Shortly after I started dating Dean, Black began writing again.
Can you tell the difference between love and lust?
—Black
I humored him, not because I wanted to, but because I relished every chance I had to talk to him.
Lust is when you want the person to make you feel good. Love is when you want to make the other person feel good.
—Pink.
The next time I got a letter from him, my hands shook. And they would continue to shake for the next few months as Black crawled into my soul and took a seat in the pit of my heart, making himself comfortable.
And if I want to hurt the person, is that hate?
—Black
I answered:
No, it’s pain. You want to inflict pain on the person who caused you to hurt. I think if you hate someone, you just want them gone. Do you really hate me, Black?
—Pink
It was the bravest question I’d ever asked him. He took the whole week to get back to me with that one.
No.
—Black
Do you want to talk about it face-to-face?
—Pink
Another week passed before he answered.
No.
—Black.
We ping-ponged for the remainder of the year, talking about philosophy and art. I was dating Dean, and Vicious was sleeping with everyone else. We never mentioned our real identities again. We never admitted to one another, not in person and not in the letters, that we were who we were. But it was becoming clearer that we were compatible.
And every time I saw him walking down the hallway with his lazy smirk and a harem of cheerleaders or his football crew trailing behind him, I smiled a private smile. A smile that said that I knew him more than they did. That they might hang out with him every day and attend his stupid parties, but I was the one who really knew the important things about him.
Even when he tried to kiss me that night, we didn’t discuss Black and Pink. If anything, the next week, he wrote to me as if nothing had happened. As if Vicious and Black were completely different people.
The one and only time he’d admitted to being Black was on the day I left Todos Santos for good. Our pen pal project had ended weeks ago, but I still found an envelope on top of my suitcase. The handwriting was unfamiliar, but I still knew who it was from. The outside said:
Open when you feel like you might forgive me.
I still hadn’t opened it.
Not even after we had sex, because I knew that wasn’t about forgiveness. That was about satisfying my need for him. And now? Now I still couldn’t forgive him, but finally my curiosity had won out over my self-control.
I pulled the last letter out of my shoebox, the paper yellow and brittle, and read it.
You were always mine.
—Black
I WALTZED THROUGH THE DOUBLE glass doors of FHH, ignoring the stunned faces of the New York employees who thought they didn’t have to deal with my sour-ass anymore. My face was relaxed, my posture poised. I was the same old Vicious, regardless of what I was dealing with in my personal life. The office was buzzing with post-holiday phone calls, overlapping chatter, the noise of working printers and people slurping their lukewarm coffees from their stupid “Best Dad/Mom/Grandmother” mugs.
I strode with purpose to Dean’s office. I couldn’t work inside there right now for the obvious reason—it was occupied by Dean—but I didn’t plan to leave NY, because there was nowhere else I would rather be.
After I saw her at the exhibit, as I sat in the searing hot bathtub and tried to get the feeling back in my numb, icy feet, I’d made up my mind. I wasn’t leaving until Emilia LeBlanc came with me. Even if that meant she was a package deal with her big-mouthed little sister, Rosie.
Emilia, my makeup is revenge.
Yours is forgiveness.
You’re better than me.
I don’t deserve you.
But I’m going to take you, anyway.
But Jaime was right. I was acting like a fucking tool when it came to her, so the least I owed myself was not to let her slip through my fingers because of that this time.
Opening the door to Dean’s office without knocking, I breezed straight in and planted my ass on the chair directly in front of his desk.
He sat there, talking on his phone and deliberately not paying any attention to me. He scribbled something on a FHH notepad as he spoke. “Of course. I’ll let Sue know, and we’ll send someone over as soon as possible. It shouldn’t take long to draft something like this.”
Sliding the notepad across his glass desk, he pointed his finger at what he wrote, offering me a smirk.
You look like shit
I snatched the pen from his hand, grabbed the notepad and scribbled something, lifting it for him to see, right next to my dead expression.
Sue looks like a bad fuck
He chuckled, still engrossed in his phone conversation. “Well, actually, I do have a contact person in Los Angeles. He’s one of FHH’s CEOs. His name is Baron Spencer. Sue will leave his contact details along with our proposition. Sound good?”
I gave him the notepad and pen, and he scribbled, tearing the paper from the pad and slapping it against my chest. I plucked it from my suit and read.
Your stepmom is a bad fuck. We’re not switching branches
It was my turn to write.
Fine. I’ll join you here. Care if I sit on your lap?
He looked up at me, and I winked.
We were back to being rowdy teenagers. Before Emilia came to town and shit all over our relationship.
“Excuse me, Stephen? Sorry to cut you off. I have an important call on the other line, something personal. Can I get back to you in ten minutes? Thank you. Okay. Thanks. You too. Take care.”
He slammed his phone down on the desk. I noticed there were a few people peeking curiously from the reception area in the direction of his office, and itched to close the automatic blinds, but knew better than to step deeper into his territory. He would’ve pissed right there in the middle of his office if it were appropriate.
“Emilia resigned,” he hissed out, opening a drawer and throwing her letter of resignation my way.
I didn’t make a move to pick it up.
“I know,” I said with a shrug. “She can do whatever the fuck she wants. I’m not going anywhere without her, and I need more time here.”
“Tell me…” Dean leaned in, lacing his fingers together. “How would you have reacted if I did the same to you? Told you I drove your high school sweetheart from our town just because I couldn’t see her with you, then went ten years later and fucked her in your office, your bed, your fucking everything? Right in your face. How would you feel about that, Vicious? Because I’m starting to believe that you’re a sociopath for not understanding the depth of the betrayal. True, the two of us were never as tight as you are with Jaime and I am with Trent, but we were still, in the grand scheme of things, brothers.”
It was my turn to lean forward. “I’m a bastard, Dean, but you knew. That night, at my party, before she came looking for you so you could go on your first date? You knew how I felt about it. But you went and did it anyway. I was angry with you for years, but I get it now. She was worth it. Emilia is a compulsion. You just want her, consequences be damned.