One night — our third together, after the torrid evening in his mansion’s driveway — I ask him what’s wrong. He answers with a question:
“What would it take for you to believe I’m really different now?”
It chills me, the way he asks. I get the impression he’s not asking from close up: I’ve changed, and I want you to believe it. It’s more of a hypothetical: If I were to convince you that things were different, purely as an academic exercise, what would be required?
His precision bothers me. It’s like he’s building distance even as he holds me close on his luxurious couch. I answer anyway.
“You don’t need to convince me. I just believe you.”
It’s a lie. I can’t “just believe” him any more than I can “just believe” I could fly without help. I’m telling him this as a leap of faith, hoping my belief won’t hang me.
But faith is all I have left, after Jamie and Mom turned their heads on our foolish reunion.
Onyx doesn’t answer. He looks away. It isn’t the response he wanted. “It’s okay if you think I’m a bastard. I am one.”
“You were one,” I correct him.
He looks around the room. I notice a cardboard box in the corner. It must be left over from when he arrived with a small load of personal belongings. But I was here last night and that box wasn’t there. So it’s new, and open with things inside it. What does it mean?
“I acted selfish in the past, but I need you to know that what I do now isn’t selfish, no matter how it might seem.”
I snuggle into his arm. It’s strong and firm — my anchor in the spinning world. “What you’re doing now is being here for me.”
This must be the wrong thing to say, because Onyx is clearly uncomfortable. He shifts, and the big arm leaves my grasp. He looks at me, his handsome face concerned. “I just need you to understand that. Beneath it all, I’m doing everything I do because it’s what’s best for you.”
“And because you care for me,” I add, nodding.
Onyx doesn’t respond.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
MIA
There’s a knock on my door. I answer without peering through the peephole. I’m distracted. I’ve now spent five nights in a row with Onyx, but tonight he had business and I’m alone. I asked him to come over afterward, but he told me it’d be too late. I asked him what business he was doing, but somehow the topic got changed and I’ve only just realized that he didn’t answer.
I shouldn’t be suffering from this odd, hollow feeling, but I am anyway. There’s a psychic blanket smothering the room. I know something is wrong even though nothing is, or seems to be. I can’t settle. There’s a piece out of place in my night’s puzzle, and I have no idea which one it is, where to find it, or how to fix it.
Jamie’s in the doorway. She’s faster than me; before I can sigh and close the door in her face, she shoves her foot inside. I hit it with the swinging door, hard.
“Ow! Fuck!”
I pull the door back, instantly apologetic. I didn’t mean to hurt her, but she’s been annoying the hell out of me this past week — and in the times between Jamie’s attempts to judge me, Mom takes over. They don’t call me too close together, and when one or the other comes over I’ve been pretending not to be home.
I think they’re tag-teaming me. One tags out, and the other in. Just so long as someone is sticking her nose into Mia Stover’s business at any given time, they’re happy. But hitting her stupid foot washes all of that away. The simple truth is, I hurt my friend. She’s obnoxious, but I know she thinks she’s trying to help.
I sort of bend down, and Jamie takes her advantage. She leans into the door and pushes. I’m off-balance so I fall onto my hardwood floor, but Jamie doesn’t stop to apologize as I was going to do with the slammed foot. I’ve shut her out too many times. This time, she’s inside through any means necessary.
“Sorry about your foot,” I say from the floor, my voice caustic.
“He’s leaving you.”
I can only look up. I’m on my ass and my tailbone took a banging. But in an instant the pain is gone and a new one is blooming. I shouldn’t know what those simple three words mean, but I do. I shouldn’t believe what she’s accusing him of, but I do. I’ve felt something amiss all evening — for days, really, since Onyx changed and he seemed to mourn a thing that wasn’t yet missing.
Yet.
She’s shot an arrow through the dark and hit me in the heart.
“Did you hear me?”
I push it away. I extend my hand as Jamie closes my door as if this is her place instead of mine. She takes my hand and pulls me up, but my distracted mental state has already stirred into something turbulent. There’s obvious truth here. So obvious, I must have been willfully blind to miss it.
I sit. Into this hard, uncomfortable antique chair in my hallway, passed down by some dead relative.
“Mia? Do you understand? It doesn’t matter if you believe me; Onyx is leaving. ”
I think of the open cardboard box in his rented living room. The way he pulled away. His distance this past week. The way I’ve followed him as he went, foolish and blind as always.
“Are you listening to me? He’s—”
“No.” But it’s not a denial. It’s not, No, he’s not leaving or No, I don’t believe you.
Just No, and nothing else.
Jamie hears the difference. She squats in front of me, now at eye level across my small hallway. “Mia?”
“He’s changed.”
“I don’t like being the one to tell you this.”
“It was different this time. I sensed something. I could tell. But still it was different. He’s …”
Jamie sighs. She takes my hands and meets my eyes. They’re deep and earnest, like Onyx’s. I feel a wave of self-pity. Even as I push this away, I know it’s true. And I wonder, if my eyes were as pretty as Jamie’s, if he’d have left.
“This isn’t your fault.” It’s like she can read my mind.
“I know.” I’m too calm. Shell-shocked. This must be the eye of my personal storm.
“But it’s real.” Jamie’s sympathetic face turns stern yet honest. Like she doesn’t want to give me a shoulder to cry on just yet because if she does, we’ll both get too emotional. There are things she needs to say, and it’s clear she means to say them now, before I lean into her, because this is going to hurt.
“Real,” I say.
“When you wouldn’t listen to me, I started poking around. I figured the worst-case scenario, if you were right and I was wrong, was that I’d just come off as nosy. But how’s that different from how I usually am?”
She smiles, and I try to smile back, but the reality of this — the knowledge I’m just now realizing I’ve always had, even though I worked so hard to earn my denial — keeps the expression from rising to my face.
“I asked some people about this rental. There’s no lease. No rental agreement. He just paid a huge lump of cash, but there’s nothing to hold him here. He still has his place in Seattle. But maybe that didn’t mean anything, so I called Anthony. I wanted to hear if he knew anything about ‘Forage Education,’ which is supposedly what Onyx came here to build. Anthony’s in some club with Onyx and his partner, and even though there’s a code of silence Anthony tells me things. I kept it light. Turns out, Anthony didn’t know anything about Forage’s expansion plans. Google did: Forage bought a sprawling plot of land outside Austin, Texas. They’ve already hired architects, to build the Education campus.”
“Maybe they’re keeping their options open.”
Jamie shakes her head. “They’re not building it here, Mia. Maybe they never planned to.”
“So why buy Urban Design, if they didn’t need us to design their Education campus?”
Jamie gives me a tight-lipped smile. She doesn’t answer. We both know what it means. “I sort of stumbled into something when talking to Anthony. I mentioned Onyx and Aiden being in Inferno, keeping things casu
al, not letting him know I was sticking my nose in where it maybe didn’t belong. And Anthony said the most curious things. First he said that he was in a club with the Forage guys, which I already knew, but that he wasn’t sure about them as people — their integrity, their values, all of that. He wasn’t questioning them; he literally didn’t know. But then he said he was starting to question them because of something that had just happened. He asked me about my impression when I met them.”
“Why does it matter? You’re not a tech whiz.”
“Anthony always asks my opinions,. It’s part of our bond. You know he’s like my dad, but to him I’m half-daughter and half-advisor. We talk all the time about stuff like this, and there’s more than one of his big things I’ve had a say in, one way or the other.”
“What was the ‘something that just happened’? The something that made Anthony ask you about Forage?”
Jamie sighs again, as if steeling herself. “Aiden Page started calling him. Trying to get a meeting — and mentioning you.”
“Me?”
Another heavy sigh. She nods slowly. “Anthony told me he said, ‘My partner is dating Jamie’s best friend. Maybe we can all get together some time. Onyx and I have something we’d love to discuss.’”
I slump. I feel kicked in the chest. Not even believing myself, I say, “Maybe it doesn’t mean what you think it does.”
Jamie looks up at me from the floor and puts a reassuring hand on my thigh. Then she comes up onto her knees and wraps an arm around my shoulders.
I’ve known this. Somehow, I always have.
“He came to Inferno Falls so he could use you to get to me — then get to Anthony from there. Everything that’s happened has been a part of it: the move, the way he kept trying to arrange a meet-up, your hook-ups, the buyout of Urban Design. If you want details, I can prove it. I’m nosy enough to have asked Anthony the right follow-ups, to have made some more calls, and to have kept looking until I found plenty. And, honey?” She looks me full in the eyes, making sure I’m paying attention. “Trust me on this: I’m nosy enough to be certain.”
I start to cry.
Not because I’m surprised, but because deep down I knew it all along.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
ONYX
Packing to leave Inferno is easy. I didn’t bring much with me, and what I did bring is simple enough to gather and box. Most of what’s in the house came with the rental, so what’s truly mine — and mine to leave with — fits in the back of the truck I’ve hired to haul shit back after I’ve flown to Seattle on the Forage jet. I prefer to fly light and can carry my messenger bag.
I look around, wondering what I’ve missed. I search the bathroom, the kitchen, the master bedroom with its giant fireplace, hot tub, and stone deck overlooking the valley. Even in these places, there’s nothing to grab. There never was much of me in this place, and I’ve been here for over a month. I’ve basically used the mansion like a hotel room. I don’t spread out much in hotels. It’s something I learned, I think, from being a scrappy kid who didn’t exactly grow up poor, but did grow up a minority in what used to be a whitebread town.
You keep your belongings close. When things stray, you risk losing them forever.
That makes me think of Mia.
I’m on the patio, looking out toward Old Town, when I’m hit with a wave of something unpleasant. It comes all at once, and I have to sit until it passes. I wonder what Aiden would think of me now: not only did I refuse to do what he wanted, but I’m feeling this rush of emotion beneath a slowly setting sun.
I’m not the ice-hearted son of a bitch I used to be. About that, Aiden is correct.
It doesn’t bother me. If feeling bad for wronging someone and ruining her life makes me a pussy in Aiden’s mind, so be it. If this emotion is regret that despite my best efforts, I’m about to hurt Mia again, then I don’t care if I feel it.
I should regret hurting Mia. I never used to, but I’m no longer that asshole.
I watch the valley. The sun sets.
If there’s a small blessing to this, it’s that Mia doesn’t know I’m going. Her heart is unbroken for now. I wanted to give her at least that much — to not ruin our final night with a fight. She can hate me in the morning, and she will. But if I’m lucky, she’ll remember the things I said — about how under it all, I’m doing what’s best for her.
Maybe she’ll understand that staying would have been the crueler thing for me to do.
Maybe she’ll be able to see my intention: that I left because the alternative was worse. Because if I’d stayed, it would have been because I was sticking to Aiden’s plan. She might hate me for leaving, but maybe she’ll come to understand the truth in time: leaving was the more difficult choice.
I should be proud of myself. For once, I didn’t lie to Mia. I didn’t manipulate her with untruths. I came here intending to hook up with her, make nice with her Jamie, and use Jamie to get in front of Anthony Ross. I came here to be a son of a bitch, to use and abuse the poor girl, same as before.
Or maybe that was Aiden’s plan, and I played along while I could. Maybe I changed my mind early. Maybe that’s the problem: that somewhere between the plan’s initial spark and my return to Inferno, I remembered that I’m no longer that kid.
I sigh. None of this matters. I’m still leaving. I still lied, even if it wasn’t the big one Aiden wanted me to tell. I still manipulated Mia with lies and half-truths.
And most importantly, even if leaving town is the least of evils, I’m still going to hurt her again.
I hear a shuffling behind me. The sound of a shoe on stone. Or a sandal.
I look back and see the sandals in question. There are long legs above them, a simple blue dress, and a girl whose unadorned self is exactly what makes her so beautiful.
“Were you even going to say goodbye?”
I could lie, but I owe it to both of us not to make this more emotional than it needs to be. Let her hate me more, if she must. Let her be angry if it saves her some sorrow.
“No,” I say. Then, because I can’t help it, I add, “I’m sorry.”
“Apologies. You’re always apologizing to me.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Anything else. Anything that’s not an apology.” Tension is building. This isn’t close to a shout, but a scream is hiding behind it. “Anything but more of the bullshit I’ve heard from you again and again and again. You owe me that much, Onyx.”
I can’t face her. I have to make a clean break.
Let her hate me, I remind myself. Let her be happy to see me go, because I’m her villain.
So I don’t reply. It’s near-impossible to keep my mouth shut, but I’ll do her no favors defending myself.
I watch the sunset, holding it in. I keep my back straight. I probably look cocky, like I’m too good to answer. Strong. Detestable.
“Jamie says you came here to get to her through me. She says that all you wanted, all along, was a way to make Anthony Ross like you. But that’s crazy, right? Tell me she’s crazy.”
I turn my head. Mia’s eyes are strong, shimmering in the orange light. She comes off furious, but rage is only part of this. She’s angry, yes. But she’s hurt even more.
I hate myself, but the best way through this is to hurt her deeper. Worse for her now means less sorrow later.
“Tell me that even if you needed to talk to Anthony Ross, that wasn’t the reason you came.”
“I can talk to Anthony Ross whenever I want. I needed a personal connection.”
“Then tell me it was only part of the reason. Tell me it was a side benefit, not the purpose of your trip and the reason for all that happened between us. Because—”
She sniffs, fighting not to lose control. She’s so broken. I see it and want to leap from the balcony. Get in my car and crash it into a bridge stanchion. Her break is all my fault.
“Because whatever you came here to do,” she continues after reclaiming control, “things
changed when we connected again.”
I watch her, knowing how much Mia longs to believe what she’s saying. Again I think: I did this to her. We met when she was tender, and I’ve shattered her like a vase. Mia will never be whole. I know it because although she has every reason to shout me down, she’s begging first. She wants to believe my lies this time. Whatever bullshit I tell her now, she’ll leap to embrace it.
I can’t do that to her. Not now. Not again. Not ever.
“Nothing changed,” I say.
I’m looking away. I hear her stop short behind me, disbelieving. I hate my cruelty. I need to keep telling myself that it’s for her own good. I made this bed. And no matter how much she detests me, that’s the mess I’ve made to lie in.
“It’s not true,” Mia says.
“You should go. I wanted to leave quietly so I could spare you this. I made a mistake, but for what it’s worth I decided to stop on my own.”
“Anthony Ross is coming to town next week.”
I can’t read her tone. The non-sequitur surprises me, so I turn to see her watching me, still inscrutable.
“He’s coming to see Jamie. So if you want to meet him …”
“I don’t want to meet him. I told you. I already know him.”
At first I don’t understand what’s happening with Mia, but then I see it all at once. My resolve snaps, and all of a sudden my tough guy act gets so much harder to maintain. She’s not caving, begging me to stay, tell her pretty little lies, and make believe that all is well. There’s a bit of that in Mia now, but above it all is strength. I was wrong to believe she wasn’t angry. She’s shaking as I take her in, her face working.
And all of a sudden, I no longer feel like letting her hate me.
“Stay.” Her sweet word sounds like a threat. Her fists are balled at her sides. Her upper lip is firm, eyelids slightly lowered. She’s trembling, like someone with mild palsy. “Stay and fuck me, and I’ll tell him good things.”
Trillionaire Boys' Club: The Internet Giant Page 14
