by Amelia Wilde
What would you have done then?
Exactly what you did.
Jesus, the truth hurts.
There’s no good way to admit to another person that you’ve been living a lie for ten years. When you lie about something that fundamental it colors everything else. What wouldn’t he lie about if he would lie about his own identity? Did he even really love me?
A sob catches in my throat. I can’t be certain, but I felt it, and I thought it was real.
I know with certainty it was—it is—real for me.
Can I help it that part of me wants him back?
Chapter Forty
Christian
“Mr. Pierce?”
I’m just beginning to rouse up from the black, peaceful depths of alcohol-induced sleep, and the voice sounds like it’s coming from underwater.
No. I don’t want to wake up.
All I want is to go back in time, destroy that fucking journal, and keep Quinn in bed with me all night, for the rest of my life.
I bury my head back under the pillow and squeeze my eyes shut.
The knock comes again.
“Mr. Pierce?”
Fuck.
With an exasperated sigh, I throw the covers off my body and lurch to the side, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed and planting my feet on the floor.
That was a mistake.
My stomach lurches with the movement, and now that I’m upright, the full extent of my hangover is readily fucking apparent.
I bury my face in my hands, my palms meeting the rough stubble there.
I haven’t shaved since last Thursday.
I feel like shit.
I will probably never feel good again.
The air in the room is stale and close, and the drinking and lack of showering hasn’t done anything to improve it.
Another knock at my bedroom door.
“Mr. Pierce…” It’s Sarah, my city housekeeper. Her voice sounds concerned, urgent.
“Just a second,” I snap back, my tone harsh, and then I stand up, my legs wobbling underneath me.
Somewhere in this mess is a t-shirt. I find it crumpled near the head of the bed and put it on, not bothering to cover my boxers with pants. It’s Sarah out there, not the Queen of England.
By the time I get to the door that leads to the rest of the penthouse, my head feels like there are jagged spikes being driven into it from every angle.
This is not a very promising start to the day.
Whatever day it is.
Yanking the door open, I reveal myself—and am instantly blinded by the light streaming in from the hallway.
“Shit,” I cry, throwing a hand up over my eyes. “Can you turn that off?”
There are muted footsteps as Sarah retreats down the hall, and then I hear the click of the switch being flipped. Behind my palm, the hallway darkens. I lower my hand and watch Sarah come back down the hallway, her round frame broken up by a crisp white apron.
She tilts her head back to look at my face, then purses her lips.
“You need to get out of that bedroom, Mr. Pierce.”
I roll my eyes, a movement I regret immediately. It throws me off-balance and sends another bolt of pain through my head. “Go away, Sarah.”
Sarah has raised six children, so she’s not about to take my foul attitude at face value. Her no-bullshit demeanor is why I hired her to come around three days a week.
“Unlikely,” she replies, pushing her way past me and into the bedroom. Seconds later, the space is flooded with sunlight as she snaps open the shades and flicks on a lamp in the corner. “This room is filthy, and you’ve been wallowing in it for two days.”
“How do you know?”
She gives me a look like I’m an idiot, then begins picking up the clothes strewn across the carpet. “I came Friday. Do you remember?”
I narrow my eyes, trying to recall any detail about Friday. What comes to mind is Quinn.
We had a meeting scheduled for 10:00 that morning. Once she left, running out of my apartment like I was some kind of serial killer, I stayed up the rest of the night, alternating between feelings of devastation and terror.
What if Quinn went back to her apartment and told Carolyn everything?
What if she told Pierce Industries everything?
Those thoughts were incessant, unyielding. As soon as I convinced myself that she wouldn’t—Carolyn wouldn’t believe her over me, and of course my father wouldn’t—the whole damn circus would start over.
Why the fuck did I expect a different reaction from her?
Why did I ever think that what we felt for each other—that powerful, wild current running between us—would override a lie of that magnitude?
For the rest of the night, there was nothing to do but wait.
Finally, I decided to proceed as if nothing had happened. We could work things out at the meeting, in a relatively neutral location.
I showered and dressed, chose my favorite suit—a charcoal summer-weight piece made in Italy—and had Louis take me to the Pierce Industries building.
In the office I was my usual charming, slightly cutting self, joking with the secretaries, sitting through update meetings, but I was burning up inside the entire time, feeling the life bleed out of me with every memory of Quinn’s hatred, her terror.
At 9:30, I had just texted Louis to bring the car around to head to her office for our meeting, when my office phone rang.
“Christian Pierce.”
“Hello, Mr. Pierce. I’m calling from Ms. Campbell’s office. Unfortunately, she’s no longer available for your meeting this morning.”
Disappointment floods my chest. “Did she give a reason?” I said into the receiver, my voice hitching just enough to be embarrassing.
The guy on the other end of the line didn’t mention it if he noticed anything. “She called in sick early this morning, sir. I see from her schedule you have another meeting next Wednesday. Would you like me to reschedule for Monday?”
“No,” I said sharply, then reminded myself that none of this was the assistant’s fault.
It was mine.
“No. That’s all right.” It was hard to force the words out past the lump in my throat.
I hung up, pushed back from my desk, and snatched my phone off its surface. And then I was moving without thinking, through the office, down to the lobby, and out the door. The town car idled at the curb, and I got in.
“HRM?” Louis called from the front.
“The penthouse. Now.”
It didn’t take me long to get absolutely wasted that day.
“No, Sarah. I don’t remember you being here Friday.”
“You wouldn’t let me in. You were in quite the state, from what I could gather.” She puts a hand on her hip and cocks it to the side. “Get into the shower, Mr. Pierce. It’s almost noon. Time to go to work.”
Chapter Forty-One
Quinn
Carolyn didn’t give me a spare moment to wallow all weekend and my insurance company called to tell me that the check for my burned-down house would be disbursed in thirty days or less, so when I arrive at the office on Monday, I’m not a complete wreck.
My heart feels hollow, wasted, empty, but my mind is clear—well, clearer, at least.
I know what I have to do.
I have to keep doing this job for just long enough to get out of it.
Adam is already at his desk when I stride past, head held high. Nobody is going to know that I got involved with my client. Nobody is going to know that he shattered my heart into a thousand tiny shards and left it there for me to sweep up.
The only saving grace is that I don’t have a meeting scheduled with him today.
I’ve resigned myself to the fact that the next few weeks are going to hurt like a motherfucker.
This is exactly why you don’t date clients, I think, settling into the chair behind my desk and wading into a million reminders about Christian and his lies. His name is on every docu
ment and my computer is filled with press pictures.
I spend the morning sending bright and chipper responses to charity after charity, shoving my heartbreak deep down where it can’t touch me.
It works…for a while.
By noon, I’m trying to tread water while waves of turmoil suck me under the surface.
Thank God for Carolyn.
I switch off my computer screen and breeze out past Adam. “I’ve got a lunch date,” I say to him with as much of a smile as I can force onto my face. “Be back in an hour.”
Carolyn meets me at a hole-in-the-wall Thai place halfway between the HRM offices and her boutique. The service is lightning fast. It seems like the waiter brings the food out as soon as we’ve handed back the menus. Normally, that kind of speed would be cause for suspicion—can a kitchen at any restaurant cook anything that fast?—but I’m so desperate to unload some of this heaviness from my heart and soul that I don’t care. I just dig in.
“What’s on your mind, Q?” Carolyn says between bites. I haven’t said a word about Christian yet. I thought I was playing it cooler than that.
Guess not.
I search for the words as I swallow a bite of pork noodles.
“I’m not over him.” My voice comes out low and strained, and Carolyn frowns.
“It’s only been a few days. Give yourself time.”
The feelings I’ve been struggling to keep at bay all morning crash through me again.
How can I be so conflicted?
What Christian did—is still doing—is unforgivable.
I open my mouth to tell Carolyn what he did, what he revealed to me last week, but I choke on the words.
Even though he’s in the wrong, and even though I’m furious with him, I can’t bring myself to betray him.
Not entirely.
I close my mouth again and shake my head, then I lift another bite to my lips. It turns to tasteless mush in my mouth. I force myself to swallow anyway.
Carolyn puts down her fork and leans back in her chair. “What happened between you two?” She gives me a hard look, and I wait for her to put her hands in the air between us, to tell me that we don’t have to talk about this.
She doesn’t.
“He—he admitted something to me that is unforgivable, so I left. I turned my back on him and left.”
I expect Carolyn to look confused, but instead her eyes narrow, and she looks to the side, her jaw working. “So he cheated on you. God, what an asshole. That is so typical—”
It would be so convenient to let her believe it. It would be an answer everyone would accept, expect even, but I just can’t let it lie. I cut her off.
“He didn’t cheat on me.”
Now confusion does settle in over her features. “Then what was it?”
This is my opening, my big chance. But I’m looking across the table at Carolyn, who has known Christian since they were teenagers. She was among his closest friends in school. If she doesn’t know already, it’s just not my place to tell her.
“I can’t tell you, Care.”
She looks a little pissed off with me now.
“Seriously, Q? I’ve known him for years. What are you going to tell me that I don’t already know?”
I shake my head. “I can’t tell you. Please. Just trust me on this.”
She sighs. “Fine. But Q—” she leans forward again, into the table, and picks up her fork. “You’re a mess. You had a blank look in your eyes all weekend, and now you look like you’re about to cry.”
As soon as she says it, a tear wells up in one of my eyes and squeezes out onto my eyelashes.
No. I am done crying over men. I wasted enough tears on Derek, that scumbag.
I snatch up my napkin and carefully collect the tear, then flatten the paper back over my lap.
“I’m not going to cry over him. Not anymore, Care.”
“Okay,” she says softly. She looks into my eyes, searching my face for the truth behind the words, and then she looks back down at her plate.
We eat in silence for a little while longer.
“Could you blame me if I did, though?” I finally choke out. Carolyn is my best friend in the city—maybe the entire country, at this point.
“No,” she says, “I wouldn’t blame you.” When she looks at me again, her expression is a mix of concern and curiosity. “But Q—was it really something you can’t look past? I know Christian is a player, but underneath all the womanizing and partying and the cocky attitude, he’s—” She pauses, biting at her lip. “As long as I’ve known him, I’ve thought he was a good guy.”
Her words crack something open inside me, and then she lands the final blow.
“I’ve never seen anyone so excited to be with another person as you were about him, Q. If you’re ready for it to be over, then I respect that decision. But if you’re not? If you’re not convinced you can spend the rest of your life without him? Maybe he’s worth a second chance.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Christian
My father summons me to his office as soon as I arrive at Pierce Industries.
On the way up to his office, I try my damnedest to look like nothing is wrong, like my tardiness is just a result of a weekend-long bender. It should be easy enough to explain, despite the fact that I haven’t been at the Swan much in the past few weeks. I certainly haven’t been shutting down the place like I used to.
His secretary makes me wait, which is a sure sign that he’s irritated about something. When he finally comes out from behind his door to wave me back nearly ten minutes later, I’ve almost stopped caring. If I stop moving, even for a second, I’m flooded with thoughts of Quinn.
She’s the only thing that matters to me, even if she’s gone.
My father walks back around to his seat behind his desk and sits down, glancing at his computer screen. I follow his lead, taking my seat across from him in front of the desk, and wait while he clicks at something.
The silence lasts for a long thirty seconds.
Then he turns away from the computer, crosses his arms in front of him, and speaks.
“It’s a bad habit to get into, son.”
I raise my eyebrows at him. “Which habit are we talking about?”
“Strolling into the office halfway through the afternoon.”
I cross my own arms over my chest and nod. “It’s not a habit until you’ve done it twice.”
“Remember that the next time you’re tempted to sleep late.”
My father says this neutrally, with no hint of mockery.
Then the corners of his mouth turn up, and his eyes glint in the light coming through his windows. “It must have been one hell of a party.”
I return his smile automatically, and the lie comes easily to my lips.
“Can’t argue with that.”
“Listen,” he says, uncrossing his arms. “I’m impressed with the work HRM is doing for you. Who did they assign the account to? I’d like to send him my thanks.”
My throat tightens, and I cover my mouth with my hand, pretending to cough while I swallow painfully. “It’s a she, actually. Quinn Campbell.”
“Quinn Campbell,” my father says thoughtfully, testing her name in his mouth.
I wish I were telling him the name of the woman I was planning to spend the rest of my life with. I want him to be saying her name, then asking me more about her. I want him to say her name again when I introduce the two of them, and having him shake my hand, congratulating me on finding the perfect woman, a woman far too good for me, a woman I will never regret marrying.
Instead, he’s saying the name of the name of the woman who is going to be forced to work with me for the foreseeable future despite the fact that my despicable behavior has destroyed any chance of me ever being with her.
“The woman deserves a raise,” he says finally, slapping a hand down on the surface of his desk.
It’s a struggle to keep the smile on my face. “She does.”
My father considers me. “It’s not all her, though, is it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” My tone is light, almost teasing, but I honestly have no idea what he’s referring to.
“Not one person has come to my office to tell me that you’ve been in the tabloids in, what, three weeks? That’s unheard of, Chris.”
I shrug. “Needed a break.”
“You sure that’s it?” My father gives me a conspiratorial grin. “It seems awfully sudden for you to just drop out of the scene.”
“What do you know about the scene?” I say, rolling my eyes, even though my heart is pounding so hard against my rib cage that I’m surprised it doesn’t burst out and fall to the floor.
“Nothing,” he says, his eyes still twinkling. “I just thought that maybe there was a woman involved.”
My half smile isn’t genuine, but he seems not to notice. “I’m always involved with a woman, one way or another.”
He gives me a chuckle. “You’re just like me in my younger days.” As he says it, something flashes in his eyes for a split second—too quickly for me to pinpoint the expression. “Never mind all that. I just thought the sudden absence from the gossip pages meant you had someone a little more…permanent in your life.”
This conversation is killing me. Of fucking course I had someone more permanent in mind. What other reason could I have for making such an abrupt change to the identity I’ve been cultivating for a full decade? Only love…
The thought brings me up short, but I can’t let myself off the hook. Not this time.
Only love would bring a man to that conclusion.
Real love, raw love, the kind of love that strips away all the bullshit from your life, even if you don’t want it to, even if you’re begging for it not to.
I loved Quinn like that.
I love Quinn like that.
I’ll never stop loving Quinn like that.
I know that now.
“When I find a woman who will keep me out of the gossip sites, you’ll be…among the first fifty people to know,” I say, keeping my tone light through enormous effort. This meeting has to end soon, because there are things I need to figure out.