His for a Price

All the things she wasn’t entirely ready to admit to herself, even now.

“I spoke to Nicodemus not three days ago and he gave me no indication that there was anything wrong with your marriage,” Chase said, sounding impatient, which made that thing inside her pull tight. Coil harder. “In fact, you didn’t even come up.”

“Oh, I see,” she gritted out. “That must mean that I hallucinated the past month of my life, then.”

She heard the sound of papers rustling, and then a keyboard tapping, and it filled her with a completely unwarranted fury that Chase could simply...go about his business while she was nothing but stuck.

Not that she’d entirely admitted that to herself in the week or so since she’d returned home from Greece. She hadn’t allowed herself to think such a thing while tossing herself back into the life she’d left behind here and wanted so desperately to believe still fit like a glove.

But that didn’t make it any less true.

“Although, now that I think about it, he did seem particularly focused on business,” Chase said, almost grudgingly. “He’s usually a little more friendly. Only a little.”

Mattie waited, but Chase didn’t offer up any other details. She realized she was clenching her teeth, and forced herself to stop.

“Thanks,” she said mildly, though inside, she was so terribly raw and too hot and shattering into jagged little pieces. “I’ll write you a note, shall I? And the next time you see him or talk to him, you can give it to him, and we can all pretend we’re in grade school together.”

“Mattie—” Chase began.

“I don’t want to hear whatever you’re about to say,” she told him, and there was nothing smooth or glass-like about her voice then. She only wondered how she’d held it together so long. “I did what you wanted me to do, and you couldn’t even do me the courtesy of showing up to witness it. And I only called you back today because I thought you should know the state of things between Nicodemus and me. Foolishly, I was worried that it might affect the business. I’m delighted to hear that while Nicodemus may have broken a promise or two to me, all is well where the company is concerned.” She laughed, and it was not a nice sound. “As ever, that’s all that matters.”

“It’s not all that matters.” Chase sounded tougher than the brother she knew. Harder. Colder. “But it’s the only thing we have left. And if that doesn’t mean something, Mattie, then I don’t know what does.”

It’s not the only thing, a tiny voice whispered inside her. It’s a company. It’s not us.

And Mattie realized then that she was miserable. Pure and simple.

She let that unfortunate truth trickle through her, filling her up until she hardly recognized herself, as if it had changed her from the inside out. Altered her. It made her want to throw her phone across the room and watch it break into pieces. It made her want to curl into a ball and cry for days, as she’d only done one other time in her life.

She’d been a liar for most of her life because there was one truth she couldn’t tell. And she wondered why she’d never noticed that keeping that secret had changed her. Turned her inside out. Made her the kind of woman who could look at a man she loved and be too afraid to admit it, even to herself.

That thudded into her. Like a sledgehammer. Like Nicodemus’s heartbeat beneath her palm. Like one more true thing she couldn’t tell him, couldn’t say out loud, couldn’t let herself believe.

“Do you think about that day?” she asked Chase, because they were what was left. The company was incidental. Or it should have been.

His silence told her he knew exactly what day she meant. And more, that he did think about it. But they hadn’t spoken of it. Not in twenty years. Not since it had happened.

And she didn’t want that guilt anymore, the guilt that had always convinced her that it was her fault they had this distant, strained relationship. That it was her fault they were like this.

“I get that you’re upset, Mats,” Chase said after an uneven moment, when there’d been nothing but that heavy silence between them that she wasn’t sure he’d break. “But I don’t see any point in revisiting old ghosts. Particularly those ghosts.”

“I’m guessing that means you don’t wake up every night of your life screaming, then,” she heard herself say, as if from a far-off height. “Calling out for her again and again.”

“What is the point of this?” And she’d never heard him sound like this, not in years. Like there was something raging beneath his skin, too. “What is there to be gained? I’m sorry that you still have the nightmares, I am. But dragging ourselves back through this swamp is only going to—”