My mission needs my focus. I cannot give it to Caitlin.
But I refuse to give Caitlin up, so the mission must wait.
The mission comes first.
Caitlin comes first.
As I looked out across the valley in the hour before Caitlin arrived, I made a decision, and that decision was a strange one.
My decision is: I refuse to decide.
I refuse to believe I cannot give all my time and energy to both Caitlin and my mission, shortchanging neither. I refuse to believe that if you have one and subtract one from it, that the answer is zero.
The problem with my decision (and my refusal) is that neither works in the real world.
In the real world, one minus one is zero.
In the real world, I can’t have both.
This is not a case of And. This is a case of Or.
I think all of these things as I open the door to face Caitlin.
Whatever this was supposed to be between us, it’s become something different. I need to face reality instead of the nonexistent myth. We were never supposed to be a couple, but somehow we’ve become a couple.
I look at Caitlin, knowing what I have to do.
But I can’t.
I refuse.
She hasn’t made me second-guess anything that shouldn’t be second-guessed. She hasn’t distracted me from anything that didn’t require the occasional distraction.
But she’s harming my focus, and there’s no way out but to end it.
I take her hand and lead her inside. There’s no one in the house but me — no maids, no assistants, not even any groundskeepers outside. I wanted privacy. So I open my mouth to tell her what needs saying. I waver. I see her eyes — soft brown, the kind of eyes you get lost in. I tell myself to be strong.
Instead, I pull her to me. I kiss her.
We can’t do this. I need to stop. If I don’t, I’m a bastard. If I don’t, I’m not just the hypocrite Alexa accused me of being; I’m also digging the knife deeper into Caitlin’s belly, too cowardly to tell her this was supposed to be our breakup.
She deserves better. She deserves the breakup. She doesn’t deserve my confused affections. She doesn’t deserve the bludgeon of my lust.
But I mash her lips with mine. Her hands are all over me, unbuttoning my shirt, pulling it over my head. I remove her blouse so urgently that I almost rip it. My hands slip beneath her bra without unfastening it, because there’s no time for niceties. Somehow I get it off anyway and then her hands are at my belt, unzipping me, reaching down my pants to stroke my sudden erection.
She’s rushing so much that her hands are clumsy, amateurish. She grinds against me. I try to push her away, to end this, but instead I stumble all the way to the wall with her, pressing her to it. I kiss her neck, lick her tits, rub my fingers across their saliva-slicked curves, pinch her nipples.
Her hands are still on my cock, jerking so fervently that I might just come all over her stomach right now to end this. My hand slips inside both pants and panties. I find her bare and wet, warm and inviting. I touch her clit and she gasps. I cover her gasping lips with mine, kissing her urgently.
I push back. I actually have to keep my arm straight between us, fingers tented near her collarbone, forcing myself not to look into her eyes or at her heaving chest.
This has to be done. It can go no further.
“Caitlin, we need to talk.”
“It’s so hot when you say that.”
“I’m serious.”
Her fingers circle my cock.
My balls snug up under me, tense and ready to fire. Just looking at her makes me want to come. Just looking at her makes me want to take her upstairs, make us both forget, and then look out at that valley vista together.
“Then talk,” she says.
“You need to stop,” I say, hoping she doesn’t.
Her hand pauses.
My hand, still inside her panties, does not. I force it to. I draw it out and I take another step back, finally apart.
“What is it?”
“Caitlin …”
She’s shaking her head.
“Caitlin, we need—”
“Shut your fucking mouth.” She’s still breathing like she’s run a race. Her breasts rise and fall. Her eyes are deep, suddenly sad.
“Let me say what I need to say.”
“No.”
“You have to hear it. You deserve it.”
“No, Anthony.”
“You—”
“Kiss me. Make love to me.”
I just watch her. I watch her and want her.
She closes the step between us and pushes my chest.
“If you have something to say to me, say it with your cock.”
I move closer. I won’t do this. I’m not that big of a bastard.
But with her just a foot from me, I can smell her like a predator smells prey.
I’m no longer in control — I’m not Anthony, the rational man who shares my skin.
Now I’m something different. Something else. Something that is all need.
My hands move of their own accord. I hook my fingers into her waistband and pull violently down. Her pussy hypnotizes me. My cock twitches, dribbling fluid with hungry anticipation as she reaches for it.
Her fingers wrap around it. They shouldn’t be there, but I want them.
I push her sideways, so her back is against my wall of windows. So I can see the valley as I betray her with my lust. Does it matter that she knows what this is? Does it matter that she’s realized what I was going to say, and wants me to fuck her anyway?
“Open your legs,” I say. “Show me how wet your pussy is.”
Demure now, she looks down, bites her lower lip, and parts her knees for me. Her pants are still entangling her ankles so I step on them and allow her to free herself. Then I repeat my instructions, looking down as her hand strokes my cock. Her legs open as her bare ass kisses the window.
Her fingers slip inside a little and come out slick.
“Paint the head of my cock with your juices,” I tell her. I say it gruffly, because that’s what this is. That’s what this has to be. I don’t have feelings for her. We’re here to fuck, so fucked we’ll get.
Caitlin rubs my cock against her pussy. Her body is so hot on me, it’s like there’s a furnace inside. She wets the head of my cock as instructed, making me shiver as my flesh rubs across her wet pussy.
I lift her legs. I bury my cock inside her and she gasps.
“Fuck me, Anthony.”
I fuck her with her legs wrapped around me, her feet off the ground. I turn her around and fuck her from behind with her smooth ass beneath my grasping hands. I fuck her so hard, pencils fall off the countertop five feet from us. And when I’m ready, I turn her around and I spurt my come all over her beautiful tits.
It’s not love-play. It’s only sex between us.
We slump to the ground, spent.
Then the bubble pops, and harsh reality intrudes all over again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
ANTHONY
I CAN’T HAVE A HUNDRED percent of both: my mission, and Caitlin … who I realize all of a sudden I’ve started to think of as my woman.
I guess we’re not just fucking. I guess I can’t just end this.
Maybe I can have eighty percent of both. Maybe that’s fine.
It has to be, because it can’t be anything else.
“Anthony?”
Caitlin is looking up at me. Satisfied as she is, she looks like a doe. Our aggressive, angry energy is gone with our orgasms.
Looking at her, I love her. I can’t leave her, and I doubt she can leave me. We both know that’s how it has to be. I was going to tell her that we needed to end this thing between us.
Caitlin knew … and her answer was to insist that I fuck her anyway. To assure me that feelings don’t matter.
But we were both wrong. In this dimly lit afterglow, our lust has surrendered real life.
And
no matter how we try to hide it, in real life, emotion is all there is.
My one-word reply to Caitlin sounds sad to my ears. It’s not, but I think we both know what’s happening. A sacrifice is going to be made. The only question is which one it will be.
“Yes?”
“You cut me out. Jamie told me you had a meeting with a charitable partner. Don’t tell me you just forgot to invite me. Don’t pretend it was an accident.”
I close my eyes with a sigh, then open them to meet hers. “It wasn’t.”
“That’s unfair.”
I look down at Caitlin. Adults seldom say that things aren’t fair. It’s a playground sort of criticism — childlike ethics reasoning that when something tips the moral balance, it deserves to be against the law.
“I needed time to think.” I gesture at our spent, naked bodies. “About what this is.”
“I didn’t mean it’s unfair in terms of our arrangement. I meant it’s unfair to me personally. It has nothing to do with us. It only has to do with me.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know the expression about how the life you save is your responsibility?”
I nod and lace my fingers through hers. This doesn’t feel like a breakup. Maybe because it’s not. Maybe because I realize now that I can’t ever let her go … and if it means the end of the rest of me, so it will have to be.
“You didn’t save my life, but you did save me, Anthony. After our talk, everything changed. I was in a terrible place. I wasn’t just angry at my parents. I was angry at myself. I was pissed off at all I’d tolerated over the years. Boyfriends who cheated and were rough with me, treating me like shit while I let it happen. A job I didn’t like. I didn’t even send food back when a restaurant got it wrong. I’d let myself become a doormat just like my parents were doormats for each other in their own way, and I hid it all behind this hard exterior. I said that I believed in calling people on their bullshit. And I did. I called everyone out, including you. Except for myself. I didn’t let myself see what I was doing wrong. What I was tolerating.”
I look down, waiting.
“What you said — what you did for me that first night? It saved me, in a way. Now I’m happy … and that joy is your fault.”
“You did it for yourself, Caitlin. It was all your own work.”
“You saved me, Anthony,” she says as if she didn’t hear me, “and now I’m your responsibility.”
I nod slowly.
“I believe in what you’re doing, both with the Ross Institute and the Ross Foundation. Jamie promoted me because I bullied her into it — because that’s how much I believe. So when I say what you did was unfair, that’s what I mean. You can’t take this mission away from me. You have to include me when I can make a difference. Do you understand? This isn’t just your thing. It’s mine, too.”
I smile down at her — because although I can’t say for sure yet, I’m sure Caitlin is in the process of saving me, too.
“What’s next for us?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
“Are we a couple?”
Caitlin looks up at me. I get a little false-shocked look, but then she smiles and looks away before she answers: “I’m not sure, Anthony. Are we?”
“What do you think?”
Caitlin turns around, faces me full-on, and says, “Come on, guru. Scio te.”
“‘Let the buyer beware’?”
She shakes her head and corrects me: “Know thyself.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that with all the introspection you do every day both onstage and off, I shouldn’t have to tell you who you are, what you stand for, or what you believe.”
I look into Caitlin’s eyes. “Too late. I think you already have.”
Now she looks touched.
“I’ve always believed in telling the truth,” I tell her.
“So what’s the truth about us?”
That it’s not just sex.
I wish it were, but it’s not.
Things would be so much easier if I could stay detached from Caitlin, and fold my life into neat little boxes.
“We are where we are,” I say.
I know what else I should probably say to Caitlin, but I can’t. Not until I’m sure.
So I hold her instead.
CHAPTER THIRTY
CAITLIN
I’D LIKE TO STAY AT Anthony’s, and I’m sure I’m welcome, but staying over tonight feels like I’m inviting a jinx. Something is changing between us — maybe already has changed — but I’m afraid to look it in the eye for fear it’ll dissipate like a ghost in the mist.
Anthony isn’t the only one able to read people. He’s not the only one with insights. He looked at Rena and knew her problems were about guilt, and he looked at me and identified that anger at my mother was hiding anger for my father. But when Anthony came to the door, it took one look to see the conflict on his face: the knowing he should do one thing while acknowledging he was likely doing another. I saw that conflict as he pulled me into the house behind him, then when his sex became angry and our afterglow made it all feel more like lovemaking than fucking.
I think he meant to break up with me today, just like I meant to tell him off.
But we’re two poles that couldn’t help but be drawn together.
I follow my thoughts …
Anthony built a lot of his reputation on sexual freedom: Yes.
Anthony and I were just going to get each other off, so as to be sexually free with maximal efficiency: Yes.
But his feelings for me became something else just as mine were becoming something else for him: Yes.
He found himself torn between me and his work. Now I’m the one keeping him from that purpose, at least a little.
And while I feel high on what just happened, I feel guilty, too.
Yes. Yes. And Yes.
What I feel is: Good.
What I feel is: Happy.
What I feel — even though I know I probably shouldn’t — is: Euphoria.
I hope that Anthony feels the same. I hope he allows himself to feel it. I’m sure he made a decision today, and our pillow talk convinces me further. I don’t think Anthony is still wondering whether he should give me some of his attention or if he needs to horde it all for his business. I think that choice has been made, and now Anthony needs to get used to it.
I hope he’s letting himself feel the joy that I’m just now allowing myself to feel, rather than racking himself with guilt. He should be. He knows better. Another pillar of Anthony’s philosophy is making decisions efficiently, and in full. You don’t linger or waver; you make your choice without looking back.
I love you, Caitlin.
He didn’t say those words, but I sensed them on his lips. Or maybe I’m wrong and he’ll never say it. But rather than worrying and wondering, I pretend. I allow myself to be happy in this moment. God knows I’ve logged enough miserable hours to have earned it.
The next day is Sunday. I wake up in my own bed, then lay beneath the sheets for a few moments as I try to remember what’s new and different. I feel happy without a clear reason — the opposite of realizing that you’re sure someone is watching you unseen. Only after several long, slow breaths and gazing at the morning sun do I remember.
Again, I don’t want to think on it too long because I’d rather not count chickens before they’ve hatched. But still I’m happy. Still I’m eager to see what the morning brings.
I get a phone call as my coffee is brewing. It’s Anthony. We only talk for a few minutes because, as usual, he has fifty things on his schedule even on Sunday. There’s no time to meet, but unless I’m imagining it I get the strong feeling he wishes we could. There’s an undercurrent to his words — a seeming desire to make me understand that he needed to hear my voice. We don’t talk about anything at all. We don’t schedule a new meet-up or discuss business.
It’s a pointless discussion: a true waste of time by a
ny definition except the one that matters most.
Five minutes later I’m alone again, but I can’t stop smiling. It was the first time Anthony called with nothing to say. Five minutes is an eternity to a man like him. Wasting even that much time on me is like a wealthy man lighting a hundred-dollar bill to make a point.
Sunday passes quickly. Inspired by Anthony’s voice, my mind turns to business, to the Ross Foundation. I start to think of his mission, which is also my mission now. I think about the funds the foundation has coming in, and start making mental calculations, already deciding where to spend it for maximum effect. Quickly my head fills up and I have to grab a pen and paper, and once I’ve done that I decide I might as well drink the rest of the Kool-Aid and dig through my Fate In Your Palm swag bag for the Dharma Journal to write in instead.
Seeing my notes from the seminar, everything comes rushing back. I remember my inspiration and elation through it all. I take notes at first, but soon I’m filling out template pages, deciding on my goals for the next year, and then the next five. I’m listing my reasons, giving my actions purpose, delineating obstacles in my path and describing ways I might surmount those obstacles. Then I flip to the front of the journal and fill out my personal inventory: assets that I seldom give myself credit for, people I know who might help me, and weaknesses I must bolster to succeed.
It’s a self-help love-fest. Jamie would make fun of me, but I don’t care.
I’m flying high by dinnertime. For the first time, I feel like I’ve created a true plan for my life. I finally believe that I can get to where I want to go — and far beyond.
It’s all right there, pen and ink in my journal.
The yearly goals.
The monthly goals.
What I’ll do this week to advance them.
Right down to what I’ll do tomorrow.
It feels like I have my hand on the ignition button of a fine automobile. Life is no longer a matter of hoping and dreaming. For once, I know what to do in order to make my mark on the world.
Tomorrow, I’ll hit the errand Jamie asked me to handle days ago, hunting down the P&L numbers from her discussion with Anthony. I’ll have to dig through the Disclosure archives to find their conversation, but how hard can it be?
The Guru (Trillionaire Boys' Club Book 6) Page 16