“Busy, busy,” I said. “What about other clients?”
She gave me a look. Vinod Sushil Enterprises was taking up the majority of her time, and I was taking the rest of it.
I shrugged. “You should always be looking for new clients. If you get too busy, you hire people to work under you. I have fourteen associates at Eriksen.”
Her bottom lip pushed out in a pout. “I want to do it myself. I don’t want other people to do it for me.”
“I do things myself. The other people assist me.”
She turned to look out the window. I clasped her hand more tightly, not allowing her to pull away.
“You tell me that…” She paused and drew in a breath. “You tell me that I belong to you. You won’t let me see other people or talk to other people without losing your shit, and yet you push me toward world domination.”
She was being sassy and she knew it, which was why she wouldn’t look at me. I’d allow this little rebellion, to a point. More cage rattling. It pleased me at least as much as it unhinged me.
“First of all, I don’t ‘lose my shit,’” I said. “I protect what’s mine, which is what you signed up for. And I’m not ‘pushing you toward world domination,’ I’m explaining that business grows or contracts. There’s no coasting, Chere. Onwards and upwards.”
“Can I get my feet under me first? Vinod’s a huge client with a lot of lines, a lot of opportunities. I’m sure more business will come.”
I snorted. “Not from him. He’s going to put your work out under his own name and keep you a secret as long as he can.”
“But in the contract—”
“In the contract, his name is bigger than yours. It’s all right.” I let go of her hand and stroked the concerned lines on her face. “That’s how you start. But Vinod Sushil isn’t the height of your career arc. He’s the starting point. Don’t forget that, no matter how busy he keeps you, no matter how much smoke he blows up your ass.”
Her half pout turned into a whole pout and a sigh as she curled her hands together in her lap. She still wore the ring I’d given her on her left hand, where an engagement ring would go.
“Chere,” I said, touching her knee.
“What?”
Ugh. It was hard being her lover and her owner and her career mentor. It was hard being everything to her, but I couldn’t let any of it go. Without control, fears crept in. Fears for me, fears for her. Fears for us.
“Don’t bitch out,” I said. “I’m only trying to help.”
After a moment of tension, she turned toward me and rested her head against my shoulder. Her hand crept back into mine and I held it, stroking my thumb across her palm. “I love you,” I said. I didn’t say it very often, because I didn’t know what it meant, and I didn’t want to diffuse the word’s power by saying it all the time, but at moments like this, when she returned to me, when she surrendered, it was all I could think to say.
“I love you too,” she said.
With my other hand, I dug in my briefcase and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. I hadn’t been sure I’d be able to give it to her. I’d written it in a haze of guilt over my jealousy of Cantor, jealousy she’d called me on in no uncertain terms. The fact that she’d been in a cage at the time didn’t soften the blow.
Why are you so jealous?
I don’t know, starshine. Maybe because I love you so fucking much.
“This is for you,” I said, forcing myself to hand it over. Her face lit up the way it always did when I gave her poetry, but seriously, it had been easier to give her other people’s poetry. Writing my own feelings felt like opening up a vein on the page.
“You don’t have to read it now,” I said.
“May I read it now?”
“If you want.”
She let go of my hand and opened the paper, and looked down at the words I’d written early this morning, while she was asleep.
He strokes her, presses her palms, her arms,
Her lips, her body, her cool skin.
She wants to be hurt and held. He wants her to huddle
Inside his walls and sleep.
“He” was me, of course, and “she” was Chere, and the poem was part of what I felt last night, but not enough. They never expressed enough. My poems were clumsy sketches, not paintings, and I never managed to rhyme like the old school poets. There was no rhyme to us, no reasonable organization.
“I didn’t get to huddle with you last night,” she said when she finished. “I missed you.”
“I missed you too,” I said, although that wasn’t what I meant by that line. I meant that I wanted her inside me forever, where no one else could get to her, or influence her, or lure her away. When I wrote sleep, I meant surrender, but she’d already done so much surrendering last night that I couldn’t bear to put that on the page.