The reminder of her parents and the afternoon’s revelation seems to shake her. She regroups quickly. “Well, we run in the same social circles.”
“And you will steer away from me when we show up at the same event. Do I make myself clear?”
Her nostrils fume, her eyes calculating. But she concedes with one word, “Perfectly.”
For good measure I add, “You do not want to make me your enemy.”
“Funny, I thought you’d already made me yours.”
That truth lingers in the air around us, irrefutable. She may mean I made her my enemy when I dropped out of the game with Alayna. Or when I left it three years ago and entered therapy. But I think instead it’s more accurate that she became my foe that summer ten years ago—when I decided to break her heart.
I’d told her she was suffering from karma. Wasn’t I as well?
We’ve arrived at her apartment building. The cab pulls over to the curb. “Farewell, Hudson. This is for good, I suppose. The taxi’s on you.”
She gets out of the car. I don’t watch after her.
I instruct the driver to head back to The Bowery. There’s just enough time to collect my luggage before heading to the airport for my trip to Japan. If it were only the Plexis deal at stake, I’d cancel. But there’s something else now, something more important. It’s time to act on the information that Warren Werner gave me about the vulnerabilities of his company, and that will begin with a source in Japan.
When I return, my energy will be thrown into repairing my relationship with Alayna. There’s been serious damage done on both our parts, but we can move on, I think. I have to believe that. Because without her, there’s no reason for anything else.
Though much is in turmoil about me, I feel oddly at peace as we return to my penthouse. Celia is gone from my life, and there’s a freedom with that knowledge that I hadn’t expected. Like a long-growing tumor has finally been removed. There will be a scar, I know. I’ll rub at it and scratch at phantom aches. But it’s gone, and, with Alayna, we can finally begin the process of healing.
Chapter Twenty
Before
“Why can’t I just ditch tonight after the actual rehearsal? That’s the important part, right?” Chandler had been trying for twenty straight minutes to get out of Mirabelle’s wedding rehearsal dinner.
My mother tested the temperature of the curling iron¸ her mind clearly more on her task than on her son’s complaints. “I don’t understand why you’re so eager to abandon us.”
He’s fifteen, I wanted to tell her. That was reason enough.
“Because it’s boring!” He flung his hands out, exasperated.
“Chandler!” my mother warned, covering my sister’s ears as if she might be offended by the word boring. As if blocking the sound after the fact could undo that it had been heard.
But boring…that I could agree with, even though I hadn’t been fifteen for nine years. The entire family had spent the last week of August at Mabel Shores preparing for Mirabelle’s wedding weekend. Five days of nothing but social interaction. I was close to going insane. At my sister’s insistence, I’d agreed to not bring any work. It was a mistake. With my mind unoccupied on business, my thoughts returned again and again to my other addiction—the game.
Celia and I were between schemes at the moment—part of the reason I was so eager to concoct a new one. Every guest that walked through our house that week, every visitor, was a potential subject. What could I learn from her? I’d ask myself. Or him? Or them?
Somewhere I recognized that my obsession was getting out of hand. Our experiments had grown more and more complex, more intense, more frequent. Often even my work hours were infiltrated with daydreaming about the next project, the next scam. The week away had made me realize just exactly how consumed I’d become. I felt like a junkie who hadn’t scored in a while—jittery, agitated. On edge.
Needing something to occupy my time, I’d resorted to joining Mirabelle in my mother’s room as Sophia made her presentable for the evening’s rehearsal.
Chandler leaned against the doorframe. I could sense he was on the verge of giving up but not quite. “No one will miss me,” he said quietly.
“I’ll miss you.” My mother didn’t even try to make it sound like she meant it.
My brother and I exchanged a glance. I wasn’t close to Chandler—eleven years of separation made it difficult, not to mention I wasn’t the type to bond. But we were still family, and in that we shared the basest parts of our existence. We had the same parents, the same upbringing. We both knew that he could sneak away from the dinner and our mother would never notice.
Mirabelle knew this as well. Having remained quiet for the bulk of the conversation, she spun to face Chandler now. “I’ll miss you! So for one night, Chandler, can you forget about your friends and stay? For me?”
There wasn’t a person in the world who could say no to Mirabelle Amalie Pierce. The subject was dropped. Chandler left the room with a huff, but he’d stay for the night’s extravaganza.
It occurred to me that Mirabelle could have simply asked him to stay from the very beginning and saved the entire debate. I supposed she’d been giving Sophia a chance to be the mother. It was amazing, really, that she continued to do so. I started to wonder what it would take for Mirabelle’s faith to be broken and then caught myself. Those were the kind of thoughts that led to experiments. And no matter how desperate I was for a fix, I wouldn’t play on Mirabelle. I couldn’t.
I forced myself to concentrate on the scene at hand for distraction. Mirabelle sat at the vanity, my mother stood behind her, working on her hair. She was even, near as I could tell, sober. A memory flashed through my mind, or rather a collage of memories. Times that my sister and I had sat around my mother’s feet as she primped in front of that same mirror. She’d sit there for ages, dolling herself up. I’d watch as she applied her rouge, plucked her eyebrows, straightened her hair, and every time, I’d think how beautiful my mother was.
Though it had been a frequent occurrence, I’d seemed to have forgotten. Those had been good moments. There had been good times.
The memory inserted a warmth to the present, like a light had been focused on us, brightening the ordinary moment into something meaningful.
“Good thing your hair only hits your shoulders. We’d never get ready in time otherwise.” Even my mother’s complaining seemed less dreary.
“I should have cut it. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about this at all. I’m thinking I’ll get a pixie as soon as the honeymoon’s over. Thoughts?”
I bit back a smile. My mother hated short hair on girls.
“Are you trying to kill me?” But I noticed the hint of a smile on Sophia’s lips as well. “I still don’t know why you didn’t hire someone to do your hair and makeup tonight.”
Mirabelle shrugged. “I didn’t think I’d need to get made up tonight. I’ll have enough of that tomorrow.”
I studied her in the mirror, and I saw her lie. She’d hoped for this—for Sophia to insist on making her up instead. She remembered those times too, and Mirabelle, forever romantic that she was, had hoped to recapture it. She’d succeeded.
Perhaps I owed my sister’s optimism more credit.
“Thank you for being here, Hudson,” Mirabelle said when she caught my eye with her reflection. “It means a lot that you can share this time with me.”
Normally, I’d shrug her off. But the nostalgia made me strangely willing to chat. “I have to admit, this isn’t my thing. Yet, I’m glad I’m here too.” I hadn’t realized it until just that moment. She didn’t need to know that.
My mother took a strand of Mirabelle’s hair and wove it around the curling wand, seemingly oblivious to our conversation as she concentrated on her work.
“I’m sure you have a spiel waiting on the tip of your tongue, though,” Mirabelle said, touching up her lipstick. “How love is a myth and marriage the bane of all evil.”
I chuckled at the accur
acy of her statement. “Not to mention that you’re barely old enough to drink. Quite young to be signing off your entire life.”
Her face fell slightly. She’d wanted me to deny my disdain for the practice of romantic union, and I’d enforced it instead. Oh well. It was honest. What was I supposed to do? Lie?
So I wasn’t the type to put on niceties. But I could find another way to be supportive. Mirabelle had always been a bit of a Pollyanna. She’d make the best of anything. Maybe marriage actually would work for her. “I trust you know what you’re doing, Mirabelle. Don’t mind me.”
“I usually don’t.” Her grin was back, and I felt my shoulders relax. I hadn’t even realized I’d been tense. “And I do know what I’m doing. Adam is the best thing for me. He makes me happy. I make him happy. You know. It’s all a bunch of happy.”
Blah, blah, blah. It was what all the lovebirds said. Then a bump in the road, and everything fell apart. Love was so easily manipulated. So easily redirected. How could it ever be real? How could anyone be willing to give up their life for something so unreliable?
How could Mirabelle?
She must have read my thoughts in my expression because she added, “I mean, I know it won’t always be top of the world. There will be hard times. But none of that matters as long as we have each other.”
“Excuse me while I roll my eyes.”
“You won’t know until you find it yourself, Hudson.” She was the only one who ever spoke like I might find my own one true love. It was kind of charming, actually.
“But did you have to get married? Couldn’t you shack up together for a while first?” Like, until the euphoria faded, and she realized the ridiculousness of the notion of happily ever after.
“Nope. I have to get married.” She widened her eyes as she applied mascara to her lashes.
“Mirabelle!” So my mother was listening.
“Is there something you aren’t telling me, little sister?”
Mirabelle laughed, pausing her makeup application. “I’m not pregnant, you ass. I’m in love. And yes, I still have to get married. Because when you love someone,” she met my gaze in the mirror and said without a flicker in her confidence, “their world interests you more than your own. So much so that you disappear into them, and the only choice you have is to merge your life with theirs. Because otherwise, you cease to exist at all.”
It was more mumbo jumbo. But it struck me—somewhere deep inside me, a place that I didn’t recognize, reverberating in my bones and tingling through my nerve endings. So I let it sit and settle and didn’t refute.
A few silent moments later, it was my mother who spoke. “I couldn’t wait to marry your father. Did I ever tell you that?”
I froze, and I sensed Mirabelle did too. My mother never spoke about the past. Never anything pleasant, anyway. We’d grown up assuming that her marriage to our father was based on business. Jack’s father’s company had just gone under, but the Pierce name still held weight, and my father was an innovative thinker. The Walden family, on the other hand, had money and investments with no one to groom for takeover. Sophia Walden’s union to Jack solved a lot of problems.
We’d never been led to believe that there was love involved.
“No, Mom, you haven’t told us,” Mirabelle said quietly, and I could feel her silently urging Sophia to go on.
“We were more in love than anyone should have the right to be. It scared my father, I think. When we announced our engagement, he nearly had a heart attack. ‘How will he ever provide for you?’ As if my trust fund didn’t give me enough money to provide for myself.”
Sophia didn’t look up as she spoke, her focus pinned on a lock of hair that refused to lay the way she wanted it to. “But Daddy took Jack out for ‘a talking to.’ And when they came back, it was decided that we could get married as long as your father took over the Walden companies. It was a win-win as far as I was concerned. Our worlds were becoming entwined in every way possible.”
I noted her use of the word worlds and realized that had been what had spurred her trip down memory lane. My mother had also moved her world to be with Jack Pierce. Or Jack had moved his world to be with her. Such a strange thing to try to comprehend. It was easier for me to imagine my parents having sex than to imagine them being in love.
“My father wanted Jack to take over as soon as we were married. Since I wanted a short engagement, Jack spent a lot of that time at the office with Dad. I didn’t see him nearly as much as I would’ve liked. Our wedding day, though.” She sighed softly. “It was the happiest day I could imagine. There Jack was, in his tux. So handsome. I kept wishing the ceremony would hurry and get finished so I could jump him.”
“Mother!” Mirabelle feigned embarrassment. It was the sort of story she got off on. Even if it was coming from her parent.
“I was young once too.” Sophia’s face was bright, happier than I’d ever remembered seeing it.
“Then I hope you had a wonderful honeymoon.”
My mother’s wistful smile vanished at Mirabelle’s words. “Well, it started out well. But Jack had to leave the day after we arrived in Bora Bora. Company problems. He was in charge now. You know. If a wife had to be left alone on her honeymoon, then that’s what had to be done. The story of our lives after that.”
Mirabelle dropped her gaze. If I had to guess, she was fighting back tears. She was an easy crier.
Interesting, though, was how my mother’s words affected me. I’d always seen my mother encased in a hard shell of bitterness. Now, she seemed to shift in my view, and from this new vantage point, I saw something else surrounding her—something warm and tender. Approachable, even. A woman that she once was.
How fascinating would that study be? To examine where she came from to how she ended up. Maybe it was another scenario Celia and I could recreate. Another game we could try to play.
God, always the game…
My mother set the iron down. “But the wedding day was beautiful. And yours will be too.” She combed her fingers through the last curls she’d made then took Mirabelle by the shoulders. “Look at yourself. You’re just lovely.”
Mirabelle did as she was told. She smiled at her reflection, apparently pleased with her appearance. Or she was pleased with the experience. She reached up and patted one of Sophia’s hands. “Thank you, Mom. For everything.”
For the smallest space of time, while I watched as this mother and daughter shared a seemingly ordinary moment that was anything but ordinary, I sensed that there was something to life that I was missing. A color adjustment, perhaps. A flavor that I simply hadn’t been introduced to. A sound that hadn’t found its way to my ears. Something…more.
But that was mumbo jumbo too. If I needed proof, I only had to look back on the results of my experiments. How I lived—emotionless and free—that was all there was that was real. There was nothing more.
***
I discovered that evening that rehearsals were as draining as actual weddings. Though I’d attended a few out of obligation, I’d never been involved in them as Mirabelle had involved me. She’d convinced Adam to make me the best man. I was in the damn wedding party. It was the most hypocritical situation I could imagine myself in. All night I was asked, “Aren’t you so happy for Mira? Doesn’t she make a lovely bride?”
As happy as I can be and she’s lovely all the time could only be said so many times before responding grew wearying. In between the fake conversations and polite smiles, I imagined the schemes I could work. That one in the too-tight skirt—would she still be drooling over the dick who’d brought her if I convinced her the best man was into her? The waiter who kept flirting with Adam’s sister—would he cheat on his wife (he clearly wore a wedding ring) if she returned the attention? I knew I could get Mirabelle’s bridesmaid to slip away with me—we’d fucked occasionally in the past—but could I arrange for her fiancé to catch us?
It was maddening how many times I had to remind myself that Mirabelle’s wedding was
off limits for my experiments. So many times, in fact, that I stopped listening to myself. And when the bridesmaid in question took a seat next to me, the tug to attempt my play was too strong, the buzz overwhelming all reasonable thought.
I placed my hand on the back of her chair and leaned in. “You wouldn’t have chosen that seat, Melissa, if you didn’t mean to get something from me.”
She twirled a ringlet of hair around her finger and sat forward so I could easily peer down her dress. “And what exactly would I want from you, Hudson?”
“From the way you’re shoving your chest at me, I’d say you want me to fuck your tits in the pool house.” Under the table, I slid my hand up her skirt. “But don’t worry. I’d give your cunt proper attention as well.”
Her breathing picked up, and her eyes dilated. “I’ll go out first. Wait five minutes to follow.”
Perfect. “Be naked when I get there.”
I waited until she was out of sight before I tracked down Timothy, her fiancé. He was an intern in a law firm that would fall all over themselves to get Pierce Industries business. “Timothy, I have some off-the-record legal I might want some help with,” I told him. “Would you mind meeting me in the pool house in fifteen minutes?” An image of Melissa pushing her porn-size tits together while my cock thrust between flashed in my head, and I amended my request. “Make that twenty minutes.”
He agreed. Of course. And I was off for a night of what I loved best—scheming and sexing. My dick stiffened as I snuck away from the stage where dinner was soon to be served. I’d barely made it five feet, however, before a familiar voice called to me.
“Hudson?”
I spun right around at the sound of Mirabelle’s voice. “Uh, yeah?” Even though she couldn’t have any idea what I was up to, I felt guilty all the same. Thankfully, it was dark enough here that she couldn’t see the bulge in my pants.
She stood just at the edge of the stage. “Where are you going?”
“Just stepping away for a bit of a breather.”
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