My eyes were fixed on the edge of the paper sitting under the door. Mad picked it up from the other side. I let out a breath, closing my eyes in relief.
“I always knew I could never be Booger Face’s dad. That’s why I kept asking Amber for a paternity test when she banged on about it. You think I’d turn my back on a kid of mine?” I growled. “Fuck, I love her like my own kid, and she isn’t even mine. In fact, she was supposedly the very goddamn product of my fiancée and brother bumping uglies behind my back.”
Silence. Ouch. Okay. In all honesty, I’d seen it coming. There was much more to my shitty behavior than supposedly not telling her I was my ex-fiancée’s baby daddy.
“Who’s her biological father?” Mad asked through the door.
“Some dudebro from Wisconsin. I went to confront Amber after I took the paternity test.” I ran a hand through my hair. “After Amber and I broke up, she got hit with the finality of it and tried calling me, ghosting Julian, trying to make amends. By then, I was traveling and didn’t pick up. She went back home to nurse her broken whatever the fuck she has in her chest. Clemmy’s dad is an old high school flame. Amber said she’ll talk to him. We’re figuring it out so that Booger Face has the best childhood.”
“What a mess.” Mad sighed.
“Yeah.”
“Poor Clemmy.”
I sighed. “Yeah.”
I loved my niece to death, but she wasn’t what I’d come here to talk about.
“Anyway”—I cleared my throat—“my family doesn’t hate you. Just putting it out there. Mom thinks I’m a first-rate asshole, and Dad is probably taking me out of his will. But they still like you. If anything, once I explained you didn’t even ask for money or anything and just did it for Dad, you became even more heroic and perfect.”
I’d call her Martyr Maddie, but the truth was lately she hadn’t been that same meek, insecure girl I’d met all those months ago at all. She stood up for herself constantly and only did what she believed in.
And unfortunately, it made her stupidly irresistible.
The quiet from the other side of the door grated on my nerves. I dragged my forehead over the wood, squeezing my eyes shut.
“I don’t want this to be over.” The admission fell from my mouth on a whisper.
I wasn’t ready to tell her everything yet. I recognized it seemed like a highly convenient time for me to realize I was in love with her. But waking up tomorrow knowing there was no Mad on the agenda seemed like a prospect worth offing myself for.
“Please.” Her voice trembled. “Leave.”
I pressed my fingers to her door, then walked away, respecting her boundaries for the first time since I’d met her. They said doing the right thing made you feel good.
They were wrong.
It felt shitty to do the right thing. Downright stupid. When I was back on the street, I looked up at her window, ignoring the rain pounding on my face. I saw her face pop behind the glass. She was crying.
And as I got into my Uber and the drops kept running down my face, I thought maybe so was I.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
MADDIE
I’d done it.
I stood up for myself.
Martyr Maddie no more. I went against Chase Black. Flat-out refused him. I cut things off with Ethan. I even sent Katie a message, explaining how okay I was with her dating my ex-something. I was taking a proactive stance in my life.
So why was I feeling anything but empowered?
I’d always thought standing up for myself would feel celestial. Like a fully grown butterfly bursting out of a cocoon, flapping its colorful wings. In practice, I felt grossed out with myself by the way I’d turned Chase away on the day he’d hurried to the clinic to take a paternity test. I felt so empty I could feel my bones rattling inside my body as I set foot in the studio the next morning. New York Fashion Week was mere weeks away. August had bled into September, and my sketch was ready and submitted to Sven. We were supposed to start stitching the dress today. The model was supposed to be on her way to the office. Sven told me he had taken our discussion about the sketch to heart. Not only had he not made one change to my sketch, but he’d also suggested we use an everyday woman to model the dress. And by “everyday woman,” he still meant a nineteen-year-old, ridiculously gorgeous model with perfect skin and silky hair. But unlike most runway models, she was a whopping size six. Super skinny and fit to the rest of the world, but on the curvy side in fashion standards.
All I had to do was see the production of the dress through, stage by stage.
“If it isn’t the office mattress. Grab a ticket, gentlemen. Everyone gets a lay,” Nina proclaimed as I skulked into the office. We were the only two people in. Everyone else at Croquis liked to be fashionably late. Yesterday, Nina had reached an all-time-bitch level. The type normally saved for Korean high school dramas and daytime soap operas. When I’d gone downstairs to buy a salad, condoms had spilled at my feet from my shoulder bag. She’d crammed them into it when I wasn’t looking.
“Shut up, Nina,” I said tiredly, collapsing into my seat and powering up my laptop.
Realizing I’d actually answered her back, Nina whipped her head around, twisting her mouth in distaste. She was wearing a Stella McCartney black day dress paired with flat Louboutins. “So now you have a mouth? I mean, for more than blowing important men? Figures.”
Figures? What did she mean?
“Seriously.” I rolled my eyes, fed up with her crass behavior. “That mean-girl cliché is super early 2000s. It’s 2020. Throw shade. Finstagram me. Graduate from petty slut-shaming me. This is getting real tiring.”
“You’re so lucky to not have any principles,” she continued, undeterred. “I bet I could get where you are if I chose to let the right people in the industry get a piece of me.”
I snapped my laptop shut. “Nina,” I warned, finally taking a good look at her. She was shoving pictures of her with her lobbyist boyfriend into a cardboard box. Her eyes were red. She was . . . oh God, she was packing.
“Spare me your victory speech, okay? I got fired yesterday, as you’re well aware. Sven handed me my notice personally. Said something about Chase Black bringing his attention to the HR manual of Croquis. Apparently, Mr. Black read the entire thing yesterday while waiting at the clinic for some type of results—for what, he wouldn’t say. Hopefully for chlamydia. And hopefully it turned out positive. Anyway, Chase was super happy to let Sven know I am apparently bullying you.” She sniffed. But I knew she was talking about the paternity test. “Whatever, I don’t even care. My first-choice internship was Prada, the second Valentino. Croquis was my fifth choice.” She quickly wiped a tear that slid down the tip of her nose.
I stood up, making my way to her. She grabbed one of the boxes and turned her back to me. I tugged at the fabric of her sleeve. “Look at me,” I said harshly. No sign of Martyr Maddie in sight. I was pissed, and I owned it.
She looked down, shaking her head.
“Nina.” My voice grew sharper. “You are bullying me.”
“It’s just banter!” she cried. Bullshit.
“Why do you hate me so much?”
She looked up, giving me a duh look. “Why wouldn’t I? Look at you. You have horrible taste in clothes, yet you feel so comfortable in your own skin. You’re the uncoolest person I’ve ever met, no offense. Yet you’re probably Sven’s favorite employee. Men like Chase Black throw themselves at you and have bathroom sex with you and fire people for you. You are way ahead of the game for our age, and you didn’t even go to a good college. You just . . . have it all together. I don’t know. It doesn’t seem natural for a twenty-six-year-old. It feels like you got a lot of shortcuts.”