chapter
Twenty
My chest hurt, like a heavy weight was pressing down, impeding breaths choked with tears.
“Erin. Erin.”
Hands gripped my shoulders and my legs were tangled, immobile. With what felt like superhuman effort, I broke free and sat halfway up, eyes flying wide. I wasn’t in Chaz’s car. I wasn’t in my bed. Gasping, I recognized Isaac’s alarmed face. Isaac. I was at Isaac’s apartment. On his sofa. Cautious, as if afraid to unsettle me further, he released his hold and sat next to me, silent. I squeezed my eyes shut and fell back, relieved and yet unable to stop my frustrated tears.
Jacqueline’s interventional pep talk had been weeks ago, and the horrific visions of Chaz’s final moments hadn’t intruded on my sleep since that conversation. Foolishly, I’d begun to hope they were gone for good. No such luck. The nightmare had returned, and what abysmal timing to stage a reappearance. One night sooner or later and I would have been at home, alone.
“I’m okay.” The words rasped from my raw throat. “It was just a stupid bad dream. Neurons firing. Something I ate. I’m sorry I woke you.” Pete appeared at my prone eye level. He rested his muzzle on my arm, his eyes on mine. “I’m sorry to you, too,” I told him.
“He tore in here faster than I did, ready to rip someone limb from limb.” Isaac rubbed the dog’s head. “You said a name. Chaz?” Moonlight streamed in from the wall of windows and lit his face clearly—the concern in his eyes and the pucker between his brows. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I closed my eyes, unable to refuse his gentle question or the empathy with which he’d asked it, unable to voice the no in my mouth. “He was my boyfriend.”
The silence stretched, and I thought that would be the end of it.
“Was?”
I took a shuddering breath and looked at him. “We broke up junior year. When he proposed. I cared about him, a lot, but I didn’t love him. Not like that. I broke his heart. And five months later—” My throat ached, straining to suppress the words. “He had a wreck a few blocks from campus.”
I would never forget my friend Maggie showing up at my dorm room with my usual Starbucks order and bad news written all over her face. In a rare blessing, Christina had spent the night elsewhere, so she wasn’t there.
“Kennedy called me,” Maggie said. “He thought I should tell you in private, before word gets out to everyone…”
“He didn’t survive,” Isaac said.
I shook my head.
“I’m sorry.”
“At his funeral, his mother told me he’d kept the ring. He was alone that night, but in my dream I’m there with him, in the car. And he tells me to lie to him. To say I would have changed my mind. So I do—and I tell him I love him. And then I wake up and it didn’t happen. It can’t ever happen.” Actual vomit earlier in the evening, word vomit now.
“This nightmare. You’ve had it before tonight.”
“It’s been happening for the past year. It’s been a few weeks since last time, and I thought it was gone, but it will never be gone.” My tight fists and clenched teeth couldn’t banish the pointless tears. “I’m just going to have to live with it. Because I get to, you know? I get to live with it. Jesus, what am I even saying? You lost your parents.”
“Grief is grief. It’s not a contest, and there’s no sense comparing them.” He stared out the window, thinking. “What do your parents say about this?”
I swallowed. “They don’t know. No one knows.”
“Therapist?”
“I tried. Campus counselors were somewhat helpful, but I didn’t get to see the same person every time, so I got mixed results and I got tired of rehashing it over and over, like running in place. I saw a private therapist—once—but he blamed the universal root cause for everything when you’re female—stress.”
“As though having your sleep interrupted night after night wasn’t causing the stress.”
“You sound like you know what I’m talking about. Did you— You must have had difficulties after losing your parents. You were just a little boy.”
“I did. But I was with family. My cousins were older, but welcoming enough for a couple of teenagers.” He smiled. “My grandfather lived with us too.”
“What was that like? Mom’s parents retired to Colorado when I was young, and Daddy’s parents were hundreds of miles east.”
“Pop’s in a memory care center now, so I got to spend time with him before Alzheimer’s started stealing his stories, and his ability to know who I am. The dementia didn’t really set in until after I left for Penn. I’d visit when I was home, and he thought I was my father.”
I smiled, unsurprised after seeing the photograph of his parents. “What’d you say?”
He shrugged. “I made like I was him. He would say he liked my hair short, then tell me I needed a shave. He always asked about my ‘wife,’ his ‘baby girl’—my mom—and I’d tell him, ‘She’ll be along tomorrow.’ It was all lies, but it made him happy.”
“And now?”
He shook his head. “He doesn’t know any of us anymore. I can sit with him for an hour and he’ll tell me the same story two, three times, as though I don’t know him and haven’t heard it before. Something that happened when he was a young man, or when he was a boy.”
Grandma McIntyre had Alzheimer’s before she died. I hadn’t really known her. Daddy’s parents had always lived in South Carolina, where he’d grown up, and where his sister, her husband, and two cousins I barely remembered from childhood were now. There had been some sort of falling out. I wasn’t privy to the details, but our visits to see them—already infrequent—stopped when I was eight or nine.
Daddy’s father had passed away from a massive heart attack when I was in high school. My parents flew out for the funeral and came back in a snit—something about my aunt not appreciating the money they’d offered to help with Grandma’s care.
“No one ordered your sister to quit her job and be a full-time caregiver,” Mom had told Daddy in her best righteously incensed, middle-aged-lady voice. “That’s probably what killed your father—trying to do a job that should be left to professionals. Your mother doesn’t know up from down. She would be well taken care of in a home, and we would have paid our share.”
“Amanda doesn’t want to put her in a home—”
“Exactly. She’s making that choice. Let her deal with the consequences of it.”
Thus ended the conversation I overheard. Grandma McIntyre died two years later. I was away at school. Mom texted to let me know: Daddy’s mother has passed away. We’ll be flying to Greenville on Friday, staying at the Westin. Back Sunday. It was like she was just some lady they knew and not my grandparent.
“What’s the home like, where he lives?” I asked Isaac.
“It’s nice. All the residents have some type of dementia. The staff is trained to keep them safe and comfortable. They have activities and encourage social interaction. We’re lucky. Other places are like elephant graveyards for olds.” He watched me for a moment. “Don’t think I didn’t notice that expert deflection. Well done, Ms. McIntyre. Ain’t falling for it though.”
His perception unnerved me. I couldn’t hide behind my habitual barricades and fortifications. I didn’t like it. My lips twisted and I groaned and rolled my eyes up to stare at his ceiling. “It’s kind of how I deal.”
“Or how you don’t deal. Diversion and artificial cheerfulness.”
My lips parted and my eyes burned, and damn him if I didn’t try to smile. “Well done, Mr. Maat. That was a direct hit.”
“Masking your pain is why it’s coming out in your sleep. You’re professionally trained. You must know it.”
“I tried, Isaac. It didn’t work, okay? It didn’t work because I did something I can’t take back. Maybe you don’t know what that kind of guilt feels like.” I struggled to sit up again, hurt and furious and wanting nothing more than to disappear, but he was sitting on the blanket and I was under it. I got no farther than propped on my elbows.
He stilled me with one hand under my jaw. “Try again.” His words were soft. His touch was cool on my heated skin.
My breath issued in shallow pants. I stared into his eyes, watched as his gaze moved to my mouth. Desire flared hot in my belly, a longing beyond anything I’d ever felt, and when he lifted his eyes back to mine, I knew he could see it. I leaned my face into his palm, desperate to stoke the banked passion buried just beneath the surface of his heart before he extinguished it.
“Don’t step to me, Erin McIntyre.” His fingers betrayed him, stroking lightly behind my ear before his mind was aware that the actions of his body contradicted his words.
I’d never heard the phrase before, but what it meant was plain—and spoken far too late.
“I’m already here,” I said, a whispered surrender and a plea. He was near enough that I could taste his breath. Inches separated his mouth from mine, but I was trapped beneath the blanket and could get no nearer. Despite his words, he would be the one to close the space between us—or not.
He leaned closer and his lips touched mine. I had never been kissed so carefully. Our eyes were open, gauging every fragile trace of emotion, savoring every measured point of contact. His tongue traced along the surface of my bottom lip, pressing for entrance. I fought to remain still under his hand, calm under his mouth, responding only, afraid to wake him to what we were doing. Afraid he would stop. Lips slid together, tasting, assessing. I wanted to thrash free of the constricting blanket and climb him. I wanted to wrap my arms and legs around him and pull him in and never let go.
All at once, he deepened the kiss and shoved the blanket to my waist, freeing me. I rose like a sliver of iron to a magnet, hands twisting into his T-shirt to pull him closer, eyes falling closed, trusting him, mouth opening in unrestrained submission as his tongue swept forward, intoxicating and sweet. I was terrified and recklessly alive, certain those disparate states of being weren’t meant to be so strongly intertwined.
His hands slid to my shoulders, down my arms to cup my elbows, leaving trails of fire on my skin. Until he used that leverage to disconnect his lips from mine by self-inflicted force. “We can’t do this. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”
“Why?” My arms were still folded between us, still clinging to him by his shirt, which was suddenly a too-insubstantial hold.
He stared, unmoving, still holding us apart. The room was lit with the picturesque light pollution of downtown and a glowing half-moon in a clear pre-daybreak sky. “You report to me. I’m your supervisor. This is highly unethical, not something I’ve ever done or intended to do.”
“My father owns the company—”
He stood and backed away as I came onto my knees, my hands reaching out but no longer able to touch him. His eyes bored into mine. “Is that a threat?” He passed a hand over his face and breathed a quick, juddering sigh. “You were emotionally vulnerable, and it’s my responsibility as the person with the supervisory power not to cross that line. There is no excuse and you have every right… But I wasn’t alone in that kiss—”
“No.” I sat back on my heels, confused and shaking my head. “There’s no threat. I didn’t mean it that way. I meant we’re not the same as others in our positions. The power structure between us isn’t like other management hierarchies. I report to you, yes, but my father is your boss’s boss. It could be argued that I’m…” I swallowed. “…taking advantage of you.”
He sighed, eyes closed, but before I could be relieved by it, he said, “Either way then. It can’t happen.” He crossed his arms, the physical manifestation of an emotional retreat. “You’re a McIntyre. It can’t happen.”
“You say that like… like I’m a Capulet and you’re a Montague.”
Okay, so Romeo and Juliet weren’t the best #couplegoals comparison in the history of lovers, fictional or real, since—spoiler alert—they both died violently at the end, but the fact that he said my surname like it was a disease made it an apt one.
He disregarded the comment as if I’d not said it. “Will you be able to sleep?”
Internal Erin laughed bitterly and said, NO. “I don’t know.” I turned to examine the eastern sky, still a deep indigo. There was no hint of dawn on the horizon. “What time is it?”
“Around four, I think.”
I did not want to lie on his sofa for hours, restless and wide awake, mortified at vomiting in the presence of and then sexually molesting my disinclined-to-be-touched boss—after rousing both of us (and his dog) from a dead sleep with my nightmare. At the bottom of that glorious mental list of Erin’s Fuckups, I was still horny as hell.
I lay back, studying him as his eyes shifted from the window to connect with mine.
“It would be best if you could get a few hours’ rest.” His arms remained loosely crossed. He’d moved no closer, and I knew he wouldn’t.
“I’ll try. I’m sorry I woke you.”
Isaac had no obligation to my attraction to him. Zero. It was my cross to bear. All mine. But damn, that kiss. I’d been kissing boys since I was eleven, and no kiss had ever compared. The man had skills, a thought that led my sex-starved imagination to what other skills he might have. Probably had. I was thankful my face was in shadow so he wouldn’t read my mind again.
“No worries, Ms. McIntyre.” He clicked his tongue twice and said, “Come,” to Pete, and my body caught fire as they padded away, silent but for the faint, retreating taps of Pete’s toenails on the floor.
I closed my eyes and pulled the blanket to my chin, stretched taut as the elastic on a slingshot just before it discharges. Christ almighty, Isaac, why? Why that word? Come.
Come, Ms. McIntyre.
Aaaughhhh.
My hand slipped past the slack waistband of the sweats. I bit my lip and turned my face into the pillow to muffle the sounds I knew I would make. Fingers stroked and pressed as my imagination rioted and filled with visions of my boss shutting the door of my office behind him, rounding my desk and pulling me up from my chair, pushing my skirt to my waist and fucking me against the desk. Come for me, fantasy Isaac said, and I obeyed, hard, my entire body heaving on his sofa.
Face still buried in the pillow, I panted and shook with strong orgasmic aftershocks. Drifting in the delicious vibrations, I returned to earth gradually, reluctant to examine what I’d just done. My sex life had been wholly fictitious for months now. Anonymous, imaginary men. Quick and dirty fucks, to completion and no farther. Enough to bring relief and, often, just the blessed oblivion that followed.
Was it exploitation to intentionally create personalized pornographic hallucinations about a very real someone who’d just issued the sternest and most resolute of rejections? He’d all but vowed Not now, not ever. My breath slowed, deep and even, as my body grew languorous, eager to sink deep into the satisfied sleep I’d just prepared it to have.
You’re a McIntyre. That unalterable trait seemed to outstrip all else—our relation to each other within my father’s company and whatever sentiments or cravings had just erupted between us. In the end he hadn’t said, You’re my subordinate. He hadn’t said, Your father owns the company I work for. He’d said, You’re a McIntyre. As if my family name was the boundary he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, cross.
I didn’t understand, and my mind was too lethargic and full of my favorite new fantasy to try.
He sat down in my desk chair and unbuttoned my blouse as I stood before him. “Come, Ms. McIntyre.”
“Again, Mr. Maat?”
He pushed the lacy cups of my bra aside and pulled me, legs spread wide, over his lap. “Yes. Now,” he commanded. His hands gripped my hips, mouth sucking a nipple deep, tongue swirling around the peak as he rocked into me.
I came again.