Chapter 26
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
SCOTT
I watched Tessa as she stomped out of the room, cursing myself for having obviously fucked up. Should I have told Kendra I wouldn’t drive her? Or insisted I take Tess as well?
Honestly, after the scene that had just occurred, I thought she might be relieved not to have to travel back with her boss. Suggesting to trap them in a car together for an hour didn’t seem like the most pleasant choice for anyone.
It had been Tess I was thinking about. No one else.
But keeping silent hadn’t proven that to her, and who knew when I’d get a chance to talk to her?
Fuck. I wanted to run after her now. Could I?
Thankfully, Kendra saved me from making an impulsive decision. “Wait. Tess?” She jogged after her employee.
I followed after. Like hell was I going to miss this.
She caught up with Tess at the bottom of the stairs. “That was petty of me. I’m sorry. I’ll ride back with you. What time is it? I probably don’t have time to get cleaned up first.”
“You can both drive to the city with me.” Since I couldn’t read Tess’s mind to know what she would have preferred, I had to make the decision on my own. And I wanted Tess with me. Preferably without the woman wearing my (mother’s) engagement ring, but that wasn’t really an option.
Tess looked from Kendra to me, her expression softer than it had been but still fairly hard. “Fine. When do you want to leave?”
Considering I was still wearing last night’s clothes… “I need to shower first.”
“Me too,” Kendra said, gesturing to her running outfit.
“Then I’ll use the shower in the room my parents slept in.” No way was anyone going to have a chance to think that she and I were showering together. No way was I going to let Kendra think she was giving that impression.
She pursed her lips, clearly disapproving. Which I understood. I probably came off as an ass in her eyes. As far as she knew, we were getting married. We were engaged. We were supposed to be acting like we had a real relationship, rather than one orchestrated for social gains. My parents had laid out that expectation for both of us when we put the whole plan into motion.
Kendra was only trying to fulfill her obligation.
But the deal was off now, whether she knew it or not, and my only obligation was to my heart. And my heart wanted Tess.
How the fuck that flowery inclination came about, I couldn’t begin to guess. Maybe this was what they meant when they said pussywhipped . If so, I was pussywhipped pretty damn good.
If Kendra had to suffer a bit in the meantime, it was what it was.
Realizing that it would be worse to make a fuss about my behavior in front of Tess, she yielded. “I’ll ask the staff to move your suitcase.”
“I’ll take care of it myself.” Without further hesitation, I walked around them and headed up the stairs. The faster we were cleaned up, the faster we could leave, the faster we could get to the part where I dropped Kendra off and it was just me and Tess.
I was already counting down the minutes.
Less than an hour later, we were on the road. Kendra, of course, took the front seat. There was no way around that, really, not without declaring something about me and Tess, and for the sake of managing a fallout that could hurt my girlfriend, that wasn’t a risk I was willing to take.
Girlfriend.
I’d never thought I’d use that label sincerely. It had slipped out over the years in various moments, when it was more kind to use that description for the woman on my arm than to explain she was just who I was banging that night. Once or twice maybe I’d used it in the bedroom, or I’d allowed it to be used, when the term had found its way into dirty talk or role-play. I’d never actually assigned it to one person. Never thought I’d get a rush when I did.
Yet here I was, practically smiling as Kendra programmed her home address into the dashboard GPS because my girlfriend was sitting in the backseat.
“My address is already in here,” Kendra said, a question in her tone.
Oh, fuck. I’d had my driver take Tess and Teyana there the night of the opera. I rarely drove myself in the city, and there were often addresses programmed in that I didn’t recognize, so it hadn’t occurred to me.
Tess had been pretty tight-lipped since agreeing to the car ride, but I caught her eye in the rearview mirror. Without words, I knew exactly what she was thinking from her expression. If you’d just told Kendra like I’d wanted...
“Hmm. I don’t know why,” I said with as much nonchalance as I could muster.
Another glance at Tess, who gave me a disdainful look before jumping in to my rescue. “After that meeting ran late last week, you had your driver take me home afterward since it was raining. I was housesitting for Kendra.”
“Ah,” Kendra said.
“Ah,” I said at the same time, as though it were new information.
“Mm,” Tess rumbled in the backseat.
I didn’t know how my father did it, balancing his marriage with his affairs. I wasn’t even really cheating, and I’d already had it with the subterfuge.
A fifty-seven-minute drive ahead of us, and I was sure it would be the longest ride of my life.
Fortunately, the first half hour went by pretty smoothly. There wasn’t a lot to report about the current negotiations with the Dysautonomia Relief Foundation, but Kendra wanted to know every detail of how the process had gone so far. Her pettiness from earlier made another appearance as she refused to address any of her questions to Tess, though it was clear that most of what she wanted to hear about was what exactly Tess had presented. It was annoying and obvious and maybe even a bit understandable, considering that Tess had legitimately undermined her, but I hated that spiteful shit.
Tess handled it admirably, only jumping in when I directed the questions to her, which I did as often as I could, and managed not to get defensive whenever Kendra made a critical remark, which she seemed to do as often as she could.
When she finally announced that the deal seemed to be pretty solid, the knot in my shoulders loosened, and I felt like I could take a real breath for the first time since we’d set out. Not because I’d been worried for myself, but because I knew how much Tess wanted her approval, even though she hadn’t said as much. Why else had she stuck at the job after so long being overlooked? And didn’t everyone want the regard of authority figures? I sure seemed to.
I could feel Tess’s ease as well, like a soft breeze from the backseat. It was probably the closest to praise she was going to get, and she absorbed it like the air freshener soaking up bad fumes.
We’d hit the city by then, and traffic was as it always was in NYC, but even that didn’t seem so daunting with the tension relieved. Glancing in the rearview, Tess had propped the seat pillow against the window and closed her eyes, the last two nights of activity seemingly catching up to her.
Kendra, however, had just gotten back from a three-week spa trip and had the energy to prove it with her inability to let more than a minute go in silence. Her first few attempts at conversation went nowhere when I didn’t return her serves.
“How has work been besides the DRF deal?”
“Fine.”
“Is your mother still hosting the Thanksgiving Feed America meal?”
“I’m sure she is.”
“Is that new legislation going to affect your production this year?”
“I’m sure Dad will find his way around it.”
Then she threw me a curve. “I suppose we should set a date?”
“Set a date for what?” I said before thinking it through.
“For our wedding, you silly.”
My gaze flicked back to the mirror. Tess’s eyes were opened, a frown bending her lips down.
“Uh, I don’t really have a preference,” I said, hoping that would put an end to it.
“I know you’ll need to look at your calendar, and I’ll need to look at mine. We’ll need at least six months to put together something proper. A year would be better. Preferably even two. Do you have a seasonal preference?”
“Not really.”
“I’ve always been fond of winter weddings. Fall too. Summer is just so done, though the weather is definitely better. We could always do something in Florida instead, at your grandfather’s estate.”
I honked my horn at the car in front of me when he didn’t cruise through the yellow light, mostly because it felt good. I wanted to do it again. In answer to everything Kendra said. Do you —honk! Should we —honk, honk, honk.
Getting pulled over wasn’t on my to-do list, though. It would only prolong the agony.
“You know,” I said, not even sure where I was going after I’d started. “This is probably a conversation best saved for later. Tess doesn’t want to listen to all this wedding planning stuff.” Yeah, that was good. “Not fair to bore her to death.”
I tried to meet her eyes in the mirror, but she was staring out the side window, the features of her profile drawn tight.
“Actually, I bet she’d love it. She used to always want to play Let’s Plan Our Weddings when we were in school.” Kendra shifted in her seat so she could look back at Tess directly. “Remember how you were sure you were going to marry that Jason kid? The guy who worked at the pizza counter just off campus?”
Tess kept her eyes glued out the passenger window. “Mmhmm.”
A stab of irrational jealousy pierced through me. Who the fuck was Jason?
“And then it was the quarterback,” Kendra went on. “That was a move up, in my book. Jason was always so greasy.”
I found another reason to honk the horn.
“After that it was?—”
I cut her off. “I really don’t need to hear Tess’s list of prior boyfriends.” Not if we expected to get to our destination without me running someone off the road. “Professional boundaries and all.”
Kendra swiveled back to face the front. “You always said you wanted something small,” she said, and for a second I wasn’t sure if she was still talking to Tess or if she was now making up a conversation we’d never had. “A bridal party that could fit around one table, you said.”
“Affordable that way,” Tess said, and I had one of those reckoning moments where I remembered that, despite all the bullshit I had to endure with the Sebastian name, I never had to worry about the cost of things.
Kendra probably didn’t have to either. Her parents were far from billionaires, but they had enough to put them in the upper one percent. Her family would never allow her to have a small wedding, and her envy was evident. To me, anyway. Because it was something I envied as well. But did she also realize that the reasons she and I felt like we had no other choice were trivial compared to the fact that most people—people like Tess—actually didn’t have a choice?
I was going to spoil her, I decided right then. As long as Tess was in my world, I was going to give her all the things she’d never had access to. How had Kendra been in her world so long and not been driven to do the same?
She went on as though her privilege hadn’t just been checked. “Two bridesmaids, you always said. You just couldn’t decide who would be the maid of honor—me or Teyana.”
“It would be Teyana,” Tess said pointedly. “No other bridesmaids.”
Kendra deflated as the words had their intended effect. “Of course. You two are so close.” She let a beat pass. “I’m not really close to anyone. My mother will have a list of cousins and friends that we’ll have to include, but for my maid of honor, there’s no one I could think of asking besides you.”
Oh. Well. That was unexpected.
Manipulative, too. Was Tess supposed to feel bad about that?
I didn’t have to look to know Tess hadn’t taken it well. “Is this your passive-aggressive way of asking me to be your maid of honor, K?”
“I...I...don’t...I—” Kendra stuttered.
Tess didn’t let her struggle long. “Earlier today you hinted that I might be on the brink of being fired, and you think I’m somehow cool enough with that to consider saying yes to being in your wedding party? Am I just your lap dog? Subject to your beck and call and your whims?”
Kendra whirled around to face the backseat. “Why would I even think you still want to work for me? You’ve already basically accused me of taking you for granted, and then you went behind my back, Tess. When I thought you were my friend. When I thought you were the one person in my life who would never take advantage of me. Were you trying to hurt me? Do you want to be fired?”
I kept my eyes pinned on the traffic, forcing myself to concentrate on the driving and ignoring the primitive instinct to defend my woman. It wouldn’t be pretty if I did. Kendra would be shred into pieces. After I’d spent all morning insisting we keep the status quo because I feared her retaliation, destroying her seemed counterproductive.
Tess didn’t need me to defend her anyway. She had her own back. “I honestly don’t know right now, Kendra.”
That seemed to hurt my bride-not-to-be more than anything I could have said.
“Okay. So.” Kendra turned to face the front, her voice thick with emotion. “We’ll get through this deal with SIC, and then we’ll reevaluate. Both of us.”
“Perfect,” Tess replied tightly.
After that, we rode in silence. That stretch of minutes felt endless. I kept looking at the time to destination on the dash, certain it was stuck. Eight minutes, it said. Eight minutes. Eight minutes.
Then, finally, seven minutes. It stayed seven minutes for a decade. Then it was six for another decade. Then five. Then four. Then three. Then two.
Then I was pulling up to the curb in front of her building. I popped the trunk as the doorman opened Kendra’s door. Then he opened the back door.
“Come on, Tess,” Kendra said.
Tess had avoided eye contact since the conversation had halted, but now she met my eyes, questioning.
“I’ll take you,” I assured her.
“She’s all the way in Jersey City,” Kendra said, already half out of the car.
“It’s fine. I’m taking her.”
“It’s really no big deal to take the train from here,” Tess offered.
“I said I’m taking you,” I snapped. Which I immediately felt shitty about since she wasn’t the one I wanted to be snapping at.
“That’s really nice of you. I must be marrying a saint.” Kendra gave me a gritted-teeth smile, and I knew she felt this was another betrayal, this time from the man who was supposedly going to be her husband. It had to seem like I’d taken a side. Had to be salt in her wound, but asshole that I was, I didn’t give a shit about her wound unless her pain ended up causing her to hurt Tess.
She slammed the door when she got out.
Tess didn’t move from her place in the back.
“You should come up here so I don’t feel like a chauffeur,” I said, when what I really wanted to say was, You should come up here so I can be near you, so I can be close enough to smell your shampoo, so I can forget that there is anyone in the world that exists but you .
Kendra was already out of earshot. I could have said it. I should have.
But I’d been too carefully guarding my words for the entire drive, and I’d forgotten momentarily how to let that guard down.
She didn’t respond. But she did climb out of the backseat and into the front. Without a word, she reached over to enter her address into the GPS then put her seatbelt on and huddled next to the door, making her seem just as far away now as she had when she’d been in the back.
I pulled into traffic in silence, wracking my brain trying to figure out what to say, how to fix this weird tension between us. So much had happened over the course of the day, so much had been said, so much I wanted to explain and apologize for and make better, and fuck. I didn’t know the first thing about how to do any of that. I’d never had a non-related relationship that required work. I’d never hung around long enough to ever get to that point. Unless I counted my family, and those relationships were so laborious that I’d purposefully abstained from any other emotional intimacies.
With Tess, though, I wanted to try. Wanted to explore the possibility that love didn’t always have to be so hard.
Wanting to didn’t mean knowing how. And each silent minute that passed without making an attempt felt like another mile stretched between us.
Then, abruptly, she threw her head back against the seat rest. “Oh my God, that was terrible!” she groaned.
I pulled my eyes from the road to make sure I was reading her right, that she meant to commiserate and not to blame. The tense smile assured me it was the latter.
“So terrible!” I agreed. “So fucking terrible.”
“The absolute worst.”
We hit a red light, and I turned to her. “I’m already going to my parents for a family dinner tomorrow night. I’ll tell them this is over then. One more day, Tessa. Can you give me just one more day?”
She swung her head toward me. “As long as I don’t have to be in a room with her before then, yes. I can give you one more day.”
Sunlight had a way of making the world forget there could ever be a storm. Tess was sunlight right then. A bright light piercing through an otherwise dark day.
I leaned across the console and kissed her, kissed her hard, kissed her like we were in my bed and not on Columbus Avenue, and when the car behind us honked for us to get moving, I kissed her quickly once more before turning my eyes back to the road.