12. Graham
GRAHAM
Itune out, nodding along and only half listening as the final stragglers at the engagement party vie for my attention.
I’m watching Dani.
Was it enough? Enough to break her, to make her regret that she tried to go toe to toe with me?
She looks dejected—the slump of her shoulders, the way she twists her fingers around her wineglass.
She’s got nail polish on, I notice. She didn’t have it when I—
Kidnapped her. Stole her from her family.
It almost seems like a fever dream when I think about it now. Like it didn’t really happen.
That’s how I know I’m turning into my dad. He did the same thing—rewrote history in his mind, acted like the girls he snatched wanted it, wanted him.
Dani does want me, though, the logical part of me points out, referencing the blackmail scheme Dani’s concocted. She wants me more than they ever wanted him.
Jeremy yawns as he slouches over to Dani.
“Can you guys give me and Colette a ride back to Mom and Dad’s on your way home? Mom said she did my laundry and ironed my shirts, but I have to pick it up. It’s so annoying. She won’t courier it.”
“God forbid your own mother wants to see you.”
Jeremy jumps when he hears me behind him.
“Graham, your girlfriend’s trying to make us take the subway—can you believe it? It’s dark and cold outside.” Colette pouts.
“I thought you would be a little more wary of the subway, Dani.” My eyes lock on hers.
“I’m fine riding the subway.” Her chin’s got that stubborn set.
Colette bats her eyelashes at Dani. “But I assumed you’re going home with your boyfriend… Aren’t you?”
“Oh, well.” Dani dithers. “I was just at his penthouse, so I don’t want to spend too much time there—it’s not like we’re engaged. And I should probably stay in the office and get work done anyway...”
I see Kraig stealing some of the leftover desserts. He’s staring at us. He’s going to tell his father…
As much as I don’t want to be Dani’s boyfriend, I also don’t want to face the wrath of my parents. It’s one thing to tell them we broke up, but they’re clearly suspicious, and Kraig would like nothing more than to stoke their doubt.
“She always wants to play hard to get, even though she’s already lost that fight.”
Dani almost drops her wineglass when I cup the back of her head and let my hand drift down to her neck.
“You’re coming home with me tonight, Dani. You’ve spent too much time on this party as it is this week.”
“You can’t be here,” I bark at Dani as she tries to follow me off the elevator.
“I can’t return to the scene of the crime?” she fires back.
“It’s not a crime.”
“Kidnapping is a crime.”
“I told you,” I fume, “I own another apartment in this building. So you, and your dog, and your take-out orders need to go live there. I cannot believe you made me stop to buy you cinnamon rolls.”
“I needed them after that party, and I’m not sharing. Besides, you’re having a drink. We both need to decompress.”
“Yes, a drink, because that’s what adults do. Wouldn’t you like to be an adult?” I head to the bar. “I can pour you a drink. Maybe give you some Vicodin with it so I don’t have to interact with you for the rest of the evening.”
“We need to get our story straight,” Dani presses, following me into the penthouse with all her bags.
Lulu gets hit on the head and yelps as Dani tries to rummage around in her bag.
“We? There is no ‘we.’ We don’t need to do anything. This is a decision you made, and you need to deal with the consequences.” I rescue Lulu from the snarl of bags.
“Then why did you—”
“What?” I turn back to the scotch I’m pouring into a glass.
“You know, why were you”—she gestures helplessly—“like that at the end of the party?”
“Like what?” I unbutton my suit jacket and sit down on the couch. “You said you wanted me to be your boyfriend. That’s how I act with the women I’m dating.”
“Like an immature asshole?”
“You liked it.” I take a sip of the scotch. “I’m your deepest, darkest fantasy, remember?” I spread my arms wide.
“I’m not fantasizing about you!” she screeches then dumps the entire contents of her purse all over my couch.
I swear, loudly, as paper clips bounce all over my lap.
“Why are they pink?”
Dani’s not frightened.
She grabs a handful of multicolored gel pens and a grid-paper notebook and sits down on the coffee table to face me.
“Focus. How did we meet?”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “You seriously don’t want any money?”
“Sex club?” she rattles off. “Dating app? We mixed up each other’s coffee orders?”
“I kidnapped you and immediately regretted it, and now I’m being punished with eternal damnation by having you in my house.”
She opens the cinnamon-bun box and rummages around in it, not paying attention.
“And pick up your paper clips before your poor dog chokes.” I snatch up Lulu and wrestle a slobbery paper clip out of her mouth.
Dani takes a sip from my scotch glass.
“I offered you one,” I hiss through gritted teeth.
“I just wanted a sip—this pairs very nicely with cinnamon buns. Oh, I know,” she says around the pastry, “we could say we met at a bakery.”
“I don’t go to bakeries.”
“Fine, a scotch bar.”
“That’s not a thing.” I scowl. “You read all those trashy romance novels. Can’t you just steal one of those ideas?”
“I don’t read romance novels.” She coughs.
“Liar.”
“Did you snoop on my phone?” she shrieks.
The dog on my lap barks at the outburst.
“I don’t have to snoop on your phone to know your little fantasies.”
I don’t even like cinnamon rolls, but I snatch the half-eaten one out of the Grey Dove Bakery box and eat it in two bites. A show of dominance.
“We’ll tell people we met at a party,” Dani decides.
“Which party?” I counter.
“I don’t know, Graham—any random party. Don’t you have friends who throw parties? It can be at one of them.”
I don’t have friends, and the only parties I attend are thrown by family members.
She can’t know that, though. It still stings.
I’m a loner. As a public service, I think savagely.
“What about a party thrown by your friends?”
“They would have seen you there.” Dani’s dismissive. “What is it you do for a living? I’d call you a nepo baby, but you’re a little too hot for that.”
“Just tell people I saw you walking on the street and asked you out.”
“No one’s going to believe that.” She gives a hollow laugh.
“Well, yes, they will—that’s how people used to meet before dating apps and whatnot.”
Dani makes a face. She doesn’t look at me as she reaches for another pastry.
“What? Why are you making this so difficult?” I demand.
“Look…” She lets out a breath. “Guys who look like you don’t just see a woman who looks like me on the street,” she says in a rush, “and want to ask her out.”
“I don’t understand.” I frown.
“I mean, it’s not like I’d get cast to play Juliet in the school play.” She grabs my drink and downs the rest of it. “I’m just saying.”
I stare at her.
“That’s not true.”
“Yeah, it is, Graham, and you keep thinking that by calling me ugly and a loser and gross you’re really going to crater my self-esteem and make me take the payout, but you won’t. You should try taking lessons from my mother. Now there’s a woman who’s a master class in making me feel like crap.”
We sit there in silence for a moment.
“Anyway,” she says to the glass, “let’s just tell people it was a weird sex-club thing, m’kay?”
There’s another long pause.
“I saw you walking on the street and I wanted you,” I remind her quietly.
The ice clinks in the empty glass. I take it from her and go get her a refill.
“I need a photo—my mom’s been nagging me for them,” she says when I hand it to her wordlessly. “Lulu, do you want to be in it?”
She fusses, trying to get a picture.
I don’t smile, though I sort of want to at all the weird faces she’s making.
“Piper says that you have to, like, turtle your neck—then your neck looks long.”
“You look insane.” I stare at her.
“Who am I kidding—I look terrible in photos,” she says, eating a cinnamon roll as she flips through the ones she took. “I need to just take one of you. Here, take your scotch and pose. Look like a billionaire! Wait—do it with the dog. Then people will know I’m here.”
“I’m not dating your dog.”
She steps back and trips over the coffee table.
I lean forward and grab her, pulling her so she lands half in my lap.
“Oh, geez. I have icing everywhere.” She licks her finger. “There are crumbs on your nice suit.” She puts her cinnamon roll in her mouth and starts brushing at me.
I grab her phone and snap a photo.
“Cute.” I show her.
“Oh, I can’t post that,” she complains.
“Well, then don’t post anything, because I have to work.”
The penthouse has very good soundproofing, so thankfully I can’t hear her in the guest suite when I finally finish the emails I needed to answer and head upstairs, slowly removing my tie and unbuttoning my dress shirt.
The hallway is dark, the only light the ambient glow from the city that never sleeps, stretched out below the tower.
I almost open her door. Almost look in to make sure she’s there, that she hasn’t escaped, that my prized possession is still mine.
I want her to leave, I remind myself. I’ll write her a check this minute.
I have my leatherbound copy of Heart of Darkness next to me on the bed, but I don’t have the stomach to finish my reread.
I sit on my bed staring out at the moon, like we’re almost eye level.
When Agent Frank Donnelly and the rest of the FBI stormed the cellar where my dad was keeping us prisoner, I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen—even cooler than when Spencer trained a mouse we’d found to run through a toilet-paper-tube obstacle course.
It was like a movie, the kind my brothers and I used to watch on the crappy TV in the corner of the cellar.
Frank had covered my eyes when he took us out. It was sunset.
“Don’t worry,” he’d told me. “It will be dark soon, and the moon will be out. I know the sun hurts your eyes.”
I shake my head.
I want to wake Dani up. Have another fight. Just so I don’t have to think.
“I have a board meeting tomorrow, and I need to sleep,” I remind myself aloud.