Volition (37 page)

I love him.

I want to be with him.

I don’t know if I want to be a Rockefeller.

I’m staring at the proofs of our engagement photos on my kitchen table. These are going to be in the paper. Jesse will see them.

I’m not sure why I care that Jesse will see them because I’m not marrying him.

I haven’t spoken to him since Cece’s wedding day, and I don’t plan on ever speaking to him again. I never thought it would be this way, but it’s for the best.

Absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder. It makes you forget.

It allows you to forget how that person made you feel, and it’s just a shadow and a whisper instead of an omnipresence pumping through my veins that I’ll never get past.

He’s still here somewhere, inside my being, but I don’t have to acknowledge him. I don’t have to think about his laughter lines. I don’t have to think about what could have been.

There are too many photos.

This must have been what Kate felt like when she married Will. Hayden is American royalty, and I’m learning that our romance will never be normal.

I can’t decide.

I shove all the prints hastily into my purse without stacking them, and two fall onto the floor, facedown. There—two are gone from the pile already, two more that I won’t have to choose between.

I’m not this girl who sits in her apartment all day, choosing photos for the papers to publish.

I know he doesn’t expect me to be this girl, but that’s the cage I’ve been put in. It’s like I’m supposed to suddenly be the demure wife to the man with the big name, and I refuse.

It’s making me resent him, and I hate that.

I hail the nearest taxi because I’m too irritated to deal with the train. Instead of dropping me at Hayden’s office, I ask the driver to take me to The Grey Dog. I pick up two sandwiches, and then I walk a few blocks to Washington Square Park.

Jim is sitting on his usual bench, reading the paper, when I approach. I hand him his usual sandwich as I sit down on the bench beside him.

“Best yet, Ms. McKenna,” he tells me as he puts the paper down in favor of what I’ve brought him.

“Thanks.”

I don’t feel like it’s my best writing, though. I’m losing my touch. Everything is bland, everything is rushed, and nothing is the same as when I was tortured. I’m tortured now but in a different way. I’m being shoved into a box. I was better when I was wild and free, and my mind could dwell on the dark things that made me a good writer instead of thinking about engagement pictures and galas in the Rockefeller name.

“I don’t get it,” I tell Jim. “It wasn’t like this when we were first dating.”

“Did he invite you to all of these fancy things back then? Or was that just once the rock was on your finger?”

“No,” I say in between bites, “he didn’t invite me. He didn’t want to overwhelm me I think.”

“Well, now, he’s got you.” Jim points to my black-and-gray engagement ring. “He’s got you, and I don’t think he’ll let go.”

I feel like we’re sitting here, painting Hayden out to be a bad person. He’s not. He’s not trying to force these things on me, but I don’t think he knows I’m about to hit my breaking point.

“I don’t know what to do,” I admit.

“You could start by talking to him,” Jim says.

Sometimes, he gives the best advice because it’s the advice I give myself but never follow. The simple steps that normal people would use to communicate often elude me simply because I don’t want to follow them.

“I know,” I say, balling the rest of my sandwich back up in the bag. I’m too upset to eat it all. “I have to go now. Bye, Jim.”

“Stay beautiful,” he says as he feeds part of the crust to a bird.

I take the subway this time because I want to think. I want to formulate exactly what I’m going to say to Hayden. Of course I’m going to marry him, but I need this to be more on my terms. I can’t be the Jackie O that his family expects me to be.

I’m soothed by the slow rocking back and forth of the train until we come to an abrupt stop with screeching wheels and a stop announcement.

I climb out with the rest of the mob and make my way to Hayden’s office building. I’m greeted at the front by Amelia, my favorite security guard. She hands me a guest badge, and I’m off to the elevator bank. Hayden’s office is on the top floor because his name and penthouse are synonymous.

I feel strangely like this is
Mad Men
, and I’m the housewife visiting without calling ahead. When I reach his floor, I’m greeted by various head nods and frightened looks because my reputation as Hayden’s fiancée and as a bitch of a writer precede me.

“Oh, Ms. McKenna.” Hayden’s secretary looks up when she hears my heels clacking on the floor. “Mr. Rockefeller is in a meeting. Would you mind waiting a moment?”

Hayden always sends me through no matter what he’s doing, so I know I won’t have to wait long. I’m selfish for tearing him away from his work, but there will always be more of that.

She pushes a button and holds the receiver up to her ear, but he doesn’t pick up. She shakes her head and nervously assures me it will only be a few more minutes, but I don’t want to wait.

Old Tate is bubbling up inside me, and I walk past her without another word. I pull on the door handle with all my weight to get it open since it’s meant to stay shut even though I know it doesn’t lock.

New Tate doesn’t stand a chance when I open the door to see Jasmine Saro and my husband-to-be staring back at me.

I feel like I want to wring her neck right here and now, especially today. I’m picking out my engagement photos for the paper, ones that her boyfriend will undoubtedly see and feel, and here she is, standing in my fiancé’s office like there’s nothing wrong with this picture.

What could Jasmine Saro want from Hayden, except to have the ring that’s already on my finger?

They’re standing an arm’s width apart, which is too close for comfort. It’s too close for business.

“Tate,” Jasmine says, like we’re old friends.

We’re old
something
—that’s for sure.

“Hayden”—I look at him, completely ignoring her—“I’d like to speak to you, but it seems you’re otherwise
engaged
in this…meeting.”

“Tate?” He looks utterly confused at my anger because it’s clearly directed at Jasmine.

He doesn’t have any idea the kind of pain that Jasmine has caused me or that she was directly responsible for my flight to New York in the first place.

“I’ll see you at home,” I tell him. Then, to her, I turn and say as icily as I know I can, “I never want to see your face ever again.”

Then, I’m out of his office and in the elevator. I don’t even stop to give my badge back to Amelia before I’m out on the street.

I’m livid. I walk down the street with a fervor that won’t die because hate gives me overwhelming power.

And there’s no one I hate more on this earth than Jasmine Saro.

Then

I WAS SO incredibly late to class.

I had studied all night for my Ancient Civilizations class, and I wasn’t going to graduate from college if I didn’t pass this test. It was the last thing standing in my way before getting my golden-ticket diploma and becoming free of Lara’s control forever. I’d be able to get a job and live in the real world on my own volition without worrying about what she would think.

It was a good arrangement. I got a degree, which she hoped would be an M.R.S., and stayed out of her hair for four years. She paid for it because she had to make me look like a presentable member of society.

Next week, it would all be over—if I passed this test and if I managed to sleep between now and then. I had so much information crammed in my brain that I knew it would all fall out if I didn’t walk straight to class to put it to paper.

I couldn’t stop for coffee because even that distraction would ruin me.

I just had to go.

I pulled on whatever articles of clothing I could find, and I knew I looked like a slob, but it didn’t matter.

I had to focus.

I ignored Haley as she grumbled something about me keeping her up all night, grabbed my computer and my notes, and walked downstairs and outside.

That morning, it took me longer to walk to class from my house than usual, and I blamed my overactive brain. I rushed into class just in time to see the tests being passed out, but my usual seat in the middle was taken. I took a seat one in from the aisle near the back door and pulled out a pen.

Focus
.

I took a test from one of the TAs, slapped it on my desk, and wrote the first two answers easily. I was distracted when someone came in late, sat down next to me, and rifled through his backpack for something to write with.

There was something wrong about this.

I wasn’t myself, so I wasn’t fully attuned to the world around me or what was going on, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. I continued to ignore him and wrote down two more answers.

“Could I get a test?”

Then, it hit me.

His voice hit me right in the heart.

I looked up then and glared at him because he knew he was sitting next to me since it was the only available seat.

“You’re in this class?” I hissed because this was the first time I’d seen him in this classroom all semester.

Another TA handed Jesse a test and told me not to talk.

Oh, I’d talk if I wanted to.

I kicked him.

“You’re in this class?”

He looked at the TA whose back was to us and then turned to me.

“Yes.”

“How long?” I said between gritted teeth.

“The whole semester.”

“I’ve never seen you.”

He gestured to the back of the room.

“I come in late, and I sit in the back for you.”

For me?

“Sometimes, I come in late,” I told him.

“I always come in later.”

He knew how important this class was to me. It was the last thing I absolutely had to pass to get my bachelor’s degree to get out of here.

More importantly, he just slipped up for one of the first times in his life.

He just admitted to me that he purposely avoided me in this class, so I wouldn’t lose focus. He knows there’s something between us, and even though he’s fervently denied it in the past, he just let it surface without thinking.

I was going to fail this test.

I tried to pull my focus away from him, but with every scratch of his annoying childish pencil, I was brought back to the fact that he’d admitted to being part of this. I wasn’t crazy.

Well, I was crazy but not as crazy as I’d always thought when it came to Jesse.

I was biting my pen so hard that I was sure it would burst all over me because none of the answers were in my mind anymore.

I hated that he used pencil, but he would never use anything else because that would be too permanent. He was an artist, always drawing things in the margins or in the dirt. Pencils reminded me so much of Jesse that I never used them if I could help it.

My mind was racing over a thousand different things, but none of them would help me answer the questions on the paper in front of me. I was going to have to take another semester and pay for it myself. Then, Lara would have to cover it up to her bridge friends, saying I was off doing charity work or that I had contracted a rare disease, had taken a semester off, and therefore, couldn’t graduate in time.

I wondered if she’d even pay for an extra semester at all or if she’d just kick me out for good this time. My stomach was in knots, and we only had so long to take this final exam.

Jesse seemed on edge, too, because the pencil scratches had stopped, and he was looking over at me beneath those long dark lashes that plagued my living nightmares.

His eyes were like his hair, so dark they were almost black, and I could feel them on me as I tried to pull anything I could from my brain.

When I thought I couldn’t stand his gaze any longer, he reached down, picked up his bag, and left.

He just left.

He took his test with him and didn’t turn it in. I looked up and saw one of the TAs shaking her head at the professor because without the final exam, it was impossible to pass the class. It was worth too many points.