I exhaled and squinted at myself in the mirror. I looked no different than I did when I worked at DeWitt and Wynters, except the constant ache and anger swimming inside me was gone. I heard Cort moving around outside and decided it was time for me to man up and talk to him.
When I opened the door, Cort was no longer in the bedroom, but I saw the light in the living room was on and I smelled coffee. I found him sitting on the sofa with a mug in hand but not drinking.
“I’m going to make a cup, and then maybe we can talk?”
He shrugged, and it pained me to see him hurting and to know I caused it. I made my coffee and took the seat opposite him, knowing I had little self-control when I sat by his side.
“You’re angry with me.”
He took a sip. “No.” But he didn’t fool me. Not when I saw his white-knuckled grip on the coffee mug.
“Yeah, you are. So let’s talk about it. That’s the thing about being with someone who’s gone through rehab. We have this annoying habit of needing to talk shit out.”
A flicker of a smile teased Cort’s lips, then faded. “Just…” He dipped his head. “I can’t do it again. I can’t be with someone who’s gonna keep me a dirty secret. I lost ten years of my life waiting in the dark for someone. I deserve the light, goddammit. And you made me think it was gonna be that way.”
“I never said it wasn’t.”
“You did. Before. You said you couldn’t imagine telling your family or anyone. Anyone? You’re that afraid and ashamed?”
The kiss the previous afternoon was the result of an overload of emotion. But if I had to choose between life with Cort and never seeing my family again, or giving him up and getting everything back, I knew exactly what I’d do.
“Knowing you’d been with Bobby and how you’d loved him for ten years, Iwasafraid. Afraid of losing you back to the life you once had. Afraid you’d see me as the fraud I still think I am sometimes.” The tight knot in my chest loosened, and the blood pumped warm and hot in my veins. “But my choice is you. The first time you kissed me, I knew it was only a matter of time.”
“Before what?”
“Before I could let go of my past and recognize that I had a future. That I deserved a future. And that the future is with you.”
“What about your family?”
My good mood evaporated. “I don’t have one.”
“You don’t plan on seeing your parents again?”
Talking about them made me antsy as hell. “Would you? After what they did to me? Who throws their child out with no money, forcing them to be homeless? All because I caused them embarrassment and cost the firm money?”
“It still bothers you, don’t it? I know it bothers me when I speak to mine because they keep thinkin’ I’m comin’ home. But they were happy to have me leave so they could pretend I don’t exist.”
“Imagine coming home and not being able to get into your apartment. And finding out from the doorman that your parents changed the locks and left you a suitcase packed with some clothes and nothing else.” Shame and humiliation washed over me, and I hugged myself.
“Why’d they do that? And how? I never understood.”
Sweet, naive Cort. He had no idea how these things worked, where people’s lives were structured to keep the tax man away, and family be damned if the money got threatened.
“My family has everything they own in trusts so they don’t have to pay taxes. My great-grandfather set it up that way, and it’s continued in perpetuity. They have a huge apartment on Park Avenue, but it’s in a trust. The house in the Hamptons? In a trust. I didn’t own my apartment; the trust did. The trust even gave me an allowance I lived off of.”
“So you had nothin’?”
I could see Cort’s shock, but I’d moved beyond that stage to living in a state of numbness. “I was lucky I was wearing the Rolex they’d given me for my twenty-first birthday. I sold that and lived off it until the money ran out.”
“Didn’t you try and talk to them?”
A shiver ran through me, and I hated that the simple thought of them could still provoke a reaction. “I did. Twice. The first time in my father’s office. He showed me the complaint they received from the attorney I’d forcibly kissed, told me I was a disappointment and failure as his son, a travesty to the firm, and it would be better for everyone if I left before they’d have to remove me.”
I wanted to vomit. The words tasted as bitter as ash on my tongue. I’d never told anyone the details of that day, not even my counselor, Raymond.
“Take it easy. If you don’t want to talk, you don’t gotta. Just sometimes it helps to let it out of your system.”
There were some things you could never forget. The disgust in the curl of my father’s lip when he ushered me into his office. His glacier-cold eyes raking me up and down as if I wasn’t worthy to be in his presence. The disdain in his voice when he read the complaint detailing exactly what I did to Oren.
