No one asked questions.
They grieved for Chloe. They grieved with me, for my beautiful wife.
We packed her death away in the lies I created for four years.
And it has been destroying me.
Grey scratches his jaw, pulling me back to the present. “You’ve got to let the bad shit be what it is sometimes, Adam.”
I hear myself laugh. “Wow. That should be cross-stitched on a pillow.”
Grey smiles. “Damn right, brother.”
“You were saying I shouldn’t be the rescuer, the middle man. So what you’re telling me, Grey, is that I should kick you out?”
His eyebrows rise. “Oh, hell no. I’m not going anywhere. It was just an example.” He pushes up from the table. “Come on,” he says.
“Where to now, Buddha?”
“The water. I’m tired as shit of surfing alone.”
Chapter 41
Alison
My father’s asleep in the study, Forbes magazine draped across a knee, and his reading glasses sliding off the bridge of his nose. I listen to his guttural breathing, watch his chest rise and fall. He seems so different to me now. His face—chapped from so much time in the sun and wind, with circles of white around his eyes from always keeping his sunglasses on—looks like a stranger’s face. His jaw looks more slack. His hands, clasped over his stomach, look like an old man’s hands.
For three days he kept himself away. On “business,” though the only business he seems to have lately is ruining people’s lives. And when he returned, he made sure to do it on an evening when we have company—my mother’s book group. Which makes me realize, as though I needed more proof, that I’ve been totally played.
A feeling washes over me—a strange, acute kind of buoyancy that makes me feel like a balloon, filling up, up, up, about to float into the stratosphere. It’s the sensation I have when the Ali Cat powers away from the dock or when Zenith used to break into a gallop, the two of us in perfect sync. I feel exultant and filled with possibilities.
I go and sit down next to my father, remove the glasses from his face, close the magazine and tuck it away beside me. And then I shake him awake. Not gently.
He starts and blinks at me, slowly bringing me into focus. “Jesus Christ. You could have given me a heart attack.”
“Don’t do this to Adam.”
He sighs. “Alison, please.”
“I mean it, Dad. It’s not right to blackmail your way into owning a company. You have to know that.”
He sits up then, fixing me with a glare that once would have withered me on the spot. Instead, a glassy calm settles over me. I’m here with him, but I’m also gone. Some part of me has broken free for the first time, truly free, and I know he can’t sway or scare me anymore.
“Did Blackwood come to see you?” He pounds the couch between us with his fist, but it’s like the gesture of a little kid. “Damn it, I told him to keep away.”
“Of course he came to see me. He was angry, and he had every right to be. What you did was wrong.”
“It’s business.”
“It’s still wrong. To him and to me. If I’d known what you had planned I never would have gone in there.”
He chuckles, and the sound stiffens my spine like a fork scratching against china. “Which is why I didn’t tell you what I had planned.”
I know this. Of course I know this. But hearing the words, put so bluntly, still comes as a shock.
“So you used me.”
He shakes his head. “Stop being so dramatic. I employed you. A smart employer understands the assets at hand and makes the best use of them.”
“You’re talking about me like I’m no one! I’m your daughter!”
“I’m well aware of that,” he says. “Are you?”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you need to get your priorities straight. It’s our family business. You should be happy we’ll get to guide the future of Blackwood Entertainment. I’ll put you in charge of Boomerang. That’s what family does. We help each other succeed.”
Using my crutch, I rise shakily from the sofa. I can’t stand to be close to him anymore. “I don’t want to succeed on those terms.”
“Stop being so goddamned high and mighty. You’ll have your own company to run. At twenty-two years old. Think about it. You can fire that Mia girl if you want. It’ll be up to you. Because I want that for you. Because I got it for you.”
A feeling blasts through me—sharp and gutting. It’s like my chest is suddenly home to a million prickling icicles.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” I say.
My father’s eyes widen, and his tone is quiet and cold. “What did you just say?”
“This is for me? Taking over a business that someone else spent his life—”
“His life? He’s twenty-three goddamned years old. What life?”
“How does that matter?” I cry. “It’s his. It’s not yours. You don’t get to just have everything you want all the time. You don’t get to gobble people up and spit them out. You don’t get to lie to me. You don’t get to cheat on—”
“Stop it, Alison,” my father interrupts, eyes cutting to the doorway. He gets to his feet and starts to push past me, but I grab his arm. I’m aware of how big I’ve always thought him to be. How he towered in my imagination. And now I see he’s not that giant. He’s not very big at all.
“You’re always talking about family. But we don’t matter at all, do we? We’re just . . . We’re like your accessories.”
“I’m done with this conversation,” he says, and pulls away from me. I stagger back, hurting my ankle and struggling for balance on my crutch. I know it’s pointless. I know we’re done.
“Fine,” I say. “Just one last thing.”
“What?”
“I quit.”
My father stalks out of the room, and I stand there, suddenly weak-limbed and trembling. A voice inside me asks, now what? Now I need to do what I can for Adam.
I limp out of the study and head for the kitchen, where I find my mother sitting in the dining nook by the window, staring out at the scrub-covered foothills and, beyond those, at the far off sliver of surf as it pounds against the shore.
“Mom?”
She looks up and gives me a faint smile. “Want some tea, sweetheart?” she asks. Even in the dim glow of the under-cabinet lights, I can see her eyes are glossy, her posture sunken.
Sitting down beside her, I rest my crutch against the table and look at her. “Did you . . . Did you hear us?”
She gives me a faint smile. “Yes, but it wasn’t anything I didn’t already know. Except that he’d involved you too.”
“You knew?” I ask. “About dad and—”
“I’m not a fool, darling.”
I’m floored and sink back in the upholstered chair, bumping my head on the frame of the picture hanging behind me. A painting my mother had done of Zenith. I don’t remember thanking her for it.
“But Mom, I don’t understand. How could you stay with him? How could you be all right with it?”
“Of course I’m not all right with it. But you and your sister were so young the first time. And I didn’t know a thing about being on my own. It sounds ridiculous, I know.” She shrugs. “But I couldn’t imagine life without your father. Even if it’s meant this . . . this life. And this life affords me opportunities that I’d never have otherwise. All of those charities. I can do so much good.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. My mind carries me back through my whole life, to every missed birthday party, recital, and horse show, to every holiday filled with extravagant gifts for my mother. Furs she never wore. Bold, expensive jewelry that never seemed to come out of the boxes. My mother’s small protest, I realize, and my fingers drift up to touch the earrings I have worn every day for months.
I did what she resisted: I let him bribe me.
“He told me it didn’t matter,” my mother says, circling a burgu
ndy-polished nail on the glossy kitchen table. “He said these were just . . . moments outside of our life together. What matters is—”
“Family,” I finish.
I wonder if somewhere along the line he and Catherine had that same conversation. If that’s why she’s so distant from all of us, because she’s been carrying around this secret, too. All of us, played against one another for my father’s convenience.
We’re both quiet. Only the sound of the dishwasher clicking off interrupts the silence. Sitting here, I feel like it’s not just the rug that’s been pulled out from under me but the entire house.
Finally, I ask, “What now, Mom? We can’t just . . . keep going like this, can we? It’s so wrong. And it’s not just us.”
She takes my hand and squeezes it. “I know.”
“So is there any way to stop him? What do we do?”
My mother pushes her chair back and stands. “We go to bed, darling,” she says. “And we get up in the morning.”
I groan and put my face in my hands. “That’s it? We just keep going like this? No one ever stops him? He just steamrolls over everything?”
“I’m not saying that,” she tells me and pulls my hands away from my face. “I’m saying we get some rest so we can get up and fight again.”
“There has to be something we can do,” I insist.
“If there is,” she says, “we’ll figure it out tomorrow.”
Chapter 42
Adam
The office is quiet as a church as I hit send on an email to Brooks, locking in the screenwriter for our first feature, and sit back. I wait, but I don’t feel the stir of excitement I’d always imagined this moment would bring.
Blackwood Films is happening.
I just took another huge step forward in realizing my dream.
Of owning forty-nine percent of a film studio.
I shake my head at myself and glance at the empty hallway outside my office. I let everyone go at noon today, the Friday before New Year’s Eve, but now I wish someone were here. Maybe this would feel better.
As I shut down my computer and pack up to leave, I can’t help but think about the past month. I spent December trying to find a way to keep my company mine, but Graham was right. There was no way. He had me cornered. If I refused his offer, he’d have broken the Chloe news to the press. And even if I’d stepped up and told the truth, admitted it wasn’t me who drove that night, I know how the media works.
Tabloids. Newspapers. Investors and business analysts. They see scandals from ten thousand feet up. The details don’t matter. If you’re anywhere close, there’s stink on you.
A young, reckless CEO who killed his wife in a drunk-driving accident is just the kind of scandal that can sink a company—even a healthy one. I couldn’t get rid of Graham without exposing myself and my company to a huge amount of bad press so I had to accept his offer.
As soon as the lawyers organize the contracts, Graham and I will be business partners.
It’ll feel like signing a deal with the devil, I’m sure, but I’m trying to keep Grey’s words in my mind. You’ve got to let the bad shit happen sometimes.
No matter how I look at it, though, locking into a relationship with the guy who’s blackmailing me seems like the kind of bad shit I shouldn’t let happen.
Grey’s advice has helped in other arenas, though. I’ve talked to both Chloe’s parents and mine and told them the truth about that night, and while it wasn’t easy, it was easier than I thought it would be.
Christmas, too. The four-year anniversary of the night I lost her.
Grey cooked lasagna and Brooks came over. It was a decent night. The best Christmas I’ve had in four years. Granted, the look on Grey’s face when he unwrapped the karaoke machine I bought him played a big part in that.
I’ve let go of the lie I’d been keeping for Chloe—which should’ve made me feel incredible—but Graham nailed me to a wall at pretty much the same time. With everything with Alison, it’s been a better-but-worse kind of feeling.
As I lock my office, I stop and stare at the keys in my hand, fighting off the feeling for this place. There’s nothing I can do.
Another week or so and it’ll be Graham’s too.
Rhett catches me as I’m getting in the elevator.
“Hey,” he says, darting inside as the doors close.
“I didn’t realize you were still here, Rhett.”
“Just wrapping up some last-minute stuff. I saw that you were here and had a question—about the party tomorrow at the Quicks?”
Graham decided to throw the company’s holiday office party at his home. As a gesture of goodwill was how he put it on the phone. The night’s on me.
But it feels more like he’s making a statement. That statement being your kingdom is now in my full control.
“What about it?” I say.
Rhett’s smile is lopsided. “We were all just wondering if you want us to meet at your house first, so we could go over together? You’re right down the street, right? We won’t cause you any work. We just thought it’d be cool if we met at your place and went together.”
“Who’s we?”
“Well . . . everyone.”
“The whole company.”
Rhett lifts one shoulder, to match his crooked smile. “Yeah.”
The elevator opens and we step out of the elevator into the garage. “Sure, Rhett,” I say, smiling. “I’ll see you then.”
The drive home to Malibu is all Alison, just like it’s been for the past month.
It’s Ali as Catwoman. Ali in her scuba gear, puffing her cheeks out like a grouper. Ali in snow gear. Ali in the stables, looking crushed as I yelled at her.
I’m totally zoned out on the drive. I don’t even realize I’m pulling up to her house until I’m there, idling in front of the Quicks’ wrought-iron gate.
I think about punching in the code, driving in, but Graham lives here and this isn’t about him. What I have to say is only for her, so I text her instead.
Adam: I’m out front. Can we talk?
I stare at the phone, not sure what happens next. Maybe she tells me to fuck off?
I know I’m going to see her tomorrow at the party—and maybe that’s why I’m here now—because seeing her and not being able to talk to her . . . that’s going to kill me. I need to talk to her, and I don’t want to do it tomorrow in front of other people.
A full minute passes. I’m just accepting the fact that she’s not going to respond to my text when the gate opens and she comes running out, a flash of wavy blond hair and a flowing red dress.
She jumps into the passenger seat, pulling the hem of her dress up so she can shut the door, and then she’s right next to me and there’s not a single thought in my head anymore, only relief. Only a massive dose of relief that knocks the wind out of me like I’ve just been punched in the solar plexus.
I back out of her driveway and head to my house.
The drive is short. The only sound is the rev of the Bugatti’s engine as I accelerate onto the freeway, but I’m hyper aware of her. Of the way she smells and the way her fingers drum nervously on her leg. Her ankle seems fine, and it’s one thing. Just one of the millions of things I want to ask her about, and say to her, but I don’t want to rush. I was such an asshole to her the last two times we were together. I want to treat her right. If there’s any chance at all, I have to treat her the way she deserves to be treated—and she deserves the best. She deserves everything.
We get to my house, both of us still quiet, careful.
Alison steps into my living room like her father did a month ago, except different. She’s calm and steady, nothing like Graham’s aggressive presence, and she doesn’t observe the things in my house either. She moves to the glass doors and stares at the ocean. She stands there and drinks in the view like I would. Like I do.
It takes me ten seconds to realize I could watch her this way forever. Every second with her is a rush and it feels right to have her
here. With me.
“I’ve wondered what your view was,” she says, breaking our silence. “I’ve been trying to picture what it is you see from your house.”
“I look exactly where you’re looking, Ali. But I see you.”
Ali glances at me and I see a flash of surprise, then pain, before she looks away. She walks over to the kitchen and picks up the basketball Grey left on the counter. Naturally. Because that’s where basketballs go.
“Is this your brother’s?” she says.
I nod. “Grey.”
“Is he here?” she asks.
I hear the slightest tremble in her voice.
“He’s in San Diego for the weekend.”
Grey’s there for a New Year’s Eve gig. His second time singing on stage. I hate that I can’t be there, but I can’t miss my company party.
Ali’s not looking at me. Now she’s the one, I think. She’s the one who won’t look at my eyes. But I can’t go there again. I’m done hiding. Done with lies and silence and distance. Done with everything that keeps me away from her.
I walk over and take the basketball from her, setting it back on the counter. Then I take her face in my hands and look into her blue eyes.
They’re teary, and the pain I see in them slays me. I put it there by leaving her in Jackson. By yelling at her. I will never do that again.
“I’m sorry, Alison. Forgive me.”
Her words come fast. “It was my fault too. I didn’t know, Adam. I had no idea what my father was doing. I thought he was trying to protect the company. My family. And I told him—”
I bend and catch her words with my mouth, kissing her. “I know,” I say. “It’s okay.” I kiss away the tear on her cheek, and come back to her lips, tasting them over and over. She’s so sweet and soft. I can’t get enough of her. “We’re okay now. It’s over.”
“You’re not mad at me?”
“Mad?” I lean back. “No way. I’m so happy. I’m so fucking happy right now, Ali. You have no idea.”
She smiles and her arms circle around my waist. “I think I do.”
“God, Alison. I’ve missed you.” The words tumble out easily. I bury my fingers into her long silky waves and let them go. “It killed me when I thought I lost you. I haven’t stopped thinking about you. I couldn’t get you out of my mind. Not for a minute. Not for a goddamned second.”
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