Sin and I laughed politely.
“Now, who is the gorgeous redhead on your arm?” Dean asked, dropping the bomb into the middle of our tiny group as if it was a discarded gum wrapper.
I stared at the ground where I imagined it to be, a huge ticking machine with an angry red count down to explosion. 2 minutes 30 seconds.
“This is Giselle Moore,” Sinclair said smoothly. “She is a Parisian transplant and a very talented artist at the gallery. Her showcase is coming up in January, I think you would be a fan of her work.”
“Oh wonderful. You know how I’m always looking for the next big thing. Are you it, Giselle Moore?”
I smiled but I could still feel Margot’s crushing censure and it took everything I had not to flee from it. “I’m happy to be the next thing, if not the biggest. I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity.”
“The accent, it’s not quite French.”
“I was born in Naples, actually.”
“Enough,” Margot spit, finally roused out of her murder plotting and into action. “This is ridiculous small talk. Sinclair, what are you doing here with her?”
Her. If I decided to be with him, this man I loved, I would have to get used to hearing that. There were a lot of words for a woman in my position: slut, whore, home wrecker, mistress, and adulterer. And yet, until now, I had never known a pronoun could be so vicious. Her; that woman who stole her own sister’s boyfriend.
Revulsion rolled through me.
“I enjoy spending time with Giselle, as you well know,” Sinclair was saying in that implacable way of his.
It only made Margot incensed.
“Fuck that.”
“M,” Sinclair reproached at the same time that Dean gasped, “Margot!”
She shook off her date’s arm, stepping forward to press a finger to Sinclair’s chest. She vibrated with righteous indignation. “I was supportive of you in Mexico. I stayed away and let you have a torrid little holiday fling. But we are living in the real world now and fantasies like this,” she waved her hand in my direction as if indicating shit on the sidewalk, “they don’t exist in real life for a reason. Sure, she’s pretty but have you even thought about the consequences?”
She wasn’t finished, I could tell. But something had shifted in Sinclair’s posture, a subtle broadening as his own anger infused him with strength and superhuman intimidation. His anger wasn’t even directed at me and I felt my knees weaken under the pressure of his gaze.
“I wasn’t living in reality, M, I was living in the fucking matrix. Nothing had meaning to me but the next meeting, the next deal, how people perceived me in the business world. Have you ever known me to make a decision lightly? Don’t come at me like a scorned woman for falling in love with someone other than you or Elena. I’m fully prepared to reap the consequences but only from the people who were really wronged. You can’t plan for something like this. It happened. It’s done.”
There was a pregnant silence. Sinclair’s hand slipped from my back to the curve of my hip. He tugged me close to his side where my body settled easily like a puzzle piece. We both sagged slightly into each other.
“I’m happy with my decision,” Sinclair said softly.
Margot stared up at him with large unblinking eyes. Sinclair’s words had cracked open her hard exterior, leaving her open and vulnerable beneath our scrutiny. I could see the truth of her love in the glazed stare, the trembling lower lip, but I could also read her determination to support him in the way she squared her shoulders, nodded her head curtly at him before turning to me.
“I hope you’re half as brave as him. He deserves a lot.”
“I know,” I said, because she was right on both accounts. Sinclair was the bravest man I knew, pursuing what was right for him – which was somehow me – despite all the obstacles, moral and physical. Being with him, taking that final step in the betrayal of my sister, wasn’t about me being a villain, it was about me a heroine, his heroine.
This is going to kill you, this has been killing you all along, but I’m going to pull you out of this hellish situation and I’m going to love you more than anyone ever has every day after to prove to you how much that pain was worth it. We are going to resurrect each other.
Sinclair’s words from our lunch date reverberated through my head.
I straightened my spine, skated my hand under his coat and around his back so that we both clutched each other. “I’ve always appreciated your take on the situation, Margot. What you’ve said, what you are saying, isn’t wrong. But neither is this.”
Her lips rolled under but after a long moment of intense staring, she shifted on her feet and nodded at me. “Okay. Good luck then.”
She turned back to Dean, who was standing with soggy shoulders a couple feet behind her. She hesitated before reaching up on her tiptoes to press a kiss to his cheek. “I’ll meet you at the car.”
He nodded but his eyes were on Sinclair. After Margot moved out of hearing distance, he took a step forward to extend his hand to Sin, his eyes sad despite his smile. “Sorry about my girl. You know how she can be, fire and ice and all that.”
“I don’t know,” Sinclair said firmly, deliberately. “But I’ll take your word for it, Dean.”