I cannot. And I cannot lie to him, either. He would see right through it, for one. And we promised each other honesty, for two.
Even if I do not love Jeremy Stonehart, I care for him enough not to deceive with empty words of affection.
Holy shit! My heart freezes in my chest. For a frightening moment, it becomes difficult to breathe. Did I just admit… did I really just think… that I care for Jeremy Stonehart?
I take a deep breath, trying to relieve the tension and renewed anxiety that’s growing within me. It feels like a deeply palpable thing, swinging from Jeremy to me like a pendulum. The gravity and weight of our conversation makes it all the more powerful.
I lower my eyes. For some reason, memories of last night’s sex flash through my mind. Was that the tipping point for him? Was that when the pieces finally clicked in his head?
“You cannot love me,” I say, staring at a spot between us on the floor. “Otherwise, why would you do all those things to me?”
A hiss escapes Jeremy’s lips. He stands up violently and turns away.
I keep my eyes on that one, single spot. All I see of Jeremy are his legs, flashing in front of me. Back and forth he goes, his strides long and angry.
“I cannot love you,” he repeats. “I cannot love you. Is that what you truly think Lilly, or is that some defense mechanism kicking in? I cannot love you. Ha! Who are you to tell me what I can and cannot do? Who are you to try to deny the truth I’ve shared with you?”
“Jeremy. Please,” I say softly. “Don’t get angry again. You took it the wrong way. That’s not what I meant—“
“No?” his baritone voice smashes through my protest like a battering ram. “I think that’s exactly what you meant, Lilly. And I think that you are scared of the truth. You asked me why it was you at the start? That I can answer. But I still will not. You ask me why it’s you, really you, who has stolen my heart? That I will never know.”
“I cannot love you,” he rages on. “Do you even know what love is, Lilly-flower? Have you ever been in the clutches of its throes? You’re young, yes. That is only a small part of what draws me to you. You want to know the other parts? I’ll list them. It’s your courage. Your strength. Your resolve and resilience. Your brilliant mind.
“If those are not reasons enough to make you question your only disbelief, consider this: I know everything there is to know about you. I know that your mother’s maiden name is Barrs. I know that she was married once before she had you. Did you know that, Lilly? Did she ever tell you the truth?”
“You’re lying,” I say.
“No. No, my dear. This time, I’m not. The only lie I am guilty of presenting to you is a lie of omission. But I told you what it was earlier. That was the last secret. The final mistruth. It ate at me these past weeks. Now it’s there, out in the open, and you know as much as I do. You know how fucked up I am. You’ve seen it all, Lilly, every side of me. Sides that have long lain hidden, sides I did not know I still possessed. You made me feel worry. True, gut-wrenching worry when you nearly drowned a week ago.
“So yes. I broke my own rules. I broke them once, Lilly, and I shocked you even when you were still under the time limit. That is the type of man that I am. That is the type of man who loves you.
“Have you ever been loved, Lilly? Truly, deeply, impossibly loved? I know you now have poor relations with your mother. A pity, that. Before you, my mother was the most important woman in my life. That was the only true relationship that I have had with a woman without any underlying, secretive need.
“I told you about the other woman. The one who almost ruined me. The one whom I risked all to let in.
“It was a disaster. It made me vow never to be so reckless again. But with you . . . with you, Lilly, that fear does not hold me back any longer.”
He stops directly in front of me. I can see the toes of his shoes at the very top of my vision.
“So don’t you dare tell me that I cannot love you, Lilly,” he rages. “You, who have seen so little of the world. How many schools have you attended growing up? Can you even remember at all? Well?” His voice rises. “How many?”
“I… I don’t know,” I say. He’s not yelling. But it’s the closest thing to it.
“It wasn’t a rhetorical questions, Lilly,” he snarls. He swoops down and forces my chin up. “List them!”
His intensity is frightening me again. I’ve completely conceded power by remaining on the floor. And I can’t do anything to help that now.
“I can’t,” I say. My voice trembles.
“You can’t.” He laughs. “Well, I can. Every single one from kindergarten to the eighth grade. There was St. Martin’s. Ridgeway. Ostelli. Marekson and Argyle. Handsworth, East Bay Park, and Eileen’s Mountainside.”
All those names . . . every one of them . . . send a rush of long-forgotten memories swirl to the surface. He’s right. He’s got them. Every single one.
“I know that you skipped senior year prom because your neighbor’s cat got sick. I know exactly where you were when you received your Yale admission letter. Only I knew the truth of your birth father, until I shared that with you weeks ago.”
“Why… why are you telling me this?”
“Because, Lilly, you would think that such thoroughness would imply an obsession. You would think that knowing all that, that following you for as long as I have, would naturally lend itself to falling in love.”
“I’d never think that,” I say.
“And, once again, you prove how young you are. There are different types of love, Lilly. The love a mother feels for her newborn child is very different from the love a sister feels for her twin. It’s very different from the love a stalker gives his target. Those are all different types, Lilly, and not one of them is less valid than the other.”
“So that’s what you’re saying, then?” The heat in his voice has started to invigorate me. The clashing overtones give me enough strength to stand. “That you love me because you’ve stalked me for so long? And you want me to reciprocate?”
“No,” he says. “That’s not it at all. What I’m saying is that all the pieces were there for this,” he gestures between us, “—for you, for us, to become my obsession. But I kept emotions out of it the entire time. I knew all those things about you, Lilly, and I did not feel the tiniest speck of attachment.
“That’s why it was so easy for me to do the things that I have done to you. That was why it was easy for me to starve you. To keep you in the dark. To teach you that the only person you are allowed to give yourself sexually to is me.”
“But slowly, insidiously, things changed. You clawed your way into my heart. I admired your strength, your courage. As I watched you through the cameras, I found myself more and more drawn to you.”
“That is why I so regret what I did. But that is also why I had to try.”
“What you did?”
“Shock you, before the time was up. Electrocute you. Break the rules I set. Because I was afraid of the pull you were exerting on me. I was afraid of becoming victim to an . . . obsession.”
His lips curl in a crude snarl. “I could not respect myself if I fell victim to that. And so, I had to sever the connection. I tried to break the hold you were exerting on me. I tried to reestablish the boundaries that I had set and maintained for many years.
“But I was helpless against them. I was helpless against you. Why do you think I forewent the TGB progression, as I set it out, by bringing you to Portland, by bringing you here? It was a way for me to try to make amends. I broke my own rules, once, so why should I leave you as the only one still bound by them? That would not be fair.”
Distaste fills my mouth. “So then, that’s what all this is?” I sweep my arms around to take in the room. “This is just you evening the score? This is just you trying to relieve your guilty conscience?”
“Yes. That’s what it was.” Jeremy steps towards me. Finally, mercifully, I don’t back away. I face him head on, channeling all
the strength I know I possess. “All the way up to the yacht. Hell, even the wine on the beach, at the start, was me trying to make amends. To quiet the cognitive dissonance in my mind.”
He pauses, choosing his words carefully. “But all of that changed the day you almost died. The accident . . . caused by me . . . made me realize the truth I’ve been hiding from for so long.”
“Oh?” I challenge. “And what truth is that?”
He takes the last step towards me and wraps me in his arms. “That I do love you.”
Chapter Four
We’re late for brunch. After all that‘s happened in the preceding hour, I feel understandably flustered.
It’s not just Jeremy’s declaration that has my mind spinning. It’s the way he went about making it, the ease with which he shifted swiftly between his personas. It’s the knowledge that he’s been harboring these feelings for me and was still capable of doing something like triggering my collar, or shocking Paul, and subsequently reveling in his power over us.
It’s him giving me the brooch and then wavering and taking it off. It’s the removal of the collar, so much sooner than I could have dreamed of, and the fact that, at some point last night, he considered putting it back.
Does that means he brought it with him on this trip? Is it still somewhere in his possession? The thought causes an uncomfortable shiver to crawl down my spine.
I look over my left shoulder at him. He’s driving. I’ve never seen him do that before. The inside of the rented white Bentley is as beautiful as the outside. The cream leather upholstery matches the light wood trim. Jeremy behind the wheel, performing such an ordinary, everyday task, seems . . . vulnerable. It makes him mortal. Something tells me that beneath the persona of the richly, successful business mogul lies a common man.
Of course, Jeremy Stonehart is anything but common. Still, seeing him drive makes him seem more accessible.
He notices me looking, then glances over—and winks. I’m so startled by the gesture that I almost jump.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I have absolute faith in you. You’ll be perfect this morning, Lilly, as you always are.” His eyes darken for a split second. “You know the cost of failure.” Then he looks back to the road. “But I have no fear of there being any chance of that, as long as you abide by the rules.”
The rules. The rules. It’s always the rules with Jeremy. Of course, I know that he has no other choice. He doesn’t have an alternative. In situations that he cannot directly control—like the meeting this morning—his rules ensure that I do not step out of line.
Again, he told me of them just before we left. And again, he kept them simple and easy to understand. Complexity leads to confusion which increases the chances of non-compliance, as he’d explained to me. And non-compliance leads to . . . well, I don’t want to even think of the things he’s threatened.
Jeremy told me to approach the meeting as if it were occurring under regular circumstances. There did not have to be anything frightening or unnerving about it. The only thing I had to watch for was what I revealed about the months since I dropped off the face of the earth.
He had a long story for me—one that he made me repeat six times before we left the hotel. The final time he asked me to do so, I was so frustrated with the process that I screamed it out at him.
That earned nothing more than chuckle and a steady, “You’re ready.”
Like he’d told Thalia last night, I was a star at Corfu Consulting. Word of the orbital success of my first, then second, then third advertising campaign, all for ZilTech, reached the ears of the president of the parent company . . . who just happened to be Stonehart. He was present at the launch of ZilTech latest consumer technology product. This happened just weeks before Christmas in time for the holidays. The story checked out because there were pictures of him talking at the event, congratulating the team on a successful launch.
At the same time, I was trapped on that blasted chair, in the dark.
Of course, the consultants who assisted with planning the campaign were present at the event as guests. They were not visible in the pictures. The affirmation of their work came not in glamour shots and praise but in the hefty paychecks ZilTech gave out.
That was where Jeremy and I met. He was interested in congratulating the laborers behind the work. I made an impression on him—as he would tell Fey and her parents. The rest was history.
Now, how was I to explain the way I fell out of contact with my former friends? That was easy, too: I was too busy. Corfu demanded complete dedication. That meant hundred-ten, hundred-twenty-hour work weeks were the norm. My social life revolved around the firm, around the projects, around the other associates. I simply did not have time for anything else.
But I was to ask Fey if she’d received my Christmas postcard:
“What postcard?” I’d asked Jeremy in disbelief.
“The one I had sent to all your old acquaintances,” he’d told me in reply. “Apologizing for your lack of contact with them in recent months.”
“You did that?” I said. “And you didn’t think it’s rather suspicious? I’ve never sent out a postcard in my life!”
“Of course not,” he answered. “But that was when you were still a child. Now, as a newly-minted professional woman, you’ve come to value a postcard’s simple utility. Besides, everybody else in your office sent out one. You did it on their advice.”
“Fine,” I’d agreed, rubbing my arms. There’d been something particularly disquieting about the thought of Jeremy, or somebody he’d hired, posing as me writing a postcard. Did he have my handwriting, my signature, forged, too?
More than anything, though, Jeremy’s instructions hinged on me focusing on Fey. After so many months apart, there’d be plenty of things to catch up on. How was senior year going? What did she have lined up post-graduation? That sort of thing.
There was also a planned escape in case things got out of hand. If Jeremy did not like the direction of the conversation, or he deemed something Fey or I said as bordering on dangerous, he would warn me by touching my knee. I’d have a short grace period to try to return the conversation to safer waters. If I failed, Jeremy would pretend to receive an urgent phone call from one of his business partners requiring him at an impromptu web conference. That would be our exit.
But that was only for minor things. If there was a greater breach–such as my mentioning or alluding to any part of what had actually been happening to me the last few months-- well, let’s just say that Jeremy had a very thorough contingency plan that he deemed viable to deter any such mishaps. It involved Paul, and his collar, and Jeremy’s ever present link to him.
Suffice it to say that threat alone was enough to make me step very warily.
By the time we reach the beachfront café where Jeremy made arrangements to meet, my palms are sweaty. Anxiety pulses through me like a malicious fever. I’m not the only one to be affected by my performance in front of Fey and her family. My father is, too.
Of course, I have no intention of betraying Jeremy’s trust. Not this soon. My purpose is clear in my mind. The pronouncement of love, or whatever Jeremy considers to be love, has not swayed me in the least.
At least, I think it hasn’t. I hope it hasn’t. I know that I need to keep a clear view on my true goals. I can’t forget them. I won’t forget them.
And yet, I’m still afraid of how things might change when I see Fey.
Jeremy parks the car and looks at me. “Ready?” he asks.
I swallow, and put on my bravest face. “Ready,” I confirm.
He opens the door and steps out, then comes around the front and opens my door. This is the touristy part of the island where all the rich vacationers flock. I’m thankful for that. It means, at the very least, that our expensive car and clothing do not stand out.
Jeremy offers me his arm. I take it graciously. He lifts me from the seat, and wraps his hand around my lower back.
In seconds, we’re on the sidewalk
, among other people. Actual living, breathing people. The novelty of it must make me tense because Jeremy leans over and whispers in my ear, “Relax, Lilly. You’re doing fine. There won’t be any surprises waiting for you at the end of the day so long as you act in accordance with the rules I’ve laid out.”
Easy for you to say , I think sourly.
We pass busy storefronts on our way to the café. I catch a glimpse of myself and Jeremy reflected in a window. I’m astounded by what I see.
We look … normal. Jeremy Stonehart, in his casual shorts and light pink button down, with those glasses covering his eyes, looks like any other man.
Any other man in possession of a killer body, a handsome face, and an aura of self-assured confidence, that is.
And I, walking there beside him, look like any other woman. Any other free woman, out on a stroll in the morning sun with her man.
Nothing about the image we cast gives even a hint to all the screwed up things that define our lives. Nothing in the reflection shows any sign of a once-abused woman and a vindictive man. Nothing at all hints at the shit floating under the surface.
Jeremy told me once that appearances must be maintained. Looking at the image other people see, I’d say we’re doing a damn fine job of it.
We enter the café. There are fewer patrons inside than out. The barista behind the counter greets us and earns a congenial nod from Jeremy. He leads me straight through the rows of tables to the back patio door.
And there, sitting beneath the shade of an oversized beach umbrella, I find Fey.
Immediately, and without a warning, an enormous jumble of emotions crash into me. I lose my footing and nearly fall.
Jeremy tightens his grip around my waist. “Easy now,” he says under his breath.
Fey hasn’t seen me yet. She’s with her mom. They’re both sitting facing away from us, looking out at the ocean. I don’t see her dad.
All the memories of everything she and I have ever shared come rushing to the surface: Our first meeting under the willow tree. All those sleepless nights we’d spend studying together. Laughing with her and Sonja over lunch at the latest eccentric antics of our psychology professor.
Uncovering You: The Complete Series (Mega Box Set) Page 47