Jack shook his head, feeling his mouth thin. He was weary of this conversation, as ever. But then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw her. She emerged from the great doors that led inside the building, and paused there for a moment, flanked by a veritable phalanx of Manhattan’s best-known and most philanthropically inclined young heiresses. Her peers, in other words. They were all engaged in animated conversation, and there was no denying the fact that Larissa looked at perfect ease in their company. There was a time she might deliberately have worn something shocking, something far too outrageous for a staid event like this, but if that Larissa still existed, Jack saw no sign of her tonight.
He let himself stare. This Larissa was radiant. Like a beacon that sent light spinning out from the party and into Fifth Avenue, then on into the dark of Central Park beyond. She seemed to glow in a beautifully fitted gown in a rich magenta hue that clung to her delicate shoulders, wrapped tightly around the delectable perfection of her torso like an embrace, and then flowed to the floor. She wore a magnificent necklace, all sparkle and shine, that seemed to rival the winter stars high above them. There was the demure hint of the same sparkle at her ears and on one wrist, and she held a bright little clutch in one hand.
She made his chest tight and his body hard from all the way across a crowded party.
He was in so much trouble.
This Larissa was claiming her world, Jack thought, with some mixture of pride and panic. And he couldn’t help but think that somehow, despite all the tumult of what he did not want to feel and what he could not help but feel, he had already lost her.
“That one,” his grandfather said with a disparaging snort, his penetrating glare boring into Larissa. “No, sir. That one has bad news written all over her. She’s been nothing but trouble since the day she was born.”
“You don’t know her, Grandfather,” Jack heard himself say, his tone clipped. “You don’t know what kind of trouble she was handed. Perhaps a little compassion is in order.”
“I know what kind of trouble she makes,” the old man retorted, unmoved. “And that’s more than enough, and far more than most.” He turned to look at Jack again, his blue eyes narrowed. “She’s no different than your embarrassment of a father. All the same morals and all the same actions. You’d be well advised to find someone else to be fascinated with, young man.”
And something in Jack … snapped.
He felt it like a loud crack, deafening for a moment, and then his hearing cleared. Everything cleared. He’d never felt so focused. He looked at his grandfather, at the old man’s trademark scowl and that censorious glare, and then he looked back out to find Larissa, only to discover that Chip Van Housen had cornered her yet again. He could see that her smile was fake across all of these people. All of these useless, unnecessary people who lionized him and demonized her and had never truly seen either one of them. He couldn’t stand it.
He couldn’t stand any of this.
“Enough,” he said.
His voice was not loud, but it had the hard echo of finality, and he saw his grandfather register it with some surprise. He looked at the old man, and felt something ancient and hard crumble to dust inside of him. His guilt, he thought dimly. That abiding ache for the things his mother would never know of him. His sense of regret that he had come from such a father. He’d been carrying these things around for so long now he’d come to think of them as part of him, twisted together into some kind of phantom limb.
“I beg your pardon?” But his grandfather was looking at him closely, and Jack knew he’d heard him perfectly.
“I’m sorry, Grandfather,” he said. And he was. But he was also resolute in a way he’d never been before. “I’m sorry that I was not the grandson you hoped for when I was a younger man. I’m sorry that nothing I do can change the way you feel about me. Some part of me looks at my father and cannot even blame you.” He thought of Larissa’s words outside a different museum, and shook his head. “But I can’t pay penance any longer. I don’t want to.”
“This is about that girl?” His grandfather’s voice was incredulous. Appalled. “That trashy Whitney girl? Why would you want to align yourself with that kind of disaster?”
“What I want is my business,” Jack said evenly, with a steel edge beneath. “I have catered to you for years out of a sense of loyalty and respect, but you have accorded me none in return. And I am tired of acting the meek, cowed little schoolboy because you feel the need to put me in my place again and again and again.” He shook his head. “I’ve had enough.”
“Jack …” his grandfather began, that heavy frown beginning again.
“I’m sorry you hate me,” Jack said in a low voice, holding the older man’s gaze with his. “I truly am. But I can’t let that rule me any longer. I can’t change it and I’m tired of trying. I’m the future of the Endicott family legacy, Grandfather, whether you like it or not. You’re just going to have to trust me.”
His grandfather stared at him for an arrested moment, his blue eyes wide. From beyond them, Jack could hear the band play, the cultured voices swell in the air and his own father’s too-intoxicated laughter drift on the night breeze. And he knew that no matter what happened here, he would not regret saying these things, much as it grieved him to hurt the old man even further. It couldn’t be helped. This was long overdue.
“I don’t hate you.” His grandfather’s voice was different when he spoke, and it took Jack long moments to realize why. He sounded old, for the first time in Jack’s memory. He sounded like the eighty-five-year-old man that he was. And, for once, he looked tired. “I don’t hate you, Jack. I miss her.”
His mother, Jack knew. Laurel Endicott Sutton, the brightest light Jack had known—until now.
“I do, too, Grandfather,” Jack said, his voice rough. “I always will.”
“I know you do,” his grandfather said in the same way, gruff and low. “I know it.”
And Jack realized a great many things then, things that should have been clear to him before. He was a colossal idiot. But then, he’d known that. Everything that had happened since he’d laid eyes on Larissa Whitney five years ago told him that. But he couldn’t even use her as an excuse. He had been as blind to what was happening in his relationship with his grandfather as he had been with her.
Maybe that was the Endicott curse, he thought then. This inability to see the glaring truth, the one that sat directly in the sun and shone the brightest. But he could choose not to look away. He could choose to stare directly into the glare, and see what happened.
How could he do anything less?
He reached over and put his arm over his grandfather’s shoulders, noticing for the first time how frail the old man was. How much smaller than in Jack’s head. He couldn’t change the past, Jack thought then—the misunderstandings, the hurt pride, the nonchalant debauchery of his twenties, but he could change what came next.
And he would.
“We’re going to be okay, Grandfather,” he said, and he felt it ring in him like a bell. Like truth. “We’re going to be fine.”
Chip Van Housen would not take no for answer. Not that this was anything new.
Larissa kept her smile fastened to her face as if it had been chiseled there, and tried to pretend that she had never enjoyed anything more than Chip’s decidedly lewd version of the waltz.
“You can’t ignore me forever, Larissa,” he said, his insipid and bloodshot eyes glued to her face. She could feel his gaze on her skin, just as she could smell the alcohol on his breath. She wondered, not for the first time, how and why she had ever spent so much of her time with this person. She had gone out of her way to do so, once upon a time. All of those memories were so dark, so blurry. Had she really hated herself that much? That seemed so hard to imagine now.
She supposed that was some kind of progress.
It was a beautiful night, crisp and bitter cold, yet deliciously warm in the cocoon of the Georgian-style mansion’s courtyard, as if the gala event
was claiming just a little bit of summer in the face of the long winter ahead. Lanterns and heat lamps bloomed with light and warmth, and if Larissa ignored who clutched at her on the dance floor, she might even have come close to enjoying herself.
But Chip was not one to listen, or to learn, and the third time he tried to kiss her with his loose, wet mouth, Larissa decided she’d had enough. She pulled back abruptly, shook off his hands, and simply walked away—headed for the outskirts of the party where, she could only hope, there might be fewer witnesses to what was likely to be precisely the kind of scene she wanted to avoid these days.
“You can’t just walk away from me!” Chip snarled at her, catching up to her too quickly and snatching at her arm. Larissa snatched it back. She darted a look around. There was nowhere completely devoid of catty, watchful eyes—but this far corner was just cold enough, she thought, that it might provide a buffer. She could only hope.
“I just did,” she said in a calm voice, completely at odds with his. “I don’t want to dance with you, Chip. I was only doing it to be polite, but I’m not feeling polite anymore. Don’t ask me again.”
There was something handsome there in his face, in the bones, but he’d ruined it long ago. Tonight she saw only the vague suggestion of his once-boyish good looks. But a creeping meanness had taken over, and it was evident in the way his lip curled and eyes narrowed.
“You won’t say no to me,” he said, with a scoffing, nasty sort of laugh that made her blood chill.
“Are you sure?” she asked, an edge in her voice. “Because I think I just did.”
“You don’t say no, Larissa,” he told her in that same awful voice. He moved in closer, his face a mask of contempt. “Ever. What game do you think you’re playing? Do you really think anyone will fall for it?”
As little as Larissa had liked it when Jack had asked her similar questions, she liked it even less now. She forced her shoulders back as if she felt brave, when inside, it was as if everything had frozen solid. It was one thing to stand up to her father. But how was she supposed to stand up to the very personification of the worst of her past? She felt shame crawl over her skin, thick and greasy, but she refused to show it. She refused to let him see any part of her at all.
“Let me make this simple for you, Chip,” she said, in a voice that sounded friendly on the surface, but wasn’t. “You need to leave me alone. I’m not going to have a debate about it.”
“You don’t get to tell me what you will and won’t—” he began, crowding her, using his body to try to cow her into submission. She stuck her chin in the air and refused to move.
“Stop trying to bully me,” she said, her tone calm. Deliberate. It cost her. “I understand that you may not have noticed this, but I’m not the person you knew. And she’s not coming back, so you’re going to have find someone else to take part in all your sordid little escapades.”
He stared at her for a moment, and Larissa realized, with a dawning sort of wonder, that she loathed him. That she always had. That there was no part of him that she remembered with anything but disgust. Had he always been her most effective weapon of self-destruction? How had she not realized that before? And why had she used this weak, nasty man to bludgeon herself for so long?
“This is all very inspiring, Larissa,” he said, sneering. “The town whore all dressed up like someone who matters. Like a real person instead of a joke. How long do you think it will last before you end up in the nearest gutter? And who do you think is really buying it? Not one person at this party—in this city—will ever forget exactly who and what you are.” He laughed that nasty laugh. “Not one.”
She felt a wave of self-loathing flood her then, nearly taking her off her feet. Shame. Horror. Everything she’d tried so hard to fight. And in that moment, she knew he was right. She could see it. She felt heat on her face, at the back of her eyes, and she knew that if she looked around, they would all be laughing at her. All of them, snickering at Larissa’s delusions, at her wild fantasies that she could ever be more than the tiny, worthless creature she’d always believed herself to be. That her father had told her she was. As if all the work she’d done these past weeks, and the months before, had been for nothing.
She felt her stomach hollow out, and she thought for a moment she might be sick.
But she didn’t die of the shame, as perhaps she wanted to do. She breathed, her heart continued to beat, and as she stared back at Chip it occurred to her that of the two people standing there, she was the one who knew who she was. Not this lowlife, all dressed up in his black-tie costume but profoundly ugly beneath.
“Who do you think you are?” he taunted her.
And she knew in that moment that it didn’t matter what Chip Van Housen—or anyone else—thought of her. She got to decide who she was. She did. And the shame was only powerful—could only hurt her—if she let it.
“I’m Larissa Whitney,” she replied, not bothering with her stock smile, not trying to be polite, and she didn’t care at all who overheard her. She was brimming with her own strength, with her own choices, and she was the one who decided what her past made her. Not Chip. Not ever. “And I don’t care who you think I am.”
And then she turned, sweeping away from Chip and his gaping mouth, and walked directly into Jack.
Who was standing there as if he’d been there for some time.
As if he’d heard every horrible word.
CHAPTER TWELVE
LARISSA wanted to die, right there and then.
She wanted to be sucked down into the bowels of New York City and left there to rot—anything but this. Anything but staring in horror at the man she loved, the man whose good opinion meant more to her than anything else in the world or in her life, with Chip’s words ringing in the air all around them. Polluting everything.
All that strength and power seemed to contract inside of her, and she had to suck in a breath to keep the sudden dizziness from sending her to her knees. He reached out a hand and took her arm, his palm so warm, so perfect against her skin, and she felt a sea of regret pull her under then, fierce and unfightable, and there was nothing she could do but look at him. At that beautiful face, beloved by so many. At those bittersweet-chocolate eyes that saw too much and not enough, and at that lush, dangerous mouth that could tease her into ecstasy and tear her into pieces.
What was the point of changing her whole life—of vanquishing her father and seizing control of all that was hers—if she still couldn’t have this man? If he thought the very worst of her and could have it confirmed on a random Friday night in December, unsolicited and unprovoked, from the vilest of sources? She felt contaminated by her own history.
She wanted to die, but she didn’t. She never did. And so she had no choice but to look Jack in the eye and try not to dissolve into tears. If she couldn’t have what she wanted more than anything else, she might as well attempt to hang on to some shred of her dignity.
“It looks like you were right about me after all,” she said, and she couldn’t manage to make her voice light. She forced a smile instead, though it felt more like a grimace. “You must feel so vindicated.”
He did not react for a long moment, staring down at her as if he was trying to translate her words, break the code, figure her out. As if she was written in hieroglyphics and he could not begin to imagine the meaning of each shape in the stone. Something passed over his face, through his eyes and then was gone.
He looked over her shoulder at Chip, and his fingers tightened slightly against the bare skin of her upper arm, making goose bumps rise, making her fight off a shiver. Then he returned his gaze to hers, dark and determined. And smiled. A bright, happy smile. Charming. Delicious.
“Dance with me,” he said.
Of all the things she’d imagined he might have said, that was not on the list. She blinked at him, trying to process his words as well as that devastating, surprising smile.
“Dance?” she echoed.
“I know you know how,
” he said, in that way of his that called to mind his golden, summer self, outshining all the rest of them on all those New England beaches. It made her chest feel tight. It made heads turn, seeking out all that light, all that sun, in the middle of a chilly winter night. “I’ve seen you do it.”
“With you?” She felt thick and simultaneously too light. Feverish. She thought perhaps she should go lie down in a quiet corner somewhere and wait for morning. Or perhaps for next year. But she couldn’t seem to bring herself to move.
“I’m an excellent dancer, Larissa,” he said, still in full Jack Endicott Sutton mode. He was dazzling. And he was drawing ever more attention as he spoke. “My grandfather would have it no other way.”
And then it clicked, finally. Larissa felt something like relief—and something much sharper, much more damaging—slice through her then, making her feel that she could breathe. Or anyway, understand. He was doing this deliberately. It was a far greater repudiation of Chip to treat her like someone worthy of the famous Jack Sutton charm than it was to slap back at the other man.
Larissa just couldn’t understand why he would bother.
She let him draw her with him toward the dance floor and then let him pull her into his arms. She felt too hot and then too cold, as if a volcano was set to erupt beneath her skin. As if the ground beneath them was buckling and heaving. She looked at him and the world seemed to spin too fast all around her, and she had to look away to keep her balance.
She saw all the grand families of New York City arrayed around the courtyard. All that Knickerbocker and Gilded Age gentility, Upper Ten Thousand denizens, robber barons and railway tycoons, New England blue bloods, and the infusion, here and there yet never talked about in good company, of new money or Hollywood glamour. She and Jack were made of this place, these people. And yet she found herself yearning with all of her battered soul for that grand old house on a lonely hill, hidden away on a desolate island, where they had been so close to whomever they’d wanted to be, for a little while. Just a little while, but she still told herself it mattered.
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