by Shelby Reed
“No.” His heart turned over. “Syd—”
“Don’t call me that!”
“I fell for you.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true.”
“So why are we here? In this place? I could have been another woman tonight. You would have slept with some other woman tonight—”
“No.” He shook his head. “What few clients I’ve had since you and I made love I’ve been able to put off. I took this past week off, then I quit Avalon tonight, except for you. One last client. I owed you.”
“You’re a liar. How can I believe you?” she cried. “And even if it were true, there’s no going back from this. When I think back to all those moments between us, those intimate moments—I feel so sick. I feel dead inside.”
He thought about reaching for her hands, dropping to his knees in front of her, burying his head in her lap. He wanted her fingers in his hair. He wanted her tenderness, but she was right, he deserved nothing. Watching her retrieve her coat and grab up her purse, his pain bled him dry, leaving a skeletal heart.
“Before you leave, hear me out,” he said, his voice shaking. “No more lies. Will you listen?”
Her coat hugged to her chest, she reluctantly rested her back against the door.
“My real name is James Hanford. Three years ago I put my sister in a wheelchair. She . . .”
A sob seized his chest and he shook it off. “Amelia had no money when the accident happened. No insurance. The government’s help is a drop in the bucket, so I fucked my way through half this city to keep her in my home, to hire nurses, to make ends meet, to keep my soul with her instead of here. But I lost it anyway.”
He lifted his head and looked at her. “I lost you. You should know, Sydney, I would have loved you.”
She shifted and looked away. “I could never love a man like you.”
“—James,” he finished for her.
“James. You are a sad, sad man, James. I won’t be dragged into your hell.”
“Then you should go,” he said. “Get out of here, Sydney. This is no place for you. Go home.”
Her coat rustled when she slid into it. The door squeaked slightly when she opened it. Her voice cracked when she said, “Good-bye.”
But he didn’t look up until it closed behind her with a resounding click, leaving him alone with agonizing silence his only companion.
Chapter Twenty-five
Two hours into the New Year, James came downstairs. The lobby was deserted of clients. They were all upstairs getting their money’s worth. Confetti and streamers littered the room, leftovers from the party. The house attendants cleaning up the mess raised their heads to look at him as he walked through the vast room for the last time. He found Azure working in her office, a single, dim lamp illuminating the file in front of her.
“It’s hiring time again,” she said without looking up. “What do you think, Colm? A college boy this time? Someone young and hungry?”
He sank to the chair in front of her desk and looked at her. “Anyone. Just no one like me.”
“No,” she said slowly. “No one like you, darling.”
“I’ve cleared out of my room.”
“Here’s your share of the payment from Sydney Warren.” She slid him an envelope. “I won’t bother to ask you how it went. She was weeping when she came downstairs, but she paid. Fifteen hundred dollars for her time with you and Garrett. Expensive to come away so devastated.” She glanced up at him and her eyes narrowed on his face. “And you, Colm? Are you devastated, too?”
He wouldn’t answer. Everything inside him was knotted and sick. Instead, he opened the envelope, flipped through the bills, and handed it back to her. “Give it all to Garrett.”
“Are you insane?”
“No. I’m beat.” He stood and shoved his hands into his jeans pockets. “I have to thank you, Azure. It’s been an interesting ride.”
“Hasn’t it, though?” She rose to her feet and came around the desk, and this time he didn’t pull back when she kissed him. His lips twitched beneath hers, the urge to cry welling up in his chest, and then it was over. All of it.
“Oh, and Colm?” she added, stopping him at the threshold of her office.
He looked back at her. “Happy New Year.”
James smiled a little. “Happy New Year. Good-bye, Azure.”
He headed out of the club through the rear exit, his belongings packed into a large duffel, which he slung over his back. The night was moonless, blacker than black. He breathed deep, coatless, letting the cold wind shiver through him.
It was time to go home. Home to Amelia, to a new existence he couldn’t begin to predict. All he knew was that Sydney was gone from his life, and the emptiness was greater than he knew how to bear.
* * *
The two men sat in silence, one with a beer in his hand, the other with a scotch and soda.
The dimly lit bar was sparsely populated on a Monday night, soft rock playing overhead and the low murmur of a newscaster on the LCD screen above the bar.
“Thanks for meeting me,” James said.
Garrett nodded and took a drink of his scotch. “I figured we should talk at some point, but I also figured you should be the one to do the talking.”
“Yeah.” James cleared his throat. “I owe you an apology for what happened the other night at Avalon.”
“You don’t owe me anything, James.”
“Yes, I do.” He finally looked at Garrett, gripping his beer with both hands. “I would have beaten the hell out of you if I’d had half the chance, you know that, right?”
“Yeah, I know.” Garrett gave him a sad smile. “I should have walked out, but . . . the money, you know. The job. I can’t lose it.”
James nodded. He understood. He’d been just as desperate that night—anything to keep from losing Sydney.
“I’m sorry you got pulled into things, though,” he said. “I could have stopped it sooner, but I didn’t. I wasn’t thinking straight. I would have done anything she wanted for a minute there, but in the end . . .”
“I understand.”
“Don’t think bad of her, Garrett.”
“I don’t. She was one pissed-off lady, and I can’t blame her.”
James gave a nod and took a long pull from his beer bottle. For a moment they were silent. Then Garrett said, “Have you talked to her since . . . ?”
“No.” He would never speak to her again. The realization sliced a hole through his insides and tightened his throat. “She won’t ever talk to me again.”
“I wouldn’t call her if I were you,” Garrett said, and James gave an arid laugh.
“Don’t think I haven’t considered it about once every five minutes.”
“You’ve got it bad for her, huh?”
“Something like that. Something mindless just like that.”
“What’s your plan, then?”
“No plan.” James took a swig of beer and swallowed. “Just put one foot in front of the other until I’m done slamming doors and burning bridges.”
“Look, James.” Garrett leaned on an elbow and ducked his head to catch James’s gaze. “For the last three years you did what you thought was right. When you came to Avalon, you were desperate and broke with a wheelchair-bound sister you couldn’t afford to care for.”
“Some kind of blessing Avalon was, huh?” James finished his beer and gave the bottle a restless nudge.
“It was, in the beginning. Don’t knock it. You earned that money for Amelia, and along the way figured out some things about yourself—starting with, you’re not meant to be a male whore.”
“True.” James half laughed. “Then what the hell am I?”
“An architect. Look, buddy, you’ve faced the impossible before. Here you are again, same scenario. Find a way to earn a living with what you know best and take care of your sister. Maybe this time, you’ll find something that won’t strip your dignity away.”
They fell quiet again until Garrett
said, “I’m going to miss you. At Avalon, I mean.” As soon as the words were out, he drained his glass and motioned to the bartender for another drink.
James’s chest ached. “Yeah. But we’ll stay in touch.”
“Good.” Garrett grinned. “So after that night with Sydney . . . we’re okay here?”
“We’re okay.”
“Let’s hug.”
“Touch me and you’re dead,” James said, and this time they both laughed.
* * *
Coming clean was a new experience for James. He’d lost Sydney, cast off Avalon, and now it was time to face Amelia. He owed her the truth more than he owed anyone. How he was going to take care of her when the savings ran out, he didn’t know. He only knew the right thing to do—tap into honesty and take the bitter medicine.
On a crisp January day, he wheeled her out into the afternoon sun, its rays seeping through his jacket, and parked her where she could look out over the lawn. He tucked and re-tucked the blanket around her, paced, and came back to face her.
“What is wrong with you?” she asked finally. “You’re acting like you’ve got ants in your pants.”
For a long time he didn’t say anything, then he grabbed a nearby patio chair, set it backward before her, and straddled it. “There’s something I’m going to tell you, and I’d rather you hear it from me than from someone else. Not that you would, but . . . it needs to come from me.”
“Should I be worried?” she asked, with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“No.” He rubbed his hands on his denim-covered thighs. “I should. You’re not going to like me anymore after this.”
“Stop scaring me.”
“Okay. Look . . .” He licked his lips. “I—”
“Take off your sunglasses so I can see your eyes.”
Jesus. They were his last bit of armor. He removed them, methodically folded and slipped them inside his jacket. Then he leveled his gaze on hers with all the courage he could muster. “You know how I work a lot at night? And I’m gone for weekends a lot, and sometimes for days?”
Her frown stole the sunshine from the afternoon, replaced it with roiling clouds of doom. “You’ve been lying about it?”
He nodded, withdrew his glasses from his pocket, fiddled with them. Tucked them away again. And then he braced his hands on his knees and said, “Yes. Lies. All of it.”
“So what have you really been doing?” A vague, hopeful smile, the silence before the storm, crossed her cold-flushed features. “Exotic dancing?”
“Worse.” He drew a breath, tried to swallow and couldn’t. “I’ve been working in a women’s pleasure club.”
For a moment her expression was a total blank. Then she burst out laughing. “You are so full of it. Even though this joke’s sort of cruel. You’ve gotten really twisted in your old age—”
“I’m telling you the truth, Amie.” He reached beneath the blanket for her limp hand. “It’s an underground club in D.C. called Avalon. I have—had—an apartment there where I entertained clients.”
All humor fled her features. “You’re serious.”
He exhaled and closed his eyes.
She didn’t speak for so long, he thought he’d imagined the whole conversation. Just another nightmare and then he would wake up. But this was no dream. The tears in her eyes spoke for her until she managed, “Don’t tell me you’re doing this because the pay is great.”
His fingers closed tighter around her hand. “Amie—”
“The pay is great to keep me out of a nursing home?”
“The pay is good for a lot of reasons.”
“Are you punishing yourself?”
“I don’t know. Amie. . . .”
“Don’t touch me.” No doubt she would have ripped her hand from his if she had the choice.
“I deserve your contempt,” he said, regret burning his insides. “At first I gave myself no choice in this job. But then it became part of who I was. And now . . . I don’t know who I am.”
“I can tell you. You’re no brother of mine,” she snapped. “I hate you for making me the source of your pain. And don’t deny such a job isn’t painful. You think you’ve helped me, but it was selfish, James. Selfish.”
She was right. He lowered his head and rubbed the aching space between his brows.
“Well,” she said, “now that you’ve cleansed your soul to me, I should tell you that you can cast off your damned hair shirt. Roger wants me to move in with him.” At his stunned silence, she went on, her face darker than he’d ever seen it. “You think you’re all I have in this world, James, but you’re wrong. You can’t stand like the concrete wall you are between me and a real life. Roger and I still love each other. The wheelchair hasn’t stopped that.”
He couldn’t think of anything to say except, “He left you after the accident. He left you alone and hurt, Amie.”
“And now he’s changed, and I have, too. No—I take that back. I’m the same person I was before the accident, except my limbs don’t work. But everything in me is the same. I deserve as normal a life as possible, damn you.”
“But how can he possibly take care of—?”
“How can he possibly give me the care you’ve provided? I would never have accepted your brand of help if I’d known what you were doing to yourself. You knew that all along, James. So you lied to me. You made me part of your unhappiness, and I don’t know if I can forgive you.” She was crying now, hard. James’s throat was tight, too. He closed his eyes again and swallowed his pain.
“Roger knows what I need, and we’re deciding together how to go about it. So you’re likely off the hook. You can stop being a . . . a gigolo, or whatever you call it.”
He gave a defeated nod and got to his feet. “For what it’s worth, I’ve given it up.”
“That doesn’t do much to help,” she said wearily. “You and your darkness. It’s always been the worst part of you.”
He wiped his eyes and gazed down at her. She was formidable in that wheelchair. She made Max Beaudoin seem like an invalid inside and out. Amelia was the strongest person he knew. “I’m sorry, Amelia. So sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“I love you,” she wept. “But you have to stop. Stop hurting the people around you and stop hurting yourself. Who will you have in the end? No one. Not even me, who you thought would be by your side forever.”
He laid a hand on her head in silence, and her lashes fluttered closed, her face wet with tears. Then he left her alone in turmoil for all he’d told her. And realized . . . all along, he’d needed her far more than she’d ever needed him.
* * *
Who knew the passage of time would move so slowly, or that joy would bleed, drop by drop, out of everything Sydney reveled in? Paintings, the ones she did for the sheer joy of the art, sat untouched in her studio. Even the charity shows had lost their satisfaction. She dutifully attended one or two and ended up with a commission for the president of a corporation and one of two unruly children who preferred scampering around her studio to sitting still. She ended up snapping a few cursory photos of them to finish the picture, and when she was done, she took a break from public events in general.
For a couple of weeks, sitting on her sofa in her pajamas and staring out the window in bleak despair became her choice of self-indulgence, but then she rediscovered her anger and went back to work, breaking out of the seclusion and recognizing it for its ability to heal.
She wouldn’t allow herself to wonder where he was, what he was doing. Had he really left Avalon? For the first time Sydney thought hard about the situation with his sister, how he’d struggled to take care of her, and a twinge of compassion pierced her. But no . . . her propensity for empathy had always led nowhere. She was empty inside where he was concerned, and she would get over him if it was the last thing she ever did.
Two months to the night the world had dropped through the floor, a knock came at the door. She had finished the children’s portrait and was washing her b
rushes in the bathroom sink when she heard it. Memories of Colm—James—admonishing her to be safe flashed through her mind, and whoever this was had found his way into her building without being buzzed up. She gingerly tiptoed across the apartment to the door, leaned against it and demanded, “Who is it?”
“It’s Hans,” came a faint, accented voice from the hallway.
Hans? She unbolted the locks and swung the door open. Indeed it was Hans, dressed in jeans and a Washington Redskins sweatshirt. For once his sandy hair wasn’t neatly combed back from his patrician face, but fell over his forehead. He looked . . . normal and relaxed.
“Hans,” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
“I have something for you,” he said, polite as always. “May I come in? I’ll only take a moment of your time.”
Sydney stepped back and gestured him into the living room, her gaze dropping to the rectangular canvas wrapped in brown paper he held under one arm.
“Max is turning your studio into a garage for his motorcycle collection,” he said, his tone dry. “He’s not selling the estate after all.”
“He . . . what?” She stared at him, her lips parted. “What is he doing with motorcycles?”
“Gazing at them lovingly, I suspect.” Hans set the canvas against a nearby wall. “It’s sad, really. He’s a sad man. He spends a lot of time alone these days, but seems to prefer his own company to anyone else’s.”
Sydney wouldn’t allow herself to feel sorry for him, damn it, any more than she did for Colm.
Hans didn’t wait for her acid response before he added, “I was clearing out the few items remaining, and found this painting in the studio closet. It occurred to me you may have accidently left it behind.”
She approached it with some reticence, already guessing what it was, and carefully stripped the brown paper away. “It was no accident,” she said softly.
Colm gazed back at her, pale green eyes alive, skin luminescent, face half in shadow, displaying both sides of him: the Colm she had known, and the dark truth she didn’t all those months ago when her brush stroked the paint on the canvas.
