The Jezebel

by Dylan Allen

  “Mom knows, too?” My voice comes out in a wheeze. I can’t breathe.

  “She’s known the whole time. Pops, too. Listen, I know I owe you more. But I really need to go.”

  I take a deep breath and compose myself…My whole life is unraveling. And I don’t know what to do next.

  “That’s fine,” I say in the voice he expects me to use—calm, collected, cool.

  “I love you, Reggie. We’ll be okay. We’ll get through this.”

  I almost laugh at his use of the word we.

  Is there a “we”?

  I hang up and face Confidence.

  “You already knew?”

  Her nod is slow, her eyes sorrowful and downcast.

  “I couldn’t say anything because Hayes asked me not to. I’m so sorry,” she sounds so sad.

  And, it pisses me off. Why is she sad? When it’s me who’s entire life is a lie. I curl my lip at her. “So, was all of this friendship shit so that you could keep an eye on me for Hayes? To make sure I wasn’t planning on fucking his brother, since it turns out he’s my fucking stepbrother, too?” I yell and Confidence’s eyes nearly bug out of her head, and fill with tears.

  Guilt deflates my anger. I’m not mad at Confidence. She’s not the one who betrayed me. “I’m sorry.” I cover my face with my hands and try to catch my breath.

  “It’s okay. I can’t imagine what you’re feeling,” she says after a minute. Her voice is soft but guarded. I nod, but don’t meet her eye. “But I didn’t even know about you and… I’m praying it’s Stone… until right now,” she says.

  To my horror, a sob breaks loose and a tear streaks down my cheek.

  “Can I call someone or take you home myself? I know it’s a lot, but everything is going to be okay.”

  Nothing will be okay, but I don’t have the strength to argue. My whole life has unraveled.

  In the days to come, all of this will feel like a gust of warm wind compared to the tsunami that will land on our doorstep.

  Opportunity

  Stone

  “I’ve got some news. Call me when you can talk.”

  Hayes’ text is curt and ominous.

  My first thought is that something has happened to Regan. Then, I remind myself that if that was the case, he wouldn’t be the one calling to tell me. I’m not surprised she’s the first person I thought of, though, there hasn’t been a night, since I got back to Colombia, that I haven’t dreamed of her.

  They’re vivid dreams, all set on that beach in the Sea of Cortez. They alternate between nightmares of me drowning or her disappearing and wet, hot fucking where my mouth and dick learn every inch of her intimately. I feel them all like I’m living them. I wake in throes of emotions and physical sensations so strong that either my pillow or boxers are wet with proof of how gripped by the dream I was.

  And every day, I leave my bed and force all of those thoughts to stay there. And they do. I go through my day in complete isolation from my emotions.

  But three months of trying to pretend that I don’t miss her, has left me exhausted.

  Something tells me that Hayes’ news, even if it’s not about Regan, is going to force me to call on the same discipline that saw me through the night the first time I lost a patient.

  I put my percolator on the stove and walk out onto the small balcony of my apartment.

  I stare out at the fog-covered valley I call home. The sun will be up soon, and the small courtyard of our building is already full of the aroma of coffee brewing and bread baking. The city stretches out in a sprawl of churches, and homes and businesses that mingle to create a vista of soaring stone steeples and the red tiled rooftops that are ubiquitous to this area. On the edges of the city, modern residential skyscrapers sit like sentinel barriers of the town and ominously dark Cordillera Oriental, a discontinuous cluster of are part of the Andes range.

  The view never fails to steal my breath. This morning, I barely notice it. My attention is still on Hayes’ text. My reluctant spirit slows my movements as I pull my phone out, and with a resigned sigh video call my brother.

  He answers on the first ring and his grim face fills the screen.

  “Hey, what time is it there?” His dark hair falls in messy waves over his forehead and he pushes it away from his face and rests his head in his hands. He reminds me of the way I felt the first time I had to inform someone that their loved one had died.

  “Five thirty in the morning. Sun’s almost up, so your timing is good,” I make small talk, even though my heart is beating out of my chest.

  He doesn’t seem to hear me.

  “No easy way to tell you this…so I’m just going to say it. Gigi Rivers is my biological mother.”

  My stomach clenches as if it’s just been kicked by the sharp end of a boot. “What? What does that mean? She and your dad…he’s her brother.” I jump out of my chair, my coffee cup crashes to the floor, shattering against the concrete floor.

  Scalding-hot coffee splatters all over my legs and I register the pain somewhere behind the loud rush of blood in my ears.

  “Jason Rivers wasn’t my biological father. Gigi was married, got pregnant with me, but my father…her husband went missing before I was born.”

  “What?”

  “She was alone, disowned by my grandfather and shunned by her husband’s family. So, she gave me to her brother to raise as his own. And she moved to Italy to start her new life.” He sounds like he’s reading from a script, but the devastation in his eyes is very real.

  I barely feel the bite of the ceramic shards digging into the soles of my bare feet as I walk back into my apartment and grab my jeans and a t-shirt from my closet. I don’t know why I’m getting dressed but I feel the need to be ready

  “I don’t…How? When… did you find out?” I stumble around the questions and rifle through my drawers for a t-shirt.

  He lets out a long, weary sigh and grips the back of his neck with his hand and closes his eyes. I trap the phone between my shoulder and cheek so I can step into my jeans while I wait for him to answer.

  “Two weeks before Gigi was shot.”

  I stop in mid-motion and the phone clatters to the floor and spins halfway across the room.

  “Shit, hold on,” I call and run to scoop it up, but my heart feels like it paused at his answer. “Before we saw you in Mexico?”

  “Yes.” His expression is regretful, but unapologetic. “I couldn’t say anything, Stone. Not without talking to Remi first. And until last week, I didn’t even know where he was.”

  A chill of dread washes over me at the mention of Regan’s twin.

  “What has Remi Wilde got to….” The answer to my question comes to me before I can finish asking it. One of the curses of a quick mind is that nothing comes to me in a soft cloud of thought. Thunderbolts are more my mind’s style, and this one packs the punch of a thousand of them at once.

  Hayes stares at me and waits for me to say what is so obvious.

  “Not Lucas Wilde?” I ask it, but it’s less of a question and more of a desperate plea for him to say I’m wrong.

  He nods and my head starts to spin.

  “How is that even fucking possible.”

  “Stone, I’m not finished, please,” he shouts to cut off my senseless stream of questions. But it’s not his raised voice that ties my tongue. Hayes, never, ever says please.

  I brace myself for whatever could be worse than the bomb he just dropped.

  I close my eyes, drop my head into my hands. “Go on,”

  “Lucas Wilde is my father. Also, he’s not dead.”

  I drop back into my chair and stare at my brother in total disbelief.

  “He barely survived an attempt on his life. And when he was found, he had no memory of who he was. He’s been homeless since.”

  “Someone tried to kill him?”

  He nods gravely.

  “Who? Do you know?” I press when he doesn’t look at me.

  When he does, I wish I hadn’t aske
d. His eyes are wet with tears.

  “His father, Stone. His own father. Because he married a Rivers. I thought our grandfather was an evil son of a bitch for cutting off his own daughter…Old Man Wilde was a fucking maniac. How Remi and the rest of them survived living with that monster is beyond me.”

  I blink in disbelief. “That can’t be. He and Regan were really close.”

  “He fooled everyone.” His voice is laced with disgust.

  “How’s Regan?”

  He shrugs, his eyes grow wary. “I don’t know. I haven’t really had a chance to talk to her.”

  “Well, what about Remi, or Tyson?”

  A small smile lifts the corner of his mouth, and it plucks a nerve to see that when he showed no feeling when I asked about Regan. “They’re okay. Remi’s back in town and holed up with his girl. Tyson is…Tyson. He was pissed, blew off steam, and now he’s thrown himself into his work.”

  “And what about Regan? Or does she not count because you disapprove of her?”

  His eyes narrow. “Remi and I were close before this. Regan and Confidence are friends. Maybe, she’ll go see her. If you’re hoping that somehow this will make me more inclined to forgive her for your little…whatever, don’t hold your breath. Marcel is a friend, and he deserves better.”

  I want to tell him what I know about that man, but I doubt he’d believe me, and I don’t want to betray her confidence. “I’m not sure why you think she’s done anything you need to forgive her for. And you have no idea what kind of husband he is.”

  “The kind she’s still married to,” he snaps, his expression hardening with annoyance.

  “For now,” I say and hate how petulant I sound and how clueless I am. We haven’t been in touch at all But, I haven’t let myself imagine anything other than her getting her ducks in a row to divorce him.

  “Stone, think about what would happen if people found out about your... thing in Mexico.”

  “It wasn’t a thing,” I say between clenched teeth.

  The damnable pity returns to his eyes. “For your sake, I hope it was. I don’t want you coming home thinking that you’re going to take Marcel Landel’s wife from him.”

  His demands make my skin feel one size too small for my body. “She’s not a thing to be taken.”

  His expression grows rigid and his eyes narrow. “You listen to me. I’ve been busting my ass to restore some of the good faith our uncle squandered while I was away. Your mother is still a pain in my ass. Dare is just barely back on his feet; I don’t have the bandwidth for another crisis. Especially not one that has anyone with my last name in the center of it. Please, think about what it will mean. And not just to me. But to our family. To your career. Stop thinking with your dick,” he growls.

  His words slip under my skin, rub against my insecurity, my guilt, and my pride. They burn away the final veneer of civility I was clinging to.

  “You’ve always been good at turning a challenge into an opportunity. It shouldn’t surprise me that you’re doing it now,” I sneer.

  “What the fuck do you mean by that?” Hayes’ eyes narrow.

  I mimic his expression and bring the phone closer to my face. “You just dropped the mother of all bombs on me. Yet, the first thing on your mind is Regan and me?”

  His anger erupts. “Of course, it’s been on my mind. You’re my brother. I want what’s best for you, and another man’s wife isn’t it. This isn’t an opportunity, Stone. It’s a fucking tragedy, and I’m just trying to stem the bleeding.”

  “And you think asking me to subvert my happiness for the greater good of a family that has deceived you your whole life is what’s best for me?”

  He winces, and color blooms on his cheeks, and he drops his gaze from mine.

  “Exactly.” I take no joy in being right.

  “Stone, that’s not fair.”

  “What is?” I bark, and he closes his eyes in a bid to find his calm.

  He sighs and runs a weary hand over his face. “I know you like her. She’s beautiful and smart, I get it. But you have no idea the hornets’ nest you’ll be kicking, if you don’t let it be. Please.” There’s that word again.

  I walk back to my room and stare at my bed. I should lie down and close my eyes and just, for once, say fuck it.

  But the sun has started to rise, and it’s too late to indulge in the confessional of sleep. Self-indulgence will have to wait until the moon comes back. Someone’s life depends on me showing up. Even on days when my own life feels like it’s up for grabs.

  I turn my back on temptation and my ire on my brother. “Beautiful and smart are tame words to describe what she is. And I don’t like her, I love her. And I know I owe you a lot, but that you’d call me to remind me of it, pisses me off.”

  Hayes blinks in surprise “Love her? You don’t even know her.”

  “I know her better than I’ve ever known anyone.” And, saying it out loud, I realize how true it is.

  Hayes gapes at me. “What the hell did I miss?”

  I laugh, but it’s bitter and short. “My formative years.”

  He looks like I punched him. “Stone—”

  “I have to go. I’ve got more patients to see than I have hours in a day.”

  “Wait,” he barks.

  “Can’t. But feel free to continue worrying about who I’m fucking. And I hope you and Remi have an awesome reunion with your dad,” I expel the last word like a curse propelled by anger and jealousy.

  I wish both of my dads would come back from the dead.

  Yeah, and people in hell wish they had ice water.

  Nobody cares.

  I hear him call my name, right as I hang up.

  “Buenos noches,” I call over my shoulder to the guard at the front of the refugee camp, and then jog over to the white van that’s waiting to take me back to my apartment. This is my last week here, and I feel guilty at how glad I am of that.

  The conditions here are bleak. This refugee crisis is the worst of its kind in our hemisphere. But for the news coverage it receives, you’d be hard pressed to even know it’s happening.

  But teams like mine, from all over the world, have come to help serve the people who are caught in the crossfire of political stagecraft. It’s easy to feel a sense of helplessness, because there’s no hope in sight for an end to the problem.

  I climb aboard the van, and before I can buckle up, we’re off. It’s dark in the van, and everyone else is asleep. I pull out my phone and scroll to my favorite torture devices.

  Pictures of Regan - a couple of us, but, mostly, just her.

  My screen saver is one of her on a paddle board the afternoon we explored the mangroves. She looks like she’s eighteen. Her hair is braided into plaits that run down either side of her head and dangle over her shoulders. Her bikini is a mismatched black bandeau top and bright green bottoms. She’s grinning wildly, her hands lifted in the air over her head, an oar clutched in the left one. Her expression is triumphant.

  Worry makes my heart skip a beat every time I think about her alone right now. The upheaval must feel endless.

  I’ve started to call her so many times, and each time, I’ve stopped.

  She’s so off limits, it’s not even funny. And despite lashing out at Hayes, I don’t want to make things harder for him.

  I gaze out at the scenery as we wind our way through the valley. The horizon doesn’t calm me the way it used to. Now, when I gaze out at the place where the sky and earth kiss, all I see is her.

  Regan, for me, is what that spot in the distance must have been for the men who were inspired to sail toward it, even though they fully expected to fall off the edge of the world. And just like them, I can’t resist that call.

  I shouldn’t even attempt it. I’m not on a ship by myself. My brother is breaking his back to repair what my mother has broken. If I make a mess of things, I’ll take him with me.

  And what if Regan never leaves her husband?

  Can I risk so much when I’m not s
ure that the horizon isn’t just an illusion?

  So, whenever I’ve had the urge to call her, I write it down in a letter. I’ve got a couple dozen notes that I never planned to mail.

  The shuttle drops me off and I trudge into my apartment. I head straight to my desk and pull out the paper and pen I’ve been using and start another letter.

  When my ink runs dry, I go in search of another pen. I feel around on the top of my bookcase where I keep my supplies and my hand brushes against a book. I grasp it and pull it down.

  It’s my copy of Cosmos. The one thing that I always take everywhere with me. It’s like a Talisman. I open and read the inscription I wrote in my ten-year-old scrawl - “You’re my Venus, I’m your Mars.”

  How true that turned out to be - just not the way I’d hoped. Like the actual planets, it feels like we have the whole world between us.

  Yet, she’s still my Venus - that out of reach, elusive star. My goddess of love, my ultimate woman.

  But am I her Mars? Didn’t I tell her that how the god fought for the love of his goddess even though she was completely off limits to him?

  In three months, I’ll be headed on an expedition that will take me away from any modern conveniences for a whole month. If I didn’t come back, wouldn’t I regret not telling her that until my last breath, I loved her?

  I make a decision, one that feels slightly premature and that I’m certain I’m not prepared for. But that’s never stopped me from trying before.

  It certainly won’t stop me now.

  Not when I think that loving Regan Wilde the way she was born to be loved - the way I know no one is loving her now - is also my calling.

  There is nothing about a life with her that is as I imagined my life would be - the children I thought I didn’t want to raise, the domestic stasis of cohabitation - but after just that week with her, I know I’d live in hell if it meant she was by my side.

  So, I package everything up and I make this last note a question. One I hope she’ll answer when she’s ready. And until then, I’ll take a measure of comfort in knowing that she’ll have these to remind her that I’m thinking about her.