifestyle. The loss of his childhood sweetheart had obviously eaten him away like a worm, and, alongside the loss of his mother at an early age, he had fallen into an abyss of shadows.
