Sine Qua Non

Chapter Nine

It surprised Jay, how attentive Nicholas was in public. His eyes were always on her, every time she looked. Or else he was offering his arm, his coat. Such old-world manners came as a shock from a man who was as ruthlessly exacting as he was, and it was a little unexpected just how much she found herself liking them.

In high school, he had been so cruel to the girls he’d been with. They were never good enough to bring home. He’d meet with them beneath the bleachers or in other people’s upstairs bedrooms, only to abandon them as soon as he’d gotten what he’d wanted, leaving them to the ruthless grind of the high school rumor mill.

Hurting people came to him so easily; it always had. Another thing he had learned from his father.

When her hand shifted uneasily in his, he squeezed her tighter and didn’t let go.

They were getting stares as they walked down the corridors. Most of the stares were directed at him. Nicholas was a very tall man with the sort of profile that could have been chiseled in marble, as noble as it was severe. The Cerruti suit he wore was the color of tempered steel, tailored to reflect both the leanness of his build and the lack of padding required to accentuate his shoulders. His body, much like his temperament, was a demonstration of absolute control.

And maybe his manners were, too. Whether you were pulling out a chair for someone or tying them to it, the intent was still the same.

Ownership.

Possession.

She blushed, and saw his face turn towards hers again, measuring her responses. They had never walked like this, hand in hand. She could feel her palm getting sweaty. She hadn’t been this nervous since her teen years, with her first crush, and feeling that way—with him —was terrifying.

They had reached the special exhibition on ephemeral art and she tried to focus her attention on that, but it only made her feel worse. As she looked at the timelapse photographs of the silent audience of melting human ice sculptures in Chamberlain square, or Yoko Ono’s apple imprisoned in plexiglass while it began its slow rot, Jay felt tears begin to form in her eyes.

“Since when did trash become art?” Nicholas asked skeptically, startling her from her gloomy reverie, which was just so him that she almost laughed, even though she felt so broken inside.

“Stupid,” she said, sniffing a little. “It’s supposed to show that beautiful things don’t last.”

He glanced at her then, which she didn’t want. Not while she felt like this. Not when every single facet of her life was a glaring reminder of why this wouldn’t work.

Even if she wanted it to.

As if he could read her thoughts, his expression softened. “It’s just a picture, blue jay.”

And we both know how much damage a picture can do.

She stared at the browning apple until her eyes hurt, aware of the steady pressure of his hand. It’s just Nick , she told herself but her pulse wouldn’t listen, and when he ran his thumb along the inside of her palm, it accelerated to a buzz in her ears.

In the next gallery, an older, European-looking couple were gazing at paintings. The man was wearing suspenders over his button-down shirt and the woman was wearing a loose linen dress that looked casual and expensive at the same time.

Jay kept her eyes on the paintings but her cheeks heated with an all-too-familiar shame as the man and woman turned to look at them. Nicholas’s hand tightened further over hers, his fingers lacing with her own until she felt as if she had been neatly shackled.

“Quel charmant couple,” the woman murmured. “Il est si grand. Et elle est tellement belle.”

“Plus jolie que moi?” Nicholas spoke up, surprising all three of them. “Je le pense aussi. C'est pour ?a que je l'ai épousée.”

The man and then, more self-consciously, the woman, laughed. “You’re just darling,” she told him, smiling with dimples. Then she turned to Jay, who felt like her face was on fire, and said, “What a charming husband you have.”

Husband?

Husband?

“ What did you say to her?” Jay demanded, the moment they were out of hearing.

Nicholas smirked. “She said you were pretty. I asked if she thought you were prettier than me.”

Jay suspected this was not the full truth but wasn’t sure how to call him on it, afraid it would trigger another conversation neither of them were ready for.

He gave her hand another playful squeeze. “Are you ready for dinner?”

“Yeah,” she said, feeling a flicker of regret that the afternoon was being cut short. Then she looked at her phone and realized that they’d been here for three hours. Despite his initial reluctance, Nicholas hadn’t complained at all.

He called a taxi as they walked out of the museum. The car met them out in front and took them to the Ferry Building, which was a ten-minute drive because of all the traffic, even though it was only a couple blocks away. They exchanged a glance when a sleek Mercedes cut them off and the driver began to swear.

“We should have taken BART,” said Jay.

“I don’t mind the wait. Did you have a good time?”

“I had a great time.”

This time, the smile he leveled at her—one of his real ones, the one with the dimples that he never showed anyone—made her stomach flip. “Good. I’m glad.”

They went to dinner at a Vietnamese fusion restaurant and under the dim lights, at a table beside a cold glass window that offered a view of the bay, they had cocktails and pho while the sun slowly sank below the rippling surface of the water and the fog rolled in on ghostly fingers.

This was a side of the city that Jay had rarely gotten to enjoy: the sparkling underlayer that catered to the exclusive elite. It was the lifestyle her mother had dreamed about when she took her clothes off for other men, letting the stars in her eyes blind her to the trash in the street.

Jay despised herself a little for wanting it, too.

“Is something wrong with your food?”

She looked down at her untouched bowl and smiled guiltily. “No, the view is just so amazing, I’m trying to take it all in.” Her shoulders dipped as she looked at him through the flickering candlelight, an accusatory thought sweeping through her head: you take your clothes off for this man, too . “This was such an amazing day.”

“We can have more. A lifetime of them.”

She laughed nervously, fingering the stem of her cocktail glass. “You didn’t even know if I wanted kids. We grew up together but we don’t know much about each other now.”

“What do you want to know?” The neck of his shirt dipped lower as he unbuttoned his cuffs and began winding up the sleeves over his forearms, drawing her eyes to both the agile movement of his hands and the flex of tendons beneath the skin. “I’ll tell you anything.”

“You told me you didn’t date.” She hesitated, cowed by his intensity and the curious intimacy of seeing his arms bared in public. When she finally dared to look in his eyes, his expression was as potent as the drink in her hand. “Do you know what you want out of a relationship?”

The old Nick would have rolled his eyes and told her that none of that would have mattered as long as he could provide, before parroting his father’s sexist bullshit. But the man across from her considered her question thoughtfully, shifting so the light caught on the watch at his wrist.

“I don’t want to be alone anymore. Coming home to an empty house year after year—it wears on you. I want to see the world but only if there’s someone to see it with me. I’m fine traveling alone but I don’t really want to. I like having someone to come home to. Someone to take care of.”

“Lots of people could give you that,” Jay whispered.

He leaned forward, covering her hand with his. “But they aren’t you.”

The world around her seemed to come to a juddering stop and Jay could have sworn that part of it broke off and shattered. In the silence that followed, she could hear the tick of his watch.

“I—” She broke off, struggling to find the words she wanted while he was looking at her like that. “I didn’t know you felt that way. The first time you told me you were in love with me, you made it sound like it was all about sex.”

“I was eighteen, Jay. I was a fucking idiot who didn’t know how to love you.”

The harshness of his admission made her reel back. Their fingers broke and Nicholas looked down at his hand before drawing away and taking a long, deep drink.

“So,” he said gruffly. “I saw the photo collage in your room. I thought you weren’t into photography.”

Jay blinked, disconcerted by the mercurial change in topic but perversely grateful for the reprieve. “I don’t really consider that photography,” she said at length. “It’s more like a scrapbook. I wanted to remember the good times, because sometimes you don’t realize how good they are until they’re over.”

“That sounds sad, blue jay.”

“Maybe it is.” She thought wistfully of her middle school friends, the nice strippers at the Beat and Tease. “I’ve let so many people pass me by and now I can’t even remember their faces. I didn’t want to forget anyone else.”

“You’ve never photographed me.”

Because I could never forget you.

Flushed from the alcohol in her drink, Jay considered him from across the table. The candle was throwing sinister shadows over his handsome face, giving him a distinctly villainous cast.

Was he jealous?

“What?” Nicholas said. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Impulsively, Jay lifted her phone and snapped a picture of him before he could arrange his face. She looked at her screen, and smiled in spite of herself: frozen in mid-motion, with his eyes widening in shock, and a sullen tilt to his otherwise inviting mouth, he looked about as real as she’d ever seen him.

“There,” she said. “Happy?”

“Do I get to look at it?”

“No.”

A glint appeared in his eyes. “Do I get one of you?”

“You have one of me.” She spoke without thinking and his eyebrows shot up.

“I only get one?”

“You only have the one?” Jay retorted, and he gave her a wicked grin.

“I thought that subject was a sore point.”

“Oh my god, you totally do.” Jay took a bracing sip of her drink. “You’re such a little creep.”

“I think you actually find me quite charming.”

“What gave you that impression?” she demanded, setting her drink down hard.

“Because you’re smiling.”

She touched a hand to one of her too-warm cheeks, aware even as she did so of the fading light, the closeness of the fog, and the exotic blend of spices permeating the restaurant. It was as if the two of them were inside a glass bubble, ensconced within their own private world. She had never been this relaxed with him—partially, because he had never given her a reason to be.

Somehow, Nicholas had tricked her into going on a date with him and having a very good time. She had gone out with him before, when he had blackmailed her into returning home, but when he dragged her to those places, Jay had gotten the impression that he was only doing it to show her that he could, leveraging the threat of his power over her. It hadn’t been like this.

Nothing they had done had ever been like this.

She picked at a cilantro leaf, shaken by the realization that, in his own manipulative way, he had taken her concerns about their twisted power dynamic to heart. “I guess I am.”

“Smiling?” he persisted. “Or charmed?

“Both,” she said quietly, wondering why the answer made her sad.

He picked up his own drink, knocking it back. “I deleted the one you sent me, by the way.”

She didn’t have to ask which one. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. My reasons were purely selfish. I don’t want anyone else seeing you like that. You didn’t answer your own question, though. Do you know what you want, Jay?”

Thoroughly off-balance now, and a little flustered, Jay shook her head. “I used to dream of having this glamorous big city life. But living on my own cleared that up pretty quick. Now, I’d settle for a quiet life. With someone kind. Who will treat me with respect and step up when things get hard and—just . . . love me without any strings attached.”

She looked at her drink as she spoke, not wanting to see his face and terrified that he’d see the lie in hers and know just how close she was to giving in, strings or no.

When the waiter came by and asked how what they were doing, Jay felt as if she’d been woken up from a dream. Nicholas ordered another Old Fashioned and Jay, feeling uncharacteristically brooding, got herself another fruity cocktail even though the first one was already going to her head.

We’ve done it again , she thought, reaching into her bright orange cocktail and eating the rum-soaked cherry while he sipped his drink and watched her with the eyes of a tired wolf. We’ve hurt each other and I don’t even know how.

He drained his second glass in several swallows, shaking himself like he thought he could cast off his sobriety. “We can go whenever you’re ready.”

Jay eyed her half-empty glass, noting the fuzzy edges. “I’m ready.”

Desire strobed through her like lightning as they walked out of the restaurant and he draped his jacket over her shoulders. On the briny sharpness of the bay breeze, she could just make out the citrus sting of his cologne suffusing the fabric that pooled around her narrower shoulders.

Walking with him, with the city lit up in fog-muted neon, Jay felt as if her veins were filled with the sparkling incandescence of champagne.

She would have fucked him, if he’d asked. Hazy from drink and a sea of warm, dark feelings she didn’t care to explore too deeply beneath all the wounds, she would have gotten to her knees and blown him until all he could say in that deep, terrible voice was “yes” and “slutty girl” and “fuck.”

But he didn’t ask, when they returned to her apartment, and as she changed into her pajamas with the faint beginnings of a hangover blooming behind her eyes, that was almost as troubling as the realization that she wanted him to.

The bathroom door opened, spilling light over her face. Nicholas walked out of it wearing basketball shorts and an old T-shirt. As he swung onto her mattress, she rolled up against him, and he put his arm around her with a low chuckle, breathing in against her hair. A stab of pure, raw desire went through her like an iron spike when she felt how hard he was.

“Are you going to fuck me?” she whispered, feeling braver than she ever had, filled with alcohol, and shrouded by that dark velvet abyss, unable to see his face even if she wanted to.

He went very still. “You’re drunk.”

“Mmm.” She nuzzled against him and felt his cock twitch. “Yes, Daddy. So drunk.”

“Jay—” she had never heard him use that tone before; it thrilled her “—don’t.”

“Why? You can do whatever you want to me. Use me, hurt me. Make me be bad.” She clasped his hand and dragged it to her chest, feeling a surge of satisfaction when he allowed her to press his hand flat over her breast. “Just make it feel good.”

His chest hitched against her back. When he traced her nipple through her thin tank top, she moaned, and the sound of it startled them both. “ Jay ,” he growled. “No.”

She rolled over to face him and found herself staring at his back. “Oh, so you’re mad at me.”

“For fuck’s sake.”

“You don’t like it when I’m in control.”

Nicholas laughed at that, which made her angry.

“I like nice guys. I only ever dated nice guys before you.”

“You’re a mean drunk, blue jay. Has anyone ever told you that?”

“I like nice guys,” she repeated, like a dare. “I like the way they fuck me.”

The mattress creaked ominously. When he wrapped his hand around her throat, she heard herself make a sharp, thin noise as he leaned over her, his dark hair throwing his eyes into shadow.

“No.” His thumb stroked over her suddenly frantic pulse. “I don’t think you do.”

Oh , she thought, head swimming. I like this.

“You like that, Jay?” It was as if she’d spoken aloud. Maybe she had. He gave her neck a squeeze and she wasn’t even sure she was breathing anymore, she was so turned on. “Is that what nice girls like when they’re getting fucked by their nice boyfriends?”

“No,” said Jay.

“No, it isn’t,” he agreed. “Because you don’t want to be fucked by nice guys. You want to be fucked by me.”

“Yes,” Jay whispered. “Fuck me, Daddy.”

He stared down at her. She couldn’t quite make out his expression in the dark but she could feel his erection digging into her hip. When his hand flexed, just grazing her nape, she had to repress a shudder.

“Fuck me. Please . I want you to.”

“Jesus,” he said, taking his hand away with a hiss. “ Fuck .”

Jay stared, vaguely incredulous, as he turned back to the wall. Her heart was still pounding. She could still feel the bite of his fingers in her skin. Jay put her hand on his bicep and he jerked, as if he were going to shrug her off. “Nick?” her voice came out small.

He didn’t respond and she felt a lick of fear.

(alone)

“Da—”

“Don’t,” he snarled. “Don’t test my control. Not right now.”

“But I—” Tears formed in her eyes and she let her hand fall. “I’m sorry.”

“I bet you are.” When he sighed, there was a hint of a growl in it. “Go to sleep, Jay.”

She rolled on her other side, aware of his big body at her back. It made her feel safe in a way that none of her first few nights back in the city had been, and when she dreamed, they were absent of nightmares. Or she thought they were.

Her eyes snapped open and it felt like the tight knot in her belly had sprouted thorns that had worked their prickling way throughout her entire body. Her head was throbbing and the darkness was spinning. Nick , she thought, looking around wildly. And then, Where am I?

Her half-packed up room popped into recognition just as she became aware of Nicholas breathing heavily beside her. The bed was moving—that must have been what had woken her up. He had slipped his cock from his shorts and was jerking himself off, arching into his own hand with an urgency that was frightening because she recognized the cadence.

He fucks me like that, when he can’t wait , she thought, and a dull throb went through her belly.

Eyes squeezed shut, he was making sounds in his throat. They were guttural and muted. So much so that she didn’t immediately recognize that most of them were her own name.

*****

Nicholas didn’t bring up what had happened the next morning, which relieved Jay. She felt terribly embarrassed about drunkenly begging him for sex, and even though she couldn’t remember the exact exchange of words between them, she recalled the blind wanting, and how cold his rejection of her had felt after feeling the weight of his large hand around her throat.

God, the way he’d been touching himself afterwards—

But Jay pushed those thoughts away, the way she did everything else. Just push it back, push it under. Let the past stay buried and gone. That had been her motto.

Until the past had come back to haunt her personally.

Seeing Nicholas wandering around her apartment was so odd. Whether he was parked on the loveseat with his laptop in one of his old T-shirts or hauling her things out to the curb, muscles straining, the domesticity of it all made her feel shy with him. She tried not to look too long or too hard—a hang-up that wasn’t shared by her neighbors. One little old lady circled the block three times with her exhausted little spaniel, just to watch a shirtless Nicholas stacking boxes.

Jay walked out to her enclosed balcony and looked down at the U-Haul, seeing herself twenty years ago, tossing out all the things her mother had branded as “too low-class” for their new lives.

(You’re still your mother’s daughter, Justine)

She unlocked her phone, scrolling mindlessly, before sliding it back into the pocket of her hoodie. No new messages from her mother. Strange. It wasn’t like her to give up like that.

I guess she doesn’t like it when I fight back.

Nicholas set down a stack of folded plastic dining chairs with a clatter that made Jay look back down at the street. The chairs were painted teal and so badly faded that the metal beneath was showing in places. She’d gotten them for company and then never used them. In this neighborhood, they’d be gone by the end of the day.

He’d taken his shirt off and now his back was glistening with sweat. As she watched, he pushed his hair out of his eyes with the back of his wrist. And of course, there was that little old lady, clutching her poor dog’s leash like her life depended on it, staring at him like he was a god.

Nicholas noticed the old woman and waved— mean , thought Jay, recognizing the mockery in the gesture—and then he looked up and caught her eye. He lowered his arm, and stood with his hands at his hips, letting her look. Jay’s legs twitched and she gripped the rail more tightly.

“I’m coming up, blue jay,” he called out. “Let me in.”

Jay was pretty sure she didn’t imagine how the other woman’s shoulders sank dejectedly.

Shaking her head, she went to the fridge and took out one of the bottles of green juice he’d gotten for her at the store, before going down the stairs and meeting him at the door. She could smell the sweat on his skin, dewy and animal, like wet hay. He wiped his palms on his shorts, blinking sweat from his eyes, radiating heat. “Is that for me?”

“You looked hot.”

He laughed involuntarily as they walked into her room, his chest hitching with the movement. The bands of muscle along his sides rippled. “You think I look hot?”

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

“Are you blushing? That’s so cute.” He unscrewed the cap and took a deep swig before making a face. She wasn’t expecting the wrinkled nose, or the sheepish grin, which somehow made him even more attractive. “And that’s the bitterest fucking thing I’ve ever tasted.”

“Sorry. That’s the kale and spirulina. It’s all that’s cold.”

“Don’t apologize.” He took another bracing sip, not quite able to hide his distaste. “Are you ready to move out tomorrow?”

“I think so.” She leaned back against the chipped Formica counter, wondering if her landlord would spring to replace it now that she was leaving. “I thought it would be harder to leave, but I’m starting to realize that there was nothing keeping me here but memories of things that don’t really exist anymore.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” He gave her arm a teasing little flick. “I like having you all to myself.”

“ Thanks , Nick.” She pretended to study the box on the counter marked KITCHEN, trying to force out the thought that she was essentially packing herself up like a possession, too. “What do your clients think about you being AFK like this?”

“They have my number if they really need to reach me.” He handed the bottle to her. “Don’t worry about that.”

She turned the bottle over in her hands. “I’m worried about your job. I mean, you only just got through sensitivity training. You really don’t want to upset your investors.”

“Fuck the investors. And fuck sensitivity training.” Nicholas picked up his shirt from where he’d discarded it on the counter and dabbed his face with it. “I want you to be happy.”

Happy, she thought. But on whose terms? His? Would he throw his career away for that?

And would she be expected to throw her freedom away in return?

“I know that look.” Nicholas dropped his now-sweaty shirt back on the counter, which nearly made her protest until she realized that they wouldn’t be her counters for much longer. “As soon as we get back to Hollybrook, you’re going to expect us to keep up the fa?ade that I don’t want you, so you can feel better about whatever this is.”

He made a gesture, flicking his fingers between them. Jay glared at him, to hide how badly rattled she was that he had perceived her so fully. “That is not what I was thinking.”

“You have no game face, blue jay. I can see right through you—even when you lie.” His voice was nearly seductive, she thought, except for a mocking lilt of cruelty. “You keep accusing me of keeping you around for a quick and dirty fling, but I’m not the one who fucks with my eyes closed.”

Jay felt the counter slam up against her back. Her panic, and his knowing, bitter smile, took her breath away. “Shut up, Nick.”

“Have we moved on to denial already?” He stepped closer, putting his hands where hers had fled. “That was fast. Usually, I have to fuck you first.”

She drew in an angry breath. “You don’t understand—”

“No, Jay. You don’t understand. Every time you ask what people will think, you’re framing our relationship around the fact that we grew up together. And we did. But then I grew up—and I wanted you. I wanted you so badly that I used to think it would drive me fucking crazy. It was like I couldn’t breathe. Have you ever wanted something that much?”

She opened her mouth, but he didn’t give her time to respond.

“If it were up to me, I’d have dragged you to the altar myself. But I waited—for you. And if your plan is to dick me down before sending me on my way like some callow pool boy, you should know that I’m not going to give you up without a fight.”

“I’m not dicking you down .” Jay was aghast at his choice of words, at the cruel comparison to her mother and her younger lover. Although isn’t it the same? She hid him away, too. She clenched her fists, wishing she could fight the voices, and banish the pain that threatened to subsume her heart every time she looked in his eyes. “You blackmailed me. You took things from me that I will never get back.”

“Then why,” Nicholas said slowly, “are you still here?”

“Because I live here.”

She knew it was a stupid thing to say, but his laughter still made her angry, and so did the ripple of muscle contracting along his chest and abdomen because also, how fucking dare he look like that while she was angry at him, but this time, when she swatted at him, his fingers shackled around her wrist.

“Oh, Jay,” he said, and she hated the way he said her name, the way it curled up around her insides like plumes of fragrant smoke. “You don’t even realize I’ve got you up against the wall.”

“I’m not going to stand here and be lectured by a—by a walking Oedipus complex.”

He stepped closer, and the sinuous lines of his body blurred before her wavering vision as she felt the heat coming off his skin, and the clean smell of his sweat filled her nose.

“Do you really mean to tell me that you’d leap into my arms if I were a stranger at a bar? Somehow I doubt that. You like making people work for it. That’s why you never fucked any of your high school boyfriends. They didn’t have the stamina to jump through all your hoops.”

“I don’t want to hear this.”

“From the moment that you jumped up my ass about that cat in the tree, I knew you would be a breath of fresh air from all of the surface-level bullshit artists surrounding me. You were so authentic, so you . And so beautiful—my fucking god, I used to have these dreams—” He let out a harsh breath, which was when she realized that she had been holding hers. “I wish you had been my first. I wanted you to be.”

“Yes, well, your father took care of that, didn’t he?” The words came out before she could think better of it.

“Yeah, he did.” Nicholas reached around her to pick up his shirt, and she felt a wash of guilt when he glanced at her with regret rather than anger. “That was too bad. I would have waited for you. You could have shown me how to touch you.” A catch entered his voice. “I would have enjoyed that.”

Maybe she was more like her mother than she’d thought.

Jay side-stepped him, needing Nick-free air. The awful things he was saying were not nearly awful enough, and she was having trouble remembering why he could not be hers.

“You didn’t wait. You took.”

“I know.” He knotted the fabric of his shirt in his hands. “But I am waiting now.”

Jay stared at the peeling juice label. Her restless hands had nearly pried it free. She wanted to protest, to find the words that would make him realize that this was wrong, but while Nicholas’s father had never taken him anywhere near a church, it seemed he’d found another way to practice his zealotry on his knees. And god, if he had been patient, if he had come at her like this , he might have been able to wear her reservations like a tide lapping away at stubborn granite.

“Think about that,” Nicholas said, with a knowing tilt of his head. “Deep down, you’re still that ruthless little Amazon looking for the one fight worth winning.”

Goddamn you , thought Jay, as he turned away.