10. Ephemeral
Chapter ten
Ephemeral
B ack at his giant high-rise of all richness earlier this afternoon, Thorn didn’t look like he knew what his next move would be, but he’s clearly figured it out.
Illegally.
Or he might have done the finding out legally when he did that background check on me, but this is crazy. Paying off someone’s medical debt can’t be a thing, at least not without their consent. Can it? I mean, I suppose it could. All you have to be is rich, have friends in the right places, and make a few calls.
Check. And. Mate.
I still don’t know how to play chess, but this feels like game over. It feels like game over for all my feels. Because who just wipes out nine hundred and eighty thousand dollars of medical debt? I’d come to terms with the fact that it was just going to be hanging over my head for the rest of my life.
It all started when I realized today is the twenty-second of August, and the twenty-second of every month means I need to log into my bank account and make my usual two hundred and eighty-four dollar payment on a plan I’ll be paying until I’m a hundred and sixty-five. I literally did the math one day. Impossible? Not if I ever have any descendants. But other than Peach Lips, kids are not in my future plans.
I got into the app and went to Bill Payments, and that’s when I noticed that the regular, jaw-dropping, staggering amount was wrong. Instead of the balance being over four hundred and seventy thousand dollars, it was zero.
I panicked and called the bank. That’s when I realized it wasn’t a mistake. The lady on the other end of the phone literally asked me if I had a sugar daddy or if a Christmas miracle just happened to occur in mid-August. I couldn’t even get over my shock to get the nerve to hang up on her. Instead, she did that for me after wishing me a very snarky good day.
So that’s where I’m at now.
Peach Lips can always sense when something is wrong. I just got back from Thorn’s workplace an hour and a half ago, had a shower, and then came down here to make something to eat. I filled a bowl of tuna and salmon cat food for Peach Lips and then remembered my payment. I logged in, checked my history, and saw the zero balance. Non-sugar daddy. Zero. Balance.
Peach Lips, having just devoured the entire bowl of cat food, is now sprawled out on the kitchen floor, giving me her one green-eyed cat gaze.
“Meow?”
That’s code for, are you going to be okay, Mom? You look funny.
I am not fine. This is unacceptable. A hundred thousand dollars to charity? I don’t know where that came from, but it’s amazing. Paying off my massive debt to the hospital, however? That says something else. No one does that unless they want something. Does Thorn want something? The sugar daddy comment makes my face burn, but here I am, getting on the floor next to Peach Lips, ready to ugly cry because a massive debt has been lifted off my shoulders.
I don’t truly think Thorn is the kind of man to buy anyone, no matter what.
He could have just paid me off after the first Peach Lips incident, but he wanted to work for us to make things right. Even after he got kneed in the nuts, he wasn’t going to give up and just hand over the cash.
Peach Lips rolls over, giving me all of her belly. Unlike most cats, this isn’t her sneak attack zone. She loves to be petted there, especially after a big dinner.
“Nothing’s gone truly right for me for…uh…a very long time,” I tell her fuzzy belly. Her cat pouch is extra swingy, and it’s a different color than the rest of her body. I like that. I like how cats usually have wildly colored, non-matching primordial pouches.
Despite my efforts to get myself under control, I sniffle. Peach Lips meows at me, and that’s all it takes for me to bury my face in her fur and start with the ugly crying. Once the waterworks start, there’s no stopping it. I have to get my face off of Peach Lips before I soak her. She gets up, too, meowing at me and licking at my cheeks, chin, and nose. One lick hits me in the eyeball, which makes it water ten times more furiously. I hug her to me, taking care to be gentle with her, and let her give me the face exfoliating of straight sandpapery cat goodness.
The noise in the garage makes me gasp-hiccup. No one can get into this place unless they belong here, and Thorn does because, duh, it’s his house.
I swipe at my face, horrified at the amount of moisture that comes away on my palm, while I balance Peach Lips with the other hand and arm. Through my hazy vision, I watch the side door open in the hallway, and a dark, shadowy form appears. Black on black, but even his washed-out, tear-stained, blurry, three-headed, six-armed image is horribly attractive. It’s really him. Facial hair gone, glasses gone. His usual dark scowl? Also gone.
“Why?” I’m not going for a preamble or small talk. We’re getting straight down to it. “Was it a power move? I was just trying to make things right before I left. I know I messed things up for you at work, so I wanted to do what I could to fix it. And I wanted to know about my rebranding. I couldn’t wait.” I’m aware this is all coming out blubbery and hiccupy and nonsensical, but I keep going anyway, slurping back tears. “I decided that whatever happened over the sandwiches was a peace gesture. I thought things were spiraling. Up. Spiraling up. Why would you spend almost half a million dollars paying my medical debt?”
There’s no shift in the facade he likes to give the world. That hard face, the one without expression, the piercing dark eyes that could discern anything like a living lie detector and a laser beam all rolled into one handy retinal package. He doesn’t soften at all. He’s not scowling, but his face naturally rests hard. He just stands there, black on black, swimming in my eyes, saying and doing nothing.
Maybe he has no idea what to say.
What words are appropriate anyway? Thank you? I don’t know if I’m thankful. I don’t know if I’m beholden. I don’t know if any of this is appropriate or what we’re even doing.
No. I trust him. I trust this is not something that demands repayment of any kind. Trust comes so very uneasily to me, and I can’t say why I’m putting my faith in that, but if I had to bet my bus house on it, I would.
“T—thank you,” I splutter. I wave Peach Lips’ paw at him and make a little baby voice. “Thank you from Peach Lips and for the animals too.” I want to ask if he has any idea how much money he’s dropped today, but that would be highly inappropriate. He knows, duh. How could he not? “There’s like two hundred and twenty billion dollars of medical debt in this country. I—I thought I’d be paying my debt forever. I don’t even know…what to…to say.”
He’s still across the room. He hasn’t moved. It doesn’t even look like he’s breathing. He’s in sexy robot mode, and it’s about all I can take. “This is the part where I get really cheesy and tell you that you don’t have to say anything,” he says.
“No!” I shake my head furiously. “You can’t be nice. Not this level of nice. You’re going to make me want to hug you, and if I do that, then all bets are off.”
Still zero reaction. Nothing. I’m not even crying anymore—belated realization here—so I can tell he’s utterly stoic.
“We weren’t betting on this or anything else.”
Fuck. I need to control my gaze. If I stare at this wonderful man who pretends he’s all hardness, unfeeling, soulless, and slightly monstrous when in reality he’s hiding a heart of pure damn gold, I’m going to stare and stare and stare. If the fire from my eyes burns off his clothes, I’m going to be in serious trouble.
People were so mean to him. So. Mean. And I let them be. I was kind of mean too. I made assumptions. Is it because, deep down, I’m just a shallow, mean troll too? How could I never have considered that some people are scowly and stoic because they’re shy? Introverted? Some people need to protect their squishy centers by having hard exteriors.
Unless it’s not real. I don’t think that’s true, but the only way to get Thorn to respond is to offer up our normal sparring. “This is all a cover act, isn’t it?”
Slight flinch. One blink. I notice these human reactions because I’m staring. And staring hard. There’s going to be flames soon, but I might have miscalculated their location. They might come from me.
“You hide the best parts of yourself away so no one else gets to see them, but they’re there. Just like all the contradictions. You’re so rich that you never have to work another day in your life, but you do. It’s all you do,” I continue.
“That’s not a contradiction.”
“Are you staring?” I ask.
“I’m looking at you, yes.”
My mouth goes dry, and I start to tremble. I have to walk Peach Lips to a cat post in the corner of the cook me straight onto a TV show and like eight different magazines kind of professional kitchen.
She latches onto the tree branch of the post, hoists herself up onto the big leaf platform that hangs off one side, curls up, and starts the beginning of a long grooming session.
“Why?” It’s safer to ask that with my back turned to him. “Is this hush money? Payment so I just disappear? Or so I give you rave reviews, and you can complete your merger?”
“I’m not sure the merger is happening. I’m rethinking it. I’m rethinking the whole direction I am going with it.”
What?! Holy shit.
“Bigger isn’t always better, and the grass isn’t always greener,” he adds.
It’s the always that gets me every time someone says those things. The grass can be green some of the time. And bigger can be better in some cases.
“Did Peach Lips work her cat magic on you? Did you smell her breath and know that forever after, no smell is ever going to be so wonderful? Do you want to bottle that scent and wear it every day?”
“Gah, what? I…I’m at a complete loss to even fathom the logic of what I just heard.”
“Or did getting bagged in the nuts such that your life flashed in front of your eyes change up some of your priorities?” I’m asking in the nicest way with a smile on my face. It’s easier to laugh about this than it is to cry all over again or let this man see just how badly I’m rattled. I still have no idea what to even begin to think.
He studies me carefully. “I paid the debt because it wasn’t yours. You were always going to have it hanging over you after losing your mother. I found that to be cruel and unfair. That, in addition to the guilt I felt about nearly ruining the path you’d put yourself on—a perfectly good path—wouldn’t let me ignore your situation any longer.”
“Unfair? Guilt?” I splutter. “That’s hardly a reason to drop half a mil on a stranger. The whole world is unfair. You likely know that firsthand.”
I’m not going to pretend that someone who has seen some kind of service or worse—and I’m just guessing here, but my gut is rarely wrong—doesn’t have scars. Just because I can’t see them on Thorn doesn’t mean they don’t exist. He might have scrubbed his background, but his company basically states that it was created through hard work, perseverance, tenacity, and an unwavering zero percent standard for error.
He completely ignores that. I’m not even fishing, and I’m not asking him to talk to me about himself, but I can tell he’s so used to shutting it down that there’s zero chance of it happening.
“This afternoon, when I was sitting in my office and going over and over in my head what I saw down in the lobby of my building—how people changed in an instant and how it really seemed like it was magic that occurred—I wanted to do something. Not just for the cats but for you. I know it doesn’t make sense, and it’s hardly appropriate. I overstepped. I knew you’d be angry as well as somewhat happy, but I did it anyway. I know the hospital the money was paid to will use it to help other people. That’s my hope, at least.”
“You should have used it for your own benefit,” I mutter.
“I don’t need any help. I’m fine.”
The I’m fine thing is never going to fly with me. I should just leave this alone. Say thank you, accept that he didn’t do this just so I owe him something—I still freaking hope that’s not true, but I’m not getting that vibe at all—pack up, and then get out of his hair. Now that we’re not trying to out-ruin each other, I really have no reason to be here. It’s crazy that I am here in the first place. Even if this was his backward way of apologizing to me, it was completely unnecessary.
He helped me without my knowledge or consent, but it’s done now, and I know I’m not going to be able to convince him to undo it. The best I can say is thank you and get out of his hair.
“I don’t have anyone. You know that through all your background checks. I have Peach Lips, and she has the world, so she’s given me that too. But as for a best friend or true family, that was my mom for me, and she’s gone. I’ve spent years trying to be okay, but I know I’m not ever going to be properly alright again. I’ve done what I could to build a life. I thought this was the end of it, but it’s just another fork or bridge or whatever analogies people use. And now…this. I really don’t know how to thank you or what I can do for you to make your life equally better.”
His face slowly morphs into a frown. “That’s not why I did it.”
“I know. I didn’t mean to imply that you had creepy ulterior motives.”
“You did once ask me if this was going to turn weird, like a hostage situation where I keep you as a prisoner in my house like a madman and force you to sleep in my bed and wear only my clothes and get completely obsessed like a bad token dark romance novel.”
“They’re so popular right now.” They’re not my thing, but if you read enough, they’re going to crop up. Personally, I’m a romcom girl myself. I like it when everything goes repeatedly wrong, but somehow, it all turns itself around. It’s funny in books, even if it’s a bitch in real life. Being able to laugh at the hard stuff in life is the most vital and important way to get through it. “I—I was thinking about going and leaving you in peace. You don’t need to drop my phone off. You can just mail it. I’m now familiar with enough of your staff that I know who to contact if I need any changes made. I know who to call.”
“Leave?” A fraction of that stoic facade breaks down. He seems confused and slightly alarmed. Like he did when he walked into the lobby earlier today and saw a heck of a lot of his staff gathered there. I thought we were all in for it, but he seemed mystified, not angry.
“Yes, go. It seems like a natural end. You’ve helped me, you’ve helped the animals, and I have no doubt you’ll figure out a way to make your workplace the best it can be now that you know what it’s like to see your staff laugh and smile. It’s infectious and good for morale. You’ll want to keep it up.”
The frown deepens. He grinds his teeth so hard that I hear them squeak. But there’s that shadow in his eyes again. Not anger. Confusion . “You think I’m an ogre?”
“No. No one does. But that’s not the issue.”
“You’re leaving?” he asks again, with real effort behind the tonelessness.
“There’s nothing left for me to do here. Unless you’d like me to do something for you. Or for your business. I can put out whatever glowing reviews you need and talk to whoever is on the other end of that—”
“There’s nothing,” he growls, swiping his hand through his short hair. “Nothing like that.”
I twist my hands in front of me. My fingers are so freaking sweaty. A shiver starts at the nape of my neck and slips down my spine when I think about tracing that same path, but much more gently and comforting. Getting close.
That’s absurd. I have no right to be thinking those things. I have no right to feel even a slight amount of heat in my body or a building tenderness in my stomach. Thorn doesn’t need my help. He’s rich, and rich people can pay anyone to fix their problems. He referenced a therapist before. If he has personal stuff going on, he can pay someone who knows their stuff to help him heal.
He doesn’t need protecting, and he doesn’t need saving. He’s the head of a security service, and I’m sure it’s not a front business for darker stuff under the surface, no matter how many times I’ve referenced that. His job is protection, and he’s got that down. As for saving? I can’t even save myself. Picking myself up and forcing myself to move forward, realizing that crying and grieving might be therapeutic, but that life still goes on and I still need shelter and food, isn’t exactly saving. It’s surviving, not thriving.
Thorn is the one who is thriving. And I need to let him get back to doing that.
“Well then, in the morning. If that’s alright?”
He gets my meaning perfectly. He’s already standing utterly straight, but his shoulders align, and his back straightens further. His eyes take on that same deadness, and his face empties out. “I can have the driver here to take you to the jet whenever you’re ready.”
All I can do is thank him again. I have nothing to offer him that he doesn’t already have and doesn’t already know. I just hope this all works out. For both of us. It seems well on the road to being that way already.
His eyes shift to Peach Lips and I swear I see a flash of something soft and a little bit sad, but he quickly gets his menacing security guard frowny face in place. “I just wanted to come and check that you were comfortable. In the house. That there wasn’t anything you needed.”
That feels like a gut punch, though I can’t truly say why. We’re the two least-suited individuals in the world. What did I expect? That we’d share a moment? This is a professional relationship and nothing more. Even the witty banter and sparring is gone now. He’s always going to know the facts of my life and nothing deeper, and I’m going to know nothing—facts or deeper—about him.
We’re not going to share a moment or anything.
“Thank you again.” I rub my clammy hands on my dress. “I’ll reiterate that I hope everything works out for you.” For the love of dancing disco cats, am I even listening to myself?
“For you too. And Peach Lips. I’m glad I got to meet you both, and I hope your life can go back to the way it was, with some slight improvements, for having made my acquaintance and that of the company.”
Shit. Okay, yeah, that payment was pure blood money and guilt. It wasn’t just my life he’d stumbled into and punched holes all over. It was Peach Lips’ life too.
I don’t think Thorn would ever admit it, but like everyone who meets her, he’s changed. He likes Peach Lips. He paid off that debt for her just as much as for me. Probably more for her. And probably because he thought he had to. It would be like me accidentally breaking someone’s tablet and then offering to buy a new one because it’s the right thing to do. You know, give or take a few hundred thousand dollars .
I have absolutely no idea how to deal with this. I’ve never been in this situation. Never. Not where I want to say more and need to say more, but the only thing I can choke out is one watered-down word. “Yes.” What the hell does that even mean?
Before he nods and walks away like he did right after the only chewing out being the sandwiches he found surprisingly delicious incident, I catch the slightest hesitation. A glimmer of indecision. Does he want to say something more? What else is there to say? Even if butterflies amount to anything at all, we don’t belong in each other’s worlds.
Thorn is used to being the tough, silent type, and I’m used to handling my problems on my own and putting a brave face on overtop my aching heart.
The end result is silence.
It lingers in the kitchen, feral and metallic, aching and confusing, long after he’s gone.