Two Weeks Later
“Are you going to be okay?” Danny asked from her idling black Jetta standing at the curb just outside the C.C. headquarters.
With my two black eyes, very bruised face, and large bandages covering my nose, forehead, and chin, I tried not to smile. It still hurt way too much, but Drs. Bloomfield and Meyers had both said I was good to go and could do any follow-up with my family doctor back in California.
“Yeah, I’ll just be a few minutes,” I said. She’d be taking me to O’Hare right after and then going back to our apartment to pack up her own stuff. She was going to move in with her boyfriend—finally!—and give their relationship a serious go. I planned to send her a case of vitamin water as soon as I got to California. With the way those two went at it, I was sure I’d be sending diapers and formula soon, too. Honestly, though, I couldn’t be happier for her.
I got out of the car and entered the lobby, passing men hauling boxes and furniture on dollies.
There was no security at the desk, but why would there be? C.C. no longer existed.
I rode to the top floor, exiting into an office space stripped of any personal items. All evidence of the life that once breathed here was gone, and I wondered what would happen to Keri and all of the others who once worked here. With luck, they’d all find other positions, but there was no doubt this had become a major speed bump in their lives.
The guilt I felt for the part I’d played was overwhelming.
I walked into Mr. Cole’s office and found him staring out the window at the Chicago skyline. He wore his usual black suit, but his silhouette lacked that rigid posture I’d become so accustomed to. I wouldn’t call him relaxed or sad, but simply…different.
“Hi,” I said, trying not to startle him. He was expecting me after my text this morning—our first communication since the world turned upside down—but he looked deep in thought.
Hands shoved into his pockets, he slowly turned and looked at my face. I pretended not to feel anything from the gesture, but I couldn’t suppress the hope he might forgive me and still want me. Despite everything. Despite my having made an epic cluster fuck out of his life.
“So,” I said, unsure where to start.
“How are you healing?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Okay, I guess. They had to put pins in my arms, so that will take longer, but you already know that.” He’d hired Dr. Meyer to ensure I was put back together nicely.
“Glad to hear it.”
There was a long, long awkward moment of silence. “I don’t know what to say. Somehow, I’m sorry doesn’t seem to cut it.” He’d lost everything because of me.
“I’m not sure you’re entirely to blame. Nancy Little and my mother had a hand in all this, too.”
I knew that was true, but he hadn’t been counting on them to trust him. Still, I had to ask, “So at what point did your mother decide to throw me under the bus?” She’d had us followed by a photographer and then leaked the images to the press.
How’d I know?
Because I’d watched the press conference he’d held to clear the air. For me. And I believed him. Every damned word.
He replied, “I’m guessing my mother decided after you and I went to Milan. That little tabloid episode probably gave her the idea.”
“I’m so sorry I blamed you,” I said. “I should’ve known you wouldn’t do something like that.”
“Yes, you should’ve, and why didn’t you trust me?” I could see the hurt in his eyes.
The truth wasn’t an easy thing to say, but I felt he deserved it.
I cleared my throat, trying to push out the words. “Because I honestly didn’t believe someone like you could really ever love someone like me. It’s just like you’d said; I didn’t feel I deserved it. I wasn’t good enough. Not for you or anything.” But that didn’t mean I didn’t want him or the life I’d dreamed of.
“You should’ve trusted me,” he fumed.
Every single woman who’d been part of that book had come forward, saying they’d been paid off by B&H, arranged through Nancy Little, to severely exaggerate their stories. At what point she’d decided to approach C.C.’s competitor, no one knew, but all that would come out in litigation. Likely. But she had to have lost her marbles to go after him with such a vengeance, and what better way to do it than blow up C.C.’s reputation and devalue his company completely. B&H could then make a play to buy up all of their assets, including their factory and patents, for pennies on the dollar. It was such a deal, baby.
Only Max had a plan to blow it all up and get the truth out there. He’d been armed and ready, already knowing everything B&H and Nancy Little were up to. His mother, however, seemed like a curveball. Still, he’d had it all handled. And then I ruined everything by telling Nancy how he’d lied and only pretended to care about me. I hadn’t accepted the money from her, so that created enough public doubt. Me against two women who’d put their stories into a book, only to suspiciously recant in the eleventh hour. It made it look like they’d been threatened by Maxwell Cole to recant, and I was the only one telling the truth. But I hadn’t. I had assumed the worst, erroneously.
Max had no choice but to come out with his very, very private truth, because once the ball started rolling, he couldn’t fix the damage I’d created. He could only hope to lessen it.
“So why did you sell C.C.?” I asked.
He shrugged. “It was the only rational choice.”
“I read the articles and blog posts and…there was no reason to fold, Max.”
He’d come out to the public right after my accident, and he’d told the truth. About me, about his phobia, and about everything. He held nothing back, including pointing out the fact that I was right to have believed he’d betrayed me. He literally cried on TV, not a sob or a bawl, but a very touching manly sort of teary-eyed speech apologizing to me, to his customers for hiding his painful truth, and to his employees for letting them down. I’d never seen anything so heart wrenching and inspiring than this man standing in front of the world, telling women not to listen to anyone who tells them they’re not good enough because they weren’t born airbrushed. He closed with saying that he truly loved me and that the press’s behavior was a new low for humanity. “A woman is worth so much more than her looks, and Lily Snow is proof of that. She put her pride aside to help me because she cared. And I find that truly beautiful.”
I had cried my eyes out watching that video on the Internet, but knowing he announced the sale of his company to some Canadian corporation with an office across town, that he would be giving it all up, broke what was left of my heart.
“I had one very good reason to sell C.C., Lily. You were right; my mother is toxic, and her willingness to hurt you was proof there could be no good in maintaining any connection with her.”
“I thought going public would solve that,” I said.
“I was fooling myself. She’d still be a major shareholder. She’d still be in my life. I want nothing to do with her. She’s done enough damage to you, me, my family—especially my sister, who I am now searching for.”
So…was he saying he would’ve sold either way? I suppose I should’ve felt some sort of relief from knowing that, but I didn’t. At the end of the day, I hadn’t put my trust in him when I should’ve. I made a huge mess. The only silver lining out of the whole thing was that he might get his sister back.
He continued, “I never should’ve traded ambition for what was right: being there for my sister and getting the hell away from my mother.”
God, I couldn’t argue with that. If not for his sister’s sake, then for his own. He probably would never be quite right, but he’d get better if he put some distance between himself and the problem.
“Did she really make you have plastic surgery when you were thirteen?” I asked. In his press conference, he didn’t give much detail other than to say his “obstacles stemmed from some extreme circumstances growing up.” Of course, I knew his mother had the same phobia as he did, and I also knew from Dr. Bloomfield how long ago he’d done Max’s nose—that perfect, straight beautiful nose. It had been twenty years ago and that would’ve put Max at thirteen. His sister had gotten hers done, too, at fourteen.