by Shen, LJ
“We’d had a fight.”
“What were you fighting about?” Every single word I uttered was cocked and ready to create an explosion. I wasn’t normally like this with Célian, but I wasn’t scared of him. I was terrified for him. I hadn’t known he harbored so much pain.
We resumed our walk to the next traffic light. He stared at his huge hands. “Camille was my baby sister, talented as hell and seriously fucking beautiful, inside and out. You remind me of her in the way you’re passionate about a story. Only she had the same feeling for fashion.”
That curved my mouth in a smile. I believed him. Célian looked like a god among men. There was no reason to think Camille would be anything less than striking, not to mention ambitious and highly intelligent.
“Camille only had one problem, and that was her boyfriend.”
“What? Why?” I asked.
The light turned green, and he seemed in a hurry to get to the office. I had to practically jog to keep up with his pace.
“Because the bastard’s name was Phoenix Townley.”
I sucked in a breath. Phoenix represented a tragedy bigger than he could shoulder.
“Camille and Phoenix had a bit of an illicit affair at work. I didn’t particularly like it. Then again, I hardly gave a fuck about who she was fucking as long as she was safe. My father, on the other hand, lost his shit. Cam and Phoenix were young and volatile, not to mention they once did very unprofessional things against her office door that I will never be able to erase from my memory—and trust me, I’ve tried to forget those sounds.” He cringed visibly. “If there’s one thing my father and I were in agreement about—and it’s not a stretch when I say it was literally just one thing—it was that Camille and Phoenix weren’t a good match. Phoenix was reckless as hell, and she was a good apple he wanted to take a bite from and throw in the trash. He was a damn good reporter, despite the fact that his daddy got him the position, but he also liked crack and whores, two things that didn’t mix well with the fact that he was dating my baby sister.”
Jesus Christ. Phoenix had done a lot of growing up during the time he was away. I knew that, because there was no way the man I knew today was a drug addict.
“I’m not even sure why the fuck I’m telling you this.” Célian ran his hand through his hair, shaking his head, exasperated. “But I’m halfway through, so I better finish. My father decided to send Phoenix off to the Middle East. You can never run out of action there. I tried to convince him not to play God, because that shit is dangerous—doesn’t matter what the cause is. Camille was livid, even after Phoenix was gone and my father told her about the crack and the whores, trying to convince her to forget him. As he put it, Phoenix had clearly chosen his work over her, so there was nothing to lament. But she was lovesick. Or maybe she was just sick, but she loved Phoenix, and Mathias didn’t respect that.”
We now stood in front of LBC’s building, neither of us making a move to go inside. There was a finality about stepping back into the realm of the office, where we’d have to remain professional, that we didn’t seem to want to face.
My lower lip trembled, and I felt my nostrils moisten. I wanted to cry so badly, but I kept myself strong for him.
“What did you tell her?” I asked. “What made her run into the street?”
“After he’d been gone a few months, she decided to go visit him. They’d been secretly talking and were going to meet in Istanbul. She sold it to Mathias as a business trip. She’d write a piece about the thriving fashion industry in Turkey. She told me she wanted to marry Phoenix, that she couldn’t sleep or eat or shit without thinking about him. She’d lost so much weight. She said he’d been clean for a while, that they were going to give it another shot, that Mathias and I didn’t know the whole story. In that moment I felt so filthy about what my father had done that I decided to tell the truth. I told her Phoenix had never had any doubts about her, but that Mathias had kicked him out of her life, shipped him away, and I hadn’t tried hard enough to stop him—probably none of us could stop him.”
“But you didn’t have a hand in doing it,” I said softly.
He shrugged one shoulder. “I couldn’t stop Mathias. His hatred for the Townleys knows no bound. If you think I’m a hateful fucker, you’ve seen nothing yet.”
“Why is that?”
“Because Townley is actually loved and respected? Because his son didn’t ruin his marriage? The fuck should I know? To me, they’re just another champagne-and caviar-eating family LBC needs to feed.”
Célian bowed his head. His face was stoic, but his eyes bled pain. He looked like The Warrior, shredded into ribbons and tough as steel.
“The moment I confessed, she bolted. The hurt and rage I saw in her eyes… I ran after her when I saw her under the bus’s wheels. Dragged her out. At first I thought she was okay. There was no blood or anything. She died eight hours later of internal bleeding. My father can’t look me in the face anymore because I told her the truth, and I don’t exactly blame him. If it wasn’t for the other shit between us, I would actually understand.”
Silence hung in the air. I wanted to hug him, but knew better than to try. So I did the next best thing, the thing my mom used to do whenever I cried, which wasn’t that often. She’d kiss the tips of her fingers and press them against my heart.
He scowled. “The fuck you doing, Brooklyn girl?”
“Kissing your pain away,” I whispered, not wondering, even for a second, how he knew where I lived, “Manhattan prince.”
He turned around and headed for the building silently, and I followed suit. The entire elevator ride upstairs, I thought about Phoenix. About what it must be like for Célian to see him around after what happened. About the tattoo on Phoenix’s forearm, of the smiling girl. Of Camille. And how he, too, was still dealing with the aftermath of her death. About how it must feel for Célian to spend time with his father here every day, or even look at his fiancée’s face. August. My mind reeled. He said they were getting married in August. Less than three months away.
The elevator dinged, and we both rushed out. I didn’t dare look at his face after all he’d shared, after how he’d opened up to me. Then it occurred to me that my boss didn’t know anything about my personal life—not about Dad, not about Mom, and certainly not about Milton. I arrived at my desk, sat back, and stared at nothing for half an hour.
A message from Grayson in our company’s chatroom snapped me out of my reverie.
Grayson: Reminding you to call your insurance like you asked me to.
Grayson: Another friendly reminder: I’m not your PA.
Grayson: Mr. Laurent, I know you’re probably reading this, so let me just say I admire the suit you’re in today. Not that I’m checking you out. And not that you don’t normally deliver in the fashion sense. How do you undo a message? God, if you can’t send me an Abercrombie and Fitch model as a boyfriend, at least send me filters.
Oh, yes. I’d told Grayson I had an insurance issue so I wouldn’t forget. I’d lied.
I took my phone out and dialed the collection agency to talk about different payment plans. Now that I had a real job, I needed to start working through our debt.
I gave the representative on the other end of the line my name and details, then asked if she needed my credit card number. It was going to suck to see the money finally coming into my bank account just evaporating right back out.
She snapped her gum in my ear, her voice lethargic. “No need, ma’am. Says here the account’s been settled.”
I blinked, staring at all the yellows and oranges and reds on my screen, not really deciphering her words. “Excuse me?”
She sighed. “Says here a payment has been made. You no longer owe us anything, ma’am. Anything else you need help with today?”
I raised my head and looked into the conference room, where Célian sat with Mathias and a bunch of guys in suits he referred to as bigwigs. They were probably discussing money issues and ratings. Those were the meeti
ngs the staff wasn’t invited to. I’d once heard Mathias shouting at Célian that he was sheltering us from the bad stuff, and Célian had laughed and retorted, “As your son, let me assure you, you have a lot to learn about protecting what’s yours. Take a fucking seat, old man.” Célian was talking to one of the suits animatedly, then he smiled his patronizing smile and patted the back of his hand like he was the most adorable idiot he’d ever had the displeasure of meeting.
Could he?
Did he…?
Mathias stared at him with a disdain that chilled my bones. All the other men and women in the room stared at him intently, listening to every word he said.
No.
Célian was too brutal, too callous to do something like this.
Besides, how would he even know?
Then, as if sensing my gaze, his face angled toward mine and he shot me a look I couldn’t decode. Anger? Annoyance? Desire? All three?
“Ma’am? Ma’am, is there anything else I can do for you today?”
I shook my head and got back to the woman on the phone. “No, everything is perfectly clear. Thank you very much.”
Jude never got a follow-up on that sex-a-thon invitation from this morning.
After spilling my guts all over her orange Chucks earlier in the afternoon, watching her eyes swim with emotions that had threatened to drown me into despair, I had decided it was in everyone’s best interest if we took the night to reevaluate the clusterfuck known as our office fling.
To say I wasn’t the oversharing type would be the understatement of the millennium. Yet somehow, in that kosher deli that smelled like death and looked like clinical depression, I’d talked about Camille in a way I never had before—not with Maman and not with Kate, and certainly not with my sorry excuse for a fiancée or deadbeat father.
I grabbed my coat and made my way out of my office after we finished the show. Judith was still typing away on her computer, paying her dues as a junior reporter. She actually had the audacity to look pissed again, for a reason beyond my grasp or care. Most women were content to simply spend time with me, in any capacity. Yet Jude got to get fucked, have lunch dates, and have me pay for her fucking life—granted, unbeknownst to her—and she still acted like I was public enemy number one.
After a grueling ratings meeting with the bigwigs earlier today, I’d taken my father aside and explained to him, again, that if he ever touched Jude, I was going to unleash his dirty laundry, one stained panty at a time, and kill the pristine Laurent name he’d been riding all the way to the bank.
Anyway, seeing as pussy wasn’t in the cards for me tonight, I decided to settle for going face to face with a dick.
I’d pay Phoenix fucking Townley a visit.
Phoenix lived in SoHo, which hardly surprised me. It was a great place to find any of your vices, from crack and dope to dead prostitutes. I located his new address in his HR file and took an Uber straight to his house.
He opened the door on the third knock, wearing nothing but white briefs. His blond curls fell on his forehead, his face flush with the humidity that knocked New York on its pale ass on the verge of every summer. He no longer looked like a kid, and it bothered me that he’d continued aging, while Camille stayed frozen, and that Judith might see him in that light—as a man, and not a bad-looking one at that.
“Cel.” He greeted me with no particular tone to his voice, like my presence on his doorstep was ordinary.
He left the door open, turning around and ambling back to his couch in a silent invitation. The apartment was small, new, and hip. And yes, I died a little using the word hip, even if just in my mind. I strolled directly to the red-bricked, trendy kitchen with intentions of fixing myself a drink. But the cupboards were full of bullshit ramen noodles. I opened the fridge and found nothing but root beer, pink lemonade, and nyloned wet cat food. Not a drop of alcohol in sight.
“Just because you’re a pussy doesn’t mean you need to eat like one.” I slammed his fridge shut, groaning.
“There’s a stray under my building that I feed. Lost souls connect to one another in a quiet way. If you’re looking for booze, hate to break it to you, but I quit.” He freefell to his couch with a thud, slouching and flipping channels on his TV. Was he expecting a medal? A bright sticker? Or maybe just for me to not punch him in the face.
Phoenix settled on BBC America. I hated that he wasn’t stupid. It made hating him more difficult.
“Mouthwash?” I asked.
“Nope.”
“Pot?” Everyone had fucking pot, even my fifty-seven-year-old Eastern European housekeeper, who also had a crucifix the size of my bathroom dangling on her meaty neck.
“Quit everything,” he said. “The alcohol, the drugs—”
“The whores?” I cut in, swiveling around and cracking open a can of root beer. I took a sip, decided it tasted like rotten anus, and dumped it in his sink.
Last time we’d had an actual conversation was when he’d tried to convince me to talk to my father about sending him packing to the Middle East. I’d said I’d try, and I sort of had, but in all honesty, I wasn’t convinced he deserved my sister. Also, I had no power over my father, especially when it came to Cam. He’d barely let me hang out with my own sister when we were kids, deeming me the troublemaker and her his princess.
The time we’d seen each other before that, Phoenix and I hadn’t really done much talking. I saw Camille upset after the entire doped-whore incident and had decided to rearrange the attributes of his face. A broken nose and three cuts in his eyebrows later, Phoenix had a pretty clear idea of my feelings toward him.
Consequently, he knew this was not a social call.
He shook his head, staring at the ceiling, his hands tucked under his head. “I never touched the prostitute. We scored some drugs together, yeah, but she was half-naked because she was an idiot and tried to seduce me. I never cheated on your sister. I was a fucked-up boyfriend, sure, but I never wronged her.”
“I’m sensing I should somehow be impressed by this revelation.” I yanked his fridge open again, this time trying the sugar-free, organic pink lemonade.
Spat it out.
Maybe sober life is punishment enough for Townley Jr.
“Not everything is a battle of words and power, Cel.”
He was the only person to call me that, and I’d never understood why. We weren’t close, before or after he’d dated Camille.
“You know, I tried to call you several times after she died,” he told me. “I couldn’t stop going over the last thing I said to her, the last thing she said to me, when we were about to meet in Turkey.”
I rubbed my jaw, moving it from side to side. I’d come here to warn him that my stay-the-fuck-away-from-Judith warning for Mathias extended to him. But somehow, we were now talking about Camille. It was the second time today I’d had to share her memory with someone else.
Not to be a sappy shit, but I really did miss my sister every single minute. She was the only thing that had resembled normal in my family. With Cam, things had been simple.
I loved her, and she’d loved me.
I’d had her back, and she’d had mine.
Mathias had fucked up, and I’d failed her, and then I’d chosen to tell her the truth when she was standing on the edge of the fucking street, like an idiot.
“Say it,” I spat.
I wanted to have that piece of Cam, too—a new piece that would make her feel alive, even if just for a second.
Phoenix sat forward on the couch, his elbows propped on his knees. He clutched his head, staring down at the floor.
“I told her I was clean, that I’d changed, and that I was crazy about her ass. She believed me. We talked about Istanbul, and she said she was going to wait for me until I came back from the Middle East, no matter when it was. Do you know what I said to her after that?”
He looked up to me, his eyes shimmering. I shook my head. I understood love as a concept, but every time people started talking like Phoenix, I
automatically assumed they were reciting a Sarah Jessica Parker movie. It didn’t seem real.
“I told her I’d never wanted to give her up, that what we had wasn’t simple, but it was real. That I needed her. That I didn’t know if we could work it out, but I would damn well try my best.” He looked up at me. “I knew your dad had a bounty on my head, but I didn’t care.”
I filled in the rest in my head. And then Camille had talked to me and found out why Phoenix really left—that they were Romeo and Juliet. That they stood no chance, because their families—my family—would never let them be together.
He reached out to me, and I froze. If hugging it out was his way of getting over his feud, he was obviously still doing drugs. Then I looked down and noticed the tattoo: Camille laughing back at me—a familiar smile with too much teeth and the eye wrinkles that upset her every time she looked into a magnifying mirror but I thought only made her prettier.
“Why did you come here, Cel? I can’t bring her back, and you don’t want to patch things up between us.” He wiped his nose on his bare bicep.
“I didn’t come here for Camille. I came here because if I find you going anywhere near Judith Humphry, I will bash your head against the first available surface and get rid of the evidence in a way that would make it impossible to find you.”
I knew what I’d just had said could bite me so hard in the ass, I would have nowhere left to shit from. Still, I couldn’t help myself.
Phoenix stood, walked over to his open-plan kitchen, and poured himself some of the nasty lemonade. “That’s for Jude to decide.”
Had she told him about her father? About her debt? About her life? I inspected him with a frown as he swiveled to face me and continued.
“Jude is building a network of friends at work. I’m glad to be one of them. You, the Laurents, hold so much power that you sometimes forget you’re not real monarchs. People—your employees—are not your servants. Look at what happened to your father. He’s done everything he could to try to control me, and his staff, and even you. Where is he now? After multiple heart attacks, he’s professionally irrelevant. You’re the one calling the shots at LBC, and your mother—his divorcée—is the one controlling the board. He has nothing left. To maintain power, you have to distribute it, too.