Chapter 39
COLE’S CHILDHOOD HOME HAS BEEN fully renovated to the point where it doesn’t look, smell, or feel anything like she remembers.
The tired green carpet dotted with old cigarette burns is gone, replaced with wide plank hardwood floors.
There’s ceramic tile in the kitchen where the olive patterned linoleum used to be, along with Shaker-style cabinets, quartz counters, and new stainless appliances.
The house only has one bathroom, but it now has a double sink vanity and a walk-in shower.
And Ray did something magical to remove the stale odor of cigarette smoke that used to permeate every inch of the house, because her sensitive nose can’t detect anything but the scent of fresh paint.
He even planted a garden in the front yard.
It’s the opposite of the “not a mansion” house Cole shares with Jordan.
Nothing is fancy. The tile isn’t imported from Italy; the paint isn’t Farrow it feels like a home.
Which is ironic, because a home was the one thing Cole had gone searching for when she left Seaside, and the only thing she never did find.
Ray’s kitchen table is so new, he hasn’t yet taken the sales tag off.
She stares at her phone, still turned off, her finger hovering over the side button that will bring it back to life.
It’s crazy to think that this six-inch device used to be glued to her hand nearly every waking hour that she wasn’t filming or showering.
She remembers misplacing it once while she on a Trophy Wives girls’ trip and telling everyone around her in a panic, “My whole life is in that phone!”
But she just can’t bring herself to turn it on. The decision about her future with Trophy Wives might be in this phone. The truth about Jordan and Annika is in this phone. The end of her marriage is in this phone.
She takes a tentative, guilt-filled bite of the Vanilla Thrilla she bought at the Green Bean, and the shortbread cookie turns out to be a sweet, buttery delight that makes her taste buds sing.
It also triggers all her food and body image issues, which have only worsened over the past six years.
On TV, five extra pounds looks like fifteen, and if she signs another contract with Quan, she’ll have to start a new diet the minute the ink is dry.
Assuming Quan wants her back. And assuming she even wants to do an eighth season.
“Oh, honey, don’t be ridiculous,” Cecily had said to her last night at the restaurant, one of the new places near the high-rise beachfront hotels that cater to the tourists. “Of course you want to do an eighth season. Your goal should be to stay on the show as long as you can.”
“Even if everyone hates me?” Cole said.
“Oh, who cares, they’ll still watch.” Cecily turned to Ray. “What do you think?”
Cole’s brother took a sip of his beer and shrugged. “Hate-watching is kind of the point of reality TV, no?”
Cecily frowned at him and turned back to Cole. “Remember why you signed on in the first place. The show puts you in the zeitgeist. It’s the springboard for all your other business ventures.”
“You mean the spray tan line Sephora and Ulta won’t stock?
” Cole had said dryly. “Or the brand partnerships that fell apart? Or the public appearances that got canceled? Or the glam team that won’t return my calls?
” She pushed her glass of wine away. “To be honest, that last one hurts the most. I thought Von and Fiona were my friends.”
Taking a breath, Cole turns her phone on and watches as hundreds of notifications download. She checks her phone calls first. Phil Beatty has left three voicemails, asking her to check in at her earliest opportunity. Jordan has left two, both of them asking when she’s out of rehab.
And Annika Roth has left exactly one. Her husband’s lover only said two words.
“I’m sorry.”
Oh god. That can only mean one thing.
Heart pounding almost violently in her chest, Cole navigates straight to the app that Parker downloaded after the cameras were installed.
The little red number in the corner of the TLC Landscaping icon informs her there are a dozen new recordings.
The app only records when there is extended activity in a room.
It takes her a few minutes of searching through hundreds of thumbnails to find it, but she does.
It happened in the bedroom.
* * *
Annika Roth, thirty years old and as genetically blessed as a supermodel, makes love like a porn star.
Not that Cole expected anything less.
The angle of the first camera, installed in a light fixture mounted on the wall beside the headboard, shows everything.
The natural honey tone of Annika’s perfect skin.
The way her hair trails behind her shoulders nearly to her waist in a sheath of glistening near platinum.
The sweat between her naked breasts as her slim hips ride Cole’s husband.
It’s mesmerizing. Like one of those autonomous sensory meridian response videos on Instagram that you find yourself watching, except ASMR videos are supposed to be soothing. Cole is feeling a lot of things at the moment, but soothed isn’t one of them.
Her husband is lying back against a pillow, his body spanning nearly the length of the bed, his arms up behind his head like a cradle.
His face is not showing, but it’s easy see that he’s doing no work at all, as if the sex is happening to him, rather than with him.
Imagining her husband having sex with another woman is one thing—and Cole has imagined it, many times.
Actually seeing it with her own eyes is another.
Will they kiss when they’re done? Will they snuggle into the satin sheets imported from France and whisper sweet nothings to each other before Annika goes back home to her husband and pretends like nothing happened?
What Cole wouldn’t give for a drink.
She turns the phone sideways for landscape-mode viewing.
The screen gets bigger, the details more vivid.
She watches as Jordan places his hands on Annika’s waist, rolling her off him and onto her stomach in one smooth move before reentering her from behind.
It’s a practiced maneuver, because Jordan is good in bed.
Great, actually. Very skilled, which is what tends to happen when you’ve had a lot of practice.
His face is now clearly visible. There is no mistaking that Cole’s husband is having sex on their marital bed with the woman who lives next door.
“Are you sure you even want to get married?” she remembers asking him years ago, not long before the wedding.
They’d just had their first really bad fight on their way home after a party, where a woman had flirted very openly with Jordan all evening long.
He hadn’t reciprocated, but he was receptive, and it was humiliating.
When another woman standing nearby noticed Cole’s expression, she’d leaned over and whispered, “Better get used to it, sweetie. It only gets worse once you’re married.
” She gestured to the other couples around them.
“But it’s what you put up with if you want this life. ”
The wedding venue was booked, the food and wine ordered, the custom dress nearly finished, the guest list finalized.
They were expecting four hundred people, most of whom Cole didn’t even know.
Because her own father was “unavailable,” John Lennox, Jordan’s dad, who was still in reasonable health back then, was going to walk her down the aisle.
Their engagement was announced in Toronto Life magazine, and shortly after, the mayor sent them a congratulatory bottle of champagne, saying, “See you at the wedding!”
When she talked to Cecily—the only person she felt she could confide in—about her hurt feelings, the older woman was sympathetic but practical.
“You know I love Jordy, but he’s like his father. He’s always had a bit of tomcat in him,” Cecily says. “Men like that, sometimes they tame after the wedding. But most of them . . . don’t.”
“Are you saying my future husband is going to cheat on me?”
Cecily turned to her and looked her straight in the eye. “Maybe. But so could a poor man. Might as well marry the rich one and get your money. Does the prenup include an infidelity clause?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, honey, get one put in,” Cecily said. “Insist on it. He can afford it. Pick a number with seven zeroes and make this the one deal-breaker you have.”
“If we need a prenup with a cheating clause, then why the hell am I even doing this?” Cole asked.
“Because maybe you’ll be the lucky ones who live happily ever after,” Cecily said. “You have to take the shot.”
The funny thing was, Cole had never believed in happily-ever-afters. Still, she took the shot. And missed. But thanks to Cecily’s pragmatism, Cole may well be able to exit her marriage with much, much more than she came in with.
Annika is working hard. Though the recording is silent, Cole’s imagination is happy to supply the soundtrack of heavy breathing and guttural moaning she’s certain is there.
She can tell by Jordan’s movements that he’s getting close, his hands gripping Annika’s hips so tightly that the pressure of his fingers leaves indents in the younger woman’s flesh.
His head turns up toward the ceiling, toward the second camera he doesn’t know is there.
Irrefutable proof.
She doesn’t need to watch them finish, but she does need to see his eyes.
She needs to see if somehow, in them, the answers to all her questions will be there.
But he gives Cole nothing. No reasons. No explanations.
Just a private sex show that Cole can’t look away from, no matter how unhealthy this is.
You married him with your eyes closed, she hears Kylie’s voice say that night at the Bellagio, when the cameras weren’t around.
I see him now, Kylie, Cole says silently, a sob escaping her chest. I finally see him, and you were right.
Cole saves the video to her phone, and then sends it to her attorney.
She finds a bottle of Tito’s vodka in Ray’s freezer. Grabbing a glass, she pours herself a shot and places it on the table, her hand drifting down to her stomach where the baby used to be.
She stares at the vodka, desperately wanting a drink and desperately wanting not to drink at the same time.
When you’re empty inside, you’ll use anything you can to fill the hole.
You’ll believe compliments from people who don’t know you, accept affection from people who don’t love you, swallow lies from people who are feeding you bullshit because it’s better than being alone, and drink yourself into oblivion to quiet the voices in your head reminding you of the past. The kitchen Cole’s sitting in is different now, clean and bright, but behind the new cabinets and beneath the new floors are the pain and trauma of growing up in a place where she never felt loved, and certainly never felt safe.
She’s reaching for the glass when she hears the front door open and a voice call out a greeting. It’s a man’s voice, but it’s not Ray’s. It’s deeper, and raspier, and carries with it everything she tried to run away from, only to end up back here, where it all began.
He’s in the kitchen, standing behind her.
“Hello, Nicolette,” he says.
Daddy’s home.