by Meg Watson
“What am I doing?” I shot back, a fistful of dresses in each hand. I stood there wishing I had something to throw, feeling my skin going slick and hot with anger.
“What… You just snuck in here to take them the second I was out of the room?? You had no right--”
“Well technically I had every right,” he shrugged.
“No!” I yelled. “Those weren’t… Those aren’t…”
I forced myself to stop, dropping the clothes on the bag and walking toward him deliberately, concealing as much of my uncontrollable fury as I could.
“The new paintings aren’t done,” I explained, impressing myself with the even tone of my voice.
“They’re sold,” he said simply.
“They can’t be sold because I didn’t authorize you… or anyone… to sell them.”
He gave me a wink. “Oh yes you did.”
“NO.”
“Well I hate to quibble, but I am your authorized agent. I have the right to sell anything you make.”
“And you stole those paintings from Bridget!”
“Oh please,” he rolled his eyes. “You never got around to even giving them to her.”
“They were promised to her, Declan! That means something!”
“It doesn’t mean anything, actually. If she never took possession of them--”
“I promised her!”
He sighed impatiently. “OK, listen, you really have to up your game, here. This isn’t Grandma’s County Art Show anymore. This is the big leagues. These are serious collectors. Giving them to Bridget would be… a step backward. I saved you that mistake.”
“You saved me!” I repeated, incredulous.
“Yes, and you should consider thanking me.”
I bark-laughed, the veneer that held back my emotions shredding into splinters all around me.
“Thanking you? For what? For tricking me? For lying to me… setting this whole thing up because you knew I would never say yes?”
“Well that’s true, right?” he shot back. “You would never have said yes. What choice did I have?”
My mouth opened and closed like a fish. I felt like I was fighting a ghost, a fog, pounding my fists against thin air.
“Oh my god, there is no way to make you understand,” I mumbled, shaking my head helplessly. What good was it to try to explain? “When is Jackson getting here?”
He shook his head. “Jackson’s gone.”
“What? Gone where?”
He held his hands out, palm up, as though it was obvious. “Gone. Defeated. Given up. On to new adventures. Asta la vista.”
“What? Why?”
He wiggled his eyebrows at me. “Because you made your decision. You picked this,” he waved his hand around the studio air.
I shook my head as though to clear it. “I didn’t pick this, exactly. I was just… I was working. Which he understood. We talked about it. I didn’t pick you. I didn’t pick you over him.”
Declan shrugged, smirking maddeningly.
“I didn’t pick you, Declan.”
“Whatever. In any case... you’re here, and he’s gone.”
My hands flapped at my sides. It really was a blessing I didn’t have a handful of knives at that particular moment. “For how long?”
“I don’t know,” he sighed, obviously wanting this to be done with. “Forever? That’s my guess.”
“Not possible,” I retorted defensively. “He’ll be back.”
“Hah,” he scoffed. “For what?”
“For me.”
“Not likely,” he chuckled, his fingers scraping at an invisible dimple on the plaster wall. “Jackson’s never fought for anything in his life. He just gives up. The guy’s just… terminally apathetic. He floats. Our father even held him back in school for a year so I could be next to him to kick his ass into caring about something. Anything. But it never took. Things don’t really matter to him the way they matter to people like us.”
“I am nothing like you,” I hissed, my eyes wide with shock.
“Oh, aren’t you…” he chuckled, cocking his head to the side. “Don’t you just love the way people look at us? Doesn’t that energy just… whoosh… fill you with a thrill?”
“No idea what you mean,” I lied.
“Oh yeah, right,” he drawled. “Like it or not, you and I are very much alike. You think I am ruthless? I think you’re ruthless. It’s one of your most adorable qualities.”
“I am no such thing!”
“Oh aren’t you? I seem to remember you trotting Jack and I around your living room just to humiliate that Kevin guy. Tsk tsk tsk. That was brutal, Mar.”
I turned away, hiding the pain that must have flashed across my face. There was truth in what he was saying. I knew it.
“Listen, come back downstairs,” he said, his voice softening. “I know you’re mad, but you still have business to work through, downstairs. We can sort the rest of this tomorrow.”
I squinted and hesitated, then nodded.
“Yes?” he said, his voice brightening with relief. “That’s my girl. I knew you could take it.”
I heard him standing tall, straightening his beautiful suit.
“So I’ll see you down there?”
“OK, Dec. Just give me a minute,” I said softly.
“See?” he said sweetly, walking over to me and embracing me from behind. “I knew you would do it my way. We’re going to have a blast, kiddo.”
Slapping me lightly on the shoulder like I was a teammate in a locker room, he left the studio. As soon as he closed the door, I pulled the beaded belt from my waist and threw it on the bed, then the dress after it.
I could only get my clothes and makeup in my bag, but that was fine. I couldn’t even care anymore. Let it all sink to the bottom of the canal. Let it burn in the fireplace. What did it matter.
Snatching the wad of unspent cash Declan had given me days earlier I opened the envelope Jackson left me. Inside was a single airplane ticket to LA, open-ended. Choking back a fist of emotion, I glanced around the studio at everything I was leaving behind with just a bag of clothes and mascara, then snapped off the light for the last time.
I kept the shoes though, because... well, you know. Gucci shoes.
CHAPTER 6
SOMEHOW HOME SEEMED STRANGE and unfamiliar. It took two days to get there via three different commercial airplanes and by the time I arrived, it all looked manufacture, like a movie set.
“Hello, house,” I whispered when I walked in, breathing deeply, trying to trigger a sensation of belonging. But nothing came.
I dropped my bag on the slate tiles and unbuckled my thoroughly broken-in Gucci sandals, leaving them where they fell. My feet on the cool tiles felt deliciously unfettered and I walked deeper into the house, feeling an inkling of change, a small sense that I did in fact belong here.
Skimming the photos on the mantlepiece, Aunt Winnie and my mother beamed out at me from years and years ago, frozen mid-laugh among friends. I tried to feel them here, the way people say you can. This would have been the exact right time to have a maternal ghost figure around. Someone I could turn to for comfort.
Someone I could confess to.
“Mom, I fucked up so bad,” I whispered into the dusty, dark air.
But she didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say. What would I even tell her? That I screwed over my best friend? That I burned bridges on two sides of the world I would probably never be able to rebuild? That I had apparently given up something real to snatch after a shiny object when some douchebag dangled it in front of my face?
Could I tell her I was that girl? No. It was better she would never know.
I had left the Netherlands with a single bag and nothing else, and that seemed appropriate. My work was gone, my clothes… even my paint materials were in a studio halfway around the world that I would never see again, hopefully.
Well, I guess this is as good a time as any to start over, then.
Sliding open the gla
ss doors, I was grateful to see that Roger had kept the garden and pool from going wild while I was gone. I flipped on the pool light and flopped onto a deck chair, sinking wearily into the cold, fluffy cushion.
The night sky was a smear of grey. No stars at all. With a frustrated groan, I realized I had never even looked up while in Amsterdam. Another chance just wasted. Frittered away.
Deliberately relaxing my muscles, I pushed away any thoughts of what I needed to do. Just for a moment, I wanted to float without feeling. I knew I had to turn everything in my life around, and it was going to be like diverting the Titanic. But just for a few minutes, I wanted to not think.
The sound of the doorbell punched through like a klaxon horn. I sat up straight and immediately began to swear.
“Fuck, I need a new bell. OK, that is job one,” I muttered as I slapped barefoot through the house. Who the hell would be ringing that? If Bridget thought she could have me murdered, she should have hired someone less courteous.
I opened the door, then before I knew I’d done it, threw myself at Jackson and wrapped my arms around his neck. Sudden, choking sobs shook my body.
“Whoa, hey!” he said, his voice pitched with concern. “Baby, hey… No don’t cry!”
But I couldn’t help it. He held me just as tight as I needed on the dark steps in front of my house, squeezing me still while my sobs tried to shake me apart.
I wanted to tell him and couldn’t. I was positively wretched. In his arms the fragile scaffolding that held me together melted away and I could see it. Everything had been ruined. Everything I had built was at risk, yet again. I felt selfish and mean, ashamed at how I had acted.
Knowing he would hold me up, I succumbed to the urge to just crumble. I let wave after wave of sorrow and regret shudder through me, not even trying to hold them back anymore.
“Oh, Margot… Margot… Shhhh baby it’s alright.”
“It’s not!” I choked, a mucousy, wet retort. “Everything… I ruined everything.”
“No, everything’s fine.”
“No,” I whimpered.
Then I pulled back and looked up at him. Had he ever been this handsome? I couldn’t remember it.
“Wait… How did you know I was here?”
He chuckled shyly. “Oh, I saw your pool light go on. Raul and I were in the garden.”
“And you… came over?”
“I had to be where you are,” he said softly.
“Declan said I would never see you again.”
“Ha! Oh he did, did he? Well that shows what he knows. Say… why are we still out here?”
He dipped down and slid his hand behind my knees, picking me up effortlessly and carrying me back to the living room.
“Declan says you never fight for anything,” I admitted, feeling a little like a gossip.
“Jackson wants to fight over everything. I want to be more judicious.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means I never had anything worth fighting for.”
I shook my head in confusion. Was he really saying this?
“But… Declan said he won. That I stayed and he won.”
Jackson sighed and pushed me back on the sofa, hovering over me on one elbow. “I can’t believe you would listen to anything he says.”
“Well… but you left.”
“I told you I would be here,” he replied, as though it was obvious.
Oh man, he totally did. How did I miss that?
I squinted at him in the dark room. The proof was undeniable: here he was. Really here. No matter what I had feared, the real and present truth was that he was here with me. The sound of that thought boomed through my mind. There was one solid thing, like the first post of a pier. One solid thing to hold onto.
“You look beautiful, by the way,” he murmured, his lips gliding over my collarbones, his voice tinged with a smile.
“I think I look like I’ve been on an airplane for six weeks.”
“That long? It suits you,” he whispered. My skin puckered into goosebumps under his breath.
“It felt like forever,” I said, letting his kisses restore me. Each one was like a tiny ray of hope. Everything wasn’t ruined. If he was here, it seemed impossible to believe everything was really ruined.
“But you never answered me,” he said, his voice suddenly wary between kisses. I wriggled beneath him, wanting more, hungry for each hope-giving touch.
“Answered you?”
“Stay with me,” he said.
I pushed him back so I could look into his unblinking, sky-blue stare. I couldn’t quite believe what he was implying.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean… stay with me.”
How many times had I heard him say that, or some version of it that mean the same thing? A dozen? More?
“OK, yeah, you’ve said that but… I-- I didn’t know that was a question.”
“That’s always been the question, Margot,” he said earnestly, diving back to cover my shoulders with kisses. “Ever since the beginning.”
“Since the… Wait now. The beginning-beginning? Like, since Zac Efron?” I teased.
He chuckled modestly. “Well if I’m being honest… Part of me knew even then. But it’s only gotten more intense as time went on. There’s something about you… You do things to me. You finish parts of me I didn’t even know I was missing, Margot,” he whispered.
“So will you?”
I bit the inside of my cheek, trying to keep my face from bursting into an uncontrollable grin, and leaned in close to his ear. Inhaling him deeply, trying to get his scent as deep as possible into my lungs, I whispered, “Say it again.”
He pushed himself and hovered over me, drawing so deliciously close I was sure we were exchanging electrons.
“Stay,” he whispered, then covered my mouth. His lips sucked gently at mine, plucking them individually with his lips, rolling them softly.
“With,” he breathed into my mouth. His tongue pushed at my teeth, opening my hungry mouth for him.
“Me,” he said, then plunged his tongue against mine, drawing lazy circles across the roof of my mouth with the tender tip of his tongue, reminding me of all the pleasures his body had shown my body.
“Yes,” I sighed.
“Yes?” he asked, drawing back with a smile.
“Will you, Margot? Stay with me?”
“Well…” I quirked an eyebrow, trying to look like I was seriously negotiating. “Will you fight for me? If you ever have to?”
“I think I just did,” he whispered in the darkness.
“Will you show me the stars?”
He nodded vigorously. “Every single one,” he promised.
“And you’ll…”
“Love you, Margot,” he finished, as though he’d heard what I didn’t want to ask. “I’ll love you, Margot. Yes. I will.”
“I love you too, Jackson,” I said all in a rush, the words tumbling out of my mouth like water. As I heard each one it echoed back inside of me, flipping through every cell, changing me forever.
He groaned in response, his mouth falling onto mine again with a passion he’d never shown me before. My body arched into his, suddenly, urgently straining to feel all of him.
I felt his hands everywhere as our fingers found each other’s hems and buttons and pulled until the clothes were cast to the floor. In moments, but not soon enough, I had his skin on my skin.
His breath came in short, hormone-sodden gusts as he rocked against me, his cock instantly hard and insistent. I threw my legs around his hips and pulled him close, grinding my slippery wet folds against him. It had been so long, I wasn’t sure I could keep from coming before he got inside me.
He pulled back, panting, then grabbed the backs of my knees.
“Turn over,” he demanded in a thick voice, lifting my legs and twisting me onto my belly.
Obediently I flipped over, angling my hips back toward him, my knees out and spread. There was no point
in hiding it, I wanted him, needed him to be inside me. I couldn’t hide anything from him.
I heard a small tearing sound and the tiny click of something hitting the floor. Then his hands were on my hips, pulling me upward.
His tongue was hot and wet, stroking my buttocks from the back of my thighs upward with long, juicy laves. My whole body shuddered as he teased along my crack, his thumbs gently pulling my cheeks apart.
“Oh, my gaaahhh--” I gurgled into the sofa cushion. My fingers clawed at the chenille and my hips pulsed backwards, urging him to explore me completely.
Patiently, his tongue stroked closer and closer to my tight, untested opening. I tried consciously to relax, but it felt like my body knew what it was doing, shamelessly shoving my ass against his face.
With each pass, I felt the tip of his tongue darting just into the opening, then out again and around. The circles went fast and then slow, then fast again. One of his fingers found the throbbing button of my clit and tapped it three times, sending desperate sparks through me.
“Yes, that!” I groaned, shoving myself back toward him. I wanted him everywhere, in my pussy, in my ass, against my clit. I wanted to be filled to bursting.
“Yesss… Baby, yes,” he moaned, sliding a slippery finger just into my ass. I inhaled deeply and spread my legs wider. I wanted him to know that I was ready. I could take it, and I wanted it more than I had ever wanted anything.
“You want this?” he asked me. I felt the wide head of his cock nosing against my tight but eager hole. He slid it up and down my crack, and I could feel the thick sheath of a lubricated condom. The ridges and wrinkles tickled me everywhere.
“I do!” I said. As soon as I felt the tip of him at my hole again, I pushed back slightly. I wanted to feel him stretch me. “Touch my clit, Jackson.”
“Yes, Mar,” he answered, flicking my clit back and forth. With his hips, he nudged me forward so I was laying flat on the sofa with his hand pinned beneath me. Instantly my hips started grinding against his fingers.
“Fuck, you are so ready for me, aren’t you?” he whispered hotly into my ear.
I whimpered, driving my clit against his slippery, juice-soaked fingers.
Then he pushed harder, his cock insistent against my tight ring. I felt a bright, stretching... burning... combined with a searing hunger from deep within me. I relaxed against his slow, undeniable entry. With every second he advanced, millimeter by millimeter, exploring a part of me no one ever had. I gave in to it completely, relaxing, willing him ever forward.
