Page 98 of Wait for Him

God, he's married. He's married, Rose. Say it enough times and maybe it'll start functioning like a fence instead of a fact I keep climbing over.

I didn't say a word to anyone when we deplaned. The car ride into the city was made in complete silence, the two of us staring out opposite windows like strangers who'd been seated together by mistake. At the front desk we didn't speak either, just slid our IDs across to the receptionist and let her check us in, close enough to touch and pretending otherwise, which is a skill we've both perfected.

And now there's an elephant the size of the entire hallway lumbering along beside us as we walk toward our rooms. Our connected rooms, because the universe has a sense of humor and it is, as ever, entirely at my expense.

"Rosalie."

I reach my door first and swipe the card against the reader. I don't turn around. I can't. I'm too busy being mortified in a way I haven't allowed myself to be since I was young enough for it to be normal.

"Rose. For fuck's sake. Look at me. Talk to me."

There's a whole ache buried in how he says my name, the real one, the soft one, and if I look at him now I'll cave. I've done enough caving to last me the rest of the trip.

"I'll see you at the meeting, Jackson," I say over my shoulder, pushing the door open and trying to disappear behind it, but he's right on my heels. He catches it before it can shut me safely inside, steps through after me and lets it fall closed at his back.

"If you don't want to talk, then don't. Just listen." His voice is low, even. "I'll leave the second you've heard what I have to say. But you're going to hear it."

I give a small nod and lower myself onto the edge of the couch because I don't trust my legs to keep arguing.

He drags a hand back through his hair, and the motion lifts the hem of his shirt an inch. Just like that I'm back on the plane, remembering his stomach contracting under my palm, the way his abs went tight as he came apart for me, and heat crawls straight up my neck.

Stop it. Stop it right now.

"Rose." He exhales my name and turns to face me. "I'm only married on paper."

My eyes snap up to his.

What?

I can feel the confusion sitting plainly on my face, but I don't have enough armor left today to do anything about it.

"I haven't talked much about my father. I've mentioned him in passing, and there's a reason I keep it there." Some kind of heaviness settles across his expression, some old sadness surfacing, and every instinct I have wants to cross the room and pull his head into my chest and hold him through it. I make myself sit still and let him finish. "He's not a man I'm proud of. I don't even carry his last name, I took my mother's. We don't have a relationship, not really, not one worth the word. But I've always felt indebted to him because he raised me when he didn't have to. He's not my biological father, and he took me and my mom as his own."

He looks somewhere past me for a few seconds, and I watch him decide whether he's really going to tell me the rest.

"Because of who he is, Frank has got something over my head. Something that would send my father to prison for a very long time."

He sits on the edge of the bed and drops his head between his shoulders, and I can already feel my anger starting to rise.

Frank?

My fucking Frank?

No. Absolutely not my Frank. Nobody owns that little troll voluntarily.

But Frank who has been sitting across from me in board meetings for years, ogling my tits and generally making himself useful enough that we tolerate the rest of him?

That Frank?

Jackson is still talking, so I do something remarkable and keep my mouth shut long enough to let him finish.

"Elyse is Emirati. She was born there. She started getting caught up in a lot of shit, pissed off some pretty well-connected people and did enough of it publicly that her mother finally put her on a plane here with a temporary visa. Frank was terrified that if she got sent back, she'd go straight to prison. Or worse."

"Shit."

"Yeah. It gets more fun. Trust me."

He runs a hand through his hair again.