Fall From Grace

GRACE

Istare at my phone for a good twenty minutes when I wake up in the morning. Those words on repeat in my head.

I trusted you.

I loved you.

I have no idea what happened. I haven’t talked to Carson in nearly twenty-four hours. He spent most of the day yesterday out of his office.

He was weird the night before when I slept over. But I know he has a lot on his mind, so I chalked it up to that. I have no idea what else it could be.

I text him a few times and I get no answer. So I pull myself out of bed and head to his house. Figure I would check there first, then head to the office. It is Saturday, so he usually does go in, but the strangeness from his texts makes me wonder if he had been drinking.

I pull up to his house, and sure enough, his car is in the driveway. I get out of my car and make my way up his front steps. I tap the code into the door lock and make my way inside. His keys are on the floor, and I sure as hell hope he brought his car home before going out and drinking. If that’s what he did.

I make my way into the bedroom and hear the shower running. His suit from yesterday is tossed about the floor, so I do my best to tidy up. And when I pick up his shirt, the smell of booze wafts into my face.

Well he was definitely drinking.

I sit on the bed and wait for him. I don’t want to walk into the bathroom and scare him. And after those texts, I don’t want to see him naked.

I fucking loved you.

The past tense hits me straight in the heart as I wait for him. Wait to find out whatever the hell happened last night.

The shower shuts off, and I hear him stumbling around the bathroom. I can’t believe he drank enough to still be drunk but maybe whatever is bothering him caused him to get shit-faced. Maybe those texts weren’t even meant for me. Maybe they were for Tiffany. Maybe he got drunk because of everything between them, and he texted the wrong person.

Oh my god, maybe I am just being crazy. I get up to leave but then he walks out of the bathroom.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he asks me, his words clipped.

“I… you texted me.”

He glares at me. “So what if I did? That doesn’t give you the right to come over here. I need to change the fucking code on my lock.”

“What the hell, Carson?” I ask him as I approach him. “What the hell happened?”

“You happened,” he growls at me. “You thought you could just beg your brother for a job so you could dig up evidence of my past wrongdoings and then use it in your goddamn article.”

I freeze. Because how the hell does he know about the article? I haven’t even sent it to my editor. It’s just been sitting on my computer for two days since I finished it. Unless… unless he went through my shit.

He stomps over to me and gets in my face. “You are going to destroy my career over something that happened ten years ago. Something I barely knew was happening.”

“That’s a lie.” The words fall out of my mouth and I wish I could take them back.

“What’s a lie?”

“You knew what was happening!”

“I was following orders from my boss. Something that you do when you are trying to establish yourself.”

“You could have told him no.”

He shakes his head and laughs. “And then I never would have found a job again.”

I crack my knuckles and let out more of the truth I know. Truths I omitted from the article because I didn’t want Carson to go down. And yes, in hindsight, I understand that would happen no matter what. The words I wrote are enough to have him investigated and have him sent to prison. “But you didn’t stop there. You didn’t stop with whatever Pennington taught you. You kept going.”

“What?” His words are so sharp they could cut glass.