going. And people only locked their doors to keep the barbarians at the gate. He was the barbarian. Why would he keep himself out?
As soon as he entered the house, he pulled off his jacket and tossed it on the f loor. Someone would take care of it. Someone always did. He heard music coming from within the house. Blaise, he guessed. She’d taken to staying here most nights, even the nights he didn’t fuck her. She seemed the sort to like piano music—or at least to pretend she liked it.
He trudged up the steps but paused before he reached the first landing. The music…it didn’t sound as if it came from a stereo or a radio. No, it sounded close, and live. Alive.
“Fuck.” Kingsley stormed back down the stairs. He had one rule in his house and one rule only. No one touches the grand piano in the music room. No one. It was to be looked at and never touched, never played, never even acknowledged. Whoever dared touch his piano would be thrown into the street and forbidden from ever crossing the threshold of his house again. The person who defied Kingsley’s one law would curse the day he’d ever learned to play the fucking piano.
Kingsley threw open the door to the music room.
He stopped.
He stared.
He did not breathe.
It couldn’t be…
But it was.
The room was dark, but Kingsley could see who played his grand piano. And even if he couldn’t see, he would still know it was him. Only one man he’d ever known could play so skillfully without sheet music, without even seeing the keys. A sliver of streetlight penetrated the room and cast a circle of light around the pianist’s hair.
His blond hair.
Søren.
Frozen in place, Kingsley could do nothing but stand and listen and watch and wait and wonder. Why? How?
The music—Beethoven, Kingsley believed it was—set the room afire, and the sound moved like smoke over the f loor, up the walls and across the ceiling. Kingsley breathed it in like incense.
The piece ended. The final note rose like a burning ember before falling to the f loor and fading into ash.
Shock had stolen Kingsley’s courage, but now it returned to him. He couldn’t get to the man fast enough. He rushed forward as the pianist closed the fallboard and stood. Over ten years had passed since Kingsley had seen him, had looked on him with his own eyes. Kingsley had almost given up hope he would ever see him again. They’d caused each other too much pain, and someone had paid the highest price for their secrets. But that was all in the past. It would be better now between them. No hiding. No lies. Kingsley would give him his heart and his body and his soul, and this time he’d ask for nothing in return.
But as the pianist rose, Kingsley noticed something different about him. He looked the same, only older now. How long since they’d last stood face-to-face, eye-to-eye? He would be twenty-nine years old, wouldn’t he? God, they were grown men now. When had that happened? If it was possible, he was even more handsome than Kingsley remembered, and taller, too. How was it possible he was taller? His clothes, however, were far more severe. He wore all black.
All black but for one spot of white.
A square of white.
A square of white at his throat.
The pianist smiled at him, a smile of amusement with only the barest hint of apology. And not the least bit of shame.
Fuck.
Kingsley stared, incredulous. He took a small step back.
No…not that. Anything but that. Whatever hope had been in Kingsley’s heart a second earlier shattered and died like the last stray note of a symphony.
The old love, the old desire coursed through his veins and into his heart, and there was no stopping it.
He met the blond pianist’s eyes—the priest’s eyes—and released the breath he’d forgotten he’d been holding.
“Mon Dieu…”
My God.
4
FOR A SILENT ETERNITY THEY ONLY LOOKED AT EACH other.
Finally Kingsley raised his hand.
“Wait here,” he said and turned around. He turned back around again. “S’il vous plait.”
Søren said nothing. Even if Søren wanted to speak, Kingsley left before he could say a word.
Kingsley strode from the music room and shut the door behind him.
As soon as he stood alone in the hallway, Kingsley pushed a hand into his stomach. A wave of dizziness passed over him. He fought it off, ran upstairs to his bedroom and changed from his rain-soaked clothes into dry ones. He grabbed soap, a towel. He scrubbed at his face, rinsed the taste of Justin out of his mouth, toweled the rain from his hair and slicked his hands through it. In less than five minutes he looked like himself again—shoulder-length dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin inherited from his father. Did he look like he did ten years ago? Was he more handsome? Less? Did it matter to Søren anymore what he looked like?
“Søren…” He breathed the name like a prayer. How long had it been since he’d said that name out loud? What was he doing here? Last year Kingsley had been dying in a hospital in France, dying of infection from a gunshot wound. He remembered nothing of those days after his surgery but for the few minutes Søren had visited. He’d been too ill, barely conscious. He’d only heard Søren’s voice speaking to a doctor, demanding they treat him, heal him, save him. Kingsley thought it only a dream at the time, but when he awoke to find he’d been left a gift—access to a Swiss bank account with more than thirty million dollars in it—he knew it had been real.
That should have been it. That should have been the last time they’d seen each other. Kingsley knew that bank account had been blood money—Søren’s way of saying he was sorry for what had happened between them. The second Kingsley spent the first cent he’d accepted that apology. They were even now. No unfinished business.
So why was Søren here?
Kingsley took a steadying breath, but it did nothing to quell his light-headedness. He was almost giddy with shock. He laughed for no reason. As much as wanted to, he couldn’t leave Søren alone in the music room all night waiting for him. He had to go back, talk to him, look him in the eyes again and find out what he wanted. And he would. He could do this. Some of the most dangerous men in the world pissed themselves at the mere mention of Kingsley’s name. People feared him. They should fear him. He feared no one.
He took one more breath and readied himself to leave the bathroom and go to Søren. But then he stepped back, kicked the seat of the toilet open and vomited so hard his eyes watered.
Once he was certain he’d fully emptied his stomach of all its contents, he sat on the cold tile f loor and breathed through his nose. He laughed.
Here he was, eleven years later, and Søren could still do this to him without saying a word. God damn him.
Slowly he stood and washed his mouth out again. He could run. He had money. He could leave. Go out the back door, f ly away and run forever.
But no, Kingsley had to face him. He could face him. His pride demanded it of him. And if Søren had found him here, he could find him anywhere.
Outside the music room Kingsley willed his hands to stop shaking, willed his heart to slow its frenetic racing.
He threw open the door with a f lourish and stepped inside.
At first he didn’t see Søren. He’d expected to find him waiting on the divan or on one of the chairs. Or perhaps even standing by the window or sitting at the piano. He hadn’t expected to find Søren bent underneath the top board of the piano. He’d turned on a lamp now, and warm light filled the room.
“What are you doing?” Kingsley asked as he came to the piano and peeked under the open lid. He spoke with a steady voice.
“Your bass notes are f lat.” Søren hit a key and turned a pin inside the piano. “You shouldn’t have the piano near the window. The temperature f luctuates too much.”
“I’ll have it moved.”
“When was the last time you had it tuned?” Søren asked.
“Never.”
“I can t
ell.” Søren hit another key, turned another pin. Kingsley watched Søren’s hands as he worked. Large, strong and f lawless hands. His clothes had changed, he’d grown taller, more handsome, and now he was a priest. But his hands hadn’t changed. They were the same hands Kingsley remembered.
Søren stood up straight and lowered the lid of the grand piano back down.
“The action is stiff. Has it not been played very often?” “You were the first. No one’s allowed to play it.” “No one? Then I apologize for playing it.”
“Don’t apologize. When I say no one is allowed to play it, I meant…no one but you.”
Søren glanced up and met Kingsley’s eyes. It took all of Kingsley’s resolve, fortitude and the alcohol left in his bloodstream not to break eye contact. Søren always had this way of looking at him that made Kingsley want to confess everything to him. Even back when they were teenage boys in school together, he’d had that power. But Kingsley kept silent, kept his secrets. They weren’t boys anymore.
“I’ll call someone,” Kingsley finally said. “I’ll have it tuned.”
“Call a music store. They’ll be able to recommend a good tuner.”
Kingsley and Søren studied each other over the top of the piano.
“Do you want to keep talking about the piano, or should we have a real conversation?” Søren asked.
Kingsley gave him a halfhearted smile and sat down on the piano bench. The adrenaline had subsided, but the disorientation remained. If he awoke to find himself in bed and all this was a dream, he wouldn’t be surprised.
“So…parish priest? Dominican? Franciscan?” he asked, the old words coming back to him like a language he used to be f luent in but hadn’t spoken in years.
“Jesuit,” Søren said, taking a seat on the white-and-blackstriped sofa across from the piano bench.
Kingsley rubbed his forehead and laughed.
“A Jesuit. I was afraid of that. I knew they wanted you in their ranks.”
“I wasn’t recruited. It was my choice.”
“So it’s real? The collar? The vows? All of it?”
He clasped his hands in front of him between his knees. “It is the most real thing I’ve ever done.”
Kingsley raised his hands in surrender and confusion.
“When? Why?” He gave up on his English and fell back into his French. Quand? Pourquoi?
“I know you’ll find this hard to believe, but I’ve wanted to be a priest since I was fourteen,” Søren answered in his perfect French. It felt good to speak his first language again, to hear it again, even if every word Søren said stabbed his heart like a sword. “I converted at fourteen, so I could become a Jesuit. It was all I ever wanted.”
“You never told me.”
“Of course not. When I met you…”
“What?”
Søren didn’t answer at first. Weighing his words? Or simply torturing Kingsley with silence? Kingsley remembered those long pauses before Søren would speak, as if he had to examine every word like a diamond under a jeweler’s lope before allowing it to be displayed. Kingsley could live and die and be born again waiting for Søren to answer one little question.
“When I met you,” Søren said again, “it was the first time I questioned my calling.”
Kingsley let those words hang in the air between them before tucking them inside his heart and locking them away.
“Did you think I would try to talk you out of it?” Kingsley asked once he could speak again.
“Would you have tried to talk me out of it?”
“Yes,” Kingsley said entirely without shame. “I’ll try to talk you out of it now.”
“You’re a little late. I’m ordained. You know religious orders are sacraments. They can’t be revoked. Once a priest…”
“Always a priest,” Kingsley finished the famous dictum. He wasn’t Catholic, but he’d gone to a Catholic school long enough to learn all he needed to know about the Jesuits. “But a Jesuit? Really? There are other sorts of priests. You had to join an order that takes a vow of poverty?”
“Poverty? That’s your problem with the Jesuits? Not the celibacy?”
“We’ll get to that. Let’s start with the poverty.”
Søren leaned back on the sofa and rested his chin on his hand.
“It’s good to see you again,” Søren said. “You look better than the last time I saw you.”
“The last time you saw me I was dying in a Paris hospital.”
“Glad you got over that.”
“You’re not the only one, mon ami. I should thank you—”
Søren raised his hand to stop him.
“Don’t. Please, don’t thank me.” Søren glanced away into the corner of the room. “After all that happened, after all I put you through, terrifying a doctor on your behalf was the least I could do.”
He gave Kingsley a tight smile.
“You did more than terrify a doctor. I shouldn’t tell you this, but my…employer at the time had decided to burn me.”
“Burn?”
“Remove me from existence. Letting me die in the hospital was a nice, clean way to get rid of me and everything I know. The doctors, they’d been encouraged to let me die peacefully. I would have, if you hadn’t shown up and given the counter order.”
“I’m good at giving orders.” Søren gave him the slightest of smiles.
“How did you find me? At the hospital, I mean.”
“You listed me as your next of kin when you joined the Foreign Legion.”
“That’s right,” Kingsley said. “I had no one else.”
“You had our school as my contact information. A nurse called St. Ignatius, and St. Ignatius called me.”
“How did you find me today?”
“You don’t exactly f ly under the radar, Kingsley.”
Kingsley shrugged, tried and failed to laugh.
“It’s not fair, you know. I couldn’t open my eyes that day in the hospital. You saw me last year. I haven’t seen you in… too long.”
“I was in Rome, in India. I’m not sure I want to know where you’ve been.”
“You don’t.”
“What are you doing with yourself these days?”
Kingsley shrugged, sighed, raised his hands. “I own a strip club. Don’t judge me. It’s very lucrative.”
“I judge not,” Søren said. “Anything else? Job? Girlfriend? Wife? Boyfriend?”
“No job. I’m retired. No wife. But Blaise is around here somewhere. She’s the girlfriend. Sort of. And you?”
“No girlfriend,” Søren said. “And no wife, either.”
“You bastard,” he said, shaking his head. “A fucking Jesuit priest.”
“Actually, a nonfucking Jesuit priest. They haven’t rescinded the vows of celibacy yet.”
“How inconsiderate of them.”
Kingsley tried to smile at Søren, but he couldn’t. Not yet.
“Celibacy.” Kingsley pronounced the word like a curse. It was a curse. “I thought you were a sadist. When did you become a masochist?”
“Is that a rhetorical question or are you looking for the exact date of my ordination? I’m a priest. Once you’re firmly convinced that God exists, it’s not that great a leap to ask him for a job.”
Kingsley stood up and walked to the window. Outside, Manhattan had awoken and stirred to life. He had CEOs and Nobel Prize winners and heiresses as his neighbors here on Riverside Drive. They were
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