Chapter 17
CLARK
After the gym, I picked up a box of Budweiser, had a quick shower, and now I’m walking the short distance from my apartment to Jay’s.
I can’t do much about the joint venture tonight.
After fighting with Teddy over it, again, I’m done.
After everything – the weekend, going out of my mind wanting Dayna, finding her in a heap after Caspar threatened her, a flight home thinking about nothing but Dayna and whether a joint venture would really mean we couldn’t be together – I’m spent.
I want a cold beer, and my best friend, if he’ll still call himself that, likes cold beer.
I’ve figured I need to work on my other issues.
Dayna’s right; I’ve got a lot of baggage to wade through, whether fixing it means she’ll have me or not.
Mending my relationship with Jay might as well be number one on my list.
I dip my head to Andy, the stocky concierge in Jay’s building, and hand him one of the Buds. ‘Pass me up, Andy?’
‘Sure thing, Clark.’
I could have called Jay or hit the intercom, but I’m going for the element of surprise. It’s after nine on a Wednesday night. Chances are he’s home, and I want to look him in the eye if he sends me away.
I knock on his apartment door then lean to one side, out of view of the peephole. As he opens the door, I move in front, one hand resting on the frame, the other holding up my friendship offering.
He’s in sweats and a T-shirt, his hair wet. He stares me down, neither of us speaking. I wait, until eventually, he steps aside. He doesn’t invite me in exactly, but he leaves the door open as he heads to the kitchen.
I follow him, planting the box of lager down on the kitchen bench. He rests back against the oven, and I watch him from the other side of the work surface.
‘I didn’t go to Verbier with Camilla Normen, and I didn’t fuck her.’
He unfolds his arms and steps forwards to take a Bud from the box. ‘I know. Connie told me.’
I take a beer for myself and put the rest in the fridge while Jay opens both bottles and hands one to me.
‘She also made me promise not to let your monumental fuck-up come between us.’
I lift my head quickly. Connie might have saved my friendship. ‘How is she?’
‘How d’you think?’
‘I swear the last thing I’d want to do is hurt her, Jay. Whether she realises it or not, I did what I did because I don’t want to be the guy who breaks her heart years from now, and I think I would have.’
He takes a swig of beer and walks past me to the open-plan lounge, dropping into a chair and lobbing a foot up onto the coffee table. He hits the remote and un-pauses a rugby game he must have already been watching.
I follow him and sit on the sofa, kicking off my trainers and putting my feet up.
‘You look like hell, by the way,’ Jay tells me.
I scoff into my bottle. ‘You don’t look like a fucking portrait yourself.’
He laughs. It’ll take a while, but I might just get my friend back.
‘You gonna tell me who you were in Verbier with?’
‘Teddy invited Spencer and me.’ I shake my head and run a hand through my hair. ‘He didn’t tell me I was crashing Dayna’s birthday.’
‘Dayna Cross?’
I nod, exhaling heavily.
‘Fuck.’
I lean my head back against the sofa and close my eyes. ‘Don’t ask if you don’t want to know.’
‘You slept with her.’
It’s a statement, not a question, but I still say yes. ‘I’m losing my fucking mind.’
‘And this is the truth? This is why you ended things with Connie?’
‘I love Connie. She’s amazing. But Dayna is in my head all the fucking time. She makes me crazy.’
‘Were you ever like that with Connie?’
‘Do you really want to have this conversation about your sister?’
‘Not really. But I do want to know.’
I sigh. ‘No. No one, ever. Only Dayna.’
‘You’re the one who kept walking away, Layton.’
I sit forwards, my elbows on my knees, and drop my head in my hands. ‘I know. I wish I’d never walked away from her. I just always listened to him and his tripe about the business, the Layton name and Cross’s reputation.’
‘Your dad’s a wanker.’
I don’t know whether to laugh or lash out. He’s dead right, and if I said it about my father, that’d be fine. But my father has this hold over me. No one else can bad-mouth him like that, not even Jay. Not even when I know it’s the truth.
‘You should tell Connie.’
I look at him for evidence that he’s seriously lost his sanity.
‘She’s going nuts wondering what’s wrong with her.’
‘Christ, there’s nothing wrong with her. She’s perfect.’
‘Tell her why. It’ll sting at first, then she’ll realise it’s you who’s the fuckwit, and she might just get her confidence back. She deserves to know the truth, and you’d better tell her about Dayna before she finds out some other way. If you don’t, and she finds out, I’m gonna fuck you up.’
‘I hear you.’
Four Buds and a couple of hours later, I lie back on my bed, moonlight tingeing my bedroom blue.
I’m right back to four years ago. I take my hands behind my head and wish I could stop seeing her when I close my eyes: her silk-soft skin, her plump pink lips, her on her knees, crying because I broke her again.
I have to put it aside, at least for now.
All I need to focus on now is this joint bid.
Keeping her safe from Caspar Kahn and any other oil hounds who come for her.
As I finally start to drift off, one last thought comes to me, Caspar’s words as I threatened him: Harold might be willing to lose that well to me, Clark, but I’m certain he won’t want to lose to a Cross.
* * *
I pull up to my folks’ house and kill the engine of my sports car.
‘Are they around?’ I ask the staff as I pass them in the entrance hallway of the house.
Elspeth, my favourite, is heading upstairs with a tray of tea and toast. ‘Mrs Layton is dressing. Mr Layton is in the driving range.’
‘Thanks, Elspeth. Have a good day.’
‘And you, son.’
I smile at her. She’s been more of a guardian to me over the years than the sperm and egg donors I call parents.
I can hear my father whacking golf balls as I head across the gravel path towards his practice area.
I duck through the wooden door into the small three-walled building with two bays.
A camera in the far corner is focussed down on my father as he sets himself up for his next shot.
He’s training. Later, he’ll play his video back and grumble about whatever’s wrong with his stroke, then proceed to waste more hours out here perfecting his grip, his swing, or the position of his feet.
I pick up the remote from the wood bench behind him and click off the camera, then I take a club from his bag.
I look down the driver, checking it’s straight, and rub residual mud from the grains in the metal on the flat side of the head.
I set a ball onto a tee in the spare bay, get into position, and drive the shit out of the ball.
‘You’re hanging left.’
‘I’ll never be good enough for you,’ I tell him.
‘Not with shots like that.’ He positions another ball on a tee and strikes it. I fight to supress a grin when his shot hangs right and doesn’t get the distance of mine. ‘I heard a rumour you were skiing last weekend.’
I don’t say anything, knowing he’ll keep going. I lift the club behind my neck and rest my arms over it, waiting while he takes another shot.
‘It’s bad enough you’re flaking on your responsibilities, but I hear you were over there, fraternising with the Cross girl when you’ve just fucked up your marriage.’
‘You can’t fuck up a marriage that never happened.’
He lifts his club and points it at me, his skin reddening.
‘Don’t get smart with me, boy. You were getting your end away with that Cross girl, and it stops.
It stops now. Do you appreciate what I’ve handed you on a goddamned silver platter?
’ His words come low and ominous through his teeth.
‘You’re at the head of the company I built, and I won’t let you bring down my reputation, my name.
You won’t return to your old ways and you will get that girl back.
‘If you want to fuck other women, do it quietly, but to everyone else, you’ll maintain the stature that I’ve gifted you and you will marry that girl. You’ll get Constance back, and you’ll clean up your act. I’ve let this slide for two weeks. That’s enough.’
I want to smack him in the face. Fighting the urge, I sit down on the bench against the back wall and give myself a second to just breathe.
‘Years ago – hell, months ago – I was afraid of you. I did everything you wanted. I gave up things I shouldn’t have had to give up for you.
But now I see you for what you are. A bitter, twisted old man.
You think you’re still someone but you’re not.
You’re an OAP whose ticker is failing. You’re weak, and one day, people will find you out. ’
I watch the rise and fall of his shoulders, back expanding quicker with each breath he drags in. It’s almost enjoyable to watch. I hate him.
‘I’m not getting back with Connie, and she’s better off for it.
I’m not like you. I don’t want to marry someone I don’t love just to fuck everyone else in a skirt behind her back.
Yeah, I saw you the night before the wedding.
I saw you for exactly who you are and who you’ve always been.
The only reason I’m not telling Mum what you did last week, what you’ve been doing, is because it will hurt her.
Make no mistake, I no longer have any loyalty to you. ’
His cheeks burn brighter and he whacks another ball. Harder. Messily. His wrath evident. ‘You’re pathetic, son. And you’re wrong. You were never everything I wanted.’
A short, sinister laugh bursts from my chest. ‘Nothing and no one will ever be everything you want.’
He turns to me now, his face tinged purple, and I realise I don’t care about his health or ill health. I don’t care about his opinion of me or Layton Oil. I want out of this warped fucking underworld.
‘Then why are you here, Clark?’