“I’m okay.”
“Really okay? Or bullshit okay like you were saying yesterday?”
I shrug. “Maybe okay. It’s still kind of a shock.”
“Just avoid him. Just don’t talk to him.”
“I know. And unless he’s an idiot, he’ll be avoiding me anyway. It should be easy. But still …” I moan. “Why, Jamie? He has the whole world. Why come back?”
“Supposedly it’s for—”
“You know what I mean. I don’t care what it’s for; I care that it’s not something a rational person would do, regardless. Even if — out of all the places in the world — Inferno Falls is the only place Forage can build this thing, why does he have to come? Send minions. Send his partner, if it has to be one of the two of them.”
Jamie is silent. She’s chewing, but I know that’s not the only reason her mouth is closed.
I glance at the clock. It’s only 7:45 and the office is a fifteen-minute walk. We have time, unfortunately. “You think he’s here for me, don’t you?”
Slowly, Jamie shrugs. Yes, that’s exactly what she’s been thinking. She doesn’t want to admit it, but it’s not like I won’t figure it out.
“I hate him,” I say. “I never want to see him again.”
“You’re talking to the wrong person. I know that.”
“He knows it, too. He’d be an idiot not to.”
“Maybe he wants to apologize.”
I laugh. It’s bitter, but a hundred percent genuine. It feels good, no matter the context.
“What?” she says.
“Apologies were always part of the process. It was almost a joke. If I wasn’t hurt so bad by the end, I would have laughed with him about it. He’d say, ‘I’m sorry,’ and it was impossible to keep a straight face. He said it so often that it lost all meaning. It became the opposite of an apology.” I push away the remains of my muffin. “I used to think that every time Onyx apologized it was like a confession. And that if he truly wanted to tell me he was sorry — if he really meant it — he’d need to find a new way to express it. Sorry didn’t cut it. He ruined the word. I can’t even hear it the way most people mean it.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Jamie says.
I shove her.
“Maybe he’s in recovery for something. Maybe he’s at that ‘make amends’ stage. Isn’t that one of the twelve steps — apologize to all the people you’ve wronged because of your addiction?”
“He wasn’t an alcoholic. Or a junkie or anything like that. He’s not in recovery. He’s just a fucker.”
“Maybe he’s in recovery from being a fucker.”
“They don’t have a program for that, I don’t think.”
“Or sex addiction.” Jamie points at me with her muffin fragments, crumbs puffing from between her lips. “Did you think of that? Maybe he was a sex addict.”
I roll my eyes. “If that’s it, I don’t want to hear it. It’s really convenient for the addict: ‘Oh, I’m sorry I fucked everyone, all the time, and lied to you every second I knew you. It was my addiction making me do that. I wasn’t in control.’ Bullshit. You don’t get to do crap like that, then blame it on some scapegoat to avoid all consequences.”
“Supposedly the first step of tackling addiction is admitting you aren’t in control of your own actions. Giving yourself over to a higher power or some shit.”
“Yeah, well, maybe this makes me an unenlightened bitch, but I don’t particularly feel like hearing it. I’m the higher power here, and I say …” I hold up my fist, then turn it thumbs-down like a Roman emperor declaring that the gladiator shall die.
We sit in silence for a while. I sip my coffee. It’s a sharp, bitter blend — Sumatra, maybe. I like milder coffee, but I drink it anyway. I’m glad Jamie brought it, because last night I wasn’t a very good friend. I needed someone to blame for my behavior, so I used her for telling me about Onyx. She tried to call and come over but I shut her down. All I can do now is to hope for her forgiveness.
What can I say? I wasn’t in control of my actions.
I finish my coffee. I can tell from the shadow line in her cup that Jamie isn’t even half done with hers. When I pitch the cup, along with what’s left of my muffin, she seems surprised.
“Do you want to head out?” I ask.
“I figured we could talk.”
I sigh, but it’s a sympathetic and good-natured sigh. “I appreciate you being there for me. But I also don’t want to talk about any of it. I won’t run into Onyx unless he seeks me out, and if he does come looking I’ll shut him down. In a way, it’s nice that the issue is so closed and definitive, because it makes my decision easy. If I still loved him at all …”
I trail away and immediately regret it, worried that it means something.
“So there’s nothing there?” Jamie says. “You don’t have any lingering feelings?”
I shrug. “He was my first. My first real boyfriend, the first guy I had sex with … all of it. I guess I’ll always have him in the back of my head. But what he did? I don’t want to feel like that again. I don’t want to let him back in even a little.”
Jamie nods as if she understands, but I don’t think she agrees.
I wonder if I do.
I hope I do.
“So, yeah,” I say. “Let’s go to work.”
Jamie looks at the clock. “We’ll be like twenty minutes early if we leave now.”
“That’s okay. We can stop for coffee.”
Jamie looks at her own still mostly full cup.
“I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night,” I explain. “I’m going to need some serious caffeine to get through the day.”
Jamie gives me a hurt, sympathetic face, then wraps her free arm around me. We stay that way until we’re out the door, but we’re once on the street her arm drops — along with my jaw.
Thank God I’m not holding my coffee. It would be on the ground if it was.
Onyx is right down the street, not fifty feet away, and headed right toward us.
CHAPTER SIX
MIA
He’s holding flowers.
FLOWERS.
That right there makes me want to punch him. I want to knee him in the balls, claw my fingernails across his handsome face, and use every ounce of strength I’ve failed to acquire in my missed gym sessions to knock his teeth backward against his tongue. I look at the bouquet, and one thought rushes through my mind:
I sure hope those are to make your hotel room prettier, because if you bought them for me I’m going to make you fucking eat them.
He’s still approaching us, now walking slightly faster. I should march forward to meet him, or spin and walk defiantly away — back into my building, maybe — but I don’t. Instead my feet betray me, rooting to the concrete.
Our history comes rushing back in a wave. I’m nineteen years old again … or maybe sixteen. He’s the charming kid with the great smile and that sexy way of talking. My body remembers, even as my mind fights to forget.
I clench my fists; I grit my teeth. I can only summon these small acts of rebellion as Onyx comes closer, but I’m spending these silent seconds conjuring things to say. Jamie’s beside me, leaning subtly back as if fearing an explosion, her eyes flitting between us. I can tell she doesn’t want to leave me alone, but that she’d rather be anywhere else.
Jamie was supposed to pump me up, make me strong, then let me be. Poor thing didn’t know she’d be standing beside me when I crashed into the inevitable.
“Mia.” He extends the flowers — not like a lover would, but like a peace offering. “I was hoping I’d—”
My paralysis snaps. I snatch the flowers from his hand and aggressively hurl them into the gutter —then, in a single fluid motion, I use both hands to shove him in the chest.
He’s wearing a long camel hair coat over an expensive-looking suit, and a motherfucking scarf — a goddamn scarf. For three hot seconds, all my fury is focused on that long strip of colorful silk, and I hate it
as much as I hate him. I want to tie him up with it. I want to use that piece-of-shit, probably-hundreds-of-dollars scarf to choke the life from his stupid beautiful body.
The scarf flaps as he staggers backward, shocked. His eyes are wide, all whites. Whatever he expected when he saw me, this wasn’t it.
Because he’s fucking stupid, apparently.
I’d have seen this coming. Anyone would have.
“Mia!”
“Don’t you talk to me! Don’t you come up to me! Why are you here? Why the fuck did you come to my town with your fancy motherfucking scarf and your goddamn coat and that smug fucking smile, bringing me—” I’m still hitting him with small blows and he holds up his hands, saying stop, just stop. “—flowers like I can just be bought off like some goddamn empty-headed bitch from a rom-com, like you think you can just waltz right back in here and—”
“I just want to talk!”
I give him one final shove. I stare deep into his eyes. If Hell has a stare, it’s the one I’m giving him now. “Talk,” I snarl.
“I wanted to say that I’m sorry for—”
He stops talking when I slap him as hard as I possibly can. The impact stings my hand but I don’t even care. I can see the shape of my palm reddening on his dark skin already.
I must have hit him hard. I can only imagine what that slap would have done to the face of a white man.
“I know I messed up. I know you’re mad and—”
I hit him again. Harder. Onyx’s hand goes to his cheek and his tongue moves inside his mouth, blinking as if I’ve knocked him right the hell off his center.
Clearly shaken, he says, “You’re making a scene.”
I look at Jamie. It’s like I slapped her. Jamie’s mouth is slightly open, her eyes wide and staring. Her coffee cup is at her feet, a brown spill pooling around it. She looks like she wants to run, but can’t summon the courage.
“I guess I am,” I say.
I move to the gutter, to the flowers he brought to try and buy back years of pain and infidelity and betrayal. I fluff them a little, pulling the stems into order. Then I use both hands to shove the bouquet hard toward his face. It’s a messy sort of move and I’m sure I look stupid doing it, but getting a face full of greenery shocks Onyx enough that this time he actually does fall backward, catching himself on extended arms. Blooms rain like confetti around him.
I stand over him, finally looking down on this man who wronged me. I look around at the people on the morning streets, who have indeed turned toward our spectacle.
“What made you think,” I say, more quietly, “that after all you did to me, you had any right to bring me flowers?”
“I … I just wanted to …” He looks like he’s afraid of making a wrong move. For a second I’m sure that he’s going to start reciting all the old lies: that he still loves me, that he’s sorry, that he was weak but that I was always his one and only.
All the bullshit I let myself believe over and over and over again, like a scab healing over just in time to be ripped open anew.
Instead he says something so plain, I actually believe it: “I still think of you.”
The truth is, I still think of him, too. They’re horrid thoughts. Violent thoughts. Sometimes, they’re crushed thoughts — my innocence made hopeful, then squashed without a care. When I’m alone, there are days I think of the good times we had and could have kept having. I think of potential, blighted by the disease he brought upon us.
But yes, Onyx. In a thousand different ways and few of them good … I think of you, too.
I want to shout to the people watching us. They want to gawk? Screw it. I’ll tell them all he did. I’ll tell them about his tapestry of lies, the dozens of other women. I’ll tell them how, each time, he made me believe.
Instead, I say nothing.
I walk away without looking back, and after a while I hear Jamie running to catch up — finally running behind me, for a change.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ONYX
I imagine a thousand things in the pause between initiating the call and its ringing.
The pause is too short for thoughts, but I have them anyway.
I, better than most people, know there are no wires between my phone and my partner’s. Our voices are sent by satellites, connections made by computers that my company controls and those we’ll direct eventually — especially if Anthony Ross has half of his way. But I still think, as it rings, of a connection working westward toward the coast: a small telecommunications animal, foraging (appropriately enough) for food.
And I think of Aiden, who might be happy with what I’m calling to discuss, or disgruntled. To the world, Aiden is either a philanthropist hero or a bastard. Which face he presents (and which one the cameras captures) depends on the day and his mood. Between us, I’ve always been the more press-friendly. Everyone knows the Forage guys are a matched set. On one hand there’s Aiden: genius, brooding, temperamental, easy to ignite into fits of anger. And then there’s me: usually the good cop to Aiden’s bad — but also a bigger cad, beneath the gloss, than the public gives me credit for. Nothing proves that more than where I am now, doing what I’m doing.
And lastly I think of Mia: a field of ideation that’s much more than just a single thought. I imagine her as she used to be: sweet, innocent, trusting, not yet jaded. I remember our passion. I think of the hard times — for her, anyway. For me, they were glory days.
And, lastly, I think of my own thoughts of Mia: meta-reflections that I suspect are kin to regret.
I’m not sure what the sensation really is. Hell, maybe I do regret what I did to her. It’s not in character for the wealthy and powerful Onyx Scott to suffer regret (especially now that Aiden and I have joined the Syndicate), but I suspect I’ve felt its cousins all the same.
Mia with her soft brown eyes.
Mia with her looks that should have been plain … but never struck me that way at all.
Mia, and how fervently she must still hate me, all these years later.
The ringing stops, the connection made.
“Are you in Inferno Falls?”
My reverie snaps. I look at the phone. I forgot I was holding it until Aiden’s voice was in my ear.
“Yes,” I say.
“Good. Are you settled?”
“I’m at a hotel. The LeGrande.”
“You aren’t going to stay there long, are you?”
“I think Forage can handle the tab, Aiden.”
“I’m thinking of appearances. You’re supposed to be in the Falls scouting for the Forage Education group. Managing the temporary team.”
Yes. That’s what I’m supposed to be doing, according to the story we told my public relations girl, Alyssa. She’s only working with a single client these days. I thought we would come to Inferno together. Once here, and after signing Forage’s cast in iron NDA, I’d have told her the truth.
I wish she had come. I could really use someone well-versed in dealing with the public to advise me. Instead, I’ll have to do this on my own — and it’s bound to get ugly.
“I’m a transient,” I say.
“Like a drifter?”
“Like a—”
“I know what you meant, Onyx. It was a joke. You sound defensive. Keyed up. Long day?”
I smile, but it’s not like Aiden can see me. The idea that anyone in my circle could have a “long day” in the sense that most working stiffs use the term is laughable. Yes, I’ve technically had one, but it began with a personal training session in our executive gym in Seattle, moved on to a 90-minute massage, then a breakfast that had to cost a grand, considering Canlis had to open special off-hours so that Nathan Turner and I could discuss Syndicate business.
I hopped on the Forage jet after my final cup of coffee, then flew across the country while sipping champagne, took a Bentley to the hotel, and let Hunter Altman, who’s in town working with some local band, buy me a suit. He isn’t being generous; he’s trying to catch up. Despite b
eing one of the first billionaires Nathan tapped to join his absurdly named “Trillionaire Boys’ Club,” Hunter seems to feel junior among the other members, and eager to prove his wealth. And it’s not like dropping eleven grand on a suit means much to any of us.
I smiled. I thanked him. And now I’m having this call in my penthouse suite in the city’s best hotel.
Oh, yes. Another exhausting day in Billionaireland.
I don’t feel like answering. Instead I say, “I’ve got a line on a rental in the hills, same neighborhood as Mason James.”
“Am I supposed to know who that is? Is he another of Nathan’s Syndicate prospects?”
I almost laugh. It shatters my pattern. Then I do, because “shatters my pattern” is the sort of mind game bullshit that made Anthony Ross so famous. This conversation isn’t about Ross … yet … but I can’t help but snicker.
“No, he probably only has a few million. It’s just that … well, when I lived here, he was the rich man on the hill. All the kids knew Mason James.”
“Rich, huh?” Aiden says in his most condescending tone — the one that makes me feel like he might be thinking of getting a few million dollars in cash, dropping the pile in a pail beside his toilet, and using the bills to wipe his lily-white ass.
“It’s a nice house. Don’t worry. It’ll seem to everyone like I’m planning to stay a while.”
“And to Mia?”
I sigh.
“You’ll need to furnish it, you know. Make yourself look at home. If she gets the impression that you’re the least bit—”
“This isn’t about Mia.”
“This is all about Mia.” Aiden situates himself on the other end, then slowly resumes, as if I’m defective rather than half of the best-known pair of Internet geniuses in the world. “Lying to yourself will do you no favors.”
I don’t want to hear this. We agreed on a few things before I came to Inferno — one being that Aiden couldn’t tell me how to do what I’m here to do. This was to be my way or nothing. We agreed to keep it between us, recruiting help from people like Alyssa Galloway if possible, and only after locking them down with ironclad nondisclosures. Alyssa was the only person I’d have trusted for this. I’m on my own without her. So unless Aiden wants to fly out and embarrass both of us while trying to handle it, he’ll accept what I say as gospel.
Trillionaire Boys' Club: The Internet Giant Page 3