Chapter 6 #2
"I’ll be late tonight," he said, his tone shifting back to business. "I have a meeting with the coaching staff. Dinner is on your own."
"Fine."
"Don't wait up."
"I never do."
He looked at me for one last second, his gaze dropping to my mouth.
"Wear the blue sweater tonight," he said. "The one you stole from my drawer yesterday. It looks better on you than it does on me."
Before I could respond, he turned and walked away, disappearing into the crowd of students, leaving me standing there holding my scarf and wondering how he knew exactly what I was wearing to bed when he was supposedly sleeping.
The penthouse was lonely when Graham wasn't there.
I hated admitting it. I hated that in less than a week, the silence had morphed from oppressive to… empty.
It was 9:00 PM. I had eaten a salad (because cooking for one felt pathetic). I had tried to sketch. I had tried to watch TV. Nothing worked. The apartment felt vast and cold without his looming presence.
I was in the kitchen, wiping down the counters for the third time, when the front door beeped.
1998.
The lock disengaged.
Graham walked in.
He looked terrible.
Worse than Saturday. Saturday, he had been in physical pain. Tonight, he looked like someone had hollowed him out with a spoon.
His coat was gone—left in the car, maybe. His tie was undone, hanging loosely around his neck. His hair was messy, as if he’d been running his hands through it for hours.
But it was his eyes that stopped me. They were bleak. Haunted.
He didn't look at me. He walked straight past the kitchen, heading for the liquor cabinet in the living room.
"Graham?"
He ignored me. He grabbed a bottle of scotch—the expensive stuff, the thirty-year-old single malt—and a glass. He didn't pour it. He just stood there, gripping the neck of the bottle like he wanted to strangle it.
I put down the sponge and walked into the living room.
"What happened?"
He laughed. It was a dark, jagged sound.
"The Senator happened," he said to the glass. "A lovely evening chat."
"Your dad?"
"My father," he corrected sharply. "Dad implies a relationship. The Senator is a management firm."
He poured the drink. His hand was shaking. Not from the shoulder injury. From rage.
"He called the coach," Graham said, his voice flat. "He heard a rumor I was favoring my right side. He wanted to know if I was compromised."
"How did he hear that?"
"He has spies everywhere. Boosters. Alumni. He pays people to watch me." Graham took a swallow of the scotch, wincing as it burned down. "He told me that if I’m injured, I need to hide it better. Because a Vane doesn't show weakness. A Vane leads."
"That’s insane," I whispered. "You’re human. You get hurt."
"Not in his world."
He turned to face me. He looked exhausted, stripped of his usual armor.
"Do you know why he’s like this?" he asked. It wasn't a rhetorical question. He was looking at me like he needed someone to witness the truth.
I shook my head.
"My mother," he said.
The air in the room grew heavy.
"She was… vibrant," Graham said, staring past me at the city lights. "Like you. Chaos. Bright colors. Loud laughter."
He took another drink.
"She was also bipolar. And an addict."
I stood perfectly still. This was it. The scar. The core wound.
"When she was up," Graham continued softly, "it was magic. She’d buy ponies. She’d paint the walls. She’d take us to Paris for the weekend. When she was down… she’d disappear. Or she’d burn things."
He looked at his hand, the one holding the glass.
"My father couldn't handle the mess. So he erased her."
"Erased her?" I whispered.
"Divorce. NDA. Custody battle. He paid her to go away. To a facility in Switzerland. He scrubbed the house clean. He threw away the paintings. He instituted the rules. Order. Discipline. Silence."
He looked at me, his eyes wet.
"He told me that chaos destroys empires. He told me that if I ever let myself lose control, I’d end up like her. Broken. Forgotten."
My heart broke. It actually cracked in my chest.
Suddenly, everything made sense. The sterile apartment. The obsessive cleaning. The need for control. The way he treated hockey like a mathematical equation.
He wasn't an asshole. He was a terrified little boy trying to keep his world from burning down.
"Graham," I said softly.
"So when I see you," he whispered, stepping closer, "with your paint and your messy hair and your defiance… it terrifies me."
"Because I remind you of her?"
"No."
He set the glass down on the table with a sharp clack. He reached out and cupped my face with both hands. His palms were warm. His touch was desperate.
"Because you make me want the chaos," he confessed. "You make me want to burn the schedule. You make me want to break the rules. And I don't know who I am without the rules."
"Maybe," I whispered, covering his hands with mine, "you don't need to be anyone. Maybe you just need to be Graham."
"I don't know how to be just Graham."
"I can teach you."
He looked at me, searching my face for any sign of deception.
"You're dangerous, Faye."
"I know."
"I should send you away. I should break the contract right now."
"But you won't."
"No," he groaned, his forehead dropping to rest against mine. "I won't."
He didn't kiss me. This wasn't about sex. This was about something much heavier.
He pulled me into his arms, wrapping them around me like a vice. He buried his face in my hair, breathing me in.
"Just… hold me," he whispered. "For a minute. Before I have to be the Governor again."
I wrapped my arms around his waist. I held on tight. I felt the tension in his back, the weight of the expectations pressing down on him.
For the first time since I moved in, the silence didn't feel like a bomb waiting to go off. It felt like a shelter.
We stood there in the middle of his perfect, empty living room, two broken children of rich men, holding each other up against the dark.
And I knew, in that moment, that I wasn't just attracted to him.
I was falling in love with the boy hiding inside the ice. And that was the most terrifying thing of all.