by Rachel Kane
It was a strange place to hear the name David Black.
“The actor?” I asked.
Alex nodded. “He was my client.”
“Before or after the—”
“During.”
“Oh.”
I sensed he wanted to tell this story his way, without interruptions from me. It would be strange to hear it from the inside. Everyone knew David Black. Everyone had watched his downfall.
“I got a call from his agent,” said Alex. “David had a problem, a relationship gone wrong, worried about blackmail… The usual, really, and the sort of job I picked up routinely in the business. I won’t lie, I was excited to get the call. You know how well-respected David was then. Best actor of our generation, had the Oscar stolen from him, but we all knew in our hearts he deserved it.
“Normally, I don’t get star-struck. God knows I’ve seen the disasters some of these actors make of their personal lives. But David was different. Calm, self-possessed, in absolute control of his emotions. I got the facts of the case. His boyfriend, a much younger man, a wannabe actor who was currently waiting tables, was demanding a big payout, or else he’d go public with all of David’s kinks.
“I should have known. We got the boyfriend into the office, and he looked scared. He told us stories about what David did to him…”
I looked over at Alex as his voice trailed off. “What happened?”
He took another drink. “I didn’t believe him. I look back on it now, and I curse myself for it. We sat there listening to this little guy describe the most hellish treatment, and all I thought was, you’re a good actor, too bad you chose to use it for blackmail.”
“Well, but how could you know, it could’ve been—”
Alex shook his head. “No, don’t do that. Don’t make excuses for me. I was stupid. I was starstruck. David was different than any actor I’d ever met. He was as self-assured in person as he was on the screen. I’d never met anyone like this. When I asked him about the boyfriend’s accusations, he brushed them off so easily. I pride myself on being able to tell when people are lying to me… To this day, I don’t know if I ignored my instincts, or if David was such an accomplished liar that I never would have been able to tell.”
He stepped off his porch, and I followed him to his garden. I wondered what he saw there, in that organized chaos. Did he see all his hard work and effort, or was he still seeing the past? I almost feared what he would tell me next…feared it, yet was almost certain of what it would be.
“In the end, we buried the boyfriend under a mountain of nondisclosure agreements. He got his payout, and moved back to the Midwest, back to his family. Problem solved. David thanked me…and then invited me to dinner to thank me further.
“I had never had a conversation like the one we had that night. His stories, his certainty, that honey-smoked voice of his. He drew me in, made me feel important. Said he saw something real in me, something worthwhile, in a city full of fakes. What could I do? I was under his spell. I like to think I’m immune to all that stuff, that I’m too hard-nosed to cave in to flattery. But he was relentless.”
Here in the garden I felt the fire of jealousy start to burn in my heart, when I realized what Alex was telling me. “You…you started seeing him. Dating.”
A curt nod. “I did. And I’m not going to lie and say it was a miserable time. I felt important, felt seen, in a way I never had before. He had this way of making you believe that no one but him could understand the real you, that every other relationship in your life had been false and shallow, compared to what you had with him.
“When the next accusation came, I was furious. It was so similar to the first, another bleached-blond 20-something, this one had been in a couple of toothpaste commercials but was up for a bigger part, until David had ruined him, he said. David’s lawyers and agent told me to hang back, that it would be unethical for me to take the case, since I was seeing David. I didn’t care. I went after this kid. I disproved his story, ripped it apart like flimsy tissue. No way could David have done anything to him. David was mine.
“And then came the next one. And the next.”
I looked over at Alex. “Is this when it started to make the news?”
He nodded. “At first it was all anonymous. A major actor has been accused of assault… Nice and vague. We worked hard to keep it that way, but these things never stay hidden. I couldn’t understand it. This was David Black we were talking about, not some creep. He was too sophisticated for all this. He was above it all. I went into overdrive. Scheduled interviews, coached him on what to say and what not to say. Photo shoots of him on vacation in Spain, looking relaxed…and innocent. And on the other side, I dug up the dirt. Every bad thing I could find on all these young men who were coming forward. If they’d ever done drugs at a party, I portrayed them as hopeless addicts. If they’d ever slept around, I gave reporters anonymous tips that they were hustlers. I destroyed their lives, the same way I felt like they were destroying mine.”
Alex had moved away from me. His drink, forgotten, dangled in his hand. He looked lost and alone, and I wanted to grab him right there, tell him not to say anymore, I didn’t need to hear it, I understood.
But he needed to tell me this. It was written on his face, this need to confess.
“The flip-side of self-assurance is overconfidence,” he said quietly. “If you win enough battles, eventually you feel invincible. David thought that no harm could ever come to him, as long as I was his pitbull, attacking everyone who tried to get near him. He stopped caring about the scandals, because he knew I’d take care of them, no matter what.
“Until I walked in on him one day. Found another blond, another of these skinny 20-somethings, in my bed, the bed I shared with David. That’s when I understood. It had all been true. All these accusations.
“Oh, David tried to tell me I was foolish. You knew the score going in, he told me. You’re a part of this. If I’m guilty, you’re guilty.”
“But you—”
“I know. I told him I hadn’t known the truth. I’d thought all these men were lying about him, about his violence. He laughed at me. I never took you for an idiot, Alex. Do you mean to say you believed me over them? I’d been so naive. I’d somehow let myself be so starstruck that I couldn’t see the truth right in front of me.
“The worst part was, he expected me to keep going. Well, now that you know, I suppose it’ll make your job that much easier. All the pretense cast aside.”
As though only now discovering the drink in his hand, Alex lifted his glass and looked into it.
“Is that when you quit the business?” I asked him, after a long moment of silence.
“My entire career, I’d felt that I was better than the people I worked for,” he said. “I might not have had a mansion, or a jet of my own, or millions of adoring fans, but I had my morality, and I had my common sense. I was far superior to the drunken playboy crashing his car while surrounded by paparazzi. I was miles above the jilted actress trying to keep her personal photos from leaking online. I was better than all of them…until David.”
I wanted to object. He couldn’t have known. When the news erupted over every celebrity site, every newspaper, the stories of David Black’s cruelty had been shocking. His steely-eyed public statement, meant to be an apology, was one of the most sociopathic things I’d ever seen.
Wait…I suddenly realize why Alex called me a sociopath, when we first met.
It wasn’t about me. It was about Alex’s fear.
Fear that he would be naive again. Fear that he would believe the best about someone, and be proved wrong.
I swallowed. Please don’t believe the best about me. I’m no David Black, but I’m no angel either. If you knew about my past…
“In my books,” I said, “there’s always justice, in the end. Miss Katie and Roger announce that they’ve called the police, and as the criminal finishes confessing, they see the red and blue lights as the authorities pull up. But I gues
s that doesn’t always happen in real life.”
Alex shook his head. “It doesn’t. David was allowed to disappear. No charges. No lawsuits. Yes, his career is over, and everyone knows the truth about him now. But his quiet retirement is so much better than he deserves.
“For a while, my friends, the lawyers and agents I worked with, gave me a little space. I think we were all shocked when the truth came out. This is how the world works; we’re always willing to believe a confident, wealthy man, over his victims. David knew that, and that’s why he exploited a certain type of man, a man who was easy to disbelieve. We all patted ourselves on the back and asked how we could have known. And then the next job offer came to me. Another day, another celebrity sin to cover up.
“I couldn’t do it. They said okay Alex, take your time, we know you need time to heal, but they didn’t understand. I couldn’t do it anymore. I could not defend one more person, couldn’t shine and polish one more famous ego.”
“So you moved back here,” I said.
He nodded. “Packed my bags and moved back to my quiet hometown. Took a few jobs here and there when Micah felt like I’d be a match, but no celebrities, no scandals, nothing that would bring back those memories…until you.”
I reached out and touched his hair. It was so strange to see Alex looking vulnerable. If he could be hurt, what hope was there for the rest of us? Yet I felt I could protect him, I could help him heal. If only he would let me. That kiss earlier had been the proof of it.
“I hope I don’t remind you of him,” I said.
A soft chuckle, almost inaudible. “No. You’re the exact opposite of David Black. You’re more like one of those young men. Hell, you’re even blond.”
“Will you hate me if I confess that I dye it two shades lighter?”
That made him laugh, not because I’d said anything extraordinarily funny, but because this is human nature. After the tension, you need the release, and you’ll take anything to get that emotion out.
“I just needed you to know all this, before we took things any further,” he said. “I hurt so many people by not believing them. I helped him ruin lives. There’s nothing I can do to take that back.”
I tangled my fingers in his. “I believe there’s forgiveness in the world,” I said. “I think there’s justice, but also mercy. It’s hard to find them sometimes, though. It’s why we have to write about them, write stories where justice is always done, because it can be hard to find in real life. But it’s there, somewhere. You’ve paid for your mistakes. You’ve tortured yourself over them.”
He looked away again. “I don’t deserve any understanding. I don’t deserve mercy.”
I put my hand on his chin and turned his face toward me. “That’s not for you to say. You helped me, Alex. You believed me. You came into my life, and you protected me. Hell, maybe the case is blown now, I don’t know. I don’t care. Let the world do what it wants with me. With you by my side, it can’t hurt me. This is your true nature. You’re a protector.”
His arms slipped around me and pulled me close. Wordlessly, his lips returned to mine, and there among the flowers he kissed me, with a hunger and a need so pure that I could not withstand it. My body ached for him, as much as my heart ached at the story of his past.
I’m not the only one who has been hurt.
We had bared our souls to each other, had seen the raw need we shared, to have someone understand us. And that understanding had to be physical as well. His kiss told me that he knew this. Knew that it wasn’t enough to be understood in the abstract.
“Take me inside,” I whispered to him.
16
Alex
I’d never had a man here before.
This house was my escape hatch. The one place I could escape from the world. Micah and my other friends hadn’t been wrong when they called me a hermit. They didn’t see why it was so important to have a place untouched by the world, unmarked by the pain of my former life. But I’d taken measures to avoid that pain. No flirting, no dates, no men, period.
This is why my heart fluttered as I brought Cam into the house.
It was why we couldn’t go at each other, madly, passionately, with brute force.
Instead we stood facing each other like a pair of awkward teenagers, with the pain of our pasts as chaperons.
Wordlessly, tentatively, we traveled each other with our hands. I felt the soft cotton of Cam’s shirt, the heat of his skin underneath it. He let me unbutton it, slowly, each move down to the next button a process of exploration and discovery. With only my fingers, I pushed the shirt back, exposing his chest, his shoulders.
He wouldn’t make eye contact. He seemed ashamed. I knew that feeling so well.
I traced his collarbones, his ribs. From the outside he gave the impression of being thin and frail, but that was not quite true. Thin, yes, but lithe, delicate without weakness.
“I should do more push-ups,” he said.
“Stop that.”
“One day maybe I’ll be as big as you.”
“You’re fine the way you are. Like this…look at this line, from your collarbone to your shoulder. Isn’t that pretty? Look at the way the shadow curves under it.”
He pulled away from my hand. “You don’t have to… I mean, you don’t have to try to make me feel better about myself.”
I cocked my head to the side. “I didn’t realize you felt badly about yourself. You never mentioned.”
He slumped and looked around. “Did I need to mention it, on top of everything else? I’m not like you, Alex. I don’t have big manly muscles, I don’t have the big bone structure.”
I grabbed him by his shirt and pulled him close. “Shut up,” I said, my lips inches from his. “You’re beautiful. I’ll pound anybody who disagrees.”
A raised eyebrow. “I disagree. You going to…pound me?”
We both laughed at that. “I hope you write better dialog than that in your books,” I said.
He reached up and unbuttoned my top button. “I try,” he said. “I’m lucky. There’s no sex in my books. Very little flirting. Katie spends most of her time batting away suitors, in favor of her platonic relationship with Roger.”
“You’re hiding too,” I said. Could he tell how fast my heart was beating?
He stopped halfway down my shirt, and looked up at me. “Yes, I suppose I am. This scares me, Alex.”
“This?”
He shook my shirt. “This. Wanting you. Wanting to go to bed with you.”
“We don’t have to—”
“No, I know we don’t have to, and that almost makes it worse. Because I want to.”
He kissed my chest. His pale hand against the tanned skin was a contrast I could have stared at for the rest of my life.
“I want to pick you up,” I said, “and throw you down. I want to rip your clothes off—”
“You like to top,” he said, his lips brushing my nipple.
“I don’t think about it in those terms. I don’t know. That all seems artificial.”
“But you want to fuck me.”
God, hearing him say it, so openly, it made me want to hide. Yes, I wanted to fuck him…but I wanted that desire to be a secret, because if it’s a secret, then nobody gets hurt.
The words, though. You want to fuck me. I couldn’t help it, I was getting hard from just the words. Or maybe it was from the way his tongue played against my nipple. Or the anticipation of what he would say next.
“I do,” I whispered.
Cam let me put my arms around him. I don’t think he was expecting me to reach down to his ass, to pick him up. His eyes went wide, and he grabbed me, with both arms and legs, to stay balanced. He didn’t have to. I wasn’t going to let him go.
“Oh my,” he said, as I carried him into the bedroom. “You’re sweeping me off my feet. Literally.”
“I’ll have to take you somewhere better, next time,” I said. “Something more sumptuous than this tiny room.”
He fell b
ack onto the bed, and rolled on my covers. “Are you kidding? This is perfect.”
Putting his face against my pillow, he inhaled.
He likes you. He wants you.
I didn’t know what to do with that knowledge. What to do with the fact that he made my heart pound. He made my hands tremble. Nobody is supposed to want me. I’m washed up. Every day there’s a new gray hair at my temples, and in my eyes you can still see the damage my prior life left me with.
Nobody’s supposed to like me. Everybody is supposed to ignore me, forever.
Yet here was Cam, shirt completely off now, reaching for me, grasping at my belt, trying to release me from my clothes so that we could be skin-to-skin.
I’d always been confident in my body. I watched what I ate, I made sure to exercise, and tried to keep the scotch to an as-needed basis, although that had gotten harder in the past few days. I’d seen the way people looked at me, and knew that I was imposing. I liked that. Imposing kept people away.
Cam made me feel nervous, stripped away all that confidence, but behind that nervousness I felt fresh, felt new. I loved having his eyes tracing down my chest, his hands now pushing my pants down, to be exposed before him. There was something exciting about this fear, a pleasurable worry about how one looks in a new lover’s eyes.
He feasted on me. He took his time. My pants slipped down my thighs, and he spent a moment here, his hands stroking the muscles of my legs. My cock was right there, hidden away in my briefs, and he ignored it, running his fingers over the hair on my legs, making it stand up. Goosebumps all over me.
“I’m scared of you,” Cam said quietly.
“You don’t have to be.”
I lay on the bed with him. Now it was my turn, my hands, slipping across the ridges and curves of his body, his softness. I finished undressing him, except for his underwear.
He had his own evidence that he was enjoying this, a hard cock curved down, ready to peek out of the leg of his boxers.
“I’m not used to giving other people control,” he said.
“Believe me, I’ve noticed.”
