Chapter 41
M arcus
When Emma informs me that she’s listing her remaining stuff on Craigslist and officially giving up her place, I feel both triumphant and relieved—and to my surprise, a little guilty.
“You did what ?” Ashton gapes at me in disbelief when I meet him for coffee near my office on Thursday and fess up about the situation.
I scrub a hand over my face. “I just told you. I got Long to buy her landlady’s townhouse in Brooklyn at above-market value.”
“To force Emma to move in with you,” Ashton clarifies, staring at me like I’ve lost my marbles.
“No, to nudge her to move in with me,” I snap.
Fucking Ashton; I was really counting on him being on my side in this.
“She has all these hang-ups about money and not wanting to take advantage of me, and I screwed up with her once before, so she’s got trust issues…
We were heading there anyway, and I just wanted to expedite things, okay? Is that so fucking wrong?”
“Not if you’re Machiavelli.” He props his elbows on the table, looking fascinated. “What else have you done to this poor girl?”
“Nothing.” Then some demonic creature—Mr. Puffs, perhaps—tugs on my tongue, and I grudgingly admit, “I may have also had her investigated when we first started dating.”
“What the fuck?” He straightens. “Why? Did you think she’s some kind of criminal?”
“Of course not. She said she didn’t want to see me after a particularly great date, and I needed some information to figure out how to— You know what? Never mind.” I don’t like the way he’s looking at me—like I’m admitting to murder.
Hasn’t every man in love done at least a little stalking?
“Oh, no.” He picks up his cup, dark amusement curling the corners of his mouth. “You’re not getting out of this so easily. If I understand it right, you pretty much stalked Emma until you got her to date you, and now you’ve also made sure she has no choice but to move in with you.”
“Bullshit. She has a choice. She could’ve gotten a different apartment. She decided to live with me of her own free will.” Which is why I don’t understand why I feel any guilt over this situation whatsoever.
“Yeah, sure.” Ashton is full-on laughing now, the bastard. “So how are you going to get her to marry you? Blackmail? Torture? Kidnapping?”
“Fuck you, man. One day, you’ll meet a woman who won’t put up with your bullshit, and then you’ll see what measures you resort to.”
A strange expression crosses Ashton’s face, but I’m too pissed to dwell on it. Picking up my cup, I down my coffee in a few long gulps and stand up. “I’ve got to go.”
“Marcus, wait.” Ashton jumps to his feet and steps in front of me before I can walk away from the table.
“Listen, I’m sorry, man.” He sounds genuinely contrite.
“You just caught me off-guard. You have to admit it’s kind of ridiculous that you’re The Herald ’s most eligible billionaire or whatever, and you have to resort to this kind of shit to get a bookstore clerk to be with you.
But”—he raises his palm before I can plant my fist into his face—“having met Emma twice now, and seen the way you two are together, I understand why you’re so hung up on her. ”
Some of my anger eases. “You do?”
“Oh, yeah.” He gets back to his seat, and after a moment of deliberation, I sit down as well.
“I’ve always admired your drive, you know,” he says, picking up his coffee cup.
“Remember that first time we all went to a bar, after our Corporate Finance exam? Barry was there, and his girlfriend, Lina? Anyway, we’d all had a few beers, and then you told us you were going to be a billionaire. Remember that?” He takes a sip.
I force my tightly curled hand to unclench. “I do, yeah.” It was a few days after Ashton and I had been partnered up on our Corporate Finance project, before we really got to know each other and became friends.
Ashton sets down his cup. “Right. Well, here’s the thing.
As drunk as we were, no one laughed at your proclamation.
No one was even tempted to laugh because we all knew you’d make it happen.
You radiated ambition; it practically oozed from your pores.
You were like a fucking missile, locked and loaded and on the way to your target.
Nobody doubted that you’d get there—not our teachers, not our fellow students, and certainly not me. ”
I frown. “So?”
“So I envied you that.” Ashton’s face is as serious as I’ve ever seen it.
“You knew exactly what you wanted out of life, and I didn’t have a fucking clue.
But recently, having observed you over the past couple of years, I realized something.
That missile-like determination, that ambition that propelled you forward, you couldn’t turn it off.
You made your billions, and you just kept going, unable to stop, unable to appreciate any of it. ”
My frown deepens. “That’s not true. I enjoy—”
“Yeah, I know, you enjoy having the penthouse and the private plane and all that money in the bank, but has any of that truly satisfied you? I’ve never seen you pause and take it in, or appreciate it on any level beyond the most superficial.”
I exhale a frustrated breath. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that I stopped envying you after a while. Like that missile, you needed to keep going, keep chasing after your ever-moving target—else you’d fall out of the sky. Take away the chase, and you’d crash and burn. Or you would’ve a couple of months ago. Now I’m not so sure.”
I cock my head. “Because of Emma?”
He nods. “At least I assume it’s because of her.
You’ve been different the last couple of times I’ve seen you.
Still focused, still driven, but… less machine-like, if that makes sense.
Like you could actually turn it off if you wanted to.
” A rueful smile touches his face. “Around Emma, you’re almost human…
though from what you’ve just told me, you may have simply redirected some of that drive.
Poor girl doesn’t stand a chance, does she? ”
“No,” I say softly. “She doesn’t.” I’d give up every dollar in my bank account to keep her, make a thousand covert deals to ensure that she remains mine.
Ashton’s expression inexplicably softens. “You love her, don’t you?”
“Yes, I love her.” I take a breath and let it out slowly.
It’s getting easier to say the words, to accept them for the incontrovertible truth they are.
“And you’re right. I am more human around her, happy in a way I’ve never known before.
Which is why I don’t want to fuck it up. If Emma finds what I’ve done—”
“How would she find out?” Ashton says reasonably. “You’re not planning on telling her, right?”
“No.” As much as I hate the idea of having secrets between us, I can’t risk losing her.
Ashton grins. “Right, smart choice. Chicks can be funny about the whole stalking-and-Machiavellian-machinations business. And you can count on me to keep my mouth shut. As to whatever guilt you’re feeling, that’s just more evidence of your growing humanity.
Marcus the Missile wouldn’t have cared about the means, just the end.
So take that guilt, shove it deep down, and focus on the future with your girlfriend.
Do what you’ve got to do to make her your wife. ”
* * *
I dwell on the conversation with Ashton for the rest of the day, doing my best to suppress the inconvenient guilt. Was he right? Did I force Emma into living with me rather than just nudging her into making the right decision?
But no. Long’s shell corporation made the offer to Metz last Friday, and Emma didn’t inform me about her decision until this morning.
Since I assume the landlady called her right away, that means my kitten has taken the time to think it through rather than acting out of desperation. And I’m glad about that.
For all that the primitive beast inside me wants to cage Emma in his lair, the thought that she might be with me because she has to is repellent.
I want her to want me, to love me as much as I love her.
What started off as a sexual obsession has deepened into a need so powerful it bears all the markings of addiction.
Except instead of destroying me, like I initially feared it would, it has enriched my life.
When that $700 million trade went bad the weekend before Thanksgiving, I blamed my feelings for Emma for distracting me from what’s important instead of realizing that I was beginning to embrace the truly important things.
The things I’ve wanted since I was a child with an indifferent alcoholic for a mother.
The things I didn’t dare admit to wanting even to myself.
It had been easy to acknowledge the physical deprivations of my childhood, to tell myself that money would eliminate the hollow fear inside me—that feeling of always balancing on the knife’s edge, of being a single misstep away from a disaster.
But no matter how wealthy I became, the fear stayed with me, driving me to work ever harder, ever longer.
Ashton was right about me. I’d had no off switch—because poverty had never been what I truly feared and money not what I really chased.
Over the past couple of weeks with Emma, the feeling of contentment I first experienced with her has grown stronger, the anxiety over the capricious future receding until it’s nothing more than a dim shadow from the past. I can now look at what I’ve earned and know — really know, with a certainty untainted by that lifelong fear—that one bad quarter won’t wipe me out, that if I step away from work one evening, I won’t lose everything I’ve achieved.