I shrug. “Needed a break.”
“You sure that’s it?” My father gives me a conspiratorial grin. “It seems awfully sudden for you to just drop out of the scene.”
“What do you know about the scene?” I say, rolling my eyes, even though my heart is pounding so hard against my rib cage that I’m surprised it doesn’t burst out and fall to the floor.
“Nothing,” he says, his eyes still twinkling. “I just thought that maybe there was a woman involved.”
My half smile isn’t genuine, but he seems not to notice. “I’m always involved with a woman, one way or another.”
He gives me a chuckle. “You’re just like me in my younger days.” As he says it, something flashes in his eyes for a split second—too quickly for me to pinpoint the expression. “Never mind all that. I just thought the sudden absence from the gossip pages meant you had someone a little more…permanent in your life.”
This conversation is killing me. Of fucking course I had someone more permanent in mind. What other reason could I have for making such an abrupt change to the identity I’ve been cultivating for a full decade? Only love…
The thought brings me up short, but I can’t let myself off the hook. Not this time.
Only love would bring a man to that conclusion.
Real love, raw love, the kind of love that strips away all the bullshit from your life, even if you don’t want it to, even if you’re begging for it not to.
I loved Quinn like that.
I love Quinn like that.
I’ll never stop loving Quinn like that.
I know that now.
“When I find a woman who will keep me out of the gossip sites, you’ll be…among the first fifty people to know,” I say, keeping my tone light through enormous effort. This meeting has to end soon, because there are things I need to figure out.
Things I need to do.
I stand up from the chair and smooth out my jacket, giving my father a grin that matches his. This time, it comes close to feeling real.
At the door, I pause a moment and turn back to address my father.
“I know it’s a bad habit,” I say jauntily, with the kind of attitude I know my father loved from the real Christian, “but I’m going to lean into it today. There’s something I need to do. Don’t rat me out to management, okay?”
My father shakes his head, his smile giving him away. With one hand he waves me out of the office. As I turn away, I hear him say one more thing, “That’s my boy.”
Chapter 43
Quinn
By Wednesday, I still haven’t made up my mind about Christian.
I work myself up into the strongest frenzied conviction that the lying asshole deserves no part of my life, blinking any stray tears from my eyes, and throwing myself into whatever I’m doing—planning Christian’s events for the next month, watching Bridesmaids with Carolyn, running on the treadmill at the gym. I wasn’t going to buy a membership in the city, but yesterday when I got out of work, I was ready to burst from all the excess nervous energy that had built up from an entire day of looking at Christian’s name over and over again. I’d have preferred to just run along the sidewalks, but when I stepped outside the HRM offices, the hundred-plus-degree heat hit me like a brick wall. So I did what any desperate person would do: I went to the Midtown Nike store, bought myself an exercise outfit and athletic shoes, and looked up the closest gym to my apartment on Google. A day pass was forty dollars, but I didn’t care. I needed to run.
I ran on the treadmill until my lungs burned in my chest, until my legs felt weak and my knees like jelly. At home, I found my roommate already parked on the sofa. Carolyn had called it an early day at the boutique. Once I was out of the shower, I flopped down onto the couch next to her, and we both stretched our legs out, our feet propped up on the ottoman.
“Another rough day?”
I rolled my eyes and sighed deeply.
“Every day is a rough day when your only client is your ex-boyfriend.”
“I bet. Trainwreck is on HBO. Want to order in?”
“More than anything.”
By the end of that movie, I’d changed my mind about Christian again. So he did something fucked up in his life. Who hasn’t made a mistake? Casting the first stone, and all that.
Of course, not everyone steals their dead brother’s identity and goes on pretending to be him for another ten years, tricking his friends and remaining family the entire time.
Wednesday morning, I wake up exhausted, as though I haven’t slept.
There’s a meeting with Christian scheduled for 10:00.
I’m torn.