When you are used to seeing someone in one particular context, it's hard to imagine them anywhere else, or to wrap your head around being with them anywhere else. It's like the first time you see your teacher outside of school, and you realize that they actually exist outside the classroom. You technically knew that. But seeing them at the grocery store, buying a family-sized bag of candy, teaches you things about them that you didn't expect to ever know.
Like that your teacher, who you know lives alone, will for sure be eating that entire bag of candy by herself.
I had imagined Laurence Royal outside of work in ways that left me blushing at night, but to actually be outside of the workspace with him felt alien. A thrilling and rattling taboo. We'd been around each other in a total of two places. Work, and that one time at a speakeasy where we had discussed work. Our overlapping lives had consisted of nothing but work up until now. And that one time we didn't talk about where I broke into his house... also for work reasons.
"Have a preference?" Laurence asked as he started up his beautiful car.
After hiding in his office, confessing to being dumped, and then watching him throw my ex boyfriend out of his office, I was finding it a challenge to wrap my head around my current situation as I settled into Laurence Royal's car, the leather warm against my body after it spent the morning sitting in the sun.
I shook my head. "Just not Dash's coffee," I said my voice still uneven.
The leather seat was soft, a comfort. The smell of Laurence Royal's cologne filled the car, sandalwood, cedar and musk, wrapping me in a quiet place, surrounded by comforts that seemed to tug at the fragile wall of 'put together' I had managed to scrounge up.
The sun baked the car, warm, like a blanket across my skin. Laurence handed me a box of tissues out of his glove compartment seeming to register something I hadn't gotten to yet. Before I could ask what he was doing, the gesture seemed to poke a hole in my resolve and I fell to tears, mortified, but too frayed to stop the water works from bursting out of me like a broken pipe.
"I'm... sorry," I blurted, hiding behind several tissues.
The reality of everything hit me. The audience to my ex boyfriend's arrival. My inability to see him, instead hiding in Laurence's office, begging him to get rid of my ex boyfriend. Forgetting who I was growing to become, and instead reverting back to a shy, insecure wallflower. It all made me feel like wet tissue paper, fragile under the smallest change.
Have I grown at all? Am I honestly better and more confident than that girl Liam broke up with months ago?
"Why would you apologize?" he asked, voice unusually soft. "You didn't break up with him at a fast food place and then show up to his work to harass him."
I gestured to all of me. "For... crying," I managed between breaths.
Laurence pulled the car to a stop, staring out the windshield, his gaze unreadable. "Caring is not something you should apologize for."
He turned to look at me, eyes boring into mine. "Nor for expressing grief and heartache."
"I can't believe I dated him," I muttered, wiping angrily at my eyes, wishing I could hide under all the tissues.
"That surprises me too," he admitted. "You strike me as someone who would strive for someone kind. And he falls quite short of that standard. I would know, I have terrible taste in dates."
A garbled laugh sob fell out of me. "Your reputation is quite famous around the office."
He blinked, looking momentarily flustered.
"I'm sorry." Apparently all sense of filter fell out of my brain when I cried my eyes out.
Fantastic.
He shook his head. "Don't be. I shouldn't be surprised. It's important to know how I'm perceived at the office."
Silence settled in the car making my sniffling loud and embarrassing, a soundtrack I was desperate to smother. After a beat, Laurence pulled the car back into traffic. "Do you have any meetings that need to be adjusted?"
"No," I said.
"Good. No sense in attempting to have Dashiel reschedule them then."
"He could manage it. But I worry that he'd use my keyboard to prep his next cup of inventive coffee," I muttered, still thinking about the toothpick in my coffee... and the gum wrapper... and the pencil... and the paperclip.
Note to self. Never suggest he temp at a coffee shop.
Laurence turned on the radio, sensing that I needed space to process, and switched to a station that played music from 1920's to the 1950's.
Ugh. Stop being perfect. The gesture nearly made me burst into tears again.
We arrived at a small coffee shop tucked away down a side street. It looked like a combination of an alleyway and a small home. Brick walls and vines created a splash of opposing colors. The brick was covered in colorful chalk that listed the daily menu along with encouraging notes and slogans. Small wind chimes hung outside on a small awning that also seemed to serve as a front porch.
The place was warm and charming, and nothing like what I would expect from Laurence Royal. He seemed to read my mind as I stared at the front entrance. "I like it because no one would look for me here," he said by way of explination.
He must have been referring to his family. His brother Carter was in jail, and had several associates that no doubt would harass Laurence if he wasn't constantly surrounded by levels of an office building or home security system.
A small kitchen window to the left of the building served as a TO GO counter. After ordering a mocha, and Laurence ordered a black coffee, he lead us around the corner and I found myself in a small garden patio.
Pulling a chair out for me at a small metal table, Laurence walked around to the other side and sat down, looking out of place in the charming and quaint secret garden. I fought a smile, instead focusing on my mocha which had the perfect combination of heat, chocolate and lack of bubble gum wrappers.
Tilting my head back, I let the sun wash over my face, enjoying a moment of peace.
"Where do you find these places?" I asked, finally feeling somewhat normal. "First a speakeasy, now this."
"I make a habit of finding new places to get work done when other places become... crowded." He put down his cup, causing a small metallic clink. "Do you expect him to make a reappearance?"
"Not sure," I said, eyes closed against the sunshine. I hoped that if I sat with my eyes closed long enough, the image of Liam standing in the office, a place that was supposed to be safe from him, would burn away.
"I'll tell our security team in the lobby to stop him the next time he tries. Do we need to post someone at your apartment building to keep watch for him?" Laurence asked like it was the most normal thing in the world to ask.
I peeked out from under my eyelashes, brow raised. "Um... no. He's not violent, just... terrible."
He processed my words, thinking. "Are you sure?"
Sitting fully upright, I shot him a look. "I don't need a security detail."
"I don't mean to sound paranoid. I am merely discussing options." He took another sip of his coffee, dark lashes kissing his cheeks as he closed his eyes for a moment. "Even family can surprise you with what they are capable of."
He looked away, a muscle playing in his jaw. "You've seen that for yourself."
Carter had been arrested in Laurence's actual office after he had attempted frame Laurence for murder. Laurence still hadn't fully recovered from the reality of it. "So you just walk around with a secret security detail... that no one has ever seen... every time you leave the office?" I said with a laugh.
Laurence Royal was quiet, not denying it. It wasn't a joke. He was serious.
My mouth fell open.
"I don't go anywhere without someone watching," he murmured. "After what happened with my brother..." He clenched his jaw. "I don't make the same mistake twice."
"You have a security detail?" I asked, surprised. "Like big burly men that follow you around, wear earpieces and speak in code?"
His mouth twitched at the corners. "Not that exact description, but yes. It's not something I advertise. I use a local company. The same one that Mr. Dalton used to work for in fact."
I was surprised. Tate Daltonâ Allie's boyfriend, used to work as a bodyguard. I had no idea that Laurence had secret eyes watching. Where they watching now?
I glanced around, suddenly self conscious. Had they seen be sobbing in Laurence Royal's car?
"They can't hear us. They just keep a pulse on my location." He took another sip of his coffee. "My brother is quite... clever. A trait that would normally be admirable if he didn't use it in dangerous ways."
A shiver went down my spine. Carter Royal was a man I had zero intention of ever seeing again. And if Laurence thought he needed a security detail...
Just how dangerous is Carter Royal?
"It's one of the reasons I keep my personal life up in the air. If others can't find any one particular thing of note. Something that I treasure, then they can't break it."
His words were careful. Weighted.
"So your life is a game of 'guess which of these things I care about?'" I asked.
Laurence closed his eyes for a beat, like the reality of my words were a reminder of the weight he constantly had to make room for. "In a sense, yes."
The thought of living like that. Pretending to be unflappable. To keep everything far enough away due to a family members cruel choice of game. It made my heart ache. "But he's behind bars. Can he still hurt you?"
"He's a sweet talker. He'll eventually be let out. Then he'll play his games with me all over again."
The reality of who Laurence Royal was forced to be, was a bucket of cold water to my system. "So even if you care..."
"It is not an option for me. Not after my brother nearly destroyed Royal Fashion, nearly killed Miss Winters and nearly sent me to jail."
A small bird landed on the table next to ours, inspecting a set of crumbs. It plucked up several bites and took flight. The thud of the table shifting under it was the only sound for a long moment.
Laurence Royal was trying to explain why he was the way he was. Why he lived behind a fortress wall with no intention of ever opening the front door again. The solid door that stood before me was a clear message.
This is all that I am. This is all that I can be.
"Why are you telling me this?" I asked, frustration bubbling up inside of me. He had opened up a crack. Removing a single brick from the fortress wall to tell me how he would never open up. It left me feeling like I was standing out in the cold, staring inside a window getting a glimpse of the world inside. But the one on the other side of the glass never intended to open the door.
"For as long as I've known you, you've never talked about yourself. Why now?"
Laurence Royal finally looked up at me. "You and I have worked together for three years. And when I saw Liam today, it made me realize something."
He leaned forward, face serious, the smell of his skin, of his cologne wafting over me as the breeze shifted. "You are the most consistent part of my life. And to someone like Carter, that won't go overlooked." His eyes grew dark, fingers slowly curling into fists on the tabletop. "If you ever see him. Even if it's someone who remotely looks like him, I need you to promise that you will tell me. No matter how small of a coincidence. No matter what time of day or night it is."
My heart began to pound loudly in my ears, my breath stuttering to a stop in my lungs. "I don't want to scare you Miss Autumns. And the timing of this conversation is unfortunate considering what you went through today, but I don't want you to stay in the dark. You've seen me, far more of me than most people. And because of that, you could become someone he tries to break."
He closed his eyes, brow furrowed. "I'm sorry." The words were a struggle for him to say. Like the reality of them, the fact that he had to say them at all, hurt. A nail hammering into a coffin with a deafening finality.
Without thinking, I reached out my hand and gently placed it on top of his fist. "I promise. I find you and I will tell you."
I watched him relax, fingers uncurling from their tense grip under my hand, body loosening under my promised words. And even though I could see that my promise to be careful helped, I sensed that by being in close proximity to Laurence Royal, my life had taken on a far more dangerous turn than I ever bargained for.
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Thank you for reading chapter fifteen! I hope you are enjoying the story! Or are at least curious to see where it goes! Add this story to your reading list to know when the next chapter drops!
UPDATE DAYS - A NEW CHAPTER EVERY FRIDAY!
Would you ever let Dash make you a cup of coffee?
Is there something more to Laurence's words than just a warning?
Will Carter make an appearance? If so, what will he do?
What will happen next?
CHAPTER QUESTION -Â Do you drink coffee? If so, how do you take it?