The Beginning of Always (38 page)

“Um, excuse me?” I laughed again, uncomfortable, chest strangled and in knots. I took a step back, out from beyond his reach.

Alistair lowered his hand. He didn’t chase me, didn’t react. Instead his face was placid, his pose easy and loose, leaning against the bannister facing me.

“It’s yours,” he said again.

“No. It’s not,” I answered firmly.

Alistair reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and withdrew a slim stack of folded papers. “I have the deed here, ready to transfer to your name.” He unfolded it and placed it on the dark stone before us. He slid the keys over to weigh the papers down. “I have a notary public downstairs in the lobby waiting to come up. Stella is here to help coordinate the transaction. We can finalize this today.”

He added an uncapped pen to the balcony rail.

“I can take care of the property taxes, and it comes fully furnished. You only need to say yes.”

I pointed a finger at him. “You only need to get your head examined. This is insane. And I’m leaving.”

I turned on my heel and stalked out, slamming my way past another set of french doors next to the outdoor sofas. The doors led to a room I didn’t recognize. Alistair followed, calling out to me. “Florence, stop.”

I glared at him over my shoulder but didn’t quit moving. I swatted at a set of gauzy curtains that billowed across my path. “What is this? A test? Some sort of sick gauge? What the hell are you playing at?”

Alistair’s eyes were narrowed, his eyebrows tight and furrowed. “I just want to say I’m sorry. I’ve wanted to tell you that for a long time.”

“So you say it now? With a penthouse apartment? What the hell is wrong with you? Why can’t you buy flowers like a normal human being? Send a card?”

I turned a sharp corner, clipping the doorway with my shoulder in my haste.

We began barreling down an unfamiliar hallway, the unbearable gleam of the decorative white wooden paneling screaming at me.

“I’m sorry about the past, I’m sorry about what happened between us,” Alistair called, his feet heavy upon the hardwood floors I left in my wake.

The hallway led me to a dead end, another bedroom. I gave a low-grade scream of frustration and turned back, pushing past Alistair. “There’s nothing to say sorry for. I don’t need your apologies. It’s been a long time. It’s over. We’ve moved on.”

“You do need my apologies.”

“No!
You
need your apologies, so don’t dump them on me.” All the emotions I’d been struggling with since yesterday’s stupid kiss were breaking free and those emotions were lacing my words with ire and resentment and fear and anger and worry. I couldn’t even think anymore; my mouth was running off and my feet were running away.

Everything was pure instinct.

“Florence, stop.”

“It’s in the past! We were done! Why are you bringing all this up now?”

I stomped from room to room, turning one corner and finding myself in another ridiculous page of
Interior Design Monthly
. Alistair followed me, and the more I tried find my way out, with each needlessly ornate door I pushed open and slammed close, the more frustrated and angry I became.

“How do I get out of this damn place?”

We were now in the chef’s kitchen (deep eat-in bar, top-of-the-line German-branded stove, pantry large enough to feed a small country, etc.). As I made my way to the far door that I knew led to the entryway, Alistair’s hand shot out and his fingers seized my upper arm. I swung my hand up to break away, but his grip was strong and all I managed to do was to stumble forward into the kitchen island. Alistair jerked me backwards to stop me from slamming my hip into the cold white marble.

My back pressed into his front, his chin grazing the side of my hair.

I resisted, struggled to get him to let me go. But his other hand seized my free shoulder and held on hard. His fingers dug into my skin and the heat of our close proximity to each other, the touch and the harried breaths we both were exhaling, it all did nothing to calm me down.

“I never forgot you, Florence. I never forgot us. I want us to start over again, I want us to be together again,” he said in a rush.

I stilled at his words, then slowly turned my head towards him, narrowing my eyes at him from across my shoulder.

“You’re kidding.” My tone was hard, icy.

“You can’t tell me you don’t feel something for me, that you didn’t respond to something yesterday in my office. That that kiss meant nothing.”

“Lust doesn’t mean anything—don’t get that twisted with something else, with something significant. You can kiss anyone and feel that way.”

Alistair shook his head, refusing my words. “No. I lo—”

I jerked my arm out from under his grip, tripping forward and twisting around to face him.

“Stop it. Stop it right now.” I shook my head and pressed my palms over my face. I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t focus on him and the past and this insanity and this whole damn insane scenario. This Upper East Side air was strangling me, with all its money and influence and power. I took quick shallow breaths, my head just on the side of faint.

I sucked in a deep breath and lowered my hands. I needed to calm down. Inhale. Exhale. I closed my eyes, shook my head, worked to center myself, and opened my eyes again.

“Okay. Look, I know you’re trying to do something nice for me. Something sweet. Let’s take this at face value, that you just somehow just bought an insanely expensive apartment. Okay. I can work with that.” I clasped my palms together and forced a grin on my lips. “That’s very kind of you, Alistair, but I do not want this.” I enunciated each syllable.

“Thanks, but no thanks. Keep this apartment for yourself. You move in. You need a home—you can’t live in the hotel forever. Please.” I was pleading. “Just please, please drop this craziness.”

“Why?” Alistair said. Despite the heaviness of the air, his entire posture was much too casual. It was a jarring contrast with my own and it agitated me further.

“Why?” I repeated, dumbstruck.

“Why don’t you want my gift?”

“Excuse me?”

“Tell me why you won’t accept this.”

“Um, because I’m not comfortable with gifts being over ten dollars, much less over ten million dollars?”

“So what?”

I couldn’t help but give an incredulous laugh. “I’m not having this conversation with you. I’m not having this ludicrous conversation with you about you trying to foist this apartment on me!”

My hands snapped in the air, pointing aimlessly. “There are strings and obligations and unspoken rules. You won’t even need to furnish this place because it’s already filled to the ceiling with all our emotional baggage!”

Second wind hitting, I pushed past Alistair to exit the kitchen.

“Who even does that? Give people real estate? Honestly!”

Alistair followed me, of course. “You need a place to stay.”

“I have a place.”

“You’re staying with Nicolas. You even said you weren’t sure if you were going to live there long-term.”

“So, you bought me an apartment, because that was the obvious answer to my housing situation.”

“Manhattan real estate is brutal.”

I whipped around. A fresh cocktail of irritation, rage, emotion, upset pride, whatever you want to call it, glided along that second wind and hit my gut.

“I’m not hurting for money, Alistair.”

“I never said you were.”

“You implied it. I can’t afford a penthouse apartment in New York City, but I’m not homeless. I have no need for your charity, I’ve done fine for myself.”

Alistair shook his head. “I know you have, Florence. Just stop getting so defensive, it’s just a gift.”

“It’s ‘just a gift.’ Please. I do not even know how to begin figuring out what is wrong with that sentence. I don’t want your gifts. I don’t want your damn apartments, your drivers, your private parties. I can find my own apartment, I can take the subway, and I like my bars a little crowded. Cuts into the free space for people’s massive delusional egos.”

I couldn’t stop. I kept on rambling, even though I should have left five minutes ago. Ten minutes ago. Never shown up.

“We can’t go back,” I said loudly. Probably louder than I needed to, but years of bottled-up emotion was boiling over and I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I couldn’t pretend. “We’re not the same! I’ve changed, you’ve changed.” I was desperate for him to understand; I needed him to back off and for us to go back to the way it had been six months ago—nothingness.

“You hurt me.” My voice dwindled and I couldn’t muster up the anger anymore. My voice went quiet, my shoulders went slack, the fight leaking from my veins. “You left. You can’t just start up again after a ten-year sabbatical.” I tossed my hands up weakly, gesturing around us. “You can’t buy a fresh start with an apartment, with an evening.” I shook my head. “You can’t buy me. You can’t change the past with that.”

Alistair’s hands were in fists, pressing into themselves, unyieldingly hard stone. “I never meant to hurt you. The hardest thing I ever did was to leave you. Don’t tell me I don’t mean anything to you.” His voice was calm, but his entire body was wound up, emotional, tense.

I shook my head. “You’re a job. A memory. That’s it. I could get fired for what we did.”

“No, you won’t,” Alistair said.

“Then you don’t know anything about the journalist code of ethics,” I said.

“Not for a kiss, Florence.”

Maybe he was right, maybe not for a kiss. But couldn’t he see? It was against my integrity. Against what I’d promised myself when I’d started this journey.

It was more than a kiss. So much more. My soul knew it was more and my heart was scared.

“Fine. Maybe I won’t. My editor would be pissed as hell. The owner doesn’t give a shit so I’m safe there. But I wouldn’t be able to live with it, okay? I knew it was a mistake to take this profile in the first place, but I did so because I was sure I could be a professional.”

I begged, I pleaded. “Don’t make me throw that away. Stop pushing me to abandon my principles.” I needed him to understand so badly. “We ended it. We both walked away. We’ve created lives for ourselves.”

“And I want to share it. Mine with yours.”

I couldn’t look at him, not for what I had to say, for what needed to be said. I shook my head again, my eyes now to the floor. It was a dark-grained hardwood floor, perfectly waxed, not a single speck of dust clouding its glossy coating.

Things are too different.

I sucked in a deep breath and slowly raised my gaze to meet Alistair’s.

“No,” I said coldly. I had to be strong. If I weakened, I was afraid of what would happen next. “Alistair, we’re wrong for each other. We can never work out.”

There was a lapse, a soft curve of time where it took bare moments for Alistair to process what I said. Then, his fist shot out and slammed against that perfectly tasteful old-world elegant wallpaper, hard enough to make a hole. His expression was granite. And I knew I had hit home.

Because he had said those exact same words to me ten years ago, in that grove of trees that we hunted fireflies in. And then, he’d walked away without another word. He’d crushed me. He’d broken me. I was rendered into nothing.

All the begging had been no use. All the crying. All the agony.

Just like now.

So now, I turned on my heels, stooped down to grab my bag, and left without a backwards glance.

My heart hardened once more. I pieced myself together and the only thing holding everything together was my resolve.

My resolve and my grief.

And my guilt.

Chapter 20

I
gawked up at the property whose driveway we were standing in. Stupid. I really shouldn’t be shocked anymore at these displays of excess, but I still was and my jaw still dropped.

Thomas and Gertrude hustled behind me with Train lumbering about. As Thomas edged near me to grab some trunks, I nudged his shoulder. “Is this Alistair’s or the company’s?”

Thomas was unloading several Louis Vuitton-stamped suitcases that were obviously Gertrude’s and answered towards the handles.

“Technically it’s his, but it currently serves as the company’s West Coast outpost. We have an office nearby in Malibu, but it’s a lot smaller than this home, so the employees we have here end up working within the house.”

I muttered more to myself than him. “Looks like a party palace.”

Thomas shrugged and continued to unload the car. “Alistair said it was a solid buy.”

“Hm,” I answered.

Thomas didn’t follow up and disappeared into the front door.

I sighed, swung my duffel bag over my shoulder, and followed. Thursday. It was Thursday, and if I played my cards right, I could finish this all by this Sunday and finally be done with Blair Properties. Two weeks had been more than enough for the full story. Gordon would understand.

The silent treatment was getting old. Old and weird, and it’d only been going on for half a day. Ever since I’d met everyone at the airport this morning, the air between us had been thick and tense. I was ignoring Alistair, who acted completely oblivious and not at all ill at ease, and Thomas and Gertrude were ignoring me, barely answering my questions with anything short of grunts and baldly exchanged glances. Train was the only person keeping me company, his expression shifting from concerned to confused as it flitted back and forth between all the players in the game.