I Was Always Second. Until I Left. novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Papers

Damian arrives with a ring and a deed for her to sign. She refuses, and Malcolm kisses her and stops.

Damian found me the next morning at 9:10.

I was on Malcolm's deck with a mug of coffee, wearing the grey sweatshirt and watching a ferry cross the bay.

I heard his car before I saw him.

He came up the outside stairs in yesterday's trousers and a fresh shirt, carrying a leather folder and a small blue box.

He looked rested, which made me want to throw the coffee.

"Gillian," he said. "Thank God."

"How did you find me?"

"Your phone is on your father's family plan." He smiled, the soft one he used at dinners. "Don't be dramatic. I'm not here to fight."

He set the blue box on the deck rail between us and opened it.

It was a ring, a square diamond, bigger than the one he'd given me.

"I was out of line yesterday," he said. "Lydia's already calmed down. It's only a postponement." He put his hand over mine on the rail. "A few weeks, and the whole thing blows over."

I took my hand back.

"You asked me to apologize to your girlfriend," I said.

His smile didn't move.

"Lydia is not my girlfriend," he said.

"She's been at every dinner with her hand on your arm for a year."

"That's family."

"It's my family."

He opened the leather folder instead of answering.

Inside was a single document, three pages, stapled.

"There's one small thing, and it's why I came in person," he said. "Your father wants a formality signed before we reschedule. It's a gift deed. Anything the Whitman estate might have for you, you assign to the family, so Chandler can run the company without lawyers chasing him. It's nothing, Gillian. You never wanted any of it anyway."

He held out a pen.

I looked at the pen.

I thought about the word on the front of the envelope upstairs.

Sign nothing they hand you before you are twenty-eight.

"Which page do I sign?" I said.

"The last one, and the flags are on the others." He moved the pen closer. "It won't take long."

"I'd like to read it first."

For one second his face changed.

It wasn't anger.

It was the look of a man who had been told the lock was already open, and was now finding it shut.

"You don't need to read it," he said. "It's family boilerplate."

"Then you won't mind if I read it."

"Gillian." He lowered his voice. "Nobody hires a woman who walks out on the Whitmans."

I put the pen down on the folder.

"No."

"No, what?"

"No, I won't sign, and no, I won't postpone, and no, I won't call Lydia."

"You're making a mistake."

"I made one," I said. "It was you."

His jaw went hard.

For a second I thought he might actually grab the folder and make me.

"Is that who you're with?" he said, looking past me at the glass door. "Some vintner with a boat?"

"Good morning," said Malcolm.

He had come out onto the deck without a sound, barefoot, in jeans and a white shirt with the sleeves pushed up.

He had a dish towel over one shoulder and he looked, honestly, like a man who'd been interrupted while cooking eggs.

Damian straightened.

"Ward," he said.

"Draper." Malcolm nodded at the ring box. "She said no."

"This is a private conversation."

"It was," Malcolm said. "Now it's your car conversation. It's on the street, with the engine running."

There was a very long pause.

Damian snapped the folder shut, picked up the blue box, and looked at me one more time.

"You'll regret this by the weekend," he said.

He went down the stairs fast, and his car left a streak of tire on the road.

My hands were shaking.

Malcolm took the coffee out of them and put it on the rail, and when I started to say thank you he shook his head.

"Don't thank me for opening a door," he said.

"I'm not. I'm thanking you for the dish towel."

He laughed, and it surprised both of us.

I don't know which one of us stepped closer first.

His hand came up and brushed a lock of hair behind my ear, as slowly as if I might bolt.

I did not bolt.

My heart was hammering.

I put my palm flat on his chest, and I could feel his heart doing the same.

"Gillian," he said, rough.

I went up on my toes, and he met me halfway.

The kiss was hard and warm and not careful at all.

He tasted like coffee and mint.

His hand slid into my hair, and the other one pulled me against him by the small of my back, until I could feel every inch of him through the thin cotton.

I made a sound against his mouth that I'd never made in my life.

He answered it with a groan low in his chest, and walked me back against the deck rail, and for a few seconds there was no ferry and no folder.

Then he stopped.

He pulled his mouth off mine and rested his forehead against my forehead, breathing hard.

"Not like this," he said. "Not yet."

"Why not?" My voice wasn't mine.

He drew back far enough to look at me.

"Because soon you're going to want to know whether I'm helping you for the right reason," he said. "And I want to have an answer ready."

"What's the answer?"

"You turn twenty-eight in eighteen days," Malcolm said. "That's when everything I'm holding for you stops being mine to hold."

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