by Ren Benton
He knew from experience that “protecting” her from the truth made the hurt worse later, but he reserved the right to hate himself for making her sad now, then, or anywhere in between. She’d survived far more than her fair share of misery and earned unrelenting happiness for the rest of her days.
One of the doors to the deck slid open to admit Olivia. Her assessing gaze measured the lack of distance separating him from Gin. “What a photo op. Where’s my phone when I need it?”
He didn’t like the idea of a friend stealing the moment for public titillation any more than he’d welcome a stranger snapping photos through the window. “It’ll be in the microwave if you don’t behave yourself.”
Silky hair teased his jaw as Gin pulled away. Her fingertips grazed his elbow, light as a butterfly’s eyelash, but his senses insisted the touch left a brand on his skin.
Olivia’s campaign to be a pest continued. “At least tell me who died to make you two so maudlin.”
The sharing mood had passed. Lex bared his teeth in a deliberately lousy approximation of a smile. “It’s a secret.”
Most of the diners approved of the roulade — flattened chicken rolled around a stuffing of artichoke hearts, spinach, and pine nuts and topped with an orange glaze — improvised by Gin to stretch a meal planned for three to serve five.
Simone complained about the carbs in the roasted baby potatoes while working her way through a bottle of wine all by herself.
Gin could have been eating packing peanuts and sawdust paste for all her numbed senses could ascertain.
If she’d stopped him from drinking two years sooner, it wouldn’t be as bad.
She knew Lex’s drinking wasn’t her responsibility. All the experts said it was no one’s responsibility but his, and most agreed even his ability to self-regulate had been hijacked by the addiction long before he’d come into her life, but damn it all to fucking hell, somebody should have done something so he never had to say there was a likelihood he’d end up without the use of his beautiful, talented hands.
She should have done something, said something, risked driving him away because her broken heart meant nothing compared to the loss he faced.
There was no convenient onion on which to blame her stinging eyes this time, so she avoided eye contact with everyone to hide the moisture collecting along her lash line. She tried to avoid looking at Lex entirely after she caught herself staring at his grip on knife and fork, but easier decided than done — that deep voice commanded attention, and everyone else at the table seemed determined to get him to talk tonight.
The struggle between need and resistance formed a stress fracture straight through her. One good tap and she’d break in two.
Simone jumped into a lull in the conversation. “We should do something to celebrate tomorrow, Gin. In honor of your brother.”
TAP.
Gin’s mouth crept open, but the spasmodic tightening of her throat choked off the scream swelling from her chest so no sound emerged.
Ethan still had his voice. “You never celebrated Ryan when he was alive. Do you think he’s straight now that he’s dead?”
Of course she did. According to Simone’s belief system, he’d be burning in hell otherwise, and that would reflect poorly upon her by association, so she used his death to remake him into the son she’d always wanted him to be.
But Gin couldn’t say that because the scar slashing across her throat was pulling across her chest, tugging down the right side of her mouth and the corner of her eye, sucking her into a void. She bowed her head to pinch it shut before it devoured her and nothing remained of her but a hungry, bloody gash.
Simone continued as if Ethan didn’t warrant a response from her. “Gin, it’s his birthday. Let’s not give the tabloids the same story this year.”
Gin had never given the tabloids anything. They took and twisted and made up whatever filth they wanted — remaking Ryan into the spectacle they wanted him to be.
Ten years, and they still wouldn’t leave him in peace.
She shot up from her chair, sending it crashing to the floor behind her. Words tore through her throat like shrapnel. “You’ll have to celebrate him being gone without me.”
She couldn’t hear through the blood beating in her ears whether she left stunned silence or exclamations of concern in her wake, and for once, she didn’t give a shit.
The shower filled the bathroom with steam. From her seat on the floor, Gin watched the fog march down the mirror. The home remedy for croupy babies did nothing for damaged vocal cords, but at least nobody would barge in on her while the water ran.
The objections of her inner environmentalist about wasting water were but one more scream amongst the chorus echoing in her head.
Celebrate tomorrow. No thanks. She’d do what she did every year — hide until the day was over and pretend it never happened the day after.
The house’s current occupants wouldn’t allow her to burrow under the covers in peace, though, and she couldn’t run the shower for twenty-four hours to ensure privacy. She’d have to leave. And go where?
The steam settled on her hair, flattening the roots and tightening the waves hanging in front of her face into loose ringlets. She scooped back the limp mass with both hands. Where was a problem for the morning. She had the rest of the night to get through first.
She turned off the water, redid her hair into a messy bun, and splashed cold water on her face. She used the hand towel to clear the fog from the mirror. Where was Olivia’s phone when she needed it? The tabloid headline practically wrote itself: Perry-Greene Reunion Explained — Pity for Hag at Death’s Door.
When she abandoned her tiled fortress of solitude, she found the attached bedroom had been invaded, if only by an inch or so. Lex lounged in the doorway, legs angled across the opening like a hurdle to discourage entry, or perhaps escape.
She felt shrunken under his dark scrutiny. “I’m not sorry.” Her voice came out rough but improved by an order of magnitude.
A wry twist warped his mouth. “You think I’m here to scold you? I was going to offer my tutelage in the fine art of delivering a ‘fuck off.’ You’ve got raw talent, kid, but you need experience.”
“I’m unmotivated to practice an art that makes so little impact on its intended audience.” Gin had explained to Simone, multiple times and in multiple tones, that until the day she died, she would never want to party with regard to Ryan. She’d explained with the help of two separate therapists. She’d allowed Maisie’s mother to take a crack at the task, from which she’d returned with a defeated shake of her head and a clipped, That woman.
Simone had a vision of the life she deserved and refused to let pesky contradictions such as her son’s sexuality or her daughter’s grief interfere with her pursuit of that vision. Her fantasies took precedence over reality.
Gin grew up immersed in the consequences of that selfishness, denial, and poor judgment, and she swore she would live in the truth.
Until Lex. Then she’d succumbed to the allure of living in a fairy tale. The story was happier without Prince Charming slowly drinking himself to death, so she erased that part of him. She couldn’t blame him for hiding it from her when she’d looked the other way every time she caught a glimpse of reality. If he’d screamed his pain across the dinner table, she would have ignored it and carried on planning her happily ever after.
Like mother, like daughter.
Her suitcase was on the small side, soft-sided, and nearly empty, but she staggered under its weight because the whole world felt too heavy for her to manage.
Lex eyed the case when she flung it onto the bed. “Please don’t leave. Not without me, anyway.”
She flipped the lid open. “Hop in.”
“Where do you think you’re going, young lady?”
One dresser drawer had held all the clothes she’d brought, and after a week, most of them were in the laundry room, so packing went swiftly. “We’re a room short. I’m going to camp on the c
ouch in the studio.”
The windowless, subterranean studio with one easily blocked exit and another potentially infested with snakes, but at least it was soundproofed so her late-night hysterics wouldn’t disturb anyone else’s sleep.
“Take my room. I’ll sleep in the studio. It will be an easier commute for me in the morning.”
She gathered her toiletries from the bathroom and dumped them on top of her socks. She’d changed the sheets that morning as if her displacement had been foretold, saving her that chore. “Do you really want to be in a room with no lock on the door with Simone wandering around?”
He darted a glance at the hallway behind him, as if speaking Simone’s name might summon her. “Then share my room and protect me.”
The press would expect no less, but Gin could bear only so much role-playing. “That would be... confusing. If I could share your shower, though, I’d appreciate it.” Since her dirty mind eagerly misinterpreted her use of share to include time as well as space, she added, mostly for her own benefit, “You know what I meant.”
“It will give us something truthfully misleading to say in interviews.” His hand balled into a fist against his thigh. “I hate this.”
She wasn’t sure which part of the situation he meant, since there were so many to choose from, but she agreed across the board — and sleeping downstairs was the least objectionable of the bunch. “You could bunk with Olivia.”
“That’s over.”
Did his willingness to share a room with Gin imply they weren’t over?
She dismissed the pitter-pat of her heart, too reminiscent of yesteryear’s fairy tale for comfort. Simone was Gin’s problem, so it stood to reason she should be the one to run interference. He’d need the most interference at his most vulnerable, such as while sleeping. The invitation had nothing to do with wanting Gin in his bed.
She unplugged the alarm clock and stuffed that in her bag, too. She needed all the wake-up calls she could get.
The room appeared stripped of her belongings, ready to be surrendered to Simone. “I guess that’s it.”
Lex shoved away from the door. “I’ll carry that.”
She didn’t need a big, strong man to carry a nearly empty suitcase for her, but she wasn’t going to fight him for the privilege, either. She’d never had to assert her independence with Lex. Unlike many, he could feel like a man without forcing the nearest woman to play weak and helpless for contrast. He offered help with boyish eagerness to please, and it was cruel to slap him down for no good reason.
Instead of hefting the suitcase, he stared down at her, night-sky eyes full of welcoming shadows where she could hide from everyone but him. “I’m not going to ask you if you’re okay because you’ll say of course you are, but if you need anything, I’m right here.”
Here. Close enough for the warmth emanating from him to tempt her to step closer and be taken in.
She stepped back instead, clearing the path to the baggage he’d already volunteered to carry for her. “If I think of anything, I’ll send you an email.”
“You do that.” Long, elegant fingers better suited to art than manual labor closed around the handle of the suitcase. “We’ve already established I’ll come running.”
Despite the size of the studio, the darkness and unrelieved hush gave the space the feel of a coffin. Sleep, eternal or otherwise, eluded Gin.
Evidently, her brain wanted to be wide awake at midnight so she didn’t miss a single second of the day she’d give anything to skip.
She blinked at the blackness above to prove her eyes were still open. If she had the floor plan and furniture configuration right, Lex’s bed was directly above her couch.
She pressed her heels against the armrest. If she’d let him move down here, he’d be crimped like an accordion, and he’d have an arm and a leg dangling to the floor in search of open frontier to claim. His size and restlessness worked for sofa sleeping only when a little spoon dictated the contours and anchored him in place.
Suddenly, her coffin felt too wide and empty.
She kicked off the blankets and rolled to her feet. Might as well make sure the stove was turned off, the doors locked, the alarm set, and Simone safely segregated from her potential victims.
Dim light led her up the stairs. On the main floor, a golden bar fell across the hallway from Lex’s partially open door.
Wary of what she’d find within, she eased her head through the gap.
Lex sat on the bed, alone, legs crossed. A laptop balanced on a stack of pillows in front of him, the screen reflected in lenses perched on his nose.
Her fingers curled around the doorframe. Oh god, why did the sight of him in glasses unstitch her?
She cleared her throat to bring the voyeurism to an end. “Those are new.”
He looked up, frowning in adorable confusion about the comment. After a moment, he wrinkled his nose, shifting the glasses. “Yeah. I fell out of warranty. Now I’m breaking down like an old car.”
She saw no resemblance to a rusted jalopy. He’d gotten more gorgeous with age, now with just enough myopic vulnerability to be endearing. “Pretty sure a tattooed bad-boy musician with a hint of studious nerd is peak chick-magnet status.”
He pulled the collar of his T-shirt higher on his neck. “She said, creeping into my boudoir in the dead of night.”
Less far into his boudoir than he’d crept into hers, and she’d restrain herself from standing over him, offering any form of assistance he asked of her. “I’m here to protect your virtue, not soil it.” She tapped the open door. “This is an invitation for trouble.”
“I didn’t want to lock you out of our timeshare.”
“I’m unlikely to need a shower while the vault is sealed for the night.”
He shrugged. “Stranger things have happened. Are the accommodations not to your liking?”
She’d counted on everyone else being asleep so she wouldn’t have to explain her wandering. Her excuse sounded weak even to her ears. “You know me. If the temperature is off half a degree, I can’t sleep.”
He stared at her, the silence stretching taut, as if debating whether to say he’d shared a bed with her often enough to know her insomnia never had anything to do with her perpetually frigid feet. Finally, he said, “You’re welcome to take anything you need to build your burrow.”
She had plenty of blankets, but she couldn’t expect him to continue playing along with obvious fabrications if she left empty-handed. “That throw should do it.”
He gathered the ivory puddle from the foot of the bed and tossed it to her.
She caught the waterfall of cashmere against her chest. “Thanks.”
“Want to stick your ice blocks under my laptop to warm them up?”
He used to grit his teeth and wrap his legs around her feet until their temperatures equalized. The laptop didn’t sound nearly as fun. “Better not. It would shut down in protest. Night, Lex.”
“Night, polar bear.”
Her heart clenched at the old nickname, a relic of a long-gone era. She turned the lock on the knob and closed the door on her way out to keep greedy women from crawling into bed with him during the night.
Herself included.
She made her way back toward her soundproof crypt.
The door opened behind her. “Hey.”
She paused at the top of the stairs and swallowed the urge to plead. I changed my mind. I don’t want to be alone. I promise not to molest you if you ask me to stay.
“I’ll hear you if you leave the door open.”
Yeah, he knew chilly toes weren’t the problem.
She nodded, message received, and returned to the studio. She stared at the door of the control room for a moment, then closed it. The whole house didn’t need to know if it was nightmare night, and Lex wasn’t getting paid to babysit her through a breakdown.
5
Lex was waiting in the kitchen at dawn again, but Gin didn’t show for their morning run — probably catching up on
her sleep after rough night. He flopped on the living room sofa and caught a few more winks of his own.
Banging in the kitchen woke him at seven. Stiff from limbs hanging off the too-narrow bed, he shambled toward the scent of coffee. He bummed half a cup to sniff, much to Ethan’s amusement, and took it below to revive Gin.
There was no trace of her in the studio.
He found the blankets in the gym, neatly folded on top of her suitcase. Gin wasn’t with them, nor was she making use of his shower.
Lex returned the mug to the kitchen, no longer in need of a wake-up aid. “Have you seen Gin?”
Ethan packed a handful of greens into a blender. “She’s probably running.”
“Her running shoes are next to her suitcase.”
Ethan shrugged off the information. “Sometimes she goes for a drive if she can’t sleep.”
“I got up at five. I would have heard her leave.”
Ethan tilted his head. “When I came through the living room, I whistled reveille, smacked your foot, and held my hand under your nose to make sure you were still breathing. You showed no strong signs of life until there was coffee in the air.”
Lex dragged a hand down his face, trying not to snap that his awareness of Gin was far more acute. Her cat-quiet step stomped across his consciousness. She would have had to sneak out before he woke up at five to get past him undetected. “You’re not worried she’s MIA, alone, since sometime in the wee hours?”
“Not today.” Ethan painstakingly fit the lid on the blender. “I will not say one damn word about what she has to do to get through today.”
Lex hung his head. He had no intention of criticizing her. He just wanted to know she was safe.
He had no choice but to wait for news. In the meantime, she wasn’t the only one who had lost Ryan. “How are you holding up, Eth?”
