I wanted her to be changed, I realized.
I wanted to believe that this Celia that I watched, while she cuddled and caressed her infant, was as genuine and real as she seemed.
I wanted her to be changed because we’d once been friends, and I wanted her to feel love, the kind of love that can't break through without morphing you into the best kind of person. The kind of love that I had with Alayna.
I wanted her to be changed because it let me off the hook.
Because if she wasn't changed, then she was just another victim to count among the others. Another person I had schemed and played with and betrayed.
Was I seeing, then, only what I wanted to see?
"Even grizzly bears care for their baby cubs," Alayna whispered next to me. And if I wanted to be judgmental about her spite, I couldn’t for even a moment. My wife deserved to hold her grudge against Celia as long as she felt she needed to. I owed it to her not to try to persuade her otherwise.
When I turned to her, I expected to find her scowling at me, silently reprimanding me for whatever kind thoughts she assumed were playing in my mind.
But I found that despite what she'd said, she was also watching Celia, and though I couldn't quite read what she was thinking; her expression was soft and her eyes compassionate.
“What’s her name?” she called across the room, a question I hadn’t been bold enough to ask.
I traced her gaze back to Celia who was now holding her baby across her shoulder, rubbing her tiny back.
“Cleo,” Celia answered, smiling as she said it, as though it were a word that couldn’t be said without a happy countenance.
"Is she a good baby?"
My gaze returned to my wife. Trying to read her. Trying to determine if she meant the question to discover something she could lord over her later, or if she was genuinely interested.
Her expression said the latter.
Celia hesitated a moment before answering, perhaps trying to determine the same motive. "She is, for the most part. I have a terrible time getting her to burp though." Her voice grew higher as she addressed the baby. "Too much of a little lady, aren't you?"
Alayna pushed her chair from the table and stood up. "Can I try?" She started working towards Celia before she got an answer. "Brett's the same way. I swear it's because she's trying to get extra cuddle time. But I learned a few tricks." She held her hands out towards Celia.
"It’s worth a shot. She gets terrible tummyaches when she doesn’t. Thank you."
Gently, she handed off her daughter to Alayna, who lit up at the presence of a baby in her arms.
I stared at them as they chatted easily about burping techniques, and wondered with a sudden tightness in my chest if this was the thing that the two of them might finally bond over. Not any of the other things I'd assumed they'd be likely to share an interest in—books, business, me—but something as simple and universal as motherhood. I couldn't tell if it was a one-off moment, or the beginning of something that could change all of us forever, but it felt precarious, like balancing a tray full of expensive china while walking along a tightrope. The slightest breeze in the wrong direction would send everything crashing to the ground.
I desperately didn't want to be that wind.
I shifted my eyes back to the text in front of me, finding the spot on the page where I had left off, but stared at the words for several moments before actually resuming reading.
A few minutes later, Celia returned to the table, leaving Alayna to rock back and forth on her heels, doting on Cleo. A pleasant, thick sort of hush fell over the room, and I tried not to breathe for fear of disturbing it.
We were beginning to settle into this quiet, when Celia started to giggle.
I peered sharply across the table at her.
"Remember the Pascal sisters? You tried to convince them you were twins." She giggled again as though remembering something particularly funny about the scheme.
I rolled my eyes. "There hadn't been any point to that game."
"Yes there had been—it was for fun." She brought up one foot underneath her on the chair. "I could never figure out whether you were that good at fooling them or whether they were just that clueless."
I frowned dismissively. Then I remembered how I'd acted that one, using a slightly different voice for one of the "brothers."
"I think they were relatively easy to fool." I began chuckling now. "Why would two brothers have two different accents?"
"Right? I don't think I've ever laughed harder."
"That was fun, wasn't it?" I'd never really labeled it as such. Or, I hadn't in a long time, too absorbed in the guilt and shame to remember that I had enjoyed myself. Had enjoyed the plotting and the playing and the companionship of that time, when I'd felt little else. I’d forgotten that even then, when I’d thought myself lost in the darkness, I was still capable of silliness, the kinds of pranks anyone might play.
It felt good to remember that, to recognize that I hadn't been completely hollow, that those years together hadn't been all wasted.
"And did the Pascals think it was fun?" Alayna's question cut through the moment, reminding me that my thrills had a cost.
I sobered quickly. "No, I'm sure they did not."
"She's burped," Alayna announced flatly, delivering Cleo to her mother. Celia took the baby then left the room to return her to the nanny.
Alayna took her place next to me once again, saying nothing as she resumed work on her spreadsheet.
I considered her carefully, irritation pinching just under my skin. She deserved her spite—I did understand that. But this was jealousy, and that I begrudged her. What right did she have to be jealous? Didn't she understand that any joy I had found in that time of cold, dark nothingness was shallow compared to the depth of happiness I'd found with her? Didn't she realize that I had barely been alive back then? Didn't she understand that my life began with her?
She had nothing to envy. She was my everything. Every moment I had lived without her was cold and empty in comparison.
"Hudson, I forgot to show you that I had this ready," Celia said returning to the table with a paper in hand. She slid it across the table so Alayna and I could both see it. It was a diagram of a room, a proposed seating arrangement. With tiny circles around larger circles to indicate designated seats, names labeled next to each one.
"I hope you find that suitable for Chandler and Genevieve's engagement party. I tried to be thoughtful about where I placed you. As you can see, I didn't put you in the back, though I did appreciate the suggestion."
I could feel my balance start to shift, feel the tray of china in my arms begin to slip from my grasp.
"Hudson suggested a seating arrangement for the party?" Alayna asked, her tone slightly confused, but underneath, a realization.
She wasn't dumb. She'd never been dumb. She was the smartest woman I knew.
"Yes," Celia answered before I could gather myself enough to intervene. "He called me right after they got engaged, concerned about any unnecessary tension between, well, us. He requested that he be allowed to approve the seating arrangement."
Alayna turned her attention slowly toward me, her eyes brimming, her expression full of pain and betrayal. "You thought I couldn't handle it." It wasn't a question. It wasn't even quite an accusation. It was a bitter acceptance of the painful truth.
"Alayna… precious…" I was wordless, stammering. I couldn't deny it—I had done it. For her good—to protect her. Always, to protect her.
She didn’t understand.
She snatched her purse from the floor and stuffed her laptop inside then pushed away from the table with a mumbled, "Excuse me. I have to go."
"Give us a minute," I muttered to Celia as I jumped up to follow my wife. I threw a glare over my shoulder though, making sure Celia felt it, because there was every chance that she'd meant to stir up this drama, that it hadn't been an ignorant misstep. Finding out which wasn't the most immediate priority on my agenda.
Alayna was outside in the hall when I caught up to her. "This isn't what it looks like. You can't let this get to you."
"Can't I?" she lashed back. "Isn't that exactly what you expected I would do in Celia's presence?"
Annoyance coursed through my body. "Oh, for Pete's sake. That isn't fair. You were obsessing. I was trying to make it better for you."
"Awesome. Seems to be working really well, doesn't it?" Her anger radiated off her in spikes like barbed wire.
I tried a different tactic. "Look," I said gently. "I understand. It's tense in there. It's difficult to trust Celia —"
She cut me off. "This has nothing to do with Celia right now, Hudson. Don't you get it? This is so classic. You don't even see how you manipulate people. You're the one making me crazy! Look at yourself in the mirror.”
I was acting on little sleep. My emotions were tangled and stretched, my bandwidth thin. “You’ve overdramatizing this. As usual. This is why I didn’t want you working on this with me.”
“That’s bullshit. That’s an excuse so that you don’t have to face the fact that you broke my trust—not in the past, Hudson, but now.” An angry tear escaped, and she wiped it away quickly with the back of her hand.
It made my stomach twist, the guilt roiling around, and instead of taking the time to step back and acknowledge that, I lashed out. “I am not going to take responsibility for your overactive mind.”
Shit. It was a low blow. Something I didn’t even mean. I took responsibility for all of her—she belonged to me. That was my job. A job at which I was failing miserably.
She looked as though I’d knocked the wind out of her. It took a couple of breaths before she could spit out her next words. “Typical. Not taking responsibility. Have you stopped to think for a second that might be exactly why we’re in the predicament we’re in at the moment?”
She’d cut deep with that one, stabbing me exactly where she knew it would hurt. It was the one problem with letting someone see every part of you—they knew how to best wound you with your own worst truths.
But I knew her too. “That’s enough. Go home. Better yet, go to work. You need something to keep your mind busy while I try to save our family. Why don’t you go fixate on The Sky Launch?”
I turned back toward Celia’s hotel room door and hit the buzzer, refusing to let myself look back at Alayna. Refusing to let myself believe that I’d acted in any way except in her best interest.
Refusing to admit that I’d done anything wrong at all.
17
Alayna
"...and the woman raised her arms above her head, her wrists bound together, remember. Then she dropped them really fast and, like, sort of shot her elbows to the side, and broke through the binding." Gwen used her arms to demonstrate as she spoke. "There was, probably three layers of duct tape around her wrists too. It was freaking amazing."
Her rapt audience of one, Liesl, leaned against the bar and stared at Gwen with wide eyes. "No way. Nothing breaks through that stuff."
"Way," Gwen insisted. "It didn't even look like it took any effort. That's how easy it was."
"This changes my vision on everything. I really thought that standard duct tape was the impenetrable fix-all. Maybe I do need to call a handyman about that pipe in my kitchen."
I chewed on my lip, my mind wandering from the discussion of Gwen and JC's night at the Open Door, the sex party they had attended the previous Saturday. I meant to listen, but I had other things distracting me. I'd come straight to The Sky Launch after having left Celia's hotel more than an hour before, and I was still fuming.
Stupid Hudson.
And stupid Celia.
Or maybe it was stupid me.
Maybe I was blowing everything out of proportion. It was so hard to tell. We'd been tense around each other, Hudson and I, both of us so worked up and anxious about this stranger out in the world, threatening to hurt us, engaging with our child. It was only natural for us to be jumping down each other's throats. It would be easier to dismiss his shitty comments and his shitty behavior if Celia hadn't been involved.
Especially when Hudson started acting like she was human.
But then, I supposed, why wouldn't he? She'd even seemed human to me at times this morning. She'd been cordial and helpful and, with her baby, she'd been just a regular mother.
But she was a woman who had done terrible things to people. Not just me, but the people whose names I’d entered into my spreadsheet. She'd scammed them and hurt them and thought it was all just for fun. Who could do things like that and not be a terrible person?
The answer, of course, was Hudson.
Hudson had done those things with her and I knew he wasn't terrible. But he'd changed.
Why was it so impossible to believe that Celia could change too? If there could be two versions of him, why not two versions of her?
There were certainly two versions of me.
And, worst of all, Hudson couldn't tell when I was one Alayna versus the other. That was the piece that had truly gutted me. He was so willing to give Celia the benefit of the doubt, and yet I didn’t deserve it? Would he always treat me like I was that crazy, fragile woman, even when I was strong?
Would I always be paying for my past?
I guessed Hudson was paying for his past, too. We all were, and it sucked.
"Wait,” Liesl said sharply, grabbing my attention. “You said she broke through the binding—was that before or after the guy fucked her?"
"Oh, definitely after. They were playing out some sort of attack fantasy. He had tape over her mouth too—you know, so she couldn't scream."
"Damn. That's so hot." Liesl threw her blue streaked hair over one shoulder and fanned herself. "It was hot, right? Or was it too rapey to be hot?"
"It was definitely hot. And rapey. Which sounds really bad, when I say it that way. But she asked for it." Gwen thought another moment. "That sounds just as bad. It was consensual."
"Consensual rape," Liesl nodded. "I get it."
I rolled my eyes. "There is no such thing as consensual rape. It's called rape play."
"Someone’s sure in a testy mood. Gwen's talking about the best night of her life over here. Lighten up."
I glared at Liesl. "And it seems she thought the highlight of the night was when a woman burst through duct tape." I moved my focus to Gwen. "If that's really the best thing you got out of the sex party, it was either the lamest sex party on earth or you already know everything."
Gwen raised her chin proudly. "I do know a lot, thank you. And it wasn't the highlight. It's just the only thing that's suitable for discussion at work in front of everyone. And it was supercool." She scowled. "Liesl's right—you do need to lighten up."
I took a deep breath in and let it out audibly. "I'm sorry. I'm in a bad mood. I didn't mean to take it out on you two."
Gwen crossed to me and knocked my shoulder with hers. "Understandable. And you are forgiven." I'd told her all about my morning when I'd first arrived. "Honestly, I don't know how we’re all not in a bad mood. This job fair is insane."
I looked out at the dance floor where the fair she was speaking of was taking place. Several of the larger nightclubs in the city had gathered together to jointly host the third annual search for nightclub employees. It was our turn to provide the space, so the main floor had been transformed into a sea of unemployed. Gwen had assigned another manager to collect resumes and make contacts on our behalf down on the floor. Even watching the whole affair was exhausting. A record number of people had shown up, and the room buzzed with chaos.
"Hey," Liesl said, leaning across the bar to get a better look. "Is that David?"
I followed her gaze. "David who? David Lindt? Who used to work here?" I perked up at the thought of seeing an old friend, even one I had parted with on awkward terms.
"It is!" Liesl exclaimed. "David," she yelled through the noise. "Hey, David!"
At the sound of his name, David turned toward the bar, straightening his tie
as he did. He saw Liesl first, then scanned his eyes across Gwen and landed on me, looking surprised when he did.
He headed toward us, and we rounded the bar to greet him. Well, Gwen and I rounded the bar—Liesl just climbed over. Which was why she was the first one to him. She jumped on him, wrapping her legs around his waist, giving him a big embrace.
I hung back while he finished saying hello to the other two. I felt a strange, nervous giddiness at seeing him. The last time we'd really spoken to each other had been at my wedding. That had been awkward too, as I recalled. Wasn't it always that way with people you'd once been intimate with? We had never slept together, and we'd never actually been in a relationship, but I had had his dick in my mouth on a couple of occasions. That definitely made things weird forever after.
Plus, before he’d left The Sky Launch, he pronounced that he had feelings for me. By then I was in so far over my head with Hudson I could barely breathe.
Poor David hadn't stood a chance.
We had parted as friends, the kind that politely say they’ll always be there for each other, but only see one another once in six years. So I felt out of my groove, wondering if we'd pick up where we left off, two people who'd worked well together and gotten along great, or if too much time had passed for that.
"Laynie," was all he said when he stepped away from Gwen and addressed me.
"Hi," I said brushing a piece of hair behind my ear that didn't need smoothing.
We both moved then to give each other a hug, clumsily leaning the same direction, then ungracefully going the other direction at the same time. Finally we worked it out, and I found myself in David's big bear hug of an embrace.
He'd always been a good hugger—I remembered that now. And it always felt good to get a hug from someone you thought fondly of.
I especially found enjoyment knowing that Hudson would be pissed off. He'd always been jealous of David—ridiculously so—and after the shitty way he’d treated me that morning, he deserved this embrace.
Complete Fixed: The Complete Fixed Series: Books 1-5 Page 143
