45. Sinclair
Sinclair
Her Stay is pretty much all the encouragement I need.
I give one more cursory protest and am, to my delight, instantly overruled.
Sylvie and Kurt say their goodnights and disappear, Sylvie with a grin that tells me she’s not too mad not to have gotten rid of me, and Elyse putters around, gathering pillows and blankets.
Then finally, finally, we’re sitting on the couch together with the rest of the Leroy Chambertin. I outstretch my arm, and she curls up against my side.
I stare down at her. “Hey.”
“Hey,” she says dreamily.
“You sure you’re okay with me staying?”
She nods. “I don’t want you to go. Not when I’ve just got you back.”
“Yeah. I didn’t want to go, either. I was dreading it all evening. Your family is wonderful.”
“Thank you. They really are.” She sets her wineglass down on the carpet and reaches up to place her hand on my cheek. “I dig the beard.”
“Really? Not too Unabomber?” In truth, I had it trimmed this week to a sharper, Manhattan-appropriate aesthetic. I thought about shaving it all off but then decided against it. I was kinda hoping a visual reminder that I’m not the man she walked away from last month might serve me.
“It’s very sexy.” She scratches it a little. Her lipstick may have worn off, but I’ve never been more conscious of the fact that I haven’t kissed her in weeks and weeks. “Is it ticklish?”
“Not for me,” I murmur, staring at her mouth. “But you might need to find that out for yourself.”
She smiles at that—challenge accepted—and presses her lips to mine.
I practically weep at the relief of it. I’ve been observing her all evening, watching her throughout dinner to see if I could gauge where her head was at.
She’s been the perfect host—warm, sweet, considerate—but, the fact of my presence here aside, I haven’t been able to assuage my anxiety over what the future holds… until now.
I utter a strangled “God” as I kiss her back, bundling her up in my arms, where she belongs.
She is a shot of whiskey, addling my brain and flooding my body with warmth.
As she parts for me and I stroke her tongue with mine, I marvel that this is the best, most complete, most emotive homecoming I could ever have imagined.
We spend a few moments like this, just kissing, making out like teenagers on her father’s couch, rediscovering each other all over again.
She is a warm, pliant dream in my arms, and she seems just as absorbed as me in every small detail, judging by the way she caresses my face and strokes my beard and rakes her fingers through my hair.
As she does, the little bells on her sweater jingle softly.
Within moments, I’m a wreck. Tears spill from my eyes and slick my cheeks and leak into our kiss.
“Hey,” she murmurs, “it’s okay.”
“It’s not, though,” I say brokenly, cupping her face and pulling away just enough to meet her eyes.
“Because I love you so much, and I thought I’d lost you—I thought I’d fucked up so badly that I’d never, ever get to see you again, and I just can’t believe this is happening, and I’m just—I’m having a hard time with it. ”
“Hey,” she says again, more urgently this time. “Look at me.”
I do. I look. I drown in her eyes. They’re wet, too. Seems I’m not the only one struggling to manage this emotional overload.
“I love you too,” she says with an earnest expression on her face, and I shake my head.
“No. You can’t. It’s too soon. I need to, uh, I need to earn it.”
“Tough shit. That’s not how it works, unfortunately for me. I fell in love with you before I found out about all the… stuff,” she finishes diplomatically.
“But I want to earn it.” I mean it.
A sly little smile. “That sounds pretty good to me.”
“Do not make this about sex. I’m trying to be sincere here. I haven’t made amends yet, and I don’t know how to.”
She’s studying me like I’m some fascinating animal in a zoo. “Baby, it’s not about making amends. There’s no scorecard. It’s about being sorry, and meaning it, and trying to do better.”
“That doesn’t sound like enough,” I begin, but she’s shaking her head.
“You’ve done plenty. You’ve laid yourself bare.
Told me so many family secrets that I could make a documentary out of them.
And better than that, you’re doing the work.
That’s the biggest sign that you’re serious about changing.
Do you know how awesome that is? I was so impressed by your progress.
I don’t know if you realize this, but it was really obvious in your letters that you’ve been making huge strides. ”
She’s so sweet. I slide my hands down her neck and along her shoulders.
She’s tiny under that sweater. “But the—cycling incident. I can’t believe you invited me here after that.
I kept thinking maybe A.J. didn’t ever get that letter to you and it was all a mistake.
I can’t believe your sister could stomach the sight of me after what I did. ”
She sighs. “I showed her the letter. We had a long talk. And we were pretty unanimous in our verdict.”
I clear my throat nervously. “Which was…?”
“That you were a scared kid and your parents are assholes. Sorry.” She shrugs like she’s not remotely sorry. “That wasn’t your worst moment, you know. I’m not going to judge you on what you did twenty years ago.”
The inference is clear. What I did a few weeks ago as a grown-ass man was way, way worse.
“Still. The parallel is horrific.”
“Yeah, it’s brutal. What are the chances?” She hesitates. “Did you go see that lady? Maria? Sylvie is dying to know.”
That makes me chuckle a little. “Figures. Is that why she let me stay the night?”
“Absolutely. She wants me to get all the tea and then she’ll probably interrogate you over hot chocolate tomorrow morning, too.”
I shift on the couch and haul her over me so she’s sitting sideways in my lap, her head resting on my shoulder and my arms banded tightly around her. “I saw her,” I say.
“And?”
I blow out a breath. “And… she was very shocked and, I’d say, extremely gracious, given the circumstances. She knew of my family, but she had no clue it was us who’d paid her off and hushed her up.”
“Was she angry?”
I consider. “I think, like you, she was more pissed at my folks than me. She has a son, so I suspect that factored into the grace she was able to extend to me. She did say my parents should have marched me over to face the music, though.”
“That’s exactly what Sylvie said.”
“Yeah. The maternal instinct is an amazing thing… unless it turns you into a fucking monster, like my mom’s.”
“So is she going to do anything? Maria?”
“Nah. For her, it was very much buried in the past. I think she recognized it for what it was: my need to look her in the eye and apologize. She said that even though the people who paid her off were clearly ‘rich assholes’—her words—she apparently had a lot of complications during her son’s birth.
Unrelated to the injuries I caused, but it meant she was able to really max out the costs of her ob-gyn care on my parents’ dime. ”
A soft laugh against my chest. “I love that. Karma, bitch.”
“Exactly. The thing that got me, though—”
My voice hitches, and she sits upright, her eyes wide. “What?”
“When she opened the front door, there was this photo of a boy graduating high school, I guess—he had his cap and gown on. And he looked like such a fine young man, you know? And it just hit me there and then that if—if things had gone more badly that night, she could have lost her baby, and that photo would’ve never been there.
Like—it just would’ve been a blank space on the wall.
A whole human life that never happened because of me. ”
I start to cry again, with harsh, hacking noises, and she throws her arms around me.
“Oh my God. Oh, that’s so awful, but you can’t think like that!
You can’t spend your whole life letting this eat you up.
You made some mistakes, and people got hurt, but everyone is fine.
Maria’s fine, and Sylvie’s fine, and I’m fine. You’ve just got to move forward.”
I sit here, shaking with the effort of holding in my tears, my arms wrapped tightly around her as though I’ll shatter into a million pieces if I let her go.
“I think you have a beautiful heart,” she whispers into my ear.
“And I think your parents have maybe guided you away from relying on it, and maybe you got a bit lost along the way. But now you’re seeing someone who can help you, and you’re feeling everything.
” Her arms flex around my neck. “And that’s the guy I want to be with, a guy whose heart tells him how to live. ”
She holds me until I’ve found it in me to calm down, and then she leans backward and takes my face in her hands.
“I also have a hunch,” she says, “that my mom can’t take all the credit for the Ward family’s very big Christmas miracle. Huh?”
I feign confusion as the panic hits. No, no, no. This is precisely what I didn’t want. “What?” I say, furrowing my brow.
“Don’t you what me. No more lies, remember? I need to know,” she whispers.
Fuck. “But it was an anonymous donation, wasn’t it?” I ask, playing for time.
“Uh-huh. But even anonymous donors are people. And do you know what?”
“What?” I ask, the dread mounting.
“Our debt, which was a totally random number, was exactly one percent of the total donation Hudson County received. What do you make of that?”
Fuck me, she’s smart, and I’m stupid. I should have made the total a more random amount.
“A mathematical miracle?” I venture, and she smirks at me.
“Nice try, dude. Spill it.”
“I’d rather we ignored it,” I plead. “But you’re putting me in a difficult position because I promised you no more lies.”
“So…”
I sigh. Jesus, I’m outsmarted here. “It was the least I could do. You were going to use the campaign money to pay down the debt. Don’t argue—I know you were. I saw your bank statements, remember? You used both Alchemy payments to do exactly that.”
“But not the whole amount! And it cost you thirty-six million dollars! That’s insane!”
“It cost me a lot less than that because it was distressed debt. I redirected some funds from our charitable foundation so that a lot of people who don’t deserve their shitty situation could catch a break.
Like I said, the least I could do. But you guys were never supposed to find out.
I didn’t want you to feel like I was trying to buy my way out of the fucking shithole I’d lied and cheated my way into. ”
“I didn’t think that,” she says, looking at me so adoringly that I will definitely start to cry again. “Like I said, beautiful heart. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. Just don’t tell your folks.”
She shakes her head. “Scout’s honor.”
“I like that your dad thinks your mom had a hand in it. And I’d hate him to know it was me. I couldn’t take it.”
“Got it,” she says. “I promise I won’t tell anyone. It’s our secret.”
I smile at her as I lean back in to kiss her.
There have been far too many secrets for my liking, but as far as secrets go, this feels like a pretty good one.