Sunday evening, Lillian and I sit on the couch nibbling almonds and drinking wine while dinner cooks. She’s watching a weekend entertainment program while I use her iPad to pump Google for information on bondage. The search turns up a zillion websites relating to the broader category of BDSM.

It takes about thirty minutes, but eventually my intellectual curiosity shifts to mild nausea. On one particularly graphic blog, I read about (and see pictures of) situations that make my skin crawl. I can’t imagine Alex doing any of the suggested activities to me. Or to anyone else.

“Flogging and nipple clamps?” I bleat.

Lillian arches a brow. “I highly doubt he’s into sadism. Or masochism, for that matter.”

“I had no idea there was so… much.” I rub my face roughly. “God, Lil, do I even know the person I’m in love with?”

“Don’t be dramatic. Of course you know him. You totally dig his dominant vibe. He probably wants to tie your wrists to a bedpost or something, not gag you. You need to talk to him about it, not fill your head with garbage.”

“He avoided the question last night,” I tell her.

“Right after you found out that Margaret’s husband was your biological father?” she asks rhetorically, albeit gently. “Hmm, I wonder why?”

“Point taken,” I mumble.

“Do you remember my sophomore roommate in college?”

I frown. “Sally? No—Susan, right?”

Lillian nods. “She was totally into bondage and discipline, a little rough play, but not hardcore S&M. You and Alex seem to have a handle on the discipline bit. A little silk rope won’t hurt anyone.” She eyes me speculatively. “You’re intrigued, admit it.”

I wince. “Does that make me a freak?”

She rolls her eyes. “Not unless millions of other women are, too. You’re textbook, Thebes. Alpha female, independent, self-sufficient, in control of your life. But you still have a primitive brain center that wants to submit to a man more alpha than you are. This isn’t news. Think Heathcliff and Catherine, Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett, Anthony and Cleopatra—”

“I get it, thanks,” I say, laughing as I stand. “Checking on the lasagna now.”

I’m halfway to the kitchen when Lillian shrieks, “Thea! Holy shit you’re on TV!”

I spin, see the image on the screen, and stagger forward until I grip the back of the couch. A vague memory pings—a flash outside Azalea.

“Son of a bitch,” I breathe.

The picture is of Damien and me kissing. Despite the truth of the moment, nothing in our seemingly passionate embrace speaks of force. His arms are locked around me, my hands on his chest.

More images follow, grainier for lack of flash but still clear. Damien grabbing my arms. Me, angry and yelling. His earnest, beseeching expression the moment he told me he loved me.

More close-ups of the kiss.

Lillian cranks the volume. A smarmy female voice says, “…identified as Young’s ex-fiancée, Thea Sands, an interior designer from San Diego. An eyewitness told us the duo had a heated argument, then settled it with this steamy kiss! Young fled the scene just moments before Sands’ date of the evening, billionaire restauranteur Alex Hughes, came outside.”

Another voice, male and dry, asks, “And weren’t they at Alex’s restaurant, Azalea?”

“Looks that way, Tom.” A stock image of Alex at a red carpet event overlays the photo of Damien and me. “But have you seen Alex Hughes lately? He doesn't look like a man to settle for sloppy seconds. He’ll be back in the game in no time!”

The collage vanishes, replaced by two overdone, fake-tanned reporters. They chat for another minute about Damien’s more recent ex-girlfriends, all of whom are more famous and interesting than I am. Then they segue to a new scandal, one involving a famous athlete and a prostitute.

Lillian mutes the television.

She stares at me over the back of the couch. “You didn’t tell me Damien kissed you.”

I shake my head helplessly. “It wasn’t a kiss, it was an attack. I bit him. Right before you walked outside.”

“Call Alex,” she snaps. “Right now.”

I run for my bedroom, stumble around the bed, and grab my phone from the nightstand. There are two missed calls. My mother and Oliver. I ignore them and dial Alex.

It rings until the voicemail picks up. Panic rises, gripping my throat—I’ve never seen him without his phone. I listen to his brief message and the beep. “Alex, please call me as soon as you get this. Don’t, uh, read the tabloids. Or watch TV. Just call me.”

I hang up and am debating sprinting to the US Grant when my phone rings. It’s an unfamiliar number, but I answer immediately. “Hello?”

“Thea Sands, this is Francine Marks with the Hollywood—”

I jab the End button.

The phone rings again, but this time I recognize the number. “Alex, thank God!”

“Thea, it’s Lucy.”

Her voice is weirdly stilted. My stomach turns to lead. He’s seen it. “Lucy, let me speak with Alex. Please. This is a misunderstanding.”

“I can’t do that,” she says, and sounds more like herself. But her sympathy chokes me. “I know there’s an explanation, and he does, too. But shit like this…” She sighs. “I’m getting nonstop calls from trashy reporters. Alex really loathes this kind of attention, Thea.”

The ground shifts and I sit hard on the bed. “But it was taken out of context,” I say hoarsely. “Damien grabbed me. I bit him. Please, Lucy. Let me talk to him.”

“I can’t,” she says softly. “But I’ll tell him what you said. Thea, just… give him some time, okay? He won’t talk about it. I barely convinced him not to get on a plane.”

“What?” I whisper.

“Look, I shouldn’t even be talking to you, but I like you. Alex likes you. I haven’t seen him this torn up about a woman since… Well, since his mother. And for that, I kind of hate you, too. So give him some space. Don’t call him.”

I can’t speak. I can’t breathe.

“Take care, Thea,” she says, and hangs up.

Lillian speaks from the doorway, “You should go over there. Just like he came here when I told him not to. Go to him.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.”

“I’m not that girl, Lillian,” I whisper. “I don’t have that kind of courage.”

“Do you love him, Thebes?”

“Yes,” I breathe.

“Then fucking go.”

Ten minutes later, I’m pacing the hallway before the door to the presidential suite. Two hundred steps. Two hundred and one. I’m waiting for bravery to overcome fear, waiting for the worst-case scenario narratives to fade.

I can’t recall ever being more terrified.

The elevator pings, startling a gasp from me. My heart gallops as the doors slide open. An elderly couple emerges and I sag with relief. They stop, bemused, at the sight of me standing before the suite’s door.

“Are you all right, miss?” asks the woman gently.

“Yes, thank you. I’m… waiting for someone.”

They trade a glance; the man says, “This is the ninth floor,” as if that would clarify something for me.

I breathe in, breathe out. Understanding dawns, and with it, a chilling clarity. They’re facing me, facing away from the other door in the hallway. Moreover, the man’s gaze keeps flickering behind me.

I move away from the door—their door—and say quickly, “I’m so sorry. I must have been mistaken.”

My steps are steady as I walk past them. The elevator opens immediately and I escape their concerned regard. I make it downstairs, through the lobby, and outside. The city thrives, busy and loud.

I walk the streets until my feet hurt, then head home.

* * *

I’ve been here before. I know what to do. Buddha warned that the root of suffering is attachment. I’m attached to Alexander Hughes. And now I suffer for it because sometimes life isn’t fair. Pain happens. This isn’t news.

I don’t wallow, cry pointless tears, or rail against the injustice of it all. Instead, I embrace discipline. Routine. One step. Two steps.

Monday through Thursday, I wake up at six and drive to Ocean Beach. I run on the beach for an hour, my footsteps drawing lines between the sand and water. I witness dawn and find momentary peace. With the sharpest edges of pain blunted, I return home to shower and prepare for the day.

At work, I consult with new clients, draft designs, and place countless orders. My desk is the cleanest and most organized it’s ever been. I spend each afternoon at Hemlock, shadowing installers and Jim to the point that he asks Matthew to tell me to back off. I do, but only a little.

I don’t see or speak with Alex, though I do find out he’s still at the US Grant. The penthouse apartment became available while he was in Boston. He’d merely relocated to the eleventh floor.

After work, I drive to Margaret’s house in La Jolla. (Mr. Delaney was thrilled to give me the gate code and keys.) I wander the gardens and hallways. I nap in the sunroom and water the indoor plants. Instead of an aching absence, I feel Margaret everywhere.

I spend hours upon hours scouring photo albums. I sketch Robert White’s face over and over. On Wednesday, in the bottom drawer of a desk, I find a set of old journals filled with his slanted penmanship.

He was left-handed, like me.

Amidst abstract recollections of events, there are highly detailed sketches. Nature scenes. Medical drawings of muscles, bones, and organs. Many are of the heart, the organ that became his surgical vocation.

Mostly, though, he drew Margaret, remarkable renderings spanning decades. With drawings, with poetry and countless letters never sent, his love for her is clear. Profound in its depth. Untarnished by time.

She was a society darling, youngest daughter of an Old Money oil family. He was a calloused, working-class youth who dreamed of financial security. Awarded an academic scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania, he supported himself through medical school with a job at an auto-repair shop.

They met at a pep rally. He accidentally spilled cocoa on her white skirt. Margaret’s boyfriend, who played football at the college, broke Robert’s nose for the transgression. The following sequence of events is spotty, but the result is clear. Margaret left the rally with Robert.

What followed was not a storybook romance but years of trials. Anger and threats from Margaret’s family. Professional successes and failures. Patients saved and lost. His enduring love for Margaret, as well as his sorrow over their childlessness.

Robert had wanted very badly to be a father and have a family of his own. An only child, at eight years old he’d lost his parents to a car accident. His maternal grandmother had taken over his care and raised him until her own death during his senior year of high school. Though I look everywhere, I find no mention of other family.

In the last fifteen years of his life, there are gaps between journal entries, some spanning years. There’s so much I will never know. His voice. The sound of his laughter. Whether his marriage to Margaret would have survived her discovery of me.

I want to believe they would have found peace. Forgiveness. Absolution.

But I will never know.