He slid in beside me and closed the door. “Home,” he told the driver.
I whipped my head toward Carlos, who was gripping the steering wheel with both hands and staring straight ahead like he was trying very hard to be invisible.
“Carlos.” I leaned forward. “Carlos, you are a good man. A kind man. A man who eats my breakfast every morning and tells me my eggs are the best he’s ever had. You saw what happened? You're on my side, right?”
Carlos glanced at us in the rearview mirror. His face was a battlefield between loyalty and self-preservation and a deep, fundamental desire to be anywhere other than this car.
“Mrs. Vale,” he said carefully, “I am a driver. I drive where I am told. I can't have opinions about what happens within the family. Nor have I ever had opinions about what happens in the back seat. I would like to retire with my pension intact.”
“Carlos,” Christopher said. One word. One syllable of authority that settled the debate.
Carlos drove.
I sat as far from Christopher as the back seat allowed, arms crossed, staring out the window while silently resenting the fact that his vulnerability had complicated my perfectly reasonable anger. That was the most infuriating part.
Ichosethis. Isignedthe paper. I saidyeson a stage in front of three hundred people. Nobody to blame butmyself.
The silence lasted four blocks. Five. Six. Seven. The car moved through downtown traffic and neither of us spoke. Too much had been said, and somehow not enough.
Then Christopher broke the silence. His voice was different. Quieter.
“I’m sorry about the restaurant.”
I didn’t look at him.
“I’m sorry about the kiwi. The fallout. Everything. I messed everything up and I know saying this doesn’t suffice but I’m deeply sorry.”
I stared at him. The remorse was written all over his face. Part of me wanted to accept his apology. Part of me wanted to slap him again.
“I don’t wanna forgive you,” I said.
He nodded. Like he’d expected that. As though he’d already decided he didn’t deserve forgiveness and was just checking to confirm.
“By the way, what is your problem with Dominic? You need to tell me and can't just keep avoiding my questions. Why am I banned from being near your brother?” I asked.
His expression went rigid. He stared at the window for so long I thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he said, “Everyone who gets close to Dominic ends up choosing him.”
He thought I would choose his brother? For what?
I didn’t respond. I turned back to the window. The car pulled through the gate and up the stone driveway. We walked into the house separately, me three steps ahead, him behind me, and the distance between us felt like an ocean.
That evening, I was in the kitchen making tea when Christopher’s study door opened and I heard his voice, clipped and irritated, on the phone.
Ten minutes later, he appeared in the kitchen doorway. His tie was gone. His sleeves were rolled. He looked like a man delivering bad news because he was.
“We have a problem.”
“Another one?”
“Someone at the hospital parking garage filmed us.”
My stomach twisted. “Filmed us doing what?”
“Arguing. The part where the security guard thought we were having a marital dispute. Where you threatened to commit a crime.” He held my gaze. “It’s online. The comments are divided between people who think it’s a passionate lovers’ quarrel and people who think you’re being held against your will.”
I set my mug down. “And whose fault is that?”
“Miley—”
