Chapter 41 #2
I brace a second hand on the workbench, my knees barely holding me, and all I can think about is the sunflower field, about him standing against the bright flowers and bright sky with my palm against his pounding heart. It’s not going away. It’s not going to change.
And I believed him.
I could almost laugh if I didn’t feel so lightheaded.
God, why did you let me believe him?
I think I’m going to be sick. It’s so hard to think and I’m going to be sick and I knew, didn’t I?
That this couldn’t last? That if he loved me like I loved him, we would have already changed the terms of the deal?
He’d been so persuasive, though, and so direct, his obsession with me so tangible, something I could feel every time he woke me up already between my legs, every time he dragged me onto his lap with one hand already on his belt.
When he brought me waffles doctored up with peanut butter and honey, when he watched me for hours and hours in the studio, when he lit up like a boy on Christmas whenever I shared the smallest thought or observation.
I’ve been just as naive as Busy and Kaitlyn think, mistaking possessiveness for promises, a fever for each other like it was a future. I’ve been a fool. I thought I was being so wary, so circumspect, but not even four months in, I’ve lost all reason, all perspective, all dignity.
I am…
Pathetic.
“Birdie.”
I jump, not having heard him come in through the door, and spin around.
Mindless panic clenches the base of my throat.
Bell is close, nearly close enough to touch me. There’s no way he hasn’t seen the open lockbox or the stack of papers on the workbench, but his eyes don’t move from mine. His hand is in his pocket like he’s just put his watch away, and his mouth is in an easy smile.
“Hi,” he says. So friendly, so warm.
I don’t know what to feel. Everything is wrong.
I’ve been lied to; I’ve lied to myself. He’s forged my signature on a legal document, and he’s giving me an unholy sum of money, and he told me he loved me like he was being crucified with it, and he’s already signed a nondisclosure agreement for when he leaves me.
How did I get here? How did I let go of everything that’s kept me alive, kept me some semblance of safe? Where did that closed and wary woman go when I needed her the most?
“You’re home early.” That’s all I can manage right now. A banal observation that somehow makes me sound like the guilty party—a sibling caught stealing money, a spouse caught cheating, all because they didn’t account for the possibility of someone coming home before they were meant to.
He’s so relaxed. How is he so relaxed? His shoulders loose, one set back, his smile so steady. He looks more casual than I’ve ever felt in my life.
“You know, I thought I’d see if I could get away sooner than I’d planned,” he says. And then finally, with the horror of inevitability, his eyes drop to the workbench behind me. “Some leisure reading?”
I close my eyes. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” He’s come closer now. I feel the hair around my shoulders shift the smallest amount—he’s playing with a curl, I think. “You know how you have to tell me what you’re thinking. I’m no good at guessing it on my own.”
I don’t know if I’m scared or angry or hurt; I think I’m everything. I take a breath, my eyes still closed. “Don’t make me feel like I’ve done something wrong.”
“Oh, I would never do that,” he says. His voice is very close now. I open my eyes to find him close enough that a deep breath would press my chest to his. His hand is braced on the workbench behind me. “I’m very aware that I’m the villain here. But I always promised you as much, didn’t I?”
“I didn’t realize that extended to forgery,” I whisper. I’ve leaned back a little—the instinct of cornered prey—watching every flick and flicker of his eyes as if my life depends on it.
“You must remember me at Evelyn,” he murmurs, “the best in your class. I could draw anything, couldn’t I? As long as I had something to copy.”
“And the nondisclosure agreements?” I know it’s absurd to be more wounded about the signatures he didn’t forge, but I am; I can’t help it.
Transgression, violation, he did promise those to me, and forgery and financial control—it’s all bad, I know that.
It’s threatening and severe, and anyone would tell me so, even his own family, maybe especially his own family—but—
But making me think he loved me and making me fall in love in return—seducing me, not with sex but with something far more dangerous—and then planning our breakup so shrewdly and so bloodlessly, under the guidance of an attorney…
His eyes drop briefly to the papers on the bench before he raises them to mine again. “I would rather you not have seen those,” he says. Like I’ve just seen his socks on the floor. A too-full inbox, maybe. Not his plan to muzzle me with paperwork and money.
I’m grateful for the flash of bitter anger then.
I’m able to speak without crying, even though misery has cinched my throat and stung my eyes.
“I’m surprised you didn’t forge my signatures on those too, so they’d be all ready to go when June rolls around.
I wouldn’t want to get in the way of your next free-use arrangement. ”
Something passes over his face—hurt maybe, which makes no sense at all—and for the first time, I see him fight to slip back into his mask.
His lashes dip and the knot of his throat bobs.
He straightens up, steps back, creating space between us, and after another heartbeat, his expression has settled back into its famous sunniness.
He brushes the curls off his forehead and offers up a soft, slanted smile.
“I know it looks bad, but it’s fairly standard in situations like ours.
My attorney felt like the unusual nature of our…
beginning…warranted some safeguards in case my career took a more high-profile turn, that’s all. ”
It fully occurs to me then. “Your attorney knows about us? The real us?”
“Well, obviously. It was easier than making up a raft of lies about why I needed two different kinds of trusts for twin sisters.”
My cheeks are hot against the air of the studio, and I feel sick to my stomach all over again.
I don’t know this attorney, but in a town this size, that means nothing.
He could be at the next gala or brunch or fundraiser or any of the things the well-connected and well-heeled did to bide their time and donate away their guilt.
“I don’t even know if I really want to run for office,” Bell is saying, and he’s reaching for my hair again, tugging on a strand and winding it around his finger.
“I might be content starting my own firm and rocking the boat without my bosses panicking because they only care about keeping the wheels greased for their next project. But if I do run for office, you can understand why an attorney would advise me to get an NDA from you, right?”
Right. Because no campaign would want a former mistress unaccounted for, particularly if her story was as lascivious as mine.
My mind drifts to the possibility that he might be married to someone else by the time he’s ready to run. Politicians like that sort of thing, don’t they? Having personable and photogenic spouses who can glad-hand and then disappear whenever it’s convenient.
And of course that could never be me. Birdie Cooper could never be the mayor’s wife.
There aren’t enough vibrating plugs in the world to coax me through the social niceties, the unwelcome eyes.
I’d be miserable and then I’d be no help to him, and we’d be stuck like that for as long as he was in office… or until he divorced me.
Maybe this is the kindest outcome, in a way.
To cut me loose at the end of our term, to part ways as friendly, former contractors.
He’d said something like this too, when he’d first approached me in the barn.
He’s turning thirty soon, and he wants to get serious about his life.
His own firm, getting married, all that.
I can’t be surprised by this, I can’t claim to be the injured party. I knew. I knew because he told me, and I let myself tumble into a fantasy anyway.
I have to anesthetize myself. I have to numb the shame and grief and get through this conversation because I have to think.
Go somewhere quiet and figure out what I’m supposed to do next because I don’t know.
I don’t know if I can stay here anymore, knowing that something is complicit in me, eager to write my own tragedy, and I’m unable to convince it otherwise.
“I understand” is my long overdue answer. “It makes sense. You need me out of the picture in the cleanest way possible.”
His eyebrows knit together as his hand goes still in my hair. “I don’t want you out of the picture. That has to be really fucking plain by this point. If it’s not, then I—I’m not sure what, actually. Then maybe we’ve been living in two different worlds this last month.”
I stare at him. “The cover letter said—”
He shakes his head quickly. “He’s an attorney, sweetheart. Not my priest, not my therapist. His job is to think of the worst possible outcomes and mitigate them for me. He’s just trying to look out for his client.”
“But you already signed them.”
“Even if we’re together, it’s still a good idea to have it made official—from my attorney’s perspective at least—and it’s written to protect you from anything I might say or publish as well. And just in case it’s not clear, I do want us to be together.”
I don’t believe him. With both relief and aching regret, I realize I don’t believe him. Maybe that means my good sense is returning, even if it also makes me want to press my face into the floor and cry.
He must see it because he puts a knuckle under my chin so he can look me in the eyes.