Chapter Twenty-Seven
I suspect the only thing that would tip my family off to our scheme more than Anna and me appearing to know nothing about each other is how we suddenly seem like newlyweds, blocking out everything else on the island.
But there’s nothing to be done. For the next two days, we rarely leave the bungalow. And when we do, I can’t keep my hands off her.
We get back that first morning, drop our clothes, and finally get in the shower together. Messy, wet kisses, soapy, roaming hands work us both into a fever. It’s not fully light out yet; we have all day. But we must forget all of that because we don’t take the time to dry off; I set my hands on her hips, walking her backward to the bed, where I coax her down and beg my way between her legs, promising to make it good, nipping at her stomach, across her hips, until I tease her with a finger, and then my tongue, watching up the length of her body as she arches and presses into my touch. It’s only the first time I’ve done this to her, but the shape of her is familiar; she tastes like something I’ve always known. With my arms around her thighs, hands clamping her knees open, I lose myself, ravenous for her silk and sounds, the scrape of her nails in my hair, and the wild, clawing stretch of eternity where she comes against my tongue.
Drunk with lust, Anna drags me up her body, flips us over, and sinks down on me, seeking, it seems, every possible way to drive me to madness: fingernails digging into my chest, teeth scraping my neck, the way she lifts her hips just as I think I might come, teasing and withholding her slick heat, giving me only the barest friction until I feel like a barbarian, rolling on top of her and pinning her wrists over her head, fucking her with a desperate fury that leaves me gasping and astounded and leaves her poured like warm honey across the sheets.
We fall asleep in a breathless stupor, waking hours later, exhausted and starving. I don’t think either of us cares for one second what we look like emerging from our bungalow, but Anna looks stunning anyway. Her hair is in a messy bun on top of her head, her face free of any makeup, and the glow of pleasure lights her skin from beneath. She walks beside me along the beach to the café for lunch, her legs long and bare in cutoff shorts, arms supple and tanned in a simple white tank, and I slide my hand into her back pocket, relishing the way she fills my palm as she walks.
I can’t resist reaching across the table while she spears a bite of fruit, or touching her bottom lip as she chews. She laughs at me as I move to the chair beside her so I can lean closer, press my nose into her neck, and inhale the way her sweat and my sweat together mix with the soap from the shower we took earlier. She smells like sex and sugar and me.
My hand finds its way to her thigh, my food forgotten. Her skin is satin on my fingertips, and I think about kissing it not three hours ago, think about how hard I took her after, and the way the mess of her desire spread down her thighs, right where I’m touching. She turns to capture my mouth in a kiss, her sweet pineapple tongue sliding with mine. Anna reaches with one hand to dig into my hair and I don’t care who’s there, who might be watching. I don’t think about anything but her.
“I need you back in bed,” I tell her. “On your hands and knees.”
We take the rest of the food to go.
WHAT WE DON’T DOis talk out what collaborators with benefits should look like. We never stare directly at any of it, and nothing about this feels simple anymore.
Starting that first day after we make love, it might as well be just the two of us on the island. While everyone else is at a sunset game night, Anna and I hike to a secluded cove where we skinny-dip and then collapse on a blanket where she shimmies down my body, teeth dragging down my abdomen, teasing my cock with her kisses and tongue under the moonlight. The following morning, we wake slowly, lazily, making languid love with me curled behind her, my hands roaming the warm front of her body. We book a private boat to take us to a reef a few miles offshore where we snorkel and enjoy lunch on the deck, and I trace patterns on Anna’s stomach as she sunbathes topless on the bow. Later, we tumble into our bungalow, where I finally play out the fantasy that looped in my mind for hours: straddling her ribs, roughly stroking my aching length, spilling on breasts still warm from the relentless sun. We have dinner that night at Jules Verne, at the table in the most private corner, hidden by the branches of a giant mangrove, and I have no idea whether anyone looks our way; all I know is no one dares to join us.
It’s only later that second night—after we walk back to our bungalow, after Anna wraps her legs around me and I take my time feeling every inch of her, after I hold her boneless, sweaty body in my arms while she comes down—that we finally, truly talk.
Pushing up onto her elbow, she looks down at me. “Liam?”
“Mmm?” I reach up to stroke her jaw with my thumb.
“What are we really doing here?”
“What do you mean?” My voice comes out gravelly, my throat accustomed for the past several hours only to the hoarse, unfiltered noises she drags out of me.
“What’s the loophole in the trust?”
I smile, pushing the mess of hair out of her face. “I was wondering when you’d ask.”
She curls up on her side facing me and reaches beneath her head, adjusting her pillow under her cheek. “I figure we’re past the point of pretending to be surface-level bros.”
This makes me laugh. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She stares at me, brown eyes luminous in the moonlight streaming across the bed. Anna traces a finger down my throat, bringing her hand to rest over my heart.
I lift it, kissing her palm, before putting it back where it was. “We leave soon.”
“I know.”
“And if it’s okay, I’d like to keep seeing you.”
She laughs. “I know you didn’t mean to, but that’s almost word for word what Richard Gere says in Pretty Woman before everything goes to shit.”
“I think there are some important differences here you may be overlooking.”
Anna squints at me. “Are we sure?”
Laughing, I reach around her back, pulling her flush to me. “I want to keep this going, whatever it is.”
“So maybe you fly to LA and take me on a date sometime.”
I lean in, resting my lips against hers, swallowing down the absurd, impulsive thought that wants to shove its way out of my throat: Come live with me. Instead, I say, “Anytime you want me.”
She pulls back, ruthlessly biting her smiling bottom lip. “Okay.”
And that easily, something ancient inside me settles.
With a deep breath, I reach forward, running my thumb over her lip, freeing it. “You know I was close to my grandfather.”
She nods. “He was your favorite.”
“Right. But he was also… a little unorthodox.”
“Another word only rich people use.”
I roll to my back, tucking a hand behind my head, and stare up at the ceiling, mentally sifting through what I can tell her. “Family was very important to him.”
“Yeah. You mentioned that to me the first day you came over—sounds like there’s a lot more buried in there.”
I laugh quietly. “Yeah.”
She reaches forward, tracing my Adam’s apple with her fingertip. “Like what?”
“The thing about legal trusts is you can put whatever you want in them. Any stipulation.” She waits for me to say more, dragging her hand down to rest over my sternum. I set my own hand on top of hers.
“I was only fifteen when Grandpa died. We were all at the reading of the will, but you can imagine in a situation like that, especially for kids, a lot of the details sort of go over your head. The reading took hours. I understood, basically, that he was leaving us each a very large sum of money. I understood that it was contingent on us being married. At the time, it didn’t seem so weird that he would want that. Kids sort of take those adult directives as law.”
“I can see that,” she says quietly.
“About three years ago, pretty soon after I moved out of our apartment, I created a foundation. The annual deposits from the trust go directly to this fund.”
“Like a charity?”
“Sort of, yeah.”
“So—wait—you’re not keeping your inheritance money?”
“No, like you said, I have a job.” I grin at her, continuing, “With the approach of our five-year anniversary and in anticipation of the full balance of the trust coming into my name, I asked my attorney to clarify a few details about the inheritance. Whether there were any limits on its application, stuff like that.”
“You mean,” she cuts in, “like rules about how you can spend it?”
“Exactly.” I shift, rolling to my side to face her. “You know most of the important details, like how the trust stipulates a marriage to trigger the inheritance, and if there’s a divorce before the fifth anniversary, we forfeit the remaining balance.”
Anna huffs out a laugh. “It’s so wild.”
“Well, what I didn’t know, and what I’m guessing none of my siblings know, is that if the estate attorney—in this case, the firm that represents the money held in my grandfather’s trust—finds evidence of artifice or fraud—”
Her eyes widen. “Like marrying someone to get student housing?”
I nod. “Yes. If they find evidence of fraud in the five-year window, the clause makes the fulfillment of the trust null and void.”
“Even though we’re legally married? You’d lose everything?”
“I’d lose everything, yes, but there’s more.” I trace the line of her collarbones from one shoulder to the other. “I can’t say whether it was my grandfather’s intention, because of course he’s gone, and the attorney who drew up the documents has also passed away. But it appears that my grandfather wanted to find a way to bind the siblings together, to inspire us to support and confide in each other. He was always encouraging me to be kinder to Alex, to come from a place of understanding and empathy. In hindsight, I realize that he knew how much of a wedge our father drove between us, but he could never have anticipated how little any of us, as adults, actually disclose to each other at all.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that the way he worded the clause in the trust concerned with our inheritance, legally, if one marriage is deemed fraudulent, the entire clause is nullified. The legal interpretation seems to be that it wouldn’t be one sibling’s inheritance but the entire balance of the account—nearly half a billion dollars—going to charity.”
Anna stares at me.
“If one falls,” I say, “we all fall.”
I see the moment it fully lands. Dread washes her out, and she pushes to sit, the sheets falling to her waist. “You’re telling me that if we get busted, Jake could lose the possibility of an inheritance? Charlie?”
“It appears so.”
“What about Blaire and Alex? They’ve been married for over a decade.”
“It doesn’t seem to matter. The money was put into an account for each of us. It is my and my attorneys’ understanding that access would be cut off—at the very least it would be restricted until the wording could be clarified in court. But this is the leverage I mean: my father wants me to come on as CEO. He’s looking for leverage. Don’t you think if he knew he could hold my siblings’ inheritances over my head, he would?”
“So if he finds out, it’s your life or their money?”
I nod.
“And you don’t think your siblings know?”
“I can’t imagine they do. Otherwise Alex would be doing everything he could to not sabotage this.”
Two furrowed lines appear between her brows. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t you just tell them?”
“I only got clarity a couple weeks ago,” I say, shrugging. “I thought I would be able to come here alone. I didn’t think I would have to involve you in it. I didn’t think it would turn into a circus. But then my mom implied that my father was getting suspicious about us. I don’t know if he’s aware of the loophole, but I’m sure his lawyers are. Or will be.”
“Now if you tried to tell your siblings while we’re here, you’d have to admit to Alex that we’re lying,” she says, nodding in understanding.
“And he’d either want his lawyers to confirm, or—more likely, since his lawyers would take weeks to do that—immediately go to Dad and ask if I’m telling the truth.”
Anna exhales a quiet, “Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
I blow out a breath, closing my eyes. “I didn’t want you to feel the enormity of it. The pressure is… intense.”
“You didn’t have to handle this alone.”
“We barely knew each other. I was just trying to get through every event without catastrophe.”
Anna settles back down beside me. “We just have to get through the next few days. We can do this.”
I pull in a deep breath. “We can.”
“This was a lot to carry, Liam.”
“It was.” After a beat, I look over at her and smile. “You called me Liam again.”
“I did.”
Our gazes lock for several quiet beats and then she leans forward, pressing her lips to mine. When she pulls back, I ask, “Do you look more like your mom or your dad?”
“My dad, definitely. My mom is short, has blue eyes and blond hair. My hair is naturally brown, eyes brown.” She laughs. “I used to want her eyes, but now I’m glad that I got everything from him. He’s the shit.”
“I’d like to meet him.”
She nods. “Yeah. I’d like that. I think you two would get along.”
I smile, opening my mouth to say something about not being sure about meeting Vivi again, though, but Anna speaks first, grinding my thoughts to a halt: “He was diagnosed with lung cancer a few weeks after you moved out.”
I roll to my side again to face her. “Oh shit. Is—is he okay?”
“Well, the lung cancer is gone—for good, I hope.” She smiles weakly at me. “But one of the possible side effects of the type of chemo he had is what’s called secondary acute myeloid leukemia.”
I go still, heart dropping. “So his cancer is cured, but he got leukemia as a result?”
Anna nods. “Before you worry too much, his prognosis is good. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t. But at first, we didn’t know. The prognosis for this type of AML usually isn’t great. So the past six months have been… yeah.” She reaches up, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “His oncologist and hematologist both think he’s going to get through it. I really do think we’re on the other side, but it’s been hell.”
“I can’t even imagine.”
“I wish all of my research had been more useful to Jake’s jellyfish sting,” she says, laughing. “I know more about topoisomerase II inhibitors and myelodysplastic syndrome and doxorubicin than I ever imagined I’d have to learn, and there’s not a lot approved for secondary AML, but what there is, is—of course—also chemotherapy, which is just… fuck,” she says, exhaling sharply. “Just a type of drug that kills the cancer a little faster than it kills you.”
“Anna—”
“He has insurance, but because our health care system is a nightmare, he’s underinsured. And he’s a mechanic, you know, so even though he owns his own shop it’s not like he has a pension or paid medical leave.”
It hits me so hard. Of course. This is why she needed money. She’s been scraping her bowl just to cover her expenses and his. And she’s twenty-five.
“Anna, you could have asked me for money anytime.”
She laughs at this, the true, round sound filling the room. “I assumed you were as poor as I am.” Anna tucks her hands beneath her chin. “Besides, I have enough now. It feels weird to take the money from you after everything, but—”
“No. You’re taking it.”
“Unless they figure out we’re lying.”
“Even if they all figure it out, you’re taking it.”
She gazes steadily at me and then nods against her hand. “Okay. I can be selfish when it comes to my dad.”
“It isn’t selfish. It’s a business arrangement, revised verbally just now.”
“Still,” she says, and our gazes snag and hold. “It’s different now.”
It’s my turn to laugh. “I can’t believe it’s only been a week.” Reaching forward, I stroke my thumb over her cheek. “And… whatever happens between us after, I mean who knows… but I’ll make sure you’re taken care of.”
Her eyes widen and she shakes her head. “No way. You’re not responsible for me.”
“I know.” I nod, even if it’s not entirely true. “Let’s just take it one day at a time.”
Anna leans in, kissing me. “One day at a time. That’s all I’ve ever really been able to afford anyway.” She grins, but then her smile turns mischievous as she rolls me over onto her, saying, “Let’s see how it all feels in a few months.”
I tilt my head, looking down at her, knowing I will never tire of this view. “Why in a few months?”
“I’ve heard divorce sex is hot,” she says, and cackles in delight as I dive for her neck.