Good In Bed

by Bromberg, K

  God damn. Where was she? Where the fuck was she?

  An ebony-skinned woman I recognized as Olivia’s legal assistant rushed out of the last stall.

  “Uh…” she said when she saw me.

  “Where’s Olivia?”

  She hesitated, then went to a sink to wash her hands.

  “Please,” I said. “I mean her no harm. I just… Why isn’t she here?”

  “She had a doctor’s appointment.”

  “What kind of doctor?”

  She shook the water off her hands. “Back up.”

  I moved out of her way. She ran down the hall to make it back in time. I was right behind her without a second to spare.

  The gallery was half-empty, but the chairs on the left side of the room were all taken with her colleagues. The judge was a woman in her sixties with blond, shoulder-length hair and reading glasses she could easily deliver a death glare over.

  Besides her, all eyes were on me standing between the two tables as I calculated the days since our broken condom. She’d had an insemination appointment the next day.

  I didn’t like the number I came up with.

  What was the doctor’s name? She’d said it.

  This was now. No time for drama.

  “Your Honor,” I said, “I want—”

  “Can you identify yourself, sir?” she said.

  Galang. His name was Galang.

  “I’m Byron Crowne, the owner—”

  “Your Honor.” Gregory stood. “Mr. Crowne—”

  “Sit down, Gregory,” I said.

  “You should sit with your counsel, Mr. Crowne,” the judge said. “Then we can get started.”

  “I have something to say first.”

  “Wait your turn. My courtroom isn’t a theater.”

  “Yes. I know, but…” I took a breath. “Your Honor—”

  “I will hold you in contempt if you don’t sit down.”

  They’d take me away and hold me for a few hours. By the time I paid my way out, it would be too late.

  “Your Honor, I’m dropping this matter with the intention of complying fully.”

  Gasps from the left met groans from my lawyers on the right.

  “And you need to turn my courtroom into a circus to do that?”

  “Please. I have an emergency that can’t wait.”

  She took her glasses off to get the full measure of me. “What kind of emergency?”

  “Personal,” I said. “It’s my family.”

  She put her glasses back on and looked at the papers in front of her.

  “Byron!” Gregory said in a cross between a shout and a whisper. “What the—”

  “It’s over,” I said. “I’ll fill you in later.”

  “All right,” the judge said. “Counsel will confer in the jury room. We will reconvene and put the final agreements on the record.”

  The room burst into murmurs.

  I spun around and out the doors to beat the crowd and the questions.

  Chapter 35

  OLIVIA

  I’d left the house early because I had to keep moving or drown in doubt. At a table in the cheap cafe on the first floor of Dr. Galang’s office building, I watched the traffic on Sunset. The building was twenty-four stories of medical offices. Tables and chairs were gathered around a fountain out front. Executives from the surrounding talent agencies scurried across the street and through the lobby for a quick coffee. The city kept moving. Only I was still.

  Eight in the morning. The courtroom doors were opening.

  Byron was there. He was probably looking for me. Maybe wondering where I was. Probably relieved he didn’t have to look me in the eye.

  I’d made the right decision. I wouldn’t have been able to bear seeing him right before the insemination. He was the dream of having it all, and that had slipped through my fingers. Seeing him would have made me want to catch some part of it. In his green eyes and steady, commanding voice, I’d have lost my will to refuse to settle. I’d let the clock tick down for months, grasping for a love that was always out of my reach. I couldn’t do that to myself. I didn’t deserve a lifetime of disappointment.

  Eight fifteen.

  Motions to dismiss. Rejections of same. Opening statements. Kimberly was an absolute genius and would add some obvious-seeming twist of logic his team would scramble to meet.

  Eight thirty. My coffee was cold. The traffic on Sunset was at its peak, and I was already late. I tossed my cup into the trash and took the door to the lobby.

  The elevators were across the sun-drenched space. A wall of glass looked out onto the fountain in front of the building, and I took a moment to glance at it as I made my way past. A black Bentley drove up onto the sidewalk as if that was perfectly legal and slowed.

  When I saw the driver, my skin tingled with recognition.

  Before the car was fully stopped or I was in control of my shock, the back door flew open.

  “Byron?” I whispered to myself as he bounded up the steps, unbuttoned jacket flying.

  The Bentley moved off the sidewalk, and the man I couldn’t bear to hope to ever see again opened the glass doors, gaze darting all over the lobby before landing on me.

  The tingle had dissolved into pure energy, leaving me in a state of numb focus on the narrow space between Byron and me. I couldn’t break it to go to him, nor to run away. My will to do anything at all was preoccupied with adjusting to this man coexisting in the same space.

  He buttoned his jacket and closed the distance between us. My pupils tightened on him, and everything around us went dark except the light in his eyes. Just before his lips moved to speak, I remembered why I was there and what he’d refused me.

  Everything.

  “What are you doing here? Did you win?”

  “Maybe.” He paused, holding back a smile. “I took a loss.”

  “What?”

  “I’m changing the house. For you.”

  The world, with its bright lights and sounds, flooded back.

  Was that why he was here?

  “You think this was about a house?”

  “No.” He smiled at his own folly and opened his arm toward the café I’d left. “Can we talk? I want to start over. Just—”

  “I’m late for an appointment.” I tore myself away and walked toward the elevators.

  “No.” He got in front of me. “Listen. I know why you’re going up there.”

  “And?”

  “And don’t. Please.”

  “Byron. What do you want out of me? I’m just trying to live the life I want.”

  “I know.” His fingers curled with the tension of holding back one thing to say another thing he couldn’t.

  “You don’t want to be a part of it. You can’t be what I need. Okay, fine. Just get out of my way.”

  I went past him, but he shifted until he was blocking me again. People were watching. He was going to make a scene.

  “I’m going to be late,” I said through my teeth.

  “Don’t do this. Please. I’ll go insane. I’ll lose my mind. When I think of another man’s child inside you, even though he’s a good man, a friend to you, a great uncle—I’m not insulting him, but just… He’s not me.” His pleas dropped in volume and grew in intensity, and I changed my posture before some well-meaning person called security. “Someone else writing himself inside your body… Olivia, it drives me to a despair I can’t fight. Not disappointment, but misery.”

  “You don’t want what I need.”

  “It’s not about what I want anymore. I’m a foolish, conceited man. Whatever fate gave me, whatever the advantages, it didn’t give me the sense to see my own heart. But I can’t unsee it now. I can’t cling to my idea about myself while you live in the world. I can’t. Please. Let me look into a child’s eyes and see both of us there. I’ll do whatever you want. Whatever. You. Want.”

  “I can’t…” I said before shutting down out of self-preservation. I couldn’t ask for it. I couldn’t reach fo
r everything and come up short again. My face crumpled, and a tear fell onto my cheek. I wiped it with the back of my hand.

  “I can.” He took my biceps in his hands and bent to eye level. “I love you, Olivia.”

  I must have misheard him. “You what?”

  “I. Love. You. I swear it. God help me, I love you so much I’m more alive. I’m happy when I’m near you. I love you selfishly, jealously… I love you so completely I can’t deny it anymore. Not for another second. You’ve written your name inside me. Please… Olivia.” He closed his eyes. “Please say you still love me.”

  When he opened them, I saw him through a cloud of tears, and when I blinked, they dropped like rain.

  “I’d say…” I couldn’t finish past the hitch in my breath. He handed me a handkerchief. “I’d say this is a game you’re playing because you’re a possessive, hateful asshole.”

  “I am.”

  “But you’re not a liar.”

  “Not today.”

  I balled up the damp handkerchief and looked away from him to the people moving in and out, the fountain in the front, the sun crawling higher in the sky, and the clock behind the security counter, its hands moving ever forward.

  Putting my eyes back on Byron, who hadn’t moved in the passing seconds, I took a deep breath. “Some things change. But I love you and I always will.”

  The joy in his smile flashed, and for a moment, he was the happy boy in the painting.

  He kissed me, and I closed my eyes to taste all the layers of his happiness, knowing that I’d see it again, over and over, for the rest of my life.

  Epilogue 1

  BYRON

  She waddled.

  Olivia pacing the Crownestead garden with her phone stuck to her ear was the cutest fucking thing I’d ever seen in my life. I couldn’t take my eyes off the way she walked as if her hip joints were coming unglued… until a volleyball smacked my head so hard I saw stars.

  “Hey!” Olivia shouted.

  “I’m fine!” I said when the grass took on a normal hue and the sun didn’t look like a hole in a cardboard box.

  “Logan!” she shouted, pointing her phone at him like an accusing finger, undeterred by my fineness or anything else. “You did it on purpose.”

  She was due in a few weeks and a little… on edge.

  “I did not,” he said from the other side of the net.

  He most certainly had done it on purpose.

  “Forget it.” I snapped up the ball. “I’m fine.”

  “Not like I hit any vital organs.” Logan shrugged.

  I tossed him the ball, but even pregnant, Olivia appeared out of thin air and grabbed it mid-arc and waddled back to me.

  “Did he concuss you?” she asked, touching the red spot.

  “There’s not even a bump.”

  “You should lie down.”

  I didn’t need to lie down. I needed one more point to crush the insect on the other side of the court. Except he wasn’t there anymore. “Where’s that little turd?”

  “Talking to your father.” She tilted her chin at the glass door, which was open so Ted and Logan could talk. “You win.”

  “Excellent.” I kissed her. “You had lemonade.” I kissed her again to get another snap of Nellie’s ginger lemonade.

  “Yes.” She put her arms around my neck, and I put my hands on her waist, pressing her belly to mine.

  “What did your mother say?”

  “She’s not cutting you a deal on the house.”

  “But I’m a developer with an all-cash offer.”

  “One of many.”

  I felt an urgent shift against my stomach. The baby kicking.

  “He’s getting impatient,” I said between lemon-drop kisses. “Trying to beat the clock.”

  “Trying to get you to close on that monstrosity in Bel-Air.”

  The monstrosity didn’t live up to the hype. A scant thirty-four thousand square feet with gardens, a hedge maze, and specially cordoned off where the creek’s boundary fell, it was even modest.

  Eleven months after changing the plans and one week left to completion, I already had offers on it. Once it was done, sold, and off my plate, Olivia and I were getting secretly and quietly married. Then we’d have our son.

  “For fuck’s sake,” Logan cried, “she doesn’t need to be resuscitated.”

  I ignored him to kiss her, imagining all the ways I’d own her body when it was healed. I enjoyed being gentle with her, but we both craved our old selves.

  “Byron,” my father’s voice followed, and I pulled away from Olivia long enough to look over at him. “Come join us in my office.”

  “Better go,” she said. “Before we start something you can’t finish the way we want.”

  We parted, and I jogged to the house.

  * * *

  Ted Crowne kept an office at Crownestead. It was more of a sitting room overlooking the side yard, but he still oversaw Crowne Industries operations and needed to sit behind a desk sometimes.

  Logan sat across from him, and I sat in the chair next to him. Outside, Olivia and Mom drank lemonade. My mother was comfortable enough around Olivia to drink through a straw as they watched the sun set.

  “What’s this about?” I asked. Our father hadn’t called an across-the-desk meeting in years. Not since I’d abdicated my succession rights.

  “Fucked if I know.”

  Dad shut the sliding wooden door and moved behind his desk. “Gentlemen.” Dad hitched up his trousers before sitting. “So, your mother is getting worse. This was completely expected. It’s a degenerative disease. You boys don’t have to look like I slapped you.”

  “Shouldn’t Dante and Colton be here?” Logan asked. “What about Lyric?”

  “All of us have an interest,” I added. Intentionally or not, Logan always forgot Liam.

  “This is business,” Dad said. “Which means it’s you two.”

  “Then why’s this guy here?” Logan jerked his thumb in my direction.

  “Logan’s shutting up now so you can finish.”

  “Thank you.” Dad directed his gratitude at Logan. “She’s getting the best care available. We’re moving a staff in. But…” He tapped his fingertips against one another. “She needs me. More of me, more of the time. And I need her.”

  The energy that came off Logan could have lit up a city, but when I glanced at him, he was all business. Good for him.

  “So, first things first, we’re moving out of Crownestead and back down to Los Angeles.”

  “Why?” Logan objected. “Mom loves it here.”

  “She wants to be near her children, and whatever she wants, she gets. She has a property in mind. She saw the house. It’s wheelchair accessible—when it comes to that. I suggest… both of you… to not try to talk her out of it.”

  “Fine,” Logan said.

  “Where is it?” I asked so I could gauge the neighborhood, the price, and the best way to make it perfect for her.

  “Bel-Air,” Dad said.

  “Great,” I said like a fucking idiot. “The neighborhood council loves me now. I need to see it sooner rather than later.”

  “Jesus,” Logan said under his breath.

  Dad leveled his gaze at me, and for a moment, I felt as if everyone knew Colton’s missing Range Rover was at the bottom of the lake except for me. Again.

  “You built it, son.”

  “Ah, Dad…”

  “It’s perfect.”

  “I didn’t have you in mind when I started it.”

  “You didn’t when you finished it either. Don’t worry, we’ll pay market unless we’re outbid. Then we’ll match it.”

  “No bidding, Dad. If Mom wants it, it’s hers.”

  “Are you serious?” Logan said. “The OBT goes to some environmental fund, and now you’re paying market for the house it was supposed to build?”

  I hadn’t needed the money to make the house smaller, nor would I ever need it. I had everything I’d ever wanted.


  “What’s the difference?” Dad asked.

  “We’re not negotiating? Just, ‘Here… Take it’? It should go to Crowne for cost.”

  “Mind your business, twerp.”

  “Exactly.” Logan jammed his finger in my direction. “It’s business. This business. Which is my business. Dad—”

  “And there’s something else,” Dad said. “If you two can get your thumbs out of each other’s eyes for a minute, I’ll tell you.”

  We took a breath.

  “Logan.” Dad looked at his second son. “Your mother and I talked about this… God, if I could count the hours we talked. We’ve watched you work yourself ragged to prove you can manage an international company the size of Crowne. But every time I ask you what you want out of your life—just a month ago was the last time—you say you want what your mother and I have.”

  “I do. You guys are perfect. So?”

  “How are you going to get it like this? Twenty-two-hour days. Constant travel. The last time you socialized, it was to practice Cantonese.”

  “You managed.”

  “We were stupid. We got married at eighteen, before Uncle Jerry died. Before I knew it would be mine. You’re running into a lonely life like a starving man chasing a sandwich.”

  “You’re telling me to date? Dad. Come on.”

  “I’m telling you to get married.”

  “What?” Logan sat straight up with his hands leveraged against the arm rests as if he were preparing to launch.

  “Dad?” I said incredulously. “Are you serious?”

  Our father laid his hands flat on the blotter. “Your mother and I don’t care how much money you make in a lifetime. Or how much you grow the business. She said, and I quote, ‘I will die weeping if the room dims before my babies find their happiness.’ Which isn’t her best bit of verse—”

  “Just get married?” Logan interrupted. “Should I pick a girl off the street? Hire someone? What even is this?”

  I held my hand in front of Logan’s chest as if he were in the passenger seat and I was coming to a screeching halt. “Dad, is this even legal? What did Joe say?”