by Alexis Hall
He glanced at it grumpily and sighed. “I’m sorry, Arden. I have to get moving. Do you want anything from Paris?”
“Yes.” I grinned at him. “I want you to come back super quick, and eat ridiculously expensive sushi off my restrained, naked, helplessly aroused body.”
He was laughing as he caught up my hand and kissed it. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“You promise?”
“Promises are for children.”
“And lovers.”
He held my gaze for a long time, but he was the one running late and I wasn’t backing down.
“Then,” he said finally, “I promise, my Arden.”
Chapter 14
Unfortunately when Friday rolled round, I was too wrecked for anything we’d planned and promised and hoped for. Instead, I was sitting on the sofa, dazed and half crying, and clutching helplessly at my phone.
It was only when Caspian said, “Arden, what’s wrong?” that I realized he was there. Or even remembered that he was supposed to be coming.
I glanced up. Noted—with a terrible sense of distance—how lovely he looked just then. Charcoal gray suit, lilac shirt. And, in what must have been a moment of unusual opulence, a Liberty print tie in shades of silver and indigo. God, he’d dressed for me. And I was—
“It’s Nik.” The words burst out of me in a teary blurble. “He’s been hit by a car or something. I don’t know. He’s in surgery. That’s bad, isn’t it? When people are in surgery?”
Caspian was silent for a moment. Startled, possibly. “Well, it depends on the surgery.”
“Right. I…I…” My attention reeled from Caspian to the apartment. “I didn’t get any sushi.”
“Forget the sushi. I’m sorry to hear about your friend.”
“Yeah.” For the first time in my life, I wanted Caspian to go away. I needed to freak the fuck out. And having him standing there, all calm and pristine and vaguely concerned, was cramping my style.
“You should be with him,” he was saying, with the uncertain gentleness I remembered all too well from my other crises. “What hospital? I’ll call a car.”
“I can’t be with him. He’s in fucking Boston.” That was when I started crying. Properly this time. Not the anxious eye-prickling of the shocked. But the full-on wailing of the terrified and traumatized. “And I’m supposed to be his next of kin.”
Caspian tugged out his pocket square—which turned out be purple and polka-dotted, unusually playful for my austere Mr. Hart—and pressed it into my hand. “What about his parents?”
“He hates them. I should probably tell them but I don’t know if he’d even want them there.” Words kept coming. Muddling with my tears. Until everything was a mess. “And his ex-girlfriend’s in Paris and I can’t get hold of her. And I have £50.56 in my bank account right now and a flight to Boston is like eight hundred quid and I don’t think my family could afford it but they wouldn’t say no so I can’t ask and nobody over there will really tell me what’s happened except there’s been a crash and Nik’s in hospital and he’s all alone in a strange country full of Americans. And, oh God, they don’t have the NHS over there and I don’t actually know how insurance works. And what if he dies? What if he’s already dead? Or they’ve thrown his broken body out of the window because he didn’t have gazillions of dollars on hand to pay for medical care?”
At last I stopped talking. I was nowhere near out of panic, but I was definitely out of breath. Also most of the water in my body was erupting from my eyes. So my mouth wouldn’t work anymore, except for strange, sticky gulping noises.
“Excuse me,” said Caspian. “I have to make a call.”
He stepped briskly away from me. I heard his footsteps carry him down the hall. The click of a door closing. The soft murmur of his voice. He could have been saying anything. Like please get me away from this crazy, weeping person.
I…I couldn’t blame him. He’d come here for sexy funtimes. Not deal-with-hysterical-breaking-Arden-times. But seeing him turn away like that? It had hurt. A dull pain upon a deeper one. A careless knock against already bruised flesh.
I was calmer though. Not particularly in a feeling better way. So much as hollowed out. His pocket square was still crumpled in my sweaty fist so I used it to wipe my face. I’d cried so hard it was like I’d exfoliated myself and even the silk felt rough against my skin.
Also. Snot. There was a quite a lot of that. Caspian must have really enjoyed the sight of me tonight. And why the fuck was I worried about looking disgusting when Nik was—
At that moment, Caspian came back in.
Oh God. I was ugly and awful and he’d seen me.
“Sorry about that.” I make a valiant attempt to pull myself together. “I was just a bit…anyway. Do you want to get that sushi?”
“Stop talking about sushi.”
“Sorry.” Usually I liked Caspian’s commands, finding not harshness there, but the opposite. A kind of care-taking. Unfortunately I was in no state to be strong or understanding or react to anything except the surface of things. So it felt like a slap. Made me flinch.
He sighed. Crouched in front of me. Drowned me in the sweet familiar scents of his body and his cologne. “Look at me, Arden.”
I wouldn’t. I couldn’t.
He caught the edge of my jaw and forced me. I didn’t even have it in me right then to resent it—just blinked at him with swollen eyes. “The car will be here in ten minutes,” he said. “The jet will be ready in thirty. Bellerose will meet you at Heathrow.”
My brain was static. “W-wait. What?”
“I said you should be with your friend and I meant it.”
“But…I can’t…”
“You can. And you will. Now go and pack.”
For some reason, the simplicity of that—of going and packing—cut through the numbness of my body and the emptiness of my mind. I rose jerkily and stumbled toward the bedroom.
Then something made me stop. Look back at Caspian.
I don’t know how it happened. If he moved first or I did. But his arms opened for me and I rushed into them, and he held me. His embrace tight and warm and absolute, with nothing held back. It was overwhelming—overwhelming in a way I desperately needed—the purity of his affection. The ferocity of his solace.
I pressed myself against him, shuddering. And he let me stay.
His hand crept into my hair, soothing me. “It’s going to be all right, my Arden.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I will do everything in my power to make it so.”
My eyes burned, as if they wanted to shed more tears. “You can’t stop someone dying.”
“No, but I can give your friend the best possible chance. And I can make sure you’re by his side if the worst happens.”
There was a silence. Beneath my cheek, his heart pulsed, its rhythm unwavering within its cage of flesh and bone. It seemed impossible that something so powerfully vital could ever falter. Or stop altogether.
“I got snot on your pocket square,” I mumbled.
“Then I will have it dry cleaned.” He unpeeled me carefully. Stroked the moisture from my cheeks with his thumb. “Now you really do need to pack.”
I nodded, bent my head to swiftly kiss the inside of his wrist—felt his responsive shiver—and went.
My sense of time was blurry but I was pretty sure it didn’t take long to fling a handful of clothes into my trundly and zip it up. And then Caspian took me down to the car, steering me expertly with one hand at the small of my back like we were guests at a cocktail party. I was trying to find words to thank him—any words would do—but the magnitude of what was happening was simply too great.
And then I was in the car and it was too late anyway.
At Heathrow, I was taken to a special entrance, where I was greeted by name and whisked off to a private lounge. As promised, Bellerose was there, looking far too elegant for a man who had presumably been yanked away from his evening in order to arra
nge a trip to America for his boss’s…his boss’s whatever I was.
He took my passport from my unresisting fingers and went off to deal with the pilot for me. I perched on the edge of one of the leather sofas and stared blankly out of the floor-to-ceiling windows. Caspian’s plane was waiting on the runway, a pale bird against the oily dark.
Eventually, Bellerose dropped down beside me, and pushed a cup of something into my hands. “I got you some tea. It’s hot and milky and you should drink it. And then I need you to listen to me.”
I nodded. Took a sip of tea. I wasn’t particularly into the stuff, but it did, actually, make me feel slightly more human. Unfortunately, “slightly more human” meant full of fear and misery again. Only wanting to be in Caspian’s arms, with all the badness of the world held at bay.
“I've got you a suite at the Liberty,” Bellerose was saying. “It’s the closest decent hotel to the hospital. I’ll also arrange for a car to meet you at the airport when you arrive.”
I kept nodding.
“Do you have your phone with you? The one Caspian gave you?”
Did I? Apparently I did. And my own, too. Go me, and my brief moments of competence.
“I’ve sent you all the details. And call Caspian when you land. He’ll be worrying.”
Caspian? Worrying? “Um, okay.”
“I don’t suppose you thought to bring the credit card Caspian provided when you first moved into One Hyde Park?”
I honestly wasn’t sure if I’d remembered to pack my socks.
“I didn’t think so. Here.”
Another card. Coutts again. Quietly black on the reverse. An artfully faded image of a Chinese street on the front. The logo a flash of silver. “I…I that’s…You know I can’t take his money.”
Bellerose’s lashes—which were reddish-gold, like his hair—fluttered, as if he was trying very hard not to roll his eyes. “Given you don’t have any of your own, you don’t really have a choice.”
“I do! I have £50.56.”
“There’s no shame in lack of money. Just inconvenience. How are you intending to live in a foreign country on an income of nothing?”
“Very frugally?”
“Use the card.” He picked it up and slid it into my jacket pocket. “If you don’t take proper care of yourself, Caspian will be angry.”
“W-with me?” I found myself blinking back fresh tears, overwhelmed by, at this point, basically everything.
“Much more likely with me, since it’s my job to ensure you don’t starve to death in a gutter in Boston.”
I cringed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be difficult.”
“Then might I recommend not being?”
“Oh God,” I wailed, in unfocused despair. “You hate me.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“I d-don’t like it.”
“Personally, I find the way people treat you when they don’t like you infinitely preferable to their behavior when they do.”
I burst into tears.
There was a longish…well. Not a silence because I was sniffling into it. But a period of time in which I cried and Bellerose sat there uncomfortably.
“Please stop doing that,” he murmured. “You’re getting salt in your tea.”
I was trying to stop crying. I really was. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to be happening.
“For heaven’s sake, I’m Caspian Hart’s assistant. My opinion about anything is utterly irrelevant.”
“N-not to Caspian.”
“Well, no. But he does not consult me about his personal life. Nor would I want him to.”
“But you keep having to do all this stuff for me.”
Bellerose half turned, and it was one of those moments where, despite the fact they looked nothing alike, he reminded me of Caspian. Beautiful, unassailable, and merciless. “It’s not for you. It’s for him.”
“I’m not sure whether that makes me feel better or worse.” I did my best to present the tatters of a smile. “All the same, I’m sorry I dragged you out. And on a Friday night as well.”
“It’s fine.”
“But you could have been, I don’t know, at a party or having sex.”
“Actually, I was knitting.”
That surprised a snuffly laugh out of me. And then I realized he wasn’t joking. “You knit?”
“What I do in my spare time is none of your business.”
“But knitting? Seriously? That’s…you do realize that’s adorable, don’t you?”
“I think I preferred it when you were crying.” The look Bellerose was giving me would have clotted cream. Except he’d let himself be human with me—even if just for a moment—and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be properly scared of him again.
“You’re so mean. Why are you so mean, Bellerose?”
“It gets things done.”
I rested my head on his shoulder. “You know, you don’t have to wait with me.”
“You know I do.”
Time went all airporty. Dragged its feet. Slumbered in corners. But, finally, the plane was cleared for takeoff. I went through the last few checks and hurried outside after Bellerose. He’d dealt with my luggage and was waiting for me by the door of the plane, only slightly ruffled by the wind, and looking like the center spread from a Milieu pull-out special on private jets.
“Um.” I clunked up to join him. “Thank you for doing all this. And sorry for crying and being awkward and making a fuss about the…the credit card.”
I was such a nonsense person. When a man flew you across the world in his private jet so you could be with your friend, drawing a line at using his actual money was as hypocritical as it was futile. And I fully expected Bellerose to point it out, but all he said was, “You will call him, won’t you?”
“Yes. As soon as I can.”
“Make sure you do.”
Wow. Bellerose was certainly, err, something. I grinned at him. “He must pay you really well.”
“Most likely.”
“Or else you really love him.” Shit shit. I couldn’t quite believe I’d said that aloud.
Bellerose just smirked. “Not the way you do, Arden. Have a safe flight.”
Watching him descending the stairs with the sort of grace I could only dream of, I couldn’t help thinking of Caspian. Surrounded by glass and darkness and so many walls. “You’ll take care of him, won’t you?” I blurted out.
He half turned. “Always.”
And then he vanished into the shadows between the runway lights. And I was alone. Well, apart from the pilot and the cabin crew, and all the other people Caspian was paying to attend to my every need.
But, y’know, emotionally speaking.
* * *
We landed in Boston at around 7 a.m. Or rather at 2 a.m. EST. Which was instant jet lag, my body insisting that there should be morningness, when it was still the middle of the night. I’d set an alarm for an hour before landing, which had given me time to shower and de-rumple, but I still stumbled off the plane like a zombie who’d partied too hard.
I couldn’t tell if it was my brain being porridged or the inherent sameness of airports but it didn’t really feel as if I’d flown across the world or that I was in another country. At least not until I had to talk to people who sounded like they’d left their r’s in seventeenth-century England. And then the realness of it all became almost uncopeable-with.
Once my passport had been checked, luggage retrieved, and I’d been welcomed to the USA, I was whisked along gleaming concourses, past travelers and lingerers and an honest-to-goodness Dunkin’ Donuts stand, and finally bundled into a limo. It was a bit like being a rockstar and a bit like being kidnapped.
Although I would make a terrible subject for a kidnapping. I wasn’t famous and my family wasn’t wealthy. What were the perpetrators going to demand? Bring us one million units of your best walnut bread and your copy of Twilight Imperium? Or maybe Caspian would have to step in. Which sounded
like the plot of a five-episode, post-watershed BBC drama series. And viewers would write in and complain about the unnecessary homosexual content. Because being part of a clearly implausible kidnapping plotline was necessary. Whereas kissing a man was totally gratuitous.
Oh God. Brain. Stop. Just stop.
My head was a ceaseless whirl, disconnected frivolities flying about as chaotically as socks in the washing machine. It was probably a slightly unhinged defense mechanism. So I didn’t have to think the only thought that mattered: Nik’s in hospital. Nik’s in hospital. Nik’s in hospital.
Also, the whole limo deal was extra awkward when there was only you. Maybe I should have felt like Mr. Big—sweeping between skyscrapers in my long, black penis car—but I was small. So small. The corridor of the limo rolling away from me.
I tried to distract myself by looking out the window. Except it was hard to get a sense of the city beyond its difference. An alien glitterscape, languidly sprawling, up, across, around, careless of its own space. Disconcertingly uniform, too, with its neat redbrick parcels and tall silver towers. This smooth curve of history, so unlike the haphazard patchwork of London.
Ugh. I’d been in America less than an hour and I was homesick?
The drive was quicker than I was ready for it to be. Airport, tunnel, streets. And we arrived. The hospital was this vast campus, multi-building thing, bright, shiny, and monstrous, the way that only public institutions could be.
I de-limoed near the big red EMERGENCY sign and hurled myself into the building. Everything that followed was little more than a blur of…happening. I checked in—my squeaky questions gently put aside for the surgeon—and was redirected. A horrible hell-journey of slick gray tunnels and silver elevators, my nose full of hospital smell. I had to go through another round of identification at the ICU, while I scoured my hands with sanitizer gel. Then another corridor. Past the misted glass of waiting area: huddled shadows within. My footfalls silenced by vinyl, as if I was already half ghost.