CHAPTER 2 Consequence
September 24, 2010
The tension between Aaron and me was palpable. I had had a chance to talk to David, and he seemed much more relaxed about the situation. He knew my dad would go ballistic on them once we returned, and on all of us, but he understood my reasons for wanting to do this.
Aaron, on the other hand, didn’t want to talk to me. Not about this. He was upset. Very upset. He was a perfectionist when it came to his job, and I know I made my security team look bad by escaping them. I should’ve known better. But I was safe and wasn’t putting my life at risk. I knew that much, thanks to Caleb’s letter. But Aaron didn’t. He wasn’t aware that I’d read it, and I’m sure he was clueless about the content of it, too. Not that he wasn’t in on all the secrets. He must’ve been the one to brief Caleb when he first arrived in Paris five years ago.
The charade was over. I wanted to tell Aaron what I knew and apologize for escaping, but he wouldn’t let me. Maybe once we were back in New York and my dad was done berating us, he would talk to me. We were in this together, even if he didn’t realize that. My father wouldn’t miss the opportunity to make us atone for our sins and mistakes once we returned.
Knowing Aaron and David’s jobs weren’t at risk brought me peace. Like my dad would fire them and finally grant me my freedom after this. He was probably thinking about his next move while I found temporary refuge from his retaliation in Cape Town.
William knocked twice on his trailer door before letting himself in. I tossed a bookmark between the pages of the book I was reading and set it aside.
“Hej, ?lskling.” His tone was weary, but his bright smile melted my heart for the millionth time. He dragged a heavy hand along the length of his face. “You’re almost done with another book.” He jerked his chin at it. “I’m sorry you’ve had to spend so much time here waiting while I work.”
He threw himself on the bed next to me and rested his head on my stomach.
“This has been perfect,” I reassured him, combing his hair with my fingers. He groaned with delight. “I needed a break from everything.”
“Mmm.”
I laughed. “So spoiled already.”
“I could stay like this forever.” William nuzzled his head against me. “With your fingers in my hair.”
“You need to rest. These schedules are insane. Are you guys going to be done tomorrow, as you said?”
“No.” He rolled slightly to place the back of his head against my belly and looked up at me. “Because we just wrapped.” He smiled and lifted his hand to tuck my hair behind my ear.
“What! Oh, my God! Congratulations!” I smiled back, thrilled. He lifted himself to a seating position and curved a hand behind my neck. He kissed me lazily like we had all the time in the world, and we kinda did. At that moment, we had nothing else to do and nowhere else to be but present. In the moment.
William broke off the kiss and stared at my lips, which felt swollen from the exchange. “I can’t wait to take you home and just …be us in New York.” He brushed my lower lip with his thumb, and I did the same. “We’re leaving tomorrow first thing in the morn …” A heavy knock on our door startled us, cutting off William mid-sentence. He sighed. “Tell me it’s Aaron without telling me it’s Aaron,” he joked, rolling his eyes and getting up from the bed to get the door.
“Aaron.” William looked over his shoulder at me and lifted a brow.
“Mr. Sj?berg, sorry to disturb you, but I’ve got Mr. Murphy on the line.”
“Sure.” William extended his hand to grab the phone. “Guille, it’s your father.” He walked toward me, offering the phone, but Aaron interrupted him.
“I’m afraid he wants to talk to you, Mr. Sj?berg.”
My father hadn’t tried to contact me since we arrived. I thought he would for sure fly in himself to drag me back home, but he didn’t. In a sick, twisted way, it disappointed me to feel like he didn’t care enough to do so, but the relief of not having to confront him yet was more significant than my unresolved daddy issues.
William pinched the bridge of his nose. I knew he was exhausted from work, and the last thing he must’ve wanted was to have a little chat with my dad. He thanked Aaron and shut the door after telling him he’d return his phone once he was done with the call.
William frowned at the Blackberry and tapped the keyboard, probably to unmute the call, and brought the phone to his ear, clearing his throat. “Mr. Murphy.” I gathered myself and sat on the edge of the bed to concentrate on their exchange while I attempted to decipher what my dad would say on the other side of the line.
“No, that wasn’t—yes, I understand,” William said, stumbling with his words, widening his eyes at me as he paced like a caged lion between the trailer’s narrow walls. “That’s very generous of you, but it won’t be necessary. I have a private jet waiting.”
William decided to sit down next to me and held my hand, his warm gaze comforting me more than he knew.
“Tomorrow morning,” he said, massaging the palm of my hand with his thumb. “The flight plan includes a stop in London to refuel, but—” William sighed while I heard my dad’s muffled and indistinct voice through the speaker. “That could be arranged.”
My hand moved to his head, and I massaged his scalp. William closed his eyes and allowed his neck to arch back while I ran my fingers through his messy hair.
“Of course.” William opened his eyes lazily and passed the phone to me, dipping his chin to let me know it was my turn. I took the call but kept combing William’s hair. It helped soothe the nerves. I had yet to speak to my dad directly. All communication had been filtered through my security.
“Dad?”
“Are you and William together?”
“Yes, we are.”
One, two, three seconds of silence filled the fissure that had formed between us the moment I hopped on that plane to South Africa. Or who knows? Things might have begun to fracture after a few failed attempts from my father to convince me Nathan was who I was supposed to be with when we broke up.
“We’ll discuss this when you get back.”
“Dad?” I held the phone in front of me and stared at the screen, but he’d ended the call. “Fuck, that was rough,” I muttered, dropping the phone on the bed, my hands flying to my face, seeking shelter from the warmth pooling in my aching eyes.
William grabbed the phone and returned it to Aaron, who stood right outside the trailer next to David. He shut the door and rushed back to me.
Being a rebel was very much unlike me. I’d always done the right thing, never dwelled too far from the invisible lines my dad drew around me. I was too scared to even imagine bending the rules, let alone breaking them. It was heartbreaking to realize I would lose his favor the moment I dared to challenge him. That he could be so cruel.
To me.
“I’m sorry.” William knelt on the floor before me to level his gaze with mine. “We’re leaving tonight. I’ll let the captain and crew know.”
“Why? What did he want?” A hot tear rolled down my cheek.
William kissed it midway and said, “He wanted to know when we were flying back and if we needed flights to be arranged. He then asked for the flight plan and demanded we hop on that plane at once.”
“I see,” I breathed out, cupping William’s face with my hands, a few more tears slipping down my face. “He was so cold. He didn’t even say hi and straight up asked if you and I were together and said we’d talk once we get back.”
“Well, I’m not Nathan. Or a guy in a suit, for that matter.” He snorted. “Of course he’s not going to approve of us dating. It’s one thing for his daughter to be friends with celebrities, but it’s another for her to actually date one.”
You’re definitely not Nathan, I thought, but I would never say such a thing. I loved and respected Nathan too much to compare him with William, even if my feelings for him had changed. They’d been overshadowed and overpowered by my inescapable connection with William. I was reduced to a moth in his presence, doomed to be eternally drawn to him.
And that’s the reason why I had gotten myself into this mess with my dad. For William. And I’d do it a thousand times over again.
“Well, I hope the conversation back home leans more toward me escaping my security and flying here on my own rather than who I’m dating,” I added. “Besides, I need to have a serious conversation with him about the things Caleb wrote in his letter. Things need to change when I return.”
“Everything’s going to be okay.” William stood and pulled me up from the bed. “I promise.”
“I know, but I can’t help but feel like there’s this side to my father I’ve never seen before. And I’ve gotten a few glimpses of it in these past months, and I don’t like it.”
William placed his hands on my waist and pulled me closer to him. “I don’t know all the details of how things were dealt with in the past, but from the few things you and Joel have told me, I know things will be different … especially with us.”
“You Sj?bergs really can’t keep things to yourselves, can you?” I shook my head and smiled. “What has Joel told you?”
“Enough,” he replied quickly, his smile softening and his brows pulling in. “Just know that I will always take your side, and you and I will always be a team. No matter what.”
I believed him.
William saying these things meant more to me than he would ever know. One of the biggest issues in my relationship with Nathan was precisely that. I always felt like he was too quick to take my father’s side and agree with him because he cared too much about his opinion of him. They were business partners, for God’s sake, and Nathan’s future depended on that power dynamic. My dad knew the leverage he had over him. And I was na?ve enough to think he really cared about Nathan. And maybe he did warm up to him. But now, there was no way to avoid thinking he only did what he did to retain control over me.
Ultimately, what I wanted would always come second, and I hated it. Even if the engrained voice of reason inside my head told me it was for the best, deep down, I wasn’t happy about how things were handled. Like when I suggested going on a weekend trip with Nathan and he refused because he assumed my dad wouldn’t allow it and thought it was impossible to make it work with my security. He preferred to deny me rather than risk the possibility of falling out of my dad’s good graces.
It was suffocating. And now that I’d come up to the surface and had finally taken a long, deep breath of fresh air, I wasn’t ready to dive back in.
“Thank you,” I said, running my thumb along his lower lip. My chest swelled with feeling because I knew he meant it when he said we were a team. I knew I could trust him. And as we stood there in comfortable silence, he caught my finger and took a playful bite. “Ow!”
He laughed and ran his thumb along my lower lip too. “I love you, Guille.”
“I love you too.” So much. But my head was still reeling, afraid the spell would be broken if I got too excited about us. I knew I was ready to make some big changes in my life, especially knowing the things I knew now about my mother and how her death was nothing but a mistake. All I had to do was get on that plane, fly back to New York, and face the music.
It was 6:05 pm, and the sky was on fire, swirls of orange and pink fusing together against the blue, promising a perfect sight. William insisted on driving us to the airport in the red Mustang for our last ride, and at this point, there was nothing Aaron could do to stop the insurgent momentum of my initial escape from New York. Even if Aaron insisted I ride with them every time we moved around Cape Town.
One of the hotel managers hopped in the SUV with Aaron and David to bring the Mustang back to the hotel once we got to the airport.
“Buckle up, “William said, flashing only the edge of a suspicious smile at me. He put the car in drive and hit the gas before I could even tell him how beautiful I thought the sky was. But I laughed, my back plastered on the creamy leather seat from the speed. I laughed every single time he sped away like that because it made me feel free and happy and alive.
I could imagine Aaron shaking his head with disappointment, David biting his lip to avoid smiling, and my dad back in his office in New York, twirling a small tumbler of whisky as he did in Paris when he had too much on his mind. That last thought made me shiver, yet I smiled as I quickly tied my hair into a ponytail, feeling the promise of the South African spring blowing against my cheeks.
The Mustang glided with ease over the coastal road from the hotel to the airport, the sun blasting its last bright rays of light, painting the perfect sundown. And to our left, the moon—a reminder that time did not stand still, that Earth wouldn’t stop spinning, and I would confront my father very soon. And this time, these thoughts weren’t chaperoned by anxiety but by a newfound excitement that bubbled up in my chest instead.