Rebound (19 page)

T
hirty hours after leaving the resort in Jackson, I’m finally getting to my house in Malibu. There were no flights, so I rented a car and drove. Stopped at a roadside motel to grab a couple hours of sleep when my eyes wouldn’t stay open. Hit five different states trying to avoid road closures. Barely remember any of it.

As I step into the kitchen, rich, fragrant smells flood my nose. Grey’s standing at the stove, stirring something in a small saucepan. He’s set the table, and on the island, I see a carved turkey, mashed potatoes, string beans, and rolls.

My brother’s pretty much a screw-up, but he’s a decent cook. Bizarre for a nineteen-year-old kid, but something just translates when he touches food.

He turns and spreads his hands. “Happy Turkey Day, bro.”

I drop my weekend bag and stare at him.

For an instant, I’m tempted to tell him about everything that happened in Wyoming. But that urge is gone pretty fast, leaving no trace behind.

“What’s going on, Adam?” Grey says.

I look at the food he’s obviously spent all day preparing. “This is cool of you, but . . .”

I can’t finish. I can’t say the words
I can’t
. They go against my moral code.

I move to the bar and grab a lowball glass, a bottle of Dewar’s, and head for my room. My favorite leather chair sits in front of a floor-to-ceiling window to the Pacific. I sit and pour and take a long pull. The sun is just setting over the ocean. The moon is rising. Such a solid, eternal thing, planets and continents and oceans.

The surf pounds against the sand. The gulls circle and dive.

Clouds float and night falls.

Nothing is steady.

Friday.

At some point, in the morning I’m almost sure, Grey comes in and asks me to surf. We argue. About surfing or something, and I tell him to fuck off.

I watch the beach and I try to forget.

I try to stop replaying every moment with Ali.

When it works, it’s because I’m thinking of Chloe, or the mistake I’ve made that could affect my company like a cancer.

At some point Grey comes back and tells me I need to talk to him. Rhett’s worried and he’s been calling Grey to check in on me. Mom—“your mother”—called him directly since I didn’t check in with her on Thanksgiving, which Grey’s especially pissed about. Not that he ever answered the call. He let it go to voicemail.

I let him finish then I tell him to fuck off again.

Saturday is more of the same except I switch my brand to Maker’s Mark for a little variety, and my scruff is starting to itch.

Sunday, I feel better. Well enough to leave my room and take the bottle out to the back deck for some fresh air.

“What the fuck, Adam?” Grey says, when I sit at the table and refill my glass.

“Grey, come here.”

He comes over, and stands over me. His eyes are drawn and he looks tired, like he hasn’t been sleeping, which is weird because insomnia is my job, but I also see a flicker of desperate hope in them.

“Check it out.” I point to the beach. “Lucky’s figured out his timing. He can launch
over
waves for the tennis ball now.”

“Fuck you, Adam. You’re not allowed to fucking fail,” he says as he walks away.

I spend the rest of the day trying to figure out how he could possibly say that to me when he knows about Chloe.

Monday morning brings a surprise.

Someone pounds on the door. Since it doesn’t stop, that means Grey’s out somewhere. I get up from my spot on the deck and answer it.

Graham Quick pushes past me and looks around my living room like a repossession agent, measuring my worth by my furniture and the prints on my wall. Seeing everything he’s going to take from me.

“You screwed up, Blackwood,” he says, his back turned to me. “And by the smell of you, you know it.”

“I just want to be clear about something, Graham. You’re trespassing right now.”

“Are you going to call the police?” He turns, regarding me with Alison’s intelligent eyes. There’s no gentleness in Graham’s though. But maybe there never was in Ali’s either.

Adrenaline makes me feel weightless. “No. I was thinking I’d take care of it myself.”

“Relax, I’m not going to keep you long,” he says, his eyes darting to the patio outside. Through the open glass door, the bottle of whisky and my glass shine on the table, gold and amber in the sunlight. “You look like you’re busy with important matters. I’ve come here with a proposal.”

“Is that right? Let’s hear it.”

“I’m willing to increase my investment in your company to thirty million. That’s a lot of money, Adam. I think even a spoiled little shit like you can recognize that. But in exchange, I want majority share. Fifty-one percent. And I want the chairman position on the board. You agree, and I don’t say a word to anyone. No one needs to know you’re a pathetic drunk who wrapped your wife around a tree four years ago.” He smiles. “That would be bad, wouldn’t it? For Boomerang’s bottom line? For the studio venture with Brooks Wright?”

My head feels scattered with all the whisky, without any sleep, and it takes a minute for the words to hit. When they do, I’m transported back to that night with Chloe. I’m seeing the car spin out, and the tree move at us so fast, like it’s flying over the icy road instead of the other way around.

I feel a shaking inside me, deep in my chest. This was my grief and I kept it safe. I kept her safe and now she’s not. Her life is cheapened by Graham Quick’s words. She’s a bartering tool now. A weapon.

Chloe would have hated this.

But not as much as I do. As much as I hate that I let this happen.

“You’ve built a good foundation, Adam,” Graham continues. “Blackwood Enterprises is healthy, I’ll give you that much. You seem to have enough balls to get things started. A business. A marriage. But you’re a real fuck-up on follow-through. At some point, you’ll see that I’m helping you. You need me. But for now, it’s time to step aside and let a real businessman take over.”

“If you mention my wife to me again, I will beat the living shit out of you.”

Graham’s thick eyebrows climb. “Such violence. That’s it, son. Throw a punch so I can get you on assault, too.”

Something snaps inside me and I’m striding to Graham. He flinches and steps back. “You’re a fucking killer, Blackwood,” he says, moving to the front door. “But I’ve got you cornered. I think you know it already.” He reaches for the door handle. “Oh, there’s one other condition I forgot to mention if you’re interested in retaining your reputation and your company. Keep your hands off my daughter or I will destroy you.”

When he’s gone I head back outside, but I can’t sit down. I pace like a wild animal trapped in a cage. I can’t bring the glass up to my lips, either. Sky and ocean are everywhere around me, but all I see is twisted metal and blood. Then everything changes, and all I see is white snow. Ali’s long legs, stretched out all over the bed.

I grab the edge of the patio table and lift. The sound of glass shattering sounds wrong and right and perfect with the cry of seagulls and the crash of waves behind it.

I go to the key hook by the garage but I stop myself. I know better. I know not to get shitfaced and get behind the wheel of a car. I’ve learned at least that much in my life and her house is only a mile up the road. I pull on my Nikes and take off at a run.

I
trundle around the stable on my knee scooter, feeling perfectly useless and like I’m suffering the world’s first weeklong hangover. Luckily, my ankle’s only sprained and, now that it’s encased in a proper bandage and an orthopedic boot, it’s feeling better. But all of the rest of me feels bruised. No, broken.

The scooter and the bandages upset Persephone and Suede. I’m foreign to them. I must smell different, and I’m sure it’s like I’m a different creature—half girl, half machine. Suede backs up in his stall when I come over. He paws at his mat, kicking up shavings. His ears twitch like he’s on high alert.

“Come on, lovely,” I say. “It’s just me.”

I hold a palm full of oatmeal and raisins out to him, but he clomps around in his stall, turning his back to me.

“Great.” I’ll have to have Joaquin come in later and take care of
them. Heat rises in my throat, and my eyes prickle. It’s ridiculous to feel personally rejected, but I do.

I start to wheel my scooter around to head back out of the stable when the door swings open, crashing into a wall full of tack and making a heavy iron rake drop to the ground.

It’s Adam. But not. He’s unshaven, disheveled. He’s wearing gym shorts and a band t-shirt. His brown hair flies everywhere, and his face is red with exertion. I’ve never seen him this way.

He stalks up to me, and I start to back away, but he seizes the handles of the scooter, anchoring me in place. The odors of alcohol and sweat waft toward me, and I can’t reconcile them with the person I know.

I feel suddenly, unaccountably frightened, and on this scooter, there’s not much I can do to protect myself.

“I will never give you and your father what you want, you hear me?” His gray eyes look darker, almost black, and they drill into me now with so much anger, it’s hard to believe I ever found tenderness there.

Calm down
, I tell myself.
Don’t let him rattle you
. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I tell him. “But thanks for dumping me in the middle of a blizzard.”

“Come on, Alison,” he says, and every word comes out sharp and derisive. “I took you for a lot of things but never for a liar.”

“And I took you for a lot of things, too,” I say. “I guess we were both wrong.”

It hurts to see him like this. In some private agony I don’t understand. Part of me wants to rush in to try to make it better, but he doesn’t deserve that. He isn’t what I thought. He left me like I meant nothing.

Adam releases the scooter and steps back. Scrubbing at his scalp, he says, “I need to know whose idea it was. Yours or your father’s.”

“What idea? What are you talking about?”

“Please,” he says, and his jaw clenches. “Just answer me. I need to know what was real. If this was just some plan you had all along or if it happened later. You need to tell me. Now.”

“What plan? Adam, I swear to God I don’t know what you’re talking about! All I know is that we spent a night together that I thought—” I can’t say it. Can’t give it to him. I can’t tell him that I thought that night meant something. Meant everything. I can’t be vulnerable with him. Never again. He doesn’t deserve it.

“Thought what, Alison?” He comes back up to me again, and I see he’s unsteady, swaying. His eyes look glassier, and it’s like his body is draining of energy right in front of me. “That you’d make me feel like a complete asshole? Like the world’s biggest sucker? Is that what you thought?”

“No! Of course not. I don’t—”

“Really hope you’re getting the goods on Blackwood,”
Adam says in a mocking tone. “Does that sound familiar?
I’m getting everything I need
.”

It does sound familiar, but for a second I don’t know why. Then it dawns on me. My cell phone. He read my texts. He thought . . .

“Adam, I didn’t . . . That’s not what I meant.”

My ankle throbs violently, and I’m having a hard time staying upright on the scooter. I need to sit down. I need him to hold me and to believe what I’m saying. But his expression, his rigid posture, tells me how impossible that is.

“Really? Because it’s pretty obvious what you meant. And it’s pretty obvious you went right to Daddy and gave up
my life
and
my pain,
so you could both get what you want.”

“No, I didn’t.”

But I did. I did exactly that. Only it wasn’t planned. It wasn’t a scheme I’d been concocting all along. “You have to believe me. It wasn’t like that.”

“Did it make you feel good to run her through the mud? That’s what you Quicks do, isn’t it?”

“Adam, that’s not fair. I didn’t mean—”

“I loved her, and you fucking used her. I just don’t understand why,” he says. “Don’t you get that Boomerang is the one thing I do right? That it’s the one thing in my life that’s not fucked up? Why would you want to take that away from me? Those people. The work. I created all of that. Maybe that feels like trivial bullshit to you and your father, but it’s everything to me. Everything.”

“No one wants to take it away from you,” I say.

He arches an eyebrow. “Right. No one except your father.”

“We’re just trying to invest, not control it.”

His laugh is an ugly bark, but understanding brightens his clouded gaze. “Jesus Christ, Alison. You really don’t know, do you?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” Reaching out a hand to seize his, I say, “Please, just explain it.”

But he pulls away from me and backs off a few steps. “Ask your father to explain it,” he says. “Ask him about how he just came over to my house to blackmail me. And call me a killer.” He puts his hands over his face, and his shoulders shudder. Muffled sounds fill the silence between us, sounds of raw agony that rake through me. “You gave him everything he needs to ruin me.”

I can’t stand to see him like this and know I’m the cause of it.

“I never said anything like that,” I tell him finally. “I never called you a killer. I’d never do that. I just said you drove drunk and had an accident. I know I shouldn’t have said even that, but I was so hurt. I didn’t know why you left me there. I felt like you used me and threw me out. Those texts. I was just giving him an answer so he’d leave me alone. I never planned to hurt you. I’m so sorry I did.”

I try to get off my scooter, to go over to him. I want to put my arms around him and help in some way, but I can’t. I know I can’t.

He sees my intention and backs closer to the door. “No, leave it alone,” he says.

“Adam, you’re not a killer. You’re good. You’re so—” There aren’t words for everything he is. Everything he means to me. “It was just a mistake.”

“You’re right,” he tells me. “It was a huge mistake. It
should
have been me.
I
should have been the one driving the car. But it was Chloe who drove.”

And then he disappears through the stable door, and I hear his footsteps, slower now, receding into the quiet night.