He follows me.
“You guys,” I say to my staff. “Can you give me a minute?”
They head out the backdoor, casting curious looks over their shoulder as they go. My staff will have stuff to gossip about for years.
“Why aren’t you writing the story?” I ask him without looking at him. Again I know he’s here like I have some awful Simon radar. I know when he’s here, I’m painfully aware when he’s not.
“Because trying to get revenge on your father has ruined enough of my life. Because it’s not worth it if it costs me you.”
“You don’t have me.”
“But I want to.”
“Simon —”
“No, let me finish. Please.”
My silence gives him permission and he crosses the kitchen to stand in front of me.
“Everything I told you, everything I said, except for the stuff about the foundation, it was true. It is true. I went into journalism because I wanted to do the right thing. I wanted to be the kind of person my parents would be proud of. And the darkness I saw in the world, it’s gotten to be all I ever see. It’s filled me. And I wasn’t lying about dreaming of you.”
“You dreamed of me because you wanted revenge.”
“I dreamed of you because you are the brightest thing I’ve ever seen. You were then. You are now. Two days away from you and I feel like I’ve lost all the light. I feel like my whole life after my parents died was this dark nightmare I just had to…survive. And then I met you. And everything…everything is better. Food. Air. Sunlight. You make everything better, Penny.”
I suck in a breath, but it shudders and rattles me and he takes another step towards me.
“I was lying to you. And you were lying to me. But in the middle of that,” he says. His fingers brush mine, where my hand rests on the table. I flinch. He pauses, his fingers hovering over mine. “I told you more about myself. More…truth. Than I’ve told anyone…ever.” His fingers touch mine again and this time I don’t flinch. I let him touch me. Carefully. Slowly.
His hand covers mine. Familiar and foreign all at once.
“It was the same for me,” I whisper and I can’t believe I’m doing this. I can’t believe I’m letting him close. Letting him back in.
I must be crazy.
“I told you things I thought I had forgotten,” I whisper. His fingers are laced with mine, now. Our palms touching and he’s pulling me closer.
“All I want,” he says. “Is a chance. To see if this is what we think it is.”
“What do you think it is?”
“Love.” The word sends an arrow through me. “I hope it is.”
“I thought it was love, too,” I tell him. “But then I found out you were using me for a story.” He winces. “And everything you’re saying sounds…right. Sounds good. But I can’t just trust you again. I can’t just believe you after you hurt me like that.”
“I know. But I’m here. This week. Next week, too. Every week it takes.”
His fingers brush my face and I wait for him to pull me to him. But he doesn’t. He’s just there. Waiting.
“I want you to write the article,” I say.
“Are you sure?”
I nod. “My dad’s cost us enough. He shouldn’t cost you that second Pulitzer.”
“I don’t know if I have it in me anymore,” he says.
“You should find out.”
HE STAYS THE WEEK. Meets me every morning for breakfast in the kitchen. Spends the evenings in his room working on the article. After dinner, he comes out to my trailer. And we talk. We just talk.
And I feel myself falling into this place…I’ve never been before. He shows me the snow globe, tells me how his dad bought it when he was born and I fall a little more.
He tells about the foster father and how he died. He tells me about Bates and The Debt and part of me thinks, Simon admires the criminal.
“I owe him my life,” Simon says.
“I owe him, too,” I say, and it’s a strange realization.
I cook and I worry about the deer eating my peas. I think about brewing beer and Simon thinks about it with me. We hike up to the prospectors’ ruins. We drink wine by the fire.
He asks me if I’m going to change my name back to Tina.
“Tina wasn’t very happy,” I tell him.
“Penny is?”
“Penny is.”
On Wednesday night, Megan joins us by the fire. Bringing Maker’s Mark, two rocks glasses and the Dallas Cowboys’ cup from the kitchen.
I can’t imagine getting any happier.
Thursday night, he brings me the article to read. I read it sitting at my table in my trailer while he stands against the sink, looking more nervous than I’ve ever seen him.
When I finish the last word, I sigh and put the pages down.
“So?” he asks
“It’s amazing,” I say.
“It’s not too…angry?”
I shake my head no. He worries about that. About the darkness in him. “It’s smart. It’s concise. It paints the picture of man who values profit over people. I don’t think there is such a thing as too angry.”
“How do you feel?” he asks. “I don’t have to turn it in if you don’t want me to.”
I stand and put my arms around him; my head against his chest. I could stand like this, with him, all night. But he’s leaving in the morning and there are other things I want to do.
“Honestly, Simon,” I tell him. “It feels like a clean slate.”
“Yeah.” He nods. “That’s how I feel, too. Like I can go on now.”
“Me, too,” I whisper.
I kiss him. He’s kept his distance this week. He’s been polite and respectful. And I’ve been unsure and worried.
But not anymore. Not tonight. My hands curl around his neck and I open my mouth against his. Inviting him in. Urging him in.
“Penny,” he breathes against my skin. “Are you sure?”
“I’m so sure,” I tell him and he whoops loudly. Swinging me up into his arms to carry me into the bedroom.
“What if it’s not as good as we remember?” I ask and he drops my feet on the floor and starts working on the buttons of my shirt.
“Impossible. It’s gonna be better.” He’s kicking out of his shoes, tripping a little and I laugh.
“What if the secrets made it hot?”
He takes off his shirt and I’m done laughing. I’m on fire for him.
“The secrets didn’t make it hot,” he tells me, touching my arms, tracing my ink, looking in my eyes. “We did.”
And we make it hot again.
Twice.
THE NEXT MORNING, he checks out with promises to be back on Monday.
“Do you believe me?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say.
“We promised no more lies,” he says.
“I’m trying,” I tell him. He drives away in a beat-up Jeep and I do everything not to cry.
He sends flowers the next day. So many flowers my trailer is full of them. He sends Megan flowers.
And I fall deeper into this feeling.
It’s soft and sticky. It’s like spun sugar and whipped egg whites.
Monday morning after another successful weekend, I start to play the old game with myself. Convincing myself he won’t actually come back.
And that I don’t actually care.
But within hours he’s back, walking into my kitchen like he never left.
And I fall. I fall and I fall.
He teaches me to play cricket. Bobby grew up in England and he knows how to play, too, and suddenly, Simon’s got the staff playing in the field behind the house and he’s so happy I can’t stand it. Sometimes I have to look away so he doesn’t see me crying and think I’m sad.
He leaves every weekend, comes back every Monday.
“This is getting ridiculous,” Megan says. “I can’t keep charging him for the room.”
So he moves into one of the other trailers. An
d he writes. The articles on my father will be a five-part series. 60 Minutes already wants to talk to him about the story.
He has to leave for a week before Christmas and when he comes back there’s a big blond man and a beautiful freckled woman with wild hair with him.
“This is Tommy,” he says, clearly nervous. “And Beth. My family. And this,” he says about me, “is Penny. My girlfriend.”
I fall. I fall so hard that that night, lying in his arms in my trailer, I say; “I love you.”
Because there’s nothing else to say. It’s undeniable. There can be no more after this. I can feel no more for another person.
“I love you, too,” he says, kissing my shoulder.
And I was wrong. I just keep falling.
EPILOGUE
Four months later
Simon
BATES’S OFFICE is the top floor of a club. I’m let in by series of henchmen until I’m finally sitting across from Bates’s desk with a cup of coffee in my hand. He has a computer on his desk. A stapler. A small jar with pens in it.
Like he actually does business.
“I was expecting something a little more Scarface,” I say. “And a little less Office Space.”
“What did you say to me?” he asks, wrinkling his brow. “I hate to be predictable.”
“Bates, I can safely say you’re completely unpredictable.” Perhaps it’s odd that I’m so chummy with a confirmed killer and puppet master, but I suppose I’ve lived through stranger things.
I check my watch because I have important things to do. Penny is waiting at the park with a picnic and a cricket bat. And a book, I think, but she’s hiding it.
“Am I just here for a chat, or is there something you want to talk about?”
“Congratulations on the story,” Bates says. “There’s talk of another Pulitzer nomination.”
“Thank you, but you could have just broken into my condo to tell me that,” I joke and, I’m not sure, but it seems as if Bates’s lip actually curls. A smile?
“I’ve found Rosa,” he says and I nearly drop my coffee. “She was released from prison five months ago.” He pushes a piece of paper my way. “She’s working at this address in Oakland. A diner. The coffee is terrible but the pie is good.”
I take the address. Tommy and I put money aside for Rosa, for when she got out. But our letters to her in jail were always returned. And she never put us on her list of visitors.
Rosa hasn’t been seen or spoken to since that night.
“The baby?” I ask.
“With the father. It seems…complicated.”
I shake my head, put my coffee on his desk.
“I don’t know why you’re doing this. I don’t know what debt is getting paid anymore. You didn’t get her out of jail. She had nothing to do with killing The Pastor.”
“The Debt is mine,” Bates says, looking at me with his eerie eyes. “This is how I pay the debt I owe you.”
“You owe me?”
“All of you.”
I start to wonder why a man like Bates would take interest in a bunch of foster kids who end up in jail for killing an abusive foster dad.
Unless he’d been a foster kid, too.
“Fuck,” I breathe and put my head in my hands. The dots connecting into one pretty clear picture.
“You were in St. Jude’s, too,” I say.
The Pastor had abused Bates at one time. He wasn’t a ghost springing out of nowhere, he sprang out of St. Jude’s. Just like the rest of us.
Bates doesn’t answer me. He glances at his watch, makes a gesture and, suddenly, a neckless henchman is at my side to escort me away.
I stand and put the slip of paper in my pocket.
“I’ll reach out to Rosa,” I say. “Thank you.”
“The gratitude is mine.”
THANK you for picking up RUIN YOU! I hope you enjoyed it!
If you want to read Beth and Tommy’s story (and who doesn’t?)
LOST WITHOUT YOU
WHERE I BELONG
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Table of Contents
Introduction
I. Then
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
II. Now
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
Ruin You Page 19