16. West
CHAPTER 16
WEST
The incident is an envelope.
The experts I hire spend the next few days analyzing it. The manila envelope is post-stamped in New York, and it contains pictures of Nora from the past week. Out running. With her guards outside a fabric store. The picture from the Long Island Tribune of the two of us is attached, too, cut out in precise lines. There’s a note with handwriting that immediately gets sent off for analysis.
He won’t keep you from me.
It’s unnerving. Unsettling. It’s also a clear escalation from what she received back in Paris. There were letters, but sometimes weeks went by between them. Now it’s barely been a week since the bouquet incident.
The plan might be working. Annoying him, drawing him into getting more reckless. I need more moments like the polo match or the party. He won’t keep you from me. Yes, I will. And I need to goad this obsessed stalker into making a mistake… and then I’ll catch him.
The day after, when we’re back in the gym, I tell Nora about it. Show her images of what was sent and what I’m going to do with it. What my team is looking for and analyzing.
She nods through it all, asks a few follow-up questions. Her hands are balled up and her expression is tight. Like she’s holding back what she’s really feeling. But she can’t hide the effort it takes.
“Okay,” she says finally. “Thank you for telling me.”
I raise an eyebrow. “That’s it?”
“I really do appreciate it, West. Rafe doesn’t usually share this much with me. And I want to know. It’s my life, after all.”
I shake my head. “Not that. I don’t need thanks.”
“Then what do you mean?”
“Are you angry? Scared? Annoyed? He knows you’re living here. He’s been watching you,” I say, and I’m angry. The idea of someone thinking they have any right to her…
“It wouldn’t be productive.” She locks herself back under control, and the effort I saw on her face disappears. She becomes a still lake again. “Let’s continue with the moves you taught me.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “It’s not productive ?”
“I can’t do anything about it,” she says. We’ve been practicing self-defense maneuvers for an hour already. How to get out of a grip, how to twist a man’s arm. How to break out of a chokehold.
I want her to feel competent. Empowered. Even if I’ll never let that bastard get close to her.
I approach her again, and this time, she doesn’t hesitate. She ducks from my lazy attempt to catch her and shoves her knee between my legs.
I stop it only an inch from making impact. “Good,” I tell her. “That was really good.”
A smile flashes over her lips. She likes these kinds of compliments, I’ve noticed. Maybe not the ones that make her feel ogled or like an object. She’s had enough of those.
But she loves being praised.
Good thing I fucking love praising her.
“Again,” she says, her cheeks flushed with color. “And I know anger is productive. My therapist tells me all the time.”
“Your therapist?”
“Yes.” She jabs my way, and I raise my palms in time to catch her attempts. She’s not holding back today. “I’ve tried to work through all of this. I told you.”
“In a therapy room.”
“Yes, but she wants me to get out there, too. She tells me I’ve said no too many times and that I need to learn to say yes and have the tough conversations that follow.”
“Have you told her about this? About us?”
Nora hesitates only a second, but it’s long enough for me to hear the answer. Yes. “She won’t tell anyone.”
“I’m not worried about that.” I approach her again and wrap my arm around her upper body. Fix my forearm against her throat. We’ve done this before, and I’m not applying any pressure. “What does she think?”
Nora is warm beneath my grip. She’s also quick, reaching up to find the spot on my hand, between thumb and index finger, that hurts like a motherfucker when you press down.
“She thinks this is good for me.” She presses down. Sharp pain radiates up my arm, and I release her.
“Well done,” I say through gritted teeth.
“I’m sorry,” she says. I fix her with a look, and she shrugs a little. “I know you tell me not to apologize to you, but I have twenty-four years of practice. It’s hard to break.”
“I know. Which is why I’ll remind you. That was really good. You found it immediately.”
“I’ve been practicing.”
“On yourself?”
“Yeah.” She must see my look, because she rolls her eyes. “I don’t do it hard. I’m not the masochist.”
I hold up my hands again, and this time she jabs twice before giving me a cross. “So I’ve been given the stamp of approval from your therapist,” I say. The idea of Nora talking with someone about me, about this , fills me with curiosity. That there’s a space where truth floods out of her. “What have you told her?”
“That’s privileged information.”
I can’t help teasing her. “She’s probably on my side, you know.”
“About what?”
“ About what? she asks,” I say and shake my head. “About this. You learning self-defense and embracing your anger.”
Color spreads along Nora’s cheeks. “She was shocked when I told her about that. Our practice with… Well. Practicing dating.”
“Shocked at the brilliance of it. Don’t forget to move your feet.”
She glances down and then shifts around me, her hands still raised. Tendrils of dark hair have escaped her ponytail and frame her face. “She said she’d never heard of anyone using that approach before.”
“We’re innovators.”
“Apparently.” Her lips tug. “Let’s try the thing you did earlier.”
“Grabbing you from behind?”
She nods and turns like she’s walking away from me. I move closer and sling one arm around her waist; the other covers her mouth. My movements are slow, and I don’t hold her hard. I wouldn’t even if she asked me to.
We’ve done this several times already.
She’s soft against me, and warm, and her lips part beneath my palm on an exhale. There’s a brief second where I wonder what that would feel?—
And then her hands come up to grip my arm. She drops beneath me into a wider stance and puts all her weight into pulling down my arm. Then she swings her leg back and bends it into the back of my knee.
I’m pushed forward, off balance, and can’t hold on to her anymore or I’ll fall. She dances back and out of my arms with a wide smile. “That was the best one yet!”
“That was magnificent,” I tell her honestly. “And now? What would you do?”
“Run. You know I’m fast.” She’s still grinning.
“Yes, you are. You’ll run and you’ll call for help. You’ll call me.”
“And you’ll come?”
I push up the sleeve of my shirt. “Always.”
She glances away, out the windows and toward the green spring lawn. But just as quickly, she looks back at me. “Okay.”
“Promise me,” I say. “You’ll call me if you need help.”
“Yes, I promise.” She rolls her eyes. “Sometimes you’re worse than Rafe.”
That feels like a barbed spear in my chest. I haven’t reminded myself of just how much she should be like a sister to me in days. It has been futile, since I clearly can’t see her that way. I’ve never been able to.
But maybe she does.
I switch tactics and study the fire in her eyes, the flush in her cheeks. She’s comfortable around me, at least.
“You said you don’t like arguing with people,” I say. “But you must have done it plenty of times.”
She rolls her neck, like the question annoys her. “No, not really. I guess I just never learned how to. I never argue with anyone—not with my family, not with friends.”
“You have siblings,” I say. “You and Rafe never argued?”
“No.”
“Funny,” I say. “I argue with him all the time.”
“We’re five years apart, and then he was away at boarding school with you and Alex and James. And after the accident, when we lost my oldest brother… it felt like my job to keep everyone happy.” Behind her, the ocean is stormy today, the sky gray. “My two younger siblings weren’t born until Dad was on wife number three, and the age gap in that direction is large, too.”
I cross my arms. “What about friends? Guys you’ve dated? Have you ever argued with them?”
“Ever?” Her voice comes out testy, like she’s embarrassed by the question. She runs a hand through her ponytail. “No. Not really. I avoid it; I told you. I give them what they want, or I remove myself from the relationship entirely.”
“Right. Either it’s a hard yes or a hard no.”
“Yeah,” she says. “I guess you can teach me how to argue, then.”
“Weird kink, but okay,” I say. “If you want to, we can fight all day long.”
Her heartbeat picks up—I can see it in the way she shifts, the way her breath changes. “It’s not like… I mean, I don’t like arguing.”
“People usually don’t like doing things they’re not good at.” I grab her water bottle and hand it to her. It feels like she needs something to do, something to hold. She gets nervous even at the thought of this. “But that’s where practice comes in. Repetition. Just like with you saying no to men.”
She uncorks the bottle. “Who made you an expert at fighting?”
“I can handle conflict,” I tell her. “Everyone fights with the people they’re close to. My parents did a bit too much. Rafe and I, and Alex and James, well… you think four teenage boys always saw eye to eye?” I lean back against one of the weight machines. “What do you want to fight about?”
“There’s nothing on my mind right now.”
“Nothing? I doubt that very much.”
“Fine. Maybe there are lots of things, but nothing that we can argue about.”
“I’ve met your mother. I met your father, too,” I say. “They don’t strike me as people who never fight.”
“I never said they didn’t.”
“You said you never learned. I don’t believe you,” I tell her.
Her gaze snaps to mine. There’s a glint of irritation in her eyes. It feels like victory. She knows exactly what I’m doing with my goading.
“Yes, they fought. The entire family fought. But it wasn’t productive. It wasn’t efficient. And it always, always meant I had done something wrong. And it was never truly over. They didn’t fight with me. They fought at me.”
“It was never over?”
“No, there was never a resolution. Mom loves bringing up disagreements that happened months ago, reminding me with little barbs of things I’ve done—things that still hurt her. My father, when he was alive, didn’t argue at all. You either agreed with his perspective, or the conversation was over and you could leave. There was no in-between. And there was certainly no making up afterward.” She takes a deep breath. “I just had to quietly wait it out, test the waters, prove myself to them again, until the argument was swept under the rug and hopefully forgotten.”
“So you never knew when it was over.”
“No.”
“We’ll practice that too.” I hold up my hands. “Do you do the same things with guys, then?”
“I guess,” she says. “I know what to say to ensure there’s no argument, to bend to what they want to hear, because the idea of not doing it…”
“You’d get punished if you didn’t,” I finish. “Your mother. She’s…”
“Yes,” she says with a groan. “You know her.”
“I’ve met her a few times. She’s a character,” I admit. Rafe and Nora’s mother was once an actress. She nurtured attention and craved it, a circle that sustained her, until it stopped. Until she pushed that onto her children instead. I’ve seen the exasperated way Rafe has dealt with her over the years.
I’ve never witnessed the way she takes it out on her daughter. It rearranges some of the things I’ve heard, things I’ve seen.
“Was she the one who wanted you to model?” I ask.
Nora looks down at the water bottle. “Yeah. It was her dream for me. She made most of it happen.”
I shake my head slowly. “Don’t say that. You did the work.”
“Yes, sure, but it was…” She shrugs a little. “I’m grateful. I don’t mean to say that I’m not, and I know that my life?—”
“For fuck’s sake,” I interrupt. “There are no cameras here. Do you think I’m going to hold you to anything? Say what you really feel. Without the caveats.”
Nora’s eyes flash again. “ Fine . It was her dream, and I did it to make her happy. All of it. The auditions, the dietitian, the nose job, the sessions with a coach on how to walk, how to pose. And it made me feel good for a while, to know that I was making her happy. That I was making photographers happy. My father, my brother. Everyone thought it was so clever, that I could model the brands Valmont owns.”
“I’m sure they did.” My arms are crossed over my chest now, like that might stop my muscles from tensing with anger. Every single thing she’s saying makes my blood heat another degree. “A nose job?”
“The week after I turned eighteen,” Nora says. Her face is calm in a way I’m not. Like I’m the only one burning with anger. “She found the surgeon, booked the time.”
“She did what ?”
“To set me up for success, she said.” Nora shrugs. “It was years ago.”
“You never needed it.”
She chuckles a little, but it’s polite. Strained. “Right. Thanks.”
“Do you enjoy it? The work?”
“Modeling? Not really. I loved getting to work with beautiful designers, though, and wear their clothes. It’s taught me a lot.” A real smile spreads across her face. “It’s what made me realize I want to be the one creating the pieces. I don’t want to model anymore.”
“You want to design.”
“Yes.” She meets my gaze with one of her own. “Even if my mother and Rafe think I’m throwing away an opportunity by turning down modeling jobs.”
“They’ve told you that?”
“Yes. Repeatedly.”
“I wonder what your therapist says about your mother. And your father,” I say darkly. The image of much younger Nora, caught between two arguing titans, pressured in every direction, makes red descend. They didn’t argue with me.
They argued at me.
“She has a lot of opinions there too,” Nora says. She raises her hands. “Shouldn’t we practice again?”
“ Should we?” I ask her. “What do you want, Nora? It’s your list of things to practice, and so far, I’ve decided on the self-defense classes. That wasn’t on your list.”
“No, I guess it wasn’t,” she says slowly. “But I like the idea of defending myself. If the stalker ever… Well. Not to imply that your team isn’t great.”
“You can imply it if you want to. I’ve told you, my ego can take it.”
That makes her laugh a little. “I’m not so sure about that.”
“Test me,” I say. “Get angry with me, argue with me. As long as you’re being yourself. Okay?”
She nods, and a small smile curves her full lips. Lips I’ve come close to kissing far too many times, all under the guise of helping her. I’m an asshole , I think. But at least I can help her practice standing up for herself and being honest.
It’s a fucking tragedy that anyone ever made her feel like she couldn’t.