CHAPTER SIX
BENNET
My morning is not off to a good start. I am running on the concept of sleep. Not actual sleep, the memory of it, the theoretical possibility of it. And a coffee so strong my assistant looked mildly concerned when she handed it to me.
My run-in with Jenn in the gym has replayed in my head approximately forty times and gotten worse with each iteration. You're of childbearing age is going to haunt me into the next life.
I hadn't been at my desk a full hour before the board summoned me to the conference room, which is where I have been for the better part of three hours while Frank Delacroix and his rotating cast of concerned old men have catalogued every single public misstep I've made in the past five years with the thoroughness of a criminal indictment.
The fountain. The Vegas situation. The Cannes situation.
The other Vegas situation, which was different from the first one and somehow worse.
The numbers attached to each one — estimated reputational cost, projected impact on Meridian, liability exposure — stacking up on the whiteboard like a tab I keep running and never paying.
Rosalie is the only person in the room on my side, and even she winced at the Las Vegas number.
I am sitting at the head of my own conference table, in my own building, being talked at about my own life, and I am doing the thing Rosalie trained me to do which is keep my face neutral and my hands still and wait for the moment I can end this.
"The board's position has been clear since the last incident," Frank says, in the voice of a man who has been practicing law since before I was born and knows exactly how to make a sentence sound like a verdict. "Frankly, it's been clear since well before it."
Do I need a board of directors? I should look into that. Can I dissolve a board? I'll ask Rosalie.
I look at Rosalie. She gives me the microscopic head shake that means Do not say whatever you're about to say.
I look back at Frank.
"I understand the board's position," I say.
Even. Measured. The voice I built specifically for rooms like this one.
"I understood it when Jackson sent the memo, and I understood it when my attorney walked me through it at brunch.
" I let that land for exactly a second. "What I don't understand is why we're having this conversation again in my own conference room when the solution is already on her way up. "
Silence.
Frank opens his mouth, but the conference room door opens, and my world comes crashing down.
Bennet Sullivan ceases to exist. I'm Michael Bennett again. Eighteen years old, crying on the side of the road in the rain, soaked through, running from the only thing that ever mattered.
Blaire Alexander just walked into my conference room.
My brain does something I can’t even put into words.
A kind of full-system halt, every process suspending at once.
She is in a black sleeveless turtleneck and a white pencil skirt and heels that make her already tall frame taller, and her hair is pinned back, and her makeup is impeccable, and across her right eyebrow and down her cheek runs the scar that I kissed the last time I saw her.
Ten years ago. When I was still Michael and she was still. ..
Ten. Fucking. Years.
Ten years and she still walks into a room like she owns the air in it. Like she decided before she touched the door handle that this was her space now and everyone in it simply hasn't caught up yet.
I watch her take in the room. Every face turning toward her with varying degrees of relief and assessment. I watch her register all of it in approximately two seconds and file it. She straightens fractionally and produces a smile that is warm and professional and gives away absolutely nothing.
She looks at Frank first, because Frank is clearly the loudest energy in the room and she has correctly identified the center of gravity.
Then her eyes move to Rosalie.
Then around the table.
They land on me.
Blaire Alexander looks at Bennet Sullivan and sees a client.
I look at her and see the girl who ran her fingers through Michael Bennett's hair in a dark room while he shook apart, and I feel a coldness move through my chest that I haven’t felt in a long time.
I stand.
"Bennet Sullivan." My voice comes out exactly as I need it to — controlled, neutral, the particular register of a man receiving a consultant he didn't ask for and is tolerating professionally. I extend my hand across the table.
She crosses the room and takes it.
Her hand is warm. Her grip is firm. Her eyes are exactly the color I remember, and she is looking at me with focused and professional attention. Like someone meeting a stranger.
She has no idea who I am.
"Blaire Monroe." She holds my gaze a beat, reading me the way I imagine she reads every room — efficiently, thoroughly, storing what she finds. "I appreciate you making time. I know I'm walking into the middle of something."
Monroe. Not Alexander. Of course, she married him.
"You're not interrupting," I say pushing back the bile forming in my throat. "We were just finishing."
I look at Frank when I say it.
Frank looks at me. Then at Blaire. Then back at me.
"Yes," he says, after a moment. "I believe we were."
I let go of her hand.
I gesture to the chair two seats down from mine — close enough to be cordial, far enough to be professional — and she moves to it without hesitation, setting her laptop on the table and pulling out the chair.
Rosalie is watching me, but I can't look at her.
I sit back down at the head of my table, in my building, in the life I built out of the rubble of the boy she doesn't recognize, and I fold my hands in front of me and look at Blaire Monroe with the expression of a man who has never seen her before in his life.
I have explicitly avoided looking into Blaire Alexander for ten years.
I never wanted to hear her name again, so I wasn't going to actively seek out information on her.
When I left Houston, I left Michael Bennett behind and never looked back.
I still let Rosalie call me Michael, but that's for her sake, not mine.
"So," I say. "Let's see if you're worth what they're paying you."
"Mr. Sullivan." Rosalie's voice carries the specific frequency she reserves for when I am embarrassing her professionally.
I still don't look at her. I keep my eyes on Blaire.
Other than expressive raised eyebrows, the room is very quiet.
Blaire blinks once. It was there and gone, carefully covered by a blank expression, but I know what I saw. Anger flickered across her face for just a second. She folds her hands on the table and leans forward slightly.
"I've read your file, Mr. Sullivan." Her voice is calm. Warm, even. Like I haven't just implied she's a line item. "I didn't have as much time to prepare as I'd like, given I just took on your case Friday, and everything moved quickly from there."
Without taking my eyes off her I say, "If she can't show up prepared on her first day, what exactly are we doing here? She's a waste of money and quite frankly a waste of my fucking time."
Rosalie clears her throat. Loudly.
Blaire doesn't even flinch, which surprises me.
"Bennet." Frank's voice carries a warning.
Damnit. I know I’m letting my emotions lead this conversation and I need to dial it back.
Then Blaire raises her hand, nods to Frank, and says, "It's okay. I've handled toddlers with more bite."
So much for dialing it back.
Game. Fucking. On.
"What I'm saying, Mr. Sullivan," she continues, completely unbothered, "is that I read a thirty-two page brief and spoke with your board, but I haven't spoken with you directly.
I walked into a board meeting that's apparently been running for hours, in a building I was notified I'd be living in approximately forty minutes ago.
" She tilts her head slightly. "So, no, Mr. Sullivan, I am not unprepared.
I am efficient at what I do. And if you did a quick Google search, you'd see I'm also the best at what I fucking do. "
Someone at the far end of the table coughs in a way that might be a laugh.
I stare her down coolly. She matches my energy.
There it is — that thing she always had, that quality I spent four years studying from a careful distance in high school hallways.
The complete and total refusal to be made small.
She didn't have the vocabulary for it at eighteen, just the instinct.
At twenty-eight, she has both, and she's sitting two seats down from me in my conference room deploying them like she was born to it.
Which she was. She just didn't know it, yet when I knew her.
"Alright." I lean back in my chair. "You've read the file. Tell me something that isn't in it."
She looks around the room with the brief, efficient scan of someone taking inventory. Then she looks back at me.
"May I ask a personal question?"
I gesture to go ahead with an open hand and a nod.
"Are you homosexual?"
The room does several things at once. Frank develops a sudden interest in his notepad. Two board members exchange a glance. Someone's pen stops moving.
Rosalie turns and looks out the window at whatever is apparently fascinating about the Los Angeles skyline at ten thirty on a Monday morning.
I am going to burn this building to the ground. I built it, I can burn it.
I grind my teeth. "No, Mrs. Monroe. I am not gay."