Chapter 20
I sent him a text first thing this morning, telling him that we need to talk in person.
I lingered at the hospital yesterday, hoping he’d come back in so I could tell him, but he was swamped all day and never returned.
His pager cut me off at the worst possible moment.
Today I’ve been in the office, my mind locked on his tattoo, tears clinging to the backs of my eyes since I saw it.
At first, my not telling him was anger-driven. It was hurt-driven. It was animosity-driven. I felt as though I was protecting myself by not saying anything. That if he didn’t recognize me, that was on him, and I owed him no explanations.
But now, things have changed between us.
I don’t know what’s happening and what’s not, but regardless of any of that, he needs to know.
He’s not my enemy and I do not hate him.
In fact, with each passing day I spend with him, I care more and more about him.
His guarded, self-protecting armor is loaded with chinks.
Finding and infiltrating them, discovering the prize beneath is indescribable.
Kaplan Fritz is textured. He’s layer upon layer and outwardly, what you see, what the world sees, is not the heart of the man beneath. He tries. Lord knows he tries to stay untouchable, but he’s not.
And I can’t do it anymore.
His tattoo.
The guilt of him not knowing, of me keeping this secret for as long as I’ve kept it is eating me alive.
“Hey, are you staying?” My head flies up from my desk to find Charlie, her arms loaded with binders, her workbag over her shoulder. I glance at my watch and realize the time, but I’m not finished with everything I need to do. ADHD kicked my ass today with all that was going through my head.
“Yes. I’m behind. Go on. I’m good.”
She hesitates, shifting her weight. “You sure? I can stay and help. I know the gala is now pushing everyone to full force.”
“Yes, but it’s coming along great.” Which it is.
The responses we’ve received from the charities, as well as potential attendees when we ran this idea past them, have been enormous.
Everyone is thrilled with this idea and even Mean Jenny is getting on board—sorta.
“For real though, I’m just finishing up on some stuff. Go ahead. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Okay. Good night.”
I throw her a wave and then force myself back to my laptop. I finish writing up an email, check through Kaplan’s one last time, and with a yawn I stand, shutting the top of my laptop and stretching out my back only to scream out in surprise when I find someone lingering by the door.
“Jesus,” I cry, my hand on my chest. “You scared me. What the hell are you doing here? How did you even get in the building?” The doors lock to the outside at 5:00 p.m.
“Your friend let me in. I told her I was surprising you. Aren’t you happy to see me?”
I frown. “Honestly, no. Seriously, Ava, I have nothing to say to you. You and Tod can have each other, and I wish you all the best, but after what you did, I never wanted to see you again.”
Ava’s blue eyes go from lifeless to venomous in a nanosecond. “Did you know he broke up with me?”
I press my hands down on my desk. Clearly, we’re doing this and there is no getting rid of her. I didn’t even know she was in Boston. I sigh. “No, I didn’t know that. I haven’t spoken to him since shortly after he left Boston.”
She takes a step into the large open room, her back rigid and her posture accusatory. “He told me that now that you know about us and it’s over between the two of you, that you won’t even talk to him, he doesn’t have to pretend with me anymore.”
I shake my head. “I have no idea what that means.”
“He was only with me because he was afraid I was going to tell you what we did and then he’d lose you.”
“Ava, I’m tired. It’s been a long day. Do we have to do this?”
“I hate you, Bunny. I’ve always hated you.
You with the stepdads who love you. With the stepbrother who loves you.
With a mom who loves you. Tod loves you.
Everyone fucking loves you and no one ever gave a shit about me.
I’ve been in love with Tod since college.
You know he only went to graduate school at UCLA because that’s where you were going?
He asked you out. Not me. Fat, disgusting Bunny. And he wanted you.”
Tod’s words from when he showed up at my hotel room cycle through my head. “You trapped him.”
Another step and my heart picks up a few extra beats.
I’m not afraid of Ava. She’s a lot smaller than I am and she didn’t grow up with Mitchell, who likes to box for exercise and taught me how too.
I don’t think she’ll attack me physically.
But she’s visibly unhinged, which makes her unpredictable and scary.
“We had sex one night after he’d had a bit too much to drink and I told him I’d tell you if he didn’t try dating me too. I figured he’d end it with you. I knew all he wanted was your money. That he truly loved me.”
“Ava, does your mom know you’re here?”
“My mom?” A weird laugh that’s a bit hysterical cracks the air like a whip. “My mom disowned me, Bunny. She cares more about the money your mom gives her than she does about me.”
Ah. So that’s what this is.
She tilts her head, her red-painted lips spreading into a menacing grin. “But, you see, they don’t know your secret like I do.”
Now my heart is thrashing in my chest. “What secret?”
“I saw him that day you ran from the church. You ran right to his car. Kaplan Fritz. I know all about your relationship with him. I found the emails and texts you saved on your computer years ago.”
Shit.
“So what?” I shrug, feigning indifference.
Her clenched fists hit her hips, that smile frozen on her face. “I know how broken up you were when he stopped talking to you. We were freshmen in college. I was your roommate. I watched and heard it all.”
“Again, so what?”
“I saw him, you know. Kaplan. At your special eighteenth birthday party Elijah threw you right before we left for UCLA. You were climbing out of the pool in your bikini with your fat, gross body on display just as he arrived. I’ve never seen a man look more disgusted in my life. He took one look at you and left.”
Is that… is that true?
Kaplan and I hadn’t talked much that last year.
He was working crazy hours. We texted more than emailed or called because it was easier.
Just random messages, checking in, asking how things were going.
Sometimes those texts came in the middle of the night from him.
Random thoughts he was having. Deep, soulful thoughts that I cherished finding when I’d wake up.
But they all stopped right around that party.
And he never returned my calls, texts, or emails after that. The timing lines up.
Ice water dumps into my veins, my gut twisting, sick to the pit of my soul with the realization she’s telling the truth.
“I can ruin him, Bunny. I can ruin both of you.”
That snaps me back. “How on earth do you figure that?” My voice trembles and I hate that I’m so shaken by this. By her being here and what she’s saying and the thought that Kaplan got one look at me and decided he never wanted to speak to me again.
“You were a minor. He was an adult. You were carrying on a secret relationship. How do you think that will play in the press? Pedophilia is a serious crime.”
Oh Jesus. “Those conversations were completely innocent, and we never saw each other after Forest’s funeral.”
She leans casually against a desk, picking at her chipped red nail polish.
The same color she was wearing at my wedding.
“That doesn’t matter though. Does it? There was already a picture of you in the papers together.
All I have to do is make an allegation and there is proof of contact.
The press will love it. Boston’s favorite billionaire prince falls from his throne into a well of shame and disgrace for entering into a relationship with a fifteen-year-old girl. How old was he back then, Bunny?”
Fuck. Just fuckety fuck fuck.
I round my desk before I know what the hell I’m doing, only to stop short.
I don’t want to engage her. And now that I look at her a little closer, she doesn’t look well.
Ava never ate. She was always “dieting” in the form of starvation, but she looks practically emaciated now.
Her brown hair, the same color as mine, is stringy, hanging limply down her back.
Her eyes are too big on her face and sunken in, the skin around them stained purple despite the heavy makeup she’s wearing. Same with her cheeks.
These last few weeks have not been kind to her.
“Ava, let me call your mom. My mom. Let’s get you some help, okay? You don’t look well.”
“I look better than you!” she screams, picking up a glass paperweight off the desk and hurling it across the room—thankfully not at me. It bounces off another desk and crashes to the floor without breaking. I jump, banging my hip into my desk. Hard.
“What the hell is going on here?” Kaplan comes storming in.
Jaw locked, eyes blazing as he heads straight for me, and I wish he wasn’t here.
He needs to leave. Now. Something I try to convey when his eyes meet mine.
He’s on the other side of the room, moving fast in my direction as if he’s coming to save me, and I hold up my hand.
The three of us positioned in a triangle of sorts and I shake my head, nodding my chin in the direction he just came, begging for him to go.
He shakes his head in return, acrimony etched on his face. His wild green eyes narrow in on me, checking me over as he now slowly edges for me.
Another headshake, my expression beseeching, and finally he stops. His gaze cuts sharply over to Ava, who is standing stock-still now, barely breathing as she squints at him, her rage appearing to have cut off like the flip of a switch.
Something isn’t right. She’s too eerily quiet and calm after all that.