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CON
After Lily left, I stood staring at the elevator while time lost all meaning. Maybe it was five minutes, maybe it was all night. All I knew was when I finally tore my eyes away, it was still night. The air had cooled, and the hellish red clouds just above were starting to scud across the sky. The smell of rain wasn’t musky and fresh in LA. It carried a metallic tang. An acrid aftertaste. I breathed it in as I stepped outside. The rain was already beginning to patter lightly. The glowing flames in the candles flickered angrily as they weaved away from the tiny spats. I stood over the table for another indeterminate period of time, taking it all in. She’d gone to some trouble. I recognized the carbonara and fettuccine from Giardo’s. The flowers were fresh. The candles weren’t familiar. She must have bought it all before I came home, and then she’d waited here for me to return.
I couldn’t picture her face. Not right now. If I had summoned the image of her face paling beneath its tan, the roses withering from her cheeks, her large blue eyes filling—I didn’t know what I would do. ‘
I had to do it, I reminded myself. I didn’t know how I was going to heal the wound the news would create in my relationship with Halley, but I knew it would be a damn sight easier if the knife wasn’t still buried in the flesh. Halley might understand a fling. I’d lose her respect for a while, and it would always be between us, but we would move past it eventually. But if Lily stayed between us, I didn’t know what would happen. How could she move past what stayed right in front of her?
I kept my thoughts focused on my daughter as I walked to the edge of the terrace and placed my hands, palm down, on top of the rough, chest-high wall that separated me from a thirty-story free fall. I was protecting her, the way I’d sworn to always do. The first time I’d held her, nearly twenty-two years ago, I’d looked down into her small face and swore to stand between her and pain, no matter what.
I hadn’t kept it, of course. It was an impossible promise. No one could protect someone from the multitude of papercut wounds life inflicted. I’d even been the cause of the pain at times—the demands of my career pushing aside time with her. But I’d done my best. I’d learned to let go of deals when they got in the way of our vacation plans, to walk away from brutal negotiations when they threatened to overrun her high school graduation.
Now I’d learn to let go of Lily. To walk away and not look back. It was the only way.
* * *
Imet Garrett and Landon for lunch the next day. I trusted all four of my friends implicitly, but I didn’t need a business manager like Dominic or a producer like Julian. Right now. I needed a crisis manager and something to counteract the information Kim was about to receive.
I could tell that it killed Landon to shake his head and spread his hands out, palms up. “I’m sorry, Con. She’s clean.”
I nodded grimly. I’d expected as much. After two months of being tailed, they hadn’t seen Kim get so much as a parking ticket. They couldn’t find anything in the last few years of her history either. And before that, it was all things the courts and Halley already knew. The cocaine arrest. The insider trading. The highly supported suspicion that she’d spent a few years working as a high-class call girl in Vegas. It was a long shot to hope that Landon had found something in the eleventh hour. But as disappointment crashed around me, I realized I had hoped.
Garrett leaned forward, ready to step in. “What can I do?”
I shook my head. I had no fucking clue. I’d sent clients to Garrett before when their personal lives were threatening to overshadow their professional, but I’d never needed a crisis manager myself. I’d lived the straight and narrow because I was too damn busy for detours. Besides, I didn’t need him to manage the professional fallout I might experience. That would be relatively minor, unless con artists started coming out of the woodwork to claim they’d also had relationships with me and that the power differential had made them feel coerced. Those could be disproven, but the stain might remain. What I needed Garrett to manage now was how I looked to my daughter. How did I soften the blow?
Garrett was silent for a few minutes, breaking it only to order when the server came over. Finally, he looked back at me. “There are two ways to manage this with Halley,” he said. “One, you put the onus on Lily. She pursued you relentlessly. Didn’t want to tell her because you didn’t want to ruin the friendship. Lily caught you in a weak moment. It was a one-time thing. You didn’t mean for it to happen, and it will never happen again. You’re just as disgusted as she is.”
“In other words, lying to your daughter,” Landon said bluntly.
I ignored him. I was willing to lie to Halley if that was what it took. But I didn’t like lying about Lily that way. I understood the angle, but even the idea of saying those things about her—painting her out like a gold-digging slut—made me feel sick. “What’s the other way?” I asked, wincing.
Landon and Garrett glanced at each other. I had a feeling it was obvious to them, but I needed it spelled out. My usual agile mind felt like a rat in a box. It was scrambling desperately for a way out, but all it could find were walls.
“You tell her the truth before she hears it from someone else,” Garrett said.
I waited for him to elaborate, but he seemed to think he’d said enough.
“This is what people pay you for?” I asked, my voice rising. “How is telling the truth managing a crisis?”
“Sometimes it’s the best answer,” Garrett said, unoffended. “People like the truth. It feels right when they hear it, even if they don’t like it. If you want to feed the public a lie, you’ve got to pour enough sugar on it to disguise the taste. The truth always goes down easier.”
“That’s bullshit.”
He shrugged. “If you say so.”
I clenched my jaw, pissed he wouldn’t fight back. I needed somewhere to channel all this furious, clashing energy. They let me stew until our food came. Then Garrett said, “What’s wrong with the truth?”
“I can’t have them both,” I said immediately. “If I try to keep Lily in my life, I think I’ll lose Halley.”
“No one said anything about keeping Lily. I just said tell Halley the truth.”
I stared at Garrett, not comprehending.
“Jesus,” Landon muttered. “He doesn’t even know what the truth is.”
Yes, I did. I didn’t want to acknowledge it, but I knew the truth. Lily had pursued me after I told her to stay away, but only because she felt the same electric energy I did. And it had never just been about sex. I’d fallen in love with her.
Garrett was laying it out for me, gently so as not to piss me off again. “What I’m suggesting is this—tell Halley the whole truth. You fell in love with her best friend. The two of you fought it because you knew it would hurt her, but it happened anyway. But even though you are in love with Lily, maybe for the first time in your life, you’re willing to walk away if that’s what Halley needs you to do. You really don’t fucking want to, but you will.”
