Chapter Twenty-Seven
Rose clutched her crate, carrying it through the main doors of the anthropology building as the evening sun glowed across the path outside, blinking between tree branches, reliving each dreadful moment of watching Toby rip down his country drive and kick up a plume of dust against the bright, nighttime sky. Hiking up the main stairs, she strode to the graduate student lab, her summer dress flowing around her thighs and an old thrift-store cardigan drooping off one shoulder. For now, she could leave her supplies on one of the chairs in the corner until she mustered the desire to sort through them, which might be a while because her heart felt like a well-used washrag, wrung so hard it hurt just to breathe, and she’d barely held it together for the entire long haul back to Austin, which had taken all day since before sunup.
Had Toby gone to find Katy last night when she’d seen his Bronco tear off down the ranch road? Maybe he’d just gone to hit a bar and get wasted. She took a deep breath. She ought to be glad to have avoided further entanglement with him. Heaven forbid she be halfway into rock-art recording on the Legacy and content in his bed, only to find out when she had nowhere else to go.
Keep moving. If she kept busy, she kept her mind off the ache that had resided in her stomach ever since Toby’s phone had buzzed in that beautiful rock shelter. Why had he played her like a fiddle, painted this beautiful picture of a future with her and her son, if he was still going to sleep around on the side with whoever he wanted?
She was going to be sick again and pressed the crate harder to her stomach to put pressure on the discomfort. She’d been such a fool. Yet still, the sincerity on his face as he’d pleaded with her had looked genuine. His frustration hadn’t seemed fake. Was he really so good an actor? Or had he, in some unfathomable way, been…telling the truth when he’d said that he hadn’t been with Katy and hadn’t seen her since before Rose and he had met?
She set down the crate and rummaged for her keys, when she heard a man chuckling and talking in the empty room across from her. It was Howie. Instinctively, she paused to listen, when she heard him say, “Hang on. I think I heard someone coming.”
Unable to pinpoint her suspicion, she felt the need to hide and snatched up the crate to scurry back to the stairwell behind one of the double doors propped open. She watched through the crevice in the hinge. Howard stuck his head out in the hallway and peered back and forth, then pushed the door so it swung mostly closed. It slowed to a stop on a squeak, leaving a crack.
“They’re gone,” she heard him say faintly.
Abandoning her crate, she crept back around the door, eased down the hall, and stood outside his door.
“So you finally got Rose back?” another male voice said.
She knew the voice. It was one of Howie’s friends, a grad student who had started the same year as they had but was taking twice as long to finish his dissertation. What on earth were they talking about?
“I tried, but it’s not like I want her anymore anyway. She’s blown me off for three years now and shacked up with the property owner the whole time.”
Rose’s jaw hit the floor. What?
“But I got something better. I totally spoofed the dude’s phone. He’s got tons of money but no brain. The dumbass punked me a couple times, so I found a girl on his phone from some old one-nighter and started texting her from the guy’s number. Once I’d been back and forth with her, I unblocked his phone and let the messages go through to him. Rose must have seen them because by the time we got back to the campsite yesterday, Rose was all angry, saying we were done and needed to pack up. She wouldn’t even go back to his house.”
“Whoa, Howie, that’s harsh,” his friend said, an ounce of concern in his voice. “Doing shit like that’s illegal. How’d you do it?”
Rose’s eyes widened. And suddenly, a rush of pain swamped her stomach, suffocating her. The pain in Toby’s voice, the way he’d chased her, pleaded with her… He’d sounded genuine because he had been telling the truth! Red flashed before her eyes. What had Howie done? She tried to return her attention to the conversation, but her shock only blossomed into fury and tears. Howie had gone too far. Coming to her senses, she dug in her pocket for her phone, tapping open the voice-recording app and hitting Record.
“He left his phone on his counter. He didn’t even have a password on it, not like it would have been hard to crack.”
Howie had always been savvy. The app he’d created for his dissertation to store surveys conducted by penetrating the ground with soundwaves to build three-dimensional models of artifacts without unearthing them proved his ability.
Oh my God. Toby had begged her to listen to him. He’d pleaded with her to hear him explain how Katy had gotten his number and how he’d asked her not to message him.
And her quick judgment and heart, wounded by men’s past actions, had rejected him.
“Anyway, he seems to have figured it out, ’cause I can’t access his device anymore. Must have deleted the app. Doesn’t matter anyway. Rose is over it now. If I can’t have her, Toby Dixon sure as hell can’t flaunt her in front of everyone, either.”
“Careful, Howie. That’s some weird shit. If the guy traces it back to you, you could be in a lot of trouble.”
Howie laughed. “There isn’t any way he can trace it back to me. Unless you rat.”
But his friend sounded worried, and after muttering that he had stuff to do—which sounded a lot like an excuse to leave—the sound of books shuffling into a satchel ensued. Rose stopped the recording, numb to the core. She slid her phone into her cardigan pocket and backed up a step, walked a few paces, then jogged, reaching her crate. She grabbed it up and dashed down the stairs and exited outside, her mind swirling with what she should do.
She had to contact the dean, but he was already gone for the weekend. She’d email him about the urgency of speaking to him and come find him first thing Monday. She couldn’t allow Howie’s obsession with her and the tactics he’d used to retaliate go unreported. For so long, she’d worried that if she spoke up she’d ruin her future prospects—
Her phone buzzed in her backpack, and she set everything down partway down the path toward the performing arts buildings to pull it out. Was it Toby? Oh God, she had to talk to him! And yet trepidation made her fingers tremble.
A text from her dad brightened the screen. Her heart sank a degree. She opened up the new message. He’d taken a picture of Sage with a woven latigo leather belt on, just like his. She smiled fondly at the photo, then X-ed out of it, looking at the string up unopened messages. Toby’s name was highlighted. She’d ignored every attempt he’d made to contact her, too confused and bitter to cope with it. Instead, her thumb hovered over his name, then finally, on a deep breath, she tapped open his messages.
Toby:Please call me.
Toby:Rose, I miss you.
Toby:I never messaged her, I swear it. She texted once after we met, and I asked her to delete my number. I swear I’d never hurt you.