Her Secret

by Bloom, Penelope

  She was so distracted by the dog that I had an uninterrupted opportunity to look at her. Her head was leaned back as she giggled, scratching the frantic dog behind the ears. More than anything, I think I admired the way she could be so determined and focused, but she still hadn’t lost that ability of hers to utterly enjoy a moment. I craved some of that in my own life. I wished I could just stop for once and enjoy what I’d accomplished instead of always fixating on what was next. Somehow, Violet could do both, and maybe that was part of what drew me to her so strongly. Just being around her made me feel more like I could imagine a future where I wasn’t so cold and closed off all the time.

  Those were dangerous thoughts. They were exactly the kind of thoughts that had led me to foolishly trust Kristen with everything, to become so blind that I would literally sign away my book without realizing it. It didn’t seem to matter how many times I reminded myself of Kristen, because Violet was different.

  She interrupted my thoughts when she came hobbling back toward me with a huge smile. She also had several raised, white spots on her neck and chin that were surrounded by red patches of irritated skin.

  I frowned and reached out to touch her cheek. She misunderstood and her eyes widened. Her lips parted and her eyes fell to my mouth. I couldn’t help but laugh as I shook my head. “Uh,” I said. “I think you’ve got hives.”

  It took a second for my words to sink in. She scratched at her neck. “I do feel really itchy… Shit, it’s probably because I’m allergic to dogs.”

  I stared. “You didn’t think that was a good reason to maybe not let the puppy maul you?”

  She spread her hands like I was asking ridiculous questions. “I don’t know, okay? It was a reflex. Look at that little guy. Besides, I just get itchy and some slight skin rashes. It’s not like I’m going to swell up and die.” She was scratching hard enough to leave painful looking red marks on her neck.

  I took her wrists in mine. “Stop scratching. Please. And come on, we need to go scrounge up an allergy pill or something.”

  “Those make me so drowsy. I won’t be much help to you if you give me one.”

  “It’s better than the alternative,” I said. Whether she was concerned or not, I didn’t like how quickly her hives seemed to be growing.

  There was a little gift shop in the convention center that thankfully sold individual packets of popular over-the-counter medications. I got her a Benadryl and had her down it with a bottle of water. We spent the next few minutes sitting just outside the shop while Violet repeatedly tried to itch her hives and I held her wrists to keep her from doing it.

  “You will let go eventually,” she said. “And when you do, I’ll scratch.”

  “You’ll only make it worse if you do.”

  She groaned, and because of the way I had her wrists, when she finally decided to go limp and stop fighting me, she ended up resting her head on my shoulder. For the first time since I’d helped her up the stairs in her apartment and let her lean into me, I didn’t try to stop myself from enjoying how she felt. She felt small against me, and any passerby absolutely would’ve taken us for a couple by the way we were practically cuddled together.

  “You know,” I said after she’d been quiet a while. “I have to admit that I’m starting to wonder how much of my concern for your foot was really just an excuse to keep holding onto you.”

  She gave no response, and I quickly felt stupid for what I’d said.

  “Fuck,” I groaned. “I’m sorry. I’m making this weird. It has just been confusing, I guess. Ever since the breakup, I haven’t even thought about relationships, let alone been remotely attracted to someone. Then you came along, and I wrote it off as physical. But… Shit. I’m making it weirder, aren’t I?”

  I frowned. She still wasn’t responding. When I leaned down to get a look at her expression, I realized she was fast asleep. I let my head flop back against the wall behind our bench and laughed softly at myself. Idiot.

  Surprisingly, keeping my eyes down while Violet dozed on my shoulder seemed to be enough for any potential fans to refrain from coming over and asking for pictures. The most I encountered were a few who smiled excitedly and waved. Despite what Violet probably believed, I actually enjoyed meeting my fans. Non-fiction wasn’t my final, fully realized dream, but I took a great deal of pride in what I did and I was constantly striving to make every book better than the last.

  Still, I had a half-written manuscript on my computer for a thriller. It was technically the sequel to What’s Buried There, because part of my dream wasn’t just to write another thriller with my own name on it. It was to launch a full-blown legal assault to prove to the world that Kristen had stolen my work. I didn’t care about getting a penny of the royalties back. I just wanted all the people she’d tricked to know what a fraud she was, and writing the undeniable successor that she would never be able to write herself seemed like the perfect knockout punch to my plan.

  The only problem was actually writing it. Writing a book was hard enough without all the complications that came with my secret thriller. Namely, the possibility that my legal assault would be too little too late, and the book would be seen as some knock-off fan fiction that would only add more fuel to the Kristen Woods fire. I hadn’t let myself think about it, but I realized it had been months since I’d made any serious progress on the manuscript. Little by little, I’d grown too tired to care anymore.

  So why was I suddenly filled with so much fire to get back at her?

  As if in response to my question, Violet let out a satisfied little moan in her sleep and nuzzled her head into me. She was all the things I didn’t think I deserved in a woman. She was somehow adorable and sexy at the same time—from the way she’d blush in a heartbeat when she spoke without thinking to the way she’d had the courage to insert herself into my life. She was just timid enough to be endearing, but when it came to fighting for what mattered, she was strong enough to push through it. Maybe that was what I liked so much about her. She had some internal, inexplicable drive to defy her own nature. The Violet Browning I’d come to know wasn’t the kind of woman who would go to such lengths not just to prove me wrong, but to earn a job working for someone she fully expected to make her life hell. Yet something drove her to do it anyway. I admired the hell out of that.

  I knew my assistant was going to be pissed at me for this—and rightfully so—but I decided Violet wasn’t waking up any time soon. Leaving the convention right now to take Violet to her room would mean missing part of the window of time I was scheduled for, but I wanted to get her somewhere she’d be comfortable.

  I scooped her up in my arms and carried her through the convention center, which wasn’t hard considering how small she was. I drew a few curious looks and eventually managed to get captured in several unfortunate cell phone videos and pictures. Eventually, I got her outside, got a taxi, and finally ended up back at her room. Aside from a few confused, heavily drowsy questions, she stayed asleep the whole way.

  I had to use my knee to hold her up as I knelt down and looked through her purse outside her room at the hotel. It felt like a slight invasion of privacy, but I needed her room key.

  It wasn’t my first rodeo inside a woman’s purse, and I knew what to expect. Every woman on Earth had a stash of menstrual emergency items. Most had a small, personal pharmacy, or at the very least some over-the-counter pain relievers. There would usually be a few pens, something to write on, a virtual travel kit of beauty supplies, and so on.

  Violet’s purse was an anomaly. Granted, I didn’t venture inside some of the side pockets with zippers, but the main bag was stuffed a pair of lacy red underwear, which I forced myself to ignore for privacy’s sake, a broken crayon, an unopened pack of gummy fruit snacks, and a little black lipstick tube. Something about the tube looked off, so I ignored my better judgment and picked it up to get a better look. It felt too light, and when I pulled off the lid, I realized it was a kid’s toy. Rotating the base made a little red plastic l
ipstick tip slide out, but it was completely pretend.

  I frowned at it, turning over as I tried to figure out why the hell she would be carrying something like this around. Near the base of the tube, the letters “Z.B.” were printed in white. I hadn’t ever really stalked her social media or looked at the details of her background check, so I didn’t know if she had a sister. Maybe she had a little sister. A really little one. That would explain the strange contents of her purse. Sort of, at least.

  I set the lipstick back in her purse and found her room key, along with a few crumpled candy wrappers it looked like she’d poorly attempted to hide in random compartments of her purse. I wondered if she was hiding them from me, or from herself. Knowing Violet, neither would’ve surprised me.

  Once I scanned her card, I carried her to the bed and laid her down. She was fully dressed, but I didn’t even entertain the idea of getting her undressed for bed to any degree. I knew exactly what would be going through my head, and there was no way I could pretend it would be a platonic, considerate gesture. All I did was slide off the shoe on her non-booted foot. I doubted even Violet would accuse me of getting any kind of perverted pleasure out of that.

  I grinned down at the shoe as an idea occurred to me. I found some stationary from the nightstand and a pen. I scribbled, “Housekeeping: despite what it may seem, this is not a full-sized replica of The Titanic. Also, please do not assume this shoe belongs to a famous NBA player, because it does not, despite its alarming size. Please leave it on the nightstand for two important reasons. Reason 1: the nightstand has enough structural integrity to hold the enormous weight of this shoe and moving it somewhere else could result in broken furniture. Reason 2: I can’t promise you won’t injure your back if you try to lift this by yourself.

  Thank you,

  Peter Barnidge

  I grinned at my own stupid letter. I knew I was getting soft on Violet because I actually worried I might’ve stretched the joke a little too far, and I didn’t actually want to hurt her feelings. I just wanted to make her laugh a little when she woke up. I thought about trying to wake her one last time, but decided it would’ve been for selfish reasons. Violet hadn’t come along because she wanted to attend the convention. Frankly, I doubted she wanted to come along at all, and I was fairly sure she’d be happy to learn she slept through the whole thing.

  I pulled the blankets over her and scooted her up slightly until her head was on the pillow. I paused, wondering if I’d set her too close to the edge of the bed. Not wanting her to roll out of bed and knock herself out, I pulled the blankets back down and tried to do a sort of non-invasive pushing maneuver. I put one hand on her shoulder and the other on her hip and gave a little shove, sliding her to the center of the bed. I repositioned her head on the pillow, pulled the blankets back up, and then sighed.

  There were extra pillows in the closet, so I padded the edges of the bed with them just to give her one last barrier from falling. I wasn’t sure why I seemed so convinced she was about to start speed rolling when she’d been sleeping completely still this whole time, but Violet had a way of making me worry. That combination of determined hard-headedness and vulnerability made me afraid she’d push herself too hard—or roll off a bed.

  When I finally went to leave, I heard the sheets rustle just as I pulled the door open.

  “Finally done manhandling me?” she asked in a sleepy voice.

  “You’re awake?” I let the door close as I turned to face her.

  She was sitting up in the bed on one elbow and grinning. "I was asleep, not in a medically induced coma. So, yeah, somewhere between you trying to use me like a battering ram and slamming my head up and down on the pillow, I woke up. I was just curious if you were going to build a cage around my bed before you left, so I kept my eyes closed to see where it was all going."

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t know if you were an aggressive sleeper. I figured if you rolled out of bed and offed yourself, I’d be legally responsible.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Is that still the story you’re going with? Because, if you ever want to start telling me the truth, I’m a good listener.”

  I couldn’t say if it was the way the sun was streaming in through the blinds behind her and giving her a surreal kind of hair-halo effect, or if it was just a severe case of dick-brain, but instead of walking out of the door like I should have, I closed the door and leaned my back against it. I’d spent so long trying to stay closed off. Opening up for once felt like a release—a welcome one. “You want the truth?” I asked.

  Something in my tone must’ve unnerved her, because she was watching me like I’d just bared my teeth.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  There’s no reason I should, but I think I’m going to fall in love with you. “I trusted Kristen because I thought I cared about her. I learned two things. Caring about somebody makes you blind and stupid, and I should only give my trust if I’m willing to lose everything.”

  “Peter… That’s cynical. Even for you.”

  "Do you want to know what Kristen did?" I put my hand on the wall, unconsciously bracing myself to relive the memory. "She worked as my assistant. Almost every month I'd have a stack of contracts to sign for foreign deals, audio deals, speaking arrangements, and so on. Kristen and I started dating about three months after I hired her, and she convinced me to start using her as part of my editorial team, too. So when she learned about my dream to write a thriller someday, she encouraged it. Little by little, I got the book done. She read it over for the first edit, said it had potential, and passed it along to the rest of the team.

  “In the middle of a busy day, she gave me a stack of contracts to sign. By then, I trusted her. I thought I loved her.” I laughed bitterly at that. It sounded so stupid now, and it made me marvel at how I could be dumb enough to fall into the same trap with Violet. I really thought I was falling for her, didn’t I? Maybe not love—not yet—but it was the same slippery slope, only this time it felt steeper, more unavoidable. With Kristen, I’d wanted to feel that way. I thought it was time. I’d pushed myself and ignored the obvious warning signs. Ever since I met Violet, I’d practically been clawing and fighting not to fall for her, but I could see now that I’d been barreling downhill the whole time. “So when she told me she already read through everything and made sure I’d be happy with the terms, I believed her. I didn’t even scan the pages as I signed my name right next to every little post-it she’d left saying ‘sign here’. As it turned out, I signed a contract as a ghostwriter and gave her full rights to publish my book under her own name. I signed away any possibility of royalties or recognition for the price of five hundred dollars.”

  Violet’s expression was darkening, and now she looked downright furious. It was almost enough to make me laugh, despite the bitter taste in my mouth from the memory. “That can’t actually be legal. Tricking someone into signing something isn’t the same as if they willingly signed it, right?”

  “I talked to a lawyer. It varies by state, but it would rely on my proof that she had willingly tricked me. Once we dug a little deeper, we found out that she’d spoken to her own lawyer, and she’d been laying traps for weeks, including confusing lines in her emails that made it sound like she was confirming I’d be okay with the agreement. ‘How is my story coming?’ or, ‘will you have the story ready for me soon?’. It wouldn’t be a concrete, sure-win on her side, but my lawyer painted a bleak enough picture that I just wanted to move on and forget it. I thought I’d write another one and move on—forget her and forget everything that happened. That got harder when her book—my book—became a national hit.”

  Violet leaned her head back against the headboard. She looked torn between wanting to break something and wanting to cry. “I didn’t think I’d ever say this, but I think I can understand why you tried so hard to push people away after that.”

  I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. I didn’t even notice Violet had gotten out of the bed until she was in fron
t of me with her hand on mine. It was bad timing. Bad because the swelling emotions in my chest were too strong to shove down this time. Given a few hours to clear my head, I knew I could’ve put my resistance back up against her. Now though?

  “You don’t have to keep pushing,” she said softly.

  I tried to stop it, but my hand was already against her cheek. In the back of my mind, I quietly cursed myself for not just closing the door when she’d woken up—for not walking straight out of here and back to the convention center, where my assistant was probably already beginning to freak out.

  “I can’t promise anything,” I said. “If we do this. It might be the only time.”

  She stared up into my eyes, unflinching. “I can promise you something. I won’t ask you to sign any contracts.”

  I grinned. “That’s a start.”

  Her eyes suddenly fell. “There’s something I should tell you, before—”

  I didn’t want to hear it. I remembered learning about black holes in college. There was a point surrounding the black hole called an event horizon. It was theoretically possible to escape the gravitational pull of a black hole as long as you didn’t cross the event horizon, but once that line was crossed, there was no turning back.

  I wasn’t sure if I’d crossed that line with Violet a week ago, an hour ago, or just seconds ago, but I knew I was powerless to stop this now. It wouldn’t have mattered what she told me. Whether anything came of what was about to happen, or not, I knew it needed to happen.

  Before she could even finish her sentence, I had one hand behind her neck and the other hooked behind her thighs. I probably should’ve been more careful, considering her ankle, but I basically carried her across the room and did an MMA style takedown to get her on the bed. All the restraint I’d shown around her had been an illusion.