The Secret


    Sipping my coffee, I lean forward in my chair, studying theyout onest time. Once I order the pieces for this staging, changing anything bes exponentially more difficult, that’s why I like to visualize it all onest time. Pressing the button on my desk phone, I hit the auto-dial for Brandon and wait until he picks up.


    “Boss?” he answers. He always calls me that, though I don’t think of myself as anyone’s boss. I think of myself as the visionary and nner, and Brandon as the executioner of said ideas. But he uses the term as a way of reminding me that he’s grateful for this job, and I always appreciate gratitude.


    “I’m doing a final visual on the Pacific Heights property before I put the pull order in,” I tell him, and since he’s the guy who pulls the pieces I need from our warehouses, I’m pretty certain he’d like me to be sure, too. “Can you bring the photos into my office one more time?”


    His roughughter fills the line. “You really are an old soul, you know?”


    I smirk as I trace the blue line from the foyer to the staircase, making a mental note to make sure I have a runner for that section of flooring. The marble is slippery, and I’m pretty sure Roberta’s first show for the property is a wealthy man in histe sixties. We do not want slippery floors. Slippery floors andte sixties do not mix—just ask my grandmother. “I can’t visualize alongside digital photos. You know that. I need my physicals to–”


    “Toy out the design, I know,” Brandonughs, finishing my sentence. “Sure thing, Boss. I’m in the warehouse unloading that order of mirrors but I’ll bring them up in the next few, okay?”


    I find a spot on the design where I’ve ced amp, but there is no outlet, so I circle it. “Perfect. Thanks, Brandon.” Ending the call, I finish my coffee and am about to touch up my lipstick before seeing Sutton in his office when Geo stops in, knocking gently twice on my already open office door.


    My pulse skips a bit, and that’s not unusual. At first, when Sutton and I got together, my reaction to Geo freaked me out. I felt traitorous to Sutton. How could my pulse shudder that way for another man? But then, after a weird week of introspection, I decided that it would be odd not to be affected by George Mercer. I mean, he’s absolutely gorgeous.


    Still, I’m dangerously in love with Sutton. When I think of him letting me suck his cock and holding my head down as hees down my throat? I almoste just at the thought. If he did it? I’d be toast.


    I’m obsessed with Sutton. There is no questioning that.


    But I can’t turn off the way my body reacts to an incredibly handsome and sessful man. Even if that man is my soon to be father-inw.


    I’ve rationalized the guilt away because I’ve seen first-hand every single woman sumb to his charm. So why should I hold myself to the unreasonable standard of beating the charm of the great-in-bed (watercooler chat), handsome as hell, wealthy as sin, charming and charismatic George Mercer? I can’t, I shouldn’t and I won’t.


    But I also won’t pander to them, because I am in love with Sutton, who is also handsome and charming. I’m just saying, I no longer feel guilty over enjoying him privately, in my thoughts, when he happens to be in my presence.


    Preferably not when my fiancé is about to punch his lights out. Or whatever that was going to be.


    “Avery,” Geo says, nodding his head in greeting, giving me half of one of his charming smiles. I smile back, both of us pretending thatst night never happened, and that everything is business as usual.


    “Hey Geo, what’s going on? What can I do for you?” I ask.


    He takes a step into my office, but his hand is still on the door handle. “I have a new property in a hot location, probably won’t be listed long. I have a few clients who will most likely make offers.”


    I nod. “That’s great.”


    Releasing his grip on the door, he steps inside further, and shoves his hands in his pockets–something I’ve noticed he does when he’s unsure of himself. I know many people would not believe that George Mercer is ever unsure of himself, but I see it when he is. I know it because Sutton is my fiancé, and he has, despite their rift, the same tells.


    “Well, it needs to be staged, and I’m hoping to have the entire ce done by the end of week.” His lips form a t line as we blink at one another. “Do you hate me?”


    I shake my head. “I don’t hate you but we’re finishing the Pacific Heights property this week. Brandon’s bringing the photos up, and I’m putting the pull order in today.” I nce at my watch and see it’s already half past two. “He’s gonna be another half an hour I think, so if you have time now, we can get started?”


    Geo smiles, and though he’s smiled at me a million times in thest year, this one makes my insides warm. “Thank you for making time for me.”


    I smile, ignoring the foreign heat wing at my insides at the soft way he expresses gratitude. “Let me just grab myptop and we can go over the property images, and I can work something up quickly based on what I have in the warehouse.”


    He nods. “That sounds great.” Geo moves to the door and holds it open, and I snatch myptop from my desk and brush past him, making sure to ignore the tonka andvender that radiates off of him as I pass.


    I attempt to trail behind him to his office but he waits, instead walking down the hallway side by side.


    “That’s not how it was with Margot,” he says softly, catching my eyes and holding them so intensely that my lungs copse, and I heave out a breath, quietly, my chest rattling.


    “No?” I ask quietly, unsure of what I can ask, what is kind to him and not a betrayal to Sutton. I don’t know where to draw the line of normal interest and care or something greater. I don’t think I can go too deep into something greater.


    It’s a scary thought, for so many reasons.


    He shakes his head as we continue to walk, though our pace is unhurried.


    “Why don’t you tell him otherwise?” I ask after too many pinching, narrow moments of silence wherein I feel as if the world only consists of me and George Mercer. “Why don’t you set him straight?” I choke out, feeling the need to pad the space between us with words, words I mostly mean, regardless of how detached I feel from them right now.


    Wee to a natural stop, both conversationally and physically. He nods up at his office door, then pushes past me only to open it, and wait for me to enter. I nearly pass out as I walk inside, holding my breath, truly fearful to get an intense lungful of him. “Thank you,” I murmur as I duck in and make myselffortable at the table across from his desk–the ce I usually sit when I work with Geo or he and his team.


    “I just e-mailed you the first round of things you’ll need,” he says as he moves past me, settling into his desk, the red wing-back chair a beautiful, sunsetting contrast to his shadowed face and dark, grey eyes. “Get the light?”


    I get up and flick the light on, and the intense shadows around his face disappear, and I don’t know what was worse (in a good way) —the dark, broody and mysterious shadowy version of Geo or the crystal clear in every beautiful detail version of him? I have noints about either option. “Settle,” he urges me back to my seat after I’m caught staring at him for a moment. I sit back down and open myptop, and begin pulling up my email.


    “I can’t believe that’s been his perception of me all these years,” he breathes out, distress lining every crease and dip in his voice. He shakes his head, running an equally veined hand over his chest as his eyes gravitate to mine.


    “How in the world could he think any differently if you didn’t tell him anything?” I retort in defense of the man not here, the man I love with my whole heart, who has also effectively helped me create who I am as a person today.


    He is my soulmate. Of that I have zero doubt.


    Geo shakes his head, looking listless and dazed for a moment, his eyes floating over his desk before locking on mine. “She was the love of my life. I only had eyes for her. She was my everything.” He smiles, and I nearly gasp from the pain that explodes behind my ribs at the sight of his frail, broken attempt at pretending it doesn’t still hurt. “But Margot… she loved attention and feeling… a certain way,” he says, shrugging. “Desired. I guess that would be the best term for it. She always needed to feel desired and all her attempts to curb that need were endless… I was never enough. I never quite could make her feel desired enough.”


    My heartes to a shuddering, screeching halt. “Desired,” I repeat, sinceing to terms with this new information. I never imagined Geo was a cheater, but after Sutton exploded yesterday, I’ve reconsidered and while I don’t believe it, it is within reason and believable. I can’t deny someone else reasonably believing he could cheat. He’s good looking, flirtatious, effervescent—perhaps a stereotype but when reframed through the lens of a stranger’s eye, Geo could be viewed as a cheater. Still, I’ve never felt that in my gut.


    He nods. “I don’t know. I mean, of course all these yearster I certainly have suspicions. Childhood trauma, a very challenging rtionship with her own father—I think Margot was very lost. I just didn’t know how to help her then.”


    I don’t know what to say, so I sit there, bncing myptop on my thighs, fingers hovering over the keys, screen waiting.


    “If I wasn’t there when she needed attention, she simply sought it elsewhere. And I know that I’m going to sound whipped and pathetic but… she really didn’t mean to hurt me. It was like, she just… couldn’t handle being alone, couldn’t handle being without physicalpany or touch.”


    Emotion lumps up my throat, making me swallow ufortably. I wait a moment for my eyes to stop burning, and say, “So why then did the papers say it was the other way around? Sutton said the articles he found pinned you as the phndering womanizer.”


    I study Geo’s face as I hurl those usations at him. He doesn’t even flinch. “I became that, I felt that I had to be that in order for everyone to forget what happened.” He sighs. “She loved me very much, and she was my everything. And Sutton, my god,” he breathes, the ends of his eyes lifting as he smiles, likely reying a beautiful memory from the past. “She adored him. He was her whole world, and that was the truth of it.”


    My mind is stuck on his words earlier, the words that imply he sacrificed himself for the sake of Margot’s memory. “I still don’t understand,” I start, but reroute my statement to a question, fearful that this revealing conversation will end if I let it. “What happened?”


    I don’t specify if I’m asking what happened to Margot that night or what happened between the two of them over time… I don’t know what I’m asking, but Geo seems to understand the broadness of my curiosity.


    “She had many affairs during the course of our rtionship. They were not emotional in nature but still, they were devastating.” He smooths his fingers down the silk tie he’s wearing today, a ssic Robert Talbot, the kind Geo prefers. “I couldn’t leave her. I loved her too much. Ford thought I should; he thought that if I left her, maybe she’d change but I knew she couldn’t. And I’d rather live with her, pleasure infused with exquisite pain, than alone, nothing but pain without her.”


    What a horrible situation to be in, and not just to be in but to raise a child in. “Did Sutton ever know?” I ask, but as soon as I do, I answer the question myself. “No, of course not.”


    Geo nods. “I had a friend at the Chronicle back then. I paid him to write the story from a different angle. The police had an open and shut case with a man who was not denying his guilty charge so they had no problem with me shaping the public narrative. Of course, money urged all of these things along, as it always does.”


    I think about Geo losing the love of his life and then taking on the public role of cheating asshole who became the demise of his innocent and adoring wife. I wasn’t around, and I’ve never asked, but I’m sure that he took media scrutiny for a long time until the next big story in the Financial District broke.


    Blinking, Geo’s form changes behind my eyes in an instant.


    The constantpany he keeps, his charming smile, the way he is always there for Sutton from a distance—now all I see is a very broken man trying to climb his way out of a life he never signed up for.


    “I’m… so sorry,” I breathe, my words shaky and quiet. Everything he’s told me today is shocking, and more than that, it will utterly change Sutton. My beautiful, hard working man has lived most of his life believing that his father—the great businessman adored by all—is secretly a selfish monster who caused, indirectly, his mother’s death.


    Knowing the truth means setting Sutton free from the prison of anger and resentment he’s built up around him where Geo is concerned.


    Geo opens his desk drawer, fishing around for a moment before sliding me a photo over the desk. It’s a Kodak photo, it says as much on the back, and it’s been so long since I’ve seen a photograph printed from film that I hold it gently, careful not to smudge it with my thumbs.


    In orange digital numbers, 7 4 98 are tucked into the corner. “That was the night it happened. She’d gone out to a bar to celebrate the 4th after fireworks with Sutton at the water. I didn’t want to go downtown, or get drinks, but there was no convincing her otherwise. So I initially stayed with Sutton and she went out.”


    The photo is of Margot, her dark hair piled high on her head, shiny, effortless bangs styled perfectly for the beach. Her arms are around a very young Sutton, who is beaming, holding a sand bucket in his hands. Geo is behind them, a hand on Sutton’s shoulder and one on Margot’s–he isn’t smiling, but his eyes are full of pride. Sutt’s feet are hidden by sand, and Geo is shirtless, Margot in nothing but a ck bikini. Her smile makes me smile. “She looks happy.”


    “She was happy. She was just… lost,” Geo says, staring at the photo in my hands across the space. “She’d been seeing Barry for a while. I knew about it. Hell, I knew Barry. I’d met him ironically in Los Angeles, and he and his wife Josie moved to the bay around the time Margot met him.”


    I don’t know what’s appropriate to ask, but I figure Geo will tell me if I reach or cross a line. “How did she meet him?”


    “At a department store. She was buying her favorite perfume and he was buying it, too.” He shrugs, smiling, wisdom lining the corners of his eyes. “Like I said, I knew it was never deep. She never connected emotionally to them.”


    “What happened that night?” I ask, recalling what Sutton said. That Geo had slept with a married woman and, in a fit of rage, her husband had killed Margot in an act of anger and hurt driven vengeance. As I stare down at the photo in my hands, envisioning Margot staring down the barrel of a gun, my heart shatters for everyone involved. So tragic. “If what Sutton read isn’t true, what happened?”


    Geo doesn’t tell me I’ve pushed too much or gone too far, and as I study his features, the worry and regret, I wonder if he’s sharing with me now because he needs to unload the burden of truth or if he’s hoping that I can mend the damage between he and Sutton, and that I can better deliver the truth to Sutton.


    I don’t know.


    But I stay rooted to that seat, ignoring myptop, ignoring the tiny window of time I even have right now, ignoring the pull order I need to put through to Brandon—ignoring everything but Geo Mercer and his broken heart.


    It is imperative that I do.


    “I told her to be home before sunrise, that I didn’t want to lie to Sutton about why she wasn’t home for breakfast again. And when one in the morning rolled around I just… I got so goddamn angry, you know? So I called the nanny I didn’t want to call and I stormed down there.” He reaches out, taking the picture back from me as if having Margot’s image out while he recounts this portion of the story is too painful. Geo ces the photo in the drawer, and closes it, resting his hands on his desk. “I tried to convince her toe home with me, but she and Barry were several drinks in. He wasmitted. He wanted what he came for, and he was not pleased with my cameo that night.”


    “Where was his wife? What did you say her name was?”


    “Josie. His wife knew, like me, that her husband had a wandering eye and sticky palms.” He strokes his hand over his forehead, the veins over his metacarpals bulging as he does. “That night, like me, she was home. With their kids.”


    I nod my head, unsure how to react to this awful story and the way it defined both his and Sutton’s lives forever. “She didn’t want to leave with you?”


    He shakes his head. “No. And Barry didn’t want her to go either. And the longer I tried to convince her, the moremotion it made, which led to me getting kicked out.”


    I straighten against the seat, grabbing myptop before it slides off my legs and crashes onto the floor. “You got kicked out?” I balk, shocked by this news.


    He shrugs. “They were there together first. To the bartender, I looked like the troublemaker.” Another shrug. “I’ve never faulted that man for what he did. He did his best not knowing the unbelievably tangled web going on behind the scenes.”


    A young version of Geo, distraught and stressed, appears in my mind, motionless, waiting for direction. “What did you do next?”


    He blinks at me a moment, and I’m sure he’s reying that night in his mind. Maybe even for the first time in a long time. I wish I could hug him, but I know that’s not appropriate. Not at work.


    “I waited out front and when the staff came out at close, I asked where they were. The man who kicked me out said Barry and Margot had slipped out the back door shortly after I was removed.” His eyes grow ssy, and my stomach knots itself over and over as I wait for the rest of the tragic story. “Police believed that Margot may have wanted to go home, even though she refused to leave when I was there. She asked the bartender to call her a cab but Barry had convinced her to let him drive her, and they slipped out the back before the cab came.”


    Immediately my mind goes to a car ident, fueled by alcohol and rising emotions, but Sutton’s words drift back. She was shot. There was no drunk car ride. “Why did he shoot her?”<fna21c> Readplete version only at FιndNovel</fna21c>


    He sighs. “It was casual to Margot. But Barry loved her. And he wanted her to leave me. And she wouldn’t.” Geo clears his throat, and begins shuffling papers on his desk until he finds what he’s looking for. He passes me the packet of documents rted to the property that brought me into his office in the first ce. “He killed her because she refused to leave me. And then he confessed, and was arrested.”


    I shake my head. “If he confessed, if he admitted to having an affair with Margot and killing her, why did you change the narrative at all? Why didn’t you let the news run the real story?”


    He reaches over the desk, his sleeve cuff raising as he points at the address on the packet. “Our first listing in this neighborhood.” Shifting back into the story, he adds, “I couldn’t do that to… her… or Sutton. I controlled the media around him at the time, so he wouldn’t see anything about it. I always figured, by the time he could ess that stuff, he’d be old enough to hear the truth, or maybe I thought he’d be at the age where he’d know his father well enough to know that was just a story for the papers.”


    I lick my lips. “That doesn’t really answer the question.”


    Geo’s soulful eyes turn stormy as he drops his volume, surprising me by what he says next. “You know, you’re the first person I’ve told this to. My brother knows, but you’re really the first.”


    My throat goes dry. “I wish you’d share this with Sutton. It would change everything.”


    He sits up straight, and the sunlight illuminates him from behind, making Geo look almost godlike as he barters– “Would it, though?”


    I nod fervently. “Of course it would, Geo. The truth is the exact opposite of what Sutton believes. It changes his entire narrative about you.” I finally ept that we are going to transition away from this topic, and open myptop, keying in my password to the Mercer Properties portal. “And you still haven’t told me why. Why you went above and beyond to make sure everyone thought that you were the one stepping out, and that Margot was an innocent victim of your poor choices, not her own. Why, Geo? You had to know that one day, Sutton would read that stuff. That he’d form an opinion. And you did nothing to persuade him otherwise. Why?”


    “I loved her too much to let her bad choices define her memory.” His eyes grow misty again, and his voice drops an octave, to something smoky and pained, quiet and tender. “And I never thought that my own son would assume me to be the viin in his story.”


    I’m torn between feeling bad for Geo and feeling angry with him. Had he simplymunicated with Sutton when he was growing up, had he exined things to him—Sutton would not be so hardened to Geo. But likewise, I understand Geo’s surprise that Sutton equally did not ask. He was the child, he should not have had to ask, but now? They’ve worked side by side for years, in cold climates—why didn’t Sutton ever ask for rification? Both of them are at fault in their own ways. I see that, but it’s on Geo to clear the air.


    “Why don’t you tell him all this now?” I ask. “I think Sutton canpartmentalize. He can ept that he loved his mother very much, but that she was troubled.”


    Geo doesn’t say another word about it, but instead says, “We have four days for this property. Take a look at everything, and let me know. Brandon has ess to the warehouse in Galt, right? If he needs to pull pieces from there to get this done, I’m okay with that.”


    I blink at Geo, my chest going concave at how easily he volleys the most serious and impactful story in his life to work, staging and selling multi-million dor properties. I nod. “Okay.”


    We sit together in his office as I go through the floor n, appraisal report, consent and release forms for photos and everything else. An hourter, things are figured out, Geo has told me that I have proverbially saved his day, and on my way out of his office, heading back to the photos Brandon brought out for me, Geo stops me.


    “I won’t ask you to keep secrets from my son because he is your other half, and I respect that but?—”


    “You have to tell him,” I say definitively, epting zero excuses. “Tonight. Come over. I’ll make dinner and you two are going to iron this out.” I step into his space, drawing close. “I’m bringing you Mercer men together. No more of this.”


    He doesn’t smile, but the corner of his lips lift the tiniest amount. “I’ll see you tonight.”