He turned to head back inside, but Frankie’s belligerent voice stopped him. “Oi! You gonna tell your bird the truth, then?”
Wes looked over his shoulder into Frankie’s challenging stare. The rain was falling faster now, starting to plaster his shock of hair in coal-black tendrils across his pale cheeks.
“I’m smarter than you,” Wes said. “I never really thought about it before, but this is how I know—I didn’t let the lies pull us apart in the first place.”
Frankie snarled through the rain, and Wes shook his head. “Dude. You wanna prove me wrong? Do what I can’t. Tell Jess the truth. Whatever it is, it can’t be worse than the hell you’re both going through now.”
He left Frankie there in the pouring rain, holding a wet cigarette and staring holes in his back, and wondered if he’d crossed a line.
No time to worry about it now.
He pounded down the back stairs and grabbed his gear from the locker room. He had to get to his second shift.
Chapter 27
Rosemary stumbled into a diner at Eightieth and Broadway, soaking wet, and clutching a shivering white mess of dog in her arms.
The tiny, wizened hostess raised both improbably red eyebrows to her hennaed hairline and said, “You wanna sit at the counter, or you want a booth?”
“Booth, please,” Rosemary gasped out, feeling Lucille’s legs kick against her chest. She was squeezing the poor dog too tightly, she knew that, but she couldn’t seem to get herself to unclench until she settled into the dubious comfort of the orange cracked vinyl booth seat.
Without even asking, the waitress, whose nametag read HILDY, brought over a pot of coffee, and flipped and filled the mug in front of Rosemary in one efficient motion.
“Thank you,” Rosemary said automatically. She reached for the steaming mug on autopilot, which let Lucille loose. The little dog scrambled onto the seat, gave Rosemary a reproachful look, then pointedly turned away to stare out the large plate-glass window by their booth.
“Is it okay to have a dog in here?” Rosemary asked belatedly.
“We usually ask people to keep ’em in their carriers or purses,” Hildy said in a gruff Brooklyn accent. “But I guess she don’t look like she wants to make trouble.”
“Thank you,” Rosemary repeated, this time with heartfelt gratitude. She wasn’t sure her legs would hold her for another block of walking around like a zombie in the rain.
Hildy’s wrinkled face crumpled up into a smile that made her look like a cheerful hobbit. “You’re fine, hon. If the manager gives you any lip, you tell him I said it was okay.”
“Okay.” Rosemary winced at the faintness of her own voice, but Hildy gave her a brisk, motherly pat on the shoulder and started making the rounds with her coffeepot.
Rosemary wrapped her chilly fingers around the hot ceramic mug, welcoming the burn. It shocked her out of her torpor, zapped her brain out of its current feedback loop of denial and betrayal.
Wes was lying to her. About something big, something huge, if the way he had to work to firm his voice when he talked about it was any kind of clue.
Somehow, despite the fact that she knew—she had known—for a week that something was off, she was still completely blindsided now. Rosemary shifted in the seat, wincing at the squawk of protesting fake leather, and breathed through her mouth until the persistent threat of humiliating tears abated.
She would not sit in an all-night diner and sob. She just wouldn’t.
Beside her on the bench seat, Lucille scrabbled around looking for crumbs in the cracks. When that got boring, she shifted her attention back to the window, watching the people go by.
In an instant, she was up on her back legs, front legs propped on the ledge running below the window, black nose pressed to the glass. When she went into the full-body wag, Rosemary started to worry about the manager noticing them. She didn’t want to get Hildy in trouble. Even though something told her Hildy probably ran this place like a small, aproned dictator, Rosemary attempted to shush Lucille’s frantic wriggling.
Lucille, however, would not be hushed. High-pitched whimpers started up, short, staccato bursts of sound that made Rosemary flinch. What was wrong with her dog?
She tried to pull Lucille away from the window, and looked up and through the glass just in time to catch sight of Wes’s retreating back in the sea of passing people. He was wearing a black leather jacket, shoulders hunched against the wind and rain, but Rosemary would recognize him anywhere.
Where was he going? Another lie, she realized, because he wasn’t hailing a cab over to the east side where her hotel was, he was crossing Broadway now, aiming for the downtown subway.
There was a sense of disorientation commonly described as vertigo, although it would be more accurately classified as height vertigo (or acrophobia) when it felt like this—as if she were standing at the edge of a steep precipice, rock shearing away beneath her into vast nothingness, and wind buffeting her from all sides as if pushing her to jump.
Suddenly filled with renewed energy—anger made decent fuel, it turned—Rosemary leaped out of her seat, pulling Lucille up with her. She tossed a twenty on the table and rushed out of the diner, darted through the busy Broadway traffic, and followed Wes down into the dark maw of the subway.
He refused to tell her the truth? So what. Rosemary was an expert at discovering the truth about how the world worked. She didn’t need him to tell her; she’d find out on her own.
Keeping her chin tucked and Lucille wrapped up in her jacket, Rosemary managed to negotiate a Metro pass out of the bored, nearly incomprehensible attendant in his little bulletproof cubicle. It was a bit of a struggle to work out how to jam the card into the turnstile, but she could see Wes waiting for the train about twelve meters away, so she forced herself to slow down and focus, and the thing slid through the groove and let her through.
She purposely turned away from Wes, walking a short distance down the platform to wait. More and more people trickled down the stairs and onto the platform, filling the space between them until she felt more confident inching her way back toward him. She needed to get in the same car as Wes, or she’d never be able to tell where he got off.
Stolidly ignoring the layers of grit and grime just freaking everywhere down here, not to mention the odd scamper of a rat across the tracks, Rosemary swallowed her rising gorge and sidled closer.
The train pulled up with a rush of foul-smelling air and a screech of metal. The doors opened, and Rosemary held her breath, allowing herself to be swept up in the tide of people moving forward.
Do not hyperventilate do not hyperventilate do not hyperventilate … oh, frak, I’m hyperventilating!
Unavoidable, because there was no way she could force herself to take deep breaths of the close, recycled carbon dioxide emitted by the people crammed into this metallic tube of death, all coughing and hacking and spitting and wiping their excretions on the doors and seats and the poles in the middle of the car, leaving nothing to brace herself against.
Focus, she told herself. Now is not the time to worry about phantom bacteria. WWBD, Rosemary? What would Buffy do?
If she ignored the fact that she wasn’t a fictional vampire slayer, and even if she were, her superpowers probably wouldn’t help her if she contracted ebola, Rosemary could manage a calm inhalation or two. It got better at the next stop, when enough people got off to allow her to sit down, wedged into the back corner of the car, as far from Wes as she could manage.
There he was, the man she’d allowed into her hotel suite, her lab, her heart—leaning against one of the poles running down the middle of the car, as nonchalantly as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
Rosemary narrowed her eyes on his leather-jacketed back, and vowed not to let him out of her sight until she discovered exactly what he was up to.
He changed trains once, at Times Square, which was a hoot and a half. Rosemary managed to keep up with him while keeping him from spotting her. It helped that the gener
al New York City rule was to keep one’s head down and make zero eye contact.
When they finally emerged from the stinking depths of hell into the cool, relatively clean air of Delancey Street, Rosemary nearly staggered with relief. She felt as if she’d been through the wars, destroyed the Death Star, slayed a nest of vampires … but it wasn’t over yet.
She squinted around. The area looked vaguely familiar, and as Wes took off, walking briskly toward a gray stone building on the next corner, Rosemary figured it out.
That bar. Chapel. He’d lied about having to work … to come out and drink with his friends?
Even after hearing his betrayal from his own lips, Rosemary still had a hard time believing it. Maybe she was hopelessly naïve, or maybe she didn’t want to think something so simple and trite could be worth this much emotional upheaval.
Either way, she obviously had to find out more.
Lucille squirmed, whining to be put down. Knowing the little dog had probably reached her limit of being carried around like a fuzzy handbag, Rosemary debated for a split second before setting Lucille on the damp sidewalk.
Picking up a paw daintily, as if shocked and appalled at the condition of the concrete she had to walk on, Lucille huffed out a breath and charged off after Wes suddenly enough to nearly tear the leash from Rosemary’s hand.
Rosemary tightened her grip and tried to keep up. Lucille towed her along until they were inside Chapel, then she put her face to the ground and started snuffling around for Wes’s scent.
“Good luck,” Rosemary muttered, wrinkling her nose. Even her weak human senses detected a maelstrom of scent markers hanging in the Chapel air, everything from cannabis to cologne.
Her heart pounded loud enough to drown out the beat of music from the speakers. The place was less crowded than the first time she went there; presumably as an after-hours bar, it filled up late.
She surveyed the room intently, looking for Wes’s bomber jacket and chestnut hair darkened by rain, and finally spotted him ducking behind the bar.
He reached up for a slim bottle of clear liquor, saying something over his shoulder with that easy smile Rosemary loved so much.
She frowned. Was he working at Chapel now? He never said anything about that.
Starting forward, tugging Lucille, who’d been distracted by a cache of empty peanut shells under a table, along in her wake, Rosemary headed for Wes, determined to get some answers.
But every question flew out of her head when a new customer stepped up to the bar and spoke to Wes.
It was the gray-haired man!
Shrinking back, Rosemary watched their interchange, her mind racing, picking up and discarding different approaches, different possible explanations.
Time, that fundamental quantity so basic it could be used to measure and define other elements, began to play impossible tricks on her, slowing and blipping like a roll of film that had skipped its loop.
She blinked, and the world came into focus.
The real world, not the fantasy world she’d been living in for weeks—and when Lucille finally picked Wes’s voice out of the crowd and charged off to find him, Rosemary went with her.
The older man was gone by now. Where? She neither knew nor cared. He was inconsequential, a mere symptom of the diseased mind standing in front of her with an expression of shock and dismay dawning over his handsome face.
“Rosemary! What are you doing here?”
Having no patience with chitchat, Rosemary waved that away. She couldn’t seem to take her eyes off Wes, the way his shoulders stretched the material of his soft gray shirt, the way his too-long hair curled over the collar. The way his cheekbones still shone with the remnants of rainwater, and his lush mouth—the mouth she’d felt over every inch of her body—retained a hint of the anger and resignation she’d seen in him when he spoke to the well-dressed stranger.
In a flash of unfamiliar, entirely unwelcome awareness, she became conscious of how she must look. Her clothes stuck to her, damp and clammy; her braids were heavy, wet ropes against her back.
Shoving the pitiful-waif image out of her head, Rosemary drew herself up to her full height.
“Who is that man? The truth this time, Wes.” She felt her mouth tremble, and firmed it ruthlessly. “I don’t want any more of your lies.”
Watching the tentative light die out of his eyes was like watching an experiment she’d worked for hours to meticulously set up suddenly explode right in her face.
But Rosemary forced her knees steady and stared him down.
It’s always better to know than to wonder, she reminded herself. Even when knowing the truth hurts like a stake through the heart.
Wes felt his insides go liquid with fear, as if he’d swallowed a shot of vodka laced with pure poison—it burned all the way down, and that was only the beginning.
“Who?” he tried, but he already knew it wouldn’t fly. Everything was crashing to the ground; all he could do now was try to save the pieces.
“You know exactly who I mean,” she hissed, stepping right up to the bar.
Wes glanced around for Christian, who had his eye on them already. He gave the universal head jerk for “take five” and went back to filling drink orders.
Ducking back under the bar partition, Wes came around to Rosemary and reached for her arm.
She flinched away from his touch.
Wes sucked in air and tried to still his galloping heart. Relax. The first hit always hurts the worst, he tried to tell himself.
Only he didn’t really believe that. The worst was yet to come.
A yip near his feet made him look down to see Lucille dancing on her hind legs and begging for attention. “Hey, someone’s glad to see me,” he said, crouching to ruffle her fur.
Rosemary jerked on the leash hard enough to yank Lucille off her feet. The dog yelped, and Wes frowned up at Rosemary, but she didn’t appear to even realize what she’d done. Her hands were clenched into tight fists and she was up on the balls of her feet, her whole body poised for a fight.
Yeah. No doubt about it. He’d been made.
But she still didn’t know who Pops was, he reminded himself. That could buy him some wiggle room, right?
“I told you,” he said, keeping his voice light and reasonable, as if they weren’t about to have a knockdown drag-out in the middle of Chapel. “That guy’s a nobody. Just an old scam artist I lent some money to a while back, and now he won’t pony up.”
She shook her head mechanically. “No. No, I don’t believe that, because if he owes you money, why does he keep showing up here and talking to you? No, you have something he wants. And I bet I know exactly what it is.”
Wes stood and faced her, his mind a blur of pure panic. She couldn’t know, there was no way she could know—and he saw in her eyes that she’d recognized the emotion all over his face.
Resignation warred with betrayal for control of Rosemary’s expression, and Wes felt like his chest might explode. “Fuck,” he cursed harshly. “You picked a hell of a time to get good at reading me.”
“Oh, I had help,” she said, her voice shaking with rage. “I already knew you were lying.”
“How?”
“I heard it straight from you.”
He took in her appearance again, wet, lank hair and chilled, pale skin. Her clothes were soaked through. The rain. Oh God.
“You were in that alley when I talked to Frankie, weren’t you?” He couldn’t believe this was happening.
She nodded, her chin moving up and down like a spasm.
“Jesus, that was an hour ago—you must be freezing! Let me …”
Pulling away from his concerned hands, Rosemary all but snarled, “I don’t need your help. I don’t need anything from you except the truth.”
Helpless, Wes dropped his hands back to his sides, aching to wrap her up in something soft and warm and away from this mess he’d created. “I’m sorry, Rosie. I never meant to hurt you.”
“Shut up,” she
cried. Heads turned, even at Chapel, and Wes pulled her with him, protesting all the way, to the door beside the bar. Once they were safely in the back hallway that led down to the storage cellar, and away from prying eyes, she seemed to lose whatever steel had been keeping her upright.
“Don’t be nice,” she choked out. “I know it’s a lie, you can stop pretending to like me now.”
“I was never pretending about that,” Wes said, her words flicking over the raw wound of his guilt. “I—you’re important to me.” He couldn’t say it, couldn’t tell her he loved her for the first time like this, in a storm of tears and anger, when he knew she wouldn’t believe him.
“Oh, I’m sure.” She tried to sneer but couldn’t really carry it off with the way her mouth kept trembling. “Important to your wallet, maybe. How much did he promise you?”
Wes put his hands on his hips, utterly confused. “What are you talking about?”
“Quit playing innocent,” she said, her blue eyes flashing fire and brimstone. “That man, the one you were arguing with. He’s from a pharmaceutical company, isn’t he? You’re planning to steal my research and sell it to the highest bidder!”
Chapter 28
When did he lose his mind? Was it the moment he agreed to his father’s ridiculous demands, just to keep Pops away from Rosemary? Or should he go further back, maybe to the first moment he saw Dr. Rosemary Wilkins in that classroom back at the academy.
Wes shook his head like a spaniel shaking off water droplets. “Are you serious?”
“That’s an evasion, not a denial,” Rosemary said, something behind her eyes shattering. “Oh God. I can’t believe I trusted you. I can’t believe I thought, even for a second, that someone like you might look at me and see more than an opportunity.”
Maybe the whole world had gone insane. This was like living in the Land of Backwards, where up was down and left was right and gorgeous, smart, successful women cried over losers like him. Wes felt sick. “Rosemary, sweets. Don’t talk like that. It’s not true, I never, ever thought of you like that.”
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