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“No.” As much as I hate the idea of having secrets between us, I can’t risk losing her.
Ashton grins. “Right, smart choice. Chicks can be funny about the whole stalking-and-Machiavellian-machinations business. And you can count on me to keep my mouth shut. As to whatever guilt you’re feeling, that’s just more evidence of your growing humanity. Marcus the Missile wouldn’t have cared about the means, just the end. So take that guilt, shove it deep down, and focus on the future with your girlfriend. Do what you’ve got to do to make her your wife.”
* * *
I dwell on the conversation with Ashton for the rest of the day, doing my best to suppress the inconvenient guilt. Was he right? Did I force Emma into living with me rather than just nudging her into making the right decision?
But no. Long’s shell corporation made the offer to Metz last Friday, and Emma didn’t inform me about her decision until this morning. Since I assume the landlady called her right away, that means my kitten has taken the time to think it through rather than acting out of desperation. And I’m glad about that.
For all that the primitive beast inside me wants to cage Emma in his lair, the thought that she might be with me because she has to is repellent.
I want her to want me, to love me as much as I love her. What started off as a sexual obsession has deepened into a need so powerful it bears all the markings of addiction. Except instead of destroying me, like I initially feared it would, it has enriched my life. When that $700 million trade went bad the weekend before Thanksgiving, I blamed my feelings for Emma for distracting me from what’s important instead of realizing that I was beginning to embrace the truly important things.
The things I’ve wanted since I was a child with an indifferent alcoholic for a mother.
The things I didn’t dare admit to wanting even to myself.
It had been easy to acknowledge the physical deprivations of my childhood, to tell myself that money would eliminate the hollow fear inside me—that feeling of always balancing on the knife’s edge, of being a single misstep away from a disaster. But no matter how wealthy I became, the fear stayed with me, driving me to work ever harder, ever longer.
Ashton was right about me. I’d had no off switch—because poverty had never been what I truly feared and money not what I really chased. Over the past couple of weeks with Emma, the feeling of contentment I first experienced with her has grown stronger, the anxiety over the capricious future receding until it’s nothing more than a dim shadow from the past. I can now look at what I’ve earned and know—really know, with a certainty untainted by that lifelong fear—that one bad quarter won’t wipe me out, that if I step away from work one evening, I won’t lose everything I’ve achieved.
And perversely, that knowledge has been good for my fund’s performance. I’ve been calmer, less stressed, which has enabled me to assess investments with a different eye. Over the past two weeks, we’ve taken on more risk in certain areas while dialing it back in others, and we’re up another two percent in a market that’s oscillating like a rollercoaster. I’m still working a lot, still striving to do as well as I can for my investors, but if I have to take an evening off to go to dinner with Emma and her friends, I do it without worrying that I’m undermining my life’s work, that I’m edging closer to that vague, ever-looming disaster.
Of course, it helps that Emma is so understanding when I whip out my laptop on the weekends or during the evenings—that in her own quiet way, she’s as much of a workaholic as I am. I didn’t pick up on that about her at first, erroneously assuming that since she didn’t go into a high-powered profession like business, medicine, or law, she’s likely to be less ambitious, more laid back. And she is, in some ways—the rates she charges for editing are significantly below the industry average, for instance—but in other ways, she’s just as dedicated to her chosen field. Without making a big production out of it, she edits between a novella and a full novel every week on top of having her full-time bookstore job. Each time I look up from my computer, I see her working—and she never seems to tire of it or complain.
The more I learn about my kitten, the more I both want and respect her… and the more I want the one thing I now realize I’ve been missing.
A real family.
With her.
* * *
I’m still thinking about it on Friday. Last night, each time I saw Emma cuddling her cats against her chest, I pictured a baby in their place; each time she smiled, I saw a toddler with those same dimples. It’s too soon for this, I know, but I can’t help it.
