Ruthless Rival (Cruel Castaways)

Present

She was here.

In my domain, in my territory, in my claws.

Whether it was her father who’d pushed her into my arms or the mystery surrounding me, Arya had finally taken the bait. She looked exhausted. The outline of her ribs poked through her blouse. There was something haunting about her face. But I’d take her any way I could have her. That, at least, hadn’t changed.

We had a pleasant meal, although I could tell her mind was elsewhere. My bet was that Daddy dearest had finally owned up to his wrong deeds and she’d had to not only face the truth but swallow it whole. After I paid (I wondered if watching her write a check for all the meals I’d paid for was going to be as sweet as drowning myself inside her), I suggested we take a walk.

“I could use a walk.” Arya surprised me by not being her usual defiant self. We strolled along Greenwich Avenue. The street was bustling with people, dogs, and life. As surreal as being with her again in New York was, I couldn’t stop myself from enjoying it. Countless times I’d imagined myself as a teenager taking her places. I’d fantasized about being someone else. The son of a surgeon and a child psychologist, maybe. Taking Conrad Roth’s precious daughter for ice cream. He’d have let me too.

“My father wondered if your clients would be open to a settlement.” Arya wrapped her arms around herself, her cheeks flushed with the wine and the meal.

Ah. So this was what this dinner was about. A grim smile found my lips. “We weren’t open to settlement pretrial, so that’s a goddamn stretch if I ever saw one. Also, I’d appreciate if next time he uses his attorneys as a channel of communication.”

She pursed her lips.

I nudged her shoulder with mine as we walked. “Hey. Let’s not talk about that.”

There was a lull, but then Arya forced herself to smile. “So tell me about your childhood. I’m still trying to figure out where I’ve seen you before.”

This was my chance to come clean, if I’d ever had one. Since I wasn’t a complete moron, I passed on the opportunity. But it was a reminder I couldn’t romance this woman. I was deceiving her to the highest degree by not revealing my true identity.

“I grew up here in New York. Went to a private school when I was fourteen. My parents and I didn’t really get along.”

“What do your parents do?”

“My father owns a deli, and my mother managed an estate.”

So far, not one lie. Although my sperm donor’s shop was a continent away, and my mother had managed the Roths’ estate by sweeping the floors.

“Do I know this private school?”

“You do.”

“Does it have a name?”

“It does,” I confirmed.

“Wow, you’re really not going to tell me.” But her eyes clung to my face, the distant sparkle of hope willing me to contradict her. “You’re impossible.”

“And you love it.”

“So how did you find yourself at Harvard Law School, seeing as you and your parents aren’t on speaking terms? Don’t tell me you got a full ride. That’s nearly impossible. Especially in your tax bracket.”

She still believed I came from money. I didn’t correct her assumption. This was the point when I considered how much to tell her. Only Riggs and Arsène knew my story. Ultimately, I realized it didn’t really matter.

“Promise not to judge?”

“Can’t promise that, Counselor. But I’m not usually the judgy type.”

I stuffed my hands into my front pockets. “I had a . . . a sponsor of sorts.”

“Phew, I was worried you were going to confess to bestiality.” She pretended to wipe her brow. “What’s a sponsor, exactly? Is that a code for sugar mama? Or is the correct term a cougar these days?”

“I’m not sure what the terminology for it is, but she’s the one who put me through law school when I couldn’t even afford the train ticket to Boston.”

“Wait, she shelled out six figures for your education?” Arya sobered up. “Are you that good in bed?”

I let out a laugh that seeped into my bones. It was the first time I’d really laughed in decades. My body wasn’t used to that anymore.

“First of all, the answer is yes, I am, in fact, that good in bed. Second, get your mind outa the gutter. Mrs. Gudinski was in her fifties when I was in high school. She was very lonely. I was a stable boy.”

“Sounds like a well-produced porn movie so far.”

I bumped my shoulder into hers again, and we both laughed.

“She had horses. Expensive ones. But she only came to visit them, never to ride. Her late husband was an amateur equestrian. She kept the horses to honor him but had no interest in them whatsoever. She had too much money and no one to spend it on. She needed someone to keep her company during the holidays. Someone to visit her on the weekends. You know. Someone to care.”

“And that someone was you?” Arya raised a skeptical eyebrow.

I flashed her a wounded frown. “Me and my closest friends, who I roped into it. Together, we became one big, screwed-up family.”

“Huh.”

“Don’t ‘huh’ me. Tell me what you think.”

“You don’t strike me as a caring person.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“For one thing, because all you want is to bed me. Relationship-phobe much?”

Her jealousy stirred something dangerous in the pit of my stomach. The kind of feeling you get when you realize you’ve just survived a near-fatal car crash.

“That’s different. I don’t want anything serious with you because I cannot afford to be with you. Dating the daughter of the person I’m suing, especially in a case like this one, is not a healthy career move.”

“Do I smell leverage?” Her eyes lit up as we picked up our pace to get warm.

“No, you smell a pragmatic business decision. For you too. Imagine what it’d look like if word got out. Our relationship is doomed. That doesn’t mean I’m against settling down when the right woman arrives.”

“Way to make a woman feel special.”

I laughed.

“Are you still in touch with her? With your sugar mama?” Arya hugged her midriff, protecting herself from the cold.

“Yes. What about you?” I asked.

“I don’t know her, but I mean . . . I could give her a call?” She played dumb. I laughed some more. Shit. This was a lot of laughter.

“What were you like as a teenager?” I amended my question.

“Rebellious. Angsty. Bookworm.”

A knowing smile tugged at my lips. I still remembered her gulping books up, at least one a day during summer breaks, like the words would fade if she didn’t read them fast enough.

“Bookworm,” I repeated, feigning surprise. “What’s your favorite book?”

Atonement.

“Atonement, hands down. I stole it from my local library when I was fourteen, because it was risqué and I knew my parents would never let me purchase it. It’s tragically underrated. Have you read it?”

“Can’t say I have,” I said, tsking. I couldn’t, as a matter of principle, read the book that had caused my downfall. Because if I hadn’t kissed Arya . . . if I hadn’t caved in to her request . . .

Then what? You’d have stayed in the slums, with a mother who didn’t love you and a girl you were pining after but who could never be yours, only to grow up to be a criminal.

Things could have gone a lot worse, I knew. If I’d stayed home and gone to a shitty school. Because even if that first kiss had gone unnoticed, the second or the third or the fourth one wouldn’t have. And even if all our hypothetical kisses had gone undetected, I still couldn’t have had her. I would have had to sit on the sidelines and watch as Arya fell in love with someone she could actually be with. A Will or Richard or Theodore. Who had a driver and a maid and a college adviser from age ten.

“You should,” Arya said.

“Loan it to me.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t give out my favorite hardbacks as loans. That’s a rule.”

“Rules are meant to be broken.”

“Interesting take, from a litigator.”

We stopped in front of Jefferson Market Library. The clock on the tower crawled to five minutes before midnight. I couldn’t believe we’d spent so many hours together just walking and talking. It was like the last twenty years hadn’t even happened.

Only they had.

They were there, in the inches between us, cold and lonely and filled with missed opportunities and unadulterated injustice.

“Why are you really here, Arya?” I turned toward her, my tone rough and coarse, like the scales of a sea creature. “And please, spare me the fine-dining bullshit.”

She wet her lips, dropping her gaze to the ground.

“I came to tell you I’m not coming to court again. Today was my last day. I’m done punishing myself for the things he did. I can’t stomach hearing what these women have been through.”

“You think he did it?” I needed to hear her say that. To disown the man she’d once chosen over me. Our bodies were flush against one another. You could barely fit a needle between us now.

“Yes,” she said quietly.

I reached with my thumb and index finger to tilt her chin up. Her eyelashes fluttered. They were shining like diamonds, full of tears. Swamp eyes, I’d called them when we were kids. But that wasn’t true. They were mossy. The kind of velvety green you could stare at for hours. She held my gaze boldly.

Silver-spooned princess.

The clock hit midnight behind her shoulder, chiming once.

“The witching hour.” She closed her eyes, letting two tears roll down her cheeks. “In books, strange things happen during that time.”

I cupped the sides of her neck, drawing her close, breathing her in. “In reality too.”

And just like that, two decades later, I made the same mistake Nicholai Ivanov had and crushed my lips against Arya Roth’s, knowing the world might explode and that my demise would be worth it.

My hands were in her hair, yanking lightly, like I’d dreamed of doing all those years. My blood flooded with desire. I wanted to ravish this woman and leave nothing for the man who came after me. She opened her mouth for me eagerly, our tongues playing together, a small whimper coming from somewhere deep inside her throat. I sank my teeth into her lower lip, tugging her closer, licking her lip before diving in for a deep, feral kiss. I curled my fingers around Arya’s waist, pressing her body to mine. There was not enough of her, and suddenly, I felt a little panicky. That there was only one Arya in the world. One chance at having her. I withdrew my mouth from hers, pushing her curls from her face. Her eyes were hungry. Full of things. Bad things. Good things. Arya things.

“Come home with me.”

Fuck. It sounded like a command more than a request. She stiffened in my arms, descending back to earth, the fog of dopamine dissipating from her body.

She put a hand on my chest. “I’m not going to sleep with you, Christian.”

“Is it the bet? Because screw the bet.” I almost crushed my teeth into powder, outraged by my own desperation. I’d slept with dozens of women over the years and had always been in charge. Of the narrative, the rhetoric, the fine print, the situation.

“It’s not about the bet. You’re right. We can’t be together, and I’m not sure it’s a good idea to dive into this with you when I’m feeling so . . .”

“Vulnerable?” I offered.

“Confused,” she said firmly. “I’m going through a lot. So if you’re looking for more than friendship, don’t contact me. I don’t do forbidden.”

We were forbidden when I couldn’t afford the clothes on my back and you asked me to pin you against your library shelves. You liked it, then, when you wanted to destroy me.

“You’ll change your mind,” I said, with more confidence than I felt.

“What makes you say that?”

“We’re good together. We have chemistry. We make sense. Doomed things are always sweeter, don’t you know? This thing”—I pointed between us—“it’s not going anywhere until we act on it. You want a friend? I’ll give you a friend. But you’ll want more. I guarantee it.”

“Oof.” She dropped her head to my shoulder, chuckling softly. “I’m too old for this.”

“For what?” I pressed my hand to the small of her back, inhaling her greedily, smelling her pending departure.

“This. It was easier to hate you when I didn’t know you at all.”

“You always knew me,” I murmured into her hair.

“You know? I think you’re right. My soul . . . it feels calm when it’s next to yours.”

I smiled grimly.

If only she knew.

The next day, I arrived at the courthouse with a mixture of irritation and relief. Arya wasn’t there, which meant that for once, I could do my job without a constant semi and the hovering question of what was going through her head, but also that I didn’t have the luxury of bathing in her presence. Of knowing she was only a few steps away.

Which was why, as soon as I caught up with paperwork back at the office, I gave her a call.

“How did you get my number?” She typed away on her computer on the other end.

“You gave me your business card, remember?”

“Yes. I also remember you throwing it away.”

“Irrelevant. I’m a man of limitless abilities.”

That was a roundabout way of saying I’d gotten my secretary to look her up in the yellow pages.

“You mean limitless bull crap.”

“How about hot dogs by the New York Public Library? I have a book I need to borrow. Seven thirty okay?”

“First of all, the library closes at five. Second, no, actually.” She stopped typing for a second before resuming her work. Was I the only one who was obsessing about that kiss? Apparently so. Arya sounded like she had other things on her mind. “I can’t. I have somewhere to go.”

“Want some company?”

Just fucking offer her your balls already. Throw in your apartment too, Christian.

If this was how I reacted to one kiss, I definitely had no business sleeping with this woman.

“I’m not sure you’d want to give me company.”

“Where are you going?”

“The cemetery.”

I dropped the pen I was holding, wheeling myself backward and turning to look at the calendar hanging on my wall. Shit. March 19. Arya and Aaron’s birthday. I pushed my chair back to my desk, where my phone was on speaker.

“The cemetery sounds fine. Which one?” I pretended not to know.

There was a pause on the other end.

“Why would you want to go with me to the cemetery?”

“Isn’t that what friends do? Be there for one another?”

“Is that what we are now? Friends?”

“Yes,” I said, even though giving her friendship in return for what she’d done to me was crazy, even by my standards. “We’re friends.”

Another beat of silence. I had no idea what I was doing.

“Mount Hebron Memorial.”

“Who are we visiting?”

“My brother.”

“Do you think he’ll like me?” It was a thing we’d done back then. Pretend like Aaron was still around. Argue, tease, and laugh with him.

Arya stopped typing and sighed. “I think he’d love you.”

Mount Hebron Memorial hadn’t changed. The giant weeping willow was still there, hovering above Aaron’s grave. I saw Arya’s outline curling above her brother’s tombstone like a question mark and had to stop and absorb her. Leggy and stylish in her designer pencil skirt and red-bottomed heels. Larger than life, and yet not much larger than the Arya I’d met almost twenty years ago. A firefly; small but glowing. I pushed the wrought iron gate open, a luxury I hadn’t had as a trespassing kid. Arya sensed my presence and turned around, throwing me a tired smile.

“It’s weird,” she sighed. “That you came.”

“Are you used to people not coming when they should?” I asked.

“Pretty much. Plus, I’m not your problem.”

“I’ve never seen you as a problem. Your clothes, maybe. But never you.”

“What’s in the bag?” She changed the subject.

I handed it to her wordlessly. I’d stopped at the bodega down the street to see if the dude who’d fed me all those years ago was still there. He wasn’t, but his son was. I asked the son to sell me all his expired stuff. After looking a little suspicious, he’d relented.

“Dinner for two. Hope you’re not fussy.”

“Not at all.” She grabbed the plastic bag and peeked inside. “Aww. Takis. Fancy.”

“There’s cheese balls and Almond Joys, you know, to offer you a full, nutritious meal.”

I sauntered over to settle on the same grave I used to sit on when we were kids, of Harry Frasier. I stopped when I saw there was another grave right next to him now. Of a Rita Frasier. Wife, mother, grandmother, and doctor.

“Not alone anymore, buddy.” I brushed a hand over Harry’s tombstone before propping myself against it. When I turned to Arya, I caught her looking at me strangely. Again, I found myself wanting to get caught. For Ari to call me on my bullshit. To recognize me. Her eyes flashed with something. I wondered what she’d do next. What would come out of that pretty mouth of hers.

Nicky, how I’ve missed you.

Nicky, I can explain.

Nicky, Nicky, Nicky.

But she just blinked and shook her head, turning back to the grave in front of her.

“Hey, Ar. It’s the other Ar. I . . . where do I even begin? Things, as you know, are a mess. Not only with Conrad. Mom is suddenly taking interest in me, probably because she’s scared to be homeless in half a minute . . .” She shook her head. “It’s stupid, complaining to you, when you have it so much worse. Sometimes I envy your lack of consciousness. Other times, it terrifies me. I still have entire conversations with you in my head. I still see you everywhere. In my mind, you grew up with me. You have an alternate life. You’re married now. With a kid on the way. Aaron”—she let out a chuckle, laughing and crying at the same time—“I absolutely loathe your wife, Eliza. I call her Lizzy just to rile her up. She is so stuck up.”

I bit down on my lip. Arya had been and remained a wonderfully odd girl. But for the first time, I also recognized that we weren’t all that different. That both our parents had sinned greatly, even if in different ways.

“In this alternate universe, I’m looking forward to you giving me a nephew. You know I love children. Even considering having one myself. What’s that? Have I met anyone myself?” She frowned, shooting me a quick look. I straightened my back, like a pupil.

“Nope. No one worth mentioning. I mean, there is this one guy, but he is off limits. He says the chemistry is stronger than us. But as you know, I flunked that subject in high school.”

She talked to Aaron a few more minutes before coming to sit beside me. I opened a bag of chips and passed it between us. She munched, extending her legs and lacing them at the ankles.

“How’d he die?” I asked, because I needed to. I wasn’t supposed to know.

“SIDS.”

“I’m sorry.”

“At least I didn’t get to know him. It’d have hurt a million times over, I assume.”

Depended on the person. I had yet to miss my mother.

“Do you visit him often?” I asked. We were both staring at Aaron’s grave. Looking at one another seemed too . . . raw.

“More often than I should. Or so people keep telling me. A part of me is angry at him for bailing on the shit show. I need someone to be here, you know?”

“You have someone to be here,” I said, with honesty and openness that should’ve frightened me but somehow didn’t.

Suddenly, I remembered something. I passed Arya the bag of chips, stood up, found two small stones by a flower pot, and put them on Aaron’s grave.

“So he’ll know we came to visit.” I heard the smile on Arya’s face behind me and turned to look at her. “I used to do that all the time. How’d you know?” Her eyes glittered.

“Who said I’m not Jewish?” I raised my eyebrows.

“Your name. Christian,” she laughed.

My fake name, more like.

Tread carefully now, a voice inside me warned. But I was too far gone to listen.

“Someone once told me about this tradition.”

I sauntered back, taking my seat next to her, our shoulders brushing.

“Hey, Christian?”

“Yes?”

“It’s my birthday today.”

I know.

“Happy birthday, Arya.” I kissed the crown of her head as she propped her cheek on my shoulder, looking straight ahead at the conveyor belt of businesspeople gliding along Park Avenue. “And happy birthday, Aaron, too.”