by Vivian Wood
His eyes are hopeful. And determined. It makes my stomach sick.
I’d rather not tell the most honorable man at Harvard that I won’t stay past a month or two at the firm, but I don’t have it in me. The day has been a rollercoaster of a ride already, and as I motion to Jesse to head outside of the cramped quarters of my office, we head in sync towards the break room, my curiosity driving me to pepper my best employee with questions.
I start with the most obvious.
“You know I was shocked when I came into the firm and David told me that you work mostly pro-bono. I never thought my father would allow that.”
He sniffs. “I know. It seems impossible, doesn’t it? Most firms would have told me no.”
“My father would have added a fuck no for emphasis.” I glance over at Jesse. “Charity’s never really been his thing. In fact… it’s the opposite of his thing.”
Jesse’s dark brows raise. “Maybe once…but then again, he was the most supportive person on my side when I proposed it to the firm. Gave me his blessing and everything, even when David wanted to put a hard stop to all the free hours we were submitting to billing.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I stop in the wooden-floored hallway. “My dad was the one who okay’ed it?”
“Shocking, isn’t it?” Jesse grins. “No one was more surprised than me.”
I keep walking, maintaining pace with Jesse. We amble into the break room without breaking stride. “Maybe Dear old dad thought he was doing you a favor. I mean, since Marilyn got you the job.”
Filling a cup with water from the cooler, Jesse frowns, spinning in his Ferragamo shoes towards me, his dark brows furrowed. With the same slanted stare that scared away Harvard yuppies, he lifts the plastic cup to his lips, taking a long sip. He seems to consider what he’s going to say before finally blurting out the last truth I would ever expect to come from his shiny white teeth.
He gazes blankly at me. “Heath…what makes you think Marilyn got me this job at King & Sparrow?”
I blink. “I… Well, I assumed my dad didn’t hire you. Since he only seems to give a damn about protecting blue-bloods like that fraud friend of his, Chris Jackson.”
“Huncho…” My old roomie drags out my nickname. “Your father was the one who hired me on the spot. Said he remembered me from Harvard.” He blinks. “Said he remembered me from you…and that that was enough.”
I balk, my mouth going dry at the thought. My cup of Joe almost tries to climb back up my throat, and I push it down, my head swimming from all the conflicting notions fighting in my overworked brain.
My dad said that? My mind tells me No way…despite what Jesse says.
It doesn’t make any sense. Considering my father’s past. Considering my past with him.
Truth was…my father didn’t trust my judgment. Never said a kind word about my intellect.
He pressured me into attending Harvard Law—harassed me into it, in fact. Every step of the “Ivy-covered” way, he’d tried to beat me into submission, bend me to the will of the Sparrow way.
Shock wasn’t the word for what his lawyer had told me about his living will. I’d never imagined my father would leave his shareholdings and the future of the firm in my Harvard-dropout hands.
Hearing Jesse’s confessions about my father pushes a button in me—a button I didn’t know could be pressed. A stinging sears its way behind my eyes, but the burning subsides when the delivery guy—Steve What’s-His-Face—steps into the glossy gray-painted break room, his smile wide as our gazes collide.
I punch Jesse’s shoulder lightly, feeling a tingle form underneath my tightening fingers. In the clear light of day, I feel every bit of the asshole David King is, and because I can’t have what I really crave, I opt for the next strongest item. I storm out.
Jesse calls over my shoulder. “Is it lunch time already?”
Halfway down the hallway, I stalk into my own office space. “Not quite.” I reach for my wallet and keys. I glance at Somerset throwing him the jingling set.
“Not unless Jameson has enough calories to count as a full brunch.”
I stalk quietly to the elevators without looking back.
Chapter Twenty-Three
VIOLET
Friday afternoon
My heart feels heavy in my chest, no matter how hard I run.
This morning’s jog is one of the worst I’d ever had.
Completing my jog through Central Park isn’t the toughest; keeping my mind off of Heath is. And as I cross the trail through the park’s Bridle Path loop, my headphones in, and my Nikes on, I can’t quite get the sexy asshole out of my head, last night’s late rendezvous and later trip to police headquarters sticking like a thumbtack in my mind.
The air is crisp, ripe to the taste. I inhale it steadily, not letting the frigid temperatures stop the one habit I love to have—the only habit I’ve kept to myself after my divorce left me decimated.
Jogging was my release. My sin and my sanctuary.
When my mind is full of chaos, running is what I escape to first, and this morning, through the December frost and winterized forest, even the lap around the Reservoir, through the Meadows and up across 102nd Street can’t save me from my scandalous memories, my body still on the path, but my head still stuck in Heath’s apartment. Thinking. Dreaming. Wondering what if…
What if he didn’t get that call? What if we had finished what we started?
Would I still be the same? Would anything be?
What was the protocol for fucking your boss when part of you wasn’t so sure about him? When a piece of you still believed he might revert to the prick he’d been just several months prior?
Heath was a playboy. That was a given.
It went without saying that the New York investor-slash-Hollywood producer was a male-slut on every coast, and a part of me had been ashamed at how fast he’d almost talked me into his bed, how quickly I was willing to throw caution to the wind just to let his lips feed on mine on top of his quartz counters.
Only hours after, he’d made me regret my decision, pushing me away in as harsh a manner as anyone could. I recount the sordid scene as I cut across West Drive, my heartbeat drumming in my ears.
“Heath?” I called again to him in that secluded back seat. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Yes,” he answered, his stare as cold as the dry earth and just as brown. “You can stay away from me.”
I blinked, my brain barely able to keep up with the scathing words coming from his mouth. “What…?”
“I’m serious, Keats,” he said, his clipped tone cutting the very wings on which I’d flown just hours before. The high I’d had from being with Heath was falling at my feet, and I crashed to earth, shattering into a million pieces at his pricey soles.
“This?” He motioned between us. “This can’t work. It never does. I don’t…” He grit his teeth. “I don’t know how to be close to people.”
I said his name again, my touch drifting to his shoulder. “Maybe you should just give it a try…”
“Why?” He turned on me, the ice in his eyes turning to anger. “You want to end up in a coma too?”
My breath hitched. “Jesus, Heath. That’s not fair.”
“Fair to who exactly? To my father who may never wake up? To my sister whose phone calls I hadn’t picked up in a week prior to the accident that almost took her life? And what about you, Keats?” He leveled at me, making my skin shudder.
“What about me?”
“I left your bed in the middle of the night, put a goddamned country between us. Didn’t that give you a hint as to the type of asshole I am?”
I said nothing. I couldn’t. In so many ways, he was right, and the hurt in Heath’s eyes when I didn’t respond was tangible—a palpable sensation that put a heaviness in the air. He turned from me, his face twisting towards the opposite window. The chill outside is nothing compared to the frost I feel when he looks away, and his voice is quiet when it returns, the tenor so
ft enough to cut an emotional hole into my psyche.
I sighed when he said “See? Even you know it… I think it’s best you cut your losses now.”
“Heath…” I uttered, an attempt to recover.
“Just go!” He yelled suddenly, scaring me half-to-death. The sound was a shock to my system, and I fleed, my eyes filling with tears as I reached for the car door, wrenching it open. My body was just as bewildered as my brain, my senses overwhelmed. Both raged against me, in a battle with absolutely no winners, and I fought the urge to listen to either, sprinting up the steps to my Brooklyn brownstone, chest hurting, my head swimming and small pieces of my soul breaking along the way.
Even now, jogging in my favorite place on Earth, I can feel those pieces missing.
Different types of pieces than those that had broken, fractured and flailed from what was once the worst thing to ever happen to me.
My divorce.
It’s an event that feels like forever ago, despite the passing of just two years—a time warp I will never understand.
Somehow this is deeper. More visceral.
When a marriage ends, it feels like the world does. And I remember a time it felt like the sky was falling around me, that the very ground beneath my feet was going to swallow me whole and spit me out.
But I recovered. Bounced back more than I ever thought possible.
Maybe it was because the pieces I thought were missing when my ex, Jeffrey, left were just hiding. Sitting around, tapping their feet. Waiting for me to get my shit together.
What Jeffrey and I had was an arrangement more than a blinding love, and even in our best moments, I was never fully myself. Never as happy. Never as satisfied. Or free…
As I was when I was with Heath. Asshole that he was to me in that back seat.
Despite his darkest moments, there was a light in the thick of his hidden depths—a passionate warmth. The way he talked, touched, looked at me.
His was a humor that matched mine, a passion and lust for life that rivaled my own. The twinkle in his brown eyes told a different story than the one coming from his lips.
Heath had hardened his heart because it had been broken so many damned times. By the people closest to him.
I understood, more than most, that the raw emotion under his rough laughter, the silent agony in his eyes was a result of hurt. Anger. Protection of a soul that had been pushed and prodded and poked full of holes.
It was that soul—or at least, the glimpses of it—that drew me to him at Elsie and Brett’s engagement party.
Beneath the light teasing with a sophistication, an intelligence, a biting wit.
He was every bit of his father’s son. But in the best ways.
Smart and bold. Take-no-shit and self-made…with a knack for excelling at both business and pleasure.
And what a pleasure he gave. What a pleasure he could be.
I know that my heart or head—maybe both—wanted more. It’s the “more of Heath” that teases me, tortures me as I finish my run. I slow to a walk, still wondering about the mystery of the man when a small mob of reporters rush my way, a growing crowd of cameras starting to form across the street, heading fast in my vicinity. And I freeze, my feet stuck to the ground.
Nothing—not even fight or flight—kicks in, and without Heath by my side like last time, I’m unaware of what to do. I take a deep breath, throwing my shoulders and long hair back, steeling myself for what is to come. With the pack of excited press moving quickly towards me, there’s nothing to do but wait, and as I stand dumbfounded on the corner, my cell stuck to my hand, a gigantic black truck, sitting on shiny rims, skids in front of my path, careening around the corner like a bat out of hell.
It stops right in front of me, kicking up ice and bits of yesterday’s snow, nearly soaking me in the process. The back seat window rolls down, revealing a beautiful brunette. Several seconds show me that it’s my beautiful brunette, and as I stand—still shaking—in my hoodie and leggings, she raises one hand at me, ushering me inside as the back door to the behemoth vehicle swings open.
She yells out to me. “Vi, come on!”
It’s the only urging I need. I follow her direction quickly, flouncing into the truck. The media mob makes it to our side of the street, and as they do, our humongous tires squeal as we peel out, the rev of the truck loud as we leave a trail of journalists in our dust before turning the corner to Columbus Ave. My throat emits a gasp as I lean back against the leather, the plush seats threatening to swallow me as I force my pounding pulse to slow.
My heart continuing to hammer, I glance over into the face of elegance beside me, marveling at the beauty despite the bruising on her delicate skin. My heart beats an unfamiliar tempo as recognition sinks in. I smile, saying her name.
“It’s good to see you, Marilyn.”
Heath’s TV superstar sister smirks. “It’s good to be seen.”
“Heath never told me…I didn’t know you were released from the hospital.”
“Escaped is more like it.”
“And I’m guessing that screaming paparazzi mob out there was for you?”
“I think they could smell me coming from a mile away.”
“Must be one hell of a perfume you wear.”
“Have to,” she answers, circling her face with one painted finger. “Gotta make up for this new face somehow.”
I frown. “What are you talking about? You’re still beautiful.”
She snorts. “Tell that to the my TV show producers when they can my ass for showing up on set in a nice shade of puke green.” She narrows her dark blue eyes at me. “What are you doing at the Park at this time anyhow?”
“Going for my morning run.”
She lifts a sharp eyebrow. “At noon?” My face heats, my stare swiveling out the window. “I see,” Marilyn comments as a quiet enters the back seat, the hum of the truck the only sound in the oversized car. “You’re trying to avoid my brother, aren’t you?”
There’s no point in lying. “Is it that obvious?”
“Please.” She purses her lips. “I saw the way you two were dancing around each other at Brett and Elsie’s engagement party. Not that Heath can really dance…” She trails off with a tiny smirk. “What’s the problem now? I mean, you’re not in love with him, are you?”
“What?” I swing towards her in my seat. “No!” I cross my arms. “It’s just that… I…we…” I exhale. “You…”
Marilyn leans towards me. “Can I buy a vowel or…?”
I sigh, feeling sick just talking about it. There’s so much to sift through. Too much, in fact. Especially when my past is beating down my door.
I glance at Marilyn. “The problem is…that I don’t know how to finish that sentence. Heath and I are a long story. And until I know how this story ends, I’d rather not even start.”
She hikes a high-arched eyebrow, eyeing me inquisitively. “So you’re going to give up before you even begin?”
I sigh. “If I have to…”
Her pink lips purse. “Better to play it safe, then?”
“Safe. Yes. Exactly.”
Marilyn turns to me. “Violet, I’m sorry to say this… But what a fucking crock of shit,” she hisses, her pretty brows pulled together in a frown. “Stop lying to yourself.”
I scoff, straightening in my seat. “I’m not.”
“You don’t want safe. You want special. What you and Heath have is that. Stop settling for a lukewarm life. A lukewarm love. You said yourself that sometimes you even questioned if you loved your ex, Jeffrey. Am I right?”
I shrug.
“So?” She practically screeches. “You were settling.” Her palms fly outward as she gazes at me. “You were settling in that stuffy condo in Chicago. Settling in a disloyal circle of friends. Settling for a man who never even bothered to sweep you off your feet. Vi…” she blows out gently, gesturing with her hands. “You’re not regular,” she repeats, sounding just like her brother. “You’re not normal.” She giggle
s softly. “And that’s a great thing. Romance, love, lust—those shouldn’t be normal for you, either. You can play a lot of things safe. In fact, you should.” She shakes her head. “But love isn’t one of them. And until you drop that wall of hurt, you won’t find the love you deserve. I should know: I haven’t found it yet. But then again…” Her ocean-colored eyes grow glossy. She holds out her hand. “Hi. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Marilyn. Emotional brick-layer. And you are?”
I find the will to laugh. Marilyn hugs me. And suddenly everything feels alright.
But I still haven’t found a way to tell Heath…that in the business of love and the law, my case—and heart—are now no longer closed…
Chapter Twenty-Four
HEATH
Friday afternoon
Manhattan sure knows how to kick the shit out of a man.
The music is pumping, the speakers buzzing. A bass too intense for the sound system blares through the air, and as I stroll my way into the club—soaked on every inch of skin—I shake a slew of ice flakes from my shoulders.
So much for having an LA winter.
It would have been my first real Los Angeles winter season, my first foray into an eighty-degree Christmas. Instead, I’m here—a strip club, no less.
I came back to New York for two reasons…and both involved Marilyn. Now, standing here in a cheesy exotic bar rife with bottom shelf liquor and purple walls, I don’t know how to tell a friend—a man I haven’t seen in seven years that the person he once knew…is a fucking fraud.
Jesse sits down as I approach the violet-lit VIP section, his gray overcoat sitting precariously on his shoulders, his arms spread wide as he takes in the view in front of him.
A mass of brunette wavy hair and fake tits. A dancer spins around the pole, mimicking the swirl happening in my hungry gut.
I take a seat on the faux leather, tempted to swipe his drink. God knows I could use the alcohol. I inhale slowly.