Trillion(31)

Rolling my eyes, I say, “It’s nothing like that. He cares about me. He’s my boyfriend.”

She clucks her tongue. “Don’t be so na?ve. Men only care about one thing and if you think otherwise, you’ve got another think coming. He’s going to smash your heart into a million pieces. Just wait.” Mom paces some more. “Oh, god. Sophie. What have you gotten yourself into?”

“Just because Dad left you doesn’t mean Nolan’s going to leave me.”

Her cool gray eyes turn glassy. It’s an unspoken rule in our household never to bring up my father … now I know why.

“This isn’t worth getting upset over, Mom.” I spring up and grab a tissue from the box on the coffee table. She swipes it from my hand, catching a few tears that roll down her gaunt cheeks before dabbing at the corners of her eyes.

I hate to see her in pain, and knowing I’m the cause of this …

“He’s a good man.” I place a hand on her shoulder.

“He’s old enough to be your father,” she says. “It’s just wrong.”

“I’m an adult.”

“You’re in high school.”

“Only for a few more months …” I force a tight smile. “I’m not a little girl anymore. You have to trust me to make decisions like this.”

She peers out the window of our living room with its parking lot view, listless and silent.

“You didn’t seem to have a problem when he took me out to dinner that first night,” I remind her.

“It was different. We were about to be evicted and you swore to me it was only dinner.” She moves away, heading to the kitchen and unscrewing a bottle of wine before pouring a generous amount into a Mason jar. “Obviously you know this is wrong, otherwise you wouldn’t have been keeping it a secret all this time.”

“I only kept this a secret because I knew you were going to overreact.”

Her pointed stare trails to mine, slow and audacious. And she scoffs. “You think you’re grown now? Fine. Don’t come crying to me when this explodes in your face.”

Underneath it all, she means well.

She loves me and doesn’t want me to get hurt. There’s nothing I can say to change her mind … not now.

“That specialist Emmeline’s been seeing? He’s a friend of Nolan’s,” I say. “He’s paying for everything.”

Her mouth presses into a hard, thin line.

Ever since Nolan referred us to his friend’s research center, Em’s been making noticeable strides, and it’s only been a couple of months. At this rate, the experimental treatment could change her entire life. Ours too.

“You told me you found him online,” she says. “You said you applied for his program.”

“I said what I had to say.”

“Apparently.”

The loudest kind of silence settles between us.

“I’m leaving,” I say. My cheeks heat when I think of the true meaning of my words. I might as well be saying, “I’m going to have sex with my boyfriend … see you later.”

Mom finishes her wine, wordless, and I slip back into my shoes. She doesn’t try to stop me—not that she could.

Nolan and I are in love.

Nothing can keep us apart.





Twenty-Three





Trey



Present



“These were my father’s.” I open a box of Cuban cigars and slide them across my grandfather’s mahogany desk in the center of the study the next night.

Two hours ago, I sent a Town Car for Sophie. She arrived in a cloud of floral perfume. Tight jeans. Cashmere top. Silk headband with a leopard print. Tiny gold studs in her ears.

I imagined her standing before her bathroom mirror, primping and preening down to the last detail—all for me.

She can claim she’s not interested all she wants, but she made an effort to look good tonight …

“Always thought I’d save these for a special occasion,” I continue. “Wedding day. Birth of a child.”

“I thought you never wanted those things?”

“Just because you never wanted something doesn’t mean you’ve never thought about it before.” There was a brief phase in my late twenties, when I thought maybe I could be the kind of man my father was. But every woman I dated tried to morph herself into what she thought I wanted to be or had transparent motives. It was easier to keep things physical, to cycle through them once boredom settled in.

And that’s what marriage is to me … perpetual boredom.

Eventually the sex fizzles into a monotonous hell. The conversations grow stale. The attraction wanes.

Who in their right mind would want that if it weren’t forced upon them?

Apparently Nolan Ames …

“Have you ever smoked one?” she asks, reaching for a cigar. She drags it beneath her nose, inhaling the way I do when I want to remember the way my father used to smell. Like tobacco, leather, and a trace of my mother’s perfume after she hugged him.

“Once. On the tenth anniversary of their death. Thought it would make me feel closer to him.”

“And did it?”

Distorted memories of that day dance through my head. A coldhearted reporter from a major newspaper had just called asking for a quote. I was drunk. Angry. Then numb. I wanted to feel something … else.