29. Cali
CALI
A week later, I'm sitting in a red velvet seat at the Metropolitan Opera, a place I never, ever thought I'd be, having the time of my life.
I don't even like opera. Or I didn't think I did.
But Ronan has a private box, to nobody's surprise, way up high with a view of the whole stage and the whole gold-and-crystal room.
There's a little curtain he can pull if he wants privacy, and champagne in a bucket, and the singing is so big and so sad and so loud that I keep getting goosebumps whether I understand the Italian or not.
"You're crying," Ronan murmurs beside me.
"I am not!"
"Your tears beg to differ." He hands me a handkerchief. "It's alright. It's supposed to make you cry. That's the whole point."
I dab at my eyes. "She's dying down there, Ronan. And he doesn't even know yet. He's still singing to her like everything's fine."
"That's opera for you." He takes my hand and holds it on the armrest between us. "Everyone always finds out the truth too late."
Something about the way he says it makes me look at him. But he's watching the stage, his face still, the light catching the half-gray, half-blue of his eyes. So I let it go.
I've decided this week that I'm going to stop reading meaning into everything the man says. It's exhausting, and it's usually me projecting my own baggage onto him anyway.
The kids are once again with my mom. It's been a lot of Grandma time lately, which triggers my maternal guilt, but all three of them seem thrilled with the arrangement.
Hayden recovered from his stomach bug by Monday and immediately went back to being his normal cheery self.
Isabella has appointed Ronan an honorary member of Doctor Fuzz's medical team, a title she takes very seriously.
He made pancakes that morning after the bug, by the way. He actually did it. He stood at my stove in his rumpled henley and flipped pancakes while Hayden read him the ingredients off the syrup bottle.
I stood in the doorway and thought, This is the most dangerous thing that has ever happened to me.
So here we are. Date six. The soprano hits a note so high and so pure that the whole room seems to hold its breath.
And then Ronan's phone rings.
He pulls it from the inside pocket of his tuxedo jacket. Strange—he must've gotten a new case, because his phone is usually red, but this one is black.
He looks at the screen and his whole body changes. It's subtle. Anybody else wouldn't catch it. But I've learned a few things about him since he crash-landed in my life.
"I have to handle something," he says.
"Now?"
"It'll only take a few minutes." He stands and buttons his jacket. "Stay here. Enjoy the show. I'll be right back."
"Ronan—"
"Stay put, kotyonok." He touches my cheek once. "I mean it. I won't be long."
Then he slips out through the curtain at the back of the box, leaving me alone with the dying soprano, the champagne, and a feeling in my gut I don't like one bit.
I sit there for maybe ninety seconds.
Todd used to say I was nosy. But it's not nosiness that's prickling at me right now.
It's the same thing that made me good at my job: I just cannot leave a question alone.
I can't sit in a red velvet chair and pretend I didn't just watch the man I'm falling for change his whole face over a phone I didn't know he had.
He keeps secrets, I remind myself. You know that. You decided you were okay with it.
But there's a key difference between letting a man keep his secrets and sitting still while one walks out the door in front of you.
Mind made, I get up and go through the curtain.
The hallway behind the boxes is empty and carpeted in more red, dim except for little wall sconces. I catch a glimpse of Ronan at the far end, turning through a door marked with a sign I can't read from here. I follow. I'm keeping my heels quiet on the carpet, feeling ridiculous but unable to stop.
The door leads to a stairwell. I go down.
The music gets fainter above me, muffled, and the walls turn from velvet to plain painted cinderblock.
I've crossed over into the part of the building the public doesn't see.
Backstage. There are ropes and cables and rolling racks of costumes, and the air reeks like dust, old paint, and hairspray.
I stop behind a rack of what look like Viking costumes, all fur and fake armor, and peer through a gap between the hangers.
There's a small clearing back here, tucked between two big canvas flats leaning against the wall. Ronan is standing in it. And across from him is a man I don't recognize, a stocky man in a rumpled gray suit. He's sweating even though it's cool down here.
I can't hear everything. But I can hear enough.
"—told you I'd have it," the man is pleading. "I told you. You didn't have to send Navi to my sister's house. She's got nothing to do with any of this!"
Ronan stands with his hands in his pockets, tall and intimidating, without saying a word.
"You hear me? That was over the line. That's not how it's supposed to work. There's a way things are done."
"Is there?" Ronan drawls.
"Yeah! Yeah, there is. And I don't appreciate—" The man jabs a finger toward Ronan's chest, though he stops short of touching him. "I don't appreciate being treated like some nobody. I've been doing this longer than you've been—"
"Mikhail," Ronan says softly. "Look at me."
The man looks.
And then his skin goes pale.
I don't know what's in Ronan's face right now. I can't see it from here. I can only see the back of him, the broad line of his shoulders in the tuxedo, so still it's like he's not even breathing.
But I can see the other man's face, lit by the work lights, and I watch it go from red to white to the gray of a drowned corpse. His finger wilts and drops back by his side.
"I—" the man starts.
"I didn't send Navi to hurt your sister," Ronan interrupts in a quiet but menacing growl. "I sent Navi so you would understand something. Do you understand it now?"
The man swallows. His throat bobs. "Yeah," he whispers as he continues to shrink and shrink before my eyes. "Yeah. I understand it."
"Tell me what you understand."
"That you—" He stops and wets his lips. "That you can reach anything. Anyone. Anytime you want."
"That's right." Ronan takes one hand out of his pocket, reaches up, and straightens the man's collar, gently, like a father fixing his kid before prom.
The man flinches at the intrusion but holds still, doesn't dare pull away.
"And I'd rather never have to. I take no pleasure in it, Mikhail.
None. But that's up to you. You'll have what you owe by Friday.
And you'll never raise your voice to me again, will you? "
"No. N-no, sir."
"Good." Ronan pats the collar flat. "Go home and kiss your sister for me. Tell her a lawyer helped you out of a jam. That's all this ever has to be."
The man nods fast, again and again, and then he turns and hurries off into the dark of the backstage.
Ronan stands there another few seconds, then he lets out a long breath. His shoulders drop, and for just a moment, he looks tired in a way I've never seen him look.
Then he turns.
And sees me.
I'm too slow getting behind the Viking costumes. His eyes find me through the gap, and there's no surprise in them at all. Like he knew. Like he always knows.
"I told you to stay put," he says.
"I know."
"But you didn't."
"No." I step out from behind the rack. My heart is going hard, but not the way it should be, not the run for your life, girl way. I don't even know what you'd call this feeling. "I didn't."
He regards me coldly. The work lights make hard shadows on his face. "How much did you see?"
"All of it."
He nods slowly. But unlike Todd, he doesn't gaslight me. If there were ever a time to lie or try to explain things away—or even to tell me that I'm crazy and imagined it all—it would be now. He doesn't, though. Instead…
"Come here," he says.
I don't move. "What did I just see, Ronan?"
He walks to me instead. He stops close enough that I have to tilt my head to keep his eyes. "You want the truth, I assume?"
"I always want the truth. It's the only thing I want, actually. It's the only thing anybody ever owed me."
He nods, expecting no less. "That man owes me quite a lot of money.
And when men owe me money and get behind on it, they sometimes forget that they should be frightened of the consequences.
So I remind them, without touching them, that being frightened of me is the correct response and that the smart thing to do is pay what they owe and go home to their families.
" He exhales. "That's what you saw. That's what I do. "
"You're a lawyer."
"Yes, a lawyer," he agrees. "That's true. It's just not all of it." He watches my face. "I've spent a great deal of energy making sure you never had to see the other parts."
I'm scared. But I'm not running. What does that make me?
"You didn't touch him," I say.
"No."
"You didn't even raise your voice. He was screaming at you, and you just stood there, and he fell apart."
"Yes."
"How?"
Ronan almost smiles, but it fails to reach his eyes.
"Because he already knows what I could do.
I don't have to actually do it; just the knowing is enough.
" He tilts his head. "You of all people should understand that.
You didn't scream at Todd, either. You just put the truth on a screen and let him fall apart on his own. "
I feel my jaw tighten. "That's not the same."
"No," he agrees quietly. "It's not. What I do is worse. I'm not going to insult you by pretending otherwise."
The last of the opera filters through the cinderblocks to reach us, dim and distorted. I can only look up at Ronan and marvel at how many things he makes me feel.
Disgust. Fear. The urge to run.
Amazement. Awe. The desire to yield.
Hope.
Horror.
Heartache.
Heartbreak.
The list goes on.
But mostly what I feel is relief. Because he told me the truth. He told me one true, ugly thing when he could have lied, and I would probably have believed the lie, because the easiest time to fall for falsehoods is when you badly want them to be true.
We stand there in the dust and the fake armor and the smell of hairspray, both of us quiet.
Then Ronan says, "You still have the napkin."
I blink. "What?"
"The cocktail napkin I gave you. From the bar." He looks at me. "Do you know where it is?"
I do know where it is. It's in the drawer in my nightstand. I'd almost forgotten about it.
"I told you the terms," he says. "You agreed to give me eight chances, and if the data ever showed you I was the same kind of man as Todd, you'd hand the napkin back and I'd disappear.
" He tips his chin toward the dark where the sweating man disappeared.
"That's data. Some of the ugliest data you're ever going to get on me. "
"You want me to give it back?"
"No," he says. "No, I don't want that. I want the opposite of that."
"Then why are you bringing it up?"
"Because it's yours." His jaw tightens. "The napkin is the one thing in this whole arrangement that's completely yours. I gave it to you on purpose. It's your out. And that won't change." He pauses. "Tonight, tomorrow, next year—hand it to me and I go. That's the deal."
I look at him as something strange occurs to me. "I think part of you does want me to do that."
He shakes his head. "No." His voice goes rough and choked.
"It would break something in me if you did.
But you have the right to. That's all I want you to remember.
" He smiles and straightens up, and when he does, he looks like the Ronan I know again.
"So. There it is. You saw what you saw. If it's too much, you know what to do.
It's a two-cent napkin in a drawer at your house. "
I think about it. I really do.
What I just saw is like seeing the shadows clustered at the mouth of the rabbit hole. I can tell, without really knowing, that it goes much, much deeper. He's not just a man with secrets; he's a man with a story I barely know the first word of.
And I let him into my house. With my children. He carried my daughter to bed, for God's sake.
But then again, so did Todd. I trusted him, and look what he did with that?
Ronan has never been anything but pure and kind. He's withheld things, but nothing that affected me or my little ones, and he's never, ever lied.
"I'm not giving you the napkin," I say.
"You should think about it," he warns. "You don't have to decide now."
"I don't need to think about it." I fold my arms. "I'm still scared of you. I want that on the record. That thing you did just now, I didn't like it."
"Good," he says. "You shouldn't."
"But you told me the truth when you could've lied. And that's worth more to me right now than you know." I let out a breath. "So the napkin stays in the drawer. For now."
"For now," he echoes.
"Don't make me regret it."
"I'll spend the rest of my life trying not to."
I don't know what to do with a sentence like that, so I don't do anything with it. I just turn toward the stairwell.
"Come on," I say. "The soprano's still dying up there. I paid attention to the whole first half. I want to see how it ends." I start walking, but when I sense he's not following, I turn back and grin. "You coming, or are you staying down here with the Vikings?"
He catches up in two strides and puts his hand at the small of my back, warm through the silk, guiding me up the concrete stairs and back toward the red carpet and the gold and the crystal.
We slip back into the box just as the music swells. The champagne has gone flat in the bucket, but I don't care. I settle into the red velvet seat, Ronan settles beside me, and our fingers intertwine on the armrest between us like nothing happened.
Down on the stage, the soprano reaches for her final note.
"Here it comes," Ronan murmurs. "The part where he finds out."
I hold his hand a little tighter and watch.