“I had no idea who you were, why you had suddenly appeared in my life, how you could thrill and terrify me at the same time, and what a woman who claimed my heart in a single instant meant for the future of a plan that had been twenty years in the making.”
“Devon, you’re still not telling me what an elaborate, decades-long plot to destroy the Killanes has to do with this, with why you’re on this roof, with what you intend to do to –”
“With what I will do, Ashley – never doubt that. Your loving attempt to save me from my fate is noble but misguided, and I –”
“There is no fucking FATE here, Devon!”
I shrieked at him, rage and terror and crying bursting out of me all at once, with no warning. “There’s just YOU, just YOU deciding to destroy yourself, no matter how little sense it makes, and no matter how much it will destroy ME right along with you!”
Yeah, and that’s when I sobbed like a useless crybaby for maybe five minutes straight – or it could have been five years, whatever.
Devon waited.
He stood there ten feet away on the ledge, and he waited. I cried until my current supply of tears was cried out, I hitched and sniffled and wiped my nose with the hankie I remembered Jimmy had given me, and he waited. I looked up, brushing blowing strands of hair away from my freezing, tear-streaked face, and there he was, still waiting.
So I waited. I crossed my arms, I sauntered over to him, I ignored the panic screaming along every nerve as I got closer to the edge, I stopped less than five feet away from his side and that stomach-plunging drop down to the street, and I waited.
Ball’s in your court, big guy.
“Ashley, I understand your rage at something that seems so senseless and brutal – and believe me, I know exactly what that molten ball of anger and despair burning inside you feels like. I’d say I’m quite an expert on the subject of despair. Anger, too.”
I kept my arms clamped firmly across each other, and I watched him through the falling snow. The wind gusted and eddied and swirled between us, whipping at our coats and blowing snowflakes into his midnight hair and his pale face.
I watched those eyes trained on mine. If he knew what I was feeling, could I maybe figure out what he was feeling, what was driving him to do this? If I could puzzle it out, could I use that knowledge to bring him back from the edge? Back to me?
Or was he already lost? Maybe it was too late, maybe I was looking at a dead man and just didn’t know it yet.
Whatever, you moron – just get him talking. You might learn something, and even if you don’t, a talking Devon is a Devon who is still here, still with you.
“Devon?”
“Yes, my Ashley?”
“If you know what I’m feeling, if you’ve felt it yourself and you understand what you’re putting me through … then why would you want to do this? Help me to understand, because I am lost as anything here.”
“Oh, I don’t want to do this at all, Ashley – I so much do not want to leave you, but I must.”
I popped up an eyebrow, going for a ‘doubtful but calm tower of strength’ thing that I totally didn’t feel. “Explain why you must, big fella – and it better be good, because I am going to take a whole lot of convincing on this subject, believe me.”
“Understood. I fear, however, that my explanation involves asking you to listen to yet another ornate tale of suffering and revelation from my past – would that be acceptable?”
He stood there in the snow, waiting. He stood there looking down at me from that ledge with the patience of a marble statue, a statue of some ancient Greek philosopher to whom all of this would have been nothing more than a fascinating moral puzzle. From his expression, he might have just asked me if going to a Thai restaurant instead of a steak house would be acceptable.
I’m not sure where I found a brave, ridiculous smile, but I felt it stealing over my face. “Right now, baby, I would find it acceptable to stand here and listen to you recite the alphabet, or your laundry list, or the periodic table of the elements –”
“Ooh, really? Then I shall not deny my Ashley, not for another moment.”
And then he held his arms out again, he threw back his head, and he started in on the periodic damn table like the adorable loon he was. “Hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium – ”
How the hell was I managing to giggle? “Devon, you idiot, please –”
“ – boron, carbon, nitrogen –”
“Devon, please stop –”
He broke off and turned to me, one eyebrow tilted up. “Are you sure? Once we get to the rare earth elements, it turns quite spicy – I find gadolinium in particular to be quite effective in persuading women to perform the most disgusting and deliciously perverted sexual acts imaginable. Are you certain you don’t want to hear more?”
“Another time, Mr. Showoff Science Man. For right now – ”
“There won’t be another time, Ashley.”
The matter-of-fact way he said it terrified me right down to my bones, but I kept talking. What else could I do?
“For right now, tell me the truth that put you on the path to this roof. While I can’t say I’ll accept it, I promise I will listen and try to understand. Fair enough?”
He nodded. “As always, you are more than fair to me, and endlessly understanding – indeed, you seem to have bottomless reserves of patience when it comes to dealing with my nonsense.”
And there was that smile again – the sad and distant one this time, but under these circumstances, I’d take any smile I could get.
“So as long as I have all these patience points built up, could I maybe get you to come tell me this story in your nice warm office?”
“No.”
“Or at least down here with me and off that ledge, where the wind could shove you right over the side in an instant – you know, before you could finish your swell story?”
“And again, no. It won’t be that long of a tale, so I imagine I’ll be able to deliver it and then be on my way in a timely fashion, before the weather has a chance to interfere.”
“You do realize how cold-blooded and practical that sounds, right?”
Both eyebrows went up this time. “Me, practical? Goodness, Ashley, you know me far better than that – I am madder than a hare in the middle of March, and not at all practical.”
He turned away from me and looked down at the ocean of air and finality waiting beneath him. He kept staring down at all that nothing as he added, “And I’m not cold-blooded either, Ashley – I’m just so scared. Not of this” – he nodded at the endless drop before him – “but of not having the strength to do what I know to be right.”
“Devon, tell me the story. Tell me the story that’s convinced you this is the right thing to do, and I’ll listen.”
I marveled at my steady voice, at the way my nerves were humming quietly, not freaking out nearly as much as they should have, given what was happening – was I that strong and badass?
Or was my own truth speaking to me, calming me with words that I knew, but couldn’t quite remember?
46. Time to Fly
“Ashley, do you recall my telling you of that nasty little moment when Aunt Emily came to me in my hospital room, when I was ten years old and recovering from a beating that should have killed me?”
“Yep – she sold you on another story, one where you had a tragic accident falling down the stairs and her husband totally didn’t try to murder you at all, right? And why did you buy into that scenario, Devon? I remember you said you had your own reasons, but being a shifty, obscure bastard and all, you didn’t elaborate.”
I made a mental note that if it turned out Aunt “Demon Queen From Hell” Emily had anything at all to do with putting Devon on this roof, my first order of business after … well, after, would be to hunt that bitch down and hammer a stake through her shriveled black heart.
Devon pulled his hands from his coat pockets, folding his arms across his chest as he leaned forward to assess th
e view of his impending resignation from the world. He spoke as he looked down, and I recognized his crisp, calm professor’s voice, the one he’d used to tell me those horror stories from across the kitchen table in our Montana hideaway.
“You may perhaps also recall that I said a number of hours passed between the moment I woke up in that hospital bed and the moment Aunt Emily arrived.”
I wondered how deep the snow was in Montana right now. Suddenly, desperately, I wanted to find out – I wanted to go there, I wanted to drag Devon with me, and I wanted to never, ever, come back.
“And what is Ashley thinking just now?”
I came back to where I was with a start, and looked up to see Devon looking back at me, curious and intent, his arms still folded as he still leaned over the abyss.
I shrugged. “I was thinking that Montana looks pretty good to me right now, bears and all.”
“To me as well, sweet Ashley.”
“So can we go there? Now? You can tell me your story there, right?”
“Nice try, but no. I do not deserve Montana. I do not deserve you. But you deserve to hear the truth that led me to this day and this roof.”
I nodded. I waited. I didn’t argue with him about what we did or didn’t deserve, I just listened. The rock-steady calm I’d felt a few minutes before fell over me again, and again I felt I was just missing something about how I could be so calm.
Why did I think it maybe had something to do with Montana, with something I’d said or done there?
Devon broke into my muddled thoughts with that precise, professional lecturer’s voice.
“As previously stated, my uncle beat me into a coma that lasted three days – when I awoke, I lay in a strange bed in an unknown hospital, and I was quite alone.
“A child in my condition most certainly belonged in a pediatric intensive care unit, but the Killanes used their influence and obscene amounts of money to see that I was placed in a private room, where there were fewer eyes to see and fewer tongues to pass on word of a barely alive boy with terribly suspicious injuries.
“During those three days that I drifted between death and life, I am told that doctors came and went at all hours, bustling in by twos and threes, conferring and commenting and issuing orders. Nurses lived by my side, administering medications and monitoring the machines that reported every breath I took and every faint beat of my heart.
“Doctors and nurses alike filed reports with the authorities despite the Killanes’ best efforts, but unconscious live boys are unable to testify as to being beaten three-quarters dead, and so everyone waited for me to be awake and fit to speak.
“My uncles and aunts and the family lawyers dreaded that moment. The hospital staff watched for that moment, the police and prosecutors prepared for it, and yet when it came, I was alone.
“One nurse had stepped out, and the next had not yet entered. The doctors were elsewhere. The technicians who drew blood and the housekeeping staff who cleaned were busy in other rooms, with other patients. I opened my eyes, and only the machines saw.
“Lights glared down at me from the ceiling like angry suns. White-hot pain blazed inside my head, and each reflection shining from the many metal and plastic surfaces in the room was like a separate knife stabbing into my eyes. I cried out, and only the machines answered, with beeps and buzzes and a constant humming.
“They answered and they spoke to me, low and insistent. I did not understand, not yet, but being machines, they were patient and they could wait.”
“Devon?”
He glanced over at me, looking up from the view below his feet for just a moment. “Yes, Ashley?”
“Devon, please tell me this story doesn’t involve you having hallucinatory conversations with talking machines.”
There went both eyebrows again. “Certainly not – my brain was wounded, not broken beyond repair. I may be quite nutteringly insane today, but on that day, I was still merely … lost, rudderless, without focus and alone.
“The low background chorus of all those monitors gave me a focus over those next few hours, helping me hang on to thoughts that threatened to run away. I came to greater wakefulness in those hours, my mind closed in on the single greatest truth of my life, and when it came … the murmurs and hums and leaping pings and beeps of those machines anchored me in that one perfect second, and I have lived in that second ever since.”
Okay …
“So your story is leading up to this ‘single greatest truth’ thing, right? And it will make sense, and won’t require me to believe in heart monitors that whisper the secrets of the universe?”
“Just so.”
“Oh, and big guy?”
“Yes, my Ashley?”
“You’re not insane. You’re hurting and scared and moody and impossible and heartbreaking, but you’re not one bit insane, not really.”
He shrugged and turned back to the abyss, staring down at it like a prizefighter trying to intimidate an opponent. “On the matter of my absent sanity, I suppose we must agree to disagree.”
“Oh, and in addition to that other stuff, put yourself down for also being sweet, loving, adorable, and sexy as all hell.”
A tiny smile flashed across his face. “You are too kind.”
“Devon?”
“Yes?”
“Devon, I’m not too kind – I love you. You understand that, don’t you?”
He shook his head, pulled his shoulders together, and closed his eyes, just for a second. Then he opened them again and sighed.
“I understand, but you shouldn’t love me. You really, really should not. I am bad for you, my Ashley, bad beyond words. I’m bad for everyone.”
Easy, Ashley. Baby steps. Don’t push him.
“And we’ll have to agree to disagree on that as well, big guy – in the meantime, tell me what happened once you were all the way awake. I’m assuming, I don’t know, nurses rushed to your side, doctors got all learned and talkative, and the Killanes panicked?”
He nodded. “All of those things happened, and more. A fog hides my memories of that first hour or so of wakefulness, but on occasion, it shifts to reveal moments of startling clarity – a nurse adjusting an IV, the keening howl I made when a doctor shone a light into my eyes … there was a man I almost recognized, a man in a decent sort of suit who might have been a Killane lawyer – the nurses chased him out in short order, I recall that … other men ducked in, in worse suits, and I rather think they were police detectives or authorities of some other stripe, though at the time I knew them only as grey blurs who were also sent away from my side.
“Time passed and I came back to myself, though it happened ever so slowly. Someone stood by the foot of my bed discussing my chart with another someone, a lab technician came to draw blood, I spoke a few words in a tiny, halting voice when a nurse asked me how I felt, and my surroundings firmed up. People became distinct individuals and not shadows, I started following the conversations I heard around me, and my memories then become rather more complete and clear.
“But as the hours flowed past and the world steadied around me, I found my thoughts drawn elsewhere. I did not think so much about the hospital, about what had happened to put me there, or what might happen next. I did not think about the people circulating in and out of my room, or the angry voices I heard arguing in the hall. A television flickered, high on a wall in a distant corner, but I ignored it.
“Instead, I fought to understand … everything. Specifics were beyond me, my immediate surroundings were meaningless, but something drove me to think of the entire web of my life, of all the suffering and loss, the pain that had lanced through every moment since that one fateful day when I was torn from Mama’s arms.
“Why? Why did all that happen? What possible reason or purpose could lie behind that endless river of abuse and rage and fear? Why did everyone leave me? Whose fault was all of this? What could it mean, and would it ever, ever end?”
“That’s a hell of a lot for one scared, hurt
ing ten-year-old boy to try and figure out, Devon.”
I watched the icy cloud of my breath drift away. “And why would you try to take on that much, anyway? Why didn’t you just hang in there and rest, and maybe worry about what would happen when a certain attempted-murderer uncle showed up?”
He shook his head with a strange intensity, denying my questions before I’d even finished asking them. “No, Ashley, no. You misunderstand me – though it is of course my fault for not making myself quite clear.”
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and back again, and he spoke to the void below.
“I did not choose to lay out all the facts and examine them like a puzzle. I did not decide to determine just what was going on in my miserable wreck of a life, with a view to coming up with a plan of action. I certainly did not think about Uncle Kennan at all.
“Those facts and those faces and those thousand awful moments pulled at me, Ashley, pulled at me and forced me down one particular path that led to a specific destination.
“I knew with the certainty of breathing that I was not meant to unravel the matter, to divine the meaning of all that had happened to me, like a scientist examining a strand of DNA – I knew I had to allow myself to be drawn down that path, and that at its end I would be shown the truth.
“That truth was not a pearl to be dug free from an oyster’s shell, not a thing to be divined or reasoned out or found by any amount of searching.”
He looked up from the depths and turned to stare at me, his arms still crossed against his chest.
“That truth was a magnet, Ashley, and I was helpless in its grip. It drew me in, pulled me closer minute by minute, until I arrived at the end of the path and understood. In that one shattering instant, I understood everything.”
He looked away, addressing the clouds and the snow. “That revelation determined the rest of my life. The special project was not born immediately – it came later, much later – but it sprang from that moment as surely as an arrow leaps from a bow.”
He said nothing after that, falling silent for an endless thirty seconds or so.
Five Minutes Late: A Billionaire Romance Page 54
