Chapter 25
CHRISTIAN
Gibson’s eyes are fevered and bright even in the dim bar as he recounts his lunch meeting with the politician Silas ran off to live with when he, Drew, and I could no longer easily afford rent after our fourth roommate moved out the winter before last. The fact that Silas had been seeing anyone came as a shock to me, but that it was the loathsome Republican Graham Lawther had me seriously worried for my friend’s safety and mental health.
This isn’t exactly what I expected would happen, but I never thought anything good would come of him being someone’s guy on the side—especially not someone with a public profile like Lawther’s.
What’s truly shocking about Gibson’s recounting is that this all seems to have been driven by Marianne.
“Do you always do everything she tells you to?” I ask when I sense he’s wrapping things up.
“I—she’s my wife.”
I guess. In name only. “What do you get out of this deal?”
Gibson looks at me, so confused, like I asked him to explain how the tides work.
Like it should be obvious, and yet he has no clue how to put it into words.
There’s pain in there somewhere, too, the same pain that’s always behind his eyes whenever Marianne comes up.
Like she went missing a long time ago, but he can’t give up the search.
“What do you mean what do I get out of it? It’s not like she wants anything else from me. ”
God. Those words hit me like a punch to the stomach.
“What would have happened if you hadn’t gone through with it?” I ask, moderating my tone to sound more sympathetic. It’s obvious he’s miserable.
“You’re pissed at me,” he says, flipping the script. “You think I’m some shady fucker now, don’t you? Please believe me when I say this isn’t an everyday thing.”
“I asked you a direct question, and of course you’re shady, but only because of the sex clubs—”
“How is that shady?”
I cover his mouth with my hand for a full second so I can say, “Answer my question. What would happen if you told her no?”
“I don’t know,” he says when I lower my hand. “I don’t tell her no.”
“Why not?”
“She’s been my best friend since we were eighteen years old—we’ve been through everything together.”
I meet this declaration with some skepticism.
It seems to me like he goes through plenty without her.
Like last night, for instance. And today.
Unless none of this means anything to him, which doesn’t feel like the case.
Meaning—he’s clearly going through something, and she might be the reason, but I’m the one he wanted to talk to about it.
“Was she not available for drinks today, then?” I ask, backing into my point.
“Okay, smart ass. I see where you’re going with this, and I don’t expect you to understand—I’m not sure anyone could. But why would I want to give her more reason to push me away?”
“You think doing her bidding is gonna win her back? Even if it hurts innocent bystanders?”
“Graham Lawther isn’t innocent.”
“Silas is,” I say flatly, abruptly rising from the table to get a drink at the bar.
When I try to pay, the bartender waves my debit card off. “It’s covered.” He tips his chin in Gibson’s direction.
I roll my eyes. “Whatever Daddy wants,” I mutter, and the bartender chuckles.
“Can you call him?” Gibson asks as I slide back into the booth and get to work on my tequila.
“What would you like me to say to him? Hey—your sugar daddy’s about to go through some things. You might want to steer clear?”
“So, it’s not serious between them?” Gibson asks in what looks like disbelief.
“If they’re still seeing each other, it’s gotta be, doesn’t it? Silas isn’t like me.”
“What does that mean?”
“He wants a relationship.”
Gibson grimaces.
“And yes, I will call him. What am I allowed to say?”
“Whatever you need to say to make it okay.”
“Jesus, you’re a mess. And you’re drunk.”
“I’m not that drunk,” he says, “but I don’t feel great either. Jesus, you should have seen the look on his face.”
“I see the look on yours,” I say.
“And?”
And? It’s completely disarming. I’m sitting next to someone who might have just destroyed one of my best friend’s life, and I want to make him feel better about it.
I hate seeing him like this—wearing his unhappiness like a cloak of shame.
He’s better than this. “I mean—if you’re that fucked up about what you’ve done, you can always call him and take it back.
Limit the damage to bankrupting him. Keep Silas the fuck out of it. ”
“Marianne has the video,” he says. “She’ll use it if I don’t.”
“And that’s fine with you?” I ask.
“I get it—okay? What you’re implying. I know she’s using me, and I don’t know why she gives a fuck about this other than she hates men in general after what happened to her—”
“Hold on.” I hold up a hand to stop him. “What exactly happened to her?”
Gibson’s eyes widen like he realizes he said too much.
“Look, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. You mentioned something about trauma when we were in Rome—she hates men—including you for whatever reason—”
“I never said she hated me.”
“Anyway, I can connect the dots,” I tell him.
“It happened in Ibiza,” he says.
I lift my brows. Not to make light of the situation, but Ibiza is one of those places I’ve heard about but can’t be sure actually exists—like Atlantis for rich people. “What did?” I ask gently.
“She was taken from a club by a group of men and raped. She woke up in a strange bed in a strange place, bleeding, bruised, totally violated—it was so bad, Christian. The three men who did it—they were all still there—sitting around in the other room, and they just let her walk out like she was nothing. She had no clue where she was. No phone. Her clothes were all ripped and…” He chokes on his next words and clears his throat.
“When was this?” I ask.
“The summer after grad school for her. It was a couples’ trip, but I had to be here—I had summer classes I had to take to catch up. Fucking Fischer and his girlfriend went along with a few other couples, but not me. So she was the only person without someone to take care of her—keep her safe.”
As the picture comes into sharper focus, I realize I should have seen it before. Guilt. It’s like looking in a fucking mirror. No wonder we connect the way we do.
“The police picked her up on the road, took her to a hospital. She was able to get in touch with her friends who got in touch with me, and I was on the next plane, but I was too late, you know?”
“Yeah,” I say. I do know.
“I should have been there.”
I should have known she wasn’t sleeping anymore. “I’m sorry,” I tell him because I don’t have much else to offer. There is no worse feeling that I’m aware of.
He shakes his head, his gaze sliding from his drink to me. His hair falls across his forehead, and I resist the urge to put it back where it belongs, but it’s hard not to touch him. Very hard.
“It was a long time ago,” he says.
“But you’re both still dealing with the fallout, sounds like.”
He drops his gaze again, sinking even lower in his seat. “Yeah, well…”
Maybe this is shitty, but it’s hard for me to muster a ton of sympathy for her when I’m sitting here looking at what the years have done to him. I don’t begrudge Marianne her trauma, but hurting other people to cope isn’t exactly healthy. I’d like to understand it better—the way he does.
“This is her M.O., then?” I ask. “Make all men suffer? When does that end?”
He gives me a helpless look along with a shrug.
“Gibson…fuck.”
“I know,” he sighs.
“And you don’t think maybe she’s using that hate to fuck you over a little, too?”
He sucks on his lower lip as he stares into his empty glass. “I don’t even know who I am without her,” he whispers.
“Yeah, I noticed that.”
He gives me a side-eye that’s actually really hot.
“Why’d you wanna tell me about this?” I ask. “The stuff about Lawther and Silas, I mean.”
“You don’t think he’s gonna do something crazy like—end it all do you?”
“Probably not, but I’ll talk with Silas later if I can get him to pick up the phone.”
“It wasn’t until I was laying out all the terms that I realized how completely she wanted to destroy him,” Gibson says. “Like there was nothing I could say to mitigate it.”
“You told him he has options, which is true—he does. You have options, too.”
“Like what?”
“Tell Marianne you’ll get Avery the money, but it ends there.”
He sighs heavily. “She’ll just do the rest herself, Chris.”
“And how would that make you feel?”
“Not any worse than I do right now.”
“You sure about that?”
He shifts in his seat and spins his glass on the table. “What are you asking me?”
“I know I’ve brought this up before, but you don’t strike me as particularly happy with your life—specifically your marriage.”
“Is it the way I follow you around that’s tipping my hand?”
I laugh. “No. If anything, I’m the one following you around. We cancel each other out.”
We’re not the only people in the Downside, but we’re two of less than a dozen others. Still, when he grabs me by the neck and brings our mouths together, my eyes blow wide open, and I almost pull away.
Almost.
But once his tongue brushes mine, I’m already fighting the urge to shove my hand down his pants. If he’s trying to distract me from the subject at hand, it’s working.
“Mm…” he groans. “You taste so fucking good.”
“So do you.” Whiskey and warmth.
We kiss again, and I wrap his tie around my hand, keeping him close and locked against my mouth while I try to devour every centimeter of him.
The way he kisses me has evolved a lot since that first time.
It’s aggressive, still, but he allows me my own hunger, too.
We feed off each other, our interest mutual and, if my math is right, equally voracious.