Chapter 40
FORTY
Nash
I’ve spent the past three weeks tracking down my former employees and asking them for meetings so that I would be able to tick off all of the bullets on Colt Fowler’s to-do list, the effort for which, I’m almost certain was designed to end up fruitless.
I was surprised by the number of them who agreed to meet with me and talk me through their experiences.
I’ve written out more than sixty personal checks and handed out an equal amount of genuine apologies, the reception of which has been a mixed bag.
I saved the Texan’s girlfriend for last, because she was one of the few to whom I was the cruelest, and I know it. She’d come to me for help once and I all but spat in her face. Hearing her perspective of that night - which I do remember well – made my stomach turn.
Tonight, I learn if my efforts have paid off.
Without his father’s approval, I know that Emmett won’t stay.
That approval may be the most important thing in the world to him, and it’s why I was so willing to jump through his many, many hoops.
Even if we don’t end the evening with Fowler’s blessing, Emmett will know that he was worth it to me to try.
After everything, that’s the only thing that matters.
The doorbell sings out as I tuck my crucifix into my shirt collar and secure my tie into place, and I angle my head down the hall to yell at my staff. “Will someone—” I stop myself, releasing a breath, and I head for the door myself.
Emmett stands behind the door in a deep eggplant suit with black accents, one that – finally – hugs his body the way that I’d hoped to see one day. “He answered his own door and he’s wearing black?” He asks with his eyebrows shot up in surprise as he takes in my own suit.
I smoothe my hands over the lapels of the jacket with a chuckle. “I thought that it might be a nice change.”
“It’s really—” he blows out a breath through pursed lips.
“Wear black more often.” If I didn’t know any better, I’d almost be convinced that I can feel myself blush.
With a hand wrapped around the back of my neck, he pulls me in for a kiss and offers me the large bundle of flowers in his hand, each of them deep red and varying in species. “These are for you.”
“Flowers?”
“I’m picking up my date,” he smiles, pressing another kiss to my lips. “Do you know what I want for my birthday?”
“Probably to get high at home and watch that horrible mutant rat cartoon.”
“Okay, yes,” he laughs. “But I want you to bring this Nash tonight. I want people to meet you.”
“That’s an awfully big ask, pretty boy.”
“We’ll check in with each other,” he says. “And if one of us needs to escape, we’ll bounce.”
With the way that the deep purple hues in his suit bring out the different tones in his eyes, and the way that he’s smiling at me, all that I can think about is hauling him up to my bedroom, tearing that suit off of him and fucking him until sun up.
Reaching for his belt, I pull his hips closer to mine, pinching my brow together as a crinkle sounds from his pocket, and he presses his lips together in an effort to keep from laughing.
I reach inside of the pocket, producing a neatly-folded pouch of gummy worms, and I have to bite back my own amusement.
“You’re bringing candy?”
“It’s my birthday,” he laughs as he snatches them away from me. “Let me live.”
“That, it is,” I smile.
·
As we step into Arcane, we are inundated with loud, bass-heavy music that rattles the bones.
Beautiful women in white cocktail dresses carry trays of beverages over their heads, passing them out to our guests, many of whom have taken to dancing with one another.
As one of them passes us with a tray of glasses topped with a gold trim – to signify that the drinks are non-alcoholic, where their alcoholic counterparts are rimmed with black – I pluck two beverages from the tray and hand one to Emmett, clinking my own glass against his.
For the first time since my grandparents passed, I have someone standing at my side as I make my obligatory welcome and thank you speeches. My ex-husband never wanted to be in the spotlight, and though we met because I was in it, he was still surprised by the constant pressures that came with it.
Emmett wears a proud smile as he stands next to me, which pushes in the dimple on the left side of his mouth.
I can feel the hateful burn of several pairs of eyes against my skin, but for the first time in as long as I can remember, I don’t look to find the source of them.
I feel absolutely no desire to scare them into submission or humiliate them for looking at me.
My eyes are on him, and I have no intention of them leaving their post.
Emmett is the one who looks, and Emmett is the one who stares them down, even through the shutter of cameras, as his hand falls protectively against my back. “Just keep showing them,” he tells me quietly.
I rest my hand at the base of his neck and squeeze, and I can feel him stifle a giggle as he continues to stare at the people who have made the apparent mistake to pass judgment.
We make it maybe twenty feet into the party before his child-stepmother - I really have got to stop calling her that.
He hates it – before his friend finds us.
She hurries toward us with the handle of a cane in one hand and the skirt of her dress in another, the tip of her nose reddening as she approaches.
“Happy birthday!” She shouts, and even from here, the tears lining her eyes are visible.
“Stop, idiot,” Emmett laughs as he pulls her into his arms. “This is gonna be the car incident all over again.”
“No,” she says with a tearful shake of her head, “I wore waterproof this time.”
Emmett lets out a deep belly laugh as he holds his friend close to his heart, rubbing a hand along her back.
I understand the way that she feels; he’s twenty-six today.
It could have been any regular Friday night, any other less-than-newsworthy trip around the sun, but this feels like a miracle.
With a kiss to Emmett’s head and a gentle pat to his friend’s shoulder, I excuse myself and head through the club toward the VIP area.
As much as I’d like to keep my pretty boy all to myself, tonight isn’t about me and what I want.
As I approach the stanchion that separates the club from the public access area to the VIP-only space, I’m stopped by a loudly-clearing throat behind me.
“Nash.” I turn to face Colt Fowler, extending his hand to me. “It seems I owe you my thanks.”
“What might that be for?”
“Nothing surfaced about Emmett being hospitalized,” he explains. “I’d asked Davis if that was his doing, and he told me that it wasn’t. Neither of us were behind his drinking being kept quiet, either. That leaves one other person who knew of both events and had the power to keep them quiet.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Fowler,” I tell him, raising my glass to my lips. “And neither does Emmett.”
With a subtle nod of understanding, he tells me, “Whoever is responsible for keeping it out of the press, I’m grateful to him for protecting my son when I couldn’t.”
“I’m sure he would tell you that it was nothing.”
“It wasn’t to me.” With a nod and a clap to my shoulder, he excuses himself, more than likely to find and greet his son.
I don’t expect that Colt Fowler and I will ever be friends, and that’s something that I’m okay with. I’ve said it time and time again: I don’t need friends. I’ve gone most of my life without them and I’ve been fine. The only thing that I need from him is to show Emmett that he accepts us.
More eyes glue themselves to me as I move through the building, one pair of which belong to the Texan, who seems to be purposely using his body as a wall between myself and his girlfriend.
It’s slightly irritating, but it’s also to be expected of him.
The others are more benign; people who want to take a photo with me but are too afraid to ask, people who want to take photos from inside the event to sell to a tabloid, and to no surprise, some who simply don’t like me.
“Nash!” Someone shouts. “Mr. Montgomery, over here!”
A woman flags me down, standing next to a man holding a large camera which isn’t supposed to be in here, but the red light flashing above the lens tells me that this is likely a live show. I reach deep inside to find the appropriate mask, dropping it into place with a cool smile as I approach her.
“Mr. Montgomery,” she says again, “I’d love the chance to talk to you about tonight’s event, if you have a minute.”
“I would be happy to give you an interview,” I tell her, “but unfortunately this is a closed event. We aren’t allowing press inside, so I’ll have to ask you to leave, but you can contact my assistant to set something up.”
“It’ll only take a minute!”
“I’m sorry,” I smile, hoping that it doesn’t look as fake as it is, “the camera should have been stopped at the door. Please contact my office for a piece.”
“We were guaranteed an exclusive with you tonight,” she tells me.
“By whom?”
“Your father.”
My mask clatters to the proverbial ground and a laugh escapes me as amusement etches itself into every corner of my mind.
My father has tried for years to contact me, to throw wrenches into my businesses, to do anything that it might take to crack the armor that I’ve built for myself – the armor that he helped to make necessary.
I didn’t think that the old man would have it in him to try this.
“Actually, sweetheart,” I tell her, taking a sip from my drink, “I will give you an exclusive comment. Jefferson Montgomery is a bigot. His only interest in having you here tonight was because one of our beneficiaries is a charity working to prevent queer suicide and homelessness – a program which I would have needed, had I not had grandparents to take me in when Jefferson kicked me out of my home because I was gay. He’ll want to buy your footage and use it for hateful propaganda.
” Dropping a hand onto her shoulder, I say, “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a check to write and a partner to celebrate with. ”
“Your partner is Emmett Fowler?” She clarifies, positioning herself in front of the camera as if we’re now in an interview. “He’s considerably younger than you. Do you worry that—”
“No, I don’t,” I stop her. “My parents promised me Hellfire and God’s wrath, and instead, He gave me Emmett. I worry about plenty of things, but our relationship and peoples’ opinions about it aren’t on that list.”
I push past her before she can ask me any further questions, and I pull my crucifix from it’s tucked-in position behind my shirt collar as I let out an anxious breath. The day that I finally hear of my father’s death will be a day that I celebrate.
And I might even invite all of these people to do so with me.
I find Emmett’s friend seated on one of the stools at the bar, and I carefully approach her, dropping my forearm onto the top of it. “Can I get you something stronger?” I ask, gesturing toward the glass of water in front of her.
“Oh, no, I don’t drink,” she tells me with a shake of her head, tucking her hair behind her ear.
“But thank you.” An uncomfortable silence hangs between us while she spins her glass against the bar top, not making eye contact with me.
“This is a good start,” she finally says, and I arch a brow in response.
“It’s easy to tell people you’re sorry; that’s just words.
The effort to show you mean it is harder.
Not many people are willing to do that.”
Dropping onto the stool next to her, I wave a hand at the bartender. “What might the over-under be on forgiveness?”
“Depends on who you want it from,” she shrugs. “Other people, seventy-thirty. Yourself…I think that’s up to you. Do you think what you did was forgivable?”
“No,” I answer with a shake of my head.
“Then try anyway.” As I pull my drink to my lips, she says, “I don’t like people who hurt my boys, and you have, in one way or another, hurt all of my boys. But Emmett seems lighter when you’re around, and so do you. So…” She stands, picking up her glass. “Take that however you will.”
I tap my fingers along the side of my glass as I take another sip of the liquor inside.
There have only been a handful of times in my life in which I’ve felt remorse; the first time that I kissed a boy, the one and only time that I tried to force myself to have sex with a woman, the night that I said those things to Emmett, and though I wouldn’t count it as an adult, the time that I called my father a buffoon under my breath was enough to send me into confession.
Being awake for the first time in more than twenty years, finally dropping the all-too-heavy masks that I’ve relied on for too long, I’ve been hit with a barrage of regrets and things that I feel genuine remorse for.
I was truthful when I told the girl that I don’t feel the things that I’ve done are forgivable.
Fowler didn’t have to instruct me to pay for the counseling of my former employees – after speaking with them, I would have offered to, regardless.
They were right; I’d been a monster.