by Anne Marsh
I was kind of a dick.
She hasn’t filed for divorce, but I worry that she will. I guess then she’d have to talk to me, but I don’t think a conversation in the presence of a court-ordered mediator will go particularly well.
I don’t want to lose her.
I work all hours of the day, trying to forget that I’ve fucked things up so badly; however, that has already happened. She set the rules when she agreed to be my temporary wife and then I went ahead and ignored them. I made her feel small.
I remember my mother screaming at my dad when he wandered home. I didn’t like the way he made her feel, as if she wasn’t reason enough for him to stay. He’d send money home, but there was never enough of it. And besides, what we both really wanted was him.
I think Hana may have wanted me until she realized she deserved a whole person, someone who could love her and be there for her. Someone who wouldn’t walk away and send a check.
Now that it’s too late, I know I want her back.
I love her.
* * *
Jax won’t answer my texts or calls either, but I’m a stubborn bastard and I’m willing to fight dirty. I finally resort to stalking him outside his current start-up. When he comes out the door, he can’t miss me.
“I need to talk to you.” Hana hasn’t answered any of my calls or texts, and I’m going nuts.
“No.” He turns right, headed for a park that’s down the street from the converted brick warehouse that houses his current start-up.
I fall in beside him. Since it’s the Mission District, we have to step over the occasional passed-out drunk. There are a shit ton of pigeons in the park, but there are also snack carts.
“Tell me how I fix this.”
For a moment I think he’s going to instruct me to fuck off, but then he sighs. “Hana is not happy with you at the moment.”
I want to seize on those last three words and ask if that means she’s happy with me some of the time or is planning on being so in the future, but Jax’s glower warns me not to be a desperate ass.
“I’d like to take responsibility for that.” I say this cautiously because I’m not certain he won’t haul off and punch me. I’d rather he wait until I have an action plan and then he can take a shot at me.
Jax exhales. “She’s not a problem, Liam.”
“I caused it—I fix it. It was my party. I married her. And people wouldn’t have been all over her if I didn’t have the kind of money I do. She’s way too nice to handle that kind of press. They’re calling her the princess of kink.”
Thanks to the photos that leaked of Hana and me on the Ferris wheel. My legal team had them taken down, but too many people have seen them and copies keep popping up. Photos of Leda and me keep circulating, too, which only adds fuel to the fire.
“And Mrs. Kink,” Jax growls. He’s clearly been spending time on the internet. It’s bad. I have a lawyer working on it, but since most of what’s out there is innuendo and out-of-focus pictures, it’s an uphill battle.
“Yeah.” I scrub a hand over my face. “So that’s not good. And it’s my fault.”
“So it’s all about you.”
Now it’s my turn to give him a look. “There’s something about Hana.”
I pause, marshaling my arguments. This would be easier in an email I could review and revise. “Marrying her wasn’t a mistake,” I continue. “I feel things about her. For her. I’d like to have a chance to really be a husband to her.”
Admittedly the only husbandly examples I’ve seen have been more of the what-not-to-do variety, but that’s not going to help my case with Jax.
“Just tell her you’re sorry and grovel,” Jax says finally. “When I say this isn’t rocket science, you should know exactly what I mean.”
“Apologize?”
“What’s she mad about?”
I think about it for a moment. “Top three? I really don’t remember our wedding, I didn’t act thrilled to be accidentally married, and I bought the mortgage on her farm so now she thinks I legally own her business and that I did it either to fuck with her or to prevent her from messing with me. Also, I used her to feel bad about myself the night of the party and my public visibility is the reason her naked photos got the traffic they did. She’s also drawing comparisons between herself and Leda.”
“That’s six,” Jax says, as if the actual number matters. One way to hurt Hana is one too many. “Are you treating her like Leda?”
“Not a chance.”
“So you didn’t have a controlling interest in her business that could be misconstrued by anyone with internet access?”
I shove a hand through my hair. “It wasn’t like that. Leda stole from me. Hell, she stole from everyone. I had a legal obligation to take steps when I found out. Leda is a thief. Hana was vulnerable and I was just trying to make sure she wasn’t anymore.”
“And yet Hana came to the obvious if mistaken conclusion that you’d disrespected her and screwed around with her career behind her back and that you couldn’t be bothered to come up with a decent excuse.”
“Pretty much.” I pull off my suit jacket and drop down onto the grass. From here I can see a square of blue sky framed by the curly gables of a row of Queen Annes. A couple of puffy clouds scoot by and I wonder what Hana is doing. I imagine her swimming in the ocean, maybe in a pink string bikini.
“How do I get her to forget and move on?”
Jax drops down beside me. “You have to show her that she can trust you. It would help if you apologized with actual words, but you’re emotionally stunted, so I get that’s a challenge for you.”
“How do I get her to trust me?”
“You weren’t there for her and you kept shit back. You should have been up-front about what you were doing and she should have had veto rights.”
“I’m not going to let her tell me what to do or not do.”
“You made her feel bad. Now you have to make her feel safe. Stop thinking with your dick for a minute. Also, don’t ever make me say those words about my sister again.” Jax frowns. “Use your brain. She was feeling vulnerable and she took a chance on you. You took that chance to use her to further your career and buy her farm. You made it seem like she didn’t count for much. You have to even things up and make yourself vulnerable to her. It’s like basic math.”
“I can’t have a relationship. You saw my parents. You know what they were like. Do you want a guy like that for your sister?”
Jax shakes his head. “Are you trying to talk me into helping you talk with Hana or out of it?”
Okay. I can figure this out. “Look, this is new for me. I don’t know how boyfriends work, so this whole promotion to husband is like going from fry cook to head chef at a Michelin-starred restaurant. I know there’s a lot riding on this and I actually don’t want to fuck it up.”
While I wait for him to process that, I lie back on the grass and stare at the sky. Sometimes it’s nice to stop racing to the top. Mostly because I’m already there, but you know, it’s good to look around. Stock up on vitamin D. More clouds skate pass. I glance at Jax but he’s still looking up contemplatively. Okay. So it’s boring as fuck and I need to fix this thing with Hana.
He finally shifts his gaze from the sky to me. “Do you want to be married to her?”
“Are you going to punch me if I’m honest?”
“Probably.”
“Long-term I’ve never seen myself as a married guy. But I thought we were working out and I have...feelings for her.”
Jax groans. “If you can’t bring yourself to say those two little words—I’m sorry—then you show her.”
I nod. Okay. Show, not tell. I don’t like even thinking about apologizing. It makes me queasy, but I can demonstrate good faith.
“Because you’d better be sorry,” Jax adds.
It’s way
too late for that rule. I think about sex and Hana a thousand times a day. “Give me examples.”
Jax stares up at the sky for a long time. “So you can start with presents. Flowers. Thoughtful shit that shows you’re thinking about her and that you know something about her other than her panty size. Whatever you do, for fuck’s sake, don’t make it about sex.”
“Buy stuff. Got it.”
“But then,” he continues, “you have to open up. You have to go all the way. Make yourself vulnerable so that she feels like she’s getting to know you and can trust you. It’s math, right? You use math all the time. If you want to fly your sorry ass to a planet, you have to figure out how much energy it will take to get to the orbit you need to reach based on the size of your ship. Then you see if your engines can provide that.”
“And this math works for you?”
Jax reaches over and punches me lightly in the shoulder. “I’m still single, aren’t I? But I know what happens if you don’t talk. You’re going to fight and there will be misunderstandings. You have to sit down with each other and really listen. And if your spaceship of love burns up on reentry or you crash-land in the ocean, at least you tried.”
“I’ll have planted my flag,” I say mock-solemnly. “Touched down and left my mark. I’ll be sure to report back to mission control with each new...development.”
Jax growls something I don’t ask him to repeat, but I win a reluctant grin from him. Honestly, I’m just glad I don’t have sisters to protect from billionaire assholes.
Decision made, I start mapping out the steps in my apology. I’ve screwed up big-time, so there’s no way a simple, two-word I’m sorry cuts it. Plus, this is Hana we’re talking about. She deserves the biggest, best apology in the world.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
NEW MISSION
Liam
GOING PUBLIC SUCKS. I don’t like to talk about myself—my private life is mine. The usual group of reporters and photographers follows me to the studio, yelling questions and taking pictures. I’ve always been the center of attention for my business successes, but this is different. They don’t care what deals I’ve closed or how the software products championed by my company could change the world for the better. They just want to hear about how I banged Hana Valentine and then married her at a sex party. I have to refrain from punching a particularly obnoxious reporter when he alleges Hana’s been seen with another guy since our breakup.
It’s almost a relief to hit hair and makeup, where the makeup artist makes me look pretty and covers up the shadows under my eyes. I pace back and forth in the greenroom until it’s my turn to go on set. The producers make all of the guests walk out through a narrow corridor and then between the rows of guests. I’m supposed to slap hands and make nice, but I feel like the steer in the chute at a rodeo. I stride over to the interviewer, waiting for me in the middle of the studio, ignoring the polite applause.
Barbara, the hostess, spends way too much time explaining to the audience who I am. She seems to think this requires a blow-by-blow description of every dollar I’ve ever made. More than once, she flashes pictures of a girl I’ve been seen with on a big screen behind the two of us. This is not efficient, so eventually I lean in and put my hand on her arm.
“Can we just stipulate that I have the reputation of being a dick and that I’ve earned it?”
“Is that how you would describe your relationship with Leda Swan? The two of you were quite the item for months. And then you broke up and the investment world learned that you’d cut the funding for her company. Two months after that, her company closed its doors. Would you characterize that as a dick move?”
I suck in a breath. “Leda and I did have a personal relationship, but that relationship never entered into the boardroom. It did not affect our business dealings. In fact, Barbara, I’d suggest that it was the other way around: our business relationship made me rethink our personal one. I couldn’t condone dating a woman who would steal from her own company. My being a dick was purely professional, not romantic.”
Barbara looks out at the audience and then back at me. “So you believe Leda was a thief?”
I keep it simple. “Yes.”
“What do you believe she stole?”
My heartbeat quickens. I haven’t shared this information with anyone outside the district attorney’s office. I’d planned to keep it that way, but not at the cost of losing Hana. “Money. Mine, her investors’, anyone who put so much as a dime into her company. I’d initially invested in her company at her request before we started dating, but things started to not add up on the business front. When I did some digging, I found that large amounts of investment funds were unaccounted for. Either Leda was unethical or incompetent.”
Barbara raises her eyebrows. “And which did you decide she was?”
“Unethical.”
“And why would that be?”
“Because I realized that the portfolio of patents held by Leda’s company was worth less than a roll of toilet paper in a Quilted Northern warehouse. She didn’t have a working product. She wasn’t close, but she told everyone it was fully functional and ready to take to market. The financials I’d seen were deliberately misleading, as were the product demonstrations. Sometimes, companies fail. It can be hard to develop a concept into a finished product and that’s not criminal. If you never had a product in the first place, however, that’s wrong in my book.”
“And you didn’t think you should share this information with the other investors so they could try to recoup their money?”
“There was nothing left. All the money vanished. Some of it went for payroll and rent, utilities and office furniture. Most of it, however, simply disappeared from the company bank account.”
“So why say nothing?”
I lean forward. This is the tricky part. “I don’t like to air my personal business, Barbara. Going public about my belief in Leda’s wrongdoing might have been perceived as the vendetta of a disgruntled boyfriend.”
Yes. Look at me. I’m such a choirboy.
“So you’re saying you chose to do nothing?”
“No, I’m not saying that. There were a lot of rumors, as we both know. People thought—think—that I shut Leda’s company down because she broke up with me.” I wink at Barbara. “And because I’m a dick.”
The audience laughs appreciatively.
“And you didn’t care?”
“I don’t worry about words. They’re just words, or so I thought, and I’d like to be judged on my actions. I worked quietly behind the scenes with the appropriate law enforcement agencies to share what I knew; it’s up to them to pursue charges or not. Not knowing about this private decision of mine, the board of Galaxtix let me know that they had their own private concerns, largely about my looking publicly like a first-class dick. They suggested I do something to fix my image problem.”
“And how did you do that?”
“Well, I wasn’t interested in apologizing to Leda. I made that clear. If you know me, you know that I don’t apologize. Instead, I got married.”
The people in the audience start whispering.
“I had a chance at a life with a really great person and I used her to clean up my image with the Galaxtix people. She doesn’t deserve that. Any guy would be lucky to have her standing by his side, but I acted like I didn’t see her. I’m hoping to convince her to give me a second chance, but I don’t know what it’ll take.”
Barbara smells blood. “Why do you want a second chance, Liam?”
I look at the camera. “I love Hana. I want her back. I’d like to be the guy holding her when we’re ninety and we’re looking back on life. And I definitely want to be the guy living that life with her. For her.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
FRANKENWEENIES AND TEQUILA
Hana
I MOPE AROUND Hey Honey Farm, making long, delusion
al lists of home improvement projects that I leave unstarted in favor of binge-reading Harry Potter. I buy myself an enormous bouquet of purple roses, hoping I’ll feel better by the time they wither. One bunch turns into two; by the third, I buy a rosebush in the interests of economy. I lie around on the beach mainlining frozen cocktail pouches. I promise myself that I’ll pull it together soon. I knew chasing Liam was a mistake, but I did it anyway, and now I have to sort my shit out. I’d rather not do it with every online gossip site in the country speculating about my motives in marrying Liam at a sex party. Pictures come out, purporting to be “a well-known couple” doing it at that party; the photos are super blurry and I’m not convinced they’re actually me and Liam, but it’s hard to fight rumor and innuendo.
So I keep my head down, vow to stay off the internet, and hire a perky agriculture major to temporarily cover the farmers’ markets for me. There’s only so much public humiliation a girl can take.
Liam texts me. Sometimes he asks if we can talk, but he also checks to see if I’m okay and whether there’s anything he can do for me. I ignore his texts. I can’t bring myself to block his number and sometimes my fingers itch to google him, although I refrain. I’m not ready yet to see him living his best life. At some point, I suppose I need to either find a lawyer or take Jax up on his offer to use his because Liam and I can’t go the rest of our lives being half-married. Mentally, I give myself the rest of the month to mope before I get myself sorted out.
Moping mostly involves revisiting the scene of our sex crimes. I drag a backpack of romance novels and frozen cocktail pouches down to the beach for a self-care day and then spend an embarrassing amount of time trying to find the exact spot where we had sex. I cry too much into my faux margaritas, but that’s also self-care. Eventually I’ll stop feeling these things and it won’t hurt so much.