He Texted Me Divorce, So I Took 20 Million and Vanished novel · Chapter 2 of 32
Chapter 2: Eleven Seconds
Louisa walks past Leo with her suitcase, the money lands in the cab, her mother's locket and the ultrasound photo are missing, and in Portland Libby says Leo has already called her sounding insane.
Nobody in the lobby moved.
The doorman behind the desk stared at his screen.
Leo set his bag down on the marble.
"What is this?"
His voice was quiet. It was always quiet.
Angela stood up fast and brushed off her knees.
"She was taking things, Leo. I was just checking."
He looked at the sweater in my hands.
It was gray and pilled at the elbows. I'd bought it at a thrift store in Ithaca.
"Was she," he said.
"She's been living off us for a year. Somebody had to look."
I zipped the suitcase shut and stood up.
My knees hurt from the floor.
"Your sister wanted to make sure I wasn't taking more than twenty million," I said. "She can relax. I'm not."
Leo's jaw moved.
He was taller than I remembered, or maybe I'd just never stood this close to him in daylight.
He had shadows under his eyes and a day of stubble, and his tie was gone.
"Come upstairs," he said. "Five minutes. Talk to me."
"About what?"
"About this." He lifted his phone an inch. "About the papers."
"I signed them."
"I know. He called me from the car." Something flickered in his face. "You didn't read them."
"You didn't ask me anything before you sent the text," I said. "So we're even."
"Louisa."
It was strange to hear him say my name.
He'd said it maybe a dozen times in a year.
Once, six weeks ago, he'd said it into my hair on the kitchen floor at two in the morning.
I pushed that away.
"You texted," I said. "I answered."
"In seconds."
I didn't know what to do with that.
He'd counted.
Angela laughed, sharp and pleased.
"She couldn't type fast enough. I told you, Leo. I told you what she was."
He didn't look at her.
He looked at me.
I thought about the four gray smudges in my bag.
I thought about the lilies on the sideboard and the plate in the kitchen.
I thought about a whole year of eating dinner alone at the end of a table built for twelve.
"Goodbye, Leo," I said.
I walked past him.
The doorman got to the door before I did and held it open.
He didn't look at my face, but he said, "Take care, Mrs. Fontana," very softly.
It was the first time I almost cried that day.
I didn't look back at the lobby.
I got in the first cab that stopped.
"Penn Station," I said.
Somewhere around Thirty-Fourth Street, my banking app chimed.
I opened it.
$20,000,000.00
I stared at the zeros until the driver asked if I was okay.
"I'm fine," I said. "I'm really, really fine."
I bought a ticket to Boston and sat by the window.
The train pulled out, and the city slid away in gray pieces.
I unzipped the inside pocket of the suitcase to look at the ultrasound again.
The pocket was empty.
I took everything out, right there in the seat.
Every sweater, every sock.
I checked the lining with my fingers.
No ultrasound.
No locket.
My mother's locket was gold, the size of a thumbnail, with my baby picture in one side and my grandmother's in the other.
She'd worn it every day of her life, even in the hospital, even at the end.
I pictured Angela crouched over my things with her two fingers.
Just checking.
The woman across the aisle was watching me.
I folded everything back in and zipped it shut.
I could go back.
I could stand in that lobby and make a scene and get my mother's locket back from a woman who'd lie to my face.
And then Teresa would know I'd come back.
And then they'd look at me long enough to notice.
I put my hand flat on my stomach.
"Okay," I whispered. "Not today."
In Boston I walked through South Station to the trash can by the Downeaster platform.
I took the SIM card out of my phone and dropped it in.
Then I dropped the phone in after it.
I bought a cheap prepaid one at the newsstand and called the only number I knew by heart.
"Hutchins Nursery, we're closed till April, go away."
"Libby. It's me."
There was a long silence.
"Louisa? Where are you? Whose phone is this?"
"Can you pick me up in Portland tonight? The nine-forty."
"Are you okay? Is it your mom's stuff? Is it the rich guy?"
"I'll tell you in the car."
She didn't ask anything else.
That was Libby.
We'd shared a dorm room at Cornell for two years, and she'd never once asked me a question I didn't want to answer.
The train ran up the coast in the dark.
I put my coat over my stomach and closed my eyes, and the kitchen floor came back.
December thirtieth.
The lilies from the funeral were on the counter, and I was sitting on the cold tile in my black dress because my legs had quit.
The penthouse was dark. Nobody was home. Nobody was ever home.
At two in the morning the elevator opened, and Leo walked in with snow on his overcoat.
He saw me and stopped.
"Louisa."
He dropped his bag and got down on the floor next to me in his good coat.
He didn't say he was sorry. Everybody had said they were sorry all day.
He put his hand flat on my back and left it there.
I turned my face into his shoulder and cried until his collar was wet.
When I stopped, he didn't move away.
His face was an inch from mine. He smelled like cold air and airplane coffee.
I don't know which of us moved first.
His mouth was warm, and I grabbed his lapels so he couldn't take it back.
He pulled away anyway, just far enough to look at me.
"You're sure," he said. "Tell me you're sure."
"I'm sure. Stay."
He said my name into my hair, and I pulled the coat off his shoulders.
He was still on his knees in front of me, still in his suit, and I couldn't look at his face.
So I looked at his hands.
Big hands, ring finger bare, one of them still braced on the tile like he was about to stand up and leave.
"Don't," I said.
"Don't what?"
"Don't get up."
His exhale came out unsteady, and that sound undid something in my chest.
I reached for his belt.
His whole body went still.
"Louisa."
"Leo."
"Wait."
I looked up then.
His eyes were almost black in the dark kitchen, and he was staring at my mouth like it had said something filthy.
Maybe it had.
"I don't want to wait," I said. "I've waited a whole year in this apartment. I've eaten dinner alone at a table for twelve. I want to feel something that isn't this." I pressed my palm flat against his chest, over his shirt, over his heart. "And I want it to be you."
Something in his face cracked.
He caught my wrist, but he didn't push it away.
He held it.
"Tell me what you want."
"On the floor." I pulled my hand free and worked his belt open. "Right here. Now."
His jaw tightened.
"The kitchen floor."
"Yes."
He said my name again, low, like a warning, and then his mouth was on mine.
The kiss wasn't careful.
It was hungry and a little rough, his stubble scraping my skin, his hands sliding into my hair and pulling the knot loose.
My hair fell down around my shoulders, and he made a sound against my lips, like he'd been waiting to do that.
I pushed his suit jacket off.
It hit the tile with a soft rustle.
I went for his shirt buttons and got three open before I gave up and pulled.
The rest of them scattered somewhere across the floor.
He laughed, a short, surprised sound against my mouth, and I felt the vibration of it in my own chest.
"Jesus, Louisa."
"I don't care about the shirt."
"I noticed."
He shrugged it off, and then his hands were on me.
One at the small of my back, pulling me against him.
The other at the zipper of my dress.
"This dress," he said, and then he didn't finish the sentence.
I knew why.
It was the dress I'd buried my mother in.
"Take it off," I said. "Please."
He did.
He peeled it down my arms and let it fall, and I sat there in the cold kitchen in my bra and underwear, and I wasn't cold at all.
He looked at me for a long moment.
"I've thought about this," he said quietly. "More than I should have."
"Show me."
He unhooked my bra and pulled it away, and then his mouth was on my breast, hot and wet, and I arched into him.
His tongue circled my nipple and I grabbed the back of his head to hold him there.
He bit down gently, and I cried out.
"Shh," he murmured, but he didn't stop.
His hand slid down between my legs, over my underwear, and pressed.
I was already wet.
"Soaked," he said, and his voice was rough. "For me."
"Always."
He pulled my underwear down my legs and threw it aside.
Then his fingers were on me, sliding through my wetness, finding my clit.
I gasped and gripped his shoulder.
"I've barely touched you."
"I know."
His thumb circled my clit while two fingers pushed inside me.
I bucked against his hand.
"God, Leo."
"Say it again."
"God, Leo."
"Not that." His fingers curled inside me, stroke after stroke, and his thumb kept its slow, punishing circle. "My name."
"Leo," I whispered. "Leo, Leo, Leo."
"Good girl."
The words hit me low in my stomach.
I reached for his cock through his pants and found him hard.
He grunted when I squeezed.
"I want it," I said. "Now."
He pulled his fingers out of me.
I whimpered at the loss.
He stood just long enough to shove his pants and boxers down, and then he was on his knees again, naked, and I could see all of him.
He was beautiful.
Broad shoulders, hard stomach, cock thick and dark with blood, and his eyes on me like he wanted to devour me.
"On your back," he said.
I lay back on the cold tile.
He knelt between my legs and guided the head of his cock against my entrance.
"Look at me," he said.
I did.
He pushed inside.
My back arched off the floor.
It was slow at first, inch by inch, and I felt every single one.
He was thick, stretching me, and I grabbed at him, at his arms, his shoulders, anything.
"Fuck," I breathed. "Leo."
"You feel so fucking good." His voice was breaking. "So tight."
"More."
He started to move.
Slow, deep strokes that made my whole body slide against the tile.
I wrapped my legs around his waist and pulled him closer.
"Harder."
"Louisa."
"Harder, Leo. Fuck me like you mean it."
Something in him snapped.
He pounded into me, fast and rough, one hand planted by my head and the other gripping my hip.
The sound of our bodies filled the kitchen.
I couldn't stop the sounds coming out of my mouth.
"That's it," he growled. "Let me hear you."
"Don't stop."
"I won't."
He angled his hips and hit something inside me that made me see stars.
"There," I gasped. "Right there."
He did it again.
And again.
I was close, so close, the pressure building and building.
"Come for me," he said. "I want to feel you."
That was all it took.
I shattered around him, crying out his name, my nails digging into his back.
He fucked me through it, hard and relentless, and I was still pulsing around him when he pulled out.
"Turn over," he said.
I rolled onto my hands and knees.
He pushed back inside me in one stroke.
I moaned and dropped my head.
He grabbed my hips and fucked me from behind, deeper than before.
The tile was cold under my knees.
"Fuck," he grunted. "You feel incredible."
"Harder."
He slammed into me, over and over, and I felt a second orgasm building, sharper this time.
"Touch yourself," he said.
I reached between my legs and found my clit.
"That's it. Make yourself come on my cock."
It only took a few seconds.
I came again, shaking, and he followed, burying himself deep and coming with a broken groan.
I felt him pulse inside me.
When he pulled out, I collapsed onto the tile, breathing hard.
He dropped down beside me and pulled me against his chest.
His heart was pounding under my cheek.
Neither of us spoke for a long time.
His hand came up and flattened on my back, warm and solid.
I looked up and saw the lilies on the counter above us, white against the dark.
My eyes blurred.
"Don't," he said softly. "Don't cry."
"I'm not."
His hand pressed harder into my back.
"Stay," he whispered. "Just for tonight."
I nodded against his chest.
He pulled his overcoat over us both, and I curled into him, listening to his heart slow.
The city glowed beyond the windows.
I fell asleep on the kitchen floor with his hand on my back and the smell of lilies in the dark.
When I woke up, the kitchen was gray and he was gone.
At six I stood at the counter barefoot and wrote him a note and stuck it on the refrigerator.
Come home soon. I'll wait. D.
He never answered it.
The train rocked. I slept for the first time in days, with my hand under the coat, flat on my stomach.
When I got off in Portland, the cold hit my face.
The air smelled like salt and diesel.
Libby was leaning on her pickup with a knit hat pulled down to her eyebrows.
She hugged me hard and took the suitcase out of my hand.
"That's it?" she said. "One bag?"
"One bag."
She threw it in the truck bed.
Then she turned around, and she wasn't smiling anymore.
"Louisa," she said. "Your husband called me an hour ago."
My stomach dropped.
"He what?"
"Leo Fontana called the nursery line. I didn't even know he knew my name." She shoved her hands in her pockets. "He asked if I'd heard from you."
"What did you say?"
"I said no." She looked at me hard. "Lulu, he sounded insane."
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