Page 152 of Reckless
“Yes.”
“When did you become good at this?”
“When Isabel made me.”
I looked down at my hands.
Not clenched this time.“What truth.”
Roman’s mouth flattened slightly, that rare sign that he thought I was being deliberately obtuse and disliked it.“The part you keep avoiding because it makes you vulnerable in the wrong direction.”
I almost smiled.“Everything about this is the wrong direction.”
“That’s new for you.”
I looked up.“You’re enjoying this too much.”
“No.”His expression shifted.He was sharper, somehow.“I’m watching you reach the point where money and action and competence are all just your uniforms you wear.You needed that reminder.”
I let the words hit.
What Kelly had stripped from me in that restaurant was the illusion that I could keep love from becoming naked and raw, as long as I did enough beautiful things around it.
So if I wanted any chance at all, I would have to speak plainly enough that she could reject me based only on me.
At the door he paused and looked back.“Are you prepared for her to still say no?”
I sat with that one for longer than I wanted.Then answered honestly.“Yes.”
Roman gave one short nod.“Good.”
After he left, I stayed in my office another hour and got nothing done.
At noon, my father called.
He did not ask whether I had time.He simply said, “Lunch,” and disconnected, because boundaries were for men who had not built entire financial empires by assuming compliance was the natural state of lesser beings.
He chose a private dining room in one of the quieter midtown places, naturally.The kind of restaurant where everyone knew your name but never behaved as though they’d noticed the money in it.
My father was already seated when I arrived.
Tea, always tea when he wanted clarity more than pleasure.
I sat.He looked at me once and said, “You look tired.”
I almost laughed.“No one in this family has ever mastered the art of pretending not to notice.”
“That would be a waste of time.”He poured tea into the second glass and slid it across the table toward me.
I looked into the tea.“She left the restaurant.Not me.”
“Ah.”There was something almost unbearable in that small syllable of understanding.
I set the glass down.
I was beginning to understand why my mother sometimes looked at him like she wanted to murder him and kiss him in the same breath.
“I thought I was giving her something meaningful,” I said.
