Текст книги "Thief"

Автор книги: Tarryn Fisher

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

We go back to the hotel and get ready for dinner. She showers first and then puts on her makeup and does her hair while I take my turn. So far we haven’t kissed. The only contact we’ve had was when we held hands earlier. I wait on the balcony while she gets dressed. When she comes out to tell me she’s ready, my eyes glaze over.

“You’re staring,” she says.

“Yeah…”

“You’re making me feel awkward.”

“You’re making me hard.”

Her mouth gapes.

“Naked feelings, Duchess! You’re in a tight black dress, and I know how good it feels to be inside you.”

Her face looks even more startled than a second ago. She spins to walk away, but I catch her and pull her against me.

“You’re wearing that dress simply because you like it. You don’t dress to make men look at you – you hate men. But, your body is ridiculous and it happens anyway. You walk and your hips sway from side to side, but you don’t walk that way to get attention, it’s just the way you move – and everyone looks. Everyone. And when you listen to people speak, you unconsciously bite your lower lip and then let your teeth slide across it. And when you order wine at dinner, you play with the stem of your wine glass. You run your fingers up and down. You are sex and you don’t even know it. Which makes you even sexier. So, when I think dirty thoughts, forgive me. I’m just under your spell like everyone else.”

She’s breathing hard when she nods. I let her go and lead her out of the room and to our minivan.

She has not lost her childlike awe. When she sees something that has never crossed her vision before, she becomes entranced – parted lips, wide eyes.

We step into the large foyer of the restaurant holding pinkies, and her speaking stills. To our left is the hostess stand, and in front of us the room opens up to two stories of red wall, decorated in gilded gold mirrors. It’s a spacious receptacle into the restaurant doors leading off into different directions, and her head swivels around to take it all in. The bulbs they use to light the room are red. Everything glows in red luminescence. The room reminds me of old class and sex.

“Drake,” I say to a tall blonde standing behind the desk. She smiles, nods and looks for my reservation.

Olivia has let go of my pinkie and has grasped my whole hand. I wonder if she’s afraid – perhaps intimidated.

I bend down to her ear.

“Okay, love?”

She nods.

“This looks like the red room of pain,” she says.

My mouth drops open. My little prude has been expanding her reading horizons. I choke on my laugh, and a couple of people turn to look at us. I narrow my eyes.

“You read Fifty?” I ask quietly. She blushes. Amazing! – the woman is capable of blushing.

“Everyone was reading it,” she says, defensively. Then she looks up at me with big eyes.

“You?”

“I wanted to see what all the hype was about.”

She does that blink, blink, blink thing with her eyelashes.

“Did you pick up any new techniques?” she says, without looking at me.

I squeeze her hand. “Would you like to try me out and see?”

She turns her face away, pressing her lips together – horribly embarrassed.

“Caleb Drake,” the hostess says, interrupting our whispering. “Right this way.”

I lift my eyebrows at Olivia, and we follow the hostess through a door at the rear of the room. We are led through a series of dim hallways until we enter another decadently red room – red chairs, red walls, red carpet. The tablecloths are mercifully white, breaking the continuity of the color. Olivia takes a seat, I follow.

The server approaches our table moments later. I watch her face as he guides her through a wine menu that is the size of a dictionary. She is overwhelmed after a few seconds, and I speak up.

“A bottle of the Bertani Amarone della Valpolicella, two thousand and one.”

Olivia scans the menu. I know she’s trying to find the price tag. The server nods my way in approval.

“A rare choice,” he says. “Aged for a minimum of two years, the Bertani hails from Italy. The grapes are grown in soil that is composed of volcanic limestone. The grapes are then dried until they are raisins, which results in a wine that is dry and higher than most in alcohol content.”

When he retreats from our table, I smile at her.

“I’ve already slept with you, you don’t have to order the most expensive wine on the menu to impress me.”

I grin at her. “Duchess, the most expensive wine on this menu is six figures. I ordered what I enjoy.”

She bites her top lip and seems to shrink into her seat.

“What’s the matter?”

“I always wanted this – to come to restaurants that raise their own cows and mortgage bottles of wine. But, it makes me feel insecure – reminds me that I’m really just poor, white trash with a good job.”

I reach for her hand. “Aside from your notably filthy mouth, you are the single classiest woman I have ever met.”

She smiles weakly like she doesn’t believe me. That’s okay. I’ll spend the rest of forever convincing her of her worth.

I order her the New York Strip. She only ever eats the filet, because that’s what she thinks she’s supposed to do.

“It’s not as tender, but it is more flavorful. It’s the steak version of you,” I tell her.

“Why are you forever comparing me to animals and shoes and food?”

“Because, I see the world in different shades of Olivia. I’m comparing them to you – not the other way around.”

“Wow,” she says, taking a sip of her wine. “You’ve got it bad.”

I start singing a rendition of Usher’s “You Got it Bad” and she shushes me, looking around embarrassed.

“Singing is something you should never do,” she smiles, “but, maybe if you translated some of those lyrics into French…”

“Quand vous dites que vous les aimez, et vous savez vraiment tout ce qui sert à la matière n’ont pas d’importance pas plus.”

She sighs. “Everything sounds better in French – maybe even your singing.”

I laugh and play with her fingers.

The meal is unparalleled in the state of Florida. She reluctantly agrees that the New York Strip is better than the filet. After our meal is over, we receive a tour of the kitchen and wine cellar – which is custom at Bern’s.

Our tour guide stops in front of a locked cage, behind which resembles a library of wine bottles. Olivia’s eyes grow wide when our guide shows us a bottle of port that is two hundred dollars an ounce.

“It’s a delight in your mouth,” he says, comically.

I raise my eyebrows. I am standing behind her, so I wrap my arms around her waist and speak into her hair. “Do you want to try some, Duchess? A delight in your mouth… “

She shakes her head no, but I nod at our guide. “Send it to the Dessert Room,” I say.

She stares at me in confusion. “The what?”

“Our Bern’s experience isn’t over. There is a separate part of the restaurant just for dessert.”

We are taken up a flight of stairs to another dimly lit area of the restaurant. It is mazelike in the Dessert Room; I’m not sure how we’ll find our way out without help. We are taken past a dozen private glass orbs, behind which each individual table sits. Each guest is given their own privacy bubble to eat their dessert. Our table is to the rear of the restaurant and fit for two. It is a strange and romantic setting. Olivia has had two glasses of wine and is relaxed and smiling. When we are left alone, she turns to me and says something that makes me choke on my water.

“Do you think we could have sex in here?”

I return my glass to the table and blink slowly. “You’re drunk, aren’t you?”

“I haven’t had wine in a long time,” she admits. “I feel a little carefree.”

“Public sex carefree?”

“I want you.”

I am a grown man, but my heart skips a beat.

“No,” I say firmly. “This is my favorite restaurant. I’m not getting kicked out because you can’t wait an hour.”

“I can’t wait an hour,” she breathes, “please.”

I grind my teeth.

“You only do that when you’re angry,” she says, pointing to my jaw. “Are you angry?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I really want the macadamia nut sundae.”

She leans forward and her breasts press against the table. “More than you want me?”

I stand up and grab her hand, pulling her to her feet. “Can you make it to the car?”

She nods. As we are rounding the corner, our server returns with our two hundred and fifty dollar an ounce port. I take it from him and pass it to her. She shoots it. The server flinches and I bark out a laugh, handing him my credit card.

“Hurry up,” I say. He races off and I press her against the wall to kiss her. “Was it a delight in your mouth?”

“It was okay,” she says. “I really want to put something else in my mouth…”

“God.”

I kiss her so I can taste it. When I turn around, he is back with my card. I quickly sign the receipt and drag her out of the restaurant.

After an intensely memorable fifteen minutes in a pharmacy parking lot in the backseat, we drive to an ice cream shop and eat our cones in the heat, outside.

“Doesn’t hold a candle to Jaxson’s,” she says, licking her wrist where the ice cream is dripping.

I grin as I watch the traffic on the street.

“Do you think we’ll ever get sick of doing that?”

We switch cones, and I eye her through my haze. She ordered the ice cream shop’s version of Cherry Garcia. I ordered something with peanut butter. I watch her eat it. She has that sexed look – flushed skin, ruffled hair. I’m tired, but I could easily go another round.

“I highly doubt that, Duchess.”

“Why?”

“Addiction,” I say simply. “It can span an entire lifetime if untreated.”

“What’s the treatment?”

“I don’t really care.”

“Me neither,” she says, throwing the rest of my cone in the trash and dusting her hands on her dress.

“Let’s go. Our hotel room has a hot tub.”

I don’t need to be asked twice.

Four months after Leah was acquitted, I filed for divorce. The minute – the very minute I made the decision, I felt a huge weight lifted from my figurative shoulders. I didn’t necessarily believe in divorce, but you couldn’t stay in something that was killing you either. Sometimes you fucked up enough in life, that you had to bow to your mistakes. They won. Be humble … move on. Leah thought she was happy with me, but how could I make someone happy when I was so dead inside? She didn’t even know the real me. It was like sleepwalking; being married to someone you didn’t love. You tried to fill yourself with positives – buying houses and going on vacations and cooking classes – anything to try to bond with this person you should already have bonded with before you said I do. It was all empty, fighting for something that never was. Be it my fault for marrying her in the first place, I’d made plenty of mistakes. It was time to move on. I filed the papers.

Olivia

– That was my first thought.

Turner

– That was my second thought.

Motherfucker

– That was my third thought. Then I put them all together in a sentence: That motherfucker Turner is going to marry Olivia!

How long did I have? Did she still love me? Could she forgive me? If I could wrestle her away from that fucking tool, could we actually build something together on the rubble we’d created? Thinking about it set me on edge – made me angry. What would she say if she knew I’d lied about the amnesia? We’d both told so many lies, sinned against each other – against everyone who got in our way. I’d tried to tell her once. It was during the trial. I’d come to the courthouse early to try to catch her alone. She was wearing my favorite shade of blue – airport blue. It was her birthday.

“Happy Birthday.”

She looked up. My heart pounded out my feelings, like they did every time she looked at me.

“I’m surprised you remembered.”

“Why is that?”

“Oh, you’ve just been forgetting an awful lot of things over the last couple of years.”

I half smiled at her jab.

“I never forgot you…”

I felt a rush of adrenaline. This was it – I was going to come clean. Then the prosecutor walked in. Truth was put on hold.

I moved out of the house I shared with Leah and back into my condo. I paced the halls. I drank scotch. I waited.

Waited for what? For her to come to me? For me to go to her? I waited because I was a coward. That was the truth.

I walked to my sock drawer – infamous protector of engagement rings and other mementos – and ran my fingers along the bottom. The minute my fingers found it, I felt a surge of something. I rubbed the pad of my thumb across the slightly green surface of the ‘kissing’ penny. I looked at it for a full minute, conjuring up images of the many times it had been traded for kisses. It was a trinket, a cheap trick that had once worked, but it had evolved into so much more than that.

I put on my sweats and went for a run. Running helped me think. I went over everything in my head as I turned toward the beach, dodging a little girl and her mother as they walked along hand in hand. I smiled. The little girl had long, black hair and startling blue eyes – she looked like Olivia. Was that what our daughter would have looked like? I stopped jogging and bent over, hands on my knees. It didn’t have to be a ‘would have’ situation. We could still have our daughter. I slipped my hand in my pocket and pulled out the kissing penny. I started jogging to my car.

There was no time like the present. If Turner got in the way, I’d just toss him off the balcony. I was soaked in sweat and determined when I turned on the ignition.

I was one mile from Olivia’s condo when I got the call.

It was a number I didn’t recognize. I hit talk.

“Caleb Drake?”

“Yes?” My words were clipped. I made a left onto Ocean and pressed down on the gas.

“There’s been an … incident with your wife.”

“My wife?” God, what has she done now? I thought about the feud she was currently having with the neighbors about their dog and wondered if she’d done something stupid.

“My name is Doctor Letche, I’m calling from West Boca Medical Center. Mr. Drake, your wife was admitted here a few hours ago.”

I hit the brake, swung the wheel around until my tires made a screeching sound, and gunned the car in the opposite direction. An SUV swerved around me and laid on the horn.

“Is she all right?”

The doctor cleared his throat. “She swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills. Your housekeeper found her and dialed 911. She’s stable right now, but we’d like for you to come in.”

I stopped at a light and ran my hand through my hair. This was my fault. I knew she took the separation hard, but suicide … it didn’t even seem like her.

“Of course – I’m on my way.”

I hung up. I hung up and I punched the steering wheel. Some things were not meant to be.

When I arrived at the hospital, Leah was awake and asking for me. I walked into her room, and my heart stopped. She was lying propped up by pillows, her hair a rat’s nest and her skin so pale it almost looked translucent. Her eyes were closed, so I had a moment to rearrange my face before she saw me.

When I took a few steps into the room, she opened her eyes. As soon as she saw me, she started crying. I sat on the edge of her bed and she latched onto me, sobbing with such passion I could feel her tears soak through my shirt. I held her like that for a long time. I’d like to say I was thinking deep thoughts during those minutes, but I wasn’t. I was numb, distracted. Something was agitating me and I couldn’t place it. It’s cold in here, I told myself.

“Leah,” I said finally, pulling her from my chest and settling her back onto the pillows. “Why?”

Her face was slimy and red. Dark half–moons camped around her eyes. She looked away.

“You left me.”

Three words. Then I felt it: so much guilt I could barely swallow.

It was true.

“Leah,” I said. “I’m not good for you. I-”

She cut me off, waving my comment away on the frigid hospital air.

“Caleb, please come home. I’m pregnant.”

I closed my eyes.

No!

No!

No…

“You swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills and tried to kill yourself and my baby?”

She wouldn’t look at me.

“I thought you left me. I didn’t want to live. Please, Caleb – it was so stupid. I’m sorry.”

I couldn’t name the emotion I felt. I was somewhere between wanting to walk out on her forever and wanting to stay and protect that baby.

“I can’t forgive you for that,” I said. “You have a responsibility to protect something you gave life to. You could have talked to me about it. I’ll always be around to help you.”

I saw some color come back into her cheeks.

“You mean … help me while we’re divorced?” She lowered her head and looked up at me. I thought I saw some fire in her irises.

I didn’t say anything. We were locked in a staring contest. That’s exactly what I meant.

“If you don’t stay with me, I’m not keeping this baby. I have no intention of being a single mother.”

“You can’t be serious?”

Never did I think she would threaten me with something of this nature. It seemed beneath her. I opened my mouth to threaten her – to say something I’d probably regret, but I heard footsteps. The brisk kind that said doctor.

“I’d like some privacy to talk to my doctor about my options,” she said, quietly.

“Leah-”

Her head snapped up. “Get out.”

I looked from her to who I presumed was Doctor Letche. Her face was pale again, all the anger gone.

Before the doctor could say anything, Leah announced that I was leaving.

I stopped in the doorway and without turning around, I said, “Okay, Leah. We’ll do it together.”

I didn’t need to look at her face to know it held triumph.

I have a decision to make. I’m pacing it off. That’s what my mother would call it, pacing it off. I did it as a kid, across my bedroom. I guess I never grew out of it.

Olivia is making her decision, whether she knows it or not. Noah is going to come back for her, because she’s that girl, the one you come back to again and again and again. So, I fight. That’s it. That’s my only option. And if I don’t get her, if she doesn’t choose me, I’m going to be that guy—the one who spends his life alone and pining. Because I sure as hell am not going to replace her with any more Leahs or Jessicas or any-goddamn-body else. Fuck it. It’s Olivia or nothing. I grab my wallet and keys and jog down the stairs instead of taking the elevator. I go directly to her office. Her secretary holds Olivia’s door open for me as I step in. I smile at her and mouth my thanks.

“Hi,” I say.

She’s in the middle of sorting through a mound of papers, but when she sees me, she smiles – all the way to her eyes. Almost as quickly, the smile sinks out of her eyes and the lines of her mouth firm into a straight line. Something’s up. I walk around her desk and pull her against me.

“What’s wrong?” I kiss the corner of her lips. She doesn’t move. When I let her go, she drops into her swivel chair and looks at the floor.

Okay.

I grab a chair and pull it up to hers so that we’re facing each other. When she spins her chair away from me to look at the wall, I know some type of shit has hit the fan.

Please God, no more shit. I’ve had about all the shit I can handle.

“Why are you being so cold with me?”

“I don’t think I can do this.”

“What?”

“This,” she says, motioning between us. “It’s so wrong.”

I rub my fingers over my jaw and start grinding my teeth.

“We are kind of experts on doing what’s wrong, no?”

“Ugh, Caleb. Stop it. I’m supposed to be thinking of ways to make my marriage work. Not building a new relationship with someone else.”

“Building a new relationship with someone else?” I am confounded. “We’re not building anything. We’ve been in a relationship since before we were actually in a relationship.” In actual fact, I tell people we were together for three years, even though it was only one and a half, because I was emotionally with her from the moment we met.

“Why are you saying this, now?” I say.

She opens a bottle of water that is sitting on her desk and takes a sip. I want to ask when she started drinking water, but I’m pretty damn sure my non-girlfriend is trying to end our non-relationship, so I stay still and quiet.

“Because it’s better for everyone if we’re not together.”

I can’t keep the sneer off of my face. “Better for whom?”

Olivia closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “Estella,” she says.

It feels like someone has reached a hand into my belly and grabbed hold of my organs.

Olivia is chugging her water, her free hand limp in her lap.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I haven’t heard her name in a long time. I’ve thought it plenty, but Olivia’s voice wrapping around the syllables is jarring.

Her nostrils are flaring as she breathes. She still won’t look at me.

“Olivia…”

“Estella is yours.” It’s a blurt. I blink at her, not sure where that came from, or why she’s saying it.

Being told I had twenty-four hours to live would have been less painful than that statement. I don’t say anything. I stare at her nostrils, which are working like fish gills.

She spins in her chair until her knees bump into mine, and she’s looking me straight in the face.

“Caleb.” Her voice is gentle, yet it makes me flinch. “Leah came to see me. She told me she’s yours. She’ll take the paternity test to prove it. But, only if we’re not together.”

My head and my heart are in a battle for who can host the most pain. I shake my head. Leah? Was here?

“She’s lying.”

Olivia shakes her head. “She’s not. And you can get a court-issued paternity test. She can’t keep Estella from you if you are her father. But Caleb, think about it. She’ll use her to hurt you. Forever. It’ll affect your little girl, and I know what it feels like to be a parent’s weapon.”

I stand up. Walk to the window. I’m not thinking about how Leah could use Estella to hurt me. I’m thinking about Estella being mine. How could something like this be true and I not know it?

“She was pregnant before Estella. We were separated, but we had sex once during that time. Anyway, she lost the baby after she swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills and had to have her stomach pumped. That’s why we went to Rome. She said that she wanted to reconcile, and I felt so guilty about her sister and the miscarriage.”

I look at Olivia when I say that. Her lips turn white as she presses them together.

“Caleb, she wasn’t pregnant in the hospital. She lied to you. She told me that too.”

I always wondered what Olivia felt when I told her I faked my amnesia. Painful truth is ineffable. It swings you around a couple times until you’re dizzy, and then punches you hard in the stomach. You don’t want to believe it, but it wouldn’t hurt so badly if on some level you didn’t know it was true. I run with denial for a few more minutes.

“She bled. I saw her bleed.” Denial is such a friendly companion. It’s normally Olivia’s best friend. Suddenly, I want in on the party.

Olivia looks so distraught.

“Oh, Caleb. It wasn’t from a miscarriage. She probably just got her period and passed it off as that.”

Damn it. Fuck. Olivia is looking at me like the naive, gullible fool I am.

I remember how Leah chased me out of the room before I could speak to the doctor. How I stood in the doorway and told her I’d stay just so she’d keep my baby. She was clearly trying to get me out of there before the doctor revealed the truth.

I don’t need to say anything to Olivia. She can see I’m getting it.

I’m feeling smaller and smaller. During my back and forth time with Leah, Olivia was falling in love with someone else. I could have just walked away with Olivia in Rome and spared us years of this tangled, twisted mess.

“How did Estella come to be?”

“After Rome we made it another month. She was angry with me. She accused me of not being present, and she was right. So I moved out again.

I was at a conference in Denver and she was on a trip with her friends. We ran into each other at a restaurant. I was friendly, but kind of kept my distance. She showed up at my hotel that night. I was pretty drunk and landed up sleeping with her. A few weeks later she called and told me she was pregnant. I never even questioned it. I just went back to her. I wanted a baby. I was lonely. I was stupid.”

I don’t tell Olivia that I found out she was seeing someone during that time. That when Leah came to me, I fell into her because I was trying to fill that Olivia hole in my chest again.

“So, she told you Estella wasn’t yours? That night you told her you wanted a divorce?”

“Yes. She said she’d slept with someone else before the ski trip. She also told me she only went because she knew I’d be there and she wanted to make me think she got pregnant that night.”

“It was all a lie,” Olivia says. “Estella is yours.”

I see the tear in the corner of her eye. She doesn’t swipe it away and it rains down her face.

”She’s going to keep hurting you and Estella as long as I’m in your life. I have a husband,” she says softly. “I should work things out with him. We’ve been playing house, Caleb. But, this isn’t real. You have a responsibility to your daughter…”

All of it – Olivia, Leah, Estella – ignites a fury in me. I spin and walk to her chair, leaning down and placing both hands on her armrests and get right in her face. All I want to do is go find my daughter, but first things first. I’ll deal with them one at a time. We are breathing each other’s air when I speak.

“This is the last time I’m going to say this, so listen carefully.” I can smell her skin. “You and I are happening. No one is keeping us apart again. Not Noah or Cammie, and least of all, fucking Leah. You are mine. Do you understand me?”

She nods.

I kiss her. Deep. Then I walk out.