I don’t answer him. Instead, I cut to the chase and say, “I’d never hurt the girls.”
He doesn’t reply right away. I peek up. His mouth is drawn tight. He glances over at me. I hold his gaze.
“I know that,” he says. “Would you hurt yourself?”
I have to ask, Cara—have you had thoughts of harming yourself or wishing you were dead?
The correct answer is a lie. The question is a trap, a test of how gullible you are. They don’t want to know, not really. They want to be alerted in time so they can pass you off and not feel responsible or get in trouble if you do something.
I have no reason to tell this man the truth. I don’t trust him. And there’s nothing he can do to help me. He’s the reason I lost it.
He gazes at me, waiting for his answer. Cool. Calm. No pity or alarm or disgust apparent on his face. He really is a shark. There’s something about his eyes, though. Something different. I can see into them better than I could before.
A month ago, I’d have died of humiliation for him to see me in a state like this, but the jig is up now. What do I care about his opinion of me?
What’s stopping me from being completely honest with him? I want to tell him the ugly truth. The urge is not unlike the compulsion to shove that butter knife in the garbage disposal.
“Yes,” I say, as cool and calm as him. “But not too bad.”
For a few seconds he doesn’t respond, but then he drops a clipped nod. “Now? Tonight?”
I consider the question. No. I’m back in my body again, and my boobs are really aching. I need to feed Winnie. I promised Pearl we could have our pies for dessert after dinner. “No.”
“Would you tell me if you felt that way?”
That’s an easy one. “No.”
He nods again slowly. He’s silent for a few seconds and then says, “Why don’t you go get a shower? I’ll clean up here.”
He doesn’t have to tell me twice. I’m almost out the door when he calls after me, “Bring the girls down to the dining room at six, please.”
I don’t turn or answer. I don’t know whether I will or I won’t. Probably I won’t.
I hurry down the hall and up the stairs like a dog is snapping at my heels, and it’s not until I’m finished feeding Winnie and standing under an almost painfully hot shower that I realize—for a few minutes in the kitchen, when Adrian was asking me questions, I was actually fully honest with him for maybe the first time ever.
I wasn’t playing Cora Jenkins. I was myself. The mess inside me.
It’s too big, too much, so I set it on a shelf in the back of my mind, but several times before I fall asleep, I take the realization out, stare at it, and wonder—if I was never honest with him, and he was clearly never honest with me, we never really knew each other, did we?
He thought I was the perfect, wide-eyed clueless girl who’d happily slot herself into the spot in his life that he wanted filled.
I thought he was a brilliant, cold, solitary man who I wassaving with all the love I’d stored up over the course of my entire sad, wretched, lonely life. I thought he was my prince.
But I didn’t know him at all.
Kind of begs the question—was it love?
Or wishful thinking?
And why does the end of wishful thinking hurt so fucking bad?
8
ADRIAN
Yet again,I can’t sleep. I’ve rowed until my arms are numb and emptied my inbox, including the annoying emails that Delaney has been sending—articles fromForbesand questions that she’s fully capable of answering herself.
I was clear with her that I’m not interested in a repeat. She seemed to take it in stride, and she’s done nothing that I feel compelled to call out, but still—what the hell do I care about “leadership mindset for the new AI economy?”
