“If he wants to testify for the trial,” I say carefully, “there are procedures in place to protect him. He’ll come forward under their terms. You can’t keep him safe, Astor, if you expose him. All those bad guys, the people who killed his parents? They’ll do exactly what you fear, and it’ll be because of you.”
“Don’t you get it?” Astor’s voice is wobbly, like it’s holding on solely by strings. “If I don’t do this, if I don’t bring him to my boss, I’ll lose everything. My career—my track to make partner, is over. My marriage is over, since I never had one. My reputation will be over … this is all I have.”
I reach for her, but she skitters out of my reach. Her eyes, that ocean shore blue, are turbulent with either desperation or a mental breakdown.
“Astor, you’re exhausted. Let me—”
“I have a way,” she says. “I know how to find him. Follow the money.”
My head tilts. “What?”
“His inheritance. Ryan’s parents left a will. I can trace where it went.”
“That can’t be possible.” It comes out more dismissive than I intend. “There’d be a ton of red tape.”
“Everybody makes mistakes.”
She says it in a way that she found a mistake. My blood goes cold.
“Astor,” I say, and I enunciate her name. “If you blow open a hole, all the other termites are gonna come crawling in. Ryan won’t be safe.”
“I know. I know that. Don’t you see? Don’t you understand that’s why I’m going crazy?” She strides away, then whirls on me. “Why do you care so much, anyway? What’s a retribution murder case with a surviving toddler got to do with you?”
My jaw hardens. “The kid means shit to me. It’s you. I’m worried for you, and the people you’re about to piss off if you do this.”
“You said that before,” she says quietly, searching my eyes. “Like you have experience with the wrath of drug cartels or something. There’s nothing to indicate they’d go after me.”
“What do you think Ryan’s parents thought?”
“That’s not the same.” Astor waves it off, like being raped, brutalized, and tortured could never happen to her. “I’m not exposing any of the cartel’s secrets. Or members.”
My mom … Rose Delaney’s face, rises from its depths, through the black of memories. Her mouth, twisted open. Her torn summer dress. Her arms, streaked with blood, reaching out to me, her words the opposite of her actions.
Run, Ryan. Run, honey! RUN!
I screw my eyes shut and turn away from Astor.
“Ben?”
I feel Astor come up behind me, her voice back to normal decibels.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
With surprising tenderness, she lays a hand on my arm. On my scar.
As if realizing what she’s done, she abruptly lifts her hand.
“I … I know I don’t sound normal.” She clears her throat. “I’m sorry for that. I’m forced to admit I’m going through a lot right now, but I’ll be all right. You don’t—I mean, thank you for coming by. For checking up. You didn’t have to, and I appreciate it.”
Finally, I turn to her. She flinches, as if my stare contains fire. Maybe it does.
“You’re taking on too much,” I say roughly. “And you’re throwing yourself into a shitload of danger, even though you don’t know it. I’m asking you to stay away. For your own safety, Astor. For your family. Stay. Away.”
This close, I can see her shades of blue. Depthless and bright, they mesmerize as they try to discern my shadows.
“Your concern is duly noted,” she says without breaking our stare. “But I’m a big girl, and what you saw a minute ago isn’t how I’ve been approaching this.”
“You can hide your emotion with business all you want. I know you. And I know that once you do this, you’ll never be the same again.”
“So, a different Astor will rise from the ashes, then,” she says matter-of-factly.
“She’s already been burned too many times,” I say.
Her hand, still holding my arm, spasms ever so softly. Like she’s remembering I have touched fire and come out of real ash.
Abruptly, she backs off. “All right.”
“All right?” I repeat.
“I’ll back off,” she clarifies, but I know a but when I see one. “If you tell me why it means so much to you that I do.”
“I thought I just did.”
“Yes, my safety.” Astor nods. “That’s bullshit.”
“Excuse me?”
“If you were so concerned with my safety,” she says, and forms the word like it’s bitter on her tongue, “you would’ve done a lot more than what you chose to do in my dorm room six years ago.”
I suppress a growl. “You can’t keep coming back to that, Astor—”
“I sure as fuck can. That morning? When you left me alone and exposed? You weren’t too concerned for my protection. Especially when the photos circulated. That fact weakens everything you’re telling me now. It’s not me you’re trying to protect. So, what’s the truth? Why do you want me to stay away?”
I want to tell her that every footstep out of her dorm room was weighed with demons, the ones telling me to run and the ones telling me to stay. That leaving her there made me the worst kind of man. That those midnight touches, having her, kissing her, was the only gap in time where choosing to keep Ryan Delaney buried and Ben Donahue aboveground was a wavering decision.
Astor’s attention flicks to the spaces on my body where my burns lie. “Do you know something about that fam—?”
I do the only thing I can think of. A desperate, spontaneous, wanting thing.
I kiss her.
16
Astor
I know why Ben Donahue carries burns.
It’s because he’s made from fire—he has to be—since heat sears his lips to mine. His tongue scorches. His body is hot, hardened with volcano ash, and my nails score across his skin, leaving red rivers of lava—
“Jesus Christ, Ben.” I push away, breathing hard.
He stands in front of me, arms limp at his sides, but his chest heaves.
“What was that?” I ask. Dumbly. Eyes wide.
He palms his mouth. Rubs. A finger slides across the inside of his lower lip like he’s still trying to taste me.
I instantly feel damp where I shouldn’t.
I’m in an over-sized NYU sweater from college. It has holes in it, probably from moths, mostly from my picking at the hem or chewing on the sleeves’ ends when I’m studying. My hair’s all over the place from constantly pushing it away from my face so it wouldn’t stick to my wet cheeks, damp from tears.
I’m so tired of crying. Over what, I’m not sure of anymore. My dead mother? An orphaned boy who’s now twenty-six? Mike? My career?
There’s a system overload going on, and I’m not sure how to stop it. All I’m aware of is, when Ben’s mouth hit mine, my mind went silent.
I couldn’t hear anything. Wasn’t thinking about anything. I just felt.
My lips rub together in remembrance, and Ben’s stare finds an inner flame at the movement. He takes a step forward, toward me, and goddamnit my eyes are welling up again.
“Don’t,” I say, though I can’t mean it.
He stops. “Astor, I…”
I hold my palm up, like I want him to stay where he is, except all I need is for him to be around me again. For his heat to stop all the cold from creeping in.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I don’t know what I was thinking, I—”
“I want you to leave.”
Ben’s mouth shuts. He nods. “Consider me gone.”
When Ben turns, when he passes the kitchen counter with cold shrimp scampi and a sad, warmed-over, single glass of white wine, I sprint from the other side of the room, hook him by the arm, and leap against his chest.
Ben catches me seamlessly. His mouth fits to mine with perfect, explosive precision. His hands cup my asscheeks as I squirm a
gainst him, wanting, needing to be closer, and he meets my every whimper by holding me tighter.
I kiss him like I’m starving.
He tongues me like he’s handing over all the dessert I want.
Ben groans beneath me, as I dig my fingers into his hair and clutch the back of his neck, wanting deeper access, tracing every space he has. Through his hold, with us standing in the center of my apartment, he glides over my underwear.
As soon as he feels how much I want him, there’s a rumble in his throat.
“Ben,” I moan into his mouth.
He responds by spinning us, stumbling over and around, until he finds the couch and we fall onto it.
I’m underneath him, giving Ben plenty of the access he demands. My legs spread without thought, he moves my panties to the side as I writhe, and he dips.
His mouth is still on mine, and he eats my cries like candy. Ben rubs, massages, flicks, and I can’t get enough.
Nobody’s been able to do this to me, not any boy I’ve had, any man I’ve tried, not Mike, not anyone … except Ben. Mike’s entire dick doesn’t come close to what Ben’s index finger can do, and I twist into every curl, bend to every beckon, until eyes open or shut, all I see are black stars.
Six years ago, Ben did this to me. I went supple in his hands, allowed him to mold me like softened butter—the only man I’ve let come close to my heart.
Six years later, Ben’s acquired even better skills.
When I come, I do it without conscious thought, uncaring of how I may look or sound. I’m freed from chains that bind—the locks of reality. And I use his name as my anchor out of fantasy.
Panting, eyes half-lidded, Ben’s a blur, but I see a curve of pink—his smile.
Too soon, real life crash-lands into my chest. As if he can sense it, I watch Ben’s smile die on his lips as he lifts off, helping me into a seated position.
I notice, through his jeans, that he is rock hard.
“Do you still want me to go?” Ben’s voice is rough, like he’s scraped it over a blacksmith’s stone.
“I … I don’t know what I…” I shut my eyes tight, unwilling to start a war against my brain and my heart. “I think that’s best.”
He reaches over and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, and I flinch. It’s not because of what he thinks, though, as his hand falls. It’s because I’m wondering if he still sees me as the cruel joke I once was.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmurs.
I shake my head. “Please go.”
The couch cushion shifts as he stands, and that’s my only clue that he’s doing as I ask. I can’t look at him as he adjusts himself and walks out. Can’t think upon the fact that the only reason he’s leaving is because I’ve asked him to.
He’d stay, if I wanted. We’d be naked in bed in less than a minute, and he’d give me all the pleasure I’ve been desperate for since we parted so severely all those years ago.
But that’s the problem, isn’t it? Our past is smeared because of a dare. And now … now I feel he’s hiding something. That maybe he’s only wanting to get physical with me as a distraction.
And both those times, I’ve felt used.
Ben knows exactly where I’m weak. I thought I was over it—I’ve been over it for years now, moved on, found a fiancé, was willing to marry someone who wasn’t Ben.
And all Ben had to do to unravel everything I’ve worked for, is look at me with desire.
“God, I’m an idiot.”
“What?” Ben pauses at the door.
“Nothing,” I say as I rise. I’m still that naive twenty-year-old who thinks she can fall in love with her brother’s best friend and have no consequences. “Goodbye, Ben.”
His hand stays on the doorframe. “Astor.”
“What?”
“Just think about what I said, okay? About the Delaney family.”
Slowly, my world darkens a shade further. “Right, because that’s why you’re here.”
“I don’t mean it like—”
“I’ll see you later, Ben.”
I make sure, this time, to summon the ice around my heart to swirl its deep freeze into my gaze.
Ben lowers his head and shuts the door.
It’s only when I’m sure he’s gone and hear the elevator ding its arrival and descent, that I fall back onto the couch and curl up tight.
Bright, morning sunlight bursts its rays into my bedroom, completely at odds with the endless gray winter days, and I throw a pillow at it.
The pillow thunks quietly against the window, and plops to the ground. I spend a moment finding parallels with the pillow’s descent and my heart, then decide to stop being so morose and get on with my Tuesday.
I make my way to the bathroom and begin my usual shower and makeup routine, deliberately keeping Ben out of my thoughts as I coat foundation over my acne scars and use black eyeliner to draw attention away from the purple bags under my eyes. I’m definitely not thinking about the way my thighs tingle every time the image of his fingers dancing inside me bursts through.
My phone rings its fire alarm sound I programmed into it, letting me know it’s someone at work. My mascara clatters into the sink as I rush out of my bathroom to find my cell, thinking it’s somewhere in the kitchen around the dinner I never cleaned up.
There it is. Beside Ben’s empty mug, old coffee stains acting like a direct map to where his lips hit the ceramic.
I toss the mug in the sink with a satisfying clunk and answer.
“It’s Astor,” I say as greeting.
“Hey, you.”
Taryn’s voice comes through the phone, and my shoulders immediately relax. In my determination to rid this apartment of Ben evidence the easy way (trash chute), I didn’t check who was calling. Could’ve been Mike. Or Yang.
“You find anything?” I ask her.
“It’s why I’m calling,” she says, then lowers her voice. “That money you asked me to tail? Well, it led to something.”
She must already be at work, I think as I head back into my bedroom and search through my closet hangers, one hand still holding the phone to my ear. My heart thrums through a few beats, thinking finally, we’ve landed Ryan Delaney, and before anyone else. So far, emails and voicemails have been silent on any other associate giving Altin Yang what he wants.
“Just get here,” Taryn says. “I don’t want to talk about this over the phone.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I say, but I completely agree with her. Mike’s probably lurking behind her cubicle, ready to nab whatever delicious treat Taryn lays out, whether it be her breasts or a clue to Ryan Delaney’s whereabouts. “I’m on my way.”
Taryn clicks off, and I decide on a simple, high-neck, sleeveless black dress suit and top it off with a blazer. I throw a black peacoat over the outfit, with my white beanie and leather gloves, and call myself New York ready.
The car’s waiting for me outside when my heels hit the lobby floors, and I wave to Ernie and Stu, the weekday security guards, as I push through the revolving doors.
I see the black car and head to it—
“Astor Hayes?”
“Yes?”
My steps halt, reacting to my name.
A man approaches, dark and heavy with black clothing, exactly like I am. Except, he’s wearing sunglasses against the bright winter sunlight, an accessory I forgot to include in my morning inventory.
“Can I help you?” I ask.
“You’re the lawyer for Angel and José, yes?”
“I’m one of them.” I adjust the strap of my heavy, leather tote. “Are you a reporter? Because I have no comment—”
“Have you found the boy?”
The man, about a foot away now, is breathing fog too close to my face. I step back instinctually, taking note of the pock marks on his cheeks, his scarred, flat nose. The black fedora furthering his disguise.
At the mention of the boy, I’m instantly on alert. “What boy?”
“Angel tells me you’re clos
e to discovering where the boy is.”
“I’m sorry, who are you?” But after saying it, I second guess why I’m even standing here. He knows one of the defendants. That’s bad enough. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to get to work.”
“My apologies, how rude of me. I’m Enrique Chavez.” He holds out a gloved hand.
I hesitate, internally berating myself for not recognizing him sooner. Out of politeness and job security, I shake his hand.
“Yes, I remember now,” I say. “But … what are you doing at my apartment?”
“It’s on the way to the courthouse. I’m going to the arraignment, and Altin said you were one of the lawyers that will be there, too. It’s how I got your name.” He smiles. “And your address.”
“I—hang on.”
I’m frantically trying to process his words at the same time I’m pulling out my phone and checking my email. Altin said I’m on the case? How can that be? Taryn and I only just...
Then I see the text.
* * *
Taryn: Had to give Yang what we had. He gathered us in the conference room and demanded info, was going crazy no one was giving him anything. I’m sorry!! WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?
* * *
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
I’m later than I thought, if Altin Yang’s already rounding up the associates in preparation for the arraignment this morning. I had it in my head to get there before dawn, but then Ben happened, then sleep happened, and—dammit.
“I really have to go, Mr. Chavez,” I say, and am about to apologize, but then remember he’s accosting me outside my apartment building.
Chavez lowers his sunglasses, and I get that eerie feeling like I’m being studied by a snake in the grass. “I’m counting on you, Miss Hayes.”
“I really don’t know why,” I say, and continue a confident stride to my car. It completely belies the queasiness sloshing around in my stomach. “I’m not in charge of José and Angel’s defenses. Altin Yang is.”
He follows me. Even opens the passenger side door for me to get in. “Yes, but I have you to thank, I’m told. For the new information. Now, if only you could just give it to me.”
Players to Lovers (4 Book Collection) Page 43
