Chapter 6

Jocelyn

The weekend was long.

I threw myself into renovating the original house on the property.

After Caleb and I had built our dream house about an acre away, we decided to rent out the original house for extra income. The family that had been renting it moved out of state. So, I was cleaning it up and getting it ready to rent out again. Truthfully, the tenants that left had been really awesome and hadn't left the house in shambles. There was just the usual wear from a house that was lived in.

The week didn't go by so well either. Vincent and I were rather awkward around each other. Even though we tried to hide it to the best of our abilities, I could tell the others were catching on. Though, towards the end of the week, the tension had eased some. I was hoping Vincent would want to talk soon about how he was feeling and how everything would pan out.

I really hated being in limbo.

As I was driving home on Thursday, my phone pinged with a text. I looked at it when I was stopped at the next traffic light. It was from Vincent. My heart started pounding as I read it.

"I know I won't see you at work tomorrow since I am going to the new shop to handle the start of the construction there. I was wondering if you could come over after work tomorrow, say around 6?" He messaged.

"I will be there." I responded as the nerves started getting to me.

I didn't get much sleep that night and was, once again, unable to focus. I should have stayed home, but I knew even there I would have found no respite. I did leave early from work, though, so I could get freshened up and changed. I had no idea what I was walking into and decided to hope for the best, and plan for the worst. As much as my heart wanted to hold onto hope, I refused to give into it entirely.

When I got to Vincent's house, nothing seemed amiss. I didn't see any extra cars in his driveway, which led me to believe he was alone. He greeted me at the door and led me inside. Instead of going to the kitchen, he took me back towards Jack's room.

I was frantically trying to remember what days Vince had Jack this week, not entirely prepared to deal with a seven-year-old after everything that had transpired with so many loose ends on the table. But, if that's what needed to happen before we could sit down and talk, then so be it.

I was so focused on mentally preparing myself, I didn't catch on that Vincent had stopped before reaching Jack's room. I nearly ran into him and looked up at him, puzzled. "I'm sorry," he said, right as he shoved me into Jack's small play room and slammed the door closed, locking it behind me.

Confusion took hold before the nerves set in. I didn't see Jack anywhere in sight. The room had been picked up.

Why had he shoved me in here? The panic started to sink into my chest.

There were no windows to escape through in this room. The only way in and out of here was through the locked door...

My heart was in my throat as I tried to calm down and find a way out of this situation. Or, possibly more accurately, make sense of why this was happening in the first place. Had he shoved me in here as some type of revenge? Was he some type of serial killer and I had never caught onto it?

As I was fighting the panic, I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye. I jerked around, facing what I presumed was a threat. My eyes landed on a pair of familiar dark blue eyes that looked ready to murder something. Or rather, someone.

Riley!

He tore past me and straight to the locked door where he pounded on the solid wood. "You will let me out of here this instant, Parker! Or I am not going to be held responsible for whatever I do to this viper!"

The threat wasn't lost on me.

Slowly, I walked over to the only chair in the room. It was a child's seat, but it didn't matter. I took it and forced myself to breathe and to calm down, realizing this was Vincent's way of forcing us to face the elephant in the room. I had to admit this was a unique way of getting us together and would not have been my first choice if given the option. If I was being forced to face Riley head to head, I needed to be as calm, cool and collected as I could be. Right now, if I said anything or tried to defuse the situation in any way, it would just aggravate him more.

I knew Vincent was trying to do his best to remediate the situation, but I wasn't so sure it was something that could be salvaged at this point in the game.

"Oh my goodness Riley, grow a f*cking pair!" Vincent yelled through the door. "You've been holding onto this grudge for over a decade! Just talk to her!"

Riley scowled at me over his shoulder, as if this was all my fault. As if I had put Vince up to this.

I leveled him with a neutral look and waited patiently for him to make the first move.

Riley's face darkened as he accepted our fate and decided to make the most of it. He launched into a tyraid about how he fell head over heels in love with me back in high school and that I had most definitely had an emotional affair with him. And how I should be ashamed of myself for not only leading him on, but carrying on a relationship with Caleb after what I had done with him. "You aren't the loyal type," he accused viciously. "I know you can never be due to what happened between us and I will drag your name through the mud at every opportunity I can and scream your infidelity from the rooftops for all to hear so no one else has to have their heart broken by the cold, heartless snake you are."

I let him rant and rave. I allowed him the space to get everything out. To accuse me and charge me with whatever he thought was necessary. Yes, it was hard. Yes, it hurt. However, I understood it was part of the healing process. When he launched into his final part, though, it was hard not to say anything. To allow him the chance to finish.

"It's because of you I have never had a successful relationship," he accused, pacing the small area in front of the door. "You broke me, Jocelyn. You broke me so hard, I could never trust anyone else. You poisoned every relationship I ever had. Ruined any possibility of my future happiness because you deliberately made me fall in love with you before pulling the rug out from under me!"

He had become insecure. Always believing his partners were cheating on him due to his one experience with me.

The thing was, I never said we were in any kind of relationship. In my mind, I had never set that precedent. There had never been any form of communication indicating we had been anything more than friends. It had been a perceived assumption on his part, which given the circumstances, I understood how it had come about.

I wasn't trying to place the blame for our current circumstances on his shoulders alone. It was a burden both of us had to bear. We both ultimately played a part in this.

While I openly admitted to my part, I wasn't sure Riley would be able to face the part he played in his downfall.

"I'm convinced," he continued on after a moment of silent contemplation, "That you somehow spun our story in a way to paint you as the victim and Vincent took the bait, unwilling to accept you for the monster you truly are."