Chapter 16 – Cora
CORA
Adrian sits across from me in the back of the limo, and the closeness jangles my nerves. I’m too wrung out to panic, but I can’t take my eyes off him. What is he going to do now? Are we okay?
How could we possibly be okay? I just crashed his car.
Old, worn memories dance across my brain like the pink elephants in Fantasia.
Plastic mattresses. Tiny plastic cups with pills and other plastic cups with shots of apple juice.
The pink soap with the smell you can’t scrub off your hands.
Nubbly blankets stuck together with static, scratchy gowns with missing snaps and worn-out Velcro.
A plastic plate screwed in front of the only window in a room you can’t leave until you lie well enough that people who don’t really give a shit believe you.
I twist in my seat and draw my knees to my chest, my heels digging into the edge of the leather seat.
That was all in the past. I got better. And then I played myself, and here I am, scared and powerless again, all my bullshit exposed. I didn’t get better. I got lucky for a while.
Adrian stares stonily out his window. Why isn’t he freaking out? Because he’s plotting to send me away? He said he wouldn’t take the girls, but he didn’t actually say he wouldn’t send me away.
People are very good at framing their decisions as your choices. You can leave anytime. Just show us that you’re really committed to your recovery. You’re in control. Do the work, and treatment will work for you. We don’t want to keep you here forever. That’s the last thing we want.
Ignore the automatic locking doors.
Ignore the gurney with the straps and the small, cold room at the end of the hall.
I don’t want to ask Adrian what he’s planning. On the off chance he’s not thinking about where to send me, I don’t want to give him ideas.
He’s definitely working through something. He has that shark-on-the-hunt look in his eyes. A little after we cross into Connecticut, he lets out a grunt like he’s come to some conclusion and digs his phone out of his pocket. I sink into myself, shoulders climbing to my ears, vertebrae buckling.
Adrian pushes the intercom. “Pull over,” he barks.
What is he doing?
“At the next bathroom, sir?” the driver asks.
“Anywhere.”
The driver changes lanes quickly to exit, and much too quickly, he pulls into the lot of a dark gas station, either closed or abandoned. There’s nothing else nearby.
“Wait here,” he orders and hops out of the car.
Is he calling an ambulance to get me? Or Logan to send some men to take me away?
Adrian stalks a few feet to stand behind the car, tapping his phone.
I push the button to lower the window a crack, praying he doesn’t notice. For a few seconds, there is nothing but the silence of a snowy night, and then Delaney’s voice, distant but perfectly audible, filters into the car through the still air.
“Adrian,” she purrs. “How are you? That was quite the disappearing act.”
A fresh wave of pain rakes my insides like a spoon scrapes pumpkin guts. Why is he calling her now?
“Delaney, I want to make something clear, and I want to do it now.” Adrian’s voice is clear and sure. His back is to the car, but I can hear him easily.
“Sure thing, boss.” She laughs, clearly aiming for casual, but even this far away, I catch the hint of unease. “What do you have for me?”
Does she mean everything she says to sound like a double entendre? She’s a living big-tittied cartoon.
“First and foremost, you’re terminated, effective immediately.
Secondly, I want to be clear, if I haven’t been in the past, we fucked, but there is no relationship between us.
There wasn’t before, and there isn’t now.
I made a mistake, and I assume I’ll pay for it.
If you feel you are being treated unfairly, seeking redress is certainly your prerogative.
You have my lawyers’ number. James will clear out your office.
He’ll call you to see where you’d like the boxes shipped. ”
“A-Adrian, what the hell?” she sputters. “Is your wife making you do this? You can’t be serious. It was just sex. We were just having a good time. You could’ve said no. This is bullshit.”
“Nevertheless,” he says. That’s it. Nevertheless.
“You can’t fire me! I earned this job!” Her voice rises in pitch with each word.
I sink down in the car seat as if her volume is somehow going to bust me for eavesdropping.
“You think clients won’t go with me? You think I’ll go quietly?
Fuck you, Adrian Maddox, you’re a goddamn cliché.
Your wife is a fucking child. You men are all the same, picking little girls who don’t know better because grown women can smell your bullshit a mile away. ”
I hate her, but she’s not wrong. The funny thing is, by the way Adrian’s shoulders stiffen, he knows it, too.
When she pauses to take a breath, he uses the opportunity to say, “This conversation is over.”
He ends the call, paces a few steps, and immediately dials another number.
“Yes, sir.” James answers halfway through the first ring.
“Delaney Pierson has been terminated. Deactivate her badge and accounts. Tomorrow, I’ll need you to notify HR and box up her office.”
“Yes, sir. Consider it done. Anything else?”
“I’ll be working from home for the foreseeable future. Report there tomorrow. Let Michelle know. She can Zoom in.”
“Yes, sir.”
He hangs up, tucks his phone away, and then stares for a few long moments at the abandoned gas station before he strides back to the car.
He’s too quick, and my reactions are too slow. As soon as he settles in his seat, his eyes land on the cracked window. He raises an eyebrow. I raise mine back.
He raps on the divider, and the driver pulls off, retracing his way back onto the highway.
Adrian silently exhales, his shoulders lowering. “I should have done that weeks ago,” he says.
I shrug. He should have.
“I should have told her to get out when she walked through the door of the restaurant. She knew you’d be there.”
“Why didn’t you?” He doesn’t have problems barking orders, and he’s never affected by other people’s discomfort.
“Tonight? I didn’t want to embarrass you.”
“Why care now but not that night?” In the apartment, he didn’t even ask her to hop off his dick. As a matter of fact, he demanded that she stay put.
“I cared.”
I snort. “You ordered me out, and then you lectured me about using the kids and told me to suck it up.”
He leans back in his seat, his head dropping against the rest. His legs are so long, they crowd the space between us. I could reach out and touch his knee. His thigh.
He sighs and turns his head to watch the snow again. “I was following the wrong script.”
“What does that mean?”
“The wrong script—you were going to take advantage of the situation because you didn’t really care.
I’d stepped out of line, but I was still within my rights, so to speak.
” He laughs derisively. “You were supposed to scream at me and throw some things. After you cooled down, I’d buy you a diamond necklace, and eventually, you’d get over it. ”
That annoying clink, clink, clink pops into my mind. “Did you buy Delaney that diamond bracelet?”
He immediately meets my eye. “No. She was fucking with you.”
I go back to what he said before. “Why would you think I’d scream and throw stuff? I don’t do that.” Not at people, at least.
“That was the script, right?” He blows out a breath. “I’m not making excuses. I’m just explaining.”
“Because that’s what your mom did?”
He nods curtly.
“Why would you do it if you saw how messed up it was firsthand?”
His lips curl, wry and tired. “Self-sabotage?” He reaches out and uses his cuff to buff the window where his breath left smudges. “You ever wait so long for something good to go bad that you can’t take it anymore?”
No. I’ve never had something good long enough that it sunk in, except for maybe him, and it was so good, I couldn’t really believe it, so I lived in a delusion.
But what’s more interesting than that, so captivating I can hardly stand to consider it more closely, is the part where he said “something good.”
“We were good?” It’s not a challenge, not snark. The question is tentative.
My chest aches from holding my breath.
His jaw clenches. “I was fucking terrified all the time.”
Oh, I understand what it’s like waiting for the good to turn.
In my bones. For the sobriety chips to disappear from the bowl on the nightstand and end up in the trash.
For all the talk about the future—about paperwork and making it official—to peter out.
For the woman who was excited to finally have a little girl to turn watchful.
For the man who said to call him Greg or Ray or Dad to start staring all the time, too.
“I was happy before you ruined everything,” I say. Adrian straightens in his seat, bearing up under the blow. “Do you feel safe now that I’m not?”
He shakes his head once.
I toss a shoulder. “There’s no such thing as safe anyway,” I tell him. “Just whether you’re lying to yourself or not.”
“I told myself you didn’t know me, so you couldn’t really care. I’d just wounded your pride.”
“I didn’t really know you.” I stretch my legs and prop them beside him on the seat.
I want him to hold my foot and rub the arch like he does when we watch a movie in the media room, and he sits facing the screen, and I sit sideways on the sofa and rest my feet in his lap.
Even though we’re lost and broken, even though we’re strangers, I don’t want to be alone.
He slides my shoe off and cups my sole in his palm, stroking down the middle with his thumb.
“I know you better now.” My voice is drowsy. With each stroke of his thumb, I struggle harder to keep my eyes open.
“And you hate me,” he rumbles.
“Less now than yesterday.”
As my eyes drift shut, I see his lips twitch, and my heart skips. I’m too kind—or too tired—to remind him that not hating someone is closer to indifference than love.