26. Adam
ADAM
I kept waiting for the pain to ease, but tonight it was a stubborn, needle-sharp presence in the muscle of my back, right at the spot where my lower spine pressed into the couch.
No matter how many times I shifted, nothing made it better.
I was supposed to be resting, supposed to be “letting my body heal,” or at least that’s what my physical therapist kept telling me with relentless optimism.
But the house was too quiet, and the longer I sat there, the more my mind soured.
I’d been scrolling through my phone for the better part of an hour, my mind numb from the repetition.
I scrolled past pictures of the girls, ten days’ worth of them, the twins mugging for the camera in stages of delight.
My phone somehow kept coming back to one picture in particular, Billie in a rare moment of unguarded laughter, a lock of hair falling in her face.
She was in the kitchen, flushed from the heat of the stove, up to her wrists in flour from the fried chicken she was making, and having no clue a photo was being taken of her.
That was my favorite, she looked so alive, so damn present, so carefree, like maybe for a second she’d forgotten all the bullshit that kept us both knotted up in silence most of the time.
I pinched the screen and zoomed in, just to see the faint lines at the corner of her eyes. Then down to her lips. Her perfect fucking lips. I missed those lips. The way they tasted, so sweet and uniquely her. The way they felt, so soft and perfectly matched with my own.
“Fuck.”
I put my phone down and pulled up my laptop. Those lips were on a date with Russell Clarke. I needed to occupy myself and not think about those perfect fucking lips. I should get my head in the game and figure out how in the hell I was going to protest my father’s antiquated will.
I’d received word today from Watkins that nothing could be done. My father’s will was ironclad. No wiggle room. The language was dense and calcified with legalese, but the upshot was, if I wanted to get my hands on that money, I’d have to get married and remain married for ninety days.
Instead of trying to figure out how I was going to solve that problem, I found myself googling Russell Clarke.
The first three pages were either the result of the man having really good PR or him being a saint.
He’d started a nonprofit for animals of the unhoused, he served meals at the V.A.
every Thanksgiving, and there was a glowing profile in the local paper about how he’d grown out his hair in college and donated it to make wigs for cancer patients.
I stared at the screen as a knot twisted in my stomach.
Was it possible for someone to be so aggressively wholesome?
Surely there was a mug shot somewhere, a DUI, or a sex scandal.
I dug through Google deeper than I’d ever admit to Billie or anyone else.
I scrutinized every photo for signs of phoniness, but the man somehow looked even more earnest with each new search result.
With an exasperated sigh I slammed the laptop closed and instantly regretted it as a hot wire shot up my spine and into my molars. For a second, the pain was almost liberating, a physical mirror of the invisible emotional turmoil I was currently experiencing.
Why did it bother me so much? Billie and I weren’t together.
We hadn’t even spoken about our hookup. Twenty years ago, I left.
She had her own life. It was too late for us.
She’d always said she never wanted kids and now I had two.
We were never going to be endgame. If she could be with a good guy, I should be happy for her.
So why did I want to puke?
I tried to focus on my breathing. Inhale: the ghost of Billie’s perfume and the persistent odor of a musty, stale hundred-year-old home to get rid of when I had the money to renovate. Exhale: the urge to punch a hole in the wall and throw my phone across the room.
None of it helped. I stood up, hoping the change in elevation would somehow reset my nervous system and take some pressure off my back at the same time.
The motion caused the documents Watkins sent over to cascade onto the floor in a gentle waterfall, scattering in all directions.
I stared down at them. They might as well have been in Timbuktu.
There was no way I could bend down to pick them up.
Billie bought me a grabber, but I had stubbornly “misplaced” it.
Having a sling was bad enough. Having a sling and limited mobility was torture.
I didn’t want to need it. Now, I hated to admit it, but I did.
As I walked around in search of it, the front door opened.
Cold air swept in, followed by the rapid click of her heels.
The timing was uncanny—we both rounded the corner into the family room at the same moment, as if we’d rehearsed it for a sitcom cold open.
Billie froze, caught in the act of tiptoeing, probably thinking I was asleep on the couch while I stood in my sweats, which had been my uniform for the past week and a half.
For a second, neither of us said anything, just blinked at each other like two cats caught on the same windowsill.
I couldn’t help it, she looked incredible.
The wind had tousled her hair so that bits of it feathered over her cheekbones, and the flush from outside made her eyes even brighter, a shade of green that, for some reason, reminded me of the exact taste of the apples we used to borrow (steal) from Mrs. Cable’s yard when we were kids.
She was in her long, dark coat and a scarf and looked like she should be walking down a runway in Paris.
Her lips plump and red and her eyes lined with black.
I’d seen her three hours earlier, but it didn’t matter if it had been a minute before, every time I laid eyes on her, my heart attempted a backflip.
She raised her eyebrows, cocked her head, and grinned.
“What?” I tried, aiming for casual, and missed by a mile.
“What are you doing up?”
“Nothing.”
Her eyes shot down to the papers and then back to me.
“You weren’t looking for anything?” she asked as she set her purse and keys down on the end table.
Ah, so that’s why she’d been smirking. Because she knew he was looking for the claw. “No.”
Her brow rose. “So you weren’t looking for the claw?”
“Nope.”
“So, you can pick these up no problem then?” She slowly removed her coat and scarf, and I had to actively remind myself this wasn’t a striptease.
“If I wanted to.” I swallowed over a large lump of lust that was clogging my throat. The reveal of her dress was doing more for me than I wanted to admit.
She shrugged, calling my bluff. “Okay, pick them up then.”
“Fine.”
She stared at me, waiting. I walked around her and sat down on the couch. When I started to move forward, she put her hand on my shoulder.
“Enough. Do not hurt yourself to prove a point.”
Then she proceeded to bend over and pick the papers up. I appreciated both the gesture and the view. I had to actively suppress a groan of appreciation and divert my eyes. I also had to shift on the couch and readjust myself, so my sweats didn’t reveal just how much I’d enjoyed the view.
Billie straightened and leafed through the legal documents, reading as if searching for hidden codes. “Wait, are these… is this about your dad’s will?” Her voice was careful, deliberate, as if the word “will” might spontaneously combust.
“Yeah,” I said, already tired of the subject, already regretting that she’d gotten a look at the rawest part of my life.
“So it’s real?” She looked up, eyes bright with surprise and—fuck—pity. “You really can’t get the trust and inheritance unless you get married?”
I nodded.
She absorbed that, lips pressed thin. She kept reading. “Have you talked to Genesis?”
I tensed. “Why would I talk to Genesis?”
“She’s your girlfriend,” Billie said, as if reminding me of a tragic celebrity death.
I shook my head, this time bracing my whole body for the pain. “We’re done. I told you.”
“But she called you. The night you ‘broke up.’” She did bunny ears with her fingers.
“Did you think we’ve been talking this whole time?”
She shrugged.
“You live here, have you seen me talking to her?”
“I go to work and there’s a time difference.”
I took a deep breath and exhaled. “She broke up with me by leaving a voicemail. I tried to call her back, and I was blocked. That’s when you saw me and asked what was wrong.
I never tried to call her again after that.
She called once more, which you saw, and left a voicemail telling me not to talk to the press. That’s it.”
“Oh,” Billie said in almost a whisper. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, then slid down onto the couch. “So what are you gonna do?”
I reached for the papers. She snatched them away, holding them out of reach. The gesture was almost playful, but her eyes were dead serious. “What are you gonna do, Adam?”
“I’ll figure it out.”
She looked back down and flipped through the papers. “This is not… you can’t dispute this. If you want this money, you need to get married.”
I leaned back on the couch. I hated how much it stung to hear her say it out loud. Like she’d pressed on a splinter I’d been pretending wasn’t there. “Are you a lawyer now?”
“No, but I have my MBA and have been handling the shop’s contracts for years now, and I’ve read enough to know what I’m talking about.” She looked up at me. “You need this money. For the house, the girls, for you. It can’t just sit there.”
“We’ll be fine.” I didn’t want her to worry about this. Billie was like me. She was a fixer. I didn’t want her feeling sorry for me. She’d done enough. I wasn’t a project. I could handle things on my own. “It’s getting late. I need to go to bed.”
“We have to talk about this—”