Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 105708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
“Compromise,” I repeat. “Okay. Yes. And for the record, I actually like that word. I like it a lot, and perhaps I was unfair earlier. I know you just want to help and protect me. Just please communicate, Nick, and I think that makes all the difference.”
“This seems like a good time to tell you that if I have to spend money to take care of the winery situation, I’m going to spend money.”
“And if I say I don’t want you to?”
“I’m going to take care of this for you and for us. You can’t be who you really are while being forced to be what you aren’t.”
That statement punches me in the chest with my mistakes and pretty much defines a huge portion of my life. “I don’t know how to take your help and not lose myself, too.”
“You’re putting too much emphasis on the money. Eventually you’re going to have to accept that is part of who I am. I’m not going to pretend that I don’t have a large bank account. I work too damn hard to get it. And I’m going to spend that money on you and with you.” He leans closer, softening his voice. “Make me understand why this is an issue. Who used money against you? Your father? Macom? Both?”
“Am I that transparent?”
“Not transparent enough, or I’d already know the answers to those questions. I need to know. Communication, remember?”
“Yes. Communication. Okay. My father was more about emotional baggage. As for Macom, I don’t know if it was money or fame or both, but it went to Macom’s head.”
“Meaning what?”
“He would throw the money and fame in my face.”
“How?”
“Does it matter?”
“It affects you, Faith. So yes. It matters.”
“He’d criticize me and then build me up and then do it all over again. I knew that he was inherently insecure, which made his actions about him, not me. I tried to build him up and support him. Eventually, though, with him and my father talking in my ear, it wore on me. Their negativity became poison, and I started to doubt myself.”
“And the doubt led where?”
“I’m not sure it was the doubt that led me down a rabbit hole I couldn’t quite escape.” I think of the fight I just had with Nick. “Macom and I didn’t fight like you and I fight.”
“How do we fight, Faith?”
“We do what we just said. We communicate.”
“And with Macom?”
“He never hurt me, but he threw volatile temper tantrums and destroyed things. The next day, he would buy me extravagant gifts to apologize.”
“Well, to start. I’m not insecure, in case you didn’t notice. I’m good at what I do, but you have a gift that I admire. You are brilliant, Faith.”
My cheeks flush, not as much at the compliment but the vehement way he delivers the words. Like he means them so very deeply.
He doesn’t give me time to reply. “And as for money. I’m going to spend money on you. Because I want to. If I want to do it just because, I will. Because I want to. And if I want to do it because I piss you off, I will. Because I want to. He doesn’t get to change that. He doesn’t get that kind of say in our relationship.”
“I don’t need you to spend money on me, but I don’t want him to define me or us. I hate that we’re even having this conversation.”
“We needed to have this conversation. You lived with him. You must have thought you loved him.”
“I did. The man I knew before the fame and the money.”
“Money and fame don’t change people, Faith. Those things simply expose their true colors.”
“I don’t dispute that, but I don’t know how he hid those true colors so well. I’ve thought about that a lot. How did I miss so much?”
“Were you his submissive?”
“No. I told you. I’m not a submissive. You know that I’m not a submissive.”
“But he tried to make you one.”
“Yes. He did. I refused.”
He narrows his eyes on me. “He found that world while he was with you, not before.”
“Right after his first big sale, he was invited to an expensive, invitation-only dinner club.”
“That wasn’t a dinner club at all.”
“Exactly. And I agreed to go because he was still the Macom I thought I knew.”
“And what happened?”
“For us, it was voyeurism and sex that felt daring and sexy at the time. Looking back, I think something was always missing for us, and that night, in that club, it felt as if we filled some void.”
“And so you went back.”
“Yes. And for a while I liked it. In some ways I always did, but why and how changed.”
“Meaning what?” he presses.
“Starting out, we kept to ourselves. Just going there made things exciting. But then he got darker at home. More demanding at the club.” I rotate and face forward. “The first time he crossed a line, he tied me up and then invited people to watch us without telling me, without asking. It spiraled from there.”