Thief Read online

  “Do you think we could have sex in here?”

  I return my glass to the table and blink slowly. “You’re drunk, aren’t you?”

  “I haven’t had wine in a long time,” she admits. “I feel a little carefree.”

  “Public sex carefree?”

  “I want you.”

  I am a grown man, but my heart skips a beat.

  “No,” I say firmly. “This is my favorite restaurant. I’m not getting kicked out because you can’t wait an hour.”

  “I can’t wait an hour,” she breathes, “please.”

  I grind my teeth.

  “You only do that when you’re angry,” she says, pointing to my jaw. “Are you angry?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I really want the macadamia nut sundae.”

  She leans forward and her breasts press against the table. “More than you want me?”

  I stand up and grab her hand, pulling her to her feet. “Can you make it to the car?”

  She nods. As we are rounding the corner, our server returns with our two hundred and fifty dollar an ounce port. I take it from him and pass it to her. She shoots it. The server flinches and I bark out a laugh, handing him my credit card.

  “Hurry up,” I say. He races off and I press her against the wall to kiss her. “Was it a delight in your mouth?”

  “It was okay,” she says. “I really want to put something else in my mouth…”

  “God.”

  I kiss her so I can taste it. When I turn around, he is back with my card. I quickly sign the receipt and drag her out of the restaurant.

  After an intensely memorable fifteen minutes in a pharmacy parking lot in the backseat, we drive to an ice cream shop and eat our cones in the heat, outside.

  “Doesn’t hold a candle to Jaxson’s,” she says, licking her wrist where the ice cream is dripping.

  I grin as I watch the traffic on the street.

  “Do you think we’ll ever get sick of doing that?”

  We switch cones, and I eye her through my haze. She ordered the ice cream shop’s version of Cherry Garcia. I ordered something with peanut butter. I watch her eat it. She has that sexed look — flushed skin, ruffled hair. I’m tired, but I could easily go another round.

  “I highly doubt that, Duchess.”

  “Why?”

  “Addiction,” I say simply. “It can span an entire lifetime if untreated.”

  “What’s the treatment?”

  “I don’t really care.”

  “Me neither,” she says, throwing the rest of my cone in the trash and dusting her hands on her dress.

  “Let’s go. Our hotel room has a hot tub.”

  I don’t need to be asked twice.

  Four months after Leah was acquitted, I filed for divorce. The minute — the very minute I made the decision, I felt a huge weight lifted from my figurative shoulders. I didn’t necessarily believe in divorce, but you couldn’t stay in something that was killing you either. Sometimes you fucked up enough in life, that you had to bow to your mistakes. They won. Be humble … move on. Leah thought she was happy with me, but how could I make someone happy when I was so dead inside? She didn’t even know the real me. It was like sleepwalking; being married to someone you didn’t love. You tried to fill yourself with positives — buying houses and going on vacations and cooking classes — anything to try to bond with this person you should already have bonded with before you said I do. It was all empty, fighting for something that never was. Be it my fault for marrying her in the first place, I’d made plenty of mistakes. It was time to move on. I filed the papers.

  Olivia

  — That was my first thought.

  Turner

  — That was my second thought.

  Motherfucker

  — That was my third thought. Then I put them all together in a sentence: That motherfucker Turner is going to marry Olivia!

  How long did I have? Did she still love me? Could she forgive me? If I could wrestle her away from that fucking tool, could we actually build something together on the rubble we’d created? Thinking about it set me on edge — made me angry. What would she say if she knew I’d lied about the amnesia? We’d both told so many lies, sinned against each other — against everyone who got in our way. I’d tried to tell her once. It was during the trial. I’d come to the courthouse early to try to catch her alone. She was wearing my favorite shade of blue — airport blue. It was her birthday.

  “Happy Birthday.”

  She looked up. My heart pounded out my feelings, like they did every time she looked at me.

  “I’m surprised you remembered.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Oh, you’ve just been forgetting an awful lot of things over the last couple of years.”

  I half smiled at her jab.

  “I never forgot you…”

  I felt a rush of adrenaline. This was it — I was going to come clean. Then the prosecutor walked in. Truth was put on hold.

  I moved out of the house I shared with Leah and back into my condo. I paced the halls. I drank scotch. I waited.

  Waited for what? For her to come to me? For me to go to her? I waited because I was a coward. That was the truth.

  I walked to my sock drawer — infamous protector of engagement rings and other mementos — and ran my fingers along the bottom. The minute my fingers found it, I felt a surge of something. I rubbed the pad of my thumb across the slightly green surface of the ‘kissing’ penny. I looked at it for a full minute, conjuring up images of the many times it had been traded for kisses. It was a trinket, a cheap trick that had once worked, but it had evolved into so much more than that.

  I put on my sweats and went for a run. Running helped me think. I went over everything in my head as I turned toward the beach, dodging a little girl and her mother as they walked along hand in hand. I smiled. The little girl had long, black hair and startling blue eyes — she looked like Olivia. Was that what our daughter would have looked like? I stopped jogging and bent over, hands on my knees. It didn’t have to be a ‘would have’ situation. We could still have our daughter. I slipped my hand in my pocket and pulled out the kissing penny. I started jogging to my car.

  There was no time like the present. If Turner got in the way, I’d just toss him off the balcony. I was soaked in sweat and determined when I turned on the ignition.

  I was one mile from Olivia’s condo when I got the call.

  It was a number I didn’t recognize. I hit talk.

  “Caleb Drake?”

  “Yes?” My words were clipped. I made a left onto Ocean and pressed down on the gas.

  “There’s been an … incident with your wife.”

  “My wife?” God, what has she done now? I thought about the feud she was currently having with the neighbors about their dog and wondered if she’d done something stupid.

  “My name is Doctor Letche, I’m calling from West Boca Medical Center. Mr. Drake, your wife was admitted here a few hours ago.”

  I hit the brake, swung the wheel around until my tires made a screeching sound, and gunned the car in the opposite direction. An SUV swerved around me and laid on the horn.

  “Is she all right?”

  The doctor cleared his throat. “She swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills. Your housekeeper found her and dialed 911. She’s stable right now, but we’d like for you to come in.”

  I stopped at a light and ran my hand through my hair. This was my fault. I knew she took the separation hard, but suicide … it didn’t even seem like her.

  “Of course — I’m on my way.”

  I hung up. I hung up and I punched the steering wheel. Some things were not meant to be.

  When I arrived at the hospital, Leah was awake and asking for me. I walked into her room, and my heart stopped. She was lying propped up by pillows, her hair a rat’s nest and her skin so pale it almost looked translucent. Her eyes were closed, so I had a moment to rearrange my face before
she saw me.

  When I took a few steps into the room, she opened her eyes. As soon as she saw me, she started crying. I sat on the edge of her bed and she latched onto me, sobbing with such passion I could feel her tears soak through my shirt. I held her like that for a long time. I’d like to say I was thinking deep thoughts during those minutes, but I wasn’t. I was numb, distracted. Something was agitating me and I couldn’t place it. It’s cold in here, I told myself.

  “Leah,” I said finally, pulling her from my chest and settling her back onto the pillows. “Why?”

  Her face was slimy and red. Dark half–moons camped around her eyes. She looked away.

  “You left me.”

  Three words. Then I felt it: so much guilt I could barely swallow.

  It was true.

  “Leah,” I said. “I’m not good for you. I-”

  She cut me off, waving my comment away on the frigid hospital air.

  “Caleb, please come home. I’m pregnant.”

  I closed my eyes.

  No!

  No!

  No…

  “You swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills and tried to kill yourself and my baby?”

  She wouldn’t look at me.

  “I thought you left me. I didn’t want to live. Please, Caleb — it was so stupid. I’m sorry.”

  I couldn’t name the emotion I felt. I was somewhere between wanting to walk out on her forever and wanting to stay and protect that baby.

  “I can’t forgive you for that,” I said. “You have a responsibility to protect something you gave life to. You could have talked to me about it. I’ll always be around to help you.”

  I saw some color come back into her cheeks.

  “You mean … help me while we’re divorced?” She lowered her head and looked up at me. I thought I saw some fire in her irises.

  I didn’t say anything. We were locked in a staring contest. That’s exactly what I meant.

  “If you don’t stay with me, I’m not keeping this baby. I have no intention of being a single mother.”

  “You can’t be serious?”

  Never did I think she would threaten me with something of this nature. It seemed beneath her. I opened my mouth to threaten her — to say something I’d probably regret, but I heard footsteps. The brisk kind that said doctor.

  “I’d like some privacy to talk to my doctor about my options,” she said, quietly.

  “Leah-”

  Her head snapped up. “Get out.”

  I looked from her to who I presumed was Doctor Letche. Her face was pale again, all the anger gone.

  Before the doctor could say anything, Leah announced that I was leaving.

  I stopped in the doorway and without turning around, I said, “Okay, Leah. We’ll do it together.”

  I didn’t need to look at her face to know it held triumph.

  I have a decision to make. I’m pacing it off. That’s what my mother would call it, pacing it off. I did it as a kid, across my bedroom. I guess I never grew out of it.

  Olivia is making her decision, whether she knows it or not. Noah is going to come back for her, because she’s that girl, the one you come back to again and again and again. So, I fight. That’s it. That’s my only option. And if I don’t get her, if she doesn’t choose me, I’m going to be that guy—the one who spends his life alone and pining. Because I sure as hell am not going to replace her with any more Leahs or Jessicas or any-goddamn-body else. Fuck it. It’s Olivia or nothing. I grab my wallet and keys and jog down the stairs instead of taking the elevator. I go directly to her office. Her secretary holds Olivia’s door open for me as I step in. I smile at her and mouth my thanks.

  “Hi,” I say.

  She’s in the middle of sorting through a mound of papers, but when she sees me, she smiles — all the way to her eyes. Almost as quickly, the smile sinks out of her eyes and the lines of her mouth firm into a straight line. Something’s up. I walk around her desk and pull her against me.

  “What’s wrong?” I kiss the corner of her lips. She doesn’t move. When I let her go, she drops into her swivel chair and looks at the floor.

  Okay.

  I grab a chair and pull it up to hers so that we’re facing each other. When she spins her chair away from me to look at the wall, I know some type of shit has hit the fan.

  Please God, no more shit. I’ve had about all the shit I can handle.

  “Why are you being so cold with me?”

  “I don’t think I can do this.”

  “What?”

  “This,” she says, motioning between us. “It’s so wrong.”

  I rub my fingers over my jaw and start grinding my teeth.

  “We are kind of experts on doing what’s wrong, no?”

  “Ugh, Caleb. Stop it. I’m supposed to be thinking of ways to make my marriage work. Not building a new relationship with someone else.”

  “Building a new relationship with someone else?” I am confounded. “We’re not building anything. We’ve been in a relationship since before we were actually in a relationship.” In actual fact, I tell people we were together for three years, even though it was only one and a half, because I was emotionally with her from the moment we met.

  “Why are you saying this, now?” I say.

  She opens a bottle of water that is sitting on her desk and takes a sip. I want to ask when she started drinking water, but I’m pretty damn sure my non-girlfriend is trying to end our non-relationship, so I stay still and quiet.

  “Because it’s better for everyone if we’re not together.”

  I can’t keep the sneer off of my face. “Better for whom?”

  Olivia closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “Estella,” she says.

  It feels like someone has reached a hand into my belly and grabbed hold of my organs.

  Olivia is chugging her water, her free hand limp in her lap.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I haven’t heard her name in a long time. I’ve thought it plenty, but Olivia’s voice wrapping around the syllables is jarring.

  Her nostrils are flaring as she breathes. She still won’t look at me.

  “Olivia…”

  “Estella is yours.” It’s a blurt. I blink at her, not sure where that came from, or why she’s saying it.

  Being told I had twenty-four hours to live would have been less painful than that statement. I don’t say anything. I stare at her nostrils, which are working like fish gills.

  She spins in her chair until her knees bump into mine, and she’s looking me straight in the face.

  “Caleb.” Her voice is gentle, yet it makes me flinch. “Leah came to see me. She told me she’s yours. She’ll take the paternity test to prove it. But, only if we’re not together.”

  My head and my heart are in a battle for who can host the most pain. I shake my head. Leah? Was here?

  “She’s lying.”

  Olivia shakes her head. “She’s not. And you can get a court-issued paternity test. She can’t keep Estella from you if you are her father. But Caleb, think about it. She’ll use her to hurt you. Forever. It’ll affect your little girl, and I know what it feels like to be a parent’s weapon.”

  I stand up. Walk to the window. I’m not thinking about how Leah could use Estella to hurt me. I’m thinking about Estella being mine. How could something like this be true and I not know it?

  “She was pregnant before Estella. We were separated, but we had sex once during that time. Anyway, she lost the baby after she swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills and had to have her stomach pumped. That’s why we went to Rome. She said that she wanted to reconcile, and I felt so guilty about her sister and the miscarriage.”

  I look at Olivia when I say that. Her lips turn white as she presses them together.

  “Caleb, she wasn’t pregnant in the hospital. She lied to you. She told me that too.”

  I always wondered what Olivia felt when I told her I faked my amnesia. Painful truth is ineffable. It swings
you around a couple times until you’re dizzy, and then punches you hard in the stomach. You don’t want to believe it, but it wouldn’t hurt so badly if on some level you didn’t know it was true. I run with denial for a few more minutes.

  “She bled. I saw her bleed.” Denial is such a friendly companion. It’s normally Olivia’s best friend. Suddenly, I want in on the party.

  Olivia looks so distraught.

  “Oh, Caleb. It wasn’t from a miscarriage. She probably just got her period and passed it off as that.”

  Damn it. Fuck. Olivia is looking at me like the naive, gullible fool I am.

  I remember how Leah chased me out of the room before I could speak to the doctor. How I stood in the doorway and told her I’d stay just so she’d keep my baby. She was clearly trying to get me out of there before the doctor revealed the truth.

  I don’t need to say anything to Olivia. She can see I’m getting it.

  I’m feeling smaller and smaller. During my back and forth time with Leah, Olivia was falling in love with someone else. I could have just walked away with Olivia in Rome and spared us years of this tangled, twisted mess.

  “How did Estella come to be?”

  “After Rome we made it another month. She was angry with me. She accused me of not being present, and she was right. So I moved out again.

  I was at a conference in Denver and she was on a trip with her friends. We ran into each other at a restaurant. I was friendly, but kind of kept my distance. She showed up at my hotel that night. I was pretty drunk and landed up sleeping with her. A few weeks later she called and told me she was pregnant. I never even questioned it. I just went back to her. I wanted a baby. I was lonely. I was stupid.”

  I don’t tell Olivia that I found out she was seeing someone during that time. That when Leah came to me, I fell into her because I was trying to fill that Olivia hole in my chest again.

  “So, she told you Estella wasn’t yours? That night you told her you wanted a divorce?”