by Megyn Ward
There.
The shape of a woman, holding a cellphone, it’s flashlight on and aimed at my manicurist and me. The bright light flares against my eyes and I wince slightly. “What’s happening?” I cast a mental net into my memory, as far as I can. When I drag it back, there’s a single name caught in in. “Gray.” For some reason, saying his name out loud sinks a heavy pressure into my chest. Prickles heat at the corner of my lids. “Where…”
“He’s here. Pacing the front of the plane and yelling at someone on the phone.” My manicurist gives me another quick grin that fades fast into something more serious. “Can you tell me what happened tonight?”
Plane.
I feel it now.
The sensation of rushing forward while standing still, buried under the bouncy floaty feeling.
“Delilah.”
My manicurist knows my name which isn’t weird because I’m kinda famous.
No.
I’m infamous.
According to my mother, there’s a difference.
And that difference makes all the difference.
Makes me a monumental disappointment.
“I don’t…” I try to shake my head but can’t, that detached feeling of curiosity I know should really feel more like full-blown panic rippling in my chest. “I can’t—”
“It’s okay.” He flicks a quick look at the woman-shaped camera holder. “I found an injection site on the back of your arm. Someone injected you with something.”
As soon as he says it, the spot on my arm starts to itch.
“K…” I look up at the camera, lids squinted against the light. “Ket…” I cast another net but this one comes back empty and I can feel the pressure behind my eyes start to build again.
“Ketamine?” My manicurist says quietly. “Is that what this is?”
“Yes.”
Relieved that he seems to understand, I close my eyes and let myself drift.
This time, opening my eyes is easier.
My manicurist is gone and so is the camera.
But the woman who was holding it is still here. She’s sitting in the chair next to the bed I’m on, head bent over an open book in her lap.
“Am I still on a plane?”
When she hears me, the woman lifts her head and smiles, showing me a row of even, white teeth. “Yes. How are you feeling?” Long auburn hair. Deep brown eyes. A perfect patrician nose perched over a full mouth and the most spectacular freckles I’ve ever seen.
“Wow… you’re really pretty too.”
The woman’s smile dims a bit. “All smoke and mirrors, I assure you.” Tucking a scrap of paper into her book, she sets it on the bed next to me. The Great Gatsby. I was supposed to read it in high school but I never did. I never did anything I didn’t want to. No one ever made me.
“Where’s my manicurist?”
“Conner.” She cracks another smile. “Up front. Talking to Gray...” The smile dims. “How are you feeling?” She repeats the question, drawing my attention from her book back to her face.
“Better. Less bouncy. Less heavy,” I report back and she nods like she knows what that means.
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
“I…” I know how this works. Focusing on the book next to me, I let its tattered cover swim out of focus. Start at the beginning and work my way forward, like a puzzle, until I can’t find anymore pieces that fit together. “I woke up and did an online spin class—Liz was there.” I shoot her a quick look through my lashes. “She’s a… friend. I guess. We had a late breakfast. There were more flowers. Housekeeping brought them up—”
“More flowers?” Even though I’m focusing on the book again, I can hear it in her tone. Concern.
“Yeah.” I nod. Shoot her another quick look. “My ex sends them. And… gifts.” I don’t want to tell her what’s in the boxes. I don’t think I can say it out loud. Thankfully, she doesn’t ask.
“Does he send flowers and gifts often?”
Did you like my gift?
The memory comes out of nowhere. Strange and disembodied. Floating around inside my head. Giving it a quick shake, I refocus. “Yeah. He proposed and I said no. He doesn’t take rejection very well.”
Instead of asking me another question, she makes a noise in the back of her throat and I take it as a signal to resume my puzzle work. “After breakfast, I called Jase Bright about hosting an event at Level and I went across the street to his office. There were paparazzi…”
Where have you been, Delilah?
For some reason, my heart starts to pound. My chest gets tight and I have to squeeze my eyes shut to try and beat the sensation back so I can focus. “Gray was there. He was really mad because he thinks I’m ridiculous and hates it when I show up at the club.” She makes another sound. This one more like the snort she let out when I called my manicurist pretty. “He and Jase fought and I told him in the elevator that flipping his boss off was a good way to get fired—”
“His boss?” Now she sounds confused. “Jase Bright is Gray’s boss?”
“Yeah. Gray works at Level.” I feel my brow wrinkle because I’m suddenly worried I’m not telling the story right. “Did I forget that part?”
“No.” The woman shakes her head, giving me a carefully guarded look. “You mentioned it—I guess I just misunderstood. Do you remember anything else?”
“Ummm…” My chest goes tight again. “I got a text from Nik in the elevator on my way back to my suite.”
“Who’s Nik?” Her freckled brow crumples slightly when she asks.
“Niklaus Vanderhoff—my ex.” I look away from her, trying to ease some of the pressure in my chest. “When I got back to my suite, I…” My hands go clammy and I have to fight the urge to wipe them dry on the bed sheets. “I don’t know.” Nausea rolls through me. The back of my throat tingling and constricting around the urge to vomit. “That’s it. That’s all I remember.”
It’s not.
There’s more.
I know there’s more.
It’s there.
Right there.
If I tried, I’d be able to reach it. Find more pieces that fit together but I don’t want to. I don’t want to see the rest of the picture I’m making.
“Okay.” She gives me a reassuring smile. Not one that says she believes me. One that says she’s not going to push me anymore.
“Did I lose my purse?” It’s a stupid thing to ask. Someone just drugged me. The last thing I should be worried about is my purse.
“I think so.” Her mouth quirks a little. “Was there anything important in it?”
“My phone. Probably some cash.”
“If you dropped it, I’m sure someone found it.” She gives me a knowing smile. “It’s probably on eBay by now.”
She’s right. It’s a beaded Judith Leiber that retails for six-grand. With my cellphone inside, there’s no telling what it would be worth.
“Do I know you?” There’s something familiar about her. Something I can’t decide is real or just my brain misfiring. “You look…”
“My name is Henley O’Connell. My step-father is Spencer Halston-Day,” she says with something that sounds like pride. “My mother’s name is Lydia.” This part sounds like an apology, probably because she expects me to recognize the name. I do. Lydia Halston-Day is a staple in the Manhattan lunch crowd. “I think our mothers are friends.” She doesn’t mean friends friends. Women like our mothers done have friends. They have rivals that they lunch and plan charity benefits with.
Take a good look because that’s where you’re headed. Fifteen years from now, when you’re tired of puking in the back of random limousines and dancing on tables, you’ll stop fighting it. You’ll marry someone like Nik. Someone who’s photogenic and rich that you can barely stand and spend the rest of your days drinking too many cosmos at lunch with Liz and fucking your personal trainer while trying to forget the fact that, once upon a time, you actually felt something real.
Ain’t life grand?
Shame stains my cheeks for some reason and I look way from her. “Do you know what happened to me?”
“Someone drugged you at the club and tried to take you,” she tells me in a matter-of-fact tone that is oddly comforting. “Gray stopped them and called his brother. His brother called Conner and here we are.”
I nod like it makes total sense. Like I survive attempted kidnappings every day. “Where is here?” It doesn’t matter. I don’t really care. Not as long as Gray is here and he is. I can hear the deep rumble of his voice, just beyond the cabin door. “Where are we going?”
“Home.” Henley smiles again when she realizes that her answer wasn’t much help. “Boston—actually, we’re probably getting ready to land.”
Boston.
A memory cuts through the fog.
Shoves itself in my face.
A text from Jane.
Silver.
She’s in labor.
Might’ve even already had the baby by now.
Shit.
I am made of failure.
“Do you know what time it is?” I ask, struggling to sit up. My arms don’t feel like lead weights anymore. They feel like over-cooked noodles. Slippery and wriggly like a pair of fish. “My sister is in labor,” I explain when she reaches out to help me sit up in bed. “I was supposed to be there. I promised—”
“Silver’s okay.” She gives me a reasurring smile. “She gave birth to a girl a few hours ago.”
A girl.
Silver has a daughter.
That weight settles on my chest again, making it hard to take a breath. I recognize this feeling too. It’s the Ketamine. It makes you emotional. Give the gift of mood swings on its way out the door.
That’s what this is.
That’s all that it is.
Swallowing an irrational wail, I feel my eyes well up with tears and I nod. “A girl,” I croak around a watery smile. “Good… that’s good. She’s lucky. Silver’s a good mom. She’ll be okay. She’ll be—”
Loved.
Accepted.
I don’t say it out loud. I don’t have to.
Because she understands perfectly—that money doesn’t necessarily mean acceptance. That privilege doesn’t always equal unconditional love—Henley reaches out and slips her hands around mine. “She’s got a pretty terrific aunt too so I’d say she’s a very lucky little girl indeed.”
NINETEEN
Grayson
WE STOPPED AT AN ALL-NIGHT DRUGSTORE FOR
supplies.
I’m not sure what was on his list but Henley came out of the store with a bagful. Thirty minutes later, I was carrying a still unconscious Delilah up the stairs of a sleek private plane.
“There’s a bedroom,” Henley said, gesturing with what looked like a paperback book. “You can take her back there.”
After I laid her down on the bed, Conner snapped on a pair of latex gloves and started conducting what looked like an examination, running his hands across the back of her neck and down her arms.
As soon as he found the needle mark on the back of her bicep, he pushed me out of the small cabin at the back of the plane with a terse you called me for help so let me help her.
Then he slammed the door in my face.
I have a feeling if not for the fact that we were already ten thousand feet in the air, he would have opened the hatch and tried to toss my ass out of the plane.
Resisting the urge to kick the cabin door in, I dig my phone out of my pocket and call Jase.
“Where the fuck are you?” He snarls into the phone, that perfect tenor of his gone feral with anger and frustration. This is the real Jase. The wild animal. The savage beast he likes to hide under a three-piece suit.
“On a plane to Boston.”
“On a—” He stops short. Takes a deep breath. Counts to ten. Whatever the fuck he does to re-leash the rabid dog inside him. “Okay…. Okay.” I hear the rasp of stubble against his palm as he slides a hand over his face. “Well, while you were hate-fucking Delilah Fiorella in the VIP stairwell, someone tried to burn down my club, but yeah—I’m glad you’re on a fucking plane to Boston.”
“Someone set a couch on fire, Jase—” I say, totally ignoring what he just threw at me about Delilah and me. Every inch of Level is covered by security cameras—including the stair well. The only people who have access to the footage is my brothers and me. I had every intention of erasing it before anyone saw it but… “it’s not like someone slapped a brick of C4 to a support beam.”
“There’s extensive water damage,” he tells me like he’s telling me he has a terminal illness. “We’ll be shut down for months—if we’re lucky.” He sighs. “Where were you?”
“If you looked at the tapes, you know where I was,” I tell him. “I was on the floor. Working.”
“Define working.” The rabid dog starts tugging on its chain again. “Because if it bears any sort of resemblance to what you were doing in that stairwell, then—”
“I was working.” I barely get the words through the clench of my teeth. “I fired a bartender for dealing earlier in the day and he showed up to—”
He sold something to Nik.
I watched the exchange.
Cash for product.
I was too far away to see what it was but—
“Where’s Delilah?” He’s still angry. Knows I’m feeding him crumbs and he’s getting frustrated. “Her driver showed up at the club to take her home and—”
“She’s with me.”
“She’s with you?” When I don’t answer or elaborate, Jase sighs. “What does that mean exactly?”
“It’s not fucking code,” I bark into the phone, irrationally angry all of a sudden. “It means she’s with me. Delilah is with me. We’re together.”
“You’re together. On a plane to Boston.” It’s not a question. “Whose plane because it’s not one of hers and I know it’s not one of ours because—”
“A friend—” I almost finish it. Almost say of Logan’s but I stop myself short. Like with Tob, Logan’s relationship with Jase is complicated. I don’t want to fuck it up even more than it already is. “A friend of mine.”
“Since when do you have friends with private planes?” When I don’t answer him, I hear that rasp again. “Tell me what’s going on, Gray.” Jase sighs. “I can’t help you if you don’t let me.”
I don’t want his help.
I don’t want anyone’s help.
I don’t need it.
“Okay.” I force myself to say it because the way I feel is a lie. What I want won’t help Delilah. It won’t help either of us. “Okay…”
I tell him everything.
Every crazy thing that happened tonight, glossing over my temporary loss of sanity in the stairwell.
Only he doesn’t call me crazy.
Doesn’t tell me that I’ve obviously lost my fucking mind. “Someone purposely set the fire and then tried to kidnap Delilah Hawthorne from the club,” he says it like he’s trying to keep it all straight. “When the fire broke out you were near an exist and started dragging people out. You saw Delilah in the alley with someone who looked suspicious and you went after them. Stopped him from taking her.”
No.
I didn’t stop him.
He gave up.
“Yeah.” Instead of admitting my failure, I swallow it. “Pretty much.”
“Okay…” Jase chuckles, the sound thin and riddled with frustration. “But that doesn’t really explain how you ended up on a private plane to Boston with her, does it?”
“Her brother lives in Boston,” I tell him, rationalizing my obvious insanity. “I’m taking her—”
The cabin door opens and Conner comes through it. I watch as he tosses a folded paper bag, secured shut with a neat row of staples, into a nearby seat.
“I gotta go. I’ll call you—”
“Don’t bother—I’m right behind you.”
“You’re coming to Boston?”
“Silver had the baby. See you in a few hours.”
After he says it the line goes dead.
Shoving my phone into my pocket, I turn back toward Conner. I don’t know what I’m expecting. What I think he can tell me but I wait anyway because Delilah’s on the other side of that door and it’s pretty clear he has no intention of letting me through it until he gets some real answers.
“Is she okay?” It’s a stupid question considering the circumstances but instead of laughing in my face, he nods.
“Yeah,” he says while peeling off a pair of latex gloves. “She says it’s Ketamine.”
“Ketamine?” I frown. Shake my head. It’s a common club drug. One we’ve had to deal with in the past but never in a needle. “You can inject it?”
“Sure.” Conner shrugs. “You can shoot up just about anything if you have a kit and know how to cook. Dealers usually sell pre-loaded syringes—easy-peasy.”
“How would she know that?” I ask, trying to wrap my head around what he’s telling. “How would she know what the guy who tried to take her shot her up with?”
“I don’t know.” Conner shrugs, tossing the pair of spent gloves into the same seat as the back. “If I had to guess, I’d say it’s because she knows what a Ktrip feels like.”
“She didn’t do this to herself,” I say, my tone hard and unmoving. “She was stone sober, not more than thirty minutes before everything went down. I know she didn’t do this to herself.”
“How?”
His question rattles me. Knocks me off balance. “Excuse me?”
“How do you know she was sober?”
He knows how.
I don’t how he knows but he does.
“Because I was with her.” I look away from him and shrug. “We were together.”
“There was skin under her nails,” he tells me, gesturing toward the paper bag. “Is it yours?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’ve got scratches on the back of your neck.”
“I—” Before I can stop myself, I reach up to take a swipe at the back of it. Feel the sting of abraded skin beneath my fingers. “Maybe. Probably.”
“Did you fuck her last night?” It’s not a judgment. Not crude curiosity. It’s a real question. Asked simply because despite the tattoos and grease-stained jeans, this is a guy who deals in facts. Operates on data.