Chapter 28 Stalemate
Behind me, the door squeals open, then shuts with a loud thunk.
“What are they doing here, Faust?” My voice shakes with a rage. I didn’t know I could feel this deeply. This is bottom-of-soul anger, biblical, the sort of emotion that made ancient philosophers wax poetic about where the human spirit starts inside the body.
And his voice is just as angry—tightly cornered, constrained, folded. “It isn’t what you think.”
“You had no right. None.”
“I only offered them money for tickets. I didn’t know they’d pick this weekend—”
“You’ve been talking to them?” Pain glances down my palms; I’ve balled my fists so tightly that my fingernails are biting my skin. “I didn’t say you could do that. I asked you not to speak with them.”
“I thought we were…”
He goes quiet. And I twist around to face him and his cold, expansive disappointment.
Which maybe doesn’t sound as big as fury, but it is.
That look on his face, like I’m a rocket that almost left the atmosphere then burst into flame, like I’m a ballerina that toppled to her knees in the middle of Swan Lake.
It makes my breath catch inside my chest. There won’t be enough air to bring me back to life once we’re through with each other.
“You thought we were what?” I bite out.
Faust’s jaw pulls to one side, as if he’s sucking at the inside of his cheek, and his dark eyes study me—still on the stage floor, to him. “I see.”
“What? Stop fucking with me, Faust. Just say it.”
His mouth presses into a firm line, plush pink skin flashing white from the pressure before he speaks again. “I thought I could make you believe me.” His throat bobs. “But you still think I’m just like him, don’t you? You’ve been waiting for me to hurt you.”
“Clearly, I was right.” I throw a hand toward the door. “And you’re not innocent, you play games—”
“Not like that. Not with you.”
“No? Then why did you do this?” An emotion unfurls inside me, painfully quick.
I think it’s anger, only it’s getting harder to see him.
“You said—you said I brought color back into your life or, or whatever. Is this why? Is it fun to you? Bringing my family here so now I have to tell them the truth? Is this you forcing me to, what, come clean to them?”
Faust stares at me blankly. “Is that why you’re upset Bernard proposed to you?”
“Of course.”
“You were just proposed to. In the paddock. There were cameras.” He couldn’t sound more disapproving if he tried. “That was your first proposal, wasn’t it?”
My words stall out, a scattered um. “Why does that matter?”
“Because I want to be your last.” His words are staccato, jarring, one loudly after the other in a barely repressed yell. “Because you deserve more than having to fake love. Because—seeing you with someone else breaks my fucking heart.”
I’m shattering. No, dissolving. Simply, quietly, like a piece of paper dropped into a lake, as the meaning of his words penetrates my anger.
My last. I palm at the thick beaded fabric stretched over my sternum, trying to wiggle another inch of space between the dress’s built-in corset and my collapsing chest. “Faust.” I’ve said his name, and now I have to keep talking. “What are you saying?”
He doesn’t answer. Not out loud. I watch weakly as Faust shakes his head, his mouth bouncing with a repressed grimace.
“Please.”
“I should go.”
“Don’t,” I plead. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how you felt. If I did…”
“Would you have stopped?” he asks sharply. “Or would you marry him?”
“Faust.”
“If someone paid you to, would you marry him?”
Tears claw at my lash line, hundreds of little begging cuts. “That’s a horrible thing to say.”
“Is it true?”
I want to say no. I know I wouldn’t want to.
That I’d hate every moment. But I can’t quite get the words out, and from the disappointment written all over his face, I know whatever I say won’t make this disaster go away.
“Would you be able to live with yourself?” Faust continues breathlessly.
“Would it be enough to know, deep down, that you’re acting, pretending to be his wife—even if you’re the only one who knows?
If someone paid you enough, would you sell your life? ”
“No, okay? I wouldn’t. I don’t want to.”
“Nobody wants to.”
“That isn’t—forget about him.” I furiously wipe away tears. “I didn’t know this is how you felt. But if this is you trying to make me choose between you and my life, then you should’ve talked to me.”
Faust winces. “No, I’m trying to give you both.
You don’t want you. Don’t you see that? The second something makes you happy, you leave.
” His voice is flat, icy, devastating, and I get it.
I understand how someone can hate winter.
“I thought you needed to see you could trust me, I thought if I paid off your problems, you’d see that you’re the one holding yourself back.
It isn’t about your sisters’ school, or your grandma’s restaurant, because you will always find another reason to avoid what you want.
You can’t even tell me that you wouldn’t marry him if someone else wanted you to. ”
“You…”
Paid off my problems.
My sisters’ school.
I never told him about Grandma’s restaurant.
“How do you know about any of that?” I murmur.
Acid churns in my stomach at how long it takes him to reply. There’s a cold, blank snow falling behind his eyes, and it clicks. Faust talked to my family. He gave them money for tickets. He gave them… more money than that.
I bite my lip, teeth harsh against my skin.
I’m starting to get mad again. Really mad, and really embarrassed.
“You.” The word comes out like a growl. “How long have you been talking to them behind my back? Is Bernard in on it, too, or just my family? Must’ve been such a blast for you, catching the cat burglar.
Or was the game seeing which rich man could get me into bed first, you or Bernard? ”
When I push the first hot tear from my cheek, get him better focused with my blurry eyes, I see Faust’s anger stutter. His mouth opening, eyes widening, like he didn’t really think I’d meant what I’d said until I started to cry. “I would never do that with him. You can’t really think that I’d—”
I hold up my hands. “Push me into telling the truth? You knew I was doing it this weekend. You gave them this option. Take the credit.”
“What do you mean?”
No cops. No lawyers. No boyfriends. I wipe my cheek with the back of my hand, tears burning through the last layer of my composure. “You got me. I… I think I was falling in love with you, and I see now that would’ve been a real mistake.”
He inhales, pupils dilating. “Cat.”
Not Arcadia. Cat. My heart breaks, and it’s an avalanche of memories.
Falling asleep with him, watching him pop champagne, asking him to stay in F1.
Him winning at chess, him finding me out, confronting me at the gala when I was already a mess.
Telling me not to lie, while keeping this time bomb from me.
Always Bernard’s brother; always someone in another world, who can flex his money over me and my family without thinking through the consequences, and I’d been so stupid to think he was different.
He’d patiently unraveled me and my defenses, and I’d fallen for it.
He hadn’t even needed to make me any promises about us—he still isn’t.
I’d let him walk gently and quietly into my heart, and he broke it from the inside.
Almost professional, this one.
But I’m smarter than this. So, I work up to the one thing no man has ever said to me.
“I don’t believe you. I don’t think you care about me,” I whisper to him. “But good job. You did it. Whatever fucked up game of cat and mouse this was, you win.”
Air. I need air, real air, away from Faust and my family and Bernard.
I go to the door, hesitating only when I hear Faust murmur my name—one more Arcadia for the road.
Then I’m in the stairwell, down the stairs, walking to who knows where, my phone buzzing in my pocket.
It could be him. Or my dad, my sisters, Bernard, the team.
So many different people could be calling me, wondering where I am, demanding that I explain myself to them, that my throat starts to constrict.
And by the time I get to the ground level, outside, the fire racing down my chest and across my lungs makes it impossible to breathe.
I push into the nearest bathroom and find an empty stall to lock myself into.
“Don’t cry. Don’t.” I grab a handful of cheap toilet paper, wrap it around my finger, and dab under my eyes. My mascara must be running. Fuck. “Come on. Don’t.”
There shouldn’t be any tears left. I cried for weeks when Grandma died.
When the bank came after the restaurant, I’d thought I’d dried out, any leftover tears freezing into frigid numbness.
And that’s how I felt for so long afterward—numb, lost in the dark.
Step by baby step, I’d walked myself back into the light, made a new life for myself and my family. I’d saved me.
I look down at the toilet paper in my hands.
It’s damp, already shredded, covered in black smears that must be all over my face.
And I realize that it’s on me again. I’m the person who has to pick myself back up.
There isn’t another Cat Cromwell, and no one will make Faust pay for shattering my heart.
So I wrap my fingers around the soggy, tearstained paper and hold my breath until the sob in my chest burns out.
Then I text Imogen.
Finished the job. Last payment is due by midnight. xC
Half of me wants to go radio silent. Dead to the world.
The other half—the eldest daughter in me—knows that isn’t an option.