Sweet Surrendering

by Chelsea M. Cameron

  I gave her a WTF face, but the color drained from Lucah’s face and his expression froze.

  “Oh my God, Tyler!” The woman’s face broke out into a smile and she leaned down to try to give him a hug. He just sat there as she kissed him on the cheek.

  What. The. FUCK.

  “Stef, wow. Long time no see,” he finally said and it was like he had to choke out the words. He stood up and let her really hug him. Okay, so clearly he knew this girl, but she had called him Tyler. I knew that wasn’t his middle name, or a nickname, or any other name that I’d ever heard him ever use. So now I had to wonder why this woman knew him as Tyler and what that meant.

  “Oh my God, what are you doing here?” The glamazon named “Stef” hadn’t even looked at me. I knew I was short, but I wasn’t fucking invisible. I wanted to say something, but I had no idea what that should be until I could figure out what the story was.

  “Oh, I’m just traveling.” He sat back down and he didn’t look at me either. HAD I TURNED FUCKING INVISIBLE AND I WASN’T AWARE?

  “I can’t believe this!” Stef was gushing and I wanted to punch her in the face, even though I didn’t know her. “What has it been? Almost a year? Where are you working now?” Lucah cleared his throat and she FINALLY looked away from him and saw me. Her smile dropped for a second as she glanced down at me, but it was back on a second later, although it was tight and not as friendly. Fake.

  “Oh, I’m such an idiot,” she said with a fake laugh that made my ears burn. “I’m Stefanie. I used to work with Tyler out in LA.” Okay, first of all, his name isn’t Tyler. Second, nothing in his résumé had mentioned LA. NOTHING.

  The three of us were suspended in the moment, none of us knowing what to say. I was waiting for someone to explain what the FUCK was going on, Stefanie seemed to be waiting for me to leave so she could have a joyous reunion with “Tyler” and Lucah (or Tyler) seemed to be waiting for the world to end.

  “Okay, since I’m clearly in the dark, I’m going to go ahead and say it. What the fuck, Lucah?” I turned my anger and confusion on him and his face turned red.

  “Tyler? I can come back. Or you could call me.” Shut up, bitch. I don’t care about you.

  “I think that would be best, Stefanie.” She smiled and waited for him to give her his number, but he was staring at me.

  “Okay, well. Here’s my number.” She fiddled in her purse and pulled out a card and set it on the table, then waited for him to say something else, but he didn’t so she slinked away.

  Thank God and good riddance.

  “Explain,” I said, crossing my hands on the table.

  He put his head in his hands.

  “I don’t even know where to start. Fuck, I knew this was going to happen.” The waiter came back with our pizza, but I ignored him as he set it in front of us and then, sensing the tension, hurried away.

  “Let’s start with why the hell she called you Tyler? How about that?” The pizza smelled good, but there was no way I could eat now. A sinking feeling had entered my heart and a little voice said, I told you so. The secrets that he’d hidden from me? They were starting to come out.

  “Because that was my name when she met me.”

  “Why?” He took the world’s biggest deep breath. “Are you sure you want to do this here?” He looked around as if someone was going to jump out and come and bail him out, but he was shit out of luck.

  “Oh no, we are doing this here, Mr. Blaine. Why does she know you as Tyler?” Maybe I was overreacting about the name, but I knew it was all part of what he was hiding from me and I wanted to know the truth.

  “Stefanie knew me as Tyler because that was the alias I was using in LA.”

  AHA!

  “So you are in the CIA!” I said it so loud that half the restaurant turned and stared at us. Oops.

  “I am not in the CIA,” Lucah (or whatever his name was) hissed in a whisper as his face turned red again.

  “Then why did you have an alias? Is Lucah an alias? What other reason would you need an alias for than being in the CIA? And why the hell did that girl act like you knew each other REALLY well?” I knew how a woman looked at a man she’d slept with and that was the look on her face. We’d get to that later.

  “One question at a time, Sunshine.”

  “Don’t you dare call me that until after you’ve explained.” I crossed my arms and leaned back against the booth.

  He looked up at the ceiling and then at me.

  “I need an alias because I am, for lack of a better term, a corporate mole. I’m a freelancer and companies hire me to infiltrate and do undercover investigations, anything from embezzlement to fraud to sexual misconduct. I’ve gone undercover in companies all over the United States and whenever I go to a new one, I get a new identity. New name, new résumé, new life. So Stefanie met me when I was Tyler Keller. That time it was a Public Relations firm that had a problem with missing money, and several of the executives were funneling drugs and using the company events to do it. Stefanie and I . . . had a relationship for a few months. It was nearly a year ago and it ended the second my job was over. I never thought I would see her again. I had no intention of ever seeing her again.” He took the card and ripped it up in front of me.

  “I wish I had your shredder right now,” he said with a tiny smile. Oh no, he could not dump all that info on me and then make a joke. No fucking way.

  “That is a lot of information, Lucah.”

  “I know.”

  “What is your real name? Am I allowed to know it?” This wasn’t the most important thing he’d lied to me about, but a name was an important thing.

  “My real first name is Lucah. I went with Lucas because it was close to my real name and I was tired of trying to be someone else. My real full name is Lucah Jacob Blythe. I’m from New Hampshire. I went to Dartmouth. I’m twenty-five and I’m in love with a girl named Aurora Abigail Clarke. Those are the only things you need to know.”

  No, that sure as hell wasn’t all I needed to know.

  “You lied to me,” I said as an enormous silence stretched between us like it was pulling us apart.

  “I had to,” he said. “I am so sorry.”

  “So those locked rooms in your apartment?”

  “All of the things from my real life. In boxes. I ship them with me wherever I go so I can remind myself who I am once in a while. I couldn’t let you see them because I couldn’t jeopardize my job.” That led me to another question.

  “Why are you at Clarke Enterprises?” Jesus, what was he investigating? Who had hired him? My brain was about ready to blow up.

  “I can’t tell you that. Like I said, there are a lot of things at stake, and it’s not just about you and me. I’ve just broken every single rule by telling you anything at all. It puts the entire investigation in jeopardy.” Investigation . . . That made something click. The Board of Directors. Dad. They’d be SO ENTHUSIASTIC about him and had basically told me to hire him. Had Dad known about him? No, that was impossible. He wouldn’t have lied to me.

  “Are you investigating ME?” There was no way.

  “No! No, of course not.” He was definitely telling the truth about that. Well, that was a little bit of a relief. Not that there was much relief happening for me in that moment. Knowing the truth was almost worse.

  “You lied to me.” He might not be the only one.

  “I know.” He didn’t make an excuse this time. Yes, I knew that it wasn’t his choice, and that it was his job, but that didn’t make it hurt any less.

  “You lied to me.”

  He didn’t answer, just reached across the table for me, but I pulled back even more. I didn’t want him to touch me right now.

  “I think I need to go home. Alone. I need some time to think.” And I got up and left, grabbing a cab and going back to my apartment.

  “What are you doing here?” Sloane said when I opened the door. Then she saw my face.

  “What happened?”

  I’d be
en holding myself together in the restaurant and in the cab, but here, in my apartment, I finally let myself fall apart.

  I told her everything. I knew I probably wasn’t supposed to, but I didn’t give a shit. My boyfriend had lied to me and I needed to talk to my best friend about it.

  She sat on the couch and stroked my hair and listened as I cried and poured my heart out.

  “Wow. That’s unbelievable,” she said when I was finally done.

  “I know. I wouldn’t believe it unless he’d sat there in front of me and told me the whole thing.”

  “So he’s investigating the company? How do you feel about that?”

  “It’s fucking crazy. I’m actually pissed off about it, because I know the Board went behind my back, and maybe behind Dad’s. I have no idea why they thought they could do this without telling us this.”

  Sloane’s hand paused for a second as she played with my hair. “Are you sure your dad doesn’t know?”

  “No, no. If he knew he’d tell me. Dad isn’t that good of a liar.” But honestly, I wasn’t sure about anything right now. My world had flipped upside down. If the sky was green tomorrow, I wouldn’t be surprised.

  “But he told you his real name.”

  “But he lied to me about everything else. And that girl, my God, you should have seen her.”

  “But it’s not like he cheated on you like Royce. He was just doing his job. It’s not like he meant to fall in love with you. It’s actually kind of ironic, if you think about it.” It wasn’t ironic, not really. I didn’t know what it was, but ironic wasn’t the word that I would use.

  “Or maybe it’s more tragic than ironic,” Sloane said.

  “Sloane?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Stop talking, please.” She did and started humming. That didn’t help because it just reminded me of Lucah, so I asked her to stop doing that too. I knew I was being a pain in the ass, but I didn’t care. Then she turned on the television and Mystic Pizza was playing.

  “Julia Roberts’ hair is ridic in this movie,” Sloane said.

  “Yeah, it is,” I said in agreement.

  I had literally no idea what was going to happen when I went into work the next morning. I considered calling in sick, but there was no way I was going to do that. If I stayed home, then I would just mope. I wanted to be out and have something else occupy my mind other than Lucah. Only problem was that I didn’t know if I would see Lucah at work. He’d tried to call me last night, but I’d ignored him.

  To tell the absolute truth, I had no idea how I felt. It was like I had too many emotions and my body had gone into some sort of shock because it was overwhelmed. I hoped it was on vacation somewhere nice. A tropical island would be great.

  I pulled myself together on the T and tried to act as normal as I could when I exited the elevator and walked toward my desk.

  There he was, pastry bag and cup of coffee waiting for me. I walked right past it, into my office and shut the door. I hadn’t eaten this morning, but I didn’t feel like it. I hadn’t eaten last night either. This was one of those times when eating your feelings wasn’t going to work.

  My phone rang and I checked the caller ID before I picked up. It was Lucah and I didn’t answer. Instead, I turned my computer on and started answering emails.

  My phone rang again. Nope. Wasn’t answering him. He couldn’t harass me in the office, not without blowing his cover, so that was another good reason to be in the office.

  Then he started blowing up my cell phone, so I put it on silent and kept working.

  Ten minutes later, there was a knock on my door.

  “Who is it?” I said. I didn’t want to ignore it if it was someone important.

  “It’s me,” Lucah said. He couldn’t really beg me to open the door without arousing suspicion as to why he would be begging me to open my door.

  “I’m busy,” I said and waited to hear him move away from the door. Then something slid under the door. I waited until I was sure he was back at his desk before I got up to retrieve the note. I couldn’t read it right now, so I shoved it in my purse. I’d read it on my lunch break. If I could handle it.

  I hunkered down in my office the entire day, leaving only to retrieve coffee and pee. I avoided eye contact and small talk with everyone. No one really seemed to notice, except Mrs. Andrews.

  “How are you, dear?” She ambushed me in the break room, so I had no escape. There was only one way out and she was blocking it. Once again, I wished for a sinkhole, or maybe a secret portal to open up and suck me into another dimension. A dimension where the man I loved hadn’t done what he did.

  The absolutely insane thing was that I knew I was being horrible to him about it. I knew he had secrets. He’d told me. I’d said I accepted it. And then, when he’d been forced to tell me about it, I’d gotten mad at him. I was mad at the situation and I was taking it out on him. Besides, if Dad knew, then Mrs. Andrews had to know. So she might have been lying to me as well. Something I couldn’t comprehend.

  “I’m fine. Just busy.” She patted my shoulder, then glanced to make sure we were alone and closed the door.

  “Did you and Mr. Blaine have a falling out? I sensed some tension between you two.” Yeah, I bet. I was surprised more people hadn’t felt it.

  “It’s nothing,” I said. I’d gone into it with Sloane, but I couldn’t break Lucah’s confidence further.

  “Oh, Rory. Work it out. Don’t let that boy get away from you. He’s one of the good ones and they don’t come around very often. You’ve got to grab onto them when they do and make sure you keep ‘em. My husband was one of the good ones and once I knew that, I wasn’t letting him go and I never did.” Her husband had died a few years ago from a heart attack, and she hadn’t remarried. I’d never asked her, but I figured it was because he was “it” for her.

  She patted my face and gave me a sympathetic look.

  “Ah, sometimes youth is wasted on the young.” She laughed and then opened the door and went back to her desk. I grabbed my coffee and went back to mine, avoiding looking at Lucah, even though I could feel his gaze burning my skin. It was different than when he looked at me when we were naked. That made me feel beautiful. Now it just made me . . .

  Sad? Angry? Frustrated? Negative. It was all negative.

  But yet . . . I was still head over fucking heels in love with him. He might be a liar, but he was my liar. He was my Lucah. Despite not knowing his real name, I knew other things.

  I knew what he looked like when he woke up first thing in the morning. I knew what he wanted to hear when we were having sex. I knew where all his freckles were. I knew the curve of his shoulder and that he liked Bugs Bunny cartoons and truffle pizza and s’mores. Were those more important than what I didn’t know?

  I left the office at lunch and took the letter with me as I sat outside at a café with an iced tea and a ham and cheese croissant. I was finally hungry again.

  I opened the letter and saw Lucah’s neat handwriting had covered pages, front and back. I started to read and I realized it was more of a list than a letter. A list of all the things I didn’t know about him.

  When I was twelve, I had my first kiss with a girl named Cassidy. It was during Spin the Bottle at my first boy-girl party. She tasted like bubble gum and our noses bumped.

  My first girlfriend was Annie. We started dating when I was fifteen and we stayed together for six months. She started dating my best friend a week after breaking up with me, and they dated all through high school and then got married. They have three children and still live in my hometown.

  I lost my virginity to a girl at my first party. I was sixteen and I have tried to remember her name, but I can’t. She was from another school and we were both drunk and I don’t actually remember much except that we definitely had sex and it definitely lasted about thirty seconds.

  I’ve never really loved a girl the way I love you. I thought I had, but I had no idea what it was before you. I’ve told exactly five wom
en in my life that I loved them. You, my mother, my nieces and Annie.

  I can’t stop thinking about you, even if I wanted to. I never believed in fate, and I didn’t believe in love at first sight either, but I have no other way to describe the feeling that went through me when you walked down that hallway and I saw you for the first time. Oh, yes, there was lust. I knew I wanted you, and I wanted to be inside you. I also knew that I shouldn’t pursue you. It is very, very against the rules. I’d been with other women when I went undercover before, but that was different. Those were strictly physical no-strings.

  He went on to tell me so many other things, some I wanted to know and some that were hard to read. Like his parents, and how it felt to lose them. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what that had been like for him, but I kept reading, even as tears started to fall down my face and the page became blurry.

  Lucah had poured his pain and his past into this letter, and the only way it wouldn’t have affected me was if I didn’t have a heart. Well. I’d had a heart but I’d given most of it to him. That was what love did to you. Made you give parts of yourself to someone and they could do whatever they wanted with them and there was nothing you could do about it.

  I finished the letter and went back and read it again. And then a third time. And then I put it down and went to a secluded corner outside the café and cried. It would be much better if I could go home and cry, but I had to actually go to work. Dad was out of town for a few days, so the company was kind of in my hands. Yes, there were other people that shared the burden, but he was my father and I had more of a burden of responsibility. It also meant that I couldn’t confront him about Lucah until he got back. That wasn’t something you did over the phone. I was going to put that off as long as possible.

  I got myself together and popped back into the café to fix my face. My eyes were puffy, but my crazy expensive mascara and eye makeup were still in place. They should put that in the advertisement; will withstand heartbreak and ugly crying.