Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire #2) (40 page)

Not something I’d ever said. Not even close.

The seconds ticked by, and I waited and asked myself why it
was
so important.

Because they were my family, that was why. And I needed that to be real.

At last, when I thought she never would, Hope picked up the pen I’d left lying helpfully nearby, wrote in the date, and then paused with it hovering over the signature line. She took a breath, let it out, signed in one fast scrawl, then set the pen down as if it were burning her.

“There,” she said. “Done.” She stared at the paper for another minute, then turned to me and said, her voice full of wonder, “This is the first time in six years that I haven’t been alone. Since I was nineteen. This is the first. I can’t believe it. I can’t…”

Somehow, there was a lump in my throat. I gathered her into me, held her close, and said, “Six years is long enough. The six years are over.”

Hope

When Hemi and I stepped out of the lobby and into the July heat, I was still shaken.

It had felt momentous, signing that paper and seeing the other one, the one that was
done,
because Hemi had already taken care of it. Karen was going to college.

And I’d given somebody else power over her, the thing I’d been working and praying to avoid ever since my mother had gotten sick.

So many nights I’d lain awake, the cold fear gnawing at my belly as I’d envisioned her being taken away from me and hadn’t seen how I’d ever manage to avoid it. Days when Vincent had threatened to fire me. Days when there’d been a hundred ninety-four dollars in the bank account and a week to go until payday. The time when she was twelve and I was twenty, and we’d both gotten a hideous weeklong flu, one after the other, and I’d had no choice but to leave her home alone and beg Mrs. Alvarez, eighty-four and grouchy, to look in on her, because I’d had no more sick days left.

All the school holidays, the summer vacations when I’d left her home alone and thought,
If something happens to her. If they find out, and they say I’m not adequate. And then she’s twelve, and she’s in foster care.

It had been worse than that, too. I hadn’t
been
adequate. But I’d been all she’d had.

I’d felt so close to the edge, always. Now, I wasn’t.
We
weren’t. It was over. It was really over.

Except that “having somebody else” also meant “having somebody else with an opinion on what she should do, and what
we
should do.” And not just “an” opinion.
Hemi’s
opinion, which was about twice as powerful as a normal person’s, and could drive Karen into full rebellion if I weren’t careful. And then there was Hemi’s money, with the power it brought to make college happen, to make eye surgery happen. The power to change her life completely.

There was more than one way of losing a child.

Karen’s welfare is all that matters,
I told myself fiercely
. Not your ego. Not your need to be right, or your need to be the most special person in the world to her. Hemi is wonderful, and he loves her, too, so now she has two people, and that’s nothing but good.

“All right?” Hemi asked. I’d barely noticed when we’d crossed the street, but we were in Central Park now, and thankfully in the shade.

He took my hand, and I said, going for casual, “Sure. And I haven’t held hands with you since New Zealand, you know? It’s nice.”

He glanced down at me and said, “I really have been neglecting you, eh.”

I hesitated, but he
was
too busy, I’d said half an hour, and there was no time like the present. Anyway, I had a feeling this was going to take more than half an hour.

How did I say this, though? Somehow.

“You haven’t been neglecting me,” I said. “You’ve had a lot to do, and a lot on your mind. I get it. But there’s something else. You want to have the right to make decisions for Karen, and I need the right to make a decision, too. For myself.”

“Oh?” His voice was still perfectly calm, but the hand holding mine surely wasn’t as relaxed as it had been a second ago.

“I need to leave Te Mana,” I said, and his hand jerked.

“No,” he said.

“Hemi. You don’t get to say ‘no.’ Not about this.”

His profile was set, and he’d picked up the pace, skirting an elderly lady with a Shih Tzu and three kids eating ice cream, forcing me to scramble to keep up. “Why?” he asked.

“Because…” It was hard to walk this fast and talk, too. “I’m in too privileged a position, that’s why. Nobody will tell me the truth about me or my work, because they’re afraid of you. I don’t have enough to do, and nobody’s going to push me so I can learn, and I’m an outsider.”

“Then tell them you need more to do. And of course you’re an outsider. It’s been two weeks.”

I sighed. “I know you think I’m some scared little puppy. But I did that. And I said I didn’t have to go home at five, that I wanted to stay, but
somebody
seemed to have already told them differently, and guess whose name is on the paycheck?”

“I don’t think you’re a scared puppy. If you have a problem with your supervisor that you can’t solve, go to Henry.”

You see how tricky this was? I couldn’t reveal who’d said what, and have Hemi step in. How would that make anything better? “I’m in a no-win situation there,” I tried to explain. He was walking so fast, and I was trying not to pant. I passed a couple eating gelato. One of them had lemon ice. Man, that sounded good. I wanted to stroll and eat gelato, not speed-walk and argue. Maybe I should drop it and casually suggest…

Ha. Like that would work with the Human Guided Missile.
Finish it.
“People either treat me with kid gloves, or they’re…envious and bitter, and they probably have a right to be.”

“How do you know?”

“Trust me. I know. And, no, I’m not going to tell you how, other than to say that nobody else leaves at five o’clock, and everybody knows that I do, and everybody knows why. Sure, it’s been two weeks, but I’ve been at the company almost a year, and I’m more isolated now than I ever was. And I know that sounds like whining. I get that. I appreciate that you’ve wanted to give me something to do that would…that would challenge me, but this isn’t it.”

“Tell me why,” he said, “and I’ll fix it.”

“No. You won’t. If you stepped in, what good would it do? It would only make it worse. And all right,” I said when he didn’t answer. “I’m going to tell you what I’m most worried about.” I clutched his hand more tightly. I was starting to feel a little faint. It was too hot out here, and I was too nervous. I should have worn a hat, I thought fuzzily.

Hot. On my head. “Maybe we should sit down for a minute,” I said.

“I’d rather walk.”

“Uh, Hemi.” The world was going alarmingly black around the edges, and I stopped right in the middle of the sidewalk as bicycles and pedestrians veered to avoid us. ”I need to sit,” I managed to say in a voice that was coming from somewhere down a tunnel. “Please.”

He swore, and then he was walking me across to a bench and setting me down on it. “All right?” he asked.

“Uh…sure.” I put a shaking hand up to my forehead. The cold sweats had started up again, just like the day before.

“Bottle of water?” he asked.

“Please.” I just wanted him to leave.

The second his back was turned, I put my head between my knees and concentrated on breathing. There. That was better. I sat up again, muttered, “Whoops,” and went back down again. It had to be at least ninety-five out here, and so humid it was like sitting in the middle of a gigantic, soaking-wet washcloth. A hot one.

When Hemi came back with not one but three water bottles, I was sitting up, attempting to look as cool and composed as a woman could whose body temperature would have been right at home in the Saharan Desert.

“Better?” he asked.

“Sure.” I eyed his overabundance of hydration. “Thank you. But…were you thinking I’d stick one under each arm to cool me down, or something?”

He smiled, the barest touch at the corners of his mouth. “Reckon you
are
feeling better.”

I took the bottle of water he handed me, and then couldn’t get the top open, because my stupid hands were shaking. He took it from me without a word, opened the top, handed it back, and pulled out his phone.

“Yeh,” he told somebody. Charles, obviously, because the next words out of his mouth were directions. “Twenty minutes,” he said once he’d hung up.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Got dehydrated, that’s all, I guess. Much better now. And isn’t it Charles’s day off? Does the poor man ever
get
a day off?”

“He doesn’t want a day off. Lives with his sister, doesn’t he. And he likes his job.”

“How do you know? Secret sign language? Mental telepathy?”

“Because I asked him after you two moved in, when I gave him his raise. I asked, was he satisfied. He said yes.”

“Nice to be you,” I muttered. “Nice clear communication.”

“I think so. And I’m waiting,” he pointed out, “for you to communicate with me now, instead of practicing your sarcasm skills.”

Right.
Get going.
I took another drink of wonderfully cold water, then said cautiously, “I’ve…heard that, um, that people think I got Martine fired.”

Hemi’s entire body stilled. “Well, you did. Or rather, you didn’t. You got her
not
fired.”

“Yes, but they don’t know that, and how can I tell them? They say…” I took a breath and continued. “That I complained to you that she was…mean to me, because she criticized my work. And because my work was bad,” I finished in a rush. “Slow and sloppy.”

I was burning from more than the heat now. The humiliation was right there. It had never left; all I’d been able to do was shove it aside. What I’d heard in the ladies’ room had cut to the bone, because I hadn’t known if it was true.

“Of course you weren’t slow and sloppy,” Hemi said. “We both know why she said that.”

“How
do
I know for sure, though? I’ve never had an office job before. Vincent didn’t exactly praise me to the skies either, for that matter. Nathan said I was fast, but how much can I rely on that? I can’t. Maybe I
am
slow and…and sloppy. I can’t get better if I’m not getting honest feedback.”

It hurt so much to say it, especially to Hemi, especially to
myself,
but I had to say it. It was the truth.

“Fine,” he said. “I told you, you don’t have to work. I’m quite happy to have you stay home.”

“And do what? Have…blow waves? Shop? Hemi, I need to see if I can do a
job.
I need to see if I’m any good, and if I’m not, I need to find out how to
get
good. And the only way I can do that is to find someplace where nobody’s going to shield me because I’m your girlfriend, or hate me and backstab me because I’m your girlfriend, either.”

All right, I was getting agitated. Sue me.

“First,” he said, “you’re my fiancée, not my girlfriend. In six weeks, the minute we can do it, you’ll be my wife.”

“Right. And that would make it better how?”

“Second,” he said, ignoring that, “who’s hating you? Who’s backstabbing you?”

Oh, man. I’d gone there. “Figuratively,” I said.

He stared at me. “No. Not figuratively. Who?”

“Well, let’s see,” I said. “Who was upset yesterday, when I talked at that meeting? Oh, yeah.
Everybody.
Take your pick. I shouldn’t have talked. I had no place talking. It wasn’t my job. You could have told me about the meeting privately if you’d wanted to, have shared your…your vision, and your concerns about it, and I could have given you my opinion or just asked questions, for what that was worth to you. If you ever wanted to do that, I’d love to hear it. But I can’t do it at
work.
It’s not going to fly. It would be different if I had some skills, but I don’t. That’s the hard truth. I need to get some. I need to
be
somebody. I need to
do
something. I need to have something to offer.”

“You are somebody,” he said. “You’re
my
somebody.”

I laughed. I couldn’t believe it, but I did, and Hemi’s expression hardened even more. “If Karen were here, she’d say that the 1950s called, and they want their sexual politics back. I love being your somebody, but I have to be more than that, just like you do. Come on, Hemi. See.”