After We Fell (61 page)

I scowl at Vance. “Why were you even watching the footage? That's pretty fucking creepy that you were watching me work out.”

“Don't flatter yourself. I was checking the kitchen monitor, because it had a short; the gym just happened to be playing alongside it at the time.”

“Sure,” I say, stretching the word out.

“Hardin's staying another night; that's fine, right?” Kim asks him.

“Of course it's fine. I don't know why your ass isn't here to stay anyway. You know I'll pay you more than Bolthouse.”

“You didn't the first time—that was the problem,” I remind him with a smug grin.

“That's because you were only a freshman in college at the time. You were lucky to have a paid internship, let alone an actual job, without a degree.” He shrugs, trying to dismiss my argument.

I cross my arms in defense. “Bolthouse disagrees with you.”

“They are twats. Need I remind you that in the last year alone, Vance Publishing has surpassed them by a huge margin. I've expanded here to Seattle, and I plan on opening a New York office by next year.”

“Is there a point to all this bragging?” I ask.

“Yes. Point is, Vance is better, bigger, and happens to be where she's working.” He doesn't have to say Tessa's name for me to feel the weight of his words. “You'll be graduating after this semester; don't make an impulsive decision now that will impact the entirety of your career before it even begins.” He takes a quick bite of the fruit in his hand, and I scowl at him, trying to think of a sharp reply.

I can't seem to come up with one. “Bolthouse has an office in London.”

He looks at me in mocking disbelief. “Who's going back to London? You?” He doesn't hide the sarcasm in his voice.

“Possibly. I had planned on it and still am.”

“Yeah, so did I.” He glances at his future wife. “You'll never go back to live there, just as I won't either.”

Kimberly flushes and gushes at his words, and I come to the conclusion that they're the most obnoxious couple I've ever encountered. It's like you can see how much they love each other just by watching them interact. It's annoying and uncomfortable.

“Point proven.” Christian snickers.

“I didn't agree with you,” I snap.

“Yes,” Kimberly butts in, like the ballbuster she is. “But you didn't disagree either.”

Without another word, I take my coffee mug and my balls as far away from Kimberly as I can get them.

T
he morning arrives much too quickly, and when I wake up, I'm alone in the bed. The empty side of the mattress still bears the imprint of Hardin's body, so he must have gotten up only a few minutes ago.

Right on cue, he enters the room quietly, coffee mug in hand.

“Good morning,” he says when he notices that I'm awake.

“Morning.” My throat is tight and dry. Images of Hardin moving in and out of my mouth with furious thrusts makes my insides tighten.

“Are you feeling okay?” He places the steaming mug of coffee on the dresser and walks over to the bed. He sits down next to me on the edge of the mattress. “Answer me,” he calmly adds when I take too long to respond.

“Yeah, just sore.” I stretch my arms and legs out in front of me. Yes . . . definitely sore. “Where did you go?”

“I went to get some coffee, and I had to call Landon to tell him I won't be home today,” he tells me. “If you still want me to stay, that is.”

“I do.” I nod at him. “But why do you have to tell Landon?”

Hardin runs his hand over his hair, and his eyes concentrate on reading my expression. I get the feeling that I'm missing something here.

“Answer me,” I say, using his own words back at him.

“He's babysitting your dad.”

“Why?”
Why would my father need a babysitter?

“Your dad's trying to get sober, that's why. And I'm not stupid enough to leave him at that apartment by himself.”

“You have liquor there, don't you?”

“No, I tossed it. Just drop this, okay?” His tone is no longer gentle; it's urgent, and he's clearly on edge.

“I'm not going to just drop it. Is there something that I should know? Because I feel like I'm being left out of the loop here, again.” I cross my arms over my chest and he takes a deep, dramatic breath, his eyes closing with the gesture.

“Yes, there is something that you don't know about, but I'm begging you to just trust me, okay?”

“How bad?” I ask; the possibilities terrify me.

“Just trust me, okay?”

“Trust you to do what?”

“Trust that I will take care of all of this shit so that by the time I tell you what happened, it won't matter anymore. You have enough shit going on right now; please, just trust me on this. Let me do this for you, and let it go,” he urges.

The initial paranoia and panic that always come with these types of situations flutter through me, and I'm moments away from snatching Hardin's phone from him and calling Landon myself. The look on Hardin's face, though, stops me. He's pleading for me to trust him on this, trust that he'll be able to fix whatever it is that's going on; and to tell the truth, as much as I want to know, I don't think I can handle another problem on my already full plate.

“Okay.” I sigh.

His brows furrow, and he cocks his head to the side. “Really?” He's astounded by how easy it was to persuade me to back off, I'm sure.

“Yes. I'll do my best not to worry about the situation with my
dad as long as you can promise me that it's better for me not to know.”

He nods. “I promise.”

I believe him, mostly.

“Fine.” I finalize the agreement with the word and try my best to push my obsessive need to know what's happening to the back of my mind. I need to trust Hardin with this. I need to trust him of my own resolve. If I can't trust him with this, how can I entertain a future for us at all?

I sigh, and Hardin smiles at my acquiescence.

L
ooks like I'll be filling out these thank-you cards to the guests who made last night's club opening such a big success,” Kimberly says with a wry grin and a wave of an envelope when I enter the kitchen. “What are the two of you planning for today?”

A look at the stack of cards she's already addressed, and the pile she's still working on, makes me wonder just how many businesses Christian has invested in, if all those people she's writing to were “partners” of some sort. The size of this house alone has to mean he has more enterprises going on than just Vance Publishing and a single jazz club.

“I'm not sure. We'll figure it out when Hardin gets out of the shower,” I tell her, and slide a fresh stack of small envelopes across the granite countertop.

I had to force Hardin into the bathroom to take a shower alone; he was still irritated with me for locking him out of the bathroom while I took mine. No matter how many times I tried to explain to him how awkward I'd feel if the Vances knew we were showering together in their home, he'd give me a weird little look and argue that we'd done much worse in their house than shower together over the past twelve hours.

I stood my ground despite his pleading. The events in the gym were motivated by pure lust and were entirely unplanned. The love we made in my bedroom isn't an issue, because it's my
bedroom for now, and I'm an adult having consensual sex with my . . . whatever it is that Hardin is to me right now. The shower thing, however, makes me feel differently.

Being the stubborn man he is, Hardin still didn't agree, which led to me asking him to get me a glass of water from the kitchen. I pouted, and he fell for it. The moment he left the room, I jetted down the hall to the bathroom, locking the door behind me and ignoring his annoyed demands for me to let him in.

“You should make him take you sightseeing,” Kimberly tells me. “Maybe throwing yourselves into the culture of the city will help him with his decision to move here with you.”

This kind of weighty conversation is not something that I want to deal with right now. “So . . . Sasha seemed nice,” I say, to not-so-covertly move the conversation away from my relationship issues.

Kimberly snorts. “Sasha? Nice? Not so much.”

“She knows that Max is married, doesn't she?”

“Of course she does.” She licks her lips. “But does she care? No, not at all. She likes his money and the expensive jewelry that comes along with seeing him. She could care less about his wife and daughter.” The disapproval in Kim's voice is heavy, and I'm relieved to find that we're in agreement on this subject.

“Max is a jerk, but I'm still surprised that he'd have the nerve to bring her around other people. I mean, doesn't he care if Denise or Lillian find out about her?”

“I suspect that Denise already knows. With a guy like Max, there have been plenty of other Sashas over the years, and poor Lillian already despises her father, so it wouldn't make any difference if she knew.”

“That's so sad; they've been married since college, right?” I don't know how much Kimberly knows about Max and his family, but given her gossiping ways, I'm sure it's not nothing.

“They married right out of college—it was quite the scandal.”
Kimberly's eyes light up with the thrill of spilling such a juicy story to my unknowing ears. “Apparently, Max was set to marry someone else, some woman whose family was close with his. It was basically a business deal. Max's father came from old money; I think that's at least part of why Max is such an asshole. Denise was heartbroken when he told her of his plan to marry another woman.” Kimberly speaks as if she was actually present at the time all this was happening, instead of just passing along gossip. Maybe, though, that's what gossips always feel like?

She takes a sip of water before continuing. “Anyway, after graduation, Max rebelled against his father and literally left the woman waiting at the altar. On the very day of the wedding, he showed up at Trish and Ken's place in his tuxedo and waited outside the door until Denise came out. That same night, the five of them bribed a pastor, using a fancy bottle of scotch and the little bit of cash in their pockets. Denise and Max were married just before midnight, and she was pregnant with Lillian a few weeks later.”

My brain has a hard time picturing Max as a lovesick young man, rushing through the streets of London in a tuxedo, tracking down the woman he loved. The same woman that he now repeatedly betrays by hopping into bed with the likes of Sasha.

“I don't mean to intrude, but was Christian's . . .” I'm unsure what to call her. “I mean, Smith's mother, was she . . .”

With an understanding smile, Kimberly ends my awkward fumbling. “Rose came along many years later. Christian was always the fifth wheel with the two couples. Once he and Ken stopped speaking and Christian came to America . . . that's when Christian met Rose.”

“How long were they married?” I search Kimberly's face for signs of discomfort. I don't want to intrude, but I can't help being fascinated by the history of this group of friends. I hope that Kimberly knows me well enough by now not to be surprised by how many questions I'm prone to ask.

“Only two years. They'd only been dating a few months before she got sick.” Her voice cracks, and she swallows, tears brimming in her eyes. “He married her anyway . . . She was taken down the aisle . . . in a wheelchair . . . by her father, who insisted on doing it. Halfway to the altar, Christian stepped down and pushed her the rest of the way.” Kimberly breaks into sobs, and I brush away the tears that are falling from my eyes.

“I'm sorry,” she says with a wan smile. “I haven't told this story in a long time, and it just makes me so emotional.” She reaches across the countertop to pull a wad of tissues from a box and passes one to me. “Just thinking about it always shows me that behind his smart mouth and brilliant mind, there is an incredible loving man.”

She looks at me, then down at the stacks of envelopes. “Shit, I got tears on the cards!” she exclaims, recovering quickly.

I want to ask her more questions about Rose and Smith, Ken and Trish in their college days, but I don't want to push her.

“He loved Rose, and she healed him, even in her dying days. He only loved one woman his entire life, and she finally broke him of that.”

The story, as lovely as it is, only confuses me further. Who was this woman that Christian loved, and why did he need healing after this?

Kimberly blows her nose and looks up. I turn to the doorway, where Hardin awkwardly glances back and forth between Kimberly and me, taking in the scene unfolding in the kitchen.

“Well, I obviously showed up at the wrong time,” he says.

I can't help but smile at how we must look, crying for no apparent reason, two massive stacks of cards and envelopes sitting in front of us on the countertop.

Hardin's hair is wet from his shower, and his face is freshly shaven. He looks incredible in a plain black T-shirt and jeans.
He's wearing nothing on his feet except socks, and his expression is wary as he silently beckons me to him.

“Should I expect you two for dinner tonight?” Kimberly asks as I cross the room to stand at Hardin's side.

“Yes,” I respond at the same time that Hardin says “No.”

Kim laughs and shakes her head. “Well, text me when you two come to an agreement.”

A FEW MINUTES LATER,
as Hardin and I reach the front door, Christian suddenly pops out from a side room, sporting a huge grin. “It's freezing outside. Where's your coat, boy?”

“First off, I don't need a coat. Second, don't call me boy.” Hardin rolls his eyes.