Take the Edge Off

by TA Moore

  “Then I guess he’ll get to break your heart as well,” she said. Her mouth twitched in a tired smile. “It’s not like he told me about you. He didn’t mention you at all.”

  Cal could have said the same, but he didn’t. After a moment Kristen shrugged and left. Cal didn’t watch her walk out. He stared into his plate until he heard the door rattle and chime, and then he looked out the window. Kristen crossed the road, precarious in narrow heels on the deeply rutted tarmac, and crossed down to put something in the drunk’s cup. The man emerged from his nylon cocoon to splutter and grip her hand with fervent, surprised gratitude.

  Kristen looked embarrassed as she disentangled herself and stood up. The homeless man grabbed whatever was in his cup and stuffed it into his pockets. Cal resented the ability to be kind. It would be easier if she were a bitch.

  He left one of Kristen’s fifties on the table to pay for breakfast and make the waitress feel like the morning was worthwhile. As he walked down the street, he wished that what Kristen said was as easy to leave behind as her money.

  He reached the outside of the hotel, the muscles in his thighs tight as he followed the curve of the drive up from the road, where he pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed.

  It rang through to the answering machine. The “after the tone” message gave Cal time to second-guess himself as he nodded to the doorman and ducked into the hotel. The tone finally went, and Cal supposed he had to say something.

  “Hey, Doc,” he said. “Cal Tate here. You going to ask me on a second date or not?”

  He hung up. Doc called back before he reached the suite. At some point, Cal supposed, he was going to have to learn his name.

  Chapter Ten

  THE ENVELOPE sat in the middle of the coffee table. It looked innocuous, brown and wrinkled at the edges, but they both knew it wasn’t. Neither of them wanted to look at it. Joe, at least, was tired of plain brown envelopes that threatened to ruin his life. He thought briefly about the coolness in Cal’s eyes when he handed the envelope over—“it’s all there”—but he couldn’t dwell on that with something like panic.

  “Kris,” he said. “What the hell did you think you were doing?”

  She looked at her nails and picked at the cuticle on her index finger. When she was younger, she bit them down to the quick—Joe had seen the pictures—but she’d broken herself of the habit. Ladies, she told him once in her sour impersonation of her dad’s pompousness, don’t have ugly hands. Now she picked at them instead.

  “I don’t like him,” she said.

  “You don’t have to.” Joe walked over to the whiskey and tapped his finger against the bottle. Too early to drink or did the fact he needed a drink make it a bad idea whatever time it was. “You should go home.”

  “You’re my home.”

  Hell.

  Joe twisted the top off the whiskey and poured a finger’s worth into a tumbler. There was no ice, but neat would do what he needed it to.

  “Stop it, Kris,” he said. “This isn’t going to work. What did you think was going to happen? That you’d pay off my driver and I’d have to ask you to chauffeur me around? Then we’d be stuck in traffic so long I’d fall back in love with you? There are Ubers in London, you know, and taxis.”

  She muttered something that he didn’t catch. Joe took a swig of whiskey and then turned to look at her.

  They’d known each other their whole lives, in the way that rich kids from the same city did. His best friend had dated her younger sister. They’d both driven down to a mutual friend’s Halloween party in Balboa Park every year, and they both had issues with their families. Not friends, but they’d known each other in passing.

  Joe asked her out the first time because a friend had walked in on him and a man whose name Joe had never learned, half-naked in the back seat of a Hummer. He’d thought he could make himself what everyone wanted, and she was the first step.

  It wasn’t fair to either of them.

  “I don’t want to get married, Kris,” he said.

  “We don’t have to,” she said as she got to her feet. “If you’ve got cold feet, if that’s what this is about, we can put the wedding off for now. Go back to how we were.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  She flung her hands up in frustration. “Why not?” she demanded. “We’re good together, Joe. We have fun, the papers all want our pictures, our parents are happy. I know we weren’t… you know… passionate, but we were happy. So why not?”

  It had been good, and Joe had thought it would be good enough. But it hadn’t been or, at least, wasn’t anymore, not when he knew what it was like to not care because a man was so beautiful you had to touch him, or to sit in easy, hazy warm silence and daydream about sand on tattooed skin.

  Cal’s beauty. Cal’s skin.

  “I wasn’t happy,” he said.

  Kristen shook her head in denial. “You were,” she insisted. “I was there. I could have told if you weren’t. I loved you… love you. I don’t care that you… had a few slips. Once we’re married, it’ll be different.”

  “It won’t,” Joe said.

  “Fine,” Kristen said defiantly. She shrugged and smiled glossily when he raised his eyebrows at her. “It’s the modern way of doing things, isn’t it? Monogamy is old hat.”

  Joe hesitated. He’d thought it was kinder to blur the edges of their breakup for Kristen, or maybe he hadn’t been confident enough that he was done hiding. Maybe he’d wanted to leave himself the chance to walk that decision back.

  “I like men,” he said. It felt odd. True, but still odd. He wasn’t sure if the tight, breathless feeling in his chest was anticipation or dread. “That’s not something an open marriage is going to change.”

  She turned her mouth down in an expressive, impatient shrug. “So you’re bi,” she said. Her voice had gone brittle, as though her refusal to acknowledge it had started to crack. “I don’t care, Joe.”

  He looked down into his whiskey. The swirl of amber blurred the world. “I’m not bisexual, I’m gay,” he said. “I loved you, Kris, but I wasn’t in love wit—”

  Her hand cracked across his face and knocked the rest of the words back down his throat. The slap caught Joe off guard, and he bit the side of his tongue. The taste of metal and salt mixed with the tang of whiskey. He swallowed and turned his head back to Kris, and she looked as surprised as he felt, her eyes huge and hands trembling. He waited for the apology he would have to reject.

  “I hope he leaves you,” Kristen spat out instead. She took a step back, legs wobbly under her, and snatched her bag up from the chair. She roughly stuffed the envelope in, on top of the clutter of old lipsticks and Post-it note reminders she had in there. “I hope everyone fucking leaves you. Maybe that’s why your mother left you. She could see what a waste of skin you’d grow into. Go to Hell, Joe.”

  She stalked out of the room and slammed the door behind her. Through the door Joe heard Edward’s low, controlled voice murmur something.

  “Ask him,” Kristen snapped. “You think he’s so great, and he’s a fucking liar!”

  There was a pause, and then Joe heard the door of the hotel slam behind Kristen. She’d stayed in an executive room a few floors down for the duration, but Joe supposed she’d check out now. He sat down on the couch and leaned his head back against the warm leather, eyes closed.

  When Edward finally let himself into the room, it wasn’t with the question that Joe expected.

  “Have you seen this?”

  Joe opened his eyes and clenched his jaw against the urge to flinch away as Edward thrust the charred bear into his face. Being stuffed unceremoniously in an envelope had done nothing for its looks. In addition to the burn scars, the stuffing had shifted in its head and one of the crackled eyes had pulled free. Smoke-stained cotton poked out of the hole.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “Tate’s room.”

  “You searched his room?” Joe asked coldly as he pushed the bear out of
his face. “Who, exactly, gave you permission to do that?”

  “Technically the room was rented by Bailey Holdings,” Edward said as he withdrew the battered stuffed toy. “As their representative, I don’t need permission to go through one of our own rooms. Especially when I had suspicions he might be involved in an ongoing security issue. Where the hell did he get this?”

  “From me,” Joe said. “I asked him to get rid of it. My stalker sent it. I don’t know why. Do you?”

  Edward glanced down at the charred, malformed thing in his hand. The expression on his face hinted at the same sort of bile-sour horror Joe felt when he looked at it, although maybe there was less confusion mixed in for him.

  “No,” he said as he slowly unclenched his fingers and set the bear down. Upright. Gently.

  “Then why did you think I needed to see it?”

  Edward gave him a scathing look. “Look at it,” he said. “It’s what those of us in the business call a red flag. When did the stalker send this?”

  “A few days ago.” Joe drained the whiskey and set the glass down. He licked his lips and got up off the couch. “It was delivered by a courier. I didn’t get the name.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Edward demanded as he followed Joe to the desk. “This is my job. If I’m going to protect you, protect your family’s interests, you can’t keep something like this from me.”

  Joe laughed dryly and held up a hand in halfhearted apology as Edward’s face darkened with frustration.

  “It’s not funny, I know,” he said. “But be honest, Edward. That’s ironic coming from you, isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  The truth was on the tip of Joe’s tongue, but he swallowed before it blurted it out. It still made sense to keep Edward in the dark, at least until Joe had something probative to put his finger on. But he was tired of lies—a flat, spent distaste had left a bad taste in his mouth—so he stripped the details off. The bones of that old frustration had been where this started.

  “What really happened to my mother?” he asked as he flicked through a stack of folders.

  Edward blinked. Once. “What do you mean?” he said. “You know what happened. She died, it was—”

  “Sudden,” Joe interrupted, “and tragic. But how? Did she have a stroke? Heart attack? You worked for my dad back then. You must have known her.”

  There was a pause. Edward cleared his throat and nodded slowly. “Only briefly,” he said. “I didn’t get the chance to get to know her, but I think I would have liked her. Joe, this is something you need to talk to your father about. I didn’t…. It’s not my place to tell you.”

  “Tell me what?” Joe asked sharply. “I’m not a child anymore, Edward. I’ve no idea who this woman was. I barely know what she looked like. You aren’t going to burst some bubble I’ve been carrying around. I want to know the truth.”

  Edward grimaced, a barely there twitch of his stern mouth. “People say that, Joe,” he said. “But they rarely do.”

  “So there is something you’re not telling me, then?”

  “You’re right,” Edward said. He paused long enough that Joe braced himself for a confession. “You’re not a child anymore and, maybe, your dad owes you some answers. I’ll talk to him when we get back, once he’s a bit stronger—”

  “Or later,” Joe suggested with tired disgust. “Or sometime. Tell you what, Edward, don’t bother.”

  “Why does this matter now?” Edward asked. “Because of your father’s stroke? He’s doing well. The doctors are confident he’ll make a full recovery with some physio.”

  It was a good theory, Joe supposed. The stalker had planted the seed before that, the suspicion that Joe wasn’t the only one with secrets, but the idea of being an orphan…. Harry Bailey wasn’t the sort of father to inspire sentimental think pieces, but he was the only family Joe had. His mother was dead before he was born, both sets of grandparents dead long before that, no siblings, and none of Harry’s girlfriends had ever made it past a fling. It was strange to think of himself completely alone.

  That was when he realized he couldn’t marry Kristen. She only made him feel more alone.

  “I told you, Edward, it doesn’t matter,” Joe said. “I’m just… that wasn’t a particularly pleasant conversation.”

  Edward looked around, his attention aimed through thick walls toward the St. Pancras lifts, and made a dubious noise under his breath. This was when he’d usually urge Joe to have second thoughts. Not this time.

  “What?” Joe asked. “Not going to tell me I’ve made a mistake?”

  Edward pursed his lips for a second as he looked down at the bear. “What’s the point. You’re not going to listen,” he said as he shrugged the distraction off and pointed at the bear. “Tell me about the bear. What happened.”

  It didn’t seem as though Edward deserved an answer, not when he hadn’t given Joe any. In the end, it was the thought of Cal that made Joe sit back down to dwell on the details. Since Kristen had arrived, Cal had been distant, and Joe supposed he couldn’t blame him for that, so it might win Joe some brownie points if he actually did what Cal suggested and told Edward what had gone on. Some of it.

  AN HOUR later they rode the lift down in stiff silence. The awkward chill between them was something Joe was more accustomed to with his dad.

  “I have an event to attend this weekend,” Joe said as they reached the ground floor. Massive, church-white candles burned in lanterns in alcoves along the hall, shadows long and unsteady across the black-and-white tiled floor. “A charity thing our nearly unretained lawyers thought would be a good PR move.”

  He left out that it was the charity named on the only picture he had of his mother, which he’d scanned and sent to Bea so she could arrange a meeting. Both his maternal grandparents had died from cancer, and Abigail Bailey had not only fund-raised for the cancer charity, she’d volunteered, campaigned, and served on the board. If she was still alive, she’d still be involved. She didn’t seem like the sort of woman who gave up on things once she started.

  Joe tried to feel proud of her, but it didn’t work. She seemed admirable, but there wasn’t that personal connection that made Joe want to go “she’s with me.” Sometimes Joe wondered if there was something a little wrong with him, deep down where the emotional connective tissue was.

  He wasn’t the first to consider that.

  Edward grunted as he took his trench coat from over his arm and shrugged it on. The light cotton hung from his shoulders as he roughly cinched it around his waist. “Short notice,” he noted. “Send me the details so I can vet it?”

  “It’s an established cancer charity,” Joe pointed out, “not a roundtable on international diplomacy. I don’t think it needs a background check.”

  “Or it’s a cancer charity,” Edward lobbed back to Joe, “so they won’t have done a proper security survey on the premises. Don’t worry, I’ll be discreet. They won’t know I was there any more than Mr. Tate will.”

  Joe winced at the reminder. He was coward enough to hope that was true, but he wasn’t proud of it.

  “Speaking of that,” he said. “You can’t unsearch a room, but in future, Cal’s off-limits. Understand, Edward?”

  Disapproval puckered Edward’s mouth. He might have dropped the refrain of reconciliation with Kristen, but apparently not the notion that he had a proprietary interest in Joe’s life. He knew—on some level he had to know—but it never seemed to set as a fact in his brain. That might never change, but Joe didn’t care what Edward thought of his love life anymore.

  He hesitated for a second, aware of the dull-bruise ache of regret in the back of his brain. So maybe he still cared. It was hard to stop when you’d spent years worried what someone would think, what they would pass on to Harry. But not enough to twist himself into knots. Not anymore.

  “He’s trouble,” Edward said flatly. “Always has been. He’s like his mother.”

  Joe snorted. “Maybe I like trouble,” he said.
<
br />   There was a pause as Edward straightened the cuffs of his jacket with scarred fingers. He cleared his throat and shrugged. “Yeah, that’s probably what that doctor Tate’s been dating thinks too,” he said. “He’s certainly eager enough. If I got ditched on a first date so someone could head to work, I don’t know if I’d go to have dinner at their hotel. I guess Dr. Lawrence is a more forgiving man than me. He even turned up on time.”

  Disappointment caught like a stone in the back of Joe’s throat. He knew he didn’t exactly have the right. Neither of them had made any promises, and while Joe had broken up with Kristen before he left California, the fact he’d had to spend the last two days finalizing it blurred the moral high ground a bit. But it was still there, cold and rough with the expectation he’d fucked this up. Even if he didn’t have a clue what this might be.

  He wasn’t about to let Edward see that. “Or,” he said as he adjusted his collar with absent precision, “Cal’s hotter than your dates. Hard to say.”

  “Not for me,” Edward said. “I’m happy with my taste in women. It’s a shame you weren’t. I won’t be at this thing tonight for more than an hour. I’ll let you know when I’m back.”

  “No need,” Joe said. “Have a good time. Enjoy yourself. I don’t have any plans to leave the hotel this evening. And I promise if I receive another burned bear, I’ll tell you first.”

  He sketched a cross over his heart with one finger.

  Edward scowled at him. “Take it seriously, Joe. They’re escalating and you don’t want to end up with more scars, do you?”

  Joe reached up without any real intention to do so and rubbed his finger across the scars dappled along his temple. Most of the time he didn’t really think about them. They had been part of his face for as long as he could remember, as unremarkable as his nose or eyebrows. Now he thought about the bear’s melted ear and charred cheek and wondered sickly how much that would hurt on flesh.

  It felt like he knew the answer—not the easily assumed “a lot” but the actual, visceral raw-meat pain of it. He didn’t remember when he’d been scalded, but maybe his nerves did.