by Cynthia Dane
Couldn’t be bad enough that I was a woman – probably. Had to be into other women on top of it. Young, masculine, and virile Eric Mann was actually a dyke? The press wouldn’t be able to shut up for decades.
“I’m sorry,” Sherman said again. He gently rubbed my back as I held back tears. Yet why was I crying? Did Natalie really mean that much to me? Had she hurt me with her actions that much? Or was this just another nail in my proverbial coffin? Was I overwhelmed with memories of the last woman I loved?
All I knew was that I wanted to die. Or, if not die, then to simply no longer exist.
Sherman held up his phone. “They found her. At Brooke’s house, if you can believe it.”
Something seized in my chest. My stomach did a somersault. I was going to be sick.
The bed moved when Sherman stood up. “I’m going to get her. Do you want me to bring her back here or… deal with her myself?”
I glanced up at him. “You would bring her back here? Really?”
“She deserves to hear the truth from you in your own words.”
Just go ahead and shoot me! “Yes. Please.” I stretched out my legs. Slowly, I bent down until my forehead touched my knees. “Bring her here. If she’ll come.”
Sherman confirmed something on his phone and turned toward the door. “Your overnight bag is in the corner. Took the liberty of bringing it in earlier, in case you wanted it…”
“Thanks?”
“Just saying.” He hesitated in the doorway. “You should freshen up and change. Think about how you want her to meet the real you.”
He left. I screamed into the bedspread.
Chapter 27
NATALIE
I didn’t know where else to go. Men were on my ass and God only knew what they were going to do once they caught me.
The police wouldn’t help. Mann-Garrett could pay them to do as they pleased. My house wasn’t safe. They were probably already hounding my mother and her chatty chihuahua.
Cars sped by on the road. A helicopter roamed the air. Paranoia screamed that they were after me. I had uncovered a secret I was never meant to know. It could mean my life.
That’s what the adrenaline told me.
My ability to reason was clouded, but I was still able to make a few things out. The Summer Villa Hotel was next to one of the most affluent neighborhoods of single-family homes you could find while still technically being downtown. It was a neighborhood I passed by every day on my bus commute. It was also a neighborhood I had visited a few times when Brooke sent me on errands she couldn’t do.
Brooke lived around there. Somewhere. She was the only one I could reasonably go to on short notice. Let alone about this!
She must have known. She knew the secret. Sherman definitely knew. The “inner circle” weren’t only people Eric Mann trusted. They were people who knew the truth.
The NDAs. The close surveillance. The reclusive lifestyle. My businesswoman’s mind explained them away as precautions when they were manufactured to protect Eric’s secret.
When I didn’t see any cars on the road, I bounded out from behind a tree and hurried quickly up the sidewalk. The cold autumn night pierced my bare arms and the three-inch heels of my shoes threw me off balance more than once. It would probably grow icy that night. I shouldn’t have been so reckless.
But I had to get to Brooke’s door. Before Sherman’s team found me.
Was it this one? The beige and brown Victorian surrounded by carefully manicured hedges and a whimsically purple porch swing on the veranda? It had to be. I recognized the bright red mailbox that said Pentecost-Lovett.
My finger repeatedly jammed into the doorbell. Please be home. Please be home…
A light turned on in the front room. A piece of sheer fabric curtain moved aside, although I couldn’t make out the face peering out at me.
It appeared in the doorway, anyway.
There Brooke was, dressed in jeans and a white tunic. Her blond hair was up in the sloppiest bun I had ever seen on her head. A glass of half-drunk red wine was nestled in her hand.
“Well, well,” she said, leaning against her doorframe and taking a gander at my state. “Look who was coughed up on my doorstep without her coat or her purse. Let me guess. They still have your cell phone, too.”
I nodded. Was this it? Was this the solace I needed? From Brooke?
“Good. That means it will take them longer to track you down. I don’t feel like having Sherman tear down my door right now.” Brooke glanced over my head and took stock of the quiet residential street. “Get in here and tell me how you found out.”
For all I knew, I was walking into a trap. Sherman would be waiting for me in the living room, and not only would I be out of a job, but I would have no future.
That was assuming they didn’t take care of problems like me the old fashioned way.
I entered. Cinnamon-apple candles warmly wrapped around me, but I wanted to choke. It didn’t help that the room grew darker when Brooke closed and latched her front door.
“Welcome to the shittiest club you’ll ever be a member of, Ms. Chen.” She sauntered by, the hardwood floors groaning beneath her slippered feet. “Let me pour you a glass of merlot. You’ll need it.”
I needed more than wine. I needed clarity.
This was already the longest night of my life, and it had barely begun.
***
The moonlight was beautiful that night. The stars twinkled as if the city usually saw such wonders in the dark. How much does Brooke pay for this kind of view? I wondered. She certainly made a ton of money, and I was willing to bet that her fiancé had a nice job as well.
I briefly met Adam Lovett on his way between the bedroom and the kitchen for a late-night snack. His sandy blond hair and beard spoke of an easy-going guy who was the perfect foil to Brooke’s pent-up personality. He gave me a cordial hello before taking some seltzer and half a sandwich back up to the master bedroom.
Brooke ushered me into the second-floor office. One desk faced the window overlooking the spacious backyard and the colorful garden, currently dormant. The other desk had a cozy corner doused in soft yellow light.
I sat on a leather loveseat and immediately clung to the afghan thrown over the back. One of Brooke’s work binders was opened on the glass coffee table. Her pair of red reading glasses slightly magnified a chart indicating the potential growth of one of Mann-Garrett’s subsidiaries.
I needed more wine after all.
“How much do you know?”
She stood behind me, one hand clenching the leather sofa while the other strangled her wineglass. It was Friday night, but late. She was probably on her way to bed when I showed up.
I was supposed to be asleep in Eric’s arms right now.
“I know that the man I had sex with has breasts.”
Brooke gulped the rest of her wine.
“Beyond that… I don’t know what’s going on. At all.”
“Of course you don’t. Did Eric spring that little nugget on you?”
“No.” I huddled in the afghan, wishing I had my damned coat. “He went into the other room to do something. I followed him, even though he told me not to.”
“You’re too ambitious for your own good, Nat.”
Fibers tickled my nose, but I couldn’t come up for air. I wanted to suffocate.
“So you saw the truth for yourself?”
“I saw enough.” I sat up with a breath shaking my ribcage. “What the fuck is going on!”
Brooke sat in the recliner next to the loveseat. “The kind of scandal and coverup that only a billion dollars can buy.”
“That was Eric, right?”
“Yes.”
Two questions swam in my head. Had Eric been trans this whole time? When the fuck was he going to tell me?
The thought that Eric was anything but a man had not yet entered my mind. It was a mixture of normalcy bias and being a product of my time. Yes, Eric was clearly female, or at least female enough for hi
m to want to hide it from the world. But he could still be a man. In fact, nothing about his behavior or the way he presented himself suggested otherwise. He wouldn’t be the first transgender man I ever met. The first one I dated? Oh, yeah.
I wish he had told me.
“It was Eric,” Brooke repeated, “but it wasn’t.”
“What?”
“There is Eric, the man you see in the media and the man you interact with at work. And then there is the Eric you get to privately know. They are incredibly different people.” Brooke shook her head. “There’s a lot going on, Natalie. Shit that could destroy the company if it got out. Now you know why we are extra vigilant.”
“Is that why you were so against us dating? Because I might find out like this?”
Her head shake turned into a nod. “Well, that and you’re a fucking intern. Christ,” she sipped her refilled glass of wine, “he really is a man at times.”
“There’s something I’m still missing here. Why didn’t he tell me?”
“Because the truth isn’t as simple as Eric having a female body. God! I wish that was it. Still a mess in this fucked up world, but a lot tidier to clean up.”
“Then what else am I missing?”
“Ah… I don’t know what is my place to tell you.”
“Whatever you can. Please.”
Our eyes met. Mine were watery from fatigue and fear. Hers were tired. “You really like him, don’t you?”
“I thought I did.”
Brooke still hesitated. “I liked him too. Hell, I loved him. So much so that I was willing to marry into that mess because I thought it would be worth it.”
“What happened?”
“I found out.”
“What?”
“Can you believe it? He hid it from me for three whole years. He’s very good at it. It helped that his manner of making love is very…” she didn’t even blush, “one-sided.”
I blushed instead.
“As you know by now, I’m sure.”
I blushed even more. How embarrassing.
“He finally told me when we started making real wedding preparations. Three years, Natalie. It took him three years to come out to me.”
“How did you take it?”
“How do you think? I freaked the fuck out! How could I not know that the man I was so in love with was like that? What else didn’t I know? How long was he going to keep hiding it from the world? Why had he hidden it? When I found out the whole story… I tried. I honestly tried. I still loved him. I still love him.”
I knew it, but I was too tired to freak out about it.
“But I couldn’t handle it. Even if I could get past the physical aspects of our relationship, I couldn’t live a lie like that. It’s such a well-kept secret that only a few of us know about it. He’s gone his whole life hiding that big secret. It eats away at everything around him. Being his wife would have been like throwing myself into a black hole.”
“You still work for him, though.”
“That’s different. I still loved him. Knowing this about him and what it put him through only made me love him more, in a way. Just not romantically. He’s my best friend in many ways. But now I can be free from the onus of how that shit impacts his personal life. He gave me his blessing to marry Matt last year and I can’t even express how happy it made me.”
I put the glass of wine down on the table before I could drop it all over the puffy white throw rug beneath my feet.
“What is happening?”
“It’s a shock, isn’t it? You think you know a person.” Brooke slung one leg over the other and gazed into the distance. Her usually crystal clear eyes were now murky with painful memories. “What really ended it was realizing that the man I loved never really existed. It sounds stupid and dramatic, but I mourned that more than the loss of my relationship. I felt like I was mourning the death of someone I once knew and loved.”
It didn’t sound stupid.
“So in a way I guess you’re lucky. You didn’t plunge that deep before you found out.”
“That’s lucky, huh?”
“Trust me. It is.”
‘What am I supposed to do now? Leave and lose everything? Stay and pretend nothing has happened?”
“I can’t tell you that.” Brooke’s cell phone beeped. She pulled it out of her pocket and responded to a text while continuing to talk to me. “All I can offer you is support in either direction. If you want to leave? We’ll facilitate it. You want to stay?” She sighed. “Well, we’re not going to chase you out. That’s between you and Eric.”
Between me and Eric. I was so wrapped up in that line that I barely acknowledged the doorbell ringing through the house.
“Babe!” Brooke yelled. “Could you get that please?”
His voice ricocheted from down the hall. “Someone you’re expecting?”
“Yes!”
Footsteps passed by the office door. I had a sinking feeling I knew who had come to call upon Brooke and her fiancé late on a Friday night. I pulled the afghan over my head and wished I could disappear.
“If you have other questions,” Brooke continued, “you should ask Eric directly. A lot of stuff isn’t my place to comment upon.”
The door opened. Sherman Smith’s hulking body took up the entire frame as he removed his sunglasses and held the bridge of his nose between his finger.
“Brooke.”
“Sherman.” She looked to me. “Don’t worry. He’s not going to hurt you.”
“Hurting you would cause me more problems than it’s worth.” Sherman entered the room. He may have come up here alone, but I had no doubt that a car sat idling with at least two other bodyguards inside. “I came here to fetch you. She’s a slippery thing.” That was directed at Brooke.
“Let me guess. She found out the old-fashioned way and ran for her life once she saw you coming. She probably thought you were going to put her feet in cement blocks and hoist her off the closest bridge.”
I tried not to let that truth show on my face when I finally pulled the afghan off my head. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“It’s not my desire. Eric asked me to come get you so you can talk.”
“How did you know she was here if you have her cell phone?”
Right, they still had my stuff…
“Saw her on the stoplight camera over there. Logic said she was heading here.”
“You have access to those cameras? That quickly?”
He leveled his gaze on me. I slowly pulled the afghan back up over my face. “One of my men is an expert hacker. The local government looks the other way when they see it comes from us. Mr. Mann pays half the city’s incoming taxes some years.”
“Did Eric really ask for her? Or is this a trick?”
“Please. There are loose ends to tie up, but I want to end the last night of my week on a high note. That means keeping Eric happy and this one’s mouth shut.”
“Let me guess. I’ve got a few more NDAs to sign.”
“Only a few?”
I got up and piled the afghan on the loveseat behind me. “I need my phone and purse back, anyway. I might as well go and talk to him.”
Sherman motioned for me to follow him. I exchanged one last look with Brooke, who nodded in encouragement. Well, if she was sure that they weren’t going to kill me, then I guess I would trust her.
Oh, please. Like they would kill me. No. They would make my life fucking hell until they were sure I wouldn’t blab about Eric to the media. Suddenly his tastes for escorts made sense. Who was more trustworthy than a million-dollar woman who made her whole living keeping a rich man’s secrets safe?
And pleasuring him, I suppose.
Yeah, I had a lot of questions. The only way I was going to get answers was if I went with Sherman and asked Eric everything haunting me for the past hour.
“I’ll text you later to make sure you’re still alive,” Brooke said, following us downstairs. “And to make sure Eric wasn’t a h
uge ass about everything.”
Yeah, that didn’t exactly inspire confidence.
Sherman put one heavy arm around me as soon as we were on the porch. This wasn’t anything like Eric tucking his arm around mine or putting his hand on the small of my back. It wasn’t romantic possessiveness or a chance to show me off. Sherman Smith was making sure I knew who was in charge and that I wasn’t going anywhere.
As if I were getting in the back of a police cruiser, he put his hand on my head and coerced me into the backseat of a sensible Audi A8.
“En route to the Summer Villa,” he announced into his headset. “Security level…” His hesitation prompted the man on the other end to ask him if everything was all right. “Security level: Alpha.”
So… that was the difference between Alpha and Beta. Did all parties entering Eric’s quarters know that he had two breasts and possibly something else? I suppose there were crasser ways to put it.
Sherman raised the partition once he hung up his headset. He also made sure the doors were locked – and he was the only one who could unlock them.
“I want to make one thing clear.” Even though the heat was on high in the car, I shuddered to have that voice so close to my ear. Not even my coat could have saved me. “Eric is sensitive about his… predicament. Try not to make it worse for him. He was already a mess when I left him to come grab you.”
Sensitive, huh? I fucking bet.
“I can sympathize with you that this is a shock. I also…”
“Have you always known?” I couldn’t stand it. I had to know. “Eric told me that you’ve known each other since childhood. So did you always know?”
Sherman, pursing his lips because I had so rudely interrupted him, made sure I got a quick answer. “Yes. I’m one of the only people he can absolutely trust. I’ve known him since before you entered elementary school.”
I scoffed.
“Don’t give me attitude. You’re the outer ring of the inner circle right now. If we wanted, we could legally force you into eternal silence and send you packing with absolutely nothing. This is your chance to set your terms with him.”