Chapter 1 #2
Teddy slumps down onto the sofa perpendicular to mine, his own beer in hand. ‘I don’t mean to belittle your shit, Clark, but they sound like champagne problems to me.’
‘Aaaaand you brought them largely on yourself,’ Yvette adds.
I look at them both, mull over those statements, then scoff through a swig of beer. ‘Christ, you’re right. I’m a fucking disaster.’
‘I hate to tell you, but that’s not news to us,’ Yvette says, jesting, I think. ‘How was Connie when you left?’
‘Angry. Sad. Asked me if I ever loved her and I said yes…’ I wince.
‘Like a sister.’ I’m quick to hold up a hand.
‘I know, I know. It was coming out wrong, I wasn’t doing myself any favours.
I get it without you both gasping like that.
By the end, she told me to go fuck myself, which I think is a much healthier headspace for her to be in.
’ I shake my head. If only I were joking.
‘She’s… God, I didn’t mean to hurt her.’
‘It was inevitable, Clark,’ Teddy says.
‘But better hurt her as your fiancée than your wife,’ Yvette adds.
‘That’s what I thought. Now, I’m wondering whether I should have just kept up the fa?ade to the grave.’
‘What about the other one?’ Teddy asks. ‘Are we admitting her name, yet?’
Yvette arches a brow in my direction. ‘Other one?’
‘Not like that.’ Ted jumps to my defence.
‘I don’t get it,’ she says.
I let my head fall back again so I’m staring at the beige lampshade hanging from the ceiling. ‘He’s talking about Dayna.’
‘Dayna? Our Dayna? Why would… That’s the reason you broke it off?’
I don’t think I want to get into it. Dayna hates me, understandably, but I’m in the pits of hell right now, so I might as well let Yvette finish me off.
‘We had an industry event last week. She was a speaker.’ I shrug.
‘She’s the CEO of Cross Industries, the highest and best woman in the energy world right now, and frankly, she’s heading up the only oil business still managing to increase year on year profit because she’s…
fucking incredible. She’s blending and thinking outside the box and?—’
‘Clark!’ Yvette yells, sitting onto the edge of her seat. ‘Can we stay on point here?’
‘Right. I just— She was there. We were on the same dinner table. She held her own with all the idiots we were seated with, put them in their place. I was dining out on her, honestly.’
‘And you guys…?’ Yvette asks.
‘No. They didn’t,’ Ted says firmly.
‘No, we didn’t. In fact, I tried to talk to her, but she gave me one of her whip-smart putdowns and ignored me for the rest of the night.’
‘Right. So, at this stage, I have to ask what this has to do with anything? Dayna has given you the silent treatment since you brutally ended things, without explanation, four years ago. I’m not sure this is cause for ditching your bride at the altar.’
He doesn’t know about the one night we fell back into bed together eighteen months ago but since that was an anomaly – a quick, hard, necessary fuck for us both before going right back to silent treatment…
‘Thanks for that. But you’re right. And so is Dayna to fucking loathe me.
But I couldn’t get her out of my head. I’m not the same man I was four years ago but she is the same woman, just stronger and if possible, even more attractive, as a whole package, and I realised that I’m still… ’
‘In love with her?’ Ted and Yvette say in unison.
I close my eyes and lift my empty bottle. ‘Do you have any more of these?’
‘Help yourself,’ Teddy says, giving me a justification for leaving the room.
When I return with two open bottles of beer, Yvette and Teddy are having a whispered debate.
‘Everything okay?’
‘Fine,’ Teddy says hastily – too hastily. ‘I was just thinking you could do with getting away from here for a while.’
I feel my forehead crease. That came out of nowhere.
And it doesn’t explain the heated discussion.
‘I can’t. I’ve got that tender due on Monday for the Persian Gulf well.
It’s too big a deal and you know how much I need a business win.
The top three bids that go through to the next round are announced on Friday.
As much as I’d love to get away – not least from my mother and her crisis meeting – I’ve got too much to take care of here. ’
‘Well… we’re actually going away next weekend. Friday to Monday, that’s all. The bid would be in, and you’d have Wi-Fi to check if you’re through to the next round. We were thinking you could come with us? There’s a group of us going.’
So that’s what the discussion was about. ‘I’m good. I don’t want to step on any toes,’ I tell them.
‘You’re not stepping on our toes, Clark,’ Yvette says, although I sense some reservation in her tone. ‘It would be nice for us if you came.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Skiing. Verbier. There’re seven of us. Why don’t you bring Spencer?’ Teddy says.
I nod. My younger brother is the one person who hasn’t waded in on all this mess yet.
Likely because he couldn’t give a shit. His world revolves around, well, him.
‘I’ll ask.’ I like a good challenge on a black slope, and not many people give me a serious run for my money, but Spencer can. ‘Have you got a place to stay?’
‘Ahh, not yet. One of the others is sorting it today.’
I sit back into the sofa cushions. ‘I’ll see if my family’s chalet is free. There’s no point paying if our place is available.’
Teddy leans in to clink his bottle against mine. ‘Nice one.’
* * *
When I eventually sink into the mattress of Teddy and Yvette’s spare bed in the small hours of the morning, the enormity of the shitstorm I’ve set in motion hits me.
Clark Layton, reckless. The man everyone expects to fail. The forever disappointment of the family. I’ve really leaned into the old narrative.
And what’s worse, even as I try to focus on Connie and how devastated I am to have hurt her, my mind keeps running away from the mess and dragging from my internal Pandora’s box a pair of brown eyes flecked with something that shimmers.
Pink skin that glows with a smile as if it were under a photographer’s flash.
The smell of perfume – praline, vanilla – mixed with the fresh, hot smell of sex, as I remember how that skin feels against mine.
Dayna Cross. The ex before my ex.
The one who got away.
The one I drove away.
The only one I want.