Shopping for a CEO (Page 80)

Thick woolen stockings and dress shoes still on, he storms out of the apartment and, instead of using the elevator, appears to take the steps.

We look at each other in stunned silence.

“Andrew got Mom’s temper,” Terry murmurs.

I want to ask what that means, but Marie is falling to pieces before my eyes.

“Oh, my God, Shannon, is he serious? Why would he refuse to be in the wedding? What on earth is going on?”

I race out of the room, managing to make it about ten feet before I hear a gut-wrenching sound of torn fabric, then feel something yank me backwards just enough to make me gag.

The seamstress’s cry is one of surprise, not pain. “Amanda!” she says. “I’m so sorry! I was standing on your sash!”

I untangle my neck and run to the elevator, pushing the button over and over, as if that will make the machine move faster.

The chatter in the living room is a mix of sobs and anger, of surprise and accusations. All the voices in different timbres and tones form a sort of solid pain in my ears, and when the elevator doors open with a soft ding!, I am relieved to hear it fade in the background, like the receding shock of an unexpected blow.

The ride down is glacial. At the rate Andrew was running, he may damn well beat me to the street, and if he does, he’ll climb in a limo and be gone.

Or will he?

It’s daylight outside. He won’t venture into the fresh air. That limits where I need to search. Declan and Shannon’s building has a fitness center, one that’s in the basement, and there’s a public pool attached to it. Spin bikes, treadmills, free weights.

I never exercise in there, but there’s a twelve-person hot tub we use frequently.

I quickly press the button for that floor and hope.

Finding him will be so much easier than knowing what to actually say to him. He can’t do this. He simply cannot pull out of the wedding. Andrew is Declan’s best friend in the world. You want your best friend there when you change from just a person to someone else’s person. You need someone who has seen you through all the different phases of yourself and watched you grow into who you are now stand before the world and claim that self.

Claim it via true love.

Of all the days for Andrew to set aside his fear, this wedding should be it. Twelve years is too long for him to hang on to this notion that he’s too fragile to be outside. There is something so irrational going on, so fueled by all the impulsive emotions we develop when trauma happens, that I feel a cool detachment forming even as my increasing love—yes, love—for Andrew clouds my judgment.

As the elevator doors open, I walk into the small hallway in front of the fitness center. I am in a lounge, with lean chairs covered in colorful leather, shaggy carpets in patterns like butterfly wings, and a series of coolers offering various electrolyte-infused waters.

You cannot access the fitness center without a special residents-only key, so I find a seat facing the stairs and wait.

And wait.

I wait just long enough to experience the dread of determining that I should go back upstairs when I see Andrew walk out of the door to the staircase. He is coated in sweat, his hair dripping with it, shirt like something from a spring break wet t-shirt contest.

His eyes are wild and he avoids looking at me until he can’t help himself.

“Did you know?”

“Does it matter?”

As his fist bangs into the doorway, I see twelve years of something he can’t even name leaking out of him.

“Fuck yes, it matters, Amanda!”

“If it helps, I thought you knew. You were right there during the rehearsal. I know you were busy with business issues and on your phone a lot, but I thought you had decided you were fine with it and willing to take the risk and…” I cut off my chatter with a sudden shrug, the look on his face like an emergency brake.

“I would be an incompetent fool at best, and a reckless jerk at worst, to spend an hour or more outside on a hot July day in a flower-filled wedding at Farmington Country Club’s enormous garden, with cakes and sweets and alcohol and pretty much every substance you can imagine drawing bees and wasps like a damn death magnet,” he says coldly.

At least he’s admitting why he’s upset about the wedding being outdoors. This is progress.

“You can bring EpiPens. The chance is so, so slim. And Marie has even arranged to have an ambulance and paramedic on hand for any medical emergency—”

“Listen to yourself!” he shouts. “Shannon is a fool! She’s going to break Declan’s heart!”

“What? No. She loves him so much, Andrew. So, so much. She would never—”

“My mother,” he says through gritted teeth, “never thought she would snap my father in two, either. But she did. And she broke Declan. Just…broke him.”

“What about you?”

“I wish she had broken me!” he rasps, his voice cracking at the end. I see his throat ripple, emotion in kinetic form. “I wish she’d just…”

“No,” I say fiercely. “No.”

“It would have been better than what happened that day! What happened after. Do you have any idea,” he says, his voice going low and taut, like a tightrope between twelve years ago and now, “what it is like to wake up in a hospital with a hollow brother with shell-shocked eyes, an enraged father, and a nurse kindly holding your hand as you’re informed your mother died because of—”

“No, no, Andrew, it wasn’t—”

“Because of me.”

He said it. The ragged savagery of his voice feels like my heart has been clawed out of its chest by a bear and rests on the ground between us, beating.