2. “Come Back” #2
She reached for me again and this time I was almost lost to the pressure of her hands on me, the way she was looking at me, the desperation in her voice when she said my name.
“The first time I have you completely,” I said, pulling back, “is not on this desk. Not with your wedding ring still on your finger. Not where anyone could walk in and ruin both our lives in a single moment. Do you understand me.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“We do this right. We do this carefully. Or we don’t do it at all.”
I helped her button her shirt back up.
She watched my hands the entire time, like she was memorizing the way my fingers moved, the way they’d been on her skin.
I straightened my own clothes and she was watching that too.
I said her name once, very quietly.
She said mine.
“Not here,” I said again. “Not yet. Not until we can do this somewhere that no one can ever find out about. Do you understand me. This has to stay completely buried. No one can know.”
She nodded like she understood that I was trying to be the better version of myself and failing at every turn.
She left at 9:47 a.m.
I stood at my window with my hands in my pockets watching Park Avenue while she walked out onto the street forty-three floors below.
I could see her standing on the sidewalk for a moment, looking confused by the sunlight.
Then she hailed a cab and got in.
The city didn’t change.
Park Avenue didn’t know what had just happened in this office.
The doorman didn’t know.
The pedestrians passing didn’t know that I’d just made a decision that was going to either transform my life or destroy it.
I thought about whether I should call Anya, my publicist of nine years, and put her on standby for the inevitable Sunday Times feature this would become if I let it. I did not call Anya. I was not yet ready to admit out loud, even to her, what I had just done.
I thought about my marriage to Helena.
I thought about Caleb.
I thought about the last text I’d sent my son. *Pickup Friday at five. Bring the history book. We’ll get pizza.*
He’d answered with a thumbs-up that had felt like a small mercy.
I thought about whether a man who has just done what he did is the same man who has spent twenty-five years being the kind of man Chip Whitlock would trust with his daughter.
The answer I gave myself was: I’m going to have to become that man twice over now. I’m going to have to become a man so careful that no one ever knows. I’m going to have to become someone so contained that my desire for her doesn’t leak out in a single moment of carelessness.
I’m going to have to become a different man entirely.
I’m going to have to become the man I promised to be and actually keep the promise this time.
I’m going to have to look at her at Sunday dinners like she’s nothing more than my oldest friend’s daughter.
I’m going to have to hold a conversation with her father without my jaw clenching.
I’m going to have to function in a world where no one suspects what happened in this office on a Tuesday morning.
And I’m going to have to want her in a way that doesn’t destroy everything I’ve built or everyone I’ve made promises to.
I looked at my hands and tried to recognize the man who owned them.
At 10:16, Chip called.
“I need to know you can handle her case,” he said.
The words landed exactly as they were meant to.
He was asking about competence. He was asking about legal acumen. He was asking if I was the right attorney for his daughter.
What he was really asking was: will you take care of her. Will you be careful. Will you be the man I’ve always believed you to be.
I thought about her hands in my hair.
I thought about the way she’d said yes.
I thought about the fact that I’d just become the man who needed to lie to his oldest friend.
“I can,” I said.
“Good. Thank you.”
I hung up and called her cell from my office line so it showed up as Cain Sterling Hayes on her phone.
She picked up on the first ring.
“Hi,” she said, small and young and on the other end of something I couldn’t take back.
“Sunday dinner. I’ll be there. Hold your face. Don’t look at me different.”
“I won’t,” she said.
“We don’t tell anyone.”
“I know.”
“Not your father. Not anyone. If anyone asks, you met with me as a client. That’s all. This is professional. Do you understand me. We have to be so careful. One slip and everything ends.”
“Yes,” she said.
I hung up the phone and poured a bourbon and looked out my window at Park Avenue.
The city was still moving the way the city always moved.
No one knew.
No one suspected.
The doorman hadn’t noticed anything. Chip hadn’t noticed anything. The secretary hadn’t noticed anything.
I looked at my hands and didn’t recognize the man they belonged to.
I held the bourbon glass and watched the amber liquid catch the light.
Somewhere below, yellow cabs moved through the streets. Somewhere, Chip was working. Somewhere, Eden was sitting in her office trying to pretend that her entire life hadn’t just tilted sideways.
I thought: this is how you destroy things.
Not all at once. Not with violence or noise.
You destroy things by making small decisions.
You destroy things by texting two words when you should have said nothing.
You destroy things by wanting someone you shouldn’t want and deciding that wanting them is worth the cost.
The bourbon burned.
I told myself very clearly that I was going to end this before it started.
I told myself that this was a momentary lapse in judgment.
I told myself that I was going to do the right thing and send her to James and take my hands off her case and her life and her person.
I told myself that by Sunday dinner, I would have come to my senses.
I told myself that I was going to find a way to want her the way she wanted me without becoming the kind of man who destroyed everything he touched.
I watched a yellow cab pass below on Park Avenue.
The way the city moves. The way nothing changes on the surface even when everything underneath has shifted sideways into something that can’t be unshifted.
The cab turned left and disappeared.
I took another long pull of bourbon and waited for the burn.
It came sharp and clean and exactly what I deserved.
I almost believed that I was going to end this.
I almost believed that I was going to be fine.
I was wrong about both.