by Maris Black
“Well, work is all I have right now. I’m in a strange place with absolutely no one to talk to, no friends, no social life. What do you expect? I had hoped to get to spend a little more time with you. Maybe you could tell me a little bit about yourself. As it is, I have to pick up bits and pieces from the grapevine, and I don’t know what the hell to believe. And you’ve got me stuck down there in that cubicle half the time, or sitting on the sidelines watching you sweat. Then the other half I’m in my room working on your social media presence, or getting kidnapped and taken out to be someone’s jailbait… uh… bait.”
He gave me a puzzled look.
“I’m talking about Mark Gladstone. I think he wants me with him to attract younger girls.”
“Yeah, you keep thinking that and you’ll be in a world of shit before you can say no thank you, sir.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Kage shrugged, and a muscle in his jaw twitched.
“Mr. Cryptic strikes again,” I mumbled. “Can you even say anything without talking in code?”
“Yeah. When you’re ready to pull your head out of your ass and stop acting like a little boy. You are so goddamn naive.”
“There you go again with the riddles and code. Why don’t you just say what you mean?”
He growled and ran a hand through his hair. “You don’t even know what you’re asking, Jamie. You say you want to get to know me? You’ll know everything soon enough, because you’ll do whatever it takes to get the job done. It’s your nature. You’ll know my deep, dark secrets. My fears. All of the ugly things that you will struggle to keep the public from catching wind of. Because I assure you— if you never listen to another word I say, listen to this— I am ugly. I am dark, and I’m bad, and I’m rotten to the core. And if you think being my publicist is going to be a walk in the park, you might want to go home to mama. Because it’s about to get rough.”
“Yeah, you keep threatening I’m going to get to know you, but I’m not seeing it.” I looked hard at him. Tried to see his eyes in the gloom. “It seems like you have this security system that I can’t breach, and every time I get close, a silent alarm goes off and you batten down the hatches.”
He dropped back down onto the bed and stared at the ceiling. “You’ve got some pretty serious hatches yourself.”
“That’s bullshit,” I said. “I’m an open book.”
“Yeah? Like you lied to me about having a girlfriend? Real open book, Jamie.”
I covered my face with my hands, wishing I could go back in time and take back the lie. “It wasn’t exactly a lie, okay? I just… I forgot.”
Kage barked out a laugh. “You’re fucking lying right now. I’m not stupid, Jamie. I can tell when I’m being lied to. I could tell it over lunch that day when you took the phone call, and I can tell it now. I don’t know if I can trust you. I need to be able to trust you.”
“Okay,” I sighed. “Jesus, you really know how to obliterate a guy’s ego. The truth is, I forgot for a second and called her my girlfriend out of habit. We’d only broken up a few days before I came here. Then when I realized my mistake, I didn’t want to admit it to you. Getting dumped is not something to brag about. It’s… humiliating. And there you were being all Mr. Perfect, and I didn’t want you to think I was lame or something.”
He didn’t respond, so I turned back over, putting my back to him. Then Kage turned over in bed and moved toward Vanessa, away from me. It was like we were a couple having an argument.
“Kage…” Vanessa said slowly. “Please tell me you brought your baseball bat to bed.”
“I don’t play baseball,” he said.
“Then could you scoot over a bit? We’re supposed to be going to sleep.”
“Dammit!” Kage laughed and moved toward the center of the bed. “Okay, if you want to be that way. But I didn’t figure Jamie would let me cuddle with him.”
I laughed and turned halfway over, meeting his gaze in the dark. “I don’t care. Vanessa did say you were a big teddy bear.”
“Yeah?” He laughed darkly. “Don’t believe anything she says about me. She has ulterior motives.”
She laughed, but she didn’t refute what he’d said.
Even though I’d basically invited him to cuddle with me, I never actually expected it to happen. I was just trying to act cool and to make up for the little quarrel we’d just had. So when he scooted up behind me and slipped an arm around my waist, I took a deep breath and held it. His warmth surrounded me, soothed me.
“You can breathe, Jamie,” Kage said near my ear. “I’m not going to eat you.”
“I know.” I let the breath out and felt instantly better. Then I shifted around a bit to get comfortable. Something firm brushed my ass, and I settled against it, feeling a sense of euphoria wash over me.
This was okay, right? If Kage and Vanessa thought it was okay, then it must be okay.
Okay to feel this way.
After a few minutes of silence, Kage said in a gravelly voice, “Don’t ever fucking lie to me again.”
“I won’t,” I whispered. At that moment, I thought I’d rather die than ever lie to Michael Kage again.
I lay there feeling him pressed against me in the dark, listening to the sound of his breathing. I didn’t dare move, because I was afraid he might let go of me.
9
THE morning light did not sneak into Kage’s bedroom. It laid siege to it, sending us cowering for cover beneath the down blankets and sheets. All three of us came fully awake there, one by one, stifled by the echoes of our own breath.
Kage was the first to brave the day. He threw the cover down the bed, revealing not only himself, but Vanessa and me as well. Vanessa giggled in her husky morning voice, and I yelled in protest.
“No lazy people in my bed,” Kage announced as he ran for the bathroom, dragging the covers along with him so that we couldn’t burrow back down. He dropped them outside the bathroom door and disappeared inside.
“Is there another bathroom?” I asked Vanessa, turning away so that she wouldn’t see my morning wood.
“There are two more bathrooms out there. One off the living room, and one in the other bedroom.”
“There’s another bedroom? Why did we all pile up in here?”
“It was a slumber party.” She laughed. “And because Kage would have lost his mind if you and I were wandering around unsupervised out there while he was in here. He’s very jealous, you know. Maybe you’re figuring that out by now.”
“But I thought you two were just friends.” I tried to sound nonchalant when I felt anything but.
“We are. Well, we are now, anyway. Things used to be different back in school. Mikey was my first love. I thought we would get married one day, you know? Have babies. Do the whole family thing.”
My face colored at the thought, and at the personal sentiment behind the words. I wanted to get to know Kage, but this was definitely not what I had in mind. It embarrassed me, and even worse, it made me feel somehow desperate. Telling me she’d been Kage’s first love… well, hell. Vanessa may as well have sunk a knife into my belly. It was ripping me up inside, and I didn’t even know why.
I just knew I didn’t want it to be true.
I wanted Kage to have never loved before. Wanted to keep him on that pedestal I’d put him on the first time we’d met. He was larger than life— beyond all of that. He wasn’t supposed to love someone.
Not like that.
Kage chose that moment when I was seething in silence to come out of the bathroom, his eyes slightly puffy from sleep. The bruise beneath his left eye was clearly visible in the light of day. He rubbed his belly lackadaisically, splaying his fingers over the taut ripples of his abs.
My eyes slid shut, and my tongue snaked out to wet my lips, and heat washed over me. For an instant I was back in that bed with Kage pressed against my back, gripping me with his powerful arm.
“Isn’t that right, Mikey?” Vanessa asked him, as if he’d been
in on the conversation all along. Her voice jolted me out of my little fantasy.
“Isn’t what right?”
“That we were each other’s first love. I was just telling Jamie.”
Kage pulled a pair of running shorts out of his walnut dresser and watched himself in the mirror as he put them on. “That’s right,” he said, and his confirmation twisted the knife in my gut.
“We were going to get married and have babies,” she said again.
“Yep.” Kage walked over to her and folded her into his arms. “Then things changed. And now I love you even more.”
I cleared my throat. “Well, I’d love to try to figure you two out and all, but I’ve got to go to the restroom before we have an accident in here.”
With that, I left the room, not waiting for either of them to respond. All of that stuff was none of my business, really. Well, actually it was my business in a way. If there was any chance it could affect Kage’s public image, then it was by definition my business. But right now I just wanted to get as far away from that piece of information as I could.
Hell, I’d never even been in love myself. And then to find out that the unstoppable Michael Kage— The fucking Machine, for Christ’s sake!— had loved a girl. I suppose it humanized him in a way I wasn’t prepared to accept. And whether I wanted to admit it or not, it pissed me off badly.
When I returned to the room, Vanessa and Kage were lying on the bed again with their phones in their hands. “Selfie time,” Vanessa told me. “Grab your phone and jump in here. I haven’t seen my BFF in ages, and I want to have something to remember in case it’s another year and a half before he decides to call.”
I did as I was told, and we all started snapping selfies, jockeying for position, laughing, dropping our phones. First I got one of just me and Vanessa, because hey… supermodel. Then I got some of all of us, with Kage pushing his handsome face in from the side.
“Okay, switch,” Vanessa called, and she flipped agilely over the top of me, leaving me in the middle between her and Kage.
I inched closer, he inched closer, and soon we were practically cuddling again. It felt different doing it when I was sober. But once I got going, I was snapping shots like crazy. Smiley shots, serious shots, blurry blooper shots. At one point, we all started making the goofiest faces we could come up with. I wondered fleetingly if these pictures would be worth something someday, because even though I was the epitome of mediocrity myself, I was flanked by two people who were destined to be stars.
I was thinking maybe this publicist gig wasn’t going to be so bad, when Vanessa reached right across my face and hauled Kage to her, nearly scrubbing my lips off with her arm. Then she planted a sloppy kiss on his cheek. “I love seeing you this way,” she crooned. “It’s about damn time.”
Kage gave her a castigating glare and wiped the kiss from his cheek. Then he stood up and stalked away from the bed, bringing our selfie love fest to an uncomfortable close.
“You know...” I spoke to Kage’s back while he stared out the window at Vegas. “This makes me think we should do a more personal style photo shoot for you, Kage. I’ve got lots of pictures of you training, and lots of video, but none of you just hanging out in your apartment.”
“You really think that would be a good idea?” His voice was flat, but at least he was speaking.
“I do. We need to get more eyeballs on you, right?” I got up and joined him at the window, staring out over the city and seeing none of it. “I do. I think it would really humanize you for your fans. It would make you relatable. We’re doing really well already with the social media accounts I’ve started. I post pics of you in different places, and it’s already getting you some followers and web hits. But some personal stuff? Yeah, I think that could be really good for us.”
Kage ran his index finger back and forth along his lips as he mulled it over in his mind. “Alright, how about tomorrow? Never mind, what am I saying? Tomorrow is Sunday. That’s like slave labor, isn’t it? Making you work on Sunday.”
“I don’t mind. What else do I have to do around here? What time tomorrow?”
“I don’t want to take advantage of you, Jamie.”
“No problem. Like I said, I’ve got nothing else to do. You’ll save me from two-thousand calories of straight carbs and fat out of the snack machine.”
“Why are you eating out of the snack machine?” Kage finally looked at me, and his expression was horrified. “I’m going to start having your meals sent up. You obviously can’t be left to your own devices when it comes to choosing food.”
“Hey, I’ve done okay on my own for twenty years. It’s not like I’m a lard-ass or anything.”
He took a moment to assess my body. Slowly, carefully. With his eyes on me like that, I almost came to regret the fact that I hadn’t yet put my clothes back on. I was standing in front of him in nothing but boxer briefs, and they were in danger of becoming too tight.
Kage took a deep breath. “You’re definitely no lard-ass.” He reached out and pinched my slight love handle with a smirk. “But you could stand to cut a carb or two.”
I wanted to huff and stomp, maybe even punch something. Because dammit, I wanted him to think I looked good. Then I compared my bod to his and relented. The guy clearly knew what he was talking about.
“Okay, you’re the boss. I’ll eat whatever you tell me to eat. But I’d better end up with a body like yours, or I’m gonna be pissed.”
Kage’s face stretched into an evil grin. “Guess you’d better start participating in my morning workouts, then. Starting Monday, you’re no longer observing. You’re breaking a sweat.”
“Bring it on,” I said with more confidence than I felt. My muscles were already protesting at the mere thought of Kage’s workout.
“I have to say, I love your choice of intern, Mikey,” Vanessa said, lounging like a cat on the bed. “He’s very eager.” Her emphasis on the last word gave me the distinct impression that she was fucking with me. Or maybe with Kage. I wasn’t sure which.
It ticked me off, but Kage grabbed a balled-up dirty sock off the floor near his bed and threw it at her. “Shut up or I’ll tell Jamie what you do for a living when you’re not modeling.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Don’t mess with me, Nessy. I’m serious.”
“Fine. No more teasing.” She wrapped her arms around her midsection and gave him an exaggerated pout. It was all very flippant, but I thought she looked genuinely cowed.
“I’ll pick you up at your place Monday morning,” Kage told me. “In the meantime, eat what I send up. If you want a snack, make it high protein, low carb, okay?”
“Your wish is my command.” I aimed a smug look in Vanessa’s direction and felt vindicated when it hit the mark. “Guess I’ll get dressed and head out now. I need to go call my mom.”
I SAW where you called yesterday,” I told my mom when she answered the phone. “Sorry, I was in the middle of a business call, and then things went kinda haywire last night.”
“Haywire?” she asked. “Are you behaving yourself?”
“Mom, I’m almost twenty-one now.”
“My baby’s growing up,” she said, a mix of joy and sadness in her voice.
“I’m not your baby. That would be Paul.”
“You’re one of my babies. All three of you are equally my babies. Even after Jennifer gets married in August, she’ll still be my baby. Then I’ll just have one more.”
“Oh, God. Don’t start calling Chase your baby, too. That douchebag doesn’t deserve you.”
“Watch your language, young man. I’m still your mother, and I will put a strap across your back when you come home.”
I laughed. “Since when do you strap people, mom?”
“Since they’ve gotten too big for their britches.”
“Okay. Well, I can assure you I don’t need a strap. I’m a working man now. I think you’d be proud of me.”
She covered t
he mouthpiece and yelled at Paul to put the jelly back in the fridge and rinse the knife, then resumed our conversation. “I’ve always been proud of you, Jamie. Always. I’m glad you’re doing well.” She paused. “I sense there’s something wrong, though. What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t nothing me. A mom can tell.”
“It’s just… love life issues.”
What am I saying to my mom? I don’t even have a love life.
“Problems between you and Layla?”
Layla who?
“Something like that.”
Actually, nothing like that.
“Anything I can help you with? She’s not pregnant, is she?”
“Mom! No, of course not.”
“Well, you’re not being very forthcoming, son. I just figured I’d head you off at the pass with the most difficult news I could think of. You know I’ll understand, right? Whatever it is, I’ll understand. In fact, I have some difficult news of my own to share.”
My heart leapt up into my throat. “What is it?”
“I got the test results back. I have breast cancer.”
“What?” I nearly dropped the phone. My face flushed hot, and I couldn’t think straight. My mom. This was my mom. Cancer? Was she going to die? Jesus, here I was worrying about petty little conflicting feelings I was having over some guy, and my mom had cancer.
Way to put things into perspective, God.
“It’s okay,” she said calmly, though I could barely hear her through the pounding of blood in my ears. “The prognosis is excellent because they caught it early. I’m opting for a radical double mastectomy. I’m not going to let the same thing happen to me that happened to your aunt. She kept thinking she could beat it without getting a mastectomy, and she lost the bet.”
I started to cry before I even realized I was doing it.
“Don’t cry, baby,” my mom pleaded. “Your father and I have cried enough for everyone, and now it’s time to be positive. I want the threat gone so that I can be sure I’ll be around to be a grandmother to your children, okay?”
