In a Rush

Chapter 32

chapter thirty-two

Emme

Today’s Learning Objective:

Students will go to confession.

I didn’t like elevators. It wasn’t something I fussed about, but I hated the way my belly flipped over when the car started moving and then again when jerking to a stop. I’d heard that some people liked those moments of near-weightlessness, but I’d never understood that.

And now, pressing myself deep into the corner of an elevator and doing everything in my power to avoid making eye contact with Ryan, I could add too damn small and not fucking fast enough to the list of things I didn’t care for.

“Say something,” he rasped.

I held my arms across my chest and glared down at the floor. My toenails were red with a swipe of green and some black dots. Like a watermelon. A few days ago, things were going well enough for me that I cared about a cute pedicure design.

And look how that worked out for me.

When the doors opened, I cut in front of him and stormed down the short hall to our suite. I had to wait for him to open the door because I hadn’t bothered myself with something as silly as a room key when we’d left for the night.

And why would I? Ryan took care of things like that. He handled the plans, the private jets, the stylists who put me in all the right clothes to be perfectly presentable as his stupid fake wife. He put all the pieces together and he pulled all the strings, and I was nothing more than the right doll for this play.

I felt him staring at me as he held the door open, but I didn’t let that slow me down. I marched into the spacious suite, crossing the wide living space to the wall of windows overlooking the Strip. I focused on all the people down there, crowding the sidewalks and stumbling out of clubs while I struggled to wrap my hands around any of the events of the past hour.

“Emme, please,” Ryan said. “Talk to me.”

“You want me to talk to you?” I cried, jolting away from the window. “Okay, let’s talk. I finally understand why you needed to marry me. Makes a lot more sense now that I realize your story was a bunch of fucking bullshit and fifteen years of friendship is worth approximately eight soccer teams to you.”

He shook his head like I’d lost the crux of it in translation. “No, that’s not what happened at all.”

I dropped my hands to my hips. “Then you’re saying it was a surprise to you that my dad was going after the same teams? You just discovered that tonight?”

He clenched his hands into fists at his sides before shaking them out. His lips parted, but he didn’t say anything for a second. Then, “No.”

“Yeah, that was obvious, but thanks for only lying to me about the entire basis of our relationship.”

“I didn’t lie to you,” he said, taking a step closer.

I ducked around a potted tree and out of his reach. “You didn’t tell me the truth,” I yelled. “You kept the important stuff to yourself and you used me to provoke my father.”

“That’s not how it went,” he said, following me across the room.

“Do you know how hard it is for me to trust people?” I asked. “How hard it is to let anyone in? I basically have five people in the entire world that I trust. I thought you’d always be one of them, but I realized tonight you’re not. Maybe you never were.”

“Em, no, listen to me.”

“How long have you been planning this?” I asked, putting the dining table between us. “Just trying to get a sense of how far back the manipulation goes.”

“The only plan was to clean up my reputation,” he said.

“Bonus points for using my fucked-up relationship with my father to turn up the heat.” I shook my head. “Did you know he’d decided to deal with his demons and wanted to make amends? Were you hoping to cash in on his guilt?”

He pushed his fingers through his hair, hanging his head. “I knew about him going to rehab.” After a moment, he added, “Both times.”

I took a step back, those words hitting me like a gust. “Would you say you’re entirely full of shit? Or just mostly?”

He shook his head but didn’t meet my gaze. I felt my blood rushing through my veins, quick and bubbly. My hands shook the way they did when my mother went off on one of her rants. My head didn’t feel like it was truly attached to my body and I wanted more than anything to fall to the floor and curl into a ball.

“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” he said, his gaze still lowered.

“But you did it anyway. You lied to me and used me. And for what? Some soccer teams? That’s all I’m worth to you?”

I hated that I had to ask. That I was back in this tired, old place where I was forced to stare down the truth that once again I’d let someone become my universe only for it to slip away like a sandcastle at the shore.

“You’re worth everything .”

Because I was good at accepting crumbs, I almost believed him. Almost. Then I remembered his deals hadn’t been inked yet.

“It wasn’t for the teams.”

“Then what the hell was it for?”

He looked up then, his eyes heavy and full. “We had a deal. Thirty and single.”

“Oh, fuck you,” I cried. “We also had a friendship based on being the only people in the world we could trust, and years of sharing all the horrible things we had to go through, and you took the worst of those things and used it as leverage.”

“Your father had nothing to do with this,” he said.

“There is no way in the world I’ll ever believe that,” I said. “Just admit I was a pawn in your chess game. Give me that much.”

He sliced a hand through the air. “No.”

I gripped the dining chair in front of me. “Then get the hell out.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

The look he gave me was one of pure agony and I appreciated that. I hoped he was in as much pain as I was. I hoped he felt like his bones were breaking and his organs were being ripped out because I certainly did. “Okay. Great. I’ll leave.”

I stormed through the bedroom and into the closet to grab my suitcase. I tossed it on the bed and started throwing clothes and shoes and cell phone chargers inside.

“Emme. Slow down. Please. You’re not going anywhere,” he said from the doorway.

“You don’t seem to understand that I just sat through the first conversation I’ve had with my father in eight years and that it also was another one of the many emotionally grueling experiences I’ve had this year. And at the end of it, I had the pleasure of discovering that my best friend manipulated me into marrying him as a maneuver to push that emotionally overwhelming father out of the way of your business deals. You’re not the one deciding what I do or where I go but I can promise I’m not staying here with you.” I stomped into the bathroom and swept all my makeup into a bag. I’d regret it later, but I wasn’t about to slow down and pack everything carefully now. “Either you go snuggle up with Hersberler tonight or you watch me walk out the door.”

“Just give me a minute to explain,” he said.

I tossed a few more things into my luggage before zipping it up. “Don’t you think you’ve asked enough of me yet? If there was an innocent explanation, you would’ve coughed it up by now. You don’t have one and I’m finished being a prop in this little production.”

He followed me through the suite and stopped near the door, his arms crossed and his legs braced like he was thinking of blocking my way. “I’ve made a mess of this. I’m sorry. But please don’t go.”

“Think of it like this,” I said, checking my shoulder bag for my wallet and phone. It wasn’t a good look to storm out only to knock on the door five minutes later. Not doing that. “You won’t have to lie about loving me anymore.”

His eyes flashed. “I never lied about that.”

I yanked the door open and pulled my luggage into the hall. “I used to think the worst thing that could happen to me would be losing you. But now I see it’s not losing you that hurts. It’s losing everything we had. It’s losing the past fifteen years of my life.”

“Emmeline.” He reached for me as I started down the hall. “Wait. Please. ”

It was good that I’d turned away from him. He didn’t deserve my tears.

The first flight back to Boston departed from Las Vegas shortly after midnight. I spent the entire flight trying to trace back the roots of my newest disaster, desperate to find the place where it’d all gone wrong.

The answer, obviously, was that it’d gone wrong way back when we’d made that pact. Those sorts of things never worked out for anyone. But I’d thought I was losing Ryan to football, to Arizona, to the distance that would rush in when I didn’t have him in my life everyday. I’d wanted a reason to pull him back to me even after the years passed. Wanted to hold on as long as I could. I’d loved him—though I’d had no idea what that really meant until now.

I landed in Boston with the sunrise and hid from the fresh, new optimism of the day behind huge sunglasses and a floppy hat when I waved down a cab. I went straight to the condo and gathered only the basics. I’d come back another time for everything else. Or Ryan would make a call and have a crew of movers dispatched to pack and deliver the rest of it.

I was just about to the door when it swung open and my heart lurched, thinking Ryan had followed me back here. That he wasn’t letting me go without a fight. That there was a perfectly acceptable explanation that would make me feel a lot less like an object to be picked up and moved around whenever it suited people. That he’d never, ever do that to me.

But it was Ines.

She yelped, I dropped all fifteen of the tote bags I’d crammed my life into, and then we stared at each other for a minute.

“Why aren’t you in Las Vegas?” she asked.

“Why are you coming home at seven in the morning?”

She pushed her glasses up her nose with a look that said Must I explain everything? “I spent the night with Jakobi, but I forgot to bring my weekend sneakers.” She motioned to me when I didn’t respond. “And what about you?”

I busied myself with gathering my totes again. That bought me a minute or two to decide how to explain this. It wasn’t complicated—he’d used me to get my dad to back off from a business deal—but it was massively complicated. We had fifteen years of friendship behind us and we knew each other in ways that no one else ever could. And if he’d just told me about my father’s role in this, I would’ve helped. I wouldn’t have liked it, but I would’ve helped because that’s what friends did for each other.

“We had a fight,” was what I landed on.

“The kind of fight that ends with you flying home early and packing your bags?”

I glanced at my things. “Um. Yeah. I’ll find a new place for us since the old apartment is transitioning into a bog and the landlord is in no hurry to prevent that. But you don’t have to worry. I’m sure Ryan won’t care if you’re here for a few weeks or even the rest of the summer.”

“Actually, I need to talk to you about that.” She slipped her hands into her pockets and rocked back on her heels. “Jakobi asked me to move in with him. I said yes, but I wanted to talk to you about it first.”

“But-but you hardly know him,” I cried, leaning fully into screeching parent mode. “You have your grad program starting in the fall and—and you know he’s a lot older than you, right?”

“I do know that,” she said easily. “I think it helps. It’s better. He’s not as”—she wiggled her fingers together as she reached for the right word—“disappointing as most of the guys my age. He’s settled and he knows who he is, and I can be who I am without constantly needing to adjust myself for him.”

“Okay,” I managed.

“And he’s very supportive of my grad work,” she went on. “He brought up the idea of selling his place and finding somewhere closer to campus. We’re going to some open houses this morning.” She pointed to her shoes. “That’s why I needed my weekend sneakers. I tried going with the work week sneaks but I couldn’t do it.”

“That’s…that’s great news, Ines.” I needed to get myself together. I knew I sounded like I was announcing a tragedy and not celebrating this new beginning with her. “I’m happy for you.”

“Thanks.” She scooped up a hoodie that’d slipped from one of my bags and shoved it back in. “I don’t want to say that I’m sure things will work out with you and Ryan because I have no factual knowledge to support that. However, I can’t comprehend a world where you two don’t end up together because you’re like a law of nature. Maybe you need to give nature time to sort itself out.”

“I’ll try that,” I said. “Thanks.”

We rode the elevator in silence, though Ines ended up shouldering half the totes since I couldn’t keep anything together this morning. Jakobi was waiting by the entrance and he almost fumbled his iced coffee when he spotted me.

“Emme,” he said, alarmed. “What brings you back to the city so soon?”

“We’re not discussing that,” Ines said to him.

“Hey, Jakobi,” I replied with a smile that must’ve been a fright because his brows pitched high above the rims of his sunglasses. “I hear you’re stealing my roommate. You better be good to my girl.”

Still staring at me like I was the walking dead, he said, “My greatest joy in life is taking care of my lady.” He clasped Ines’s hand and gave her an adoring look. “Can we give you a ride somewhere? You’re always welcome at our place. How about that? Come over and we’ll order brunch. Ines can show you her harp.”

“You have open houses to see.” I waved him off. “I’m all right. I swear. Even if this whole picture is a little terrifying.”

He shared a glance with Ines. “Then let me call your driver. Ralston would kill me if I left you here to”—he motioned to my hat and bags, and shook his head in disbelief—“handle this by yourself.”

“You really don’t need to worry,” I said, turning toward the garage entrance. Ryan had more than enough cars for one person. He wouldn’t miss this one. “Good luck with the house hunt.” I shot Ines a glance as she handed back the other half of my bags. “We’ll talk later. I don’t want you forgetting about me.”

“You’re my sister,” she replied. “I couldn’t forget you even if I tried.”

Tears welled in my eyes as I descended the stairs to the underground garage. I dumped everything in the back and then climbed into the driver’s seat. I knew the right thing to do would be calling ahead, but I hadn’t turned my phone on yet and I didn’t have the stomach for it now.

So, I hit the road with my bleary eyes and heavy heart, and hoped for the best—even if I didn’t have a great track record with that sort of thing.

Ben answered the door, his middle finger still immobilized in a hard, metal splint, and he crowed, “Emster! Get in here, girl!”

I interpreted this as an invitation to burst into loud, hysterical tears.

“Shit. Fuck. Jesus. Dammit. What did I do wrong?” He pulled me inside as he called out, “Grace. I need you out here. Grace! ” He shuffled me toward the sofa and pushed a box of tissues into my hands, all while yelling for Grace with increasing panic as I cried harder. He dropped down to kneel in front of me, tipping my chin up as he looked me over. “Just try to breathe.”

I was halfway through the tissues and blowing my nose like a squawking goose when Grace strolled in from the patio. She stopped in her tracks when she spotted me on the sofa and her husband watching me like I might combust at any moment.

She pulled out a pair of earbuds and dropped them on the countertop, saying, “Ben, I need you to go get some pineapple juice. A jar of cherries too. And the biggest bottle of vodka you can find.”

I told Grace everything. The real everything, not the smoothed down version Ryan and I had sold everyone over the past few months. The revenge husband, the business deals, all of it.

I told her how I’d allowed myself to believe it was all true and how I realized this weekend that nothing had been true.

“I don’t think that’s accurate,” she said as I loudly slurped up the last of my drink.

Ben appeared a moment later with a refill. Ben was a keeper. Ben wouldn’t orchestrate a marriage to his competitor’s daughter just to buy some soccer teams.

“What’s not accurate?” I asked.

“That none of it was real,” she said from her lounge chair. She held a hand up to block out the sun. “I know you, and I know when you’re faking it. Like the first time he came to school. You were shocked when he kissed you. Could not have been less convincing.”

“I was not shocked.” I barely recognized my voice. It was rough and slow, like I’d been choking on pebbles all day. Though I wasn’t even sure what day it was. Or the last time I’d slept. And these cherries were just about the only solid food I’d consumed in—hours? Days? Couldn’t be sure. Flying overnight was the worst.

“But then it changed,” she said. “It happened so fast and it was so strong that I convinced myself you weren’t faking it that day, but now I know I was right all along.”

“You always are, sweetheart.”

She swatted my arm. “What I’m trying to say is that whatever you two started out doing isn’t what you ended up doing.”

“Except he manipulated me for months and missed every opportunity to tell me what was really up,” I mumbled around my straw. “So, he did exactly what he started out to do.”

Grace was quiet for several minutes while I struggled to spear my cherries with the straw. It was harder than it sounded. Ben stopped by with a bunch of takeout menus, pointing out his favorites with the use of his splinted finger.

When her fiancé left to order the food, Grace said, “I don’t think it’s a secret that I was jealous of your relationship with him.”

“I just thought you didn’t like him.” I’d never understood why, but Grace was prickly in that way. She didn’t like a lot of people and her reasoning wasn’t something I’d describe as logical. Most of the time, it didn’t bother me. Until recently, there wasn’t much overlap between Ryan and Grace in my life.

“I didn’t go to college knowing how to have more than one close friend,” she said. “For a long time, I worried that it would be me or Ryan. I didn’t see how it could be both.”

I rolled my head against the cushion to stare at her. “Why didn’t you ever tell me that?”

“Because it’s shameful even for a villain,” she said with a cackle. “You always described him as your best friend and that made me jealous. But I got to know Ryan over the years and I realized—slowly, since villains never come to their realizations lightly—that I didn’t have to be jealous because he might’ve been your best friend at one time but that wasn’t who he was meant to be to you for all time.”

“It sounds to me like you’re on his side right now.” Another slurp. “I don’t think I like that.”

“No one works as hard as Hades, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I’m gonna tell you things you don’t want to hear.” She folded her legs in front of her. “But I’m always on your side. Nothing will change that.”

I linked my fingers together and let myself sink into the chair. After a minute, I asked, “Is it okay if I stay here for a few days?”

“Baby, you can stay as long as you want. But our spare room is full of wedding stuff, so I’m going to need to clear a path first.” She pointed to the phone on the table between us, still dark. “Do you want me to turn this thing on? I can manage your correspondence if you’d like. You know I’m an excellent secretary.”

I didn’t want to deal with anything waiting for me there. Not this weekend, not after the wedding announcement. And my dad and Danielle. God, I hadn’t even started unpacking all of that. I shook my head. “Not yet.”

“Does he know where you are?”

“No,” I said evenly, “and I’d like to keep it that way. It’s only fair that I get to keep a few things to myself since he kept the true motive behind our marriage secret.”

“You’re not going to give him a chance to grovel?”

I glanced at her. “Would you?”

She seemed to consider this for a moment as she tapped a finger to her lip. “If it was me and I’d fake-married my best friend from high school to get back at my ex? If that husband did everything in his power to make my life comfortable and happy, even giving my semi-half-sister a place to live and helping her find a job? If he came to parties with me where he was mobbed by his fans for hours? And put on an unbelievable field day just so I didn’t have to worry about it? If I’d developed some very serious pants-feelings for him along the way? If he handed my dickhead ex the verbal beatdown of the century and did it in front of enough people that the beatdown turns into a thing of legends? Then yeah, I would give him a chance to explain his enormous error in judgment and expect one hell of a grovel. I’d probably hold out for a trip to Paris and some grapefruit-sized earrings and maybe a beagle too.”

“A beagle?”

“Yeah, one of my neighbors growing up had a beagle named Martha Washington and that girl would hunt anything that came into her yard. Quite the body count she put up.” Grace shrugged. “I always wanted a cute dog with the heart of a savage. Ask him to buy you a beagle.”

I went back to spearing the cherries as I realized Grace would take him back. Grace, the cutthroat villain that she was, the one who wouldn’t even speak to Ben until he worked through some of his personal issues, would take back the husband who’d engineered our whole relationship. I couldn’t believe it. “How is it you’re more forgiving than I am?”

“I’m not,” she said. “I want to barbecue his balls.”

“But you also want him to grovel and buy me a dog.”

She tipped up her sunglasses and stared at me for a moment. “You might not believe this, but relationships don’t have to end when someone makes a mistake. Ben and I are constantly figuring out how to peacefully coexist. We both make mistakes all the time. Some of them are important and we have to work through them. Others are ridiculous. We had a big, stupid fight right before our couples’ shower over—and I can’t overstate how stupid this is—him keeping ceiling fans on when he leaves a room. I hate it, he loves it, and it turned into a symbol of all the other adjustments we’d made since moving in together. Then he went and beat up your ex and broke his finger, and I decided there was no point in getting pissed about ceiling fans. It’s a choice.”

I stared into my cup rather than meeting her gaze. I knew what she was saying. That I’d lived through one divorce after another. That most of those divorces were ugly—and the fights still raged on all these years later. That my mother hammered iron spikes into my heart about cheating, lying men. That I’d been cheated on and lied to so much that I was a tragedy in multiple parts.

And that it didn’t have to be like that.

I shook my head. “The problem is that he got caught.”

“The problem, I am convinced,” she said, as if she had a grand proclamation coming, “is that he hasn’t told you the whole story yet.”

I slurped a cherry into my mouth. “That doesn’t make me feel any better.”