Page 75 of State of Ruin

I’m sorry for every way I wronged you.

In this new and alien spirit of radical transparency, I should tell you I did some digging. I know you won’t be happy about it, and I understand that you’ll think it’s one more violation. And you’re right—it was. I can’t justify it, except to say that it gave me the true picture of how fully I’ve wronged you, how completely I ruined your chances of financial security, and you’ll see in a moment that I needed that kick up the ass.

You told me about your sister’s injury, but you didn’t share that hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical debt became your family’s problem. It’s not fair, and it’s not okay.

I suspect it’s because you were in such dire need of money that you had to say yes to my proposal. I truly had no idea that I had put you in such an impossible position.

It makes the other two things I now know very hard to bear.

One. You wouldn’t take the money I offered you to come to my apartment, no matter how much of a difference it would have made to your family.

Two. The money I deprived you of, the campaign chances I killed, would have made a significant dent in your debt, and that makes me sick to my stomach.

Three. (I keep finding more.) That campaign was your opportunity to save your family on your own, without having to compromise your integrity in the way that our Alchemy arrangement did, and I robbed you of that opportunity. I’ve also robbed you of many others, because I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that, once the public saw your face, the world would have fallen in love with you.

It would be impossible not to.

Every word I fed Vanessa in that meeting was a lie. A disgusting, sickening lie. Because she was right. You do have a once-in-a-generation face. (Although it’s your once-in-a-generation heart I fell hard for.)

If I thought it would help you, I would fall on Vanessa’s mercy in a heartbeat. I’d reinstate you so fast your head would spin. Say the word and I'll make the call; say nothing and I never will—it is yours either way, as it always should have been.

I can’t ask you to trust me again. I know that much. But, as I sit here, marveling at how much harm my family has been capable of inflicting by wielding pens and stamping paper, it strikes me that there’s only one way to show you how truly sorry I am.

Like I said, I can’t ask you to trust me. I have destroyed any chance of earning that.

But I can trust you. I can put my family’s secrets in your hands. My own secrets. I have my first therapy session tomorrow—my very own Black Friday. Seems fitting, doesn’t it? I’m hoping it will help me understand why I am the way I am and, more importantly, what work I can do to become a better man. Not a man worthy of you—I’ll never be that—but someone who can look himself in the mirror.

I don’t have those insights yet. But one thing I do know is that, every time you’ve entrusted me with details about your family, it feels as though you’re celebrating your memories. You enshrine your lore. We edit ours, and when they’re still not up to scratch, we erase them. Carrot and stick, remember?

So I’m going to do the only thing I can think of to do. I’m going to hide out in this room and I’m going to spill our secrets. I’m going to enshrine them, and I’m going to sign and seal them with the Voss stamp. They’ll be as legally verifiable as every fucking payoff and NDA we’ve ever issued.

Then I’ll entrust them to you to do with as you want.

I’m putting myself in your hands. And it might be the most reckless thing I’ve ever done, but it’s the only place I want to be.

More tomorrow, my darling.

Yours always,

Sinclair

CHAPTER 39

Elyse

November 27

My darling Elyse,

I thought I would go back to the city tonight, but I find I don’t want to. I might stay on the island a few days longer. My family is all leaving today, thank fuck. Mom has a lot less interest in being here when it’s not sailing weather.

But I want to stay.

I want to remember every moment of being at The Lindens with you, in the best possible way.

And I want to remember every sin my family and I have committed at Fairwater, in the worst possible way. Somehow, it feels important to stay right here, at the scene of the crime, while I write you. And each night, I’ll sleep at The Lindens and wish that my housekeeper hadn’t changed my sheets since our weekend together.

I don’t worry that the city would let me forget about you. There’s no fear of that, not for a single second. But I do worry that its distractions would reabsorb me into the man I have been until now, and I need a little space from that life.