The Perfect Illusion

by Winter Renshaw

  There it is.

  The DNA swab kits sit inconspicuously along a bottom row, two spots down from a row of pregnancy tests.

  I swipe the box and flip it over, reading the instructions. There’s a rush option, where results will come in two weeks, otherwise typical handling time is four to eight weeks.

  Perfect.

  I drop it in my basket and head to the check out lane, stopping dead when I see her.

  Annelise.

  I refuse to smile, and I make no effort to hide my disappointment in seeing her here. She’s dressed in a cream cashmere twinset and black leather leggings tailored to her perfect physique. Her face is covered in the kind of makeup a woman buys from a counter at Barneys. Annelise doesn’t belong in a Duane Reade.

  It’s too much. We’re past happenstance and coincidence.

  “Annelise.” I grip the basket handle until my knuckles whiten and the plastic digs into my palm.

  “Odessa.” She pulls her shoulders tight, and dons a devilish smirk. She doesn’t fidget or dither and her eyes don’t shift. If someone told me the woman standing before me was Annelise’s evil twin, I wouldn’t argue.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Her eyes fall to my basket, landing on the DNA test. My stomach twists. I bet she followed me here after seeing me leave Beckham’s place. If that’s the case, my sympathy for this broken-hearted girl is quickly morphing into concern that she might need professional help.

  “I knew the baby wasn’t his.” Her arms fold.

  “No clue what you’re talking about.”

  Her blue eyes roll. “Not falling for that.”

  “You need to distance yourself from him,” I say. “It’s not healthy. And please stop following me.”

  She smirks, shaking her head. “Don’t act like you know him better than I do.”

  The awkward, shy Annelise I met weeks ago is dead and gone. This psychotic woman is officially leading the charge.

  “I’m not going to discuss him with you anymore,” I push past her, heading for the cash registers. My gut tells me not to engage with crazy.

  The clicking of her heels match my strides as she follows me. A cold sweat trails down the back of my neck. This woman is completely obsessed with Beckham on a much larger scale than I previously assumed.

  “He’s a monster,” she calls after me. “I created him, and only I know how to love him.”

  My lips tighten and my skin flushes.

  I don’t want to respond, but I won’t sit back and let some crazy stalker woman slander a man who doesn’t get enough credit for the good things he does.

  But when I turn to silence her, she’s gone.

  Chapter 35

  BECKHAM

  “Here you go.” Odessa places a white plastic sack on my desk Monday morning.

  Examining the kit, I read the fine print on the back as she stands before me, fidgeting.

  “If you go online, you can pay a fee and upgrade to a rush order,” she says. “Just a quick swab of both your mouths, mail it off, pay the fee, and you should have your answer in less than two weeks.”

  “Thank you.” I put the box back in the sack and slip my hands in my pockets, eyes dragging the length of her and catching a small twitch in her fingers. “What’s all this?”

  “Pardon?”

  “You’re shaking.” I hope to God she’s not being all jittery because we fucked last night and she decided all of a sudden to develop fucking feelings for me.

  “I ran into Annelise last night,” she says. “For the third time in three weeks.”

  My brows furrow. The name isn’t ringing a bell. “Annelise?”

  “Yes.” She puts force into the word, as if that would help me to remember. “Annelise. Your Annelise.”

  I chuckle. “I don’t have an Annelise.”

  Odessa glances to the left, scratching the corner of her mouth. “She sure knows you. She knows where you work. Where you live. She knew my name two weeks ago. Said you’d told her about me.”

  My brows rise. “I haven’t told anyone about you.”

  Besides Xavier, but I’m not telling her that. She’ll think I like her or some shit.

  I sink down in my chair, resting my chin in my hand. The lack of sleep lately hasn’t done much for my short-term memory. I mentioned Odessa to Xavier a couple weeks ago, but he doesn’t know any Annelieses that I’m aware of. Pretty sure the girl he went home with that night was named Hayley or Heather or Harper.

  “She came in here my first day, brought you lunch but you’d left,” she says.

  “She came in here?” I lean forward.

  “Okay, now you’re freaking me out.” Odessa slumps into a guest chair. “She came in here looking for you. And then I bumped into her the next week when I went out to get coffee. She cried when I told her she needed to get over you.”

  “Whoa, whoa.” I lift my hand. “I have no clue who you’re fucking talking about. Some woman walked in here, bringing me lunch, and then you talked to her about me and she cried?”

  This is some Eva-level shit.

  “Yeah,” she says, eyes wide. “And I ran into her last night, at the pharmacy. She saw me buying the kit.”

  My hands rake the sides of my head, nails digging into my scalp.

  “What does she look like?” I ask, my heart thundering as my suspicion grows.

  Odessa winces, glancing up at the ceiling. “She’s pretty. Short blonde hair. Platinum. Big blue eyes. Lots of makeup. Well-dressed. The second time I saw her, she was wearing this diamond lotus pendant on her collar.”

  “Mother fucker.”

  “What?” Odessa’s hand flies to her chest. “Who is she, Beck?”

  “Her name isn’t Annelise.” My teeth grind, and I swallow the ball in my throat. “It’s Sophie Glass, my ex-fiancé.”

  “This woman is obsessed with you.” Her hands tremble in her lap. “She called you a monster. Followed me around the pharmacy. I thought maybe she was some one-night stand who took things too far. You’d mentioned you’d had stalkers before.”

  “Yeah.” I huff.

  “She said she knew the baby wasn’t yours.”

  My lips rub together, and I grab the stress ball next to my monitor, clenching it in my fist until it’s reduced to nothing. A minute later, I stand.

  “Where are you going?” She grips the arms of her chair, pushing herself up.

  I don’t answer. Anger fills my head, preventing me from speaking even if I wanted to. It’s one thing to follow me around. It’s another thing to stalk my female employees.

  But it’s something else altogether for Sophie to bring my fucking daughter into this.

  “You have a lot of goddamn nerve.”

  Sophie stands outside her apartment, which happens to be the penthouse suite of her father’s Lotus Hotel in the Meatpacking District.

  “Beckham.” Her finger trails along her collarbone as she paints a slow smile on her red lips. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  I push past her, slamming the door. Seething. My neck clenches and my body’s on fire. My blood hasn’t boiled this hot since the night I walked in on Sophie with that washed up actor.

  “It’s good to see you again.” She saunters to her mini bar, pulling out a crystal tumbler and a bottle of Scotch. “May I offer you a drink? You look like you could use one. Then again, I always enjoyed seeing you all worked up. Mm. Such a turn on.”

  I throttle my breathing. I need to think clearly because the message I have for her today needs to be crystal fucking clear.

  Sophie Glass was the first woman who ever broke my heart, at least by standard definition. I hate that she wears that title. It should’ve gone to someone more worthy. Someone with actual blood in her veins and not money, vodka, and self-serving intentions.

  “Baby’s cute,” she says, handing me a drink. I don’t accept it. She shrugs and puts it aside. “No need to be rude, Beckham.”

  She sashays to her sofa, slinking down and pickin
g up a martini glass from the coaster. It’s a little early for a drink but Sophie Glass has never paid attention to things that matter like time and responsibilities and self-discipline.

  “I still have our engagement announcement,” she muses. “Framed too. Daddy never did get over losing the son he always wanted. God forbid he leaves his empire in my hands someday.”

  Losing Howard Glass as a future father-in-law was quite the blow, but I’ll be damned if I tell her that.

  “I always wondered what our baby would’ve looked like.” Her manicured nail traces the outline of a sequin-striped pillow better suited for the bedroom of a thirteen year old girl. “I feel like it would’ve been a boy. Mother’s intuition I guess.”

  “Don’t fucking go there, Sophie.” My shoulders pull tight, fists flexing and clenching.

  “I’m sorry, I just can’t picture you as a family man,” she laughs. “Now would that be kismet? Or karma?”

  I’d never hit a woman, but it doesn’t stop me from conjuring up an image in my head of my fingers wrapped around Sophie’s porcelain throat, smashing her up against the wall.

  “You fucking bitch.”

  “I hold you responsible.” She points at me, her smile swapping out for a glare. “You should know that.”

  “Still delusional after all these years.”

  Her lips twist back into a smirk. “Not delusional. We just remember things differently.”

  “No, Sophie. You remember things the way you want to. That way you don’t have to take responsibility for the horrendous choices you made.”

  “When you tell your fiancé you think you might be pregnant, and he freaks out and goes on a rampage about how he never wanted children and how he’s not capable of being a father, what’s a girl to do?” Her eyes glass but it’s only temporary. “I didn’t want to lose you, Beckham. I did what I had to do.”

  “You don’t go out and get a fucking abortion, Sophie.” The throbbing in my head is only outdone by the painful tensing of my jaw.

  She uncrosses her legs, drawing them up on the sofa and reaching for her martini glass.

  “You stormed out that night. I didn’t hear from you for a week. I had to fix the problem.” Her words are lined in defense, but her argument is thin. “You came back to me after that, did you not?”

  “Like a fucking moron, yes.” My voice is a low growl. “Don’t think a day goes by when I don’t regret it.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Men act like they have it so hard. You think it was easy for me to walk into a clinic, a scarf wrapped around my face, and lie on a table and get our baby sucked out of me?”

  My stomach balls. “I never asked you to get an abortion, Sophie.”

  “You didn’t have to. You made it clear you didn’t want to be a father. I granted your little wish because I fucking loved you. How many women would do that for you, Beckham?”

  The searing pain in my chest intensifies when I think of never knowing my innocent child.

  “I was scared, Sophie. I needed space. I needed to process everything.”

  “You were weak,” she spits her words. “That’s one of the reasons I wanted you. You were weak and I could break you over and over. Mold you into whatever I needed. You were lost when I found you. A tragically handsome, broken soul. Couldn’t let that go to waste. I showed you what it felt like to be desired, and I made you into everything you ever wanted to be.”

  It’s true. She showed me desire like I’d never felt before. All along it was desire, not love. It was hard to tell the difference when I’d never felt anything that’d rendered me so powerless.

  Sophie knew how to bring me to my knees, offering me the world on a silver platter. She held my heart in her teeth for years, breaking me time and again until I finally snapped.

  “I didn’t come here to rehash the past with you.” My arms cross. “Came to tell you to stay the fuck away from me, my family, and Odessa.”

  She cocks her head, resting it on her hand and sinking back into her overstuffed sofa. “That’s cute. You’re all protective. Never thought I’d see the day.”

  “Tell me, Beckham. I get why you’re protective of the baby, but why the girl?” She takes a swill of her drink. “You afraid I’ll tell her the truth about you? About your past and that sick-as-fuck cult you were raised in and how you were used in those rituals where the church elders would fuck you in the ass?”

  Her head tosses back. She’s pure fucking evil in a pale pink twin set.

  My face pinches, my chest heaving. I charge at her and see a hint of terror in her blue eyes for the first time.

  “You stay away from me and my family. You don’t speak of us. You don’t follow us. You don’t so much as fucking think of us. We don’t exist to you. You’re dead to us.” My face is inches from hers. It’s all I can do not to strangle the psychotic bitch. “If I hear you’re bothering Odessa, if I see you anywhere, I swear to God, Sophie, I’ll go straight to your father and tell him the real reason we ended it.”

  Her face pales. She’s frozen.

  “You and I both know the substance abuse clause your father put in your trust is ironclad. He’ll disown you and disinherit you if he knows you so much as tried a single fucking illegal drug.” I don’t need to remind her. She’s well aware.

  She swallows, and I storm out before I do anything stupid. Sophie fucking Glass is not worth it. My priorities have shifted. My concerns lie elsewhere. I don’t want to fight dirty, but when it comes to protecting the only thing that matters to me, I’ll do what I have to and not think twice.

  Chapter 36

  ODESSA

  I find an empty park bench in Central Park and finish my pretzel-and-coffee lunch, composing my thoughts before I call my parents. It’s time to tell them about Jeremiah: that it’s officially over.

  For good.

  My fingers shake as I dial my father’s cell phone. He deserves to hear everything from me now, not secondhand through Mom.

  “Hey, baby cakes!” His voice is a whistle, breathless.

  “Hey, Dad.” I can’t help but smile when I hear his voice, though it disappears when I remember I’m seconds away from breaking the poor man’s heart.

  “Good to hear from you,” he says. “I was getting worried. Everything okay?”

  “Yes,” I say. “I’m doing well. Really happy.”

  “I saw Jeremiah’s TV show the other day. You didn’t tell us the season started two weeks ago,” he says. “Trying to play catch up with the reruns. It’s a good show. Your mom made his southern fried chicken last night for dinner.”

  “Daddy, you’re not supposed to be eating that kind of stuff.”

  “Everybody’s going to die someday, right?”

  I hate when he downplays his health. Cracking jokes isn’t going to make his chronic illnesses disappear.

  “Your mother told me you and Jeremiah were going through a bit of a cooling off period,” he says. Leave it to my mother to put a delicate spin on some heavy news. Two years ago when my brother and his wife were having marital issues, my father damn near had a heart attack when he heard they’d legally separated. “Everything okay?”

  I rake my hand along my leg and reposition myself. Attempting to find comfort on a wooden park bench is pretty much impossible.

  “I’m sorry,” I begin. “I know you liked him a lot, but I don’t want to marry him anymore. We ended things. For good.”

  My face pinches as I wait for his reaction, fingers crossed that this news doesn’t land him in the hospital.

  “You still there?” I ask. The raspy breathing on the other end tells me he is, but I need him to say something. Anything.

  “Back in high school,” he says. “I dated this girl. Marian Tisdale. She was incredible. Smile like you wouldn’t believe. Captain of the cheerleading squad. Hottest girl in school. We went off to college together, and I thought I was going to spend my life with this girl. I loved her more than anything.”

  I press the phone hard against my ea
r. My father never speaks of life before my mom, and we all assumed that he didn’t exist until she came into his life.

  “Just before the wedding,” he says. “She got cold feet. Said she couldn’t marry me because there were too many other options out there and what if she made the wrong choice? I was the only guy she’d ever loved.”

  His tone is laced in melancholy, and my heart breaks for the younger version of my father.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “I think my father took it harder than anyone,” he says. “Told me I’d never meet anyone as perfect for me as Marian Tisdale. And for years, I believed him.”

  I know how that feels.

  “And then one day, I’m working at my father’s deli and he announces that he hired some Bloom girl to pick up some hours on the second shift. A daughter of his buddy’s from the next town over.”

  My heart warms.

  “In walks your mother.” I can hear the smile in his hoarse words. “Never looked back after that.”

  “Aw,” I sigh. “I knew you met at grandpa’s deli, but I’d never heard about Marian.”

  “That’s because Marian is irrelevant,” he says. “Life didn’t matter until your mother. She’s my best friend. The girl who stuck by my side despite the fact that I didn’t deserve her. Still don’t deserve her. But thirty-five years later, she’s not going anywhere. You need someone who’ll stick with you when life gets hard. Really hard. Because it will. It always does.”

  I nod, knowing he can’t see me. My words are lodged somewhere in my throat.

  “Look. I liked Jeremiah. Emphasis on liked. If things got hard and Jeremiah bailed on you, he doesn’t deserve you,” Dad says. “And I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I knew you were only staying with him because you wanted to make me happy.”

  I clutch at my heart, desperately wishing we’d have had this talk weeks ago.

  “Thanks, Dad.” A lungful of fresh air reinvigorates me. “I’ve got to get back to work. I’ll see you and Mom in a couple weeks, okay? I’m flying back for Mother’s Day.”