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“Happy New Year, Bridget Radford.”
“Happy New Year, Michael Li.”
I swallowed.This year, I’ll take my father out of the game.He made me a terrorist, so in return, I’d make him nothing.
But that would mean no more Michael. Running into him would end because he wouldn’t work for us anymore. Actually, I’d never encounter him again, or if I did, it would be so fleeting, we’d barely speak.
If I could bottle the stolen seconds in his arms and hold onto them forever, I would. Only that wasn’t how memories worked, so even as I stood in his arms while people sang and confetti rained down on us, with his hand still firm on my hip and my lips still swollen from his kiss, I could feel the moment fleeing.
Just like all good things did from me.
* * *
Present
I stared at him as he digested my words. I told him I was a really bad person. I admitted I destroyed people’s lives, yet he didn’t answer right away. Instead, he considered me carefully with those eternally steady eyes of his.Why is he doing that?I swallowed, nerves making me antsy.
“I’m afraid I’m going to need you to explain with a bit more detail. Okay? I would like you to tell me what criteria you’re using to consider yourself a bad person, can you do that for me?”
I’d opened this door, so it seemed fair that I should have to be the one to walk through it. Maybe it had always just been a matter of time before I would be forced to tell Michael the truth. He once told me he loved me, and I lied and told him I didn’t feel the same. Then I ran as far as I could to get away from the pain—as if I could escape it. Instead, it followed me and always would. Maybe I just wasn’t born for happiness?
“I can, but you have to stop touching me. It’s not that I don’t like it. I do. It’s just you won’t want to, not when I’m done with this story. Okay? And I think if I have to feel you let go then, it might just kill me. I might die right here.”
He breathed heavily for a second. “No one is dying.” Michael took his hands off me but didn’t move. Instead, he practically trapped me against the wall, backing me up until he loomed above me. If I wanted to get away, I’d have to duck under his arm to do so. I guessed that meant technically I wasn’t trapped, but the feeling was very similar, and actually, I didn’t mind it. This would probably be the last time I ever got to be so close to him, so I breathed him in, hoping to memorize his scent.
“Doesn’t that hurt your shoulder?”
He shook his head. “Let me worry about my pain.”
“Still…it has to…”
“Bridget.” He interrupted me, brushing his thumb across my bottom lip. “Come on. Whatever it is, just say it. Stop giving it power over you and say it, whatever it is.”
My mouth shook like it didn’t want to form words, but I told him everything. I started with him picking me up from college and bringing me to my father’s yacht. They’d seized it, the government taking the yacht in their claims against my father. Any day, they might come and do the same thing to me. Seize me. I deserved it, if they did. I told him how I decided to go to that computer and look at the screen, and how stupid the choice really was, although I didn’t know it at the time. How I thought about not doing it, yet I made the choice to do so anyway.
Like the universe offered me two choices and I picked the wrong one.
I continued, not leaving a single detail out of my retelling. I told him about the years when I worked from my bedroom at school—making trades, hiding money in off-shore accounts. I wanted to make my father happy, to make him see me as more than the third one in the photos he no longer cared about. My dad. So important. So integral. So awful. How I had to know—Imusthave somehow known—because I looked at what I’d done straight in the eyes. Eventually. I looked, and I saw who we worked for and what they did. Then I told him how my father dropped the bomb on me. It wasn’t the company. It was me who did it all. I was the one earning money for terrorists.
I looked at the floor the whole time I spoke to Michael—at his shoes, at my feet, at the bottom of his pant leg. Anywhere but at him, while I confessed my many sins.
“I did it, then. Right after we danced on New Year’s. I went ahead and I started changing things. Slowly, so he never saw it coming, but then he was broke. The income stopped. I acted confused, like I didn’t know what happened…like I suddenly just stopped being able to earn.” I shook my head. They were such long nights. One move after another, like the longest chess game I hadn’t known I would have to play against a partner who wanted to destroy everything. “I didn’t stop there. His own personal earnings were gone. Allard’s. The others. I did that, but the company had to be stopped. I didn’t want to put people out of work, but it had to be handled. With any money coming in, he’d never stop.”
I could hardly bear to admit the rest. I graduated college then went to work for the company. So did Hope. We were both going to be screwed, but I did it anyway. “I tried to encourage people to take other jobs. Quietly. You were going to be okay. You had this huge company you built, and we were small potatoes to you by then. I knew I’d never see you again, and that was awful. Too much to think about, so I…I kept going. I thought the company would fold and that would be that. Zeke would be okay. He was so rich, he’d either find something else or he’d just be happy in France drinking wine.”
“But folding wasn’t what happened?” His voice sounded so calm. Any second, he’d lose it and push off the wall, away from me. That would be it.Goodbye, sweet Michael. Hello, whatever comes next.
I panted, it was like I was running up a hill, but I forced the words out anyway, even if they did sound a little shrill and hysterical. “Dad partnered with Allard. If Layla married Kit and did what they wanted, they’d continue to fund him. Zeke didn’t even know about it. I wasn’t sure. I suspected but I didn’t know, and if I asked Layla, she would say she loved Kit. And then she’d shut down about it.”
“I hated him,” Michael confessed in a low voice.
“She left him at the altar. It was like a dream, and I thought surely it had to be ending then. But the Russians, they came after Layla! They kidnapped her.” It was the worst day of my life. My knees threatened to buckle but his hand was back on my waist, holding me up. I told him to not touch me, but I couldn’t argue. “And you had to go in, and you had to rescue her. I stood with Hope and watched. I waited and I’ve never been so scared before. I thought that you were both going to be dead—youandLayla.”
He shook his head, tilting my chin up so I’d look at him. “I was never in any real danger. Neither of us were at risk of dying.”
That was just ridiculous, so I shoved at his chest. “Anytime there are people with guns pointed, there is risk. Your poor shoulder is a perfect example.”
“Okay. Fine. Please go on.” He held my eye contact, his eyes so calm and serene. “Bridget. Finish it.”
