I held the picture up. “You seem to already know plenty about her. You didn’t answer my question. I want to know why you had this picture taken,” I said pointedly.
Leeks shrugged. “That’s not really your business to know at this time.” He pointed to the picture and chuckled. “You know, I’ve never really envied this”—he waved his hand around disdainfully—“business you’re in. Wouldn’t suit me. But
her
…” He nodded to the paper I still held. “I’m starting to wonder if you should be paying us.”
My jaw tightened more, to the point that my teeth ached.
“You haven’t told David yet, have you? About the fact that you’re fucking her?” Trainor was looking at me suspiciously. “We’d have heard from David if you had, calling for your dismissal no doubt. We’d refuse, of course, but still…” He shrugged as he glanced away.
I said nothing.
“Here’s the thing,” Trainor continued as his attention returned to me. “You’re a smart man. You’re good at what you do, and you know perfectly well that your personal business can’t intersect in any way with David’s personal business.” He pointed to the picture. “So letting David find out you’re fucking her must be the plan, right? Because you’re too smart to let things get personal with her, aren’t you?” His expression was smug and mean. “You’re all about the agenda, the job, the tactic that will best bend David to your will, so surely she’s just a means to an end for you?” He cocked his head to the side as if waiting for me to confirm his theory.
“How I choose to do my work doesn’t concern you.” I sounded angry, but in truth, I was panicking. “So how about you stay out of my fucking way and let me do my job,” I seethed quietly.
“If you’d have done your job, son,” Trainor snapped back, his voice too loud for public, “David would already know about you and the girl because you’d have already told him!” He cleared his throat. “Things aren’t quite adding up with this gal.” He scratched the side of his head in mock confusion and laughed. It was a gravelly sounding chortle that rattled his lungs. He wasn’t a young man, nearing sixty himself, and he also wasn’t a nice man. That had never bothered me because I knew how to keep up with assholes, and I sure as hell knew how to hold my own with them.
“You don’t get to have an opinion on this,” I snapped back. “Because it was never part of my job description to fuck David’s mistress.”
“And yet…ya did.” Leeks, always the calmer one, cocked his head coolly to the side. “It certainly wasn’t our expectation, but hey, we admire your tenacity.” He smiled mockingly.
I gritted my teeth, refusing to respond. I shook my head, biting down hard into my lower lip, wanting desperately to yell some more. But giving these men even the smallest measure of my personal life scared the shit out of me. I knew how to manipulate people. I knew how to work the game. It was all about finding weaknesses and then exploiting them in the most advantageous way.
I had no doubt the Malcolms knew how to do this just as well as me.
Gabe was absolutely a weakness for me. And I wasn’t going to give them that.
When I glanced away, it was for the sole purpose of composing myself, and when I looked back, I took my time focusing on each of them in turn, keeping my expression calm. “Of course it’s my intention to let him find out, but I intend to do it when it benefits me most.”
I hated the sound of the lie coming out of my mouth. I despised everything about it. The words disgusted me not because they were appalling now, which they most certainly were, but because there’d been a time when they weren’t appalling at all. I’d been more than willing to use Gabe to get what I wanted from David. And these men damn well knew it. Hell, they expected it.
My lips trembled, and I bit my tongue to keep myself from reacting to the words I’d just said.
“Is that so?” Trainor asked coolly.
“Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?” I said sarcastically.
Leeks hummed. “I have some…concerns about the good chairman.”
“And let me guess, that picture is insurance for you?”
Trainor smiled but didn’t answer me. “You see to it he understands the importance of behaving like a gentleman.” He snatched the picture from my hand. “I’d hate to see this cute little thing become more involved than she already is.” He was threatening her. He was actually threatening
me
.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I sneered.
He shrugged, his lips pursing for a moment dismissively. “Let’s hope we don’t have to find out.”
I stood abruptly, nearly knocking over the chair I’d been sitting in. “She has nothing to do with this.”
“Your…
agenda
…suggests she has
everything
to do with this, remember?” Leeks’ grin was cruel and ugly.
I started to walk away.
“You’ll keep us updated, now won’t you?”
I ignored Trainor’s words and walked out.
I drove straight back to my condo, packed my bag, drank a bottle of wine to calm myself down, and finally, blessedly, passed out. I was hung over the next morning when I woke up. I showered quickly, feeling as though I might lose my stomach at any moment. I dropped my rental car off at Dulles before checking in, and then I finally stopped moving for long enough to get a coffee.
All I wanted to do was get home…back to Chicago so I could see her.
Chapter 12
Gabrielle
I
walked with a few of the girls from the sorority house to campus on Wednesday morning. Most were younger than me, which was fortunate because that also meant none of them were aware of what a brilliantly accomplished student I wasn’t.
I sat in the back of my advanced developmental psychology class. This was, as the name suggested, an advanced class. This also meant the class was not large. It wasn’t even accessible to any student who hadn’t successfully completed a few semesters worth of preparatory psych classes.
When Professor Carmichael walked in, I sank lower in my seat. He looked around, smiling at the good students who showed up every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to his class, none the wiser that a student of ill-repute lurked in the back row—none the wiser, that is, until his eyes met mine.
His smile froze as his brow wrinkled for a moment, but then his eyes continued to move. He was a nice man. He’d been my professor for two other classes in fact—Introduction to Psychology and Abnormal Psychology. In many ways I could credit the man with sparking my interest in the field.
He was middle aged, perhaps forty-five. He was a good man, a sarcastic and entertaining instructor, and he was handsome, though clearly married, given the ring on his finger. He’d never regarded me in any way that made me uncomfortable or suggested he saw me as anything other than a student. And yet, he was nothing more than a penis to me now.
I hated that. I’m sure that somewhere in one of these books I was supposed to be reading some theorist had outlined how dehumanizing what I was doing with men was. Surely they could make sense of what it meant that no man was just a man to me anymore. They were an appendage, an enigma, something I couldn’t understand, something I didn’t
want
to understand, frankly something that terrified me, though I hid it well with a crimson-lipped smile.
I sat through his hour-and-fifteen-minute lecture feeling lost, feeling helpless, feeling panicked, and when the class was over, I was nearly in tears. I skirted out of my seat quickly, ready to run.
“Gabe, do you have a moment?”
I froze.
When I looked up at Carmichael, I tried to smile, but it didn’t work. I nodded, and then I shuffled around uncomfortably as the other students left. He smiled at them, nodded, and even shook a few hands. When the room was empty aside from the two of us, I glanced at him. His expression was concerned as he leaned against his desk casually. I knew what he was doing. He was trying to make me comfortable so I’d talk to him.
“I’m kind of late for—”
“We need to talk about this, Gabe.”
I nodded.
“You’ve always been a good student. I’m really struggling to understand—”
“I’m sorry,” I said, cutting him off. “I’m working to get caught up, and…”
It was his turn to nod, but his pursed lips suggested he didn’t believe a word I said. “You’re three writing assignments behind, and you didn’t even show up to take the last test. I’m concerned that getting caught up might be…difficult. I can’t help you if you’re not willing to talk to me.”
He pushed off his desk, approaching me and standing a reasonable foot from me. But when he reached out and placed a hand on my shoulder, I sucked in a quick breath before I could stop myself and took a step back.
He looked shocked for a moment. “I wasn’t trying to make you uncomfortable,” he said quietly.
I shook my head. “It’s okay. I just… I really have to go.”
I bolted from the room then, ignoring his pleas to stay.
I didn’t bother going to my second class. I’m not really sure why I’d bothered going to my first, except that I sometimes felt the need to at least try to be something more than what I was. It never went well.
I walked back to the house, hugging my fleece jacket tightly around me as I stared at the ground.
“You’re home from class early,” Casey commented as I walked through the door.
“And you’re not at class altogether,” I retorted rudely.
She smirked. “I don’t have class until the afternoon on Wednesdays.” She shook her head as though I was an idiot for not having her schedule memorized. “Aren’t you supposed to be in your psychopharmacology class right now?”
I’d just taken the first step up the stairs, but I paused, turning back to her. “Why exactly do you know my schedule?”
“I’m just trying to look out for you. We’re sisters, remember?”
I rolled my eyes as I scoffed. “Right,” I muttered.
She squeaked this mousy sound that made me want to punch her, and I turned and ran up the stairs rather than deal with her any longer.
I let my hair down once I was in my bathroom. It was still damp from the shower I’d taken just before class that morning, and I combed through it before blowing it dry. I ran a straightener through it, and once it was hanging sleekly without a wrinkle down my back, I tossed the straightener in my sink and started putting my makeup on. I saved the red lipstick for last, hating the sight of it as I ran it over my lips.
I stood in my closet trying to remember what dresses William had likely seen me in. A small portion of my pay always went to buying bargain, sale, clearance, discounted dresses for one client or another. Of course, if anyone ever asked, I told them the restaurant I worked at was exceptionally nice and expected me to dress up.
I chose a sleeveless emerald-green dress with a pleated knee-length skirt and a thin black belt. I paired it with black heels and a black swing coat. When I was coming off the last step at one o’clock, I ran into another one of my housemates, one who didn’t feel the need to stalk my class schedule.
“Working tonight?” Molly asked as she passed through the foyer from the kitchen to the living room.
“Yeah.”
“You always look so mature and sophisticated when you go to work,” she said with a huge and completely genuine smile. “I keep asking you to get me an application when you’re there.”
“Yeah.” I didn’t seem to know how to say anything except that one word, so I walked out.
Within two and a half hours, I was disembarking the bus in Chicago. I was entirely too early, but the idea of sitting in my house for any longer than was absolutely necessary just wasn’t something I was interested in doing on this day.
Instead, I walked to a nearby bar. It was a nice Irish pub-style joint. I didn’t bother sitting at the bar because I didn’t want to run the risk of being hit on. Instead, I took a booth, and I pulled out one of the textbooks I’d stashed in my purse. But I didn’t really want to read. I wanted to drink.
I ordered an Irish coffee with a double shot of Bailey’s, largely because it was a cold day out and largely because I was just in the right place for such a drink. After drinking three in under an hour, my head was swimming comfortably in a mild state of euphoria. My eyes roamed around dreamily, landing on the bar and sticking.
It was an old, well-polished wood bar, and it was occupied by only a few men in suits at the moment. A couple of them had checked me out a few times, but I would look down at the book the moment they did, and neither had taken it upon themselves to approach me.
This bar was not unlike the one I’d been in when I’d first been introduced to this life. It had been five or six months after my mom had died, and it was my twenty-first birthday. My sorority sisters were dragging me out for a night in the city. I didn’t really want to go. I was depressed, and I was stressed. I’d only just that afternoon been called by Jessa’s school to discuss her declining grades, and I’d spent the rest of the afternoon on the phone arguing with Jessa about how we were going make ends meet without her working as much as she was. I’d escaped into a glass of something strong that night just as I was doing right now. I drank too much and too quickly, and one unlikely conversation with a stunning, tall woman I’d run into at the bar changed the course of my life forever—and I’d been too sad and too desperate to stop it. I’d also just been too stupid.
I stared at the bar now, my eyes glossing over and obscuring my vision. I was too tipsy to be taking a walk down memory lane, and I stood at five o’clock, shaking off the emotion and dropping my money on the table.
It wasn’t too far to the Drake from the pub, and I chose to walk, regardless of the fact that my shoes weren’t made for this. But there was something very satisfying about the pain. It cut into the backs of my ankles as I listened to the monotonous click of my heels on the sidewalk. My toes hurt, my calves ached too, and I let the discomfort build, pushing forward one step after another, one breath after the next, until I was standing at the entrance.
I stared up at the retro neon sign above the door, swaying slightly in my drunken dizziness.