by Mann, Marni
I took a few steps back and leaned against one of the walls. “Why would you want me here after what’s happened?”
“Because I don’t know what my life would be like without you. And I don’t want to find out.”
I knew what he was saying was the truth; Cameron didn’t lie. But I couldn’t understand how he could feel this way now that he knew what had happened between his brother and me. Still, it was the first time I had felt hopeful since the discovery had been made.
“And what about Ryder?” I asked.
“I can’t stand that you were with him.” His hands turned into fists. He took a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling, then back at me. “Honestly, it’s going to take me a while to get over. But I can’t blame you for what happened. And I can’t blame him, either.”
That was more than I could have hoped for. “So you’re saying you can forgive meforgive us?”
“I don’t think it’s about forgiveness, Charlie. You didn’t intentionally fuck my brother…and neither of you intentionally tried to hurt me. Yeah, it’s fucked up that it happened…but I’ve been through worse. It’s more about finding a way to stop the idea of it from eating away at me. I’m mature enough to be able to do that. I’ve accepted your past…even if it includes my brother now, I can’t hold it against you.”
I wasn’t so sure he couldn’t.
There were many words he could have used instead of fuck to describe what had happened. But he’d chosen the one that had power, a sting…the one that made me feel less-than in his eyes. When we used it with each other, it had a very different meaning. Now, I felt like he was using it to dig at me, and I couldn’t stop the sensation of it from fluttering around my chest and piercing my heart. As much as he was trying to play off this mature side, which I knew existed, I could sense the feelings that were still tugging at his mind. It was very much eating away at him, no matter what he tried to believe about himself, and he wasn’t even close to letting go.
I had no choice but to trust him.
“What about you?” he asked. “Do you think you can let it go?”
It didn’t matter what was happening inside my head or what would happen in the future. It didn’t matter if those thoughts of Ryder were detailed accounts or just brief glimpses. I would never let them interfere with what we had.
“Yes.” I wrapped my hands around the bottom hem of my tank top and pulled it over my head, dropping it on the floor. I unbuttoned my jeans and did the same with them, standing under the flowing streams in just my bra and panties. I lifted my face up into the water and allowed the heavy pressure to wash away the makeup that I had left. “I can definitely let it go.”
“Then please tell me I have nothing to worry about, Charlie,” he whispered.
I couldn’t tell if he was inquiring about Ryder and whether things were bound to heat up again between us, or if he was asking if I was having second thoughts about the strength of our relationship. It didn’t matter. The answer was the same for both.
“You have nothing to worry about.”
He took several steps, until he reached the middle of the shower. He didn’t come close enough to touch me, just enough to warm his face. “Then I’m going to keep my offer for him to stay here. I know he has nowhere else to go, and I can’t put my brother on the streets.” Cameron could more than have afforded to put him up in a hotel or rent him an apartment. But he’d been apart from his brother for such a long time. I could completely understand his wanting to have Ryder near. “Are you okay with that?” he asked.
I felt like every one of his questions was a test. If I told him I didn’t want Ryder to stay, he might think it was because I had feelings for him. If all that had happened between us was just sex—which I had insisted was the case—then it shouldn’t have mattered, to either of us.
“Yes,” I answered. “But I need to know that you believe me, that I had no idea he was your brother when all of that was happening.”
He nodded.
“He used that name in the mansion…Thunder…” my voice trailed off. I didn’t know why I had even brought that up, but I got the sense that Cameron was going to get out of the shower soon and I didn’t want him to. I just wanted to keep him in here and that meant I had to keep him talking.
“I believe you, Charlie. You don’t have to prove it to me.” In spite of what he said, I felt like maybe I did.
“Thank you.”
He nodded again. “I’m going to go tell him he can move his things in.”
He stepped out of the shower and removed his remaining clothes, draping them over the edge of the bathtub. Then he wrapped a towel around his waist and left the bathroom. After several minutes, I did the same, glancing into our bedroom as I dried off. He was no longer in there, and he wasn’t dressing in the closet. I didn’t know how much time I had to myself, but I needed to make sure I was completely alone. I went back into the bathroom and shut the door behind me. I quickly turned on the two sinks and leaned my back against the bathroom door, sliding all the way down until my ass hit the floor. My knees pushed up to my chest; I wrapped my arms around them tightly. I didn’t know how Cameron would react to the closed door if he came back in. At that moment, it didn’t matter.
I ripped the towel from my body and threw it across the room. Then I tucked my face into my knees and I released everything I had been holding in. This was the first time I had really cried in a while. It had been building, and it had needed to come out. I didn’t try to cover my sobs; I didn’t try to quiet them or stop them from wracking my body. I let my muscles tremble, my stomach cramp, my lungs wheeze for air. The tears were helping to dispel the pain that ravaged me inside, that told me I would never be free of my mistakes no matter how much others were willing to forgive me for them. There was nothing Cameron could do to heal me from this. Ryder couldn’t do it, either.
This was all on me.
***
Later that night, when Cameron and I were both in bed, I waited for him to touch me. We shared a king size, but we usually slept close together. Either my leg would be hung over his, or his arm would be wrapped around me. But tonight we both rested on our backs, staring at the ceiling with the TV off. Our breathing filled the air. The only thing that broke the silence was Ryder’s presence on the floor above us. I could hear the quiet humming of his TV and the water rushing down the pipes when he took a shower. I knew Cameron could hear it, too. They were the first noises that had ever come from the second story in all the time I’d lived there.
“What are you thinking about?” I asked.
He sighed. “My brother.”
“What about him?”
He moved the pillows back and sat up a little. “I was all he had growing up. You know, we went from my mom’s place to foster care and back more times than I count. I was the only consistent thing in his life, and I did my best to try to help him grow up right.”
“Don’t discredit yourself, Cameron. You did a good job.”
“I couldn’t have done that good a job if he chose to go to that place.”
The muscles in my legs and arms began to contract. “Why does it matter now?” He’d gotten past me working there. Surely he could get past Ryder doing what he did there, too.
“He’s a fucking cop, Charlie—a law enforcement officer. He’s sworn to uphold laws that go against everything that place stood for, and yet there he went, breaking those laws as he did. I trusted him to do the right thing and he did this instead. Makes me wonder what other things he might be involved in.” He blew out a long exhale. “I expected better from him.”
I had never heard Cameron be so hypocritical before. “So you expected better from him, but not from me?”
I couldn’t help saying it. I had wanted to keep it in, to blow it off, as if what he’d said wasn’t a big deal. But it was. Was he forgetting that I worked there, that I was breaking the law when I did what I did, too? That it was my mouth that had sucked his brother’s dick?
“That�
�s not what I meant,” he said. His hand reached for mine. I pulled my fingers away and tucked them farther under the covers. “Hey…”
I didn’t respond.
“Don’t you understand? It’s different for him. He’s a man. He didn’t get paid to go there; he didn’t need girls or attention—he had plenty of that on the outside. You have a completely different reason for having been there.” I had no idea what he meant by that. “I don’t blame you for your choices. I’ve told you that.”
“But you’re looking down on him for his choices?”
“No…it’s more that…” He exhaled again, deeper this time. “I’m upset with myself for not being a better influence on him. There must have been something that I didn’t give him, that I wasn’t able to understand, or that he needed and I just couldn’t figure out.”
“It’s the same thing, Cameron.”
“It’s not, though. It’s”
“You’re faulting him for being a patron there, as if his part of the transaction was wrong, and yet you understand why I sold my body for money there. Don’t you see the contradiction here? You can’t blame your brother and forgive me in the same breath. It doesn’t work that way. It’s all or nothing.” And now, it appeared as though I was no better than Ryder in Cameron’s eyes.
If one of us had been a disappointment, then we both had.
He was quiet for several minutes, stirring under the covers. His legs didn’t stay still the whole time; they bent and straightened, and his hands moved constantly in his lap. “You’re right.” It didn’t make me feel any better to hear that. It felt worse, actually. “I obviously need some time to get over this. It’s just too fresh right now.”
I didn’t say another word. I rolled over and turned my back to him, and I tucked the blanket around me. If I hadn’t spent so much time in the bathroom, emptying my body of all those tears, I probably wouldn’t have been able to fall asleep.
I’ve accepted your past…I can’t hold it against you now.
His words were still echoing in my mind, but the sobbing had exhausted my muscles, my core, my eyelids. As soon as I closed them, I fell into a deep slumber.
I didn’t know what time it was when I finally woke up. There wasn’t any sunlight bursting through the blinds, so I knew it had to be the middle of the night. There was light coming from somewhere… from the bathroom, the small gap under the door. Steam came out of the same space. He had the water running, though knowing what I’d gone through in there earlier, he may not have been in the shower at all. He could just as easily have been in the corner between the wall and tub, emptying his body of tears. Whatever it was, he was doing it behind a closed door. We’d never done that before, explored our pain separately.
It was the first time, but I believed there were likely many more to come.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ON THE THIRD NIGHT OF RYDER BEING HOME, Cameron stopped coming to bed with me. The evening before had been as awkward as the first, when we made the discovery. I thought we must have said everything we needed to, and now we both required time to heal from it all, and to figure out how to do that. So now he spent his evenings in the studio, or going out. Instead of working in there with him, I stayed in the apartment or painted in one of the basement studios at Northeastern. Even when I did go to school, not much came out of me. My inspiration had halted, my creativity felt blocked. My muse was as quiet as Cameron.
With Ryder back on day shifts, he was at the apartment with me at night, spending those few hours with me before I went to bed. He’d even cooked for me, though I wasn’t eating much. The stress had gone straight to my stomach and food just didn’t taste right. Where Cameron was expanding the space between us, Ryder was eliminating it. He talked to me; his words didn’t involve his feelings, but he answered questions I hadn’t even asked…like how his shoulder injury wasn’t a real thing, but a ruse invented by the Boston Police.
Several cops had been given free memberships to the mansion and his had come from Jay, another police officer…and another one of my regulars. Ryder believed the mansion’s staff thought having cops as clients would somehow help them stay out of trouble. When the mansion was taken down, the cops who had been members were placed on “medical leave” and told their status would be reactivated once all the names were released. Most of the men headed out of the country while they waited; none of them had been promised that their names would be withheld from the newspaper, and it seemed like the ones with higher rank and deep connections within the force were the lucky ones. Ryder was on that list. Once he’d been notified that his name had been cleared, he returned to the States.
I wasn’t sure Cameron even knew this much about him.
And I didn’t know if it bothered him that I was hanging out with Ryder at night. He’d never told me to stay away from him…he never said anything to me, really. He had his reasoning for allowing Ryder to stay in the apartment, and ignoring him felt wrong. But I also wasn’t going to suffocate Cameron for answers, or put myself everywhere he was and beg for his attention. We had almost always worked the same schedule; him switching to evenings and sleeping during the day while I was out was his way of making a statement. If he wanted to talk about it, he could come to me. I wasn’t being stubborn; I understood he was in pain, and I would have been too. I was empathizing with him and giving him the space he needed to heal.
But I was no longer convinced he would be able to heal no matter how much space I gave him.
That evening, I was on the couch. Again. My stomach was curled around a pillow and the TV was on. I had been sitting in front of the television much more lately, but I hadn’t been watching it. I never did; I didn’t even know what show was on.
“Charlie,” Ryder called from the kitchen. “Can you come in here please?”
I stood and moved into the kitchen, stopping just before I reached the island. On the edge of the granite sat three placemats, full settings, wine and plates.
“Take a seat,” he said.
“I’m really not hungry”
“You’re going to eat, even if I have to force-feed you.”
In the ten days or so that Ryder had been back, I’d noticed he had gained some weight. He was working out at the gym and starting to look like the way I had remembered him. I was doing just the opposite: fading more and more after each skipped meal. Even though I was short, I had never been tiny. I kept my shape by having lots of sex and watching what I ate. But Cameron had only kissed me a few times since Ryder had been home, and it hadn’t led to anything further. If it hadn’t been for Ryder’s threats, saying the same thing to me every evening that he cooked, I probably wouldn’t be eating at all.
I reached for the wine glass and took a sip. I savored the red for several seconds, then I swallowed and took a few more before setting the glass back down.
“One glass until you eat half of your food,” he said. “Then you get more.”
I looked up as he placed a piece of almond-crusted chicken on my plate, alongside a serving of roasted green beans, garlic potatoes, and a homemade roll.
“You can’t control how much I drink,” I told him.
He put the same amount of food on two more plates, then leaned into the counter, his face nearing mine. “What makes you think I can’t? You’re going to fight me?” His tone was serious, but there was a grin on his face. He liked the challenge. I knew that about him… from much personal experience.
“Is Cameron joining us?”
He pushed off the counter and walked around to my side, taking the seat next to me. “Doubt it. He ignored me when I went into the studio to tell him dinner was ready. But I made him a plate anyway.”
“Figures.”
“I’m not the only one he’s not talking to?”
I shook my head. “Nope.”
“I’ve never seen him like this.” He lifted his fork and placed a potato into his mouth. “He always has moments where he gets quiet and introverted, but they usually don’t last this long
. He’s really fucked up over this.”
“I don’t know what to do.” I took another drink of my wine and filled my mouth with the food from my plate. Despite my stomach hurting, everything tasted surprisingly good. Cameron could prepare the basics in the kitchen; beyond that, he liked to order out. Ryder’s cooking was similar to the way he had treated me in my wing: he was something of a perfectionist, particular about the ingredients he used and the time and attention he put into each course. I could taste all of it, in every bite.
“Trust me: you can’t do anything. I know my brother, and he just needs time to work it out.”
I understood that he was having a hard time with this. I was, too. But he was taking this to a whole different level. The distance he needed to heal wasn’t making us closer; it was teaching me how to live without him.
“How much time?” I asked.
He looked over at me, his eyes slowly running from my forehead to my chin. Even his stare was different from Cameron’s. It was sexual and feral all the time.
“I remember one time when we were younger, we were living with my mom and she needed to re-up. So she took us to this arcade, gave us two bucks and told us to busy ourselves for an hour or so. There was a guy hustling outside the arcade, selling baseball hats and sports memorabilia to the people passing by and I walked outside to check it out. All my friends wore hats, but I’d never owned one. This time, I wanted one…so I went to get it. Without him. When Cameron noticed I was gone, he came outside all nervous and hard and coldnot his usual thing. He didn’t yell at me; he didn’t talk to me, which was worse. I wanted him to tell me what I had done wrong so we could get over this little problem I’d caused. I had to ride it out, to wait until he was ready to talk again.” He smiled, but it looked unhappy somehow. “That’s just Cameron, Charlie. He keeps it all in until he gets past it. That hasn’t changed at all since we were kids. Silence is his communication. It’s fucking brutal…I know first-hand.”
