Just One Night, Part 3_ Binding Agreement(33)

“No, these choices you’ve made, they’ve been your choices. No one forced you to make them.”

“My choice was to be obedient. My choice was to be led. But now?” I take another step back from him. “I’m making another choice.”

“Kasie . . .” but his voice trails off. For once he doesn’t know what to say.

I’ve already packed up the few things I had here. They wait for me in the trunk of my car. All that’s left is for me to gather my purse and coat, both waiting for me on the sofa. I put on the coat, taking my time with each button. I know that if I do it slowly, I’ll do it right, I won’t fumble. He won’t be able to see how shaken I am. If I keep my focus, I might be able to keep the pain behind the mask.

“You have a choice to make, too,” I say mildly. “You can take me down the way you took down Tom and Dave. It would be easy to do. You wouldn’t even have to lie this time. All you’d have to do is shine a light on the footsteps I’ve left behind, let them know that the demon who led me no longer offers his protection. Throw me to the wolves. Make me a casualty.”

“I would never do that, Kasie.”

“No?” The tremor in my voice grows more pronounced. I approach him, stand with less than a foot separating us. I raise my hand, let it graze his cheek. “You’ve always known how to move me,” I whisper. “But I know you now, Robert. I know your nature. It’s the nature of a predator.”

And then I turn and leave. Nothing else needs to be said. I can’t be here. I no longer want to make up the rules as we go. I don’t want my waves to crash over my enemies. I want to make another choice.

I want to live like a woman, not an ocean.





CHAPTER 12





I GET THROUGH THE night, back at my house, alone . . . but, God, it’s hard. I want to help Dave. I even want to help Tom now. But I don’t know if I can. I certainly can’t do it tonight. But I suppose that if Robert has taught me one thing, it’s that, when all else fails, help yourself. It’s just that now I think that helping myself means making myself better, not through wealth or power, but through the effort of rediscovering my own humanity.

And then the pain . . . in my gut, in my heart, it’s overwhelming and keeps me up until dawn. I lost something extraordinary, something that I’ve come to think of as essential. I lost the moon.

And now it’s morning and I’m at work trying to see my coworkers with new eyes. I notice that Barbara is more deferential than she has been in years past, more so than even a month ago. She no longer tries to gossip with me, no longer rolls her eyes when one of the other employees says something silly, not in front of me anyway. I always thought Barbara was a little too familiar anyway but now I find that I miss her casual demeanor. Maybe she respects me more now . . . or maybe she’s just scared.

Other people in the office behave similarly. Everyone is polite; many of them go out of their way for me. I’ve asked for reports from various people and they’ve all been delivered a day early. Robert would be so proud. I’ve learned to make fear work for me.

It’s fairly rare that we respect the individual who has that power over us.

Simone’s words. But if I believe them, if I actually buy in to her whole philosophy on this topic, then I have to accept that I represent the status quo, the norm. I have to accept that despite Robert’s influence I’m not exceptional at all.

I sit at my desk, sift through my e-mails. One of the consultants writes to inform me of the three new companies they’ll be approaching this month; another reports on the retention rate of the clients we have. The e-mails are so neat and clean. What’s being said in the rooms where those e-mails are being written? What are they saying about the woman they address in these messages as Miss Fitzgerald?

. . . when someone has power over us we go out of our way to look for that person’s flaws. We exaggerate them in our minds and in our gossip.

Well really, how much exaggeration would be necessary? She picked him up in Vegas, while playing blackjack, while sipping scotch, while wearing a dress that revealed all her secrets. She went to his room where he dabbled the scotch on her skin, where he tasted her. She called him Mr. Dade.

All this while her lover of six years waited for her at home. While he trusted her, while he boasted of her modesty.

No, no elaboration was needed. Any details they might imagine could not be more salacious than the truth. Barbara buzzes my office, tells me in a polite, clipped voice that a package has arrived. Unreported profits and losses of a client who wouldn’t dare risk sending an electronic file out into the wild-robber-ridden-west that is our cyberworld.