Her Instagram post had surpassed one hundred thousand likes.
She’d taken the image from her hospital bed. The foreground was her ID braceleted wrist on top of the covers, her feet two lumps beneath the blanket, and in the background, a man slightly out of focus. He sat on a chair, looking down at the floor as if deep in thought, with a hand on the back of his neck.
Her caption told the story of our working lunch gone wrong and how her boss had resuscitated her. She made me out to be the hero of Cape Hill.
I’d been hounded at the office incessantly to retell the story, though I didn’t want to. My employees thought I was downplaying it to be humble, but the truth was I didn’t enjoy thinking about it.
The image of the boom hitting her.
Her floating face-down in the water.
The way her rib had cracked beneath my hands. Did she think of me every time her chest ached? With every breath?
She wasn’t in her post today, which was disappointing. I’d have to wait for new pictures of her in the morning. Her post this afternoon was a video from her bedroom. She panned the camera around, showing off the ‘get well’ flower arrangements dotting every available flat surface. There were flowers from her friends, from the rest of the executive assistants on our floor at HBHC, and even the owners of the gun range where she practiced. It’d be awhile before she could resume that activity.
Her ‘favorite’ gift, she’d declared, sat in the window seat. The large glass bowl was full of stones, moss, and succulents, and three green stems rose out of it, supporting the magenta orchids that bloomed from them.
I smiled in victory.
When the video looped back to the beginning, I closed the app and set my phone down, cranking up the speed on the treadmill, and ignored the troublesome sound. There were no flowers from Damon Lynch. No card, or phone call, or even a text message. I felt confident she would have told me if there had been.
His daughter had almost died, and he couldn’t be fucking bothered to so much as reach out.
My feet pounded on the treadmill while thoughts did the same in my mind. I wasn’t one to second-guess myself, but the plan I had drafted wasn’t responsive enough. I needed to revise and adapt.
My phone chirped with a text.
Sophia: You up?
Me: Yes.
When my phone rang, I punched the ‘stop’ button on the treadmill’s console, but my breathing kept its quick tempo. She wouldn’t call unless it was urgent.
“What’s wrong?” was the greeting I gave her.
She sounded panicked. “Natasha sent me the page proofs of DuBois’s book this morning, and I just finished reading it.”
Everything went cold and still. This book could save or destroy me.
“Well?” I asked. “How bad is it?”
My stomach turned at her pause, but then she was there. “It’s not bad for you, Macalister, or your family. I don’t think there’s anything in there that isn’t already online.”
I let out a tight breath, feeling like I’d just shrugged a hundred pounds of weight off my shoulders. “Then what is the issue?”
“He doesn’t say Damon’s my father.” I could picture her stricken face on the other end of the phone. “He doesn’t fucking mention me at all.”
My quiet word filled my empty gym. “Oh.”
“Oh?” she repeated with confusion. “You have to do something. Call DuBois and ask him why he—”
“It’s late.” I grabbed a towel from the stack and wiped my face. “We should talk about this in the morning.”
The line went deathly silent, and I slowed my movements. Was she still there? The screen said we were still connected.
Her voice was colder than I would have thought she was capable of. “I just told you the thing I’ve been working on for the last five months didn’t happen. Why the fuck are you so calm right now?”
“Sophia—”
“Because you got what you wanted,” she said, answering her own question. “That’s what matters to you.” I opened my mouth to defend myself, but she gasped with realization. “Oh, my God. Tell me you didn’t know.”
I closed my eyes, wishing we could have done this as I’d originally planned.
My silence was all the answer she needed.
“How?” she cried. “How’d you know it wasn’t in the book?”
I lifted my chest as if bracing for impact. “Because I didn’t tell him.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
MACALISTER
SOPHIA MADE A SOUND OF PAIN, and it was utterly my fault. Not only had I shocked her, but she’d moved as a result, and that jolt had hurt her fractured rib.
“What?” she shrieked.
I tossed my towel angrily into the bin. “I don’t want to do this over the phone.” It’d been years since I’d driven a car, but it’d be faster than waking my driver. “You’ll give me ten minutes and I’ll come to you.”