Have you ever been trapped in an elevator? Had someone hug you so hard you couldn't breathe anymore? Had the wind knocked completely out of your belly?
That's what it felt like while I waited in the conference room, arms around my midsection, slowly rocking back and forth in the rolling chair while Kieran left to find Brandon. I prayed she would be able to bring him before his speech was supposed to start. I didn't think that he would announce his run before I returned. I hoped.
So I sat there, rocking, while the nondescript gray walls of the room closed in. I had played this scene over and over again in my mind over the last two months, rehearsing how exactly I would tell Brandon the news that I feared deep down would truly break us. That fear had stopped me so many times, but I couldn't let it now. He had to learn this from me––it was the only way he might forgive me for what I had done.
"She's just in here."
Kieran's voice was muffled through the oak door before it was pushed open, and she led a very worried-looking Brandon into the conference room. His ocean-blue eyes found me, and less than a second later, he was crouched by my side, large arms wrapped around my shaking form.
"Hey," he hummed against the crown of my head. "Shh, I'm here. I got you."
His kindness only made me shake more violently.
"Baby, what is it? What's wrong?" Brandon asked, as he cupped one side of my face with a big palm and stroked the edge of my cheekbone with his thumb.
The tenderness of the gesture choked up my throat, and almost immediately, tears started to flow again. I was so unworthy of his love––I could see that now. Maybe on some level, I always saw it. Even now, when Brandon had the world on his shoulders, when he was on the precipice of taking on even greater burdens and notoriety, he was still putting me first. I didn't deserve him.
"I-I have to tell you something," I managed to get out. "Before you...before you announce. There is something you need to know."
Brandon's normally smooth forehead crinkled in confusion. His hand rubbed my shoulder, and I fought the urge to lean in and let him hold me again. But that would be cruel and manipulative.
God, how was I going to get through it when I told him? When he inevitably left me?
"Hey," Brandon said kindly as he tried to pull me close again. "It's going to be okay. You can tell me anything, Red."
I resisted, but he wouldn't let me pull away. I relished in his touch, knowing there was a decent chance I wouldn't get to feel it again after this.
"It's the campaign, isn't it?" Brandon asked as he pushed a hand through his hair. "It's too much, right? With Miranda here, it's too much. I can call it off, Skylar. Like I said, I won't do this without you."
"It-it's not that," I managed to croak.
Brandon blinked, his handsome face so thoroughly confused. "Then what is it?"
"It's probably this."
We both jerked our heads up as Miranda burst through the doors, holding a piece of paper and followed by Jared and Cory. She thrust it in front of Brandon. It appeared to be a black and white photograph of me leaving the free clinic in Brooklyn. Pictures I now knew had been taken by someone hired by my own family.
"What the fuck!" Jane's voice rang out as she and Eric tumbled in after everyone else. "She looks refined, but this chick just gouged out half my arm."
She found me sitting in Brandon's embrace and gave me a look that said one thing loud and clear: I tried. I looked with horror at the crowd suddenly amassed in the room: three people eager to ruin me, the others there to help.
Slowly, Brandon picked up the photo. He looked to me, back to the photo, and back to me again, confusion riddled in thin lines across his forehead.
"What is this?" he asked. "Why were you...is everything okay?"
"It's what I'm trying to tell you," I said, my voice small and creaky as I looked at the damning picture. I could tell exactly when it was taken by the clothes and the way I was still walking with a protective hand over my midsection. I looked sick and underfed. I looked terrified.
Jane and Eric both came to sit at the table behind me, both of them looking curiously over my shoulder while they sat. Jane would obviously know what was going on. Eric, however, didn't have a clue.
"Maybe this will enlighten you, boss."
Cory set another piece of paper on the table, and looked at me with a satisfied smirk. My insides grew cold. Brandon immediately traded it for the first. I wanted to snatch them both away, but my body felt like it had lost all nerve endings.
"My sources in New York just delivered it," Cory said with a satisfied smirk at me. "Last of the vetting process."
"What is this?" Brandon asked again as he scanned the document.
He held out the simple white paper. I took it, although I already knew what it was. I didn't know how Cory had gotten it––a well-placed bribe, perhaps, even though whoever had leaked the information was breaking major privacy laws. He could write it off as part of the process of vetting Brandon's campaign run, but also, no doubt, it was something that allowed Cory to get rid of me. Because when I looked down at the paper, I saw the short record of my last free clinic visit, including the prognosis, with the words "mifepristone" and "misoprostol" written clearly under treatment.
"It's...it's the record of..." I trailed off, my voice hiccupping over itself. The words were literally so painful to get out. My throat ached with each one.
"It's a record of the abortion she had two months ago." Miranda's voice was clear and strong from where she stood at Brandon's shoulder. It rang through the room like a church bell. "It's simple, Bran."
Her long fingers stroked Brandon's thick hair. My tongue continued to lodge itself in the back of my throat, but I wanted to rip her fingers off. She was petting him like he was her dog, and the large diamond ring she still wore glinted under the fluorescent lights.
She set a proprietary hand on his shoulder before glaring at me. "She killed your baby."
Behind Brandon, Kieran covered her mouth with one hand and pulled her cell phone out of her pocket with the other. I closed my eyes again and cradled my forehead in my palms. I would have sold my soul to have been in any other room but this one. But, as Bubbe would say, I'd made my bed. It was far past time to lie in it.
"Oh, Christ on a fucking cracker," Jane retorted from behind me. "That's a little melodramatic, don't you think? I mean, it was a cluster of cells at that point, not the divine infant."
"Jane," Eric said in a tone that beckoned her to shut the hell up.
"Well, it's true," she mumbled, but even I could hear the bitterness in my best friend's voice. She had thought my decision was a bad one from the beginning, particularly since it hadn't included Brandon. And she was right, of course. So very, very right.
Miranda was silent, but I could feel, rather than see, her meditatively rubbing Brandon's shoulder, playing with the curls at the base of his neck. Like she had a right to touch him that way. Like he was hers.
My throat felt like it was being squeezed through; every bone in my body suddenly ached. But I knew I couldn't keep my head buried in my hands forever.
"Where did you get this?" I asked, finally finding the courage to look directly at Miranda. "This photograph? Were you having me followed too?"
She just arched a delicately shaped brow. "Turns out I didn't have to. Money will do a lot very quickly, sweetie," she said. "Especially with someone as desperate as your stepfather."
Beside her, Brandon blinked. Stun was written all over his features, rendering him utterly motionless while he stared at the papers in front of him. Then he finally looked at me. The utter horror in his clear blue eyes put an arrow straight through my heart.
"Skylar?" he asked in a voice that shook. "Is-is this true?"
Miranda's perfect, pink lips twisted into an ugly smirk. I gulped, begging my heart, beating so hard I could feel the vibrations through my chest, to slow down. It only beat faster.
My glass face obviously said it all. And for once, I wasn't sorry that I couldn't hide anything on it, because even if it cost me everything, the truth was out there. There would be nothing between us, even if the revelation blew us miles apart.
Brandon's face fell about three stories, and he literally fell backward in his crouch, as if his bones buckled under the pressure of his tall frame. He grabbed the edge of the table and squeezed so hard I thought his fingers might pop off as he moved to sit in one of the chairs.
"This is true?" he asked again. "You were––" his voice choked "––pregnant?"
I swallowed hard, trying and failing not to let my glance flutter around the room, to where Jane and Eric sat behind me, silently witnessing the proceedings, to where Miranda, Jared, and Cory watched with naked satisfaction, to where Kieran still stood quietly to the side, recording everything on her phone. She caught my gaze, but made no move to put her phone away. Good, I thought. Someone was doing what needed to be done to keep Brandon safe.
The paper in my hand crackled, and Brandon's eyes zeroed on it. He plucked it from my grasp and examined it again.
"And it was mine?" he asked once he'd determined he wouldn't learn any more from the paper, which he crumpled up and shoved into his jacket pocket.
My cheeks flamed. "Of course it was yours."
"And you never thought to tell me?" Brandon demanded in a low voice that was raising with every syllable. His eyes were suddenly very red around the rims, and his whole body vibrated. "You didn't think to tell me I was going to be a father?"
He swiped angrily at a few stray tears that escaped on the last word. The sight of them caused mine to flow freely all over again.
"I-I didn't mean to––" I started weakly.
"Didn't mean to what? Tell me about my own kid?" Brandon demanded in fractured, painful words. He snatched the paper out of his pocket and scanned it again. "Is this what you used? This mis-to-pro-stol? Is that what kill–what did it?"
I wiped at my tears, which just kept coming. Jane tried to pass a handkerchief over my shoulder, but I pushed it off. I didn't deserve pity right now. I didn't deserve anything but what I was getting.
"I...yes," I said in a splintered voice that didn't feel like my own. "Yes."
The room crackled. Miranda laid her hand back on Brandon's shoulder. I snarled at it this time, but Brandon flung it away when he stood up so quickly that his chair knocked clean over.
"'You can't hide things from me'," he intoned nastily. "Isn't that what you said? 'We have to be honest with each other no matter what, Brandon.' Did I get that right, Skylar?"
My face burned at his words––my words, which I'd used so sanctimoniously. "Yes," I whispered. "But, Brandon––"
"But nothing!" he roared.
He turned to leave, but stopped in the doorframe. His blue eyes were bright and full of pain. My tears continued down my cheeks in oceans, but he just watched impassively.
"It's not your fault, Bran." Miranda's voice rang out, snide and condescending through the room. "Lies, thievery. You can't expect much more from people who don't understand people like us. Who can't ever imagine what we have."
Kieran and I both stared at the woman who was so impossibly tone-deaf. Had she forgotten where her husband came from? That at one point in his life, he had had less than every single person in this room by a long shot?
Miranda just glared back with a thin eyebrow torqued up her high, glossy forehead. "For all you know," she said to Brandon, "she was just in it for the jewelry. Come to play dress up once the Bank of Sterling was open for business. Trying to pretend she's Cinderella."
Behind her, Jared snorted. "Pretend is right," he said, to Miranda's short laugh.
Cory, of course, had to add in his two hateful cents: "No one will forgive an abortion in Boston, boss. Not in a city that's half Catholic."
In a sudden frenzy, I unclipped the necklace from around my neck as I finally found the strength to stand up. This was why I had always been so reluctant to accept gifts from him at all. There was always going to be someone saying things like this, accusing me of being in it just for his money.
"Here," I said as I held out the sparkling rope.
Brandon stared at the necklace like it was some kind of alien. He looked like he was trying to stop from crying.
"Take it," I said. " You know I never wanted this. I...I only ever wanted you."
Brandon's eyes flickered up from the necklace. For a moment, even with all of the sadness I saw there, I thought he might pull me to him, whisper it was going to be okay. There was still love shining through his grief. I could see it; it drew me to him, a moth to his sparkling blue flame.
He took the necklace from my hand, fingered it for a moment. Then his eyes shuttered. He dropped the necklace into his pocket.
"Then you shouldn't have broken my heart," he said, so quiet and forlorn that my heart practically wrenched out of my chest.
"Brandon," I begged, my voice breaking like a thousand creaky violins. "Brandon, please!"
I tripped over myself trying to cross the short space between us, finally collapsing in front of him on my knees. Gently, he pulled me up to stand, and I gripped his hands, thirsty for his warm touch, luxuriating in it. And for a minute, I thought things might be okay again. I thought he might forgive me.
"You promised," I whispered as tears fell freely down my face, streaming rivers over my painted cheeks. "You said you'd never stop chasing. You said I had to stop running. Well, I'm here. I'm here for you now, and I know it's hard, but I'm not going anywhere!"
Brandon stared down at our clasped hands. His big fingers were motionless and wooden under mine, which clenched his palms so hard I knew he'd later see moon-shaped crescent marks from my fingernails. His thumb crept over my wrist and toyed with the edge of my bracelet: the silver cuff he'd given me, engraved with the immortal words of Yeats, written for a lover he'd chased his whole life.
One man loved the pilgrim soul in you.
And then, in one small, heartbreaking movement, Brandon pressed my fists back to my chest and let go.
"I can't."
The words were so low I barely heard them, but they had the power of a wrecking ball. My hands, as if by reflex, rose to the bared skin at my sternum and pressed at the spot that threatened to crack open.
"Brandon," I tried again, my voice unnaturally weak and pathetic. "Please!"
I saw then in his eyes, glossy, red-rimmed sapphire depths that were barely hanging on to his composure, a depth of pain I never thought possible. The rest of him was as immaculate as ever, but in his eyes, there were layers upon layers of hurt that arrowed through me in a second. And I had put it all there.
"I don't want you here," Brandon said finally, each word landing like a hammer. "Go."
He left. Miranda cast one last dagger-laced glance at me before exiting, Jared and Cory close behind.
"Don't think you're getting away with this," I heard Kieran say as Miranda passed. Then she looked at me with open pity. "I'll have a car come around to the garage," she said before she too walked out.
"Sky."
I turned and fell into the thin arms of my best friend, allowing her to soothe and stroke my hair while Eric looked on sympathetically. My whole body shook, wracked with the pain of what I'd just lost, the pain of my own mistakes.
"Come on," Jane said as she stroked my hair like I was a child. "Let's get you out of here."
I pushed away the strands of damp hair pasted to the side of my face. This time I accepted Eric's handkerchief, which I used to dab at the mess.
"We'll come with you," Jane said, turning to leave. "We were only here for you to begin with."
"No," I said as I handed Eric back his hankie. "You guys should enjoy your last night together. I...I just need to be alone."
"Sky," Jane started, obviously disagreeing with my plans. "It's fine. We can just––"
"No," I said with a vigorous shake of my head, causing what remained of my twist to come tumbling down over my shoulders. "I just want to be alone."
I didn't deserve anything else.
~