“I’m sorry but we can’t have you here,” the receptionist says. “He’s busy, just arrived from out of town.” I see anger in her eyes. My attention flicks to the large man and . . . I just can’t believe there’s a bodyguard. I can’t believe he’s having them escort me out.
“Tell him I stopped by,” I murmur. Then I do them all a favor and take myself outside, using my hair as a curtain to avoid being recognized—glad that my hair can also hide the absolutely crestfallen look on my face. I head straight home, where Gina and Wynn appear to have been waiting by the door.
“How did it go?” Gina takes me by the shoulders and forces me down on the couch.
I’m still numb with disbelief. It takes me a moment to answer. “He’s walling himself up. I couldn’t see him. They . . . I was escorted out.”
“What?” Wynn cries, outraged.
And Gina: “Didn’t you tell me his staff is loyal to a fault? Of course they’d be overprotective of their Saint.”
“But did he know Rachel was there?” Wynn wants to know.
They start arguing about whether or not Saint instructed them to kick me out, but I can’t join the speculation. I’m feeling more and more hopeless as I look at my phone. My silent phone.
Locking myself in my bedroom, I call his cell phone and pace around as I leave a message:
“Heyyyyy. Hey . . . will you please call me back? I need to talk to you.” I flounder with what to say next, my thoughts stumbling one after the other.
“Malcolm . . .” I trail off, but my voice breaks so fiercely, I hang up. I wipe my tears away and dial again. “Sorry,” I whisper. I have never wanted to hear his voice so much. “I want to say that . . . I don’t know. . . . I just wanted to hear your voice.” I think of what else to say when I reach his voice mail.
I dial again. “You value truth and loyalty, and I . . . I need to talk to you, Malcolm, you need to let me explain. If that’s all you do, please let me explain.”
It’s killing me. I can’t sleep. Can’t eat. I have a constriction in my chest and I literally can’t breathe. This time it’s not in a good way. I keep waiting to hear from him, keep expecting him to message me back.
I storm into Gina’s bedroom. “Do you think it’s over?”
She jolts up in bed. “You scared the shit out of me. I thought we had an intruder!”
“Do you think it’s over? Not talking and this shit happening, it means it’s over. Right? Who am I kidding? I wasn’t even his real girlfriend. Not even for a day. There’s nothing to be over.” I laugh sadly and struggle with my tears, and with my conscience, and my desperate need for him.
“I feel bad for you, but Saint’s a powerful man. When Paul betrayed me, I couldn’t look at him, not even a single possession of his. He broke me. And this is . . . this is public, Rachel. How would you feel? If he came with something like this, throwing you for a loop? Give him time to assimilate what’s being said. Maybe he just wants to rationalize.”
Maybe he just needs to count to four, I think to myself.
“I have a temper. . . .”
One instant I’m trying to feel positive by telling myself that I will have a moment to explain, eventually, and the next I’m heavy with grief. The next, I’m one big, gigantic knot of regrets. Remembering those few, rare moments when he completely opened up to me makes me even more anxious to be with him right now, to explain. To make it okay. To hold him. To BEG him to hold ME. “Rachel, what are you going to do with your article?” Gina asks worriedly.
In my hand, on my phone screen, for the thousandth time, I look at that picture of him arriving at M4 after a business trip. Looking like a true, first-class billionaire . . . but flipping off whoever was snapping that picture. All of that glass and technology in the background, and him, in that killer suit, his dark head bent, his eyes shielded behind his aviators. No comment, the caption says. But the finger said plenty.
29
RESEARCH
A short while later I slip into my bedroom and stand, in my socks and his shirt, and stare at my laptop.
Inhaling, I bring it, along with my shoebox filled with note cards, to the little rug beside my bed. I sit Indian style on the floor and read my notes, one by one. Notes on him.
Truth and loyalty, I had written.
Traits he probably admires in his best friends. Traits he may never have found in the women who are after him. Truth and loyalty . . .
That’s all I can write about. The rest of what I’ve learned is too raw for me to share.
But truth and loyalty.
Things Saint values above love.
Things he wouldn’t find in me. I read the back of the card, my scribbled note, this one talking about me.
I SUCK SOOOO HARD.
He’d stood there talking about truth and loyalty while I sat there moved by everything we talked about, absolutely knowing that I was falling in love, helpless to stop it.