Hailee
We’re flying back to New York tonight. Our European adventure ended with the casino opening, even though the original plan was to stay in the Riviera for four more days.
I don’t know if I can get through to Alex. It’s hard seeing him so agitated and not being able to feel like his partner.
He doesn’t trust me. That or he thinks I can’t handle whatever his business is.
I’m curious how our relationship is going to develop back home. I can’t go back to my apartment per the deal with Lucas. If I’m still staying with Alex, does that mean we’re going to share a bed for another few weeks?
It’s already like we live together, but I don’t want things to move too fast. He’s a private man, and he’s sure to get sick of me if I’m constantly in his space. Fancy hotel rooms were different.
I should insist on taking the second-floor bedroom. Insist on having plenty of alone time. That’s going to be much easier when he goes back to working from the office full-time. Switzerland and France weren’t much of a test for us. Any new couple could feel like their relationship was one for the record books on a trip like this.
Things feel… magical. I always hated that word to describe love, but I’m realizing that was because I believed it was an exaggeration.
Now I’m wondering how I walked through life without this feeling. Without my stomach splashing like a magma chamber when Alex walks into a room. Without my heart ballooning until I fear it might burst when he presses his lips against mine.
Suddenly I’m not so hard on myself for being a hopeless romantic the past few years. This is worth every bad date and picky left swipe.
It all led me here. To Alex.
The jet is scheduled for a redeye. Alex is letting a couple employees of the Blackwell Corp tag along with us to New York, and unfortunately, I’m going to have to join the mile-high club some other time.
I sleep on the plush leather couch for most of the flight and wake to weak six a.m. sunlight. Out the window are purple clouds hole-punched in places by orange rays.
Alex is sitting near my head, his big hand on my shoulder. I think he might be sleeping, but when I look up to his face, I see he’s staring dead ahead in thought.
I doubt he slept for a minute on this flight.
“Good morning.”
“Morning.” He runs his hand through my hair.
I smell coffee brewing in the little back galley. There’s no conversation to be had. I just snuggle up against his thigh, cozied by the muted roar of the jet engines.
Alex’s business associates are passed out in their seats with their mouths agape. I could stay like this forever. In this tube, shuttling over the Atlantic. Alex’s strong, quiet presence next to me. The sleepiness in my bones that doesn’t have to go anywhere because I don’t either.
I sit up, still wrapped in my blanket, so we’re side by side on the couch. We stare out of the north-facing windows and sip our coffee while the sun rises.
Not a word is spoken between us. Not a word needs to be said.
When I’m done with my coffee, Alex lets me take his big hand in both of mine and hold on to it. It feels like that magic we had in Europe is suddenly back, and I’m excited at the prospect of what life in New York holds for us.
Eventually, Alex speaks. He says what we’re both thinking. “Things might be different at home. I’ll be busier, and I know you want to find work, too. But if I could choose any slice of my life to relive, rabbit, it would be these last few weeks.”
He tucks a lock of hair behind my ear, and then he kisses me.
There’s no lust about it. It’s soft. Loving.
If my breath wasn’t so taken, I’d tease him for being romantic, but then I’d be afraid he might not continue to say things that melt my heart.
We break the kiss, and I rest my head against his shoulder until we land at Teterboro.
Alex has warned me he has a busy week, and I’m glad for it. We both need to get into our routine now that we’ve landed back in reality. I have my eye on another job posting Lucas has sent me.
It’s for the new National Forest project in Washington State that Sophia had mentioned. He met one of its organizers in San Francisco.
I don’t even want to say what the position is because it’s too perfect. It’s not reforestation for a timber or mining company. It’s keeping old growth from being bulldozed in the first place.
Ever since Lucas heard I quit Blackwell, he’s been leveraging his connections to ask about potential job openings that would be a good fit for me. I swear he’s passing out my résumé at the conclusion of every meeting. He’s such a good big brother like that.
I thought he was going overboard, but he left me a message this morning saying he got me an interview with the Department of the Interior.
I’d be the project manager for the southwest corner of the national forest. I’d be talking to landowners. Logging companies. Hikers, hunters, and fishermen.
Most of all, I’d be in the wilderness working with surveying companies. I could use a break from concrete and steel. It’s not a permanent position. It would end when the National Forest is completed, but I wouldn’t mind a change of pace for a year. I can always return to this soulless corporate life if the grass isn’t any greener.
But all this talk, and I haven’t scheduled an interview yet.
Months away from the city means months away from Alex.
As soon as the plane’s tires squeal down on the runway, I’m forced to confront a world of troubles I’d been ignoring.
Alex is dropped off directly at the office, while I head back to the mansion on Park. I shower, unpack, and then call my friends and Lucas before reaching out to the Department of the Interior.
I should at least do the interview. There’s still a high chance I don’t even get the job and it’s just a Zoom call.
I send an introduction email to the contact Lucas left me. It’s short but takes me about twenty minutes as I re-read the thing about eight times for typos.
When I hit Send , I become brutally aware that that’s it for the day. I have nothing else to do. At my apartment, there’s always a chore or two, but in Alex’s mansion, there’s nothing.
Why, oh, why does unemployment have to be as awful as employment? I’m in jeans, but I feel like I might as well be in crumb-covered sweatpants.
Alex must have a gym here. I don’t know where it is, but he must. There’s no way he’s covered in muscles and roped in veins without lifting a single damn weight.
I ditch the jeans, lace up my tennis shoes, and go on the hunt. It must be on the third floor, because that’s the only place I haven’t explored out of fear of Alex. I’ve been to his bedroom there, but that’s it.
I reach the end of the third-floor hall, past his study and bedroom, and take the last door. On the other side is a gym the size of my entire apartment. Twice the size.
It’s lined with weight racks and machines. A large set of windows make up the wall and look down to Park Ave.
There are speakers in the ceiling, and I wonder if Alex uses them, but I fail to connect my Bluetooth and end up listening to myself pant as I run on the treadmill. I last about five minutes before I realize my days lounging in the Riviera didn’t do much to upkeep my cardio.
I do kettlebell swings and some calisthenics I learned in a fitness class I took with Alana, and once my brow is shiny with sweat, I call it a success.
Tomorrow I’ll run for ten minutes. Or bring headphones. I forgot working out can be kind of boring.
I go back out into the hall, and I’m walking at a normal pace towards the staircase when I start to slow. I can’t tell you what makes me slow down.
Okay, I can. It’s Alex’s damn mysteriousness that made me stop in my tracks and push open his study door. I don’t walk in right away. I’m not a snooper.
I used to be, of course. All kids are snoopers, but I like to think I grew out of it. Or it was forced out of me. All it takes is one butt plug in your parents’ bedroom to forever quell your curiosity.
I stare at Alex’s desk. It’s not as organized as I would’ve thought. It’s strewn with papers and a couple notebooks like it’s the workstation of a mad scientist.
I don’t dare go any farther, but damn it, I do.
I stand at his big wooden desk. It’s so big it looks like they could’ve built the house around the thing. It’s veined with the carvings of olive branches.
I put my fingers on some of the papers. No. I force myself to turn and leave. Alex has secrets, but it’s not my place to snoop them out.
I’ll give him the chance to open up to me. It’s too early in the relationship to fault him for being private. It’s too early to feel the need to go through his private things.
But my eyes linger on one yellow folder labeled in black sharpie. Abispa.
I have to drag myself away like I’m steel and the desk is one big magnet.
I get in the shower, my second already of the day, because what else do you do without a job?
I end up forgetting to take my Ritalin, a necessity to deal with the boredom of unemployment, and I fall asleep on the couch in the den.
When I wake, I consider becoming a cat and sleeping for eighteen hours a day until I’m gainfully employed again. It’s dark outside, which means it must be close to eight. Alex might be home, depending on how swamped he was at the office.
I get up and stretch—like a cat—and walk silently in my socks to go try to find him. There’s no Pierre in the industrial kitchen. No Alex in any of the sparsely furnished caverns they call rooms on the first floor. I get to the second floor and open my bedroom door to see the sheets stripped off my bed. There’s a note on the mattress that reads: third floor.
I go back to the stairs and spiral up. The lights are dimmed. Alex’s bedroom door is open. Candles flicker on the nightstands, and I walk forward, my mouth twisting into a grin.
I catch Alex in his walk-in closet wearing nothing but black dress pants. He’s partially turned away from me, and the lighting seems to detail every jagged edge and bulge of his muscles. He looks like a Greek god. I’m staring at the Gaddi Torso but without the obnoxious sign that reads Do Not Touch.
My attention is taken from him to a basket set on the floor by the bed. It’s filled with a stack of faux fur blankets.
“I didn’t want to wake you,” Alex says, even though he never saw me come into the room.
Note to self: I’m still not as quiet as a cat.
“What’re you doing?” I ask.
“Making room.” He’s lying suit coats on the center table of the closet and stacking shoes next to them.
“For what?”
“For you. I’m not going back to sleeping alone with you just a floor below me.”
“Oh, Alex.”
“And I got you some blankets.”
I laugh, and he puts one more pair of black dress shoes onto his suit coats and walks to me. He cups my cheek in his hand, and I let his warm lips taste me.
This man…
He pulls me onto the bed, and I shriek in fake fright. He lays me on my back, and we just kiss. His hands don’t explore me greedily. His tongue doesn’t swirl against mine. This is more tender. Again, less lustful.
He leans above me on one elbow, and I part a thick strand of his brown hair out from in front of his face. He stares down at me. Possessively. Lovingly. I don’t just want to just get fucked tonight. That’s not what’s about to happen. This is love. I open my mouth, my heart pounding as hard as it ever has.
“Alex…” I freeze for several seconds in the trance of his ice-blue eyes. “I love you.”
He keeps looking at me. A second passes. Two. I know I said it early, but after the time we’ve had together, I’m expecting the words to be returned. Instead, he bites his lip.
He leans farther back, away from me, and it feels like he takes my heart with him. I don’t want to be the first one to break the silence. As badly as I want to say something, I wait for Alex to speak.
“…. I don’t think—”
“It’s fine.” It’s like I’ve been picked up and dumped in a vat of hot lava. I burn with embarrassment and guilt for saying it when he wasn’t ready. “It’s okay,” I say far too quickly. “It’s been like a month.” I try to smile but can’t. “I’m the crazy one.”
“It’s not time that’s the problem,” Alex says.
I pause, waiting for him to elaborate on what is the problem.
“We live very different lives, . We have very different pasts.”
“I enjoy being with you in the present. Wouldn’t you say the same?”
He hesitates. “Yes, I would. But it’s only because when I’m with you, I ignore the future. Besides, there are some things in this world that just aren’t meant for me.”
“Like love?”
He doesn’t respond.
“Because Alex, the man you’ve shown me you are is more than deserving of love.”
“If you knew everything…” Alex says, quietly.
“Then tell me everything.”
“…” he says, his tone suggesting that telling the truth is some impossibility that’s over my head.
“I promise, I can take it.”
“You can’t.”
“Oh, don’t treat me like a child.” I stand from the bed. “I know you like me, Alex. I know you like us, together. Whatever it is that has you convinced this can’t be a long-term relationship is ruining everything anyway. So why not tell me?”
“Because you’ll run out that door right now.”
“Bullshit.”
He stares at me challengingly, and my heart is tugged further as he turns and goes out into the hall. For a second, I think he’s leaving me here, but then he returns with a yellow folder in his hand.
The one I’d almost picked up myself. I feel a little like I’ve been caught. Does Alex have a camera in his study? Could he have seen me about to snoop?
He drops the folder on the bed and walks across the room, where he leans against the wall. The way he’s distanced himself from me is like he’s expecting me to hate him after I read what’s in this folder.
I keep my eyes on him while I pick it up and lay it across my lap. I don’t want to hold it in my hands. I can’t. They’re shaking too bad.
My skin is hot and my pulse pounds with the kind of anticipation you get before public speaking. I step to the stage and flip to the first page. There are three mugshots. Head shots, I should say. They are square-faced men. All with buzz cuts, and two with neck tattoos. There are names beneath the photos.
Wingman, Wolf, and Capone.
Code names? I flip the page and see photos of a gun. It’s short and black and has a long, curved magazine. I frown. I’ve seen it before.
Alex speaks like he’s reading my mind. “That’s the gun that Wingman used to shoot at you.”
“What?” I keep flipping and see sketches of a bomb.
“You weren’t supposed to be there. Neither was Lucas. It was just those fools. Marty and Rob.”
“Alex, what are you talking about?” I ask, but deep down I already know. I need to hear him say it.
“I hired the hitmen, but they were supposed to miss. To drum up this story in this press so there’d be a real investigation.”
My mouth is open. I’m not sure I’m breathing. Alex is the reason I’m locked in this mansion with him?
Alex is behind the worst fear, possibly the worst moment of my life, apart from when I got the call about my dad’s heart attack.
I look up at him. He’s obscured by my tears. “Why?”
Alex narrows his eyes and takes a breath. “In 2012, I had a mining contract in Botswana. It was my first one, my break after years of trying. I won the contract over Millennium Mining, a company owned by Summit Bank and the Fords. They were competing to add mining assets into their portfolio. They weren’t happy about being beaten by a small up-and-coming outfit like mine.
“The first month when we were digging tunnels, there was an explosion two hundred feet underground. Twelve miners were killed, the youngest of which was nineteen. The government called an independent investigation, but it was led by a firm of which Chester Ford was on the board of. They claimed there was a methane deposit that our surveyors had missed. It was bullshit.”
Alex sighs. “Two of the survivors claimed they had a man kicked out of the mine who had given them false credentials. When they saw him the first time, he had a big black backpack. When he left, they said he wasn’t wearing it. My company lost the contract. We went bankrupt. It was rewarded to Millenium. The Fords ordered those explosives to be planted. They murdered a dozen people. Rigged the investigation, destroyed my first company, and reaped the profits.”
“So, the money-laundering story was your leak? You were the source.”
“I showed them smoke so they could find the fire, yes. At first, when I finally had the success and resources for revenge, I thought of just killing the Fords. But there was something wrong about the world mourning them as great men. I wanted them humiliated and in handcuffs, and then once they were at Rikers, I was going to have them shanked in their jumpsuits.”
I blink rapidly in disbelief. Conspiracy. Murder. I believe what he’s telling me, but his plan isn’t what I focus on. I keep hearing the gunshots. Those incredibly loud cracks echoing off the skyscrapers.
The fear as I clenched every muscle in my body. It was Alex’s fault. What did it matter if Lucas and I weren’t supposed to be there? All this time I was trapped in his mansion, and he didn’t tell me why. It feels like I’m falling to the center of the earth. All this time I was in love… I was deceived.
“You understand why I kept this from you?”
It takes me a while to talk. “You shouldn’t have slept with me,” I say, shaking my head. “Maybe you don’t trust me, but Alex…” I cross my arms and stand up. I can’t look at him. I’m trying so hard not to cry, but if I look at him, I know I will.
He was right. I couldn’t handle the truth.
“, I’m sorry.”
“I bet you are,” I say and walk towards the hall. It’s like I’m in a dream all over again, hovering six feet over my head. I turn to Alex. “I’m gone, Alex, but I won’t tell the police.”
His mouth opens like he’s about to fight for me, but ultimately, he knows as well as I do that there’s nothing he can say.
He nods a little, and I go down to the second floor. I pack toiletries and my bags in a wide-eyed haze and step back out onto the landing. If I hadn’t asked for the truth, I’d be bringing my things to the third floor right now. Would that be so bad?
I go to the front, and there’s already a car waiting for me. Alex must’ve called. I’m going back to my apartment, because that’s right. There was no reason for me to not be there in the first place.
Alex was keeping Lucas and me both in the dark because of his revenge plot. Was he ever going to come clean?
I get in the back seat and feel relieved that it’s raining. At least the world matches my mood as I stare at the pavement glistening under the streetlights and cry.