Chapter 38
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
OLIVER
I stride down the wood-paneled hallway lined with pictures of my ancestors, toward the voices in the living room. Squeezing my hands into pulsating balls, I try to take breaths deeper than my thudding heart and tight chest will allow.
How the hell I got through the rest of yesterday after Lexi left, I have no idea. I managed to smile and crack the infantile jokes expected of me during the last round of wedding photos, then focused hard to book her a flight back to New York and send the details to Dane.
I had to stop myself from sending them directly to her because I dread to think what else I might have said in that message.
Maybe Don’t go, I’m wild about you.
Maybe I’m sorry, I should have stood up for you more and not caved to these assholes. All I want is to be with you.
Maybe Let’s run away to a deserted island where no one will ever find us and live off a diet of local vegetation and love, passion, and mutual respect.
But any of those would have been selfish. And I don’t doubt she has no respect left for me after everything that’s happened.
So all I can do now is try to make this as right for her as I possibly can.
But, although I’ve stood up to my parents and this institution by myself before, doing it now without Lexi by my side seems impossible.
She made me feel way bigger and better and more courageous than I am. But with her three thousand miles away, I’m more like the useless, weak lump I was when I was a teenager.
To be honest, my seventeen-year-old self’s trick of getting drunk and toilet-papering some unsuspecting local’s front yard sounds like a pretty good stress-reliever right now.
The last half hour’s been spent pacing in my bedroom, which feels catastrophically empty now that the only part of Lexi that remains is her scent on the bedding.
I’ve worked hard to psych myself up for this conversation with my parents—rehearsing how it might go, figuring out how to tell them everything and to defend the book. And I’ve done my best to convince myself that I can pull this off.
A few more steps and I’ll be in their line of sight, then there’ll be no turning back. Right now I could spin around, jump in the car that’s waiting to take me to the airport without even saying goodbye, and fly home—yes, New York is my home now, not here.
This place never felt like a home. It’s always been like living in a museum. And now it feels like living in one where the scary stuffed exhibits come alive to torture you.
But I’m going nowhere yet. I can’t be a coward when someone needs to put a rocket up everyone’s arse for how Lexi’s been treated.
And that someone is going to be me. They can walk all over me as much as they like, but there’s no fucking way I’m letting them get away with the shit they’ve put her through.
“Ah,” my father says, taking off his glasses when he sees me approaching.
That’s it. I have to do it now. I’m all in.
“We were just talking about you.” My mother is, uncharacteristically, sitting by his side on the sofa.
“I don’t doubt that.” I plant my feet firmly on the edge of the fringed rug. Not close enough to them that it looks like I’m staying, not so far away that it looks like I’m leaving. As always, existing somewhere in the unclaimed land of belonging and yet also not belonging.
Giles, who’s facing my parents, snorts and flips through the papers on his clipboard with what looks like feigned concentration.
“Excellent that you’re all here.” I rub my hands together in the hope it gives off an air of control and authority, rather than the combination of screaming and dying going on inside me.
“Now that the wedding’s over and Sofia and Jeremy have left for their honeymoon, I think it’s important we get a few things out in the open. ”
Yes, that definitely sounded mature and nonjudgmental.
“Absolutely we must,” my mother says. “Sit down.” She sweeps her hand toward the chair that Giles is standing next to.
“I’m fine here, thanks.”
“Please.” My father sighs. “Please sit.”
I stay where I am and, I swear to God, Giles only just about managed to stop himself from rolling his eyes.
“Yes, Oliver. For goodness’ sake, why won’t you sit down?” my mother snaps.
“What difference does it make if I’m sitting or standing?”
“Sitting is more civilized,” my father says.
He might as well have tossed a lit match on the powder-dry tinder inside me.
“I thought you’d learned long ago that I’m not civilized. Ironic, really. Because yesterday, I learned that I’m considerably more civilized than a lot of other people around here.”
I did not intend to go straight in with snark, but it slipped out. Well, maybe not slipped—more like spurted. But Jesus, they press my buttons like no one else on the planet.
But the last thing I want to do is lose the moral high ground. Lord knows I don’t have it that often, and I have every intention of making the most of it.
“If only on the basis,” I continue, “that I do not go around spying on people or digging up dirt to sell to the gutter press.”
I sense Giles’s eyes boring into the side of my head, but there’s more chance of me juggling the crown jewels one-handed than looking at him.
My parents shuffle uneasily on the sofa. Dad picks up his Financial Times, opens it, then refolds it exactly as it was. Mum dusts off a cushion as if she’s suddenly spotted some heinous, immovable fluff.
Why are they both suddenly uncomfortable?
The awkward silence is broken by Giles. “I have some new news for you, sir. I’ve heard—”
“Hold on.” I silence him as a realization hits me like an ice block to the stomach.
My focus remains entirely on my parents, who’re still not looking at me.
“Did you both know all this was going on? That my room was bugged? That Giles or one of his cronies was going around digging up dirt on Lexi, buying old photos from a college boyfriend, then getting their friends at the tabloids, who are undoubtedly on backhanders, to serve them up to the public to humiliate her?”
Dad pulls out a scrunched-up cloth from the pocket of his slacks and polishes his glasses.
Mum gets up and walks away, looking around. “Where did I leave my embroidery?”
I didn’t know it was possible to physically notice your blood pressure rising until right this second. This isn’t stress. This isn’t even anger. This is downright disgust. And I’m not certain I’m going to be able to stop myself from losing my shit about it.
“You were in on this?” The tension in my jaw makes it painful to get the words out.
“It was bad enough to think this arsehole was going rogue and betraying me”—I stab the air between Giles and me with one finger—“but my own parents?”
“Arsehole, huh,” Giles mutters.
“Well, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck,” I respond, even though I probably shouldn’t.
“I wouldn’t say in on it,” Dad says.
“We certainly knew nothing about the photographs until after they were published,” Mum adds, picking up magazines and looking under them as if they might be hiding her needlework. “That was Giles’s independent initiative.”
Giles nods and emits a proud little hm sound.
“Oh, well, that’s okay then,” I tell my parents. “Your consciences are free and clear.” Since screaming isn’t socially acceptable, I shake my head and blow out a long, incensed breath.
Dad pushes his now thoroughly clean glasses back up his nose. “We’re all just looking out for you. Trying to stop you from making a terrible mistake. Embarrassing yourself. You know, that sort of thing.”
“But you don’t care if you humiliate my girlfriend by displaying her breasts to the world?”
Mum shrugs as she retakes her seat next to Dad. “Sometimes there’s collateral damage.”
My head and chest flood with heat. Is she for real? “How dare you describe the woman I love as collateral fucking damage?!”
“Oh, why do you have to swear?” she says. “Our ancestors must be rolling in their graves. Sit down for a minute and listen to Giles’s news. And he is not an arsehole, by the way.”
That’s not a debate I’m prepared to have, even though the evidence is entirely on my side.
But I do need to sit because, if I don’t, I really have no idea what I might do.
The only thing I’m totally clear about is that my decision to leave the country and extricate myself from this dysfunctional way of life was one hundred percent correct and has now been one hundred percent vindicated.
“The overseas job that Miss Lane was going to get after writing your…memoir…” Giles drags out the last word, covering it with a slick coating of sarcasm.
“Yes.” I slump forward with a heavy sigh, elbows on my knees. “The war correspondent post in Eastern Europe.”
“Yes.” Giles taps his clipboard with his pen. “It’s been given to someone else.”
“What?” Now I have no choice but to look at him because my eyes have instinctively shot to his pompous expression. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, sir”—now he sounds like he’s explaining astrophysics to a three-year-old who’s not comprehending—“Miss Lane will not be getting that job. Because it’s gone to someone else.”
“You can’t be right. She made an agreement that if she wri—” Fuck. I stop myself just in time before I say if she writes my book, she gets her dream job. Thank Christ, because accidentally blurting it out is not how I want to break the news of my tell-all memoir to my parents.
“She writes what, sir?” Giles asks with a smug glint in his eye.
“The agreement was that she completes an assignment they set her and then she gets the job she always wanted.” That’s better.
“I assure you, sir, that Miss Lane is currently very much facing unemployment.”
Now I’m back on my feet. And striding across the room away from all of them toward a tall cabinet lined with Doulton figurines from the 1800s that I’ve always hated.
“I assume this was all your doing.” I spin around and draw a large circle with my finger that encompasses the three of them. “That for some reason you are punishing her for her association with me.”