BOUND: Together

by Cynthia Dane

  I sat up again. “Yanked, huh?”

  “That girl really doesn’t know what she’s getting herself into with Sherman.” Brooke chortled. “Or you, for that matter.”

  My legs were tucked beneath me when I put my hands in my lap and gave my ex my undivided attention. “She seems to know enough.”

  “Enough to make educated decisions?”

  I remembered how passionately she kissed me before we left. “I think you underestimate that ‘girl.’” The thought of Natalie being nothing but a girl was laughable. She was more mature than she was ever credited. I should hope so. Natalie was a twenty-five-year-old woman. I didn’t hire immature women to work for me in my office. “She agreed to go out with me tomorrow.”

  “So I heard.”

  “From whom?”

  “Sherman, of course.”

  “Do you two often talk about my love life behind my back?”

  “Yes.”

  A flash of anger marred my otherwise peaceful stance. No. I couldn’t allow Brooke to rile me up. I doubted she did it on purpose, but she was the type of person to throw negativity at me in the name of looking after my best interests. She was the realism to my blights of optimism. Some people may find that toxic. I found it necessary – even when I wasn’t in the mood for it.

  “I’m going as Erica,” I announced. “My first real date as a woman since…” Laughter bubbled up my throat. “Since before you dumped me.”

  Brooke was quiet for a moment. “I wish you luck. You deserve someone who wants you as you are.”

  Ouch.

  Brooke must have realized how that had sounded, for she winced at her own words and shook her head in self-admonishment. “I didn’t mean… never mind. You know what I meant.”

  “You mean I deserve someone who will want me regardless of what I look like beneath my clothes. Unlike you.”

  “Eric, come on…”

  The fact she still called me Eric after all that time said everything I needed to know. “I’ll always be sorry it didn’t work out between us,” I said. “But nothing can be done about that now. We’ve both moved on.”

  She thought about that before saying, “Sometimes I wonder. If I’ve moved on, that is.”

  Silence stifled my reply.

  “I love you, Eric. You know that, right?”

  I squared my shoulders before flexing my arms. “Yet not enough to overlook my tits.”

  “Jesus…”

  She could be embarrassed all she wanted, but I was the one left wallowing in heartbreak after stringing her along for three years…

  Ah, so maybe we both suffered. Unlike her, however, I couldn’t walk away.

  “I appreciate your affection.” My bare feet pressed together, and my hands gripped my wiggling toes. “Whatever form it comes in.”

  “Trust me, Eric,” she said, “a woman doesn’t fall in love with you and simply stops one day. You’re infectious. Even if I never saw you again, I doubt a day would go by without me thinking about you.”

  “Is that supposed to flatter me?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know what I’m going on about.” Brooke’s elbows were soon in her thighs, and her face in her hands. Blond hair that I used to love combing with my fingers while she slept in the crook of my arm spilled down her arms.

  “I believe this is about Natalie.”

  Brooke peeked her blue eyes between her fingers. “I don’t know who this is about. Forgive me, I’m a tad conflicted as of late.”

  “About…”

  “About you suddenly dating a hot, young intern.”

  “Are you jealous?”

  “No.” Brooke shook out her arms. “Not jealous. More like… worried.”

  “Worried,” I echoed.

  “About you. And her.”

  I pressed the soles of my feet together. “Noble of you to worry about our relationship.”

  “See, that’s the thing…” Brooke waited until I looked back up at her before continuing. “I’m worried that you’re already seeing this as a relationship. The woman’s agreed to go on a date with you after finding out you’ve got a little more T&A than the average man. That’s not a relationship. That’s her testing the waters.”

  Something gurgled in my stomach. I doubted it was my hefty lunch I ate to power me through an intense workout. “I’m not already planning the wedding, if that’s what you’re worried about.” I couldn’t help myself. Not when Brooke pushed those buttons. “I’ve had enough wedding planning to last me a while.” I made sure our eyes remained locked together when I said that. Only then did I drop my forehead to the floor again. The stretch in my back? Amazing.

  “She has no idea what she’s getting into, Eric.”

  My sweaty grip slipped against my feet. Cursing, I stretched out my legs and slumped my arms between them. “And you don’t know her as well as I do.”

  “I don’t huh?” She guffawed. “You may know what she looks like naked, hon, but I’ve spent more time with her this past month than you have. She truly thought you were a man until last night.”

  “So? She’s been involved with women before.” I shouldn’t have shared that personal bit of information about Natalie.

  “You’re not exactly a traditional woman, either.”

  “Thank you for the reminder.”

  “Natalie is very label-intensive,” Brooke continued. “Part of the reason she’s done so well at her job is because she’s a natural whiz at categorizing people and things and knowing what to do with them. You don’t… well, you don’t fit into any labels, or categories, or whatever. You’re an anomaly, and you scare the piss out of women like her.”

  I shook my head.

  “Sherman says she literally ran away from you when she found out.”

  My head stopped shaking. It was about to make me sick.

  “I’m not trying to hurt you, Eric. I’m just trying to help you understand what’s probably going through Natalie’s head right now. Everything she thought she knew about you – her lover, no less – was a lie. That’s not easy to get over.”

  “You would know.”

  “Yes.” Brooke’s curt tone caught me off guard. “I do. Better than anyone else. Certainly better than you or Natalie.”

  I jerked upright, my head ablaze with offense. “Does this make you feel better? Reminding me that I’m some freak who has to be pieced together by every woman I date?”

  “It doesn’t make me feel anything good at all.”

  “I would never guess.”

  “Give me a break, Eric,” Brooke scoffed. “Don’t you get that I’m trying to help you?”

  “How does ripping open my most sensitive scar help me?”

  Her eyes widened. Yes, Brooke, you heard me correctly. Knowing that no woman could ever, truly love me was the biggest wound I bore. It didn’t matter how okay I felt about myself if everyone derided me for something I couldn’t help. What my father had done was an atrocity. What Brooke had done was traumatic.

  Guess which one won out in my head?

  “All I’m trying to say is,” Brooke continued, arms crossed and back leaning against the wall behind her, “just because Natalie is going out with you this weekend, doesn’t mean she’s totally okay with what you’ve sprung on her.”

  My brows continued to furrow down my face. “And what is she getting herself into, in your experienced opinion?”

  She met my gaze with her own bitterness. “Not knowing who you are, for one.”

  I stood up in one fluid motion. Enough yoga had powered my muscles to ensure that I was more flexible than a trapeze artist, but it wasn’t on par with how many flips my heart did when Brooke said shit like that. She didn’t know who I was? How the fuck did she think I felt? Every day was a new adventure in me deciding if I wanted to add an A to my name. That A may not mean much to other people. But to me? It was the difference between being two completely different people.

  Yet how could I be the person I knew I was inside?

  Pe
rhaps that’s why so much of my identity centered on other people. Brooke had been the love of my life when I was with her. She gave me a reason to put up with the pageantry and get through another day – because I knew she would be there at the beginning and end of it, offering me a kiss and a squeeze of my hand. She had loved me. I suppose she still did.

  But she couldn’t be with me, because I wasn’t a real man.

  “I know what you see in her,” Brooke conceded when she saw the fury in my face. “And I know what she sees in you. But she doesn’t see everything that there is to you. There’s a darkness that constantly surrounds you, Eric.” She looked away. “That’s why I had to end it. Even if I still loved you, I couldn’t be a part of the lies and the shadows. Not on that much of an intimate level.”

  “You couldn’t be the wife of a lie.” That’s how she thought of me. A lie.

  Brooke stood up as well. Without her heels, she came much closer to my height. To think, we once joked that I was a man who wasn’t afraid to have a girlfriend three inches taller than myself. “I wish you luck on your date tomorrow.”

  “I wish you luck in your marriage.”

  She slowly shook her head. “You can be really mean when you want to be.”

  “Same to you.” More like cruel, but who was keeping score?

  Brooke released the fists on either side of her determined stance. “You’re a strong and resilient person, Eric,” she said. “Perhaps one of the strongest I’ve ever known. What you need is someone who can be as strong as you.”

  “And that’s not you,” I said with finality.

  I had long moved on from Brooke, the woman I hired as my personal assistant shortly after she broke off our engagement. But she could still get to me. She had the power to seep deep into my soul and wrap herself around my subconscious, the place I guarded with such intensity that people often said I was impossible to penetrate.

  Few people had managed to do that. Brooke was one of them. I could easily imagine Natalie being another.

  “Mr. Mann,” Margot announced from the main room of my chambers. “Ms. Jennings is here for your afternoon appointment.”

  A woman in a flirtatious cold-shoulder blouse and tight denim jeans tossed her dark hair out of the way when she sauntered into my chambers, oozing sex and feminine sensuality. Brooke scoffed in disbelief before turning to me in disgust. “An escort. The day before your date with Natalie.”

  “It’s not like that.” A few yards away, Ms. Jennings sat on a couch and touched up her makeup in a compact. “Not what you’re thinking.”

  “You say that even though you always pay for the full service.”

  I pulled my shoulders back, puffing my chest out in my constricting sports bra. “Money buys silence.”

  “And you never know when you might need other services, right?”

  “I’m not having sex with her.” Even if I didn’t have a date with Natalie the next day, I still wouldn’t be interested in Ms. Jennings full services that evening. I had other tasks for her to perform. Tasks meant to undermine and undo so much of the toxic training I had as a child.

  “Oh, but you have before.”

  I didn’t deny it. But where Ms. Jennings failed to impress me in bed, she awed me with her effortless ability to own who she was as a woman, let alone one with such feminine power. I wanted to be more like her one day. Hence, I was more than willing to pay for her expertise and tutelage. If she could teach me to walk like her, talk like her, and unlock parts of my demeanor I didn’t even know existed, then perhaps I could discover a more authentic version of myself.

  I’ve never shied away from how much of a work in progress I am. While others strive to constantly better themselves, I’m doing that and discovering what it is I really want from life – and who I want to be.

  “Many women have crossed my path,” I reminded my ex. “Before you… and after you.”

  “Fess up, Eric. Natalie’s the first one since me to have the power to really fuck you up.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “Yes,” she admitted. “Only because I don’t want you getting hurt like that again.”

  “That power was in your hands once.” I broke away from Brooke, intent on greeting Ms. Jennings in nothing more than my workout wear. She wouldn’t mind. “I suggest that if you really feel that way, you support me instead of filling me with your usual dread.”

  Brooke bore a hole into the back of my head with that defeated visage I’m sure she espoused. By the time I turned around again, she had secured her purse strap across her chest and was ready to march out of my chambers.

  I’m not proud to say that I think she was wiping tears from her eyes.

  ***

  “Margot!” I poked my head out of my walk-in closet and hoped my housekeeper was anywhere near my chambers. “Can you come here for a second? I need your expert opinion on something!”

  She appeared in the bathroom doorway, my used towel and pajamas collected into a basket. “Yes, sir?”

  One thing I must hand to Margot: once I told her to call me Mr. Mann and sir, she never once strayed from it. However, I needed her to set aside the male pronouns for five minutes and perhaps see me for the woman I wanted to be that day.

  If nothing else, I only wore a matching bra and panty set, so my poor housekeeper had no choice but to acknowledge at least one part of my womanhood. Luckily for me, Margot couldn’t give a rat’s ass if I actually had a rat’s ass. While I’m sure she’s a whirlpool of personal opinions, she always kept them to herself. That’s how I liked my staff. Sherman and Brooke have yet to get those messages.

  I held up a blouse as my housekeeper approached. “I have no idea what to wear today.”

  Natalie and I were due to meet up at the local country club in two hours. I was scheduled to leave in one hour. Yet there I was, in nothing but my skivvies, dancing around my closet and completely aghast that I had all these nice clothes for women and no idea what to finally wear on my first date as a woman.

  Margot stared at my body, at my makeup-less countenance, and at the racks of unworn clothing I had amassed over the years but never had the excuse to wear. After a few moments of silent deliberation, she yanked a white blouse off one rack and jeans off another.

  “St. Laurent and Valentino.” She shoved both into my hands. “You can never go wrong, sir. May I suggest one of the Valentino heels as well? Two and one, sir. That’s the rule my aunt Viola follows when she’s dressing to seduce the wallets out of men for a night.”

  “Two and one?”

  “Two of one designer, and one of another to complement it. One St. Laurent, two Valentino.” She glanced me over again. “Expensive and chic, yet infuriatingly casual. Ms. Chen won’t know what to make of you when she sees you later.”

  The blouse unfolded against my naked torso before it could wrinkle. “How do you know I’m going out with Ms. Chen today?”

  “It’s the talk of everyone under Alpha Status,” Margot explained, as if it should have been painfully obvious. “Helps that everyone but the bare bones of your security team is going with you to the country club today.” She nodded to the clothes in my hands. “There won’t be a man or woman on that team who will see you in that and not be impressed. Trust me. I have flawless taste in fashion.”

  I raised my eyebrows. Margot. The woman who wore black turtleneck dresses every single day as her housekeeping uniform?

  “Thank you, Margot.” I cleared my throat. “I can take it from here.”

  “Sure you don’t want me to send in Mr. Smith to get his opinion on your hair and makeup?”

  “Thank you, Margot.”

  As soon as she left my chambers, I was left with nothing but the butterflies in my stomach. I would wear Margot’s suggestion that day… and I would pray that Natalie fell in love with the real me the moment we met.

  Chapter 31

  NATALIE

  I had no idea what to expect from our Sunday date, but one thing I did expect was Eric
coming to pick me up in front of my house. After all, he had promised me a car pickup.

  I got one. But when I stepped out of my house in my black and red floral one-piece, sunglasses shielding my face, I did not see anyone but Clyde in the Mercedes S-Class.

  “Good morning, Ms. Chen.” He opened the back door. A blast of cool air hit me as I stood in the warm October sun. I’ll never forget how odd it felt that late in the year. Everyone on the block had Halloween decorations out, but there I was roasting in my dress. “Mr. Mann has requested that we join him at another location.”

  “He’s not picking me up himself?”

  “Afraid not, Miss.”

  I hopped into the car. The door immediately closed behind me. Well, this was a fine thing. He couldn’t even come pick me up for our first real date that didn’t include whisking me away from the sidewalk? Guess it gave me ample time to touch up my makeup in my compact. I had gone with a bold red lip and the slightest bit of cat eyes. Now I wondered if I should exchange the red for soft brown. The ‘90s were alive again, after all.

  As soon as Clyde pulled back onto the road and asked if I was comfortable, my thoughts went straight to Does he know?

  Was Clyde in the inner circle? If so, how long had he known? Eric said that Clyde had been his driver for years. But what did that mean, exactly?

  I didn’t dare ask. I could get answers from Eric later. Assuming he didn’t blow me off.

  We bypassed downtown and headed straight for the countryside. Rolling hills capped in the colors of autumn made me wish I had brought a sweater. The farmlands had long been harvested; the animals meandered through browned pastures. I didn’t know where we were going, but I had a good idea.

  An exclusive country club called part of this valley home. I had only heard stories of it, of course, because the only people allowed to step across the threshold came from families of prestige and had bank accounts as glorious as Saturn’s rings. Eric fit both of those bills. Eric also had enough money and clout to ask that the club shut at least half of its doors for us to use without anyone noticing that my date was not what people thought.

  “Are we going to Blithedale?” I asked.