“Well, miss…that in itself is an interesting story. You see, my editor had me run a puff piece about Holt going on vacation with the same son who was recently all over the internet threatening to kill a bunch of people.”
I wince because I don’t recall the incident with anything near the cynicism this reporter has. Wes had been off routine with jetlag on top, and while I do not condone his epic meltdown I do understand why it happened and how it might have been prevented with a little more consideration from his overwhelmed nanny.
“Anyway, seems I wasn’t the only one annoyed by the PR gloss-over because when I called to confirm the story, an anonymous source told me Holt Calson only spent a few hours at the resort. Then he got one of the hotel’s top employees fired from her job so he could hire her on as a nanny for his son. That’s you, right?”
“This anonymous source—is he the one who gave you my number?” I ask. Even though I don’t need to. I texted Arturo when I got my new phone. Not to say goodbye, but to ask him to read a carefully worded farewell letter to the Tourmaline Kinder Club staff I had managed for over a year.
“I tell you what,” the reporter says. “How about you answer some of my questions, and I’ll answer some of yours.”
My lips twist because though the reporter’s suspicions are spot on, I do not like the way he has spoken about Wes, a troubled little boy who is navigating through a lot of hard emotions right now.
“No comment,” I decide after a moment of thought.
“But—”
“No comment,” I repeat, and this time I hang up before he can protest again. No matter how close the reporter is to the truth, I am no longer in the business of betraying Holt. I mean, look how bad everything blew up in my face the last time I did.
A few minutes later, I poke my head into Barron’s room and my heart squeezes a little at what I find. Wes is asleep on the floor beside Barron’s bed, his face content as an angel’s. As if despite having a whole suite to himself in the main house, there is absolutely no other place he’d rather be than right here on Barron’s floor.
I close the door on the sweet scene, wishing Wes didn’t remind me so much of his father…
Chapter Twenty
The first night of our arrangement, Holt seems irritated when he walks into the room. The lights are dimmed and I am seated on the edge of his bed, completely naked, with my hands folded primly in my lap, and my hair in two long braids I’ve carefully arranged to cover my nipples.
“I expect you to be ready for me when I arrive.”
“I am ready,” I say after a confused beat.
His face hardens. “This isn’t New Haven,” he informs me. “This is an arrangement. No kissing, and I am not touching you more than necessary. That means it’s your job to make sure you’re ready to receive me when I walk into this room.”
I stay confused for another second or two. Until suddenly…I’m not.
And that is how I end up fingering myself again under his watchful gaze as he unbuttons his shirt and takes off his pants.
At first, it is so very, very awkward. The dim lights do nothing to alleviate the awful exposed feeling that comes from engaging in one of the many indecent behaviors my mother warned me about—in front of someone who hates me. But despite all the disinterest in his voice…his eyes stay on me. Eating up the sight of what he refuses to touch “more than necessary” while the flesh between his legs becomes long and heavy right before my eyes. The sight has me rubbing faster and harder until I have to stop for fear of coming.
“I’m…I’m ready.” My voice is breathless as I think about how primly I folded my hands in my lap, purposefully placing them so that the top of my vagina was hidden. But now I sit before him, wet and gaping, my fingers covered with my own essence.
“Turn over,” he says, his words a hard scrape in the darkened room. Then he rips open a foil package I hadn’t noticed in his hand. “You can either get on your hands and knees, or bend over the bed.”
I climb onto my hands and knees with the feeling that I need some kind of foundation under me for this arrangement—
He is on top of me, faster than expected, one hand fisting both my braids and yanking so hard my bottom half thrusts down at the same time he slices into my most vulnerable space from behind. Basic physics, I think after sitting in on so many science classes at CIT. With one stroke, he fills me completely. With two, he sets a ruthless pace, moving in and out of me like a beast bent on domination.
No, not domination, I correct myself. Revenge. Every rough thrust is a punishment, every yank on my braids an indictment for my past crimes.
It is so different from how he was with me in New Haven. But to my shame, the result is still the same.
Arturo was good in bed. Sweet and considerate. Decent—he always put in the effort to make sure I had an orgasm, too.
But with Holt, I come apart. So fast it scares me. Part of me wonders if it is possible for any other man to be like this for me. That summer between Holt and I was so long ago, but it feels like it has somehow rewired me. As if the only person in the universe who can make me come this fast and hot is Holt. And only Holt. Amen.
He yells out behind me, angry and guttural as if I have taken something from him. And his strokes lose coherence, becoming faster and faster until he explodes into the condom. Then and only then does he let go of my braids.
We both breathe hard. For a few moments that is the only sound in the room.
Then he pulls out and says, “Don’t be here when I get out of the shower.”
Nothing more is spoken after that, and the next sound I hear is the rasp of his bare feet against the large Oriental carpet as he walks away from the bed. By the time I sit up, he is already closing the suite’s bathroom door behind him.
I feel terrible and abandoned and bereft. Even worse than last night. But this is the deal, I remind myself as I climb out of the bed and grab my silk kimono. The arrangement. And besides, I did not come to his office last night looking to relive our past, but to escape it.
Sex with Holt is humiliating. Rough and weird and wrong in so many ways. But after the boys are fast asleep the next day, my breasts swell and my womanhood tingles with anticipation as I put on my kimono and braid my hair. My body continues to want Holt, even if my brain knows it shouldn’t.
That night and every night that follows, we go through the same routine. Him watching me masturbate with that hungry wolf look in his blue eyes. Then I let him know I’m ready, and he gives me the signal to turn over before falling on top of me and rutting me like an animal.
Funny, I had thought my past responsiveness to him was a fluke of my youth. But no…it’s still happening. I come embarrassingly fast every night. Even though there’s an edge to us now, a roughness that wasn’t there before. No more gazing tenderly into one another’s eyes as we make love on a sex cloud of our own making.
Most of the time, he doesn’t even talk to me. Just strips off his clothes while I “get ready.” Then he takes me from behind. Hard. After that first night, he refuses to face me again. Maybe he is afraid I’ll end up hugging him a second time.
He’s probably right.
He is so much prettier now. So put together. Unlike ten years ago, he looks and sounds like a man one could trust to run a multi-billion-dollar corporation. Yet sometimes…usually, after I’ve come, I am so tempted to turn over on my back and pull him into my arms.
Maybe he senses this. He always pulls out fast after we’re done. And even though he only walks away, it feels like he’s running when he disappears into his en-suite bathroom. And though he no longer bothers to tell me not to be there when he returns, I know he wants me gone without him having to say a word.
So I go. And even though we have fallen into a routine by late September, I feel a little heartsick every time I make the trip back to the guest cottage.
This situation makes me wish a few weird and conflicting nevers. I wish we’d never met that summer night. I wish I could
hate having sex with Holt.
One night I choose to stand and bend over the bed as he takes me from behind. And that turns out to be a mistake. When he wraps my braids in his fist and pulls my head back, his lips hover so close to my neck, I can feel his breath. Without thinking, I turn my face to kiss him. But as soon as my lips graze his, he jerks back as if I’ve burnt him.
“Not New Haven,” he grunts. Then he releases my braids and pushes me down on the bed, pinning me there with a hand on my back until I come a few minutes later, despite having my wish denied.
Most of all, I wish that night never happened. The night when he OD’d and it all fell apart.
But my wishes mean nothing. The past happened. Still, one night in early October I call to him as he walks away from the bed.
“Holt?”
And though this is not our usual routine, and he is already halfway to the bathroom, he turns and says, “Yeah?”
He is splendidly naked. Even if the room wasn’t softly lit so the overhead lights compliment his body instead of harshly highlighting all the flaws like the ones in my old bungalow, I suspect he would still look like a Greek god.
“Yeah?” he says again. Impatient in a way he almost never was in New Haven.
In my mind, I ask if he ever wishes we never met. My heart asks him why he didn’t suspect from the start that we were doomed. And my soul wails questions from all the heartbreak songs that have made me think of him over the past ten years.
But aloud I say, “Nothing.”
He regards me for another millisecond or two. Then he seems to make an icy decision and continues his journey to the bathroom. After picking up my clothes, I make my way from the room.
When you think about it, really, truly think about it, there are so many broken things in the world that can never be fixed. Holt and I are one more broken thing. A speck of a broken thing in a universe of broken things. What we had, what we’ve broken, doesn’t even matter. And that is the truth.
Chapter Twenty-One
I am still thinking about this truth on Friday morning after I drop off Wes and walk with Barron to his last class of the week: Intro to Neuroscience.
For a few hours, I sit in the back of the large lecture hall with a laptop, taking notes Barron probably won’t ever read since he already seems to have a firm grasp of the concepts anyway—at least enough to apply them to his bioHelmet. To the point that halfway through the class, he has asked so many questions about how some brain concept I don’t understand relates to some neurological concept I don’t understand, I am sure there will be another meeting with this professor in our future. He has already spoken with Barron about his bioHelmet project on two separate occasions, but the more Barron learns, the more he wants to apply—not to the upcoming test—but to his passion project.
Barron has been like this ever since he came up with the concept of the bioHelmet, a wearable device that can not only “read” what a person’s brain is feeling and thinking, but also transmit information straight into it. He was eight years old at the time and freshly arrived to the Tourmaline Ixtapa. But after that epiphany, he spent most of his days at the resort testing the device on game adults and iguanas alike. And now, even though he’s moved to the States and has started down an exciting new path as a college student, he still views most educational concepts through the lens of his ultimate goal.
He is obsessed with and focused on the bioHelmet to such a degree that I sometimes wish I could talk with his father about him. Because I know these qualities aren’t something he inherited from my side of a family. The Pinnocks are determined, hard workers, but I cannot imagine even Lydia, the smartest member of our family before Barron was born, ever being this driven toward a goal.
My phone buzzes in my purse, taking my thoughts away from Barron and the father he’s never known.
It is another overlong text message from Aunt Judith. I slide to see the full text since she is legitimately excited about my return to States. Unlike my mother, who never answers any of my calls or texts. Or Prin, who texted, Okay girl, I love you, but you are crazy for coming back here to work for Holt Calson of all people. Da fuck you thinking???
Six weeks later, I still haven’t responded to her question…or told her about the coercive aspect of my prodigal return. Mainly because I know her circumstances after the death of her now infamously debt-ridden father. Too broke to also support me and Barron along with the two stepsisters she has been saddled with, but too loyal not to immediately come to my rescue if she knew my real circumstances.
So my history with Holt has both screwed me out of a job and a long overdue reunion with my best friend from high school, I think bitterly as I begin to read Aunt Judith’s latest message.
JUST COME FROM TUESDAY MORNING BIBLE STUDY. AND PRAISE GOD, MY FRIEND GLORIA BE TELLING ME ABOUT HOW HER NEPHEW WAS LEFT BY HIS EVIL WIFE. SHE LEFT HIM WITH A GIRL CHILD TO RAISE ON HIS OWN. CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT???? THE DEVIL WILL DESTROY A FAMILY YOU KNOW HE WILL. BUT ANYWAY, HE IS A PROFESSOR IN THE HEALTH STUDIES PROGRAM AT STAMFORD COMMUNITY COLLEGE AND I TOLD GLORIA TO TELL HIM ABOUT MY NIECE WHO IS A VERY RESPECTABLE NANNY. GLORIA SAYS HE WILL TAKE YOU OUT. SO, I TOLD HER YOU WOULD SEE HIM TONIGHT. HE GOOD JAMAICAN MAN FROM GOOD PEOPLE. TOO BAD THE DEVIL TOOK HIS WIFE. BUT NOW HE BE FREE FOR YOU.
What must be a good twenty rows of praise hands follows Aunt Judith’s message.
Hold on…what is this now??? It sure sounds like my Aunt Judith and her friend Gloria set me up on a blind date on my first night off, since my weekend schedule starts on Friday night and ends halfway through Sunday to accommodate Wes’s school schedule.
My thumbs start flying, typing out a big message about how this date they have made without asking my permission is not going to happen, but before I can finish the text, my phone lights up with a message from a 475 number. “Hi, this is Glen, Gloria’s nephew. Just made reservations at an Italian restaurant near you for tonight. Your aunt said you like Malcolm Gladwell, so I also managed to snag tickets to his talk at CIT. Sound good?”
I blink, because…it does sound good. A date to see a speaker I have only pretended to see in the past. Now Glen’s message feels less like an aunt-inflicted hardship and more like…well, an invitation to redo the night I met Holt.
But…no. Things are already too confusing right now. Why add to it? Even if Glen sounds nice and considerate and, you know, doesn’t hate me with the heat of a thousand burning suns, I don’t think it is fair to accept a date with anyone in my current situation.
However, before I can compose an apologetic text message about how I really appreciate the offer but am too overwhelmed with life as a single parent and a soon-to-be college student to date right now, Barron is tugging at my arm. “Mama, guess what? Professor Nowak says he has a free hour and can talk with me about the work he did with GoBionics last summer.”
I look around and realize the class was dismissed while I was engrossed in the texts from Aunt Judith and Glen. The hall is empty, and the professor appears to be waiting for us at the classroom door. “What’s GoBionics?” I ask Barron, trying to figure out why this is such great news.
“The prosthetics development subsidiary of GoBotics. You know—the ones involved with all the advanced work with mind-controlled prosthetics.”
Actually I did not know that, and… “How does that apply to the bioHelmet?” I ask, my voice weak with confusion.
Barron widens his eyes at me as if he has been saddled with an idiot instead of the brilliant, science-oriented mother he should have had. Then he looks over his shoulder at the professor and says, “Just c’mon, Mom, please. He’s waiting and we only have one hour with him.”
Actually we end up spending the next two-and-a-half hours in the professor’s cramped office, and I get to listen to Barron and his professor excitedly discuss concepts that are even harder to understand than the ones in his lecture. Too bad everyone can’t make high-level concepts easy to digest for the lay person like Malcolm Gladwell, I think to m
yself. It feels like a reprieve when my phone buzzes with a call from Allie.
“Hey, Allie,” I say happily after sneaking out of the office. “What’s gwan?”
“Hi, Sylvie,” Allie says with an apologetic tone. “I know it’s your night off. But Holt has a date scheduled for tonight, so we need you to work this evening.”
My brain hiccups as I stare at the screen. He has a date. Holt, the man I’ve been having sex with almost every night for over six weeks, has a date. With another woman.
He never made me any promises. He told me the night we made our agreement that he hated me. Over and over again. And truthfully, I am a good woman and I try not to be petty. But still…
A mean feeling rises up in my heart as I say, “Actually I have a date, too. But please do not worry yourself…I will find someone to replace me for this evening.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
HOLT
As I descend the marble stairs that round into the foyer, a shout rends the air from the direction of the kitchen. Back in August, I might not have recognized the sound for what it is, but now it has almost become familiar. It is the sound of Wes laughing, loud and happy, like a normal kid.
My chest tightens with guilt. Because while I am dressed in a tux for a gala I completely forgot was on my calendar until Allie reminded me about it this afternoon, Sylvie is stuck here on her night off. And yeah, revenge is best served boss. I still believe that, but…
Instead of heading straight to the door, I turn on my wingtip and make my way into the kitchen. We’re not in a relationship. We don’t kiss. We barely even touch more than necessary. My rules, which I set for a reason. But here I am, trying to come up with a way to subtly explain to Sylvie that I am not going on a date-date. It’s more like a photo-op with a famous ballet dancer meant to impress the board before they meet next month.
However, I stop just inside the kitchen door.
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