My assault on the wall doesn’t last long. Sledgehammers are heavier than they look. Cathartic, but heavy. Panting, sweat dripping down the side of my face, I drop the hammer. “Take me home, Max.”
As I walk back through the entryway, I notice the remnants of what I assume was a bookshelf. Broken glass from picture frames litters the ground. From a splintered shelf, I pick up a picture of a little boy. He’s the spitting image of Ash. I set the picture back down, feeling as though I’ve seen a ghost.
Max allows me to stew silently on the ride home. There’s so much to take in, and the weight of it is suffocating.
As we pull up to the condo, Sully calls. Max has to go back to the office, which is good. He’s in agent mode, and I don’t need an agent right now. My emotions are out of control, and he wouldn’t know what the hell to do with me.
Needing to vent to someone that will understand, I call Em.
“What’s happenin’, hot stuff?” she answers.
I pace my kitchen while I talk. “Shit’s hit the fan, and I’m feeling like I’m losing it.” I catch her up to speed with the Cliff’s Notes version.
She clucks her tongue. “Cocksucker motherfucker.”
“I know, right? I’m so mad at Ash right now I’m going to explode. How could he be so stupid? So selfish? And a kid? Fuck. He looks just like him.”
“Another Ashton Preston? That’s just what the world needs. That boy should have been sterilized.”
I fight back a sob. “I’m trying to deal with it all, but I’m maxed out.”
“That’s because you’re trying to do what you always do, and it’s not going to work this time. This is some serious shit and you aren’t going to be able to gloss over it and make it pretty. Ash fucked you over and left you with a volcano of shit that’s about to erupt. That’s not okay. You have every right to be fucking pissed.”
“I’m pissed. Beyond words! My anger is so out of control it’s taken over. I want to crawl out of my skin because all I feel is rage and there’s nothing I can do about it. Ash is gone! I can’t punch him. I can’t yell at him. I can’t make him fix it. I don’t even know if this is fixable. Five fucking million dollars! To a fucking drug cartel. How am I going to get out of this? It’s too big. It’s too much!” I collapse to the floor and let the tears come.
“You know I’ll give you the money,” she says. “Gavin’ll give you the money. I’m not sure money alone’s going to solve it, though.”
“I’m so sick of cleaning up his messes,” I sob. “I just want him out of my life. I want to be free of him.” My angry ranting turns to open weeping. “I’m being punished for marrying him. I knew I didn’t love him. I thought marrying him would give me a stable life. I wouldn’t have to worry about money. I was going to get the job of my dreams. We had great sex. I didn’t need more. But damn, I’m paying the price for it now.”
“You married him because you never had to care about him. You never had to love him. You keep everyone at arm’s length and you like it that way. Hey, I get it. I do the same damn thing. I’m not judging. If you keep them away, it won’t hurt when they leave.”
I wipe the tears from my eyes. “Yeah, unless your parting gift is a mountain of debt and a bounty on your head.”
“Babe, I hate to tell you, but you married the devil.”
“I wish I’d never met him.”
“May he rot in hell.”
I clutch my chest, as though it will help soothe the pain. “How do I make it stop? How am I going to get out of this? I need Ash to be purged from my life!”
“You’re a survivor, Lily. You’re the toughest person I know. You’ll find a way to get through this. But you have to stop pretending it’s all okay. You have to face it and fight it. Take it head on. Stop being a victim. You’ll either end it or it’ll kill you. But either way, you’ll be out. I’ve got to go, Lil. I’m doing a report on CNN. Call me later.”
Cocksucker motherfucker. I’m in deep shit.
Twenty-Five
Perhaps it’s the decreasing daylight as Thanksgiving approaches. Maybe it’s that I haven’t been able to connect with Gavin in almost seven days. Or maybe it’s that a Mexican drug cartel has hired some serial killer to jump out of the shadows and murder me. Well, torture me first... but what’s the difference, really? For whichever reason, I’m feeling blue. Maybe blue is an understatement.
I’ve been in bed since Max’s impromptu Take Your Roommate to Work Day. I get up to use the restroom, and that’s it. Eating seems uninteresting. Showering sounds exhausting. I’ve only changed to rotate through the three Gavin shirts I have. I’ve tried writing on my blog a few times, but after posting the new entries, Em had called immediately and ordered me to take them down before I ruined my brand. After the third bad one, she took over administrative controls.
To make matters worse, at the beginning of the week, my email was hacked. I’m still not exactly sure what was done or why, but my password was changed, and I was locked out. After Google finally got me back into my account, my whole history had been deleted: contacts, received mail, sent mail, the whole shebang. It was totally wiped clean. I didn’t even know that was possible. The FBI boys panicked about it and are having IT look into it. Max thinks that since I haven’t been leaving the house, the cartel guys needed to go through my email to get a read on what I’ve been up to. As if they hadn’t already fucked with my world enough.
Gavin’s dropped off the face of the planet, and it feels like my heart has been ripped out of my chest. Every day that the cartel drama goes on, I feel the deep impact of his absence. I miss the way he calms me down and helps me see things rationally. Even though I hate how he wants to swoop in and save the day, I think knowing that he could and would if I let him gave me a sense of security. I didn’t feel as though I was going through it alone, and now I do. I’m completely alone, and it’s my fault. I pushed him away. The evil one, I marry. The good one, I push away. Damn, I’m a train wreck.
I’ve called his office and left messages—messages saying it’s an emergency—and yet, he does nothing. Not even a postcard! If he cared for me as much as he’s said he does, he would put aside our issues and call me. I may have pushed him away, but he’s being a stubborn ass. If I didn’t miss him so damn much, I’d tell him to go to hell and never speak to him again. But the truth is if he were standing in front of me, I’d run to him with open arms.
Max has even called and hasn’t been able to break through Snooty Smythe’s Chinese wall around Gavin. She’ll only say, “I’ll deliver the message to Mr. Edward’s staff, and it will be prioritized appropriately.” Aren’t I a priority? She won’t even give Max Gavin’s itinerary, even when he pulls the FBI agent card. Although, Snooty is British, so maybe we need an MI-6 card.
On the eighth day of my self-imposed bed rest, I hear a knock on the door.
“If you’re here to kill me, go away,” I yell. I hear Max pad across the condo and then open the door. Hushed whispering from the entryway disrupts my quiet sulking. There’s been a lot of that this week. Max has been worried, I know. I’ve got one foot down the rabbit hole.
“You have got to be kidding me!” Em shouts as she bursts through my bedroom door. “You’re going to get your ass up and hop in that shower now. When Boston Max said you were in a bad way, I didn’t believe him. I thought some chocolate and tequila and you’d be golden. This is beyond bad. I mean it, Lily. If you are not in that shower by the time I count to ten, I will bring the shower to you, and it will be unpleasant. Ten! Nine!”
I know she’ll do it too. Em does not do idle threats. She’s ruthless. In our sorority house, she had always been in charge of hazing and vengeance. Her tactics had kept the shrinks in Tucson busy with broken debutantes for four whole years.
By the time she reaches five, I’m out of bed and shuffling to the shower. As I close the bathroom door, I hear her attacking my room.
“I’m going to burn these sheets. I think there’s something growing on them. Wait�
�� You have gummy bears stuck to your sheets? This is disgusting.” She storms into the bathroom once I’m in the shower.
“Just come on in,” I sneer.
“Fuck, Lily. I said to go gangbusters. Not bury your head in the sand. Are you really going to let Cocksucker beat you? Because that’s what you are doing. You’re drowning in his crap. You’ve just given up. That’s fucking bullshit,” she scolds. She’s clearly pissed, and I know she won’t pull any punches to save my feelings.
“You need to fight back. Get some goddamn control. I don’t know how, but you sure as hell aren’t going to figure it out holed up in your bedroom. I told you that you’re a survivor because you are. You keep getting dealt shitty hand after shitty hand, but you always make it work. Until now. It’s time to wake up and start surviving.”
“There are clean clothes for you to change into while I fumigate that sweatshirt. When you get out of the shower, you’d better be ready to start getting your shit together. Because this weepy pity party ends right now,” she orders, slamming the door behind her.
I hear more hushed whispering from down the hall as I step out of the bathroom. “You can stop talking about me. I’m right here.”
“I’ve hired people to defunkify this place while you and I go to the spa. If Juan Valdez tries to take us out on the way to get a seaweed wrap, he’ll have to face me, and I’m packing heat today.”
“What?” Max and I say in unison.
She shrugs. “You think I’d come into this clusterfuck and leave my gun at home? No sir.”
Em armed? God help us all.
“We have to leave for New York to meet with the publisher in three days, and you can’t go looking like this.” She motions to my disheveled self.
Looking in the mirror, my skin seems pale and a little broken out. I have enough extra baggage under my eyes to take me around the world twice. My hair is stringy and tangled. I definitely need some work if anyone’s going to believe that I’m some sort of an authority on starting over.
“Juan Valdez is the coffee guy,” I correct her. “I can’t imagine Ash was in debt to him for five mil, but you never know.”
Em stays for the whole three days, even spending the nights at my condo, which tells me I must be in really bad shape. Every day, she takes me to a killer spin class taught by an instructor whom I affectionately call Hitler’s Spawn. He kicks my ass every class to the point that I can barely walk when we’re done. But that’s okay because we go for massages right after. And facials. And mud baths. And any other service offered by a spa in the DC Metro area. I may feel hollow on the inside, but at least I look fantastic.
Em also takes me to a “holistic” doctor’s office, where I get B12, botox, and God knows what else shot into me. Hours more are spent shopping, looking for just the right outfit for the meeting in New York.
At night, we hang out with Max. We play drinking games and watch movies. Em and I reminisce about college and, in equal parts, bore and entertain Max. He shares undercover stories that I’m confident are equal parts fact and fiction. Max tries to impress Em with his cooking skills by making over-the-top food each evening. I think I see something happening between the two, but I know better than to say a word, not wanting to jinx any chance of my two best friends getting together.
At the last minute, Max decides to join Em and me on the trip. He says it’s for security, but I think it has more to do with Em. Either way, I’m thrilled to have him with us.
As I’m getting ready to go to NYC, I feel grateful to have such a pushy bitch as a best friend. She’s snapped me out of my funk just in time. The only lingering sadness is that I still haven’t heard from Gavin. He knows my meeting is tomorrow, and I keep hoping that he’ll call to wish me luck. His continued silence probably tells me all I need to know, but I don’t want to listen and check my cell incessantly.
By the time we board the train to leave, a fed-up Em confiscates my phone.
“This trip is about you making your life better. You can’t get your head in the game by checking your call log and email every ten minutes. You don’t need his luck, because you’re going to rock it all on your own.”
She’s right. I don’t need his luck. I’ve got this.
The meeting with the publisher goes better than I ever could have expected. The team I meet with has some spectacular ideas, and I think the discussion is going to lead to something tangible—maybe a book, maybe a column. Not wanting to rush into anything, I’m careful not to over-promise or bite off more than I can chew. Having said that, I leave the meeting feeling pretty damn excited.
Afterward, Em desperately wants to go out to celebrate, but Max puts his foot down. With the bounty on my head, he thinks that clubs are too much of a security risk. So she ends up spending most of the night pouting, or at least pretending to, which results in Max fawning over her. Eventually, he gives in somewhat and calls a few FBI friends to meet us for dinner at some hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant that makes the best Bolognese sauce I have ever had.
Max’s friends are quite handsome and a laugh a minute. None of these guys fit the uptight stereotype I’d attributed to FBI agents. The evening out isn’t exactly dancing ‘til dawn at some famous club, but it’s not a bad substitute. When you can’t throw the party you want, throw a party with a bunch of hot men packing heat.
The whole group comes back to the Plaza with us, where we end up taking over the piano in the bar and singing badly into the wee hours of the morning. I don’t think this sort of behavior is a common occurrence at the Plaza, but who’s going to say no to a girl with an Amex Black card and six men with badges and guns? And who doesn’t love hearing “Piano Man” and “Sweet Caroline” sung off-key over and over and over again?
I see many borderline sweet moments pass between Max and Em over the course of the night. Despite my complete frustration with love right now, I really hope that things go somewhere for them. They couldn’t be more different, but oddly, I think they could work together. If Em heard Max had to have a physical relationship with someone while undercover, she would probably say, “Well, this way he won’t be rusty when he finally gets home. Nothing’s worse than getting back together and having bad sex.”
Hung-over and possibly still a little drunk, Max and I take a morning train home while Em catches a cab to the airport. As always, I owe Em big time for knocking some sense into me.
After our train gets in to Union Station, poor Max has to go straight to work. He assures me that it’s not the first time he’s gone to work a tad under the influence, nor will it be the last. He says it helps him think like a criminal.
Once I get home, I climb straight into my heavenly bed. I may be pissed at Gavin for disappearing without a trace, but this mattress does dull the anger. A little. I sleep straight through the night and into the next morning, when I’m woken up by the phone.
“Ms. Clark. Lily Clark?” a voice asks when I pick up.
“That’s me,” I answer, groggy.
“We’ve a package here for you. According to the slip, it should have been delivered weeks ago, but it’s been held up in customs. Will you be around this morning?”
“Yeah. I’m around.” As soon as I hear the word “customs,” I cringe. I can only think of one person who could be sending me something that has to go through customs.
“Great. We’ll be at your building in twenty minutes.”
Dragging myself out of bed, I throw some sweats on just in time to answer the knock at the door when they arrive. There’s a bunch of guys standing outside the apartment with a box roughly the size of a Prius.
A rough-looking guy with a bushy beard and skull cap looks at his clipboard. “Lily Clark?”
“Yeah,” I reply. “I’m not expecting anything. Are you sure it’s for me?”
He looks at his board again. “You’re Lily Clark, right? It says here: Lily Clark, this address, from a G. Edwards.”
Just hearing his name makes me gasp. “Yes, that’s me.” What the
hell did Gavin send me? I look at the shipping date, and it’s marked a week and a half before he left on his trip. Before he went into radio silence. Before our fight.
The guy pushes past me and starts looking around my apartment. “Any idea where you want it?”
“I don’t know what it is,” I reply. “Can we get it in here, take it out of the box, and then figure it out?”
He shrugs, returning to the hallway, and barks orders to his crew.
They somehow manage to get the massive thing through the door. I’m still not sure how, despite watching the whole thing. It’s like a magic trick. When they finally get all the wrapping off, I see the most extraordinary desk. Gavin hadn’t been kidding when he said he had a thing for furniture. The desk is beautiful, unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The wood is adorned with carvings so detailed it must have taken someone weeks to handcraft… If I had all the desks in the entire world to choose from to write at, this would be the one I would pick. This is a desk I could write at for the rest of my life. Some girls may be wooed by jewelry. I’ve never been one of those girls. And Gavin has figured out how to woo me.
I can’t even wrap my head around how much this must have cost. The shipping alone!
After they put my desk in my office,—which now actually looks like it could be an office—I go through all the drawers looking for anything else from Gavin, but I come up empty.
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