Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire #2)

by Rosalind James

  Karen said, “Hemi…” in a tone of the purest misery.

  Violet heaved a sigh. “This isn’t going to end well. And I need to go. I have a business to run, and there’s no way Hope’s going to be ready to buy shoes in the next hour, or to let her sister do it, either.”

  “I’ll do it,” Karen said, just as Hope said, “No.”

  “See what I mean?” Violet said. “I’m going back to work. I have somebody’s wedding gown to oversee, if somebody else can pull his head out of his arse and make it happen. D’you want me to take Karen back with me?” She told the girl, “Fiona will show you around, or you could just read some more of your book. But this isn’t going to be quick.”

  Karen glanced at her sister as if she wanted to say more, and Hope sighed, ran a hand through her mass of fine hair, mussing it, and said, “That’ll be better. Go on with Violet, please.”

  “I’m going,” Karen said, “but I love Hemi, and I trust him. I don’t care if he was married before, and I don’t see why you do. He isn’t married now. Why isn’t that enough?”

  “It’s like I’m in some alternate universe,” Hope said. “Or like it’s Backwards Day. I could explain it to you, but it’s more important right now that I explain it to Hemi. Please, sweetie. Go. I’m so mad and so disappointed, I can’t…I can’t think straight. I’m going to say things I’ll regret, and I’m…” She heaved in a breath. “I can’t—”

  I couldn’t stop myself. I was still narky as hell, but if the winner was the one who needed it less—well, that wasn’t me. And she was so sad, and I couldn’t have that, so I stepped closer and put an arm around her. “Come sit down and talk to me,” I said. “Karen’s a grown girl. She knows you can get angry at the people you love.”

  “I don’t, though,” Hope said, almost wonderingly. “I don’t do that. I’ve never…” I could see the tears pooling behind her eyelids, could see her battling with her anger, and I could have kicked myself.

  “Never mind,” I said. “What was that you said? It starts with you listening to me, and me listening to you. Come sit down, and we’ll do it.”

  Hope

  How could I resist Hemi? When had I ever been able to?

  Married, I told myself, until she wanted the baby. And all the same, I was walking over to the couch in the corner and sitting down with him, and he was holding my hand as if he needed to do it.

  When I had pain, I wanted him beside me. Even if he was the one causing the pain. How bad was that? And I thought he might feel the same way.

  “There’s something wrong with us,” I said. “Something twisted.”

  “No,” he said. “There isn’t.”

  I knew it was more important to talk about his wife, except maybe it wasn’t. “You can’t just say that and make it true. The way we make love…” I kept my voice down. What a conversation to have in a crowded café, and yet here I was having it. “You like it because you can be in charge, and you hate not being in charge. In anything, and that’s where you can do it the most. You like the way I…the way I am, because I give that up to you. That’s even why you like that I’m small. I know it. And I like it because…because maybe I need to feel that, too. That I can give all the power to somebody else, that I don’t have to be in charge for a while, and I can surrender to all of my…my darker impulses and still be safe. I want somebody to take control of me, and I want to know that somebody wants me so desperately that he has to…to…”

  “Has to tie you down,” Hemi finished for me, apparently having no difficulty at all saying this in a café. “So you can’t move, and you can’t get away, and he can do whatever he wants to you. Whatever I want to do to you, because it’s not ‘somebody.’ It’s me. You need to know that I need to hold you, and that I need to keep you, and that I’m going to do it. You need me to convince you that you belong to me, and to tell you hard enough that you can believe it, too.”

  I swallowed, and he said, “Maybe that’s why, yeh. Because you need to feel needed and I need to be in control, out of some deep, dark reason in our pasts. And maybe we’re just wired that way. What does it matter why, if it feels good to both of us?”

  “But what if that’s all it is?” I asked. “What if all the rest of this is just some kind of sick…” I cast about for a word. “Co-dependency?”

  “I don’t even know what that is,” he said, “except that I know we don’t have it. You think you’ve given me all the control, all the power? Think again. What just happened? What happened yesterday? What happens every bloody time? You push back, that’s what. You tell me I’m a one-way street, and you’re not having it, and I compromise, because I do have to keep you, and I’m willing to do almost anything to do that. Even compromise, much as I hate it.”

  I pursued it anyway. No choice. “What if we couldn’t have sex, though? What then?”

  “Then I’d be bloody disappointed,” he said, and I couldn’t help a surprised laugh. “But I’d still want you in every other way, and, no, I’m not letting you go. And there are heaps of ways of having sex. If you’re asking, what if it had to be gentle every time? What if we couldn’t do everything we do now? I’d still have to touch you, and to hold you. You’re right about that. I’d still need your body, and I’d still need you with me. There’s no way we make love that doesn’t work for me, and that’s not what this is about anyway, so stop trying to make it that.”

  I frowned at him, feeling so much better even though everything else was still sitting out there, unattended to. “You were doing great until that last part.”

  “You say you want honesty. I’m being honest. What do I want right now? I don’t want to talk about this. I’m frustrated as hell, and all I want is to walk across the street and into some hotel, swipe my card in some anonymous door, yank your jeans off, push you up against the wall, and fuck you so hard you’ll feel it tomorrow. And then I want to do it again as many times as I have to until you know for sure that I am marrying you, and you’re not saying no. I want you to tell me you’re marrying me when I’m inside you, when you’re about to come, because I won’t let you do it until you say it. I want to make you tell me ‘yes’ and ‘please’ and ‘I’ll do anything.’ Just before I make you scream. And after that, I want to take you to buy your wedding shoes, so you can put them on and know you’re walking down that aisle to me on Saturday, and that after that, you’ll be mine.”

  He’d kept his voice low, but I’d jumped anyway, then looked around to make sure nobody else could hear as my mouth opened and my eyes opened more.

  I knew he’d never actually hurt me, or force me, either. He’d said it for effect. Too bad it had worked.

  “And that?” he asked. “What you just did? That I shocked you, because it was too rough? That makes me want it even more. If that’s twisted, if that’s wrong, I’m twisted and wrong, and I don’t care. So tell me what you need to, let me tell you, and let’s be done, so I can take you home and get started. Except that we’ll be at Koro’s. Bugger. This wedding can’t come soon enough for me. So you know—I’m taking your clothes away on our wedding night, tying you to the bed, and keeping you there. You’re going to be aching. You’re going to be sore. But you’re going to know I mean it.”

  I was aching right now. I tried without much success to keep my brain focused on the task at hand. Unfortunately, every bit of blood I possessed seemed to have made its way into one insistent spot, leaving me with precious little to fuel my higher powers. “Do not,” I said, trying to keep my breathing even and knowing I wasn’t succeeding, “make this about sex! You’re proving my point.”

  “No.” He picked up my hand, held it in both of his, and then he did the thing that wrecked me. He lifted it to his mouth and kissed my knuckles, ran a gentle thumb over them, looked into my eyes, and said, “I’m telling you that I love you, and I want you. Or maybe I’m trying to distract you. That could be, too. But it’s not working, so…” He kept hold of my hand, but set it on his hard thigh. “Tell me. Ask me. Let’s g
o.”

  We were way, way off track. Have you noticed how Hemi had a tendency to do that? So had I.

  “Anika,” I said. “Obviously. Who was she, how did it happen, and what about a…” I had to take a deep breath in order to continue, and I had to take my hand back, too. “Baby?”

  Hemi looked nothing but puzzled. “What baby?”

  “Violet said, ‘When she wanted the baby.’”

  “Geez. Is there anything Violet didn’t share with you?”

  “Well, if she slept with you, she didn’t share that, although I wondered. But come on, Hemi. Wife. Baby. You owe me an explanation. You owe me honesty. And not that kind you just handed out. You owe me…openness. I can’t marry somebody I don’t trust.” The words cut me deep, but they were necessary. This had to be right, or it wasn’t happening.

  He was looking serious now, and nobody did “serious” like Hemi. “No, I’ve never slept with Vi. She’s not wired the same way I am, like we said.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Same way I could tell with you. Same way you could tell with me. We back to sex, then? Good.”

  “No, we’re still at your wife.”

  “Right.” He sighed. “Anika. Not so much to tell, really. We were married, and it didn’t work out.”

  “How old were you when you got married? And how long were you married?”

  “Twenty. And four years. Two or so together, two apart, then the divorce.”

  He seemed to think that was enough explanation. I didn’t. “Why did you get married?”

  He looked at me, his face carved into its most somber lines, then said slowly, “Because I wanted her to be mine, and because I didn’t trust her otherwise. Bad reason, eh, but we were young. I was in Uni, and she was as well. The sex was like an explosion every time, and the rest was rocky. You think I’m bad now? I’m under control now.”

  “Did you…” I braced myself, then went on. “Did you hurt her?”

  “Not any way she didn’t want. Physically, I mean. In other ways? Yeh. I did. And she gave it back. It wasn’t a match made in Heaven, but then, I hadn’t seen many matches that were, so I didn’t know better.”

  I hadn’t seen any that were, so I didn’t have much to say about that. I waited, and eventually, when I didn’t speak, he went on. “Then we got our diplomas, and I got an internship in New York, but not much money to go with it, and she didn’t want to go. Maori don’t always transplant well.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Please, Hemi. Tell me.”

  I didn’t think he’d answer, but finally, he did. “We’re tangata whenua—people of the land. Away from our tribal mountain, our tribal river? We miss it like you’d miss a person, or more. Like you’d miss your family. And we miss our family as well. Our whanau. Being Maori is all about the place that belongs to you, the place you belong.”

  “Which you could handle,” I said, “being so tough and all. But she couldn’t.”

  He turned to gaze at me, his eyes liquid brown pools, the honesty in them piercing my heart. Whatever else he said or didn’t say, his eyes told me the truth. “No,” he said, “I wasn’t tough, not then. I missed it, too. It was bloody awful, in fact, but I still went, and I stayed. She said she’d come later, and she didn’t, and I wondered what she was doing back there, and I was right to wonder. She stopped emailing, stopped texting, and then she said she wanted out. And then, of course, I found out about the other fellas.”

  It had all hurt. I could see it. “And the…baby?”

  “Dunno. Not a baby, that is. Some baby? Yeh, she wanted kids for some reason, and I didn’t, not yet, anyway. I was all wrong, like you said. We were all wrong. I was…” He looked across the café, at nothing. “Not ready.”

  I realized it. No, I knew it. “You were afraid of what kind of father you’d be,” I said. “Maybe you still are.”

  He swung around again fast, a frown drawing his black brows together. “How do you know?”

  “Hemi,” I said, “of course I know. Because of your own parents. Because you want to be perfect. But there’s no perfect. There’s just trying your best.”

  “Then why are you so scared to do it with me?”

  That one took my breath away. He could say that? “Maybe because I just found out that you’d kept a giant secret from me? And because I don’t know how many more you’ve got tucked away? You’ve never told me about your mother, or your father, either, and we’re supposed to be getting married. When I heard that ‘baby’ thing…” I had to force myself to go on. “I realized how little I knew about you. How little you’ve shared. We’ve never talked about so many things.”

  “Well, I’m not going to tell you now,” he said, which wasn’t at all the answer I needed. “You have to understand something about me.” His hand was still holding mine, and holding it hard. “I’ve always operated on a need-to-know basis, and you didn’t need to know about Anika. It was over.”

  Need to know? Need to know? “That doesn’t work,” I told him. “Nothing’s ever over, not really. Everything we do, everything we go through—it stays with us. It changes us, for better or worse. And there’s no ‘need to know.’ Not in a marriage, there isn’t. You don’t feel that way about me. You want to know everything about me and what I’m doing. It makes you crazy when you don’t. Why would you imagine I’d be any different?”

  “That’s how I work, though,” he said. “That’s what I do. I need you to accept it.”

  I rubbed two fingers over my forehead, suddenly feeling so weary. “I can’t do that. I have…I had a mother too, you know. She was loving. She gave her heart, but she gave it to the wrong people, and when they broke it, she had no defenses. She was powerless to stop them from stomping on her trust, or to stop it hurting. I can’t be that person. How can you ask me to be? What do you want from me?”

  “I want you to love me more than I deserve,” he said. “I want you to love me as much as I need it. I want everything.”

  Hemi

  I knew I was asking too much, more than any woman could give, even Hope. But she’d asked what I needed from her, and it was the truth. I needed everything.

  “What was your mum’s name?” I asked.

  She drew in a surprised breath, but she answered. “Rose. Rose Sinclair. And she was as soft as that sounds. As sweet, too, and since you asked? I think it killed her. If she’d cared about herself as much as she cared about the men in her life, maybe she’d have gotten herself checked out sooner, before the cancer had taken such hold. Maybe she’d have thought she was worth her own attention, have put herself higher up her list.” She sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe not. Why are we talking about my mother? Why aren’t we talking about trust? And all right—why aren’t we talking about your mother?”

  “Maybe because mine was the opposite,” I said. “You say I don’t tell you? I’m telling you now. She was the opposite.”

  She looked like she was going to say something, ask something, so I quickly asked instead, “What does your name mean? Sinclair?”

  “What? Uh…nothing, I don’t think. Why? It means St. Clair, that’s all. I used to think it meant ‘without fault,’ or ‘free from sin.’ Nice idea, but it doesn’t. I thought, that’s good, because I can’t live up to that name, and then I realized it didn’t matter. Nobody’s without fault.”

  “D’you know what mine means?” I asked. “Te Mana?”

  “No. Not exactly.”

  She was right—why were we talking about names? Maybe because I wanted her to want mine, and I needed to tell her what I’d be trying to give her. I said, “It does mean something—almost what you said. It means honor. Courage. Prestige. The kind that’s the most precious thing in life, because you can’t take it. You can’t grab it or steal it or buy it or trick your way into it. You can only earn it by the way you walk through the world, by the way you treat others, by the way you stand up under pressure and pain, and the way you stand up for others. To have mana…it’s the most important thing for
a Maori. It’s the best thing. For any kind of Kiwi, for that matter. It’s a name that…”

  “A name you think you can’t live up to,” she finished when I trailed off. “An impossible goal. But don’t you see, Hemi? It’s not about reaching the goal. Nobody will ever get there, not all the way. It’s about trying. It’s about the struggle. If honor is what matters…surely the honor is in the struggle. It’s in keeping on when it’s hardest, in being knocked down and getting back up again, then putting your hand out to help the person next to you get to his feet, too, instead of leaving him behind. The honor is in the trying, and the caring. And that’s you.” Her hand was gripping mine so tightly, and all her passion, all her light were there for me to see, naked and unashamed.

  I’d always thought Hope shone from within, like she had a flame inside her, a candle burning bright. But it wasn’t a candle. It was a lantern. It was a beacon.

  “You think you can’t do it,” she said. “You don’t realize that you already have. You already are that man. You can show me who you are, because there’s nothing in you that I don’t love. I love you for your struggle, don’t you see? I love you because I know how hard it is for you, and you still try. And that’s why ‘need to know’ doesn’t work. Please, Hemi. Let me see your struggle. I need to see it, and I want to. It’s beautiful, and so are you.”

  My throat was so tight, I could barely speak. “I need to change your name,” I said.

  “What?” she asked. “Why…”