Rich Man

“I'll help on the condition that when this is all said and done, you disappear."

Every uttered syllable passed through my aching thoughts, hands perpetually trembling beneath the confines of the table cloth conveniently draped over my wrists. I wanted so badly to slap myself, to snap out of my utter distress. Yet I lacked the strength--or perhaps will power--to force myself into my conniving state of calm.

"And you don't come back."

All at once, I felt my body stiffen and yank my attention with great force in the direction of my phone.

Another text from Patrice.

At that point in my insane paranoia, I half expected the message to say the very words I had just been recounting with a great despair. And yet the weight of this message bore nothing in significance more than pointing out an obvious detail: We need some kind of plan.

A snide remark passed through my brain, instantly disturbing the fog of gloom looming ever so thick around my memory. I slipped my phone immediately in my pocket and made haste to shoot him the briefest of acknowledging glances. Nodding with my eyes, I turned my attention to Matt, who was already standing and brushing his jacket off.

He appeared rather distracted, refusing to meet any of my fleeting glances with the usual slighted smile. I considered noting his behavior, but my own thoughts were caught off by the gentle smile on Blake's face as he leaned against the chair he had just pushed into the table. He glanced around to each person present with a bizarre sense of longing strewn in his expression. It was as though he were about to say some kind of tragic goodbye, but he completely destroyed his doom and gloom facade by raising his voice above the rest. "Hey, if you guys want we can have drinks and take this party to my place. I'm up for not sleeping tonight."

"Yeah, I'm in," seemed to echo as attention began swarming the boy. He nodded as if to acknowledge his audience and glanced down to his phone. Typing furiously away, he began replying to whatever comment or question with a snort or a "heh" and a shrug. He's changed. I caught onto his sudden terse body language, eyes averted and dead set on the screen of his phone. But just as soon as his strict precision slamming his thumbs against his keypad began, it died away into that same happy, suspicious Blake we all knew and loved.

After paying the bill, I took my place at Patrice's side. He had an odd aura about him, awkwardly glancing at me as Matt shot him this smug look. The moment I was in step with the boy, his hand made contact with mine. At first I took this for a simple brush, but the second time was without mistake. Our fingers laced together, he lead me from the restaurant and kept me dangerously close by.

For the briefest of moments, I felt the way I did before he wished me away.

I swallowed hard, struggling to remember my focus. This cloudiness of mind was rather unsettling. I could not deny that I felt ashamed with myself, like somehow I had failed in his hatred of me. Yet there was destined to be some sort of tragic equivalent exchange, for one cannot succeed without obstacles. This would be too perfect if I didn't need him, I mentally murmured, but immediately shook the thought from my consciousness. This wasn't the time to regret the path I had chosen.

I was there, at that moment for a reason. And he was going to help me right the whole bullshit situation. Just be thankful you have his help and move on. There's nothing else you can do but wonder why the fuck he's holding your hand... Unless... "Public hand-holding?" I questioned quietly as we branched out from the rest of the mob. We broke away from one another as I slipped into his car.

"If anyone asks, we've got a 'thing'," Patrice stated coldly, as if a little disgusted with himself.

His tone cut deep, but I couldn't help but raise a brow. "Excuse me?"

"Matt and I were talking... And you got raised in the conversation. He thinks we're together so I'm letting him think that way." He refused to make eye contact with me, firmly averting his eyes to the road ahead. Blake's place was nothing more than fifteen minutes away, making the awkwardness of the drive appear something like two hours. Patrice's voice broke my unnerved silence. "I just..." he shook his head, "It’ll give us reason to be alone without raising suspicion.”

“No need to justify,” I whispered. “I understand our terms. Things have changed.”

“No shit, they have,” he retorted quietly. In his own frustration he brooded, the anger rising to his features. Out of nowhere, his hands gripped and threw the steering wheel, the entire car jerking to the side of the road. We came to an abrupt stop that left my heart racing, fingers white knuckled against my jeans.

“What the fuck, Patrice?!” I yelled, upright and ready to smack the little bastard.

“Did you ever, at any time feel anything?!”

The muscles in my face relaxed without a second thought, fright and potential fury melting away to an agape sense of understanding. Is this what has him so uptight? Past thoughts? I was given no time to verbalize my thoughts as the boy beside me shut off the car. He slammed his head against his seat and rubbed his eyes, groaning. “Why did you have to tell me? I like thinking that maybe,” he cut himself off, “I liked believing you were just some really interesting visitor who was actually worth the crazy sexual mind games.”

“You thought I was flirting back.”

“No shit.”

“Well I was.”

“How am I supposed to believe you now?” he started quietly, refusing to drop his palms from his eyes. “How do I trust a word you say to me? Or a thing you said before you went from Roark to Amanda?”

My jaw tightened, but I leaned back in my seat and gazed out my window, toward the sidewalk. These questions had only ever confronted me in the form of nightmares, ringing out their deep, dark reign of terror in my head. And even in my mind, I could not formulate such an answer as I did right then. Fore in my own bout of hopelessness, words managed to tumble from my lips in the sincerest way possible. “When I first got here, during introductions, you were the only skeptic of the lot of them. You were the only one who stopped to think at all and the only one to test my mental bounds. I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t surprised by how much you questioned me. And it would be pointless of you to deny the fact that you, at any given point, were ready to question my purpose here.

“You knew I wasn’t heartbroken, by any means. I wasn’t scared as I implied in my lazy excuse that I should have been. You knew. All along you knew there was something else. But you playfully pressed on the subject without really directly asking me who I am.” Pausing, I gathered my nerves. “We made a trade-off of show me yours and I’ll show you mine. I’d be lying still if I said that I wasn’t intrigued to the point of fear.”

“I don’t underst—“

“You terrified me. I don’t get nervous, insecure. And I did. So because of you I took the leap of following my gut. Turns out my gut is sometimes more correct than my head. You yourself taught me a great deal without even trying. “

He paused to watch me, studying my face in the exact way I once studied his. He carefully examined every mark of the liar, every pointed structure that made me the succinct knower of thoughts and feelings that I was. My stomach turned at the thought. “Don’t become me,” I whispered, watching him with concern.

His brow narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“Once you begin reading people like that, examining their structure, their poise, their everything… You never stop. You stop trusting, stop… trying to make friends or learn about others because you convince yourself you already know.”

He snorted almost immediately, rolling his eyes, “Way to preach to the choir.”

“I thought about quitting because of you.”

That caught his attention.

One shoulder shrugged at his eyes fell on me, my vision slowly cascading back to the dreary sidewalk. A stray cat ran by under the nearest street lamp, probably chasing something. “You were thinking about just walking out on this?” For the first time, a question from his lips wasn’t slicing and jagged. Of course, not until the second question rolled from his tongue with the onset of the realization that I actually considered letting Tera bring them all crashing down. “You were just going to let her win?”

“There is no victory in playing god,” I retorted, closing my eyes and swallowing, “Had I just up and disappeared, yeah, shit would have hit the fan, but at least you all would have never known what I was up to. She would have never met me. You’d all have broken apart of your own accord.”

“So that’s just it—You were ready to give up?” His voice began to rise, but I sent him down to silence with an all-encompassing, cold stare.

“Is it giving up? Or protecting you? Everyone would have been safe, naïve with the knowledge that ‘Roark’ was just the cousin who came and went and nothing more. But now that she knows who I am.. You think it’s just going to end? No… You don’t get it, kid. She wants me to suffer. Which means all of you are going to pay.”

“But why would she target us if she wants you?”

“The question is how. You can answer your own for yourself. It’s not that hard.”

He took a breath, leaning his head back, once more, against his seat. A short gust of air escaped his throat before finally, suddenly, those once gentle lips parted and out tumbled but the tiniest revelation. “She’s going to target me, isn’t she?”

I didn’t answer.

Patrice asserted the answer himself, beginning to spot the issue without so much as a wink of effort. “She’s targeting me because she knows you were closest to me.” Well, save for one minor detail.

I shook my head. “She’ll figure out that you’re the first client I’ve ever had genuine feelings for.”