Chapter Seven #2
He stared down at her in silence, studying her face, considering his answer. Then he sat down beside her, and now he was definitely too close for comfort. She was glad he had brought her the throw. Not because she was cold but because it created a barrier between them.
And she needed one. Being this close to Antaeus fully-clothed was reckless. But semi-naked, was like playing chicken with a bullet train.
‘My head is a pretty busy place,’ he said.
‘Because of work or because of this?’
Her heart thudded hard. It was the first time their eyes had been level, and maybe it was that. Or maybe it was the fact that they had come together without orders being given or followed, but it felt like there was an equality between them.
‘Work’s not a problem. It never has been.’
‘So, it’s this. Me.’
‘It wasn’t you at first. It became you when your father died.’
He hesitated, almost as if he had been on the verge of saying something else but stopped himself just in time. The urge to ask him what that something else was made her heart beat perilously close to the surface of her skin.
She could see the tiny flecks of silver in his irises. It was like looking into space, as if his eyes contained a universe. Although it had never crossed her mind before, she felt a sudden, strong yearning to be an astronaut.
‘But why is it still a problem? Why am I a problem? You’ve taken my business.’
She took a breath, but if he was being honest, she was going to have to tell the truth too. She knew for sure that he had no intention of changing his mind, as he had implied back in New York. ‘And I’m trapped here in your house halfway up a mountain.’
‘You feel trapped?’
‘I always feel trapped.’ She spoke without thinking, and her stomach twisted as she felt his gaze narrow on her face.
‘Why always?’
‘Just life.’ It was a glib, catch-all answer, but she watched his pupils expanding.
‘I run a business. That comes with a lot of pressure and responsibility.’ She waited for Antaeus to point out that she wouldn’t need to worry about that anymore, but instead he held her gaze for just a fraction too long.
‘How did you learn to deal with that?’
She forced herself to keep looking at him.
From the outside, she knew that it looked like she lived in a bubble of privilege.
A blissfully, enviably serene, effort-and pressure-free bubble.
But making that illusion believable was like every magic trick.
It required a muscle memory that could only be built by repetition—hundreds, thousands of repetitions.
You had to learn how to get your audience’s attention, how to lead them where you wanted them to look—away from the sleight of hand.
Because there was no trick. It was a performance.
And it didn’t matter how many times she did it.
Every day she felt that pressure to perform perfectly.
She had to be the fixed point in a world that perpetually threatened to spin out of control.
Every crisis averted, every lie told to smooth over Henry’s lies and affairs and profligacy was first her mom’s and then her responsibility to conceal.
Some days it felt as if her body was being torn apart by horses.
No wonder her mom’s lupus had been so bad.
She felt a rush of protective love for Cecilia. If she had understood earlier, she would have done more. But she had been looking in the wrong direction.
‘It was how I was raised.’
‘You mean by your father?’ His expression was unreadable, but his voice was instantly cool and hard-edged.
‘I’m not talking about my father.’
‘No, you never want to talk about him, do you?’ The air felt animated now. Precarious, combustible. She could hear it hissing like gas leaking from a main. All it would take was a spark and—boom!
It was time to change the subject.
‘No, I don’t,’ she said truthfully.
‘But I do. I want to know why he did what he did. I want to know how he could betray his friend, his partner, like that.’
The tension in his voice was crowding her, and now she felt trapped in a different way.
‘I don’t know.’
‘But he raised you. Surely he must have said something.’
Her fingers tightened around the glass. She felt suddenly exhausted. It was like being in a time loop. She was moving forward, but then she was back at the beginning again.
‘I was three, Antaeus, so no, he didn’t.’
He was standing, his bare chest just inches from her face. That was when she realised that she was on her feet too. With another man, she might have been scared. He was six-feet-plus of hard muscle, and he was angry, but she wasn’t afraid of him.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m leaving.’
‘You can’t just leave. We’re talking.’
‘We’re not talking. You’re interrogating me, just like you always end up doing whenever we have a conversation.’
‘That’s not true—’
‘As usual, we’re going to have to agree to differ. But what is true is that I don’t want to talk about my father. Not now, not ever, and not with you.’ She felt a sudden rush of fury that seemed to rise up from deep within her as if a dam was breaking.
‘And there’s no need anyway. You wanted to punish me. Well, you have. I didn’t have much left that was mine to take, but you took it. You took my business and my freedom. But it’s still not enough, and you know what? I don’t think anything ever will be—’
She shoved his chest, and he took a step back. She knew she had caught him off guard because it caught her off guard, the sheer scale of her fury. Later she would wonder how she had managed to do it, but she felt like a mythical goddess, possessed of a superhuman strength.
He grabbed her hands. ‘Calm down, Cassie.’
Her gaze was entirely red. ‘Don’t tell me to calm down.
’ She broke free of his grip and shoved his chest again, but this time it was like trying to push the mountain.
And she wanted to weep or scream, because this was their entire relationship.
A constant pushing and pulling like a tug of war, only this time it felt as though they were standing on a cliff edge.
‘You’re going to hurt yourself.’
Now he caught her arms just above the elbows. She tried to twist free, but he didn’t budge. He was a silent, immovable wall, her fury trapped and powerless between them.
‘Why do you care? You should be delighted. Save you the trouble.’
‘You think I want to hurt you.’
‘What I think is that I’m tired of this. I’m tired of men like you. Tired of handsome, self-serving men who don’t care who they hurt as long as they get what they want.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean, men like me?’
Finally, she shook free of his grip. ‘You think you’re the first man who’s backed me into a corner? You’re not. My dad did that for years and years. You’re not even the first man to take my business. Sorry to burst your bubble, but my ex got there before you.’
She wanted to run, but her legs felt as if they were made of damp wood. Without intending to, she sat down on the bed.
Beside her, Antaeus stood in silence. He waited, but she was done playing nice. Done playing games. Let him wait.
‘Cassie—’
She flinched as he said her name. There was a shadow in his voice, but to understand why would mean having to look at his face. She never wanted to do that again.
‘Do you want me to leave?’
Her gaze stayed fixed on the pool. ‘I thought you said what I wanted was irrelevant.’
‘Apparently I was wrong.’
She was so astonished by his words that she forgot not to look at him.
‘About what?’
‘More than I’d like.’ A thread of uncertainty ticked through his voice. ‘Less than I know.’
‘You know enough.’
‘I can’t help if I don’t know more.’ There were so many assumptions in that sentence that should have angered her, but instead, she was stunned.
Help? She stared at him. ‘Why would you want to help me?’
‘I don’t know. I just do.’ And maybe it was because so much of their relationship up until that point had been complicated and fraught, but the simplicity of his answer caught her off guard.
She started laughing because it was funny, Antaeus wanting to help her.
Then, to her horror, her throat filled with tears.
‘Cassie—’ The mix of confusion and concern in his voice was so unexpected that now her eyes filled with more tears.
But she had spent so many nights listening to her mom weep when she thought Cassie was sleeping, and her tears had changed nothing.
They certainly wouldn’t work on Antaeus.
Whatever she thought she had heard, he was relentless, merciless.
As if on cue, he said after a moment, ‘What did you mean about your dad trapping you?’
Her stomach knotted. Previously when they talked, the intensity of their emotions had overtaken logic and calm. Any conversation had been abbreviated by one or the other of them stalking off.
Or by sex.
But there was something about his bearing, something steady and impassable, almost like the mountain itself.
For the first time, she could see why he had stepped over his rivals in a matter of years and now stood like a colossus above them.
He made her want to answer him, to nod and agree, and talk.
‘You think my dad is evil. He wasn’t. But he wasn’t a good man either.’
Earlier when Antaeus had been speaking about Jason and she had realised why the story mattered so much to him, it had knocked her off balance. But betraying her dad out loud felt more as if some huge tectonic shift was happening to the earth itself.
‘He was funny and charming, and people said it wasn’t a party until he arrived. But he was also intensely selfish and manipulative, and he had no qualms about spending other people’s money. I know because he manipulated my mom into giving him control of her trust funds and her inheritance.’
She took a breath. ‘But he still had debts with so many banks. That’s why he sold his boat and the house in the Hamptons. He would have sold the house in New York, but that would have meant downsizing or moving further out. He hated the idea of that, so he just borrowed against it.’