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“I fucking say so. I’ve got a plan for tonight too. If you wanna hear it.”
“Let’s have it.”
“Leo—bring me that bottle of Johnny Walker, would you? Thank you, sir.” I poured Wilder a finger and poured myself two. “And now, we’re gonna get so blackout drunk, we forget women ever existed.”
41
carte blanche
JESSA
The night would not bloody end.
Dramatic as it was to say, I suffered through dinner with nine-tenths of my mind on Remy. Thoughts circled around in my brain—where he was, how he was, if there was any way for me to make it better. Which was a silly thought because I knew exactly the things that would make it better. I wished I was performing them instead of being subjected to Henry in this new and unflattering light.
At the moment, we were walking along the river downtown with Cass and Davis, though they’d pulled ahead of us. I watched with longing as the distance between us lengthened.
Henry was blathering about something and took my hand. I tried to retrieve it.
“Oh, sorry. I’m cold,” I said in hopes of stuffing my hands in my pockets where he couldn’t reach them.
“I’ll warm you up,” he answered with a smile, angling for my lips.
I backed away with an awkward squeak. “Henry, please stop.”
He frowned. Really, it was more like a pout. “I...I thought this was what you wanted?”
I sighed heavily, squeezing his hand and pulling him toward a bench. “I thought so too,” I said as I sat.
Henry sat next to me, the bench so small that we were arm to arm. “Is this about Remy?”
“Yes and no. Mostly, it’s about how I don’t think I love you after all.”
“At . . . at all?”
“Well, of course as my friend. Though that word feels a bit thin, wouldn’t you say?”
“I can’t think of a better one either.”
“I know I’ve left you in a lurch with your father and how anxious he is for you to settle down, but I...I just don’t think it can be me anymore. And I don’t think you think it should be me, either. You don’t love me, Henry. Not the kind of love required to maintain a marriage.”
He was looking at my hand threaded in his. “No, Bits. I don’t. You’re right. And truthfully I don’t know if I’ll ever truly make my father happy. Do you know why he wants so badly for me to get married? Why he’s leveraged my inheritance on it?”
My brows knitted together. “Because he wants you to prove you’re serious?”
He shook his head, his eyes down. “Because he . . . he found out I-I’m . . .”
I laid my other hand on top of ours, my heart tight. “Henry, it’s all right. What is it?”
He finally lifted his gaze, his crystalline eyes meeting mine with a depth of sadness I couldn’t fathom. “Because I’m gay, Bits.”
A cold tingle spread across my cheeks and hands, my breath catching, my mind racing.
“You’re . . .”
He nodded, looking back at our hands. “He caught me, you see. I’d brought a friend home on holiday, no one else knew. No one else knows other than the men I’ve been with. I’ve never...I’ve never said it out loud before. But Father...I suppose this is his way of wedging me into whatever life he designs.”
“How long have you known?”
