: Chapter 6

I crumpled Madison’s last note while she was in the shower before slam-dunking it into the trash can. I scribbled another one before she came out.

M,

Can’t help but notice you failed to comment about the jasmines. No wonder we broke up. You’ve always been unappreciative (Xmas diamond earrings come to mind).

PS:

Re: me on a horse. Do I smell a bet?

—C

I had trouble wrapping my head around the fact my convenient, timid ex-girlfriend had turned into a feisty, take-no-bullshit warrior.

There was a knock on the door.

“Come in.” I put the pen down. I expected Dad. We hadn’t had time to talk one-on-one during the weekend, and I wondered if he’d picked up on the tension between Jul and me. We hadn’t had many weekend-long family gatherings with Julian in the past three years. Not since Dad had announced I’d be chief operating officer of Black & Co., the second-in-command to his CEO and chairman position. He’d given Julian the CIO position—chief information officer—and the message was clear: I was to inherit the CEO seat when it was time for Dad to retire.

Julian had been resentful since then. He thought, considering he was the elder “son,” that he would be the natural successor. Only he didn’t feel so much like a son anymore and opted out of most family gatherings these days. In fact, I was surprised he’d come to the Hamptons. But of course he had—he’d wanted to see Madison, find out what kind of woman I’d decided to marry.

I looked up at the open door. It wasn’t Dad. It was Amber.

Fucking Amber.

She wore a pair of leather pants tighter than a condom and a blouse she’d conveniently forgotten to button around her generous, surgically enhanced rack. Her dyed-blonde hair was freshly blown out, and her face was immaculately made up, including her painted-on eyebrows, which gave her a Bert-from-Sesame-Street edge. I jutted my chin out in hello but didn’t stop shoving Mad’s clothes into her suitcase. My fake fiancée’s unaccountability infuriated me. She had nonexistent organizational skills. I couldn’t trust her to be ready in time, and I wanted to be out of here before we hit traffic. Another prime reason we were a terrible fit.

And here was another one, in case I was tempted to dip into Madison’s jar ever again—she was a dreadful drunk. On a scale of one to Charlie Sheen, she was a solid Mel Gibson. Embarrassing to be associated with. Still, I applauded myself for being pleasant and supportive of her when she’d been about to pass out. Of course, I’d had to be. She was my fake fiancée, and tossing her to another room, letting her fend for herself, seemed cold, even by my arctic standards.

“Are you alone?” Amber pouted, crossing her arms over her chest to push her tits out. She was all class.

“Madison’s in the shower,” I supplied without looking up.

She took that as an invitation to waltz in and park her ass on the edge of the bed, on which the suitcase was open. I continued cramming burnable fabrics into the open jaw of the luggage, wondering who the fuck made the weird clothes Madison was purchasing with gusto. I tried to look at the labels, but there weren’t any. Very promising stuff.

“Clementine wanted to say goodbye.” Amber leaned toward me, pushing her chest even tighter. I really didn’t want it to burst. It would delay my trip back to New York by at least a few hours.

“I’ll come see her before we leave,” I tried to clip out, but I couldn’t help it. My voice came out softer than intended where Booger Face was concerned.

“We need to talk about her.” She put her hand on my arm. If she thought it’d stop me from moving, she was dead wrong.

“Booger Face or Madison?”

“I wish you wouldn’t call her that,” Amber huffed.

“Same,” I deadpanned.

I resented Julian and Amber for calling their daughter a name with zero nickname potential. Clemmy sounded like it was short for chlamydia, and Tinny made her sound like a mini can. I therefore referred to her as Booger Face, even though long were the days since she had sported actual boogers. When Clementine was born, Amber had asked me what I thought about the name. I’d said I didn’t like it. I was certain that was why she’d chosen it.

“Fine. Tough crowd. Let’s start with your fiancée. Is it real?” Amber glowered.

I zipped Mad’s overflowing suitcase wordlessly. What the heck kind of question was that?

“She’s a bit of an oddball.” Amber’s palm slid from my arm, her fingernail running circles on her thigh absentmindedly.

“She suits me.”

But she didn’t, and we both knew that. I hadn’t considered the fact that Madison wasn’t my obvious choice back when I had dated her, simply because I hadn’t thought there was anything to consider. She was supposed to be a fling. Nothing more. Now that Julian and Amber had pointed it out, I had to admit they weren’t wrong. I liked my women the same way I liked my interior design: impractical, obscenely expensive to maintain, with zero personality and frequent updates.

“About Clementine . . .” Amber stopped circling her fingernail over her thigh, digging it into the fabric. She was nervous.

“No,” I snapped, looking up. She reared her head back like I’d slapped her. “We’ve discussed it, and my demands were clear. Either you accept them or you zip it.”

“Are these my only options?”

“This is your only ultimatum.” My gaze flicked to the closed door of the bathroom. The stream of water stopped, and the glass door squeaked open. For a reason I didn’t care to explore, I didn’t want Madison listening to this clusterfuck of a conversation.

“You think I’d lie?” Amber’s emerald eyes flared. She had the audacity to put her hand to her neck and fake a dainty gasp.

“I think you’d do anything bar selling Booger Face to the circus to get what you want,” I confirmed nonchalantly.

She stood up, fists balled at her sides, no doubt about to spew something out. Another lie, probably. The bathroom door whined. We both glanced at it, Amber’s mouth still agape.

“Out,” I growled.

“But—”

“Now.”

Amber stepped toward me. Her face so close to mine I could catch the individual freckles under her three pounds of foundation. Her tits brushed my chest. They were hard and big, unnaturally enhanced. Nothing like the soft, small ones Mad had.

Don’t think about her tits Friday night when you put your sweatshirt over her body.

Oops. Too late for that.

“This isn’t over, Chase. It’ll never be over.”

My father once told me, “If you truly want to know someone, make them mad. The way they react is a telltale sign of who they are.” Amber was working extra hard on riling me up. Little did she know, my number of fucks to give was constantly on the decline and reserved for immediate family and true friends only.

“It was over before it started,” I hissed into her face, smirking tauntingly. “Before I even laid a finger on you, Amb.”

She galloped to the bedroom door and slammed it in my face, making a scene. She wanted Madison to know, to ask what had happened, to plant the seed of insecurity in her. My fake fiancée opened the bathroom door a second later in a bathrobe, rubbing a towel into her short locks. Odd timing. I eyed her suspiciously.

“Was that the door?” She tilted her head sideways, letting the towel fall to the floor. She strode to the bed, flicked open her suitcase, and—check this—began to unpack everything I’d packed for her as she sifted through her clothes. She lifted one frock at a time, examined it, then threw it over her shoulder, in search of something else to wear.

“What the hell are you doing?” The question came out in wonder more than anger. Her eccentric behavior always took me by surprise.

“Choosing an outfit,” she chirped. “What else would I be doing wrapped in a bathrobe, fresh out of the shower?”

Sucking me off.

“So?” she asked again. “Who was it? I heard you talking to someone.”

“Amber,” I grunted, my eyes tracing the outline of her body under the bathrobe hungrily. I hated that I wanted to pound her like a piece of schnitzel. (Madison, not Amber. I wouldn’t touch Amber if it brought world peace.)

“I’m guessing you two are close,” she said as she continued to look through her clothes. Her tone was neutral, matter of fact.

“You’re guessing wrong,” I bit out.

“But you have so much in common.”

“We both breathe. That’s the only thing we have in common.”

“You’re both also insufferably bitter.”

There was a beat of silence, in which I quickly reminded myself explaining to Madison how unlike Amber and I were wouldn’t matter.

“You’re welcome, by the way,” I groaned.

“For having my things sifted through by you without permission?” She turned to look at me, still all sugar and smiles. “That was extremely generous of you.”

“You know, I don’t remember you being so argumentative when you had a regular supply of vitamin D.” I tapered my eyes, hoping my semi wouldn’t blossom into a full-blown erection as we butted heads again. That part was true. Madison had done a complete one-eighty on me since I’d landed at her doorstep asking her to accompany me to the Hamptons. This new version of her was also the real person she was, and it pissed me off I’d never gotten to truly know her.

It pissed me off that she was actually funny.

And sarcastic.

And a handful, in a bizarrely attractive way.

But most of all, it pissed me off that she’d lied to me about who she was.

“I wanted to make an impression on you back then. That ship has sailed.”

“More like sank in the middle of the fucking ocean.”

“Well.” She shrugged, clutching a red-and-purple dress to her chest, choosing her outfit for the day. “You were the one to direct it into a six-ton iceberg in the middle of the ocean. Don’t you ever forget that, Chase.”

I smiled tightly and went downstairs to break something valuable in the kitchen. Breaking her, I realized, was not on the menu anymore. She was different. Stronger.

A few more hours, and I wouldn’t have to see her again.

We were in the foyer, the staff ushering our suitcases to my Tesla, when Julian made his first chess move. I’d been anticipating it all weekend, trying to figure out his game, why he was here. Not that I was complaining: Julian and Amber were train wrecks, but I was always game for spending more time with Booger Face.

I called bullshit about Julian’s six remark. Madison was a solid twelve, on her worst days. She wasn’t just wholesomely beautiful but also sexy in a way women who weren’t worried about being sexy were. What nagged him about her was that she was indifferent to the numbers in his bank account and his Armani suits. She was what he called a postfeminist. A girl with a we-can-do-it mentality who made her own path in the world. He, in contrast, had a let-the-butler-do-it mentality. Of course they were like oil and water. But if he thought I was going to flip my shit when he called her a six, he was in for a surprise. Letting him rattle me was not an option.

When I was a kid and Julian had come back from boarding school or college, we’d always played chess. Neither of us were big fans of the game, but we had this underlying competition between us. We competed over everything. From our sports accomplishments—we were both rowers for our high school and college teams—to who could stuff himself with more turkey at Thanksgiving. Despite that, Julian and I were close. Close enough that we talked on the phone regularly when he was away and hung out more than two brothers with a decade between them should when he was home. We’d play chess in the weirdest way. We’d leave the board in the drawing room and move our pieces throughout the day. It had the shine of an extra challenge, because we always had to remember what the board had looked like before we’d left it. No king, queen, bishop, or pawn went astray. We both watched our game with hawklike eyes.

It was a lesson in resilience, planning ahead, and patience. To this day, whenever Julian and I were at my parents’ house together, we’d play.

Most of the time, I’d win.

Eighty-nine percent, to be exact (and yes, I was counting).

Still, Julian always gave a good fight.

But now we weren’t close anymore, and I suspected neither he nor I was going to abide by the unwritten rules of our new game.

“Maddie, Chase, wait.” Julian clapped twice behind us like we were his servants. Madison stopped first, and I had to follow through with her foolish decision.

My parents and Katie gathered around us. Dad was holding Clementine. He adored her more than anything else in the world. At nine, Clementine was almost a preteen, and yet he still held her like she was a toddler.

That was the thing about my father, though. He had the eerie capability to be the best dad and grandfather in the world—the best husband, at least from where I was standing—and still be a mean son of a bitch when it came down to business. We had weekly hangouts consisting of drinking beer and watching football and talking smack about our competitors. Then he’d take Mom on a date night and read to her when they came back home. He’d take Booger Face to the zoo in the morning and buy-to-destroy a competitor in the evening. He really was the entire package. For a while, I’d thought I’d follow in his footsteps.

Perfect businessman.

Perfect husband.

Perfect everything.

But then something had happened to change everything I’d believed about my family. About women.

I realized I was going to bizarre, unlikely lengths to pacify my father. I wasn’t an idiot. People didn’t fake engagements outside of Ryan Reynolds’s movies. To understand my sacrifice, you had to remember—those dents you saw in families, the wear and tear of being holed up together during summer vacations and Christmas holidays and winter breaks? The tension, the underlying bitterness, the rile-you-up buttons your loved ones pressed when they wanted to make you snap? The Blacks didn’t have them. My immediate family, for the most part, remained a shiny, untouchable thing without any real indentations. No nasty arguments. No hostile baggage between siblings. No infidelities, money problems, dark pasts. I’d come to realize that almost every family in the world suffered through a lot of their relatives’ unbearable traits. Not so with mine. I didn’t tolerate my family. I worshipped them.

Well, three out of the four, anyway.

Mad turned around, looking at Julian with a patient, saintly smile. She didn’t trust him, but she didn’t want to come off as rude either. “Yes, Julian?”

“I was thinking.” He stepped toward us, swirling the thick liquid of his whiskey in his tumbler.

“An unpromising start,” I deadpanned. People snickered uncomfortably around us. I wasn’t joking, but whatever.

“We haven’t really had time to get to know you at all. On Friday, you were . . . indisposed.” He said the word like she had puked buckets on the dinner table, as opposed to tipsily slurring her words when she’d retired to the drawing room with my mother and sister. “And on Saturday, you didn’t join us on the hike or wine tasting. You’re a difficult woman to pin down, huh?” He smirked.

She opened her mouth to answer, but he soldiered through with his speech, not giving a damn about what she had to say.

“It was impossible to get ahold of you, get to know you, and you are going to be a part of the Black clan. You’ll practically be my sister-in-law.”

“Not practically.” I wrapped an arm around Madison. “We’re not brothers, a fact you seem to forget only when convenient.”

“Chase!” my mother chided at the same time my father frowned, looking between us. Julian took a step back, tutting.

“No need to be scandalized on my behalf, folks. That’s just Chase being an unruly baby brother. At any rate, Amber and I would love to invite you guys over—along with Ronan, Lori, and Katie, of course—for a festive engagement meal. Say—Friday? Unless, of course, Maddie is busy again for the next six months.”

Motherfucker.

Queen’s gambit. He’d begun our mental chess game with the classiest chess opening, by pretending to offer a pawn. In this case, Madison. She’d been disposable to me a second ago, but now, when Julian was trying to prove his point, she became the queen. The most important piece in my game.

I smiled, clapping his shoulder good-naturedly with my free hand. “What a lovely offer. We accept.” I felt Mad’s shoulders stiffening under my arm. Her eyes darted to my face in surprise. I ignored her, still looking at Julian. “What can we bring?”

“Maddie’s banana bread,” Katie suggested. My sister hadn’t had cake for at least five years straight, so I wasn’t sure what business she had choosing dessert. “She told us she makes a mean banana bread yesterday.”

“Shocker.” Amber rolled her eyes.

Mad’s eyes ping-ponged between everyone. She said nothing, probably channeling the majority of her energy to muster the self-control not to maim me.

As soon as we buckled up in my car, she opened her mouth. She looked like a little woodpecker. Prettily annoying and ready to give me a headache. I was certain I liked Real Maddie even less than I liked Girlfriend Maddie, who had continuously tried to please me. Unfortunately, I had to make do with Real Maddie, because my family fawned over her, and because Julian’s newest mission in life was to uncover our fake relationship.

“I’m not going.”

“Yeah, you are.”

I prided myself on being a skillful negotiator. I also knew that, logically, starting the negotiation from an aggressive, dogmatic stance would get me nowhere. However, where Madison Goldbloom was concerned, I simply couldn’t help myself. She called to the four-year-old asshole kid in me. And he came running, ready to pick a fight.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I told you it was a one-off. No.”

“I will pay your rent. Twelve months up front.” My fingers curled over the steering wheel firmly.

“Are you deaf?”

Are you? I’m offering you free fucking rent to do something most women would sacrifice a kidney for.

I had the sense to keep this as a thought and not spit it in her face.

“Do you want a bigger apartment?” I asked, willing to bend over backward to make this happen. It wasn’t even about Dad anymore. Not fully, anyway. My father looked sufficiently convinced Madison and I were an item. I’d kill Julian if he uncovered the truth. And I meant that literally. “There’s a vacant one in my building. Three bedrooms, two baths, sick view. Doesn’t your little friend from Croquis live there? Steve?”

“Sven,” she groaned. “And he’s my boss.”

I knew who Sven was. We did business together. I just wanted to work the “friends” angle and remind her why she wanted to live next to someone she was friendly with.

“You could be neighbors. The place is ready for Daisy to compromise every piece of furniture inside it.”

And I, apparently, was ready to never get her deposit back and shell out close to 750K in total for the pleasure of taking her on another date.

“Daisy is content humping dollar store plant pots to satisfy her needs,” Madison replied sunnily, opening her little pocket mirror and applying lip gloss. I liked that she didn’t paint her face to a point where she looked like someone else. She normally put on lipstick and mascara and called it a day.

“Money? Prestige? Black & Co. shares?”

I was officially the worst negotiator in the history of the concept. If my Yale professors heard me, they would take my degree, roll it into a cone, and smack me in the ass with it. I drove slowly to prolong our negotiation. I was not above kidnapping her if that didn’t work.

She shook her head, still staring out the window. She confused and infuriated me. The dazzling simplicity of her—of not doing something just because it didn’t feel right—was both refreshing and frustrating. In my experience, everyone had a price, and they were quick to name it. Not this chick, apparently.

“What would it take?” I grumbled, trying another tactic. The ball was in her court. I hated her court. I wanted to buy it, pour gasoline on it, and then burn it down. For the first time in my life, someone else had the upper hand. An unlikely someone else. And all because my idiotic brother-cousin (what was he to me, anyway?) had a hard-on for seeing me fail. Everyone else in the family ate up our romance and asked for a second serving. Katie had even prodded me about who was planning Mad’s bachelorette party. She wanted to take her future fake sister-in-law to Saint Barts, for fuck’s sake.

The worst part was that Julian was barking up the wrong tree. I didn’t give a crap about the CEO throne. I mean, I did, but I also knew my place as Dad’s successor was secured. For the first time in my life, I’d done something for an entirely unselfish reason. Whoever said giving was better than receiving was high, because I was definitely not having a merry time doing the charity work.

Still, if Dad found out I’d lied about Madison, he’d be heartbroken, and that was a chance I wasn’t taking.

“Anything?” Madison tapped her lips thoughtfully. “You’d do anything?”

Well, lookee here. I’d finally found something she enjoyed other than getting eaten while sprawled on my granite kitchen island—busting my balls.

I offered her a curt nod.

“And remember, whatever it is you give me, I will only go to one dinner with you,” she warned.

“Crushed,” I drawled sarcastically—again, zero self-control. “Get on with it, Mad.”

She bit her lower lip in concentration, giving it some genuine thought. I imagined she was going to try to inflict as much damage as possible. This was a person who preferred a heating pad to a Tiffany & Co. pair of earrings. A highly unpredictable specimen of a woman. She’d castrate me if she could.

Finally, Madison snapped her fingers in the air. “I know! I’ve been wanting to sleep in for a while now. But ever since you gifted me Daisy—bless her heart—I need to walk her at six in the morning. Any later than that, and she starts scratching the door, crying, and pissing in my shoes. If I go to that dinner thing, you have to walk her every morning for a week. Weekend included.”

“I live on Park Avenue. You live in Greenwich,” I retorted, twisting my head in her direction so she could appreciate how aghast I felt toward her idea.

“And?” She snapped her pocket mirror shut and shoved it back into her purse. We held each other’s gaze on a red light for a moment. I felt my jaw tightening so hard my teeth ground one another into dust. A honking sound from behind us snapped me out of our stare-off.

“And nothing,” I muttered, willing the throbbing vein in my forehead not to pop all over the leather seats. “It’s a deal.”

She laughed with delight, her throaty, sexy voice filling my car and giving me an uncomfortable semi. “Jesus, I can’t believe I dated you.”

I can’t believe you chose this bullshit over a brand-new Park Avenue apartment.

“I don’t know what we were thinking,” I agreed solemnly.

We weren’t dating. You were dating me without my knowledge. If I hadn’t woken up in time, we’d probably be married and pregnant by now.

Now I was thinking about pregnant sex with Madison, and the semi became a full hard-on.

“It was just the sex, wasn’t it? And movies. And eating. No real talking was involved,” she murmured, resting her head back against her seat, her hazel eyes dim.

That sounded about right. We’d talked very little in the months we’d seen each other. Madison had seemed intimidated by me, something I hadn’t bothered rectifying, as it had made our eating-fucking-sleeping arrangement supremely comfortable for me.

“If it makes you feel any better, my no-mingling policy extends to all humans, not just girlfriends,” I offered.

“That does not make me feel any better. I walked around thinking you thought I was stupid,” she accused.

“Not stupid.” I shook my head. “Not overtly brilliant, either, but definitely competent.”

Didn’t they say the truth would set you free? Why did I feel so fucking chained into this uncomfortable moment, then?

“Wow. You are like Mr. Darcy’s evil twin, but sans the charm.”

“So basically an asshole?” I groaned.

“Pretty much.”

I double-parked in front of her entrance. Pediatric Guy was slumped on the stairway. His kneecaps, ears, and Adam’s apple looked like they should be attached to a person at least twice his size. He was lanky in a half-formed-teenager way, his chest caving inward. He had glasses and an intelligent nose I highly suspected women like Madison found attractive. His cheek was propped against his knuckles as he read a wrinkled paperback like some kind of Neanderthal. An actual book with pages and everything. I bet he physically went to the supermarket for his shopping and got his own takeout instead of ordering Uber Eats. This was the kind of heathen she was associating herself with these days.

I bet he wrote her love letters and didn’t even mention her rack or ass. Prick.

She glanced at him, then at me, then at him again. What was his name? I remembered it was as generic as the rest of him. Brian? Justin? He looked like a Conrad. Something that was synonymous with douchebag.

“Ethan’s here,” she announced.

Ethan. I’d been close.

“I need to tell him about that stupid dinner. You still have my email, right? Send me the details.” She hopped outside without sparing me a look. I unloaded her suitcases like I was a goddamn bellboy. To save the remainder of my pride, I dumped them by her building without even glancing at her or her dudebro, not offering to help her take them upstairs. Let Dr. Douche do it himself.

I rounded my car and got back inside, watching her ass in that ridiculous A-line dress as she approached Ethan, flung her arms over his shoulders, and kissed his cheek. Cheek. Something not terrible happened in my chest when I realized that probably meant they hadn’t slept together. Yet.

I breathed through my nose, sending a little prayer to the universe that Ethan wouldn’t fuck my fake fiancée tonight, and looked down to retrieve my phone from my pocket.

There was a note stuck to the passenger seat. The same sticky white one with my family name engraved at the top from the Hamptons. She’d put it there when I wasn’t looking. Sneaky.

C,

You saved those jasmines because they are living things, not because I asked you to.

Also: We broke up because you’re a cheating cheater who cheats.

Also 2: What’s up with Julian?

PS:

Re: you smelling something unfamiliar. It might be a good time for your bimonthly STD check.

—M