Chapter 5 - The Glass House
The rain started while we were crossing the Queensboro Bridge in the back of the car.
It was a heavy, drumming November rain that turned the red tail lights of the traffic into long, bleeding ribbons across the asphalt. Inside the Maybach, the partition was raised, shutting us into a leather-and-wood cocoon that smelled of wet wool and the faint, bitter trace of the champagne we had barely touched.
Ethan hadn't spoken since we left Calder House. He sat with his head tilted back against the leather headrest, his tie undone, his eyes closed. His left hand was still on the seat between us, his fingers curled loosely, mere inches from mine.
"You didn't have to do that," I said quietly, staring at the droplets racing across the tinted window.
"Do what?" he asked, not opening his eyes.
"Tell her you'd have security throw her out. Half the people at that gala were her third cousins. It will be in the columns tomorrow morning."
"Let it be in the columns." He turned his head toward me, opening his eyes. The dim blue ambient light of the car’s interior made his gaze look almost charcoal. "Did you mean what you said?"
"About her necklace? It was in the international business section on Monday. Her ex-husband took sixteen million in unsecured loans from a pension fund. She's liquidating her personal jewelry through Christie's next month."
"Not about the necklace," he said. He reached out, his hand closing over mine on the leather bench, his fingers cold, his grip unyielding. "About the dirt. About things growing or dying."
I looked down at our joined hands. The contrast between us was absurd—my fingers, slightly calloused at the tips from clipping wire and stripping thorny stems; his, pale, perfectly kept, the hands of a man who moved numbers across digital continents with a stroke of a stylus.
"I meant that people like Victoria think everything can be acquired through negotiation," I whispered. "She thought because you loved her once, you were an asset she could reacquire whenever her liquidity ran low. She doesn't understand that some things, once they're broken, stay broken."
"And us?" he asked. The question was barely more than a breath against the steady, rhythmic thwack-thwack of the windshield wipers. "Are we broken, Claire?"
My heart gave that violent, terrified leap against my ribs.
"Ethan, we aren't anything," I said, trying to pull my hand back. "We're a contract. You needed the voting shares. I... I needed to know what it felt like to be close to you for five minutes before I turned into an old maid who talks to hydrangeas."
Ethan sat up. He didn't let go of my hand. He shifted across the wide leather seat until his knee was pressed against mine, his large frame crowding me into the corner of the car.
"Is that what you think this is?" he demanded, his voice low, fierce, and vibrating with an anger that wasn't directed at Victoria, or his father, or the board. It was directed at me. "You think I picked your name out of an alumni directory because you were 'familiar'?"
"You said you remembered me from high school!"
"I remembered everything about you!" he snapped, leaning closer until I could see the tiny pulse beating at the base of his throat. "I remembered that you sat behind the biology lab every Tuesday afternoon reading seed catalogs because you didn't want to go home to an empty house after your mother's first surgery. I remembered that you gave your winter scarf to a sophomore who was crying by the bike racks in December of our senior year. I remembered that when Victoria laughed at your coat during the Thanksgiving assembly, you didn't cry—you looked at her like she was the poorest person in the room."
I stared at him, my mouth slightly open, my breath catching in my throat.
"You... you noticed that?"
"I couldn't stop looking at you," he whispered. His anger seemed to break, replaced by an exhaustion so profound it made his shoulders slump. He brought his other hand up, his fingers cupping my jaw, his thumb tracing the curve of my lower lip with a gentle, agonizing reverence. "I was seventeen years old, Claire. My father had already mapped out the next thirty years of my life. I was supposed to marry an Ashford, take over the firm, and produce two suitable heirs for the trust. I was a coward. I did what was expected of me because I didn't know how to be anything else."
"And Victoria?"
"Victoria was an assignment," he said, his forehead resting against mine now, his breath warm against my cheek. "She was part of the prospectus. When she left for London, I didn't mourn her. I mourned the fact that I had wasted ten years pretending to be the man my father wanted me to be."
"Then why the blind date?" I asked, my voice trembling so hard the words barely held together. "Mia said she set it up."
Ethan closed his eyes. A faint, self-deprecating smile touched the corners of his mouth.
"I paid Mia's gallery rent for six months through an anonymous foundation," he confessed. "I told her if she didn't get you to that restaurant by Friday, I would buy her landlord's building and turn it into a storage facility for municipal bonds."
I sat frozen, the shock running through my veins like ice water before turning into an incredible, blinding heat.
"You... you bribed my best friend?"
"I was running out of time, Claire," he murmured, his lips brushing against my temple, then trailing down the curve of my cheek toward my mouth. "The trust deadline was approaching. My father was moving the merger forward. And I had spent twelve years watching you from three blocks away in SoHo, buying flowers through assistants because I was terrified that if I walked into your shop, you would look at me and see my father."
"Ethan," I breathed, my hands coming up to grip the lapels of his tuxedo jacket.
"Don't tell me this is a contract," he whispered against my mouth. "Tell me you hate me. Tell me I'm arrogant. Tell me I'm insane. But don't tell me this is fake."
May you like
He kissed me.
It wasn't the polite, tentative kiss of a man who respected legal boundaries. It was deep, desperate, and filled with twelve years of silence, hungry and unyielding, his hands tangling into my hair, pulling the pins loose until the dark curls fell around our faces in the shadow of the Queensboro rain.
