I expected the remainder of the workday to be uneventful. I probably could have told Hannah I’d finish up the emailing and phone calls I had to make from home—she probably even expected me to hide away somewhere and regroup after the pitch meeting with Giles Cabot. The truth was, I only went back to the office for two admittedly selfish reasons.
The first was that one of Hannah’s apprentice designers was doing some final tweaks on a dress I was borrowing for an event that Friday night with Dylan. Hannah had been incredibly gracious three times already, letting me borrow and alter dresses from The Closet. The sad truth was that I couldn’t afford one dress that would be appropriate for the kinds of parties and dinners Dylan took me to, let alone several. The first few times I’d figured out ways to dress up things I already owned, but I quickly ran out of options. And the salary of a second assistant didn’t exactly allow for the purchasing of designer clothes. For the party Dylan was taking me to that Friday, Hannah had offered me something she’d been working on for an upcoming collection. Hence, the extensive tweaking.
And second, Josh had just come back that afternoon from a vacation in Marbella, Spain, where he’d been for two long weeks. I was dying to see him. Fiona and I had received one cryptic postcard at the office with a picture of a beach at sunset on the front and the words Sand EVERYWHERE. XO—Joshy on the back. We needed the story.
At that moment the three of us stood in The Closet while the apprentice designer tweaked, Fiona and I riveted by the play-by-play Josh was giving us, down to detailed descriptions of every tropical-themed cocktail imbibed and outfit worn.
“Blimey,” Fiona responded once Josh had finished his retelling. “I mean, you’re a massive whore, obviously. But well done, you.”
“You don’t understand, Fee. Fernando is hot,” replied Josh, closing his eyes as if remembering at that moment. “The most ravishing tosser I’ve seen. He’s Dylan hot,” he added, looking right at me, just daring me to judge him in light of this new information. I blushed on cue. I mean, I wasn’t going to argue with him. Dylan was hot.
As we stood there gossiping, Hannah’s apprentice was resewing a thin strap onto the emerald-green satin silk cocktail dress I was to wear. It was a 1920s boudoir–inspired dress—simple, clingy, brilliant green silk hitting above my knees, strategic pin tucks around my hips, with bejeweled broach-like clasps linking the thin straps to the bodice. It was basically backless, the fabric coming into a deep curve that hit just above my derrière. It was, without a doubt, the most unique and startlingly sexy thing I’d ever worn.
“Well, if that’s true”—I laughed at Josh while trying not to move my shoulders too much—“then it couldn’t be helped. And I’m certainly not in any position to judge.”
“Seriously, lovey,” Josh said, rolling his eyes at me. “Have you agreed to move in with that scoundrel of yours yet?” Then he quickly added, “Fuck all, that dress is slutty. I mean classy, but slutty. Lydia, you look ferocious in it.” I giggled in response, so thrilled to have his exuberance back in-house.
But when I thought about his question, I gazed at the floor and shook my head, hoping this line of conversation would end. It hadn’t taken long for things to get weird at the office in terms of the whole me-dating-an-aristocratic-celebrity thing. Or maybe it was just that I felt awkward about it—I couldn’t forget that stunned, stargazing look that had appeared on Fiona’s and Hannah’s faces when I’d first told them I was dating Dylan Hale. Ever since, I’d felt keenly aware, probably too aware, that it was a thing.
I felt I had to walk a fine line—if I said too many good things about how it was going with Dylan, then I could be perceived as bragging. If I didn’t say anything at all, then it looked like I was haughty. So I tried to keep it light or blasé, didn’t dwell or go into details. When I’d told Josh and Fiona that Dylan had asked me to move in with him right after we’d made up from our fight, they’d both been shocked—as they should have been. It’s bonkers to move in with someone you’ve been dating for a few weeks. But it was more than just the craziness of the idea. Dylan’s world was full of new territory—it was a world where people went starry-eyed at the mention of his name, a world with archaic social rules and where people with cameras hid behind bushes, a world where I had to keep secrets about threatening emails. It wasn’t a world I knew, and I didn’t like not knowing. I felt like I had to get a grip on it all before I went moving in with anyone.
Keeping the balance between the Dylan world and my old just-Lydia world was frankly bizarre. As it was, I was standing before them getting fitted for a gown designed by our boss, not for a work reason, but because I was attending the year’s biggest art-world party at the Serpentine Gallery—an event whose guest list had been locked in place six months earlier and which was promised to be covered in Vanity Fair’s “About Town” column. There were people who’d give their left arm to get into this party, but because Dylan was Dylan, he’d simply called and told them he’d be bringing a date. It was like I was leading a double life—by day I slogged away over email, feverishly trying to make it in the early stages of my career, and by night I was chauffeured by Frank in a Jag. The contrast made my head spin, made me feel like I had to keep track of who I was.
As I stood there, I realized I hadn’t yet told Josh and Fiona about the store—I’d momentarily forgotten one of the details I should be sharing with them. Josh would be thrilled. He was always enthusiastic about Hannah expanding the business—it helped quell his constant fear of “getting sacked.” And while Fiona hadn’t said much about the idea, the plan would benefit us both—less crazy running back and forth to Hannah’s studio for fittings, less one-on-one interaction with the likes of Amelia Reynolds and her posse of posh, snobby socialites. I was about to tell them when Fiona piped up.
“God, I’m so jealous of you two twats,” she said quietly, picking lint off of her sweater and not looking either of us in the eye.
Hannah’s apprentice had finished with the dress, and I was sliding back into my clothes behind a Japanese screen. I peeked my head out. “Fiona? What’s going on? Aren’t things going well with you and Ben?” I could see now that she was fighting off crying. She was a pro at holding back emotion and burying it under her Yorkshire wit, but I could see it.
“Ahh, it’s fine,” she quickly said, straightening. “He’s just being a plonker, is all. You’ll have to take my word for it, Lydia—guys who are our age and don’t have heaps of money can be right idiots.”
I wasn’t imagining things. I definitely heard the subtext—somehow I wouldn’t understand because my boyfriend was older, rich, and supposedly perfect. “Well, I’m happy to listen, if you want to talk?” I said, to which she shook her head slightly, picked up her bag, and headed back to our office.
By the time I sat at my desk to wrap things up for the day it was nearly seven. Hannah had ended up sending an office-wide email about the store, announcing that as soon as I found retail space, I’d be moving to work from there. Fiona, who’d been quiet the rest of the day, had left shortly after, leaving me in a quiet office, checking things off my to-do list.
Knowing Dylan was out for a work thing and dinner with his father, I hadn’t rushed, and there was a lot to tie up after the presentation. I was about to shoot off a thank-you message to Mr. Cabot when I heard the familiar ping of a new email waiting for me. I saw the new bold line in my inbox, and I immediately got chills.
The sender was once again unknown—a series of jumbled numbers and letters—and the subject line read: Don’t be fooled. When I opened the email, I saw only one line of text: CAN YOU TRUST HIM?
Below the words was a crystal-clear photograph of Dylan outside a restaurant with a man in a dark suit and long dark coat. I recognized the restaurant—a pizza chain in Trafalgar Square, not at all a place Dylan would go with any of his friends or clients. It looked like they were in a heated exchange, and the man was pressing a large envelope into Dylan’s hand. If it hadn’t been for the clear date stamp on the photo I wouldn’t have thought much of it. Dylan out to dinner with some other business dude? A person who looked less than pleased with whatever Dylan was saying? That was pretty much Dylan’s life when he wasn’t with me. But the date was a night when he had said he was in Amsterdam for a meeting about a new building. A Thursday. I remembered it well because it was the first night we’d spent apart since we’d said I love you. I’d seen him that day, and he’d been wearing the tie I now saw in the photo in front of me, a tie I’d given him.
He’d lied to me.
* * *
I stared at the screen and noticed my chest rising and falling rapidly. My breath quickening. A pit settling in my stomach. My immediate instinct was to feel like a fool. I’d been here before—on the receiving end of a message from the world that Dylan was lying to me, that he wasn’t who I thought he was. The gut punch of finding out he was engaged to Amelia.
But then I remembered: I’d been here before, and the world had been wrong. Dylan hadn’t lied to me then, and I needed to give him the benefit of the doubt now.
I immediately took a screen shot of the email, suspecting that, like the last one, if I tried to save it, it would simply disappear. I attached the screen shot to a new email to Dylan with the subject line: Another email.
My phone rang within the minute.
“Baby, when did you get this?” Dylan asked as soon as I’d answered.
“Just now,” I said. I heard him tell someone else in the room with him that I’d just received the email; then it sounded like he was stepping away from that person, moving.
“I have my people looking at it—it’s perfect timing. I was meeting with my security and IT.” Dylan was speaking to me as though we were on a fact-finding mission together, like we were Mulder and Scully solving mysteries, one disturbing clue at a time. That somehow there was such a thing as the “perfect timing” to get an email like this. Only the information I needed at that moment was not going to come from his IT or security people. And it was less about who had sent the email than what the email contained. I needed him to show me that I wasn’t a fool for giving him the benefit of the doubt.
He read my silence immediately.
“I did go to Amsterdam that night, Lydia.”
“Okay,” I said slowly, trying to work out how to say I needed him to explain more, but he cut me off before I got the chance.
“I had an impromptu business meeting that evening, and it went late. I flew out later. I didn’t tell you, because it didn’t change anything. I might as well have been in Amsterdam as far as you were concerned. The whole thing was rushed. I barely made it that night—the pilot, who had been expecting me to fly out at four in the afternoon, had been awake for too long. If I’d gotten there ten minutes later, he would have been unwilling to fly me at all. I promise you, baby—there’s nothing here you need to worry about. Someone is just trying to fuck with me.”
“Except they’re fucking with me too,” I said, hearing the surliness in my voice.
“Damsel—”
“Don’t ‘damsel’ me, Dylan. Even in the best of circumstances it’s a shitty feeling when someone knows something about your boyfriend that you don’t.” I realized as I said this that I actually had no idea if this was true. Dylan was my first boyfriend, and this was the only circumstance in which this had happened. “And it’s even worse when that something looks like a lie.”
“I’m not bloody lying, Lydia.” Great, now he was getting frustrated with me.
“Who’s the guy in the photo?” I asked, hoping that some basic information, if not his willingness to provide it, could defuse the growing tension between us. I heard him sigh deeply on the other end of the line.
“No one important. It’s someone from the government whom I’m working with on something.”
“A building?”
“What does it matter, Lydia? Don’t get out of sorts. It’s just work. Don’t let whoever is sending these emails get to you, okay? Please, let me handle this.”
I didn’t say anything. I had been taken off guard, and I was pissed. I was the one getting threatening emails, but I didn’t feel like I had the power to do anything about it. And now suddenly we were in the middle of a fight.
“Lydia?” He waited, but I just didn’t know what to say. In my gut I knew this wasn’t his fault, or at least his story wasn’t completely implausible. And I knew that he and I were on the same side, but I didn’t like it. I didn’t just want to be on the same side; I wanted to be in this together.
“Baby, listen,” he started sweetly. “I know this feels shitty. I’ve been there. This guy is encroaching on your space. You feel out of control. You want to retreat, to get a grip on what you can count on. But, Lydia, if you let this degenerate, whoever he is, get to you, then he’s getting what he wants. This person obviously knows I care about you, and he’s trying to get to me through you. Don’t let him.”
“Dylan—” I felt like a petulant child, wanting to dig my heels in.
“Damsel,” he whispered, and I could hear a door shut on his end of the line. “I just don’t want you to have to deal with this. I’m on it. I promise. If I have any solid information on this guy, I will tell you. Goddamn it—I should have solid information by now, and I’m sorry I don’t. I haven’t a clue what’s going on, actually—it’s never taken this long for my team to nail something like this. It’s like every lead we have disappears before our eyes.” He sounded so frustrated, so angry with himself, but I didn’t like just waiting.
“What can I do? I don’t like to sit on the sidelines.”
“Baby, you’re doing the most helpful thing—sending me that email immediately. I’m used to this. I have the resources. When there’s something to tell, I’ll tell you. Trust me.”
Why did I feel so unsatisfied with this arrangement? He was right—I didn’t know the first thing about hunting down cyberstalkers.
“I love you, baby. I’m sorry this is on your plate at all,” he said, and I could hear the deep regret in his voice. And also his sadness that we were fighting about this. And in my heart I did trust him. This wasn’t actually about whether or not I believed him, I realized. It was about feeling powerless, which I did. I took a deep breath. It wasn’t another picture of him with Amelia or some other woman. It was business. Classified business. I summoned the inner reserves to let it go and vowed to figure out how to deal with this better going forward.
We both sighed audibly at the same time, like a wordless truce. “You’ll be in my bed when I get home?”
“Don’t get your knickers in a twist. I’ll be there,” I replied, bringing humor back to myself too.
“Watch it, damsel,” he said in his husky bedroom-boss tone, behind which I knew there was a smile. I heard noise and voices and general work chaos on the other end. “Must run, baby. I’ll see you tonight. And, baby? Please be careful. Let Frank drive you.”
“Frank took the car home after dropping me off.”
“Baby, please.” I heard him tell someone near him he was coming, and he said goodbye before I had a chance to reply. I could hear the plea in his voice. Not demanding. Not trying to be bossy. He was worried. I didn’t know how to argue with that. I didn’t even know if I should.