Playing for Keeps Read online

  “Out.”

  “But this is your place.”

  “Yes, so if you’d please lock up when you leave, I’d appreciate it. Don’t be here when I get back.”

  Chapter 28

  #PlayingForKeeps

  Caleb worked hard in his life to avoid making bad decisions and being actively stupid.

  But he’d screwed up and he knew it.

  He honestly hadn’t thought about how it would look to Sadie, him having the file. He hadn’t thought of it because he’d had no intention of ever reading it. Except that by not telling her, he’d hurt her.

  He’d made a mistake, a bad one, and he had to fix it. Not quite sure how yet, wanting to honor Sadie’s request that he be gone when she got home, he went to his office. His plan was to cancel his day and figure out how to make things up to Sadie. He needed to somehow convince her that even though he was an idiot, he was worth taking a shot on.

  He was exiting the elevator on the penthouse floor of his offices when his cell buzzed an incoming call.

  Sadie.

  He picked it up so fast his head spun. “Sadie,” he said in huge relief. “You okay?”

  He heard a soft sigh.

  “Okay,” he said. “You’re not. Where are you, I’ll come to you and—”

  “No. Don’t. I’m . . . fine, but I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want to have this discussion with you, but I realize now I have to.”

  The foreboding that filled him made his knees wobble. “Sadie—”

  “I need you to know that I’m not that same person I used to be,” she said. “I’ve grown up a lot and moved on, and I don’t want to be defined by who I was.”

  He was straining to hear her quiet voice while being followed by two admins and a sister from the elevator to his office, all of whom wanted a piece of him before the morning got started. He shook his head at them all, signaling he needed a moment, and then shut himself in his office. “No one should be defined by who they used to be,” he told her.

  “That’s easy enough to say when you don’t know who I used to be,” she countered. “The file in your possession . . . It undoubtedly exposes things that I never wanted exposed, things that will change how people think of me. How you think of me.”

  Sienne opened Caleb’s office door and tried to come inside but he pointed at her to get out. This time he locked the door. He’d pay for that later, but at the moment he didn’t care. “Sadie, to me you’ve never been, nor will you ever be, whatever that damn file says,” he told her. “The file’s been deleted from my computer. From my server, in fact.” He’d done that first thing. “No one can ever see it, including me, I promise you that.”

  There was a pause while she hopefully considered the fact that he was being honest, that he’d truly never read the file and never would.

  “But at least one of your sisters knows everything in it,” she said.

  He closed his eyes. True. And he’d promised not to lie to her. “Yes. But—”

  “See, the thing is that secrets don’t work,” she said. “We can’t . . . we can’t do what we were doing with your sister knowing things about me that you don’t.”

  “I don’t care about that,” he said.

  “But I do,” she said. “Secrets hurt, Caleb. I’m not going to be the reason maybe something happens to your relationship with your family. I told you about the cutting. About how my parents caught onto me when I was sixteen. How they freaked.” She drew a shaky breath. “I told you about me being forced to get help.”

  It was the second time she’d used the word forced when she’d talked about that time in her life, and he sat down—again—because he realized she was going to tell him what he was missing, and that he wasn’t going to like it.

  “What I didn’t tell you was that I was detained under the 5585 hold,” she said. “It’s a psychiatric hold—”

  “For minors,” he said quietly, feeling anything but quiet. A 5585 hold was an involuntary hold for seventy-two hours minimum, and could be done against the minor’s will. For someone who was at risk or in danger from themselves, it was a good thing. But for a teenage girl who hadn’t been suicidal, just mixed up and trying to figure out how to navigate a family who hadn’t understood her, it would have been . . . Jesus. He couldn’t even imagine. Terrifying probably didn’t begin to cover it. “How long did they keep you?” he asked, unable to keep the emotion out of his voice.

  “The first seventy-two hours were to evaluate my so-called mental health crisis,” she said. “But because I was”—she let out a mirthless laugh—“stubborn, to say the least, and refused to communicate, I was held for an additional fourteen days before being able to convince my medical professionals that I could be released on my own recognizance and not be a danger to myself.”

  Two weeks in a strange place with medical professionals deciding your every move and no say or control over anything. For anyone, it would have been a living nightmare. For a girl like Sadie, who thought and acted outside the box, who’d been misunderstood all her life and felt like she had no one on her side, it would have nearly killed her.

  “If I wasn’t certifiable before,” she said, “I was certainly close after.”

  Her voice sounded hollow and he felt furious and also devastated for her. And sick that he’d brought it all back to her. “Sadie—”

  “I assume that something like that is exactly what your people are supposed to weed out, right?” she asked. “So consider me weeded out, Caleb.”

  And then she disconnected.

  Christ. He’d done this. Driven a wedge between them, made her feel like she couldn’t trust him. And he had to pay the price for that. He unlocked his office door and opened it. As suspected, Sienne nearly fell inside.

  She took one look at his face and closed the door at her back. “What is it?”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose and drew a deep breath.

  “It’s that bad that you’re trying to figure out how to tell me?” Sienne asked.

  “No, I’m trying to figure out how to kill you and get away with it.”

  Sienne made a show of looking at her calendar for the day. “Sorry. I don’t have time to be murdered today. Want to schedule it in for next week?”

  “Don’t.”

  At his tone, she dropped her playful one and stared at him. “What’s wrong?”

  “Mission accomplished.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You did it. You wanted to make sure I was protected, and you did. Because when Sadie found the file you sent me, she dumped my sorry ass.”

  “Oh shit.” Sienne moved farther into the room and dropped into the chair in front of his desk. “What was she doing in your e-mail?”

  “I had my laptop open at my kitchen table.”

  “Are you shitting me?” she asked. “We put all these safeguards on you to keep you protected and you do something stupid like leave your laptop open where anyone could get their hands on it? Seriously?”

  “It wasn’t just anyone, Sienne. It was Sadie.”

  “Okay,” she said. “That was bad, but surely if you explained—”

  “—Explain what, exactly? That you ran her life through background checks more regimented than the military, even after I promised her I wouldn’t do that?”

  “Well, that was a stupid promise.”

  “The file brought up bad memories for her about her past, very bad. As I’m sure you know.”

  Sienne’s expression softened. “She told you?”

  “She felt she had to. She didn’t want to be a secret between you and me.”

  Sienne sighed. “Dammit.” She shook her head. “I like her. I like her a lot.”

  “She dumped me.”

  “Oh, Caleb. I’m so sorry. Maybe if I called her—”

  “Don’t even think about it,” he said. “What I need from you is what I already asked you for—stay the hell out of it.” His phone buzzed. It’d been buzzing consistently all morning, w