In high school, I got to live my dream for the first time. Libby. She was loudmouthed and sarcastic and spent all her time surrounded by theater geeks, because they were the only ones who didn’t call her ugly names. In denim cutoffs and ripped fishnets, she got in trouble more than once for punching anyone who insulted her body. We dated for six months, but I was seventeen and stupid and I wasn’t enough for her.
In my early twenties, a roving pack of my father’s business friends dragged me to a strip club. The opening act on the main stage? A “joke stripper.” Here was the joke: she was too big to be a real dancer. She came out in a go-go outfit, swung around on the pole for a bit, and everybody laughed. Everybody. A few people thrust tips at her, but they were all laughing.
She was smiling the whole time. Radiant and self-possessed, in those brief moments, she owned the crowd.
When the main show started, I found her. She’d changed into street clothes and was lingering by the bar, holding a drink.
“Good show,” I told her, and she smiled again, just like on stage. Bright and brilliant.
“Thanks,” she said, tossing her hair. “I’m here every Friday.”
“You know, not everybody thinks it’s a joke,” I told her. “I bet I’m not the only one in here who’d rather see you as the main attraction.”
She just laughed, gesturing for another drink. “Is that the best line you’ve got?”
Slightly deflated, I glanced back at the guys who were responsible for this in the first place. They didn’t even seem to notice I was gone, too busy trying to lock eyes with one of the other dancers.
“Sorry, I just thought you’d like to know your work is appreciated,” I told her, resisting the urge to slink off and nurse my wounded pride, along with a scotch.
And then, she just grinned at me. “You think you’re the first guy to come up to me in here?”
The rest of the night was a damn waste of my time, but I learned an important lesson.
From then on, I never assumed. I approached every woman like she was the belle of the ball, no longer assuming that she couldn’t see herself the way I saw her. It usually worked, but Meg was a special case.
She had confidence, but she also had doubts. She had to grow into the realization of how much I wanted her, how much I love her.
And now I know she’s lying to me, and it kills.
It’s like a physical pain, a knot in my chest. How can I just pretend it’s not there? More importantly, how can I possibly ask the question?
Instead, I just keep withdrawing. It’s easier that way. If she doesn’t want to tell me the truth, if she doesn’t want to tell me anything, well…
That’s her decision. Not mine.
I’ve just gotten off the phone with Bob, advising me of the date and time of the first deposition. This one is for Meg, who’s considered a key witness. Since she sat in for the termination meeting, it’s basically her job to be there to testify in any wrongful termination suits - but it would be a lot more convenient if she didn’t also happen to be my wife.
Bob has mixed feelings on the issue. Obviously, her testimony is still important, but he’s not sure how much weight the prosecution is going to put on it. At this point, we’re moving forward on the assumption that it’s unlikely we will land in court. It’s all about convincing Mike Morgan and his team of bloodsuckers to back the fuck off.
I text Meg, quickly, with the date and time. It takes her a while to answer.
Okay.
That’s it. That’s all I get.
My phone starts going off - a phone call, this time, which I consider not answering. I sort of recognize the number, but I can’t quite place it.
“Hello?”
“Adrian.” Oh - fuck. It’s Tom. One of the senior partners, no doubt calling to send his condolences about the end of my professional career. Because he thinks I actually care. “How are you, these days?”
“Just fine, thanks.” I clear my throat. “A bit busy at the moment, actually.”
“Look, Adrian. I saw the interview.” He sighs. “It’s terrible, the way you’re being dragged through the mud on this. I just hope you can get this straightened out, because I don’t mind telling you, the board is on the verge of making you a hell of an offer. But obviously, we can’t have a scandal around.”
“An offer for what?” I’m playing dumb, and I know I’m playing dumb, but I want to hear him say it.
“We need a new CEO,” he says. “I know you left for a reason, but this company is your family’s legacy. You can’t just…”
“Thanks, Tom,” I cut him off. “The well-wishes are very much appreciated, but I wouldn’t want any of my scandal-slime to rub off on you.”
And with that, I hang up.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
MEG
“Adrian?”
I walk into his office, searching. I just got home from work and he’s nowhere to be found. I’ve decided it’s high time to tell him about my dad - he deserves to know. Even if he’s angry that I kept it from him for so long, that’s my cross to bear.
So I’m home early. There’s a document open on his computer, and it draws my gaze, even as I tell myself I probably shouldn’t look. I always read his books, but only after they’re finished. He doesn’t like it when I peek over his shoulder.
As soon as I see the first few words, I’m sucked in.
Even as Dirk’s heart raced, there was a cold, empty feeling in the center of his chest.
He would fight this with everything he had, but even still, a part of him knew it was already over.
The moment she saw his face, she knew something was wrong. But she pretended not to notice, going straight into the kitchen with a bag of groceries, until he walked in after her, caging her against the open fridge with his body.
“Who’s Paul?”
She froze.
When she finally spoke, her words tumbled from numb lips. “Paul? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Dirk slammed his hand on the freezer door. “Don’t lie to me!” he shouted, as Amanda flinched.
“He’s nobody.” Her voice was pleading as she turned around to face him, tears already gathering in her eyes. “He’s just a guy.”
This isn’t happening.
This can’t be real.
It’s a nightmare. It has to be. Driven by my own, stupid insecurities.
Dirk’s head was swimming with all kinds of excuses and explanations that his fiancee was too ashamed even to voice. Or maybe she just didn’t care enough to keep trying to lie. He could already see the truth in her face, and she was going pale as the first few words of her confession stuttered out.
The ringing in Dirk’s ears made it impossible to remember or process most of what she was saying. He tuned in mid-sentence:
“…and he just…he just cares about me, which is all I ever wanted, it’s not complicated, I just want to be with somebody nice…and easy to be with…” She shook her head at him, face streaked with tears. “You know it hasn’t been that way for us in a long time. I don’t think it ever will be again.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Dirk growled. Even as the sense of inevitability grew in the back of his mind, he wasn’t ready to give up. He wasn’t ready to stop fighting for her.
But that’s the thing. Who are you really fighting for? The Amanda you fell in love with would never do this.
She’s not who you thought she was.
“I’m talking about being happy, Dirk!” she burst out in a sob. “I want to be happy, for once in my life.”
“We were happy,” he insisted, knowing it was futile. “Or was that a lie for you, too?”
“I thought I was,” she sniffled. “But this is different, Dirk. I’m so sorry it had to happen like this. I didn’t want it to. But I care about you. I had my time with him, and we decided…that was just going to be it, for us. I didn’t want you to find out, because I knew it would hurt you.”
Fuck.
“Get out,” he said, flatly. “Send me your new address and I’ll make sure you get all of your belongings.”
“But…” She swallows hard. “I don’t…”
“What? You don’t have anywhere to go?” he snarled. “Don’t tell me I have to state the obvious.”
“He’s not…” She was hugging herself tightly, staring at the floor. “He doesn’t live alone.”
Of course.
Of course.
Fucking perfect.
I stand there, staring at the blinking cursor at the end of the document, for a long time.
He’s not going to publish this. I know he’s not going to publish this, it’s unpublishable, it would ruin everything he’s built with Dirk and Amanda and piss everybody off. This isn’t their story.
He thinks this is our story.
Or, at the very least, he suspects it. He never would’ve written this unless it came from somewhere authentic, somewhere real.
Shit.
I’m being deposed as a key witness in two days.
Curled up on the opposite side of the bed, it feels like Adrian is miles away.
He might as well be, for all we’re talking to each other. I shift slightly, sighing - honestly not trying to get his attention, but I can feel him looking at me.
“You want to ask me something?” I try, staring at the darkness above me, trying to make out the ceiling.
“Do I need to?” he counters, after a moment of silence.
I’m picking absently at a loose thread on the duvet cover. “No. But I would’ve expected at least a…casual interest.”
“You know what I’m dealing with here, Meg.” The tension comes through in his voice. “If you’re trying to test me…”
“What we’re going through,” I cut him off, rolling over to face him. “Not everything is about you.”
“Except this is about me,” he insists. “I know it’s affecting you too, but you don’t understand -”
“My dad came back,” I blurt out.
There’s a long pause.
Adrian swallows audibly. “Meg…”
“It’s fine.” I roll back over. “I’m handling it. He doesn’t want money or anything. Just wants to make peace with me. But that’s what I’ve been dealing with. Just in case, you know, you thought I was cheating on you with some guy named Paul.”
I always swore Adrian’s anger level actually changes the temperature in the room, and tonight is no different. I can feel it radiating from him in waves before he speaks again.
“You weren’t meant to see that.” Ice cold, to complement the heat of anger behind it.
“Well, I did,” I tell him. “I just don’t understand why you didn’t talk to me.”
“Of course.” He scoffs quietly. “You wouldn’t.”
I stare at the wall, seething in frustration. “You don’t trust me,” I tell him. “Not really. You never have, because you spent so much time pining over me, and not believing that I could ever understand your feelings, now it’s like I’m some other mysterious species. If you’d just told me how you felt from the beginning…”
Adrian sighs heavily. “Right. Back to this. I was supposed to somehow just know, without an inkling of encouragement, that maybe you might kinda-sorta share my feelings if I expressed them, even though you were telling everybody who would listen how much you hated me - even though you were working so hard to wall me out. If only I’d just gone for it! That would solve all our problems.”
I throw up my hands. “Because of course, I hated you for no reason at all. It’s not like you couldn’t changed that by being, I don’t know, a little less hateful.”
He looks at me, his forehead creased in a frown. “I was never hateful to you.”
“You’re right,” I snap. “It was worse than that. You were thoughtless, Adrian - like I just didn’t matter to you. How could I possibly show interest in you? How could I make myself even more vulnerable than I already was?”
“Like you didn’t matter?” Adrian sits up, eyes glinting in the darkness. “Do you have any idea what I did for you? How many times I went to bat for you when those promotions came up, and you refused to take them. I tried. I tried to get you away from me, I knew we were bad for each other, but you couldn’t see your own value. It’s cute at first, but God, Meg, it gets annoying after a while.”
Annoying?
Fuck you, Risinger.
“And if I left, where would we be now?” I challenge him.
“I don’t know,” he mutters. “We wouldn’t be at each other’s throats, that’s for sure.”
This is utterly insane. I don’t even know how to respond to that. “Are you really trying to say that one fight is bad enough to erase everything else we’ve had?”
He shakes his head. “It’s not one fight, Meg. You know it’s not. It’s everything behind it. I’m angry, you’re angry…we’re angry people, and we both have our reasons to be, but that doesn’t make it any easier.”
I’m having flashbacks to that moment in the hotel, during that conference when our affair really kicked off. He said it was complicated, being with me. He was right. I didn’t want to admit it, don’t want to admit it now, but he’s right.
There’s just so much baggage. Most of the time, it doesn’t matter. We can fuck and cuddle and watch TV and eat dinner together, and none of those things require us to confront our demons, but when things go wrong…this is inevitably the path we’re going to go down.
Because no, it’s not about the writing. It’s about everything. Every time he raised his voice to me, every time he made unreasonable demands, every time he put me in the position of defending him to his resentful staff. Every sneer, every little poke at my personal life, all the times he guilted me into staying late, every time he rolled his eyes at something that was important to me.
Oh, but see, I really liked you is a cop-out excuse. He knows it, I know it, but it’s all he’s got.
“I always feel like I have to apologize for being angry,” I tell him, quietly.
“I never asked you to,” he says. “I never wanted you to. But I do need you to forgive me.”
For a moment, there’s just the sound of us breathing.
“But I did,” I protest, softly.
He sighs. “I can’t do this, Meg. Not right now. I need to sleep.”
I have a feeling he’s right.
And I’m right.
Not halfway through breakfast on the morning of the deposition, the whole production devolves into a shouting match in the kitchen. A tiny part of my brain separates from myself and looks down on what I’m doing, tsking softly, while the rest of me is consumed with figuring out why he was so content to stew in his own suspicions, instead of talking to me.
“You know the real reason why I didn’t ask what you were doing?” he demands. “Where you were going, who you were talking to? Because I was afraid of the answer. I know you’re not like that, I know, I really do. But nobody ever is. Until, one day, they are.”
I’m so sick of this, already, but I can’t let this conversation go. “You’re not making any sense.”
“There’s love, and there’s trust, and then there’s just being pragmatic. Nobody ever thinks they’re going to be cheated on.” He waves his hands in an exasperated gesture. “There’s…I mean…Christ. I don’t know what I mean. I probably know you as well as anyone can, but there are things nobody can know about a person.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean? That you don’t know me?” I stare at him, my heart squeezing painfully in my chest. Of everything he’s said to me over the years, this is what hurts the most. “Adrian, I gave you…fuck, I gave you five years of my life, every ounce of effort and motivation I had, I drained myself dry for you. And I haven’t held anything back since we’ve been together. How can you not know me? What does that even mean?”
“See, this is why I don’t talk.” He squeezes his eyes tightly shut, for a moment. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to see t
his rationally. This isn’t high school. If you haven’t figured out by now that people betray each other…the last people you would expect…that it’s a possibility you need to keep in the back of your mind when you’re with someone, no matter who they are, no matter how devoted they seem, I don’t know what to tell you.”
I could claw his eyes out.
“So, do I have to worry about you, then?” I demand.
His face changes instantly. “Of course not,” he exclaims, his posture instantly defensive. “That’s not what this is…”
A moment later he realizes what I’ve done, and he lets out a tiny, humorless laugh.
“Fine,” he says, after a moment. “Yes. It feels shitty. Okay. Point taken, which is exactly why I wrote about it, instead of asking you. No, it wasn’t the mature thing to do. But neither was hiding it from me in the first place.”
“I just didn’t want you to have one more thing on your plate!” I shout, jumping out of my chair. I can’t take it anymore. A sob is threatening to erupt from the back of my throat. “Adrian, I can’t fucking stand to see you like this. It’s killing me. It’s killing you. I just wanted to deal with Dad, because you had enough to worry about. I don’t…” I have to stop and swallow a rapidly-forming lump. “I don’t want to fight with you.”
“I don’t either.” He sounds tired, so tired. “But I don’t think this conversation is over.”
I’m crying. I didn’t want to cry, but here I am, just crying and wanting comfort from the one person who’s hurt me the most. How could he not trust me?
I have to be in a lawyer’s office in under an hour, cool, calm, and collected. How the hell am I supposed to keep it together?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ADRIAN
His Secretary: Undone and Unveiled (The Complete Series Collection) Page 40