The Beginning of Always (56 page)

I knew the way to the elevator room, following the same path we had gone last time. The last time I was here, I had accused Alistair of trying to buy me, of trying to use his power and artificial worth to make everything okay.

If only I had known the extent of it, how he had used every weapon in his arsenal to properly and soundly destroy everything I had worked for.

I crashed through to the sterile lobby, paying no heed to the mess I made on their pristine floors. The room was quiet, and when I stabbed at the elevator button, Train suddenly appeared next to me.

“You need a key,” Train said gently.

I rubbed an impatient forearm against my forehead and eyes, wiping the droplets of water clean. I shook my trenchcoat as a spray of moisture scattered around me.

“Ms. Reynolds,” he said hesitantly.

“Let me up.” I ground out my request from between clenched teeth to the stainless-steel-seamed doors.

There was a lull after my request and then Train’s beefy palm snaked out with the key fob and the elevator dinged in arrival. I floated in, not even aware of my movements anymore.

Train was standing just beyond the boundary. He was worried.

We made eye contact and sadness flooded his features.

“Go easy on him, sweet.”

Train’s sentence lingered in the air between us just before the doors closed. I quickly pawed at my hair, sopping water all over the carpet. My reflection shimmered back at me from the silver of the elevator door, and as the floors ticked upwards, agonizingly slow, I drew a shaky breath.

I had no idea what I was doing. I had even less of an idea of how I was feeling.

All I knew was that … it hurt. Once the anger drained away, what was left was pain. The pain of betrayal. The lie of it all.

The doors slid open, but I didn’t move. I just stood there, that wide foyer yawning before me. The elevator didn’t close; the lift didn’t activate. Time stood still and all of a sudden, a wave of exhaustion slid over me.

I was weary. So goddamn tired.

All I wanted to do was sleep and pretend this was last year, when I was still safely ensconced abroad. Away from here.

Away from him.

I should have stayed away.

The floorboards creaked underneath his weight, and Alistair’s form shadowed the archway off to the side. He was wearing that horribly nostalgic outfit that had affected me so much. It was as if he knew the fact and made an effort to dress like that just to get to me. A faded gray plaid button-down and dark jeans. They were expensive clothes, made to mimic the patina of well-worn and well-loved summertime clothes.

I hated him even more like that, with his hair barely brushed into place, the sleeves rolled up to expose his strong forearms. It was all a mockery. A shadow darkened his jawline and his expression was impassive.

I was drenched, but Alistair made no observatory statement. We stood facing each other, neither of us uttering a sound. Alistair’s hands were in his jeans pockets and his posture was just shy of straight, his expression inscrutable, considering me.

That pissed me off. I walked forward and pushed past him and he allowed me, falling back out of my path. I breathed heavily, expelling shaky breaths and feeling every drop, every slithering raindrop trickling down me.

I wanted to break him.

I wanted to hurt him, as badly as he’d hurt me.

Alistair followed softly behind me. I stopped in the living room, dripping water all over the carpet. Alistair disappeared down a corridor, coming back in seconds with a large white towel. He draped the warm fluffy down around my shoulders and I shivered involuntarily.

Neither of us said anything as he gently rubbed the towel over my wet hair, wiping down my face and draping the towel around my neck. He hooked a finger underneath the collar of my trenchcoat, and I didn’t fight him as he slid it off. Alistair walked over to a coatrack and hung it up. He lingered there, fingering the edge of the sleeve, before turning back to me.

Was that remorse I saw in his eyes?

Anguish?

I slid the old Polaroid from the pocket of my damp jeans, flicking it off my thumb so it fluttered to the ground between us.

My youthful profile grinned up towards the ceiling, color desaturated with the years. So naive, so hopeful … so whole.

Any sort of expression in Alistair’s eyes slid shut and emotionless again. Silence fell, only punctuated by my ragged breaths. “Did you get that from Gertrude?” he finally asked flatly.

I shrugged noncommittally and rubbed my eyes with my knuckles. I asked, “Why was this in your safe?”

No hesitation. “Because I love you. I’ve always loved you. I never stopped.”

I kept the back of my hand pressed up against my eyes and dug into them, feeling the tears coming yet desperately wanting to deny their presence.

“You’re lying,” I whispered. My heart was breaking and I couldn’t stop the tears. Grief and anger and sadness and hopelessness all mingled within my body, bubbling up in my chest and splintering out slowly. The shards of agony ravaged every nerve. I pressed my hand to my eyelids, shuddering and shaking my head all at the same time.

There was something absolutely terrible knowing a fatal end was nigh. Being incapable of stopping it made everything so much worse.

Betrayal of any kind was unforgivable. The lying, the deceit, it was all too much.

I swiped an angry forearm against my tears one last time and looked up furiously. Alistair was still standing by the coatrack, impenetrable, his hands in his pockets.

“Is the article true? What they’re claiming, is it true?”

There was a long pause. The rain continued to fall outside and I could register nothing but the wet strikes against the windows.

“Yes,” Alistair answered quietly. “It’s true.”

“So you orchestrated this? You planned it all out? The purchase of the building, being owner of the
Journal
, forcing this assignment on me? Were you going to kill the profile before it ever ran?”

Alistair demonstrated no shadow of humanity, not a single flinch of remorse nor a raised eyebrow of indignation. His face remained stoic although his jaw was tight with tension.

My voice picked up volume. “Tell me it isn’t. Tell me you weren’t involved. Say I’ve misunderstood. Tell me!” My fists clenched at my side and all the emotions—the rage, the sorrow, the confusion, the deep sense of betrayal, they threatened to burst from their dam.

Alistair said quietly, “I can’t do that.”

“Why?” I whispered despairingly. “Why would you do that?” My voice rose a couple octaves. “Why would you do that to me? To yourself? No!” I was nearly yelling now. “It doesn’t hurt you. It does nothing for your image. My reputation, my career—it’s everything, you know that!” I threw the towel down on the floor. I wouldn’t accept his comfort. “You manipulated me. You lied to me through this whole thing. Why?”

My voice began shaking; my whole body trembled in rage and grief and confusion.

Alistair didn’t answer. He simply stood there, a ghost.

“You did this,” I said, not bothering to conceal the pain in my voice. “You did all this to discredit me, to get me fired.” I stalked over to where he was standing and pushed him. He let me, falling back a step.

That emboldened me. I shoved him again with dual open palms and he stepped back again. It felt good to galvanize into some sort of physical action.

But it frustrated me even more to know how powerless I was—emotionally, physically, in life. He held all the cards and he rolled all the dice. I screamed out my frustration and moved to push him again, and at that, Alistair shot a single hand out and circled both my wrists. He pushed me back with a knee in between my legs until my back hit the wall hard, and then he pinned my wrists next to my waist, my elbows bent and immobilized. After a second or two of struggling, I stopped.

I was breathing hard and I glared at him. Alistair’s face was completely devoid of emotion—remorse, regret, anything. All he gave me was the same exact quiet disregard.

“Now, everyone knows … everyone knows about everything.” My voice cracked despite itself. “You knew it would all end like this. You trapped me into sleeping with you, then you crushed me in the papers.”

The news reports, they’d dug and they’d dug. They’d found out about her, about our past, about the rumors and the truths, and now everything I had fought so hard to hide was out there.

That private grief I had struggled against so long was now so public.

“You really are a cold-hearted bastard. My reputation was everything, and you destroyed it.” Traitorous tears once again prickled my sight and my whole body began going numb.

“I don’t understand why. You say you love me, but you lied. You knew how this would play out. You knew it’d end like this. You conspired … you conspired to punish me. To ruin me.”

Now words seized in my throat, the syllables and the thoughts of truths long denied.

“Did you do this … because I lost our baby? Is this your revenge?”

My accusation sat between us, heavy and dirty.

Alistair’s eyes softened and his fingers contracted against my skin. “No, Florence,” he said quietly. He shook his head. “No. God no. How could you think that? That wasn’t your fault.”

I couldn’t stop. All the secret agonies of the past ten years rushed out from between my lips and I had to get them out before they poisoned me any further. These sentences, unspoken and festering, ate away at me. I had to release them.

“But you knew. You knew I didn’t want to be a mom … you knew I couldn’t go through with the pregnancy. And you broke up with me because you were angry after I lost her, that I …” I choked on my words. “I reminded you of what your mother did with you. I abandoned her just like she abandoned you.”

And abandoned her I had. I hadn’t gone to the funeral. I hadn’t cried after we’d left the hospital. I’d wanted to move on. I’d wanted to forget. And Alistair hated me for that, back then and now. He hated me for being weak, for not grieving, and I knew all these reasons coalesced into why he’d left me so long ago and why he chose to punish me now.

I couldn’t do this anymore. I wrenched myself from Alistair’s grip and turned around to head for the door.

I needed to go, someplace far, far away.

Alistair’s large forearm crashed to the wall across from me, boxing me in and refusing my exit. “Florence, don’t,” he said harshly. “Don’t leave thinking that’s true. I never once blamed you or resented you for what happened with her.”

His words were far from mollifying me. I was beyond calm. “You’re a liar! You orchestrated this all to get back at me again. You never forgave me and this was your payback.”

Alistair’s expression twisted, confused, unsure. But I didn’t read it; I couldn’t process his reaction, only pushing forth with my own truth.

“Great job! You’ve ruined me! I have nothing left now! But first, you just had to screw me one last time. Screw me and screw with my heart.” I laughed without humor. “And I fell for it. I fell for your stupid plot.”

Alistair spoke slowly. “That’s crazy and you know it. This was never about that.”

“This
is
crazy! Everything you did so far is crazy and I can’t figure out any logical explanation! This is the only thing.”

“It’s not.”

“Then what is it? Just say it. Whatever it is, just say it!”

“Can’t you believe I did this out of desperation? That I truly wanted to be with you?”

“Why couldn’t you just call me? Why didn’t you just find me like any normal person would?”

“Because I’m not normal!” Alistair bore down on me, surrounded me, enveloped me. His gaze tore into my broken soul and stripped whatever was left completely away. “I never intended for it to get this far, and before I knew it, the stakes were too high for me to pull out. I thought it’d be alright. You’d forgive me for buying the
Journal
and messing around with the logistics, but every time you asked me for the truth, I couldn’t say it.

“I’m a goddamn screwup, I know that. But know this—I broke up with you ten years ago not because of the baby or because I was angry with you, but because I couldn’t trust myself that I wouldn’t ruin with your life anymore.”

Alistair reached out to grip my upper arm. I tried to force myself from his grasp, but his fingers tightened and he yanked me towards him. “Leaving you was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. But I left because I couldn’t risk getting you pregnant again, or forcing you to stay in Michigan, or to come to New York just because that was where I got a job. You getting pregnant was the last thing I wanted for you. I knew we couldn’t be parents. You were barely out of high school, for Christ’s sake. You think I wanted that for you? You hadn’t lived. I left because I wanted you to have more than just me and more than just St. Haven. I wanted you to have the world, and I couldn’t be in it.”

But his words meant nothing. His justifications and reasoning, even if they made logical sense, they couldn’t resonate with my emotion self, so indulgent and all-encompassing in the moment.

“Bullshit. You left for yourself. You left so you could chase all this.” I threw my free hand up to gesture around. The stupid penthouse. The prestigious buildings. The city he’d conquered.

Alistair’s eyes narrowed and his fingers tightened to dig into my flesh. “I’d give up everything, every cent and everything in my life to have those years back. Every day without you felt as if I was suffocating.”

I challenged him with my glare. “Then suffocate.” My words quivered despite the hardness of my voice. “You suffocate. Choke. Then you’ll know what it feels like … you’ll know what it was like to go through those eight months of the pregnancy, that guilt, that horrible guilt of when I lost her and all I could respond with was relief.” I laughed. I laughed because I didn’t know what else to do and it was the only emotion and action I could muster. “There! I said it. I was relieved! I was so relieved. It was a release of responsibility and pain and misery, that crushing weight I was left with.

“And you knew. You knew I was that horrible. Don’t think I didn’t notice the way you looked at me those months after we got back from the hospital. You were disgusted with me. You hated me for not crying over her, for not talking about her. So you left, you turned around and didn’t look back. And now here you are, with everything you ever wanted.” I buried my head in my palms, fighting to dislodge all the bad memories and choking guilt.