by Jade White
It had been a daunting realization and she had almost fainted at the revelation. Now, it was strange to think she was still getting away with dating him. People looked at her differently at work and people were always certain they didn’t use harsh language with her or get frustrated with her. Gus could ruin their lives. Even Gracie was patient with her, when Gracie was never patient with anyone.
She stepped out of the shower and dried off, not really sure what was going to happen when people found out they were going to get married. Just talking with Caitlin, she couldn’t help but think of all of the plans that were going to have to be made. People were going to expect the wedding of the century and they were going to have to deliver on it.
They were going to expect all the stops to be pulled out and everyone was going to want to be invited. She was going to meet celebrities and politicians on the most important day of her life. She looked at herself in the mirror, dropping the towel and instantly analyzing her body.
All she could see were the places she needed to destroy before the wedding date was set. She couldn’t even really see the baby bump yet, but she was going to have to make sure she stayed slim for all of it. She was going to have to hit the gym regularly, maybe even convince Gus to get her some kind of specialized trainer. She needed to make sure she didn’t become grotesque and fat for the celebrities and judgmental eyes that were going to be watching them up at the altar. She quickly dried off and tried her hardest not to judge herself too harshly. She had time.
Walking out into Gus’s bedroom, she felt like she was going to breach the privacy he had and that she had respected up to this point in their relationship. She was about to go into his closet and look for something she could wear until he came home and could drive her back to her place without anyone seeing.
The thought of going back on her own had crossed her mind, but she was certain something terrible would happen and she would end up out on the sidewalk, walking back home. Tiffany did not fancy walking through New York City looking like she was crazy. There were enough people who already did that.
She walked into his closet and she could feel her mouth water. His closet, not surprising at all, was larger than her bedroom and she was certain she could fit her whole apartment into it. It was packed with suits, vests, pants, dress shirts, and clothes for every type of occasion. There was even a spot where he had watches and cufflinks that were on display for anyone who walked by and had a look at them. It was ridiculous to think there was someone with this many clothes and it wasn’t even a woman. She quickly grabbed a red v-neck and a black pair of sweats, pulling them on and looking at herself in the mirror. She needed a bra. Her nipples were poking through the fabric.
As she left the daunting closet behind, she wandered back out into the living room and looked around, staring out the wall of glass to where she could see the entire city. It was amazing to think that this was the view he got to see every night. She felt like an Olympian up here, given the chance to look down upon the world and stare at all the little mortals below.
She realized that someone could get drunk on this power and come to think of themselves as something higher than the normal person down below.
Staring out at the city, she wondered how many people even knew she was up here or that there were even apartments up here. She had driven by this building a few times and she had never even noticed. She just knew that on this side of town, things were a little too expensive for her tastes.
After all, as she stood there, looking out the window, she listened to the apartment and all she could hear was the soft drone of the heater. She couldn’t hear any of her neighbors above or below her, nothing from the guy who lived down the hall she had never even seen. There was nothing. You could shoot a gun and no one could hear it. It was incredible. This was beyond amazing; she looked around and stared at it. How much money did this place even cost?
She noticed there were doors upstairs she hadn’t even opened and there were rooms she hadn’t even explored. Part of her told her that she needed to behave and that it wasn’t her right to go wandering around, exploring the little hidden places of the apartment, but she convinced herself that this was going to be her apartment soon enough and what was his was hers.
She wanted to know what each room was and as she looked at the glossy, black doors, she couldn’t help but wonder. Walking up the stairs, she opened the first door and saw it was a little workout studio with mirrors on the far wall; not what she had been expecting. Another was a home office that looked like it was set up to communicate with the Pentagon if you pressed the right button.
It intimidated her and she backed out really slowly.
When she opened the last door, she saw that it was a library, cozy and tucked away. It was the kind of room that made her feel like there should be a fireplace in the corner. As she looked around the room, she realized there was a fireplace in the corner. He really had thought of everything.
This was the one room that really drew her attention and captivated her. There was something about it that called out to her and she was instantly interested in hanging out here. She closed the door softly behind her and walked into the room, flipping the switch that ignited the gas fireplace; it looked as real as any other fireplace she had seen.
The room was lavishly decorated, as she expected. The ceiling was high, just like in every other room upstairs, but what made this room stand out was the bookshelves that reached all the way up to the ceiling and lined the entire room, except for the section that was built to look like the rock face of a chimney for the fireplace. It was beautiful and intoxicating to look at as she stared at the spines of thousands of books.
Some of them were cloth, others were leather, and some of them were the paper backs that anyone might have. They were all divided up separately and there were sections that weren’t labeled. She wondered what the system was, but clearly only Gus knew. She wondered how often he came up here.
She looked at the ladder on a rail that ran all the way around the room so you could climb up to the top shelves and have a look at what you were interested in reading. It was the most charming room she had ever seen and she wanted to live in here. She wanted to curl up on the overstuffed sofa in the corner with a throw blanket and read books forever.
There was a roll top desk in the corner for a person to work and a globe near the fireplace that looked like it belonged in an old movie with an explorers club or something like that. There was a table with a map on it and several high back chairs arranged so people could have a meeting or discuss something.
There was even a table with a bar for those who needed to have something to drink while they were working. There was a great rug in the center of the room that looked absolutely breathtaking and she wondered if he had purchased it from Turkey or anywhere over there that sold Persian rugs. It looked like the real deal and that scared her. What if someone spilled something on it?
She looked around the room and decided this was her favorite room in the entire apartment. If there was one place she wanted to spend all of her time, it was here. Often, Tiffany had thought, with a guilty heart, that reading was the one thing she wished she invested more time in. She always had a stack of books she slowly made her way through and she promised herself she was eventually going to read all of them.
If she had a room like this, she knew she would read all of them. She could make her way through all of them in no time and never look back. She took a deep breath and smelled the musty scent of the room and cherished it.
Walking over to the roll top desk, she saw there was something spread open on the desk and as she looked at it, something guilty spread across her mind. She knew what it was before she even read a single word. It was a journal. It was a very expensive journal from the look of it. It had a leather back and the pages looked like they were from an actual paper mill that specialized in top of the line journals. It was the kind of journal she would have taken on an adventure if she was going across the globe
or if she was on some grand safari. When she was a little girl, she would have killed for a journal like that. She wondered how lucky you had to be to have a journal that beautiful and it not be something special.
She looked at the writing on the pages without actually reading the words, taking in what it looked like to be staring at Gus’s handwriting. She had never actually seen him writing anything before and it was strange to see the words he had written. He had a beautiful fluidity to the words that he wrote.
Handwriting was a dying art these days, it seemed, and it was slightly strange to see someone who still wrote on a daily basis with their bare hands.
She knew she shouldn’t be looking at his journal. If she wanted to look at something, there were thousands of books here for her to stare at instead of the intimate, private thoughts of the man she was in love with.
If she was interested in reading, that was where she should spend her time. But at the same time, she knew Gus wasn't hiding any secrets from her and there was nothing on those pages that would frighten her. If she read them, she was going to see the man she was going to marry and any suspicions she had about him would be proven grossly false.
But, at the same time, she knew if she read that book and she found something she didn’t like, there would be no one in the world to blame but herself. If you go looking for trouble in this kind of a way, well, trouble had a way of finding you. She was going to deserve any pain or heartache she found out from this moment.
That didn’t give her any pause as she sat down at the desk and looked at the last entry in the journal. It appeared that the man she was going to marry was a very busy man and there wasn’t a whole lot he had going on in the journal writing department of his life. She read over what he had last written; he had proposed to her after a lot of careful planning and consideration and she had said yes to him. It was sweet to hear things about him being in love with her and that he knew she was the one for him, but there was something more to it.
As Tiffany read, there was something about the words he was writing that didn’t make sense. He was talking about a lot of strange things. There was mention of a curse and a bear, something that alarmed her. As she flipped the pages, she realized these were the writings of a madman. There was serious discussion about research he had been doing in the study; he was looking for an answer to the problem he had.
The more she read, the more she began to wonder if this was some kind of a twisted joke for him to expose the fact that she had been prying into his private life. It had to be something like that. None of this could be true. As she looked at the writings, she prayed she was being fooled with.
Gus believed in some strange things and as she sat there at the desk, reading his journal, she realized Gus believed he was something called a werebear. He believed that at different points in the year, he was forced to turn into a bear and, at any moment, he could turn into a beast if he wanted it.
He had the power to become a bear if he became angry. She looked at it and she suddenly remembered the bear rug in his bedroom. She remembered that the art in his house was all designed to look like bears or to have bears popping up somewhere along the line. She didn’t understand what she was reading as she looked at it. Was this real? Was the man she was going to marry crazy? She didn’t think he was.
She also didn't think he was keeping secrets from her, but she always had a nagging feeling there was something he was hiding from her. It wasn’t something she thought it would be, like madness, but she knew he was definitely hiding something.
There was a dark spot on his soul he didn’t want to show and she understood now why he didn’t want to show it. He was crazy. He was an actual madman who thought he could turn into a bear. She shook her head and tried to convince herself this wasn’t the case.
Deeper back, when she found the entry that said he’d finally been told by Tiffany she was pregnant, he began to write about how a curse was going to fall on him. She took a deep breath and looked at the pages, staring at them as she read about him hearing about a curse if he ever got a girl pregnant without being married to her.
She realized this curse was a vague warning and he was using it as his reason for wanting to get married all of a sudden. Maybe he liked her, maybe he didn’t, but the only thing she did know was that he was afraid of getting cursed and that was why he was interested in marrying her.
This had nothing to do with the fact that he was in love with her and it had everything to do with some strange, mystical curse he was possibly going to experience if she had the baby and they weren’t married.
She looked at the words on the page and felt her stomach churning. Everything she knew about this man was a lie and she knew this had to be some kind of a joke. The man was a billionaire and he was the heir to one of the most successful businesses in the country.
There was no way he could be insane and no one would ever mention it. Someone would have blown the lid on the fact that Gus Anderson belonged in an insane asylum by now.
She looked at the journal and closed it, looking at the bear stamped into the leather on the front of the journal. This was a sick joke he was playing and she didn’t want to put up with it. If he didn’t want her going through his things, all he had to do was ask.
Playing a joke on her like this though, that was messed up. God, she prayed he was playing a joke on her or testing her. Because if he really, truly believed that he could turn into a bear, well, she was done with him right now. There was no way she was going to date a guy who believed he was a werebear.
This came out of nowhere. Sure, she knew something was off, but the fact that he thought he could turn into a bear was beyond what she could handle. No, this was crazy. She needed to deal with this and she needed to deal with it soon.
He was going to be home in an hour or so and she would use that time to think about how she was going to bring it up, but it had to be resolved tonight. She took the book and left the study, closing the door behind her as she headed back downstairs.
By the time he came home, she was ready for him.
Sitting in a chair in the living room, she’d already broken open a bottle of wine, nursing it as she thought about what she was going to say to him. She didn’t know what it was going to look like when she confronted him with the fact that he believed he was a werebear or that he had laid a trap to catch her in the act of snooping.
Either way, there was going to be some serious discussion on the topic of their relationship. In fact, she didn’t think there was anything more important to discuss right now. They were supposed to be getting married; playing games was not something she was interested in and there was no way she was going to get involved with them.
He walked through the front door, all smiles and happiness, not noticing that there wasn’t even a hint of an expression on her face. There was nothing for him to be excited about. This was not the eager, loving woman he had talked to on the phone.
No, this was a woman who was scornful and ready to get into the argument of a lifetime as she looked at him. He still hadn’t noticed the journal on the coffee table, but she knew it would only be a matter of time. Then that would answer one of her questions.
“Hey, started the celebration without me?” he joked, hanging up his coat and walking across the living room, gesturing at the wine bottle.
He noticed there was only one glass and there was a flicker in his eyes that there was something wrong. She knew it wouldn’t be long before he realized that he was in the dog house. He slowly turned toward the kitchen.
“Mind if I get myself a glass?” he asked her, heading for the kitchen and not really waiting for her to respond. “It was a long day today,” he called over his shoulder as he headed into the kitchen. “You would not believe some of the people I have to deal with, Hon. I swear, if I didn’t tell them how to do everything, you’d think they’d starve to death. I’m genuinely concerned how they get home at night. I think all of my employees are just wandering around the city
and just randomly make it back to the right location out of sheer luck.”
She didn’t say anything to him. She couldn’t stand the sound of his voice pandering to her, droning on and on about something she didn’t care about. She was seething with anger and frustration. She didn’t know what to do.
As he returned from the kitchen, bringing an empty glass, ready for wine, he looked at her and smiled.
“Nice outfit,” he said with a chuckle. “You look good in my clothes. They look better on you than they ever looked on me.”
When it was abundantly clear he wasn’t going to notice the book on the coffee table, she picked up her foot and slammed it onto the table, letting the bottle rattle as she watched the book jump and shift. He stared at it, suddenly understanding what his fiancé was interested in talking about.
He looked at it and she could see in his eyes that he was nervous. He had every reason in the world to be nervous and she was ready to make him squeal. He was going to need to find some answers and his voice very quickly. She looked at him with cold eyes and she knew he wasn't going to say anything until she initiated the whole discussion.
