Your eyes close briefly, as if to shut out my words. “Why are you doing this?”
I guard my expression as I absorb the question and steel myself for what I know will come next. I won’t be made to feel guilty. Not over you. Not over any of it. Not when you’re prepared to marry another man. At least you’re not looking at me. I’m not sure I could go through with it if you were looking at me.
“Let’s not play the whole scene, Belle. We both knew this day would come. You’re stung that I’ve chosen the time and place rather than leaving it to you, but it’s time we let each other off the hook, don’t you think?”
You blink at me. “Off the hook?”
We’re coming to it now, the part I’ve been dreading. The look of betrayal when you finally understand what I was really after—and why. But it’s necessary, this truth-telling, to put the period to us. Because if I don’t end it, you will. Maybe not today, but soon, and I prefer to take control of the moment.
“Four months ago, I was an outsider in your world, a bloke with the wrong clothes and a funny accent who’d come here to do a job. But first, I needed an entre, admittance to the kinds of parties your father and his sort throw. Goldie provided that, but only to a point. I needed a more . . . intimate contact.” I swallow. Hard. “That’s where you came in.”
I see the denial creep into your expression, see you not wanting to believe what you’ve guessed I’m about to tell you. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that us meeting wasn’t an accident. That there was a reason I turned up the night of your engagement party. I came to the States to write a story and I needed a way in.”
“A story for Goldie?”
“She was in London visiting friends last year and we met at a lecture. We ended up going for a drink afterward and got to talking about corruption and politics and war. Your father’s name came up at one point. She already knew quite a lot about his past. What she really wanted to know about were his present-day activities. His plans.”
“So she hired you to help with that.”
“Yes.”
“And that night at the St. Regis, the flirting with me at dinner the following week, the kiss in the barn—that was about my father too?”
“Yes.”
I watch your eyes go dark, like a bitter wind snuffing out a candle. You wanted me to deny it or to at least soften my response, but I promised myself I’d tell it all. Still, now that it’s done, I feel as if a part of me has been severed.
Your silence threatens to undo me, and for a moment, I consider taking it all back and telling you the real truth—that it was true once but isn’t anymore. That the story I’m working on has taken a turn I never saw coming, one I wish I didn’t have to pursue. That I imagine abandoning the whole bloody business and taking you somewhere very far away. And then I remind myself—as Goldie reminded me last night and then again this morning—that you’ve made your plans and they don’t include me.
If I don’t speak now, don’t finish what I’ve started, I never will. It’ll sting for a while, like a slap you don’t see coming—I’ve taken you for a ride and then tossed you aside—but you’ll have Teddy to soften the blow and I’ll soon be forgotten.
It helps to remember Teddy. I clear my throat and force myself to meet your gaze. “What we had—what we’ve been these last few months—has served a purpose for both of us.”
Your eyes glitter with unshed tears. “Why are you doing this?”
I thought I could stand whatever you threw at me, but I was wrong. Suddenly, desperately, I need this to be over. “Belle . . .”
“None of it meant anything to you? All these weeks, all the afternoons? It was all for her? For Goldie? When you knew I loved you?”
Love.
The word slices into me like a blade. Neither of us has ever said it before. Me least of all. Instead, I’ve lived with the knowledge that one day, quite suddenly, it would be our last day. It would have been pointless, not to mention foolhardy, to allow my heart to wander onto such dangerous ground. Now, suddenly, the truth hits me squarely, inescapably. I’ve loved you from the very first night, the very first look, the very first lie. I let myself believe I was in command of my emotions, that I could conquer them, starve them out of existence. Now I realize that was the biggest lie of all.
I feel unmoored suddenly, adrift now that I’ve abandoned all my pretenses. “I’ve been so careful,” I say finally, absurdly. “I thought I could keep myself from feeling . . . that I could just beat you to goodbye.”
“And now you have.” You brush angrily at a fresh spill of tears, as if annoyed that you’ve allowed them to escape. “What a fool I’ve been. All this time, I thought . . . I believed you felt what I did.”
Your words catch as you make a grab for your handbag. I reach for your arm, staying you. “I did. I do.” When your eyes finally meet mine, wet and wide and full of hope, I feel myself falling into them, tumbling end over end. Dizzy. Free. Lost. “I do love you, Belle. I have since that first night, when I crashed your engagement party.”
I pull you into my arms then, a man who knows he’s irrevocably lost. Goldie was right this morning when she hurled her parting words at my back. I am in over my head. I was prepared to let you go when I left her this morning. As much for my sake as for yours. Now the idea seems unthinkable. You’re the answer to a prayer I never thought to pray—and a threat to all my plans—but I’m not strong enough to walk away. I want you. In whatever way it’s possible to have you, for however long it’s possible to have you. Knowing it’s a mistake, knowing it solves nothing. Knowing that one day we will stand here again, on the brink of goodbye.
Forever, and Other Lies
(pgs. 45–49)
November 5, 1941
New York, New York
I barely register the sound of my handbag knocking to the floor as you pull me against you. You wrap me so tightly, I can scarcely tell where I leave off and you begin. And I don’t want to. Because it’s right. This ache to be near you—to belong to you—has been a part of me since that first night, and now I know it’s been a part of you too.
You love me.
There are no words after that from either of us. Your lips on mine, so feverish, so desperate, say everything that needs to be said. And everything that cannot. The promise you can’t ask of me because I’ve already given it to another. The promise that for so many reasons, I’m not free to break. And yet in this feverish, spinning, exquisite moment, I know that I mean to break it—somehow—and to hell with the consequences.