17. Chapter 17
Isla
I’m in Lina's apartment on a Tuesday morning, eating cereal I do not want, and I’ve said the words "he said he wants to be included" four times now and I still can’t make them connect to what happened next.
Lina is across from me with her tea and the expression she uses when she has decided to let me run. There is a tabloid on her coffee table with a headline that calls me a jilted heiress which I have been ignoring for an hour. I've gotten very good at ignoring things.
"He said I wasn't a child," I say. "That I could make my own decisions. That he just wanted to be included in them." I put my spoon down. "And then in the same breath he pulled out of the arrangement without asking me a single thing."
Lina says nothing.
"What the fuck is that?"
"It sounds," Lina says carefully, "like a man who means what he says and is also terrified. Those two things are not mutually exclusive."
"That's not helpful."
"I know, honey."
I pick up the spoon. I put it back down.
The cereal is getting soggy and I don't care about it at all.
"I'm not angry that he chose Elias. I understand why he chose Elias.
Elias is his child and doesn't have anyone else.
I've been a person for twenty-six years and I've spent most of that with just you and Cole looking out for me.
I'm more than capable of handling my own life.
That part makes sense." I look at the tabloid and then deliberately away from it. "It's the other part."
"What other part?"
"The part where he didn't include me. He just unilaterally made this huge decision that affected us both without asking me a single thing.
Without giving me the chance to — I don't know, Lina.
To say that I understood, that I agreed, that of course Elias comes first and I want him protected too.
" I stop. "He didn't give me the chance to be a person who could handle it.
He just decided that I couldn't and acted accordingly.
Which is what Conrad's always done." I look at the tabloid. "But I didn't think Matt would."
Lina sets down her tea. "What do you actually want? Not from the arrangement, not from the trust fund. From him."
I look at the window. The city is doing its Tuesday thing outside, indifferent and continuous.
"I want someone who chooses to stay when it gets hard," I say. "Instead of removing himself in the name of protection."
"That's worth saying to him directly."
I look at the tabloid. "It doesn't matter. He made his decision."
Lina looks at me over her tea. She does not say anything, which is its own kind of argument.
"Don't," I say.
She picks up her mug. "I didn't say anything."
"You were about to."
"I was going to say more cereal?"
I look at her. She looks back, perfectly innocent.
I roll my eyes and pull the bowl toward me.
She doesn't push more. This is why she has been my person since we were sixteen and my mother first went to a spa that wasn’t a spa and I needed someone who would not try to fix it or minimize it or offer me the version of events that was easier to live with.
Lina has never once offered me an easier version of events.
It’s the most useful thing about her and occasionally the most exhausting.
We sit in silence for a moment. I eat my cereal. I look at the tabloid.
"Jilted heiress," I say.
"Mm."
"I wasn't jilted. I was — it was a mutual —" I stop, because Lina will call me on the lie in her gentle way. "It was a fake engagement."
"I know."
"There's nothing to be jilted from."
"I know."
I put my spoon down. "Why am I acting like this is a funeral?"
Lina looks at me. "Because you liked him."
"I liked him," I agree. "But I didn't want a fiancé in the first place.
And now I don't have one. That should feel like a win.
" I look at the window. Something is clarifying.
"I went into this arrangement because Conrad forced my hand and I came out of it with the trust challenge ready to file and a case against Frey that Ramirez is sitting on.
The engagement is over and nothing else has to be.
" I look at Lina. "That is not a funeral. That is a victory lap."
Lina is watching me with the expression she uses when she’s not sure whether this is genuine or a coping mechanism. Fair enough. I’m not entirely sure either.
"What are we doing tonight?" I say.
She picks up her tea. "What do you want to do tonight?"
I look at the tabloid one more time. Then I pick it up, fold it in half, and drop it on the floor next to the couch.
"I want to go dancing," I say.
We go to Sienna, which is the kind of place that doesn’t have a sign outside because the people who need a sign are not invited, and Lina calls ahead while I go home to shower.
Then she comes over with a dress she borrowed from a shoot she did last month that fits me perfectly and costs more than the tabloid's entire press run.
I wear heels. Obviously.
We get there at eleven and the velvet rope parts the way it always does for Isla Wrenwood, and tonight Isla Wrenwood does not have a fiancé or anywhere to be tomorrow and isn’t going to think about any of the rest of it until morning.
I have a French martini in my hand before we reach the bar and another before we reach the dance floor and neither of them are enough to explain what happens next, which is that I stop thinking entirely.
This is the thing about dancing that I forget between the times I do it: it’s the only activity I’ve found that requires enough of my body and enough of my attention that my brain goes quiet.
Not numb — just quiet. The music is loud enough that there is nothing else.
I’m not managing anything. I’m not presenting myself to any audience. I’m just moving.
Lina is beside me and then ahead of me and then beside me again, and at some point a man who is attractive in a generic way asks if he can join us.
I say yes because I’m celebrating and because the photographers outside caught me coming in.
I know by morning there will be pictures and I would like those pictures to look like a woman who is doing exactly as well as she presents.
He’s a good dancer. He’s not Matt Beckett. This is fine. This is, in fact, the entire point.
I have another drink. I dance until my feet hurt in a way that is satisfying rather than painful.
Lina catches my eye across the floor at one a.m. — somewhere around drink number five — and raises her eyebrows in the universal language of ready when you are.
I do the thing I haven’t done in six weeks, which is close out a night at Sienna on my own terms, leaving when I want to leave, going home with my best friend, the tabloids getting their shot of me coming out at one-fifteen looking like a woman who has just had an excellent time.
Which I have.
I think about Matt approximately four times during the evening. I note this, and I set it aside, and I keep dancing.
In the car back to Lina's I take off my heels and put my feet up on the seat and she hands me a bottle of water and we ride through the city without talking and I think: this is fine. This is who I was before and who I still am, and those two things can coexist, and I’m going to be fine.
I think about Matt a fifth time.
I drink my water.
I wake up in Lina's guest room at nine the next morning with a mild headache and a phone full of notifications and the entirely clear-eyed recognition that last night was useful but is not a sustainable strategy.
I scroll anyway. Page Six has four photos from Sienna — me coming in, me coming out, and two from inside that I didn't know were taken.
One is mid-laugh with my head thrown back and a glass in my hand.
The other is me and the good-looking stranger from the dance floor, his hand at my waist, both of us mid-movement, looking like exactly what we were: two people having a good time with no particular stakes attached.
The caption says Wrenwood wastes no time. Three tabloid accounts have reposted it. Someone in the comments says I look like my mother.
I put my phone face-down on the nightstand and stare at the ceiling for a moment.
Then I pick it back up. I look at the photos again. I do look like I'm having a good time. I was. That counts for something.
It was a good night.
Conrad calls at noon.
"The revised trust agreement has been filed," he says. "Your monthly operating account will move to a maintenance allowance effective thirty days from today. Unless you recommit to the engagement in writing before then."
I think about the clinics. I think about the shelters.
I think about the spring partnership I have been building for six months, the one that would put a free clinic in three underserved neighborhoods if the funding holds.
I think about what a five-year freeze does to all of that, and I think about Conrad knowing this and calling anyway, and I think: he really does not know me at all.
"I'll think about it," I say.
I hang up before he can say anything else. I call Cole.
"It's time," I say.
He is ready. He has been ready for six months. I knew this and I’m still grateful for it in a way that sits somewhere behind my sternum and does not entirely fit into words.
"I'll have the preliminary notice filed by end of week," he says. "Ramirez confirmed she has enough for the arrest warrant. They're moving on Frey as soon as we give the signal."
"Not yet," I say. "I need a few more days."
"Isla—"
"I have a plan," I say. "I just need to finish it."
He is quiet for a moment. "Does Matt know about this plan?"
"He's not part of this anymore, Cole. He made his position clear."
Another pause. "Okay," he says, which is Cole for I don't love this but I trust you, and I have been fluent in Cole for twenty-six years.