Empire of Desire by Rina Kent

My chest squeezes when I see the first word there. Gwyneth says she categorizes them by colors. The red is for the hardest ones to get over.

And the first word under the letter M is written in a thick red marker. A word that shouldn’t be in the negative words list in the first place.

Mom.

It has several red lines underneath it—bold, messy, harsh—and I can imagine her furrowed brow and stiff movements when she did this. When she decided Mom is the worst word under the letter M. Like she thinks death is the worst word under the letter D.

“You’ve never gotten over her even though you’ve never met her, have you?” I ask her sleeping form, stroking her auburn strands away from her forehead.

This must be why she’s been asking if King was searching for her. Does she want to find her? She’s never expressed that before, neither to me nor to her father.

It’s understandable in King’s case since he’s the founder of Gwyneth’s mother’s anti-fan club, but she’s never talked to me about it.

Or maybe I wasn’t listening.

She stirs, moaning softly in my neck, before she pulls back and stares at me, then at the notebook that’s still open on the letter M.

All sleep whooshes away from her face as she startles and snatches it from my fingers. She staggers to the other side of the sofa, pulling it close to her chest.

“It means nothing.” She smiles, but it’s with effort and barely-there. This woman can’t fake a smile to save her life and it’s weirdly endearing.

“Do you want to find her?”

“No!” she says too fast, too defensively.

“Hey, this is me, not King. You don’t have to lie or hide to protect his feelings.”

She winces. “Was I that obvious?”

“Kind of.”

“It’s not that I want to find her because I want a relationship with her like Dad thinks. I just want to ask her why, you know? I want to know why I meant so little that she threw me away and didn’t care whether I lived or died.”

“I understand.”

“You do?”

“I’m sure King understands, too, even though he doesn’t want to admit it or admit that he can’t erase her from your life.”

“He wanted that?”

“It’s one of his goals, aside from crushing Susan.”

She gets on her knees and inches closer to me. “Please tell me, Nate. Was he looking for her?”

“He was.” I didn’t think she needed to know this before, but if she’s still this entangled in her mother’s story, then she deserves the truth. Or as much of the truth as I can give her without making her hate her father.

“Why?”

“To keep her away from you so you’d never meet, even by coincidence.”

“Oh.”

“I told you. He takes protecting you to the next level.”

“Did he manage to find her?”

“He was getting close, but I’m not sure if he did.”

“He…did.”

“How do you know that?”

“I…uh…”

“What did you do, Gwyneth?”

“I got his car’s dashcam and watched some footage. I think he was speaking to a PI, but I couldn’t get his number to call him. Anyway, Dad said, ‘She can’t be Gwyneth’s mother. Look again.’ So that must mean he thought he’d found her. And that whole thing happened the day of the accident. Isn’t that too much of a coincidence?”

Jesus. I keep her out of my sight for a second and she goes playing a dangerous detective game. She really has no sense of self-preservation sometimes. “Why the fuck did you even get the footage?”

“Why is that important right now?”

“Answer the question. What pushed you to watch it?”

She remains silent, biting her lower lip and staring at me through her lashes. At my harsh stare, she blurts, “Aspen said she suspects that Dad’s accident wasn’t an accident.”

Fucking Aspen. I’m going to have a word with her about planting these seeds in Gwyneth’s head when we don’t even have concrete evidence.

I’m almost sure it was an accident. If there had been foul play, the detectives would’ve told me as much, or I would’ve sensed it myself.

“Since when are you and Aspen friends?”

“We’re not, but after she told me that, I saw that Dad found my mother on the day of the accident, so what if she’s the one behind it?”

“That’s a reach.”

“But what if it’s true?”

“That possibility is slim to none, especially since we’re not one hundred percent sure that the accident was premeditated. You need to stop this train of thought.”

“As long as the possibility is there, I won’t give up.”

“Gwyneth, you need to move on.”

“I will after I see this to the end. But here’s an idea: I’ll be able to move on faster if you help me.”

“Nice negotiating skills.”

“I learned from the best. You teach me a lot of things, husband.” Her voice turns breathy and she lets her notebook fall to the sofa as she inches toward me.

The strap of her oversized shirt falls off her creamy shoulder. She’s not wearing shorts today, just the shirt.