Fuel the Fire (18 page)

Connor blew him, I deduced.

What I didn’t know until years later: Theo Balentine and Connor were dating. Not openly. Hence the rendezvous in the hotel restroom. And this was different from Caroline Haverford. Connor called his time with her “eleven months and twenty-two days of vapidity and boredom.”

He called his time with Theo “fun.”

Jealousy should slither down my spine like a snake making route to my heart. Or rage. I am fire where my husband is water. It’s only natural I should burn in the face of his ex.

But I don’t feel those things.

I feel triumphant. I’ve kept what Theo couldn’t.

Connor is mine.

When Theo enters the room fully, I draw in a breath. I’ve seen him numerous times. He was always a part of the academic tournaments in Faust and later in college, but this is the first time I’m seeing him with the knowledge that his bathroom hook-up wasn’t a one-time event.

He’s taller than I remember, paler, the bags beneath his eyes darker. He resembles a sinister villain, aquiline nose and ratty brown hair, and his posture suggests a creature that lurks in shadowed corners.

He enters Loren’s office with curved shoulders, hunched and uncomfortable with his height, hands stuffed in his pockets. He shuffles forward, eyes flitting to Lo as though he’d like to self-eject from this room…the one that contains
me.

He wears a prim and proper suit, dark-colored and tailored for his frame. I hone in on his hair, wondering if he purposefully left his locks unkempt. Maybe he heard he’d be seeing me, so he ditched his comb to appear laid-back and pliable, friendlier. It’s something Connor would do, seeming as nonthreatening as possible to other men.

But I forget Connor is one-of-a-kind. A manipulator and a genius.

Theo is mortal in comparison.

I scoot forward to the desk, openly giving Theo another once-over like I’m the automated, full-body security scanner at an airport.
I’m not afraid of you or intimidated.
His eyes find me, the color of storm-clouds. Fate is telling me something.

I willfully ignore this ominous sign and straighten my back.

Lo releases his grip from the chair and angles his body, giving me a better view of Theo and vice-versa. An awkward, strained tension lingers in the quiet.

I swivel my chair a fraction to Loren. “Why can’t I speak to Mark? Or is he too busy to call the president of Hale Co.’s new billion-dollar subsidiary company?” I don’t add that Mark has ignored nine of my ten calls. I’d rather he look like an incompetent fool than me look like a reject.

Theo rocks forward on his feet and answers before Lo. “That would be because he’s too busy sipping cocktails on his yacht.” He shrugs like it’s nothing. “Mark has a family and kids and grandkids and apparently it’s been his youngest one’s birthday for thirty-five days.” He glances hesitantly at Loren, worried like he said too much in front of Hale Co.’s CEO. “I’d work just as hard if he was gone three hundred days out of the year. I really don’t mind pulling the all-nighters. I’m single so…” He cringes a second, scratching at his head and looking quickly to me, then to the floor.

What the hell. Fun? How is he fun?

He’s accidentally handing me personal information, making mistakes left and right. Someone just dropped a sad, little guppy into my ocean and it’s swimming past my razor-sharp jaws. Unless he’s manipulating me into believing he’s weaker than he is…

I rest my hands flat on the desk. “So those dark circles under your eyes aren’t from weed?”

I asked Connor for three facts about Theo in case I ran into him at Hale Co. I wanted artillery, and without falter, he gave it to me, zero emotion attached.

1. Theo used to smoke copious amounts of weed at Faust, hot-boxing his dorm room and disassembling the fire alarm.

2. Theo loved poetry and art. He never had passion for the corporate world, but his parents pushed him towards it.

3. Theo liked to be bottom.

I was not excited to learn the third fact, but I pocketed it anyway for later use. Connor wouldn’t hand me meaningless information. He’d open a wardrobe of ammunition—of swords and pistols and arrows—and ask me which one I needed.

At the mention of drugs, Theo tries to flatten his ragged hair. “I don’t do that…” He clears his throat, coughing into his fist. “It was a…Faust thing.” He lets out a tense breath and turns to Lo, maybe to see if he just drove his job into the ground.

Lo only stares at me. “You know him too?” He was aware that Theo knew Connor from boarding school and that’s it.

“Only a little.” Bringing up Theo’s relationship with Connor will get him fired on the spot. Loren’s protectiveness towards me circles around like an eclipse. It’s always there, waiting to darken the skies.

Theo watches me carefully, cautious and knowing. I hold the string to his fate, sheers practically glinting in my grasp. His storm cloud eyes are benign, a tornado that never touches down but lingers uncertainly before vacuuming into the sky.

He’s the guppy.

I swivel back to Lo. “We knew each other through Model UN and Quiz Bowl.” I don’t cut Theo’s string. I angle towards him again. “You were their literature trump card.”

He nods, his shoulders falling. “And poetry.”

“Huh,” Lo says, almost bored by the knowledge. His cell rings, and he checks it, making his way to the door. “Theo can take care of whatever you need, Rose. I’ll be back in a half hour.” He puts the phone to his ear, exiting the office and disappearing down the hall for privacy.

The call is either from his father or Lily. Maybe Ryke.

Theo scratches his head again in thought. Then he gestures to me. “I can take care of any
marketing
needs. Anything else, you can call your assistant.” That was rather assertive. He pauses and rocks on his loafers. “I graduated summa cum laude from Yale.” He nods a couple times, scanning the office to avoid my gaze.

Yale. Ugh.

Why couldn’t he stay there and not enter my stratosphere?

And I graduated summa cum laude from
Princeton
, which is like running through quicksand with fifty-pound shackles. In comparison, Yale is like being thrown into a pool with a lifeguard. Connor’s college is easier than both, but he didn’t attend the University of Pennsylvania for academics. He went for the people. It had the Ivy League badge of pride, but most importantly housed large quantities of trust fund babies that he needed to meet. People like Patrick Nubell of Nubell Cookies. Or Loren Hale. And my sister.

After a long moment of silence, Theo points to the chair. “Should I?”

“By all means,” I wave him on with a saccharine smile.

He drags the chair closer to the desk. I stiffen some, not predicting this. I pluck a pen out of a Hale Co. mug, rolling it between my fingers. Connor used to tell me little things about Faust, only after we started dating. He said that all the boys talked about prep school girls from Dalton, Pavawich, and Vorwell. He said that rumors circulated about me since he often sought me out during academic conferences.  

He said that some were false. Others were true. He only believed in the ones that I verified.

I just hoped that these rumors never extended to Yale after my adolescence. That would be disastrously sad.

After Theo sits, he runs his clammy palms on his pants.

How many rumors does he believe in? I bet he’s already shaped who I am from office and tabloid gossip, the reality show, and whatever remnants I left during childhood.

“Do I make you nervous?” I ask outright.

He laughs once. “Yeah.” He nods, more to himself. “Kind of. You’re…you.” I’m not one-hundred percent positive the context of his answer.

“I don’t know what that means.” I try to emulate Connor, keeping my voice even and unreadable, but I end up snapping the words.

He opens his mouth and then closes it slowly, rethinking. He still evades my eyes.

“Don’t hold back,” I tell him. “If I wanted you out of this office, I would’ve told Loren about your relationship with my husband.”

Theo strokes the armrests a couple times, contemplating. “Thank you for that. This job…it wasn’t easy to come by. Hale Co. runs on nepotism, and what I have in intelligence, I lack in connections.” He pauses, finally staring straight at me. The tornado’s funnel lowers beneath the cloud line. “Connor used to say it’s as bad as having a 1.0 GPA.”

“He insulted you.” No surprise there.

“He insults everyone, but you probably know that.” He clears his throat again.

“Stop doing that.” My skin crawls at the noise. “Unless you’re a cat.”

“Excuse me?” He frowns.

I roll my eyes. He is not my husband, not even marginally. “You sound like you’re coughing up a hairball, Theo.”

Color drains a little from his cheeks, and he shifts, setting his ankle on his knee. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t hold back,” I remind him. “Why do I make you nervous?”

“You…” He rakes my face, absorbing my fiery glare. “You were the talk of Faust for a while.” He pauses too long.

I wave him on.

He nods again. “We never considered Dalton a threat at Model UN, not until you appeared on their team. You almost beat us, and the guys couldn’t stop talking about this girl.” His gaze drifts as he pools his memories. “The heiress to the Fizzle empire had more knowledge than five of us combined. Back then everyone expected you to be dimwitted. You were a girl.” Fuck yes, I am a girl. “You dressed like it took you five hours to get ready.” I do love fashion. “And you were rich.” That too.

I shake my head. “It’s tragic that it took
me
for all of you to learn that girls can be feminine and smart.” Had I known this, I think I would’ve broken into Faust and taped portraits of women who’ve inspired me all over their hallways. Coco Chanel among them.

“I agree,” he says.

“So you’re nervous because I’m a confident woman.”

He hesitates as if there’s more. “There were rumors about you.” When he rubs his neck, his sleeve slides up, revealing a tattoo on the inside of his wrist, maybe the start of a larger design.

“Like what?”

“You stabbed a doll with scissors and wrote on its forehead.” He squints to recall the words. “Something like…
I won’t take care of this unless
…
something.
”

I remember. “I won’t care for an inanimate object unless the boys do it too,” I tell him.

“So it’s true?”

“That one is. I don’t know the other rumors you’ve all conjured about me.” I’m sure some are overdramatic, even for me.

 He looks to the ceiling, as though it’ll help him think. “There was one that you were addicted to cocaine. You seemed a little…” He pauses briefly off my glower. “…high-strung.”

“That’s ridiculous.” I can’t simply be this way. I have to have a cocaine addiction?

He nods. “And then the rumor that your father set you up in an arranged marriage when you were little.”

“What?” I balk. Connor never told me that.

“You didn’t really date. At least that’s what we heard from Dalton guys, so it just kind of spread.”

I frown. “No one thought that I could’ve been a lesbian?” This seems like the less theatrical conclusion.

“You always wore high heels,” he says.

I grit my teeth. There are just too many stereotypes to weed through. “I could’ve been a proud lesbian wearing high heels,” I retort. “For being so smart, all of you are annoyingly stupid.” So I was too feminine to be a lesbian in their eyes, another stereotype to chew on.

“I didn’t believe any of that,” he says. “I don’t think anyone who really used their brains did, but most rumors are usually unsubstantiated and cruel.”

He’s not awful.

“This was so long ago,” he says, sitting up in the chair. “It’s all just prep school stuff.”

“Yale—”

“Is different,” he cuts me off with a slight grimace. “The people that cared enough to know you by name saw you as a trust fund baby, being handed your father’s soda company. It was a…different atmosphere. Faust guys didn’t give a shit where you originated but where you ended up. If it took you one-step to reach the top or someone else five-hundred, it was all the same to us.”

I bounce back and forth between loathing Faust boys and loving them. I’m accustomed to this love-hate conundrum since I’m married to one.

He licks his dry lips, the silence winding more uncomfortable tension. “Are we going to talk about the brand?”

“In a second.” I’m not going to squander this time with him, even if my ribs constrict around my lungs the longer we share each other’s company. “What was Connor like at Faust?”

I’ve never had this information from an unbiased source. I’d love even a small childhood secret. Since Connor has no siblings, the guys he grew up with at Faust are as close to brothers that I’ll ever come by. Unfortunately, Theo is the first I’ve encountered outside of a college event, or else I’d chosen another before him.

Theo meets my inquisitive eyes. “I watched maybe one episode of
Princesses of Philly
, and Connor patronized almost every single person in the span of ten minutes. No one seemed to care.”

Connor was edited poorly, but not all of it was fake. That probably wasn’t.

“At Faust, he was a lot like that,” Theo says, “and he was popular. It wasn’t because he was connected and rich as hell, but yeah, he was all of those things too. Connor was just someone you wanted around because he said things everyone was afraid to say. He knew when to be quiet and when to speak, and when he spoke he was the
only
one who could get away with calling you inferior and have you smiling afterwards. He was the only one who could say these things without being hated.” He shrugs. “At the end of the day, he was just likable.”

Likable.

If he was so likable, how did it take me so long to like him?
You loved me, Rose
, I hear his voice in my head.

I click my pen, mulling this over. “You realize that he was manipulating all of you?”

Theo nods. “Yeah. He would tell us as much. We always joked that he was the type of person who’d explain how he was going to stab you in the front before he actually shoved the knife in…and you’d let him. Of course. In some circumstances, he’d probably even pass you the knife so you can shove it in your own chest, and you would.”