by Shelby Reed
Near his home in Silver Spring, he stopped at the usual flower stand and purchased a bouquet from an old man, who said, “Mums today? What happened to the usual roses?”
Colm smiled and took the bouquet. “I like to keep her guessing.”
The house was chilly. Amelia’s nurses were changing shifts and though they both greeted him, the one departing—the new one—spoke a little more warmly than the other. Colm recognized the smile all too well. He returned it, holding her gaze just long enough to ensure maybe an extra kindness or two for Amelia. There were times that head-to-toe appraisal bolstered him. He’d come to rely on slow looks for all sorts of twisted reasons.
He didn’t realize how tired he was until he stepped into his sister’s bedroom and set the flowers on the bedside table. Her closed eyelids didn’t flutter. She was so still, her dark lashes like smudges of ashes against her cheeks. For one horrifying instant he imagined her dead, even though he knew better. She always slept deeply after particularly taxing physical therapy sessions. But the same jolting fear woke him up a lot of nights, soaked in sweat and heart pounding.
Sleeping. She’s just sleeping.
The world shrank, drawing in its ragged edges until it was just the two of them, siblings against the world. Their world, the strange and wonderful one they’d forged as twins. But now . . . he was a whore. She was a quadriplegic, and nearly unrecognizable. He was responsible for all of it, and here he stood, offering a damned bouquet of flowers, a sad symbol of the bright promise they’d both displayed once upon a time.
Sinking to the chair, he glanced around and sighed. Three years ago this room had been his home office. Cluttered computer desk and drafting table in the corner near the window, no blinds or curtains, sunlight flooding the space. Plans on that drafting table. Dreams. Now the room felt arctic, its cold seeping through his gray Henley shirt, and the place smelled like Pine-Sol.
He grabbed an extra blanket from the foot of the bed and spread it over Amelia, then focused on her face and reached out to finger the dark silky strands on the pillow. She had always been petite, but now she was as small as a child, and so damned pale. Grief welled in his chest and he laid his forehead on the bed near where her hand lay. “Just sleep,” he whispered. “Rest.” As long as she slept, she escaped her reality, and he could find a moment’s respite from the guilt.
It’s always about you, isn’t it?
The knot in his throat grew. Usually he could keep it together when he was home, but today he felt so beaten. Maybe it came from being inundated with Beaudoin’s malice and the knowledge of Sydney’s inevitable victimization at Colm’s own hands. Maybe it was the fact that on a rain-soft night three years ago, he and Jill had been arguing about nothing in the car—with Amelia in the backseat, unbelted, the stubborn fool—and he was more interested in his own irritation than the wet bridge, and when their Lexus hydroplaned into oncoming traffic, he hadn’t been able to stop it. Maybe it was because he still missed his wife sometimes, not the fighting, but the way they had been in the beginning . . . and maybe it was because in three years’ time he had nearly screwed her out of his memory.
“You never feel anyone else’s pain, do you?” Jill had accused him. “You’re like an automaton. What will it take to wake you up?”
The last words he’d heard before the collision. They stayed with him. What will it take to wake you up? He was the one sleeping now, not his sister.
Without warning his shoulders started shaking, and he pressed his face against the sheets by Amelia’s hand. Every time he thought he was cried out, the emotions surprised him. He was so empty, but the tears—they lurked, each one a scalding reminder of his and Amelia’s destruction.
When the nurse came in to check on his sister, he kept his head down. The nurse acted like she didn’t notice, and he was grateful. He liked this warm, heavyset woman who watched over his twin. Hell, she took care of him, too, when he needed it.
After a while he regained his decorum, snatched a tissue from the nearby box and wiped his face. “How long has she been asleep?”
“An hour,” Jane whispered. “She’ll sleep into the evening. She had a rough day.”
He swallowed and looked at Amelia’s hand rather than at the nurse. His sister’s skin reminded him of rice paper. The veins marked a diminutive map beneath it. “I can’t stay long enough to see her awake,” he whispered back. “I’m working out of town for the next couple of weeks, but I’m still as close as the phone. All you have to do is call and I’ll get here, Jane. Any issues, any problem, and—”
“You’ll know immediately,” she said gently.
“Tell her I was here when she wakes up.”
Jane smiled and cast a glance at the bright bouquet he’d set beside the bed. “Oh, she’ll know.”
* * *
Though the grief sat like a stone in his chest and guilt assailed him, he finally left Amelia and headed over to Avalon, where he parked a safe distance down Connecticut Avenue from the large, innocuous-looking trio of town houses.
Inside the pleasure club’s main building, he picked up his mail from Azure’s secretary and rifled through it. Two notes from women thanking him for the best sex of their lives, one of which read like Penthouse Forum. So different from the mail he got at home. He swallowed as he thought about the daily bills for Amelia’s care, a familiar anxiety tightening his chest. He was almost caught up, thank God, but Azure had him enslaved, and she knew it. She reveled in it. In typical clairvoyant fashion, she appeared at the end of the corridor, wraithlike in a gauzy white pantsuit, her black hair woven back in a soft braid. Colm knew what the outfit meant. She was in a benevolent mood.
“Colm, darling. Tell me this is not bad news.”
“On the contrary.” He forced a smile. “I think Sydney and I are off to a good start. She needs more models, though. I figure at least one of the guys might be agreeable to earning a little money on the side.”
Azure reached him and smoothed the front of his button-down shirt with a gentle hand. “I’m sure that’s doable. It’s a quiet week here.” She started into her office, then paused and looked back at him, her catlike eyes unreadable. “You’re asking Garrett in particular?”
Jesus, she was a mind reader. “Is he here?”
“He’s got appointments tonight.”
“Sydney won’t need him tonight.”
“Then you’ll find him upstairs. Don’t keep him long if he’s resting. I want him ready for a most important guest.”
An important guest on a quiet Sunday night. Colm’s mouth quirked. He could picture the client. Church first, family brunch, take the kids shopping, tuck them into their canopied beds, then off to the fuck palace. Sometimes he hated the cynical bastard Avalon had turned him into. Sometimes he walked into this place and felt its embrace, felt the orgasm building even before he’d touched his first client of the evening. He belonged here. He would stay until Amelia recovered some mobility, or Azure let him off his tether.
He strolled through the Baroque-decorated lobby, weaving around circular settees and gold-leafed tables to the great curved staircase, where he took two steps at a time to the second floor. Someone was burning incense, patchouli and cedar. He breathed it in and thought about college. Another life. Ashes of memories.
Garrett answered his apartment door in a towel, his light brown hair wet and messy. “What are you doing here?”
“I got dismissed a little early today.”
“Trouble already?” He let Colm into the room and went to his dresser to pull out a pair of jeans. He was probably hooking up with Dana Cherlow, an attractive Broadway actress in town for a Kennedy Center gala. She liked her men in ripped jeans and T-shirts. Bad boy shit. She liked it rough and relentless.
“No trouble yet.” Colm leaned against the doorjamb. “Sydney needs another male model for some kind of erotic ménage à trois canvas, and you’re the only one I’d put up with. And even that’s minimally.”
“You know you want me.
” Garrett dropped his towel and smacked himself on the naked ass.
“Jesus, Garrett. Don’t do that.”
“Sorry.” In the fashion Dana Cherlow favored, he pulled on a pair of snug jeans without underwear, fastened and zipped them. “Talk to me on the balcony before my appointment gets here. I need a smoke.”
They moved down the long hall, passing rooms where not a sound echoed, even though Colm knew there might be an early bird or two experiencing the eye-rolling orgasms Avalon promised. Congresswoman Margaret Vale was usually one of them at this hour. She liked a sweet, short fuck and made methodical rounds, sampling Avalon companions, one whore a week. Colm had entertained her two weeks ago, and it hadn’t been half bad. She was sexy in a cougarish way, even if he hadn’t gotten off when he was with her. It took a lot to get him to that point anymore. Two or three clients back-to-back, or a general weariness, and then he would climax. The clients loved it and took smug credit for it, although few requested it from him. And after three years, coming was just a physical response to which he was completely disconnected.
The autumn sun shone its direct rays on the two men as they stepped onto the back balcony. The wrought iron–surrounded terrace was one of Colm’s favorite places in the town house. He often brought his voyeuristic clients out here, although no passerby could really see what took place. Azure owned the two lots behind Avalon and had demolished the row houses that sat on them, then surrounded the land and its gardens with high, manicured hedges. The elite pleasure club had made her incredibly wealthy, enough to shoo off underpaid law enforcement when suspicion reared its inevitable head.
Facing away from the chilled breeze, Garrett lit a Turkish cigarette, took a long drag, and offered it to Colm in a cloud of sweet-scented smoke. Normally Colm didn’t like cigarettes, but he was wired, driven. He took it and sucked in a lungful of smoke. Closing his eyes, he held it for a moment then exhaled with a shiver. The smoke scraped his throat and spun the world around him.
“So what’s this group sex thing?” Garrett asked, leaning an elbow against the balustrade. “You, me, and one chick posing?”
“Right.” Colm looked away. He was a whore, but certain ideas were still new to him, especially when it came to his friends. He’d never touched another man, never wanted it, not even in his darkest fantasies. Azure had asked him point-blank his limitations when she’d interviewed him for the job, and he didn’t have many, but he preferred women. He craved them. Nothing could take the place of soft skin and being lost in deep, wet heat.
“Hmm.” Garrett rubbed his bare stomach beneath his T-shirt. “I don’t know.”
“Garrett. It’s just posing. The entire female population of this city has seen your dick. Don’t go shy on me now.”
“I don’t mean that.” He passed the cigarette back, the breeze rifling his light brown hair. “I mean, will you respect me in the morning?”
Colm took a drag and tried not to laugh, but it came out in a smoky burst anyway. “This won’t affect our friendship from my standpoint as long as you remember I don’t swing both ways.”
“Jesus God, you’re the most hetero guy I know.”
Colm’s humor faded to a smile. Garrett was heterosexual himself, but if a client wanted to engage two men at once, he obliged with a shrug and a grin. Sex was sex. It all felt good. It all paid well, too.
This was a hell of a life.
“It doesn’t matter what I am,” Colm told him. “And I don’t judge your crazy ass.”
Garrett took back the cigarette and rolled it between his fingers. The air between them grew thick with smoke and something strangely like sadness. “I wouldn’t do anything to make you uncomfortable.”
“I know.” For a moment they were silent. The day had been so full of anguish, Colm couldn’t stand even a little sentimentality. He changed the subject. “Max Beaudoin is an evil bastard.”
Garrett’s eyebrows went up. “So why is the woman with him?”
“I haven’t figured it out yet, but she’s broken. I’m only going to make it worse in the end, and I try not to give a shit, but—”
“But you’re James Hanford, a good guy masquerading as a whore Azure dreamed up. James Hanford,” Garrett added, “with a sister you would give your life for. And you have. You’ve given your life. What’s one more job, one more lonely woman? Do the job, Jimmy, and put it behind you. You can do this. I’ll help however I can.”
Colm looked away, toward the high hedges that blocked out the real world beyond Avalon. Who the hell was James Hanford these days? After three years of this shit, he’d nearly forgotten his own name.
Garrett puffed smoke into the air and grinned. “Jesus H. I can’t quite picture us sharing the same chick. You’re such a control freak, you’ll be telling me every little move to make, from where to stick my tongue to where to put my damned hands.”
“Just swear to keep them off my cock,” Colm said, grateful for his friend’s sense of humor.
“Unless your illustrious artist tells me otherwise.”
“I’m telling you otherwise.”
Garrett laughed and carefully stubbed out the cigarette on the concrete floor, then blew on it and stuck it in his jeans pocket. No littering at Avalon. No cigarettes unless the client requested it. Dana Cherlow would watch Garrett smoke half a pack tonight.
“So when are you free for this thing?” Colm asked, straightening from the balustrade. Dusk was falling and he felt a strange, urgent tug back to Beaudoin’s estate.
“Normally Wednesdays are three-fuck nights, but this week’s quiet.” Garrett adjusted himself in his jeans and squinted at Colm. “Will that work for this woman—what’s her name?”
“Sydney. Sydney Warren.”
“Don’t say that too tenderly or I might think the worst.”
“There is no worst. And I’m looking forward to her ménage idea like a kick in the balls.” Colm shoved a hand through his hair. “It’s late. I gotta go.”
“Leaving me all alone in the funhouse, huh?”
“You’re the only one I know who still thinks it’s fun.” Even if Garrett did look kind of alone, standing there in the out-of-character clothing some rich bitch had chosen for him. “I’ll call you with the time as soon as I talk to Sydney. And thanks, man. Your being there will make things a lot more bearable.”
With a shrug, Garrett lit another cigarette and let the smoke snake through his lips. “See you Wednesday, Jimmy.”
Chapter Six
Sydney found her female model by posting help-wanted flyers on bulletin boards at Capitol University, and within two hours she had five responses. Dark-haired and body-pierced in ears, brow, and tongue, Cherise Ford was a junior art student who had heard of Sydney in local art circles. Cherise loved the idea of working in Sydney’s private studio, not to mention the generous pay. Sydney liked her immediately, her youthful enthusiasm, her coltish movements, as though she had only just finishing growing and didn’t know what to do with her long limbs. And the sparkle of those piercings all over the place—they would read as erotic instead of gauche on the canvas. For the first time, excitement tickled Sydney’s muse awake. This project might well turn out to be the right combination of portraiture and sensuality she’d always sought.
After a day of small triumphs, her evening with Max was a different story. Normally Sydney loved the eighteenth-century stone inn in Middleburg where they went for dinner, a charming place where they used to spend evenings talking art, music, the life they would make together. But this conversation was abysmal, filled with awkward silences.
And somehow the image of Colm Hennessy sat between them, as vibrant and hot as the flickering flame of the candle by Max’s elbow.
“I’ve thought about what you said,” Sydney told Max when she couldn’t stand the silence, or thoughts of Colm, anymore. “About . . . counseling. You’re right. I’ve made arrangements to see someone in the city next week.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” He smiled at her and drained hi
s bourbon on the rocks, the ice cubes knocking in the glass. In the background filled with the clink of dishes and the low murmur of diners, Mozart spun his magic through the low-ceilinged room. Sydney closed her eyes, searching for the serenity she normally experienced in this tiny inn, but nothing came to her. Nearby, a waiter’s tray clattered to the floor and the noise jerked her back to the world.
Max’s gaze had wandered, first to the clumsy waiter, then to the flickering candlelight around them, never landing on one particular thing for more than an instant. “I’ve got a couple of trips coming up in the next few weeks,” he said abruptly, arranging his utensils alongside his plate.
“Oh?” She swallowed a bite of filet mignon and set down her fork. “Really? Where?” What she really wanted to say was, Take me with you. Free me from this mess. Except Max was the biggest tangle of all, and a trip together wouldn’t change that. Sitting across from him on this strained date, she understood it now. Without some kind of help—counseling, a shared, truthful dialogue—soon they would have nothing left, and Max didn’t seem to recognize the danger whatsoever.
“San Francisco,” he was saying, “Chicago.” He paused and smiled. “You look so wistful. You weren’t thinking about coming with me, were you? You’ve only just started working with Colm.”
“And I’m anxious to keep working,” she said flatly. “This is a challenge, remember?”
But God, she was confused. It didn’t bother Max one bit to leave her alone with a strange man—a devastatingly attractive one. Max hadn’t always been so free with her. Until recently, he’d been mildly possessive, even though she’d figured it had more to do with their agent/artist relationship than their romance. Why was this time so different? What lay in California or Chicago that would tug harder at him than his usual need to guard what he felt was his?
