No Going Back

by Ainsley Kincade

  “How do you fit into all of this?” Reagan asked.

  Leaning my head back, I breathed in and out slowly before speaking. “You’ve experienced how aggressive Brandon can be when he wants something.”

  Reagan nodded, twisting her shirt around her fingers again.

  I looked away from the effect, wishing she’d sit on her hands until I could finish this conversation. The words were on the tip of my tongue, but I knew I’d look like a prick saying them and resisted, barely. “Brandon wanted Keira to sit for him. He had since they were teenagers, but she always said no. Brandon had come out as gay early on, so it wasn’t that. She didn’t like the amount of control he required from his models. If she didn’t want to do a certain pose, she wouldn’t. Brandon didn’t work like that.”

  Squirming in her seat, Reagan looked away. “It’s hard to argue that he knows what he’s doing, though.”

  Chuckling, I said, “True, which also irritated Keira.” She hated to lose an argument, and would have had to eat her words with Brandon if she’d fought him on a pose that turned out to be amazing.

  “So, she never sat for him?” Reagan asked.

  I shook my head.

  She frowned. “I still don’t understand what any of this has to do with you. Or how you even met Keira.”

  Rather than answer her directly, I asked a question I’d been curious about for a long time. “Do you know anything about how I came to work for the magazine?”

  Reagan seemed more confused than ever, but shook her head. “I guess I assumed you’d started in design and worked your way up. You have an amazing eye.” She offered the compliment with no embarrassment or apology, which I appreciated, even though it surprised me.

  “My ‘eye’ didn’t develop in graphic design. I started off as a photographer,” I explained.

  Her eyes widened. “Really? I had no idea.” Curiosity eased away some of her nerves. She sat up more fully, a question forming on her lips before she pulled back and pursed them. “Wait, is this…that’s how you knew Keira and Cyrus, right? Photography?”

  Nodding slowly, I steeled myself for the details I had run out of time to avoid delivering. “Cyrus found me my senior year in college. He saw my photographs in a student art show and offered me a short run show at his gallery, between two bigger artists.”

  Reagan stared at me in shock. She’d only met Cyrus and realized his importance in the local art world that day, but had quickly grasped the impact that one offer must have had on my career.

  “I said yes, of course,” I continued. “I would have been crazy not to.” Closing my eyes, it was difficult not to pick apart that decision now. So many things could have been different if I’d just said no. There wasn’t a logical reason I should have, at the time. Shaking off such thoughts, I said, “I met Keira the night the show opened. For several years, we were just friends. She was dating someone else and several years older than me. Plus, I was trying to launch my career as a photographer. I’d just accepted a staff position at the magazine, too, which took up a lot of my time. Keira loved my work, though, so we stayed in touch.”

  Another chance for what ifs. Had I just moved on, not kept the friendship alive…where would our lives have gone?

  “The news article, it said you’d just barely started dating before she died,” Reagan said. She’d pulled back in on herself. The space between us seemed wider than before.

  “Several months before she died, she was approached by an organization about modeling for them. It had been several years since she’d done any serious modeling work outside of a few small projects for the magazine with me, so she almost turned them down. They were insistent, though, and eventually she agreed to do it, but only if she could choose the photographer.”

  Slowly, Reagan’s eyebrows rose. “I’m guessing she didn’t ask Brandon.”

  “No,” I said wryly. “By that point, Keira had been scaling back from the main Marpole Inc. ventures and focusing more on her own interests and pursuits. Cyrus didn’t appreciate that, and blamed me for her distance. When she asked me to be the photographer for the shoot, he was pissed and demanded she not do it. Cyrus felt he was losing control of her and what they’d built together, and was threatened by our friendship.”

  “I’m guessing she didn’t bow down to him,” Reagan said.

  Shaking my head, I almost wished she would have. “We did the shoot, it went amazingly well, and the client was thrilled.” I rubbed my hand across my eyes. “Keira was happy, too. She’d forgotten how much she enjoyed modeling and asked me to do another shoot, one just to get back into practice. When she saw the photos, she insisted I use them for a show. I’d spent the previous few years focusing on my work at the magazine and hadn’t really had time to pursue individual engagements. She was determined to change that and booked a show for me, as a surprise, when I dragged my feet…but it wasn’t at Cyrus’s gallery.”

  Reagan cringed, correctly guessing how well Cyrus took the news when he saw the listing and that his sister was the sole model of the show.

  “Irate wasn’t a strong enough word to describe Cyrus’s reaction,” I said. “The fight they got into drew the neighbor’s attention. I wasn’t there, but gossip spread through the art community like a match to tinder. Rumors were flying that they were dissolving the partnership, going their separate ways permanently.”

  “Were the rumors true?” she asked.

  All I could do was shrug. “Keira never really said. I think they were at a standstill, and had been even before that. Keira wanted to launch a program for teens and kids that were interested in the arts but didn’t have the resources to participate. Cyrus thought it would take too much of her time and leave him picking up the slack. Her doing something this big without his permission simply lit the fuse on a fight that had already been simmering. Regardless, Cyrus put the majority of the blame on me, and still does.”

  I could only hope Reagan saw his reasoning as jaded and uncalled for. Breaking up their partnership had never been a motive of mine. Keira was a friend, for years, one who pushed me to excel and take risks. Even though Cyrus had been the one to discover me, she was the one who relentlessly prodded me onward and upward. While Cyrus found and launched artists, she cultivated them.

  “Tell me about how she died.” Reagan’s voice was soft this time, no hint of accusation behind her words. She still needed to understand, but I had hope she wouldn’t run when she had all the details. A small hope, but it was there.

  Keeping my gaze focused on Reagan’s bookshelf, I gave her the rest. “The organization who’d approached her about modeling, it was due to their marketing director. He knew Keira’s work, had apparently followed it since she was young. When it came time for his company to launch a new marketing campaign, he was insistent Keira was the woman for the job and his bosses agreed she seemed like a good match. They didn’t know, and neither did Keira or I, that this guy had been obsessively collecting pictures of her, stalking her online. This chance to meet her in person took his obsession to a whole new level.”

  “Oh wow,” Reagan said.

  “After the shoot for his company, he started stalking her offline. She didn’t realize it was happening. No one did,” I said. “After Keira’s fight with Cyrus, we started spending more time together. It led to more than friendship and we began dating seriously. Maybe we were too absorbed in our new relationship to notice some of the oddities around that time for what they were.”

  “What do you mean? What oddities?”

  “Crumpled mail, like someone had hastily shoved it into the box. Keys going missing then reappearing somewhere she thought she’d already looked. A broken tail light. Phone calls from blocked numbers that disconnected right after accepting a call.” I shook my head. We were so blind. Saying everything now, it seemed so obvious something was wrong.

  Reagan’s fingers landed lightly on my arm. “Those sorts of things happen all the time, truly by chance. Neither of you knew to look for signs of anything harm
ful.”

  I pulled away from her touch, even though I was desperate for her comfort. Regardless of what I wanted, Cyrus was right that I blamed myself. How could I not?

  “One of my photos of her was being featured at a show during a banquet held by one of the arts associations Keira belonged to. We were invited to attend, and we did. She was so happy that whole night. When we walked out of the hotel, she was talking about going away that weekend when he rushed us. I was so caught off guard, I didn’t respond fast enough. He’d already stabbed her twice before I could tackle him.

  “He was crazed by that point, ranting about her betraying him as she bled all over the sidewalk. I tried to get the knife away from him. He was stronger than he looked and didn’t seem to feel any pain over his adrenaline and rage as I hit him and tried to get his arms under control,” I said, numb and burning with shame and guilt at the same time.

  “I’m not even sure how it happened, but he managed to get the knife turned around and stabbed me. The shock of it loosened my grip and he got away from me for a few seconds. I was back on him almost instantly, but in those few seconds, he’d stabbed her several more times and it was already too late. People from the hotel heard the noise and came running out and he panicked. I was losing blood and in shock. He managed to shake me off and run. I should have chased him, but I saw her eyes losing any sign of life and couldn’t do anything but crawl over to her. She bled out in my arms as we waited for the ambulance.”

  Pushing up from the couch, I stalked across the little living room. Everything churning inside me was begging for release. I didn’t cry the night she died. Shock stole my emotions from me. I walked around in a daze after the paramedics forced me back from her body. Covered in her blood and mine, I’d ridden in the back with her on the way to the hospital, instead of in a separate ambulance as they’d wanted. Sirens wailed as we drove, but not for her. The police sat with me after they took her body away and I was being stitched up, asking a million questions I didn’t know the answer to. They wanted an explanation. I had nothing to give them aside from a name.

  “It wasn’t until we got to the hospital and I was able to partially process what had happened that I realized I knew who’d attacked us. At first, I thought I must have been misremembering, because it didn’t make any sense.” Pacing back and forth in front of her TV, I tried to pull myself together.

  “Later, when they went to his apartment and found all the photos of her, his notes on her schedule, the copy he’d made of her key, and pieces of her mail he’d stolen, that was when they realized the truth. Seeing Keira and I together had destroyed his fantasies and pushed him to act.” I shook my head, telling myself for the millionth time that I would have traded any amount of happiness I had during that time to have spared her life.

  “Keira’s parents never blamed me for what happened, but Cyrus lost it. He showed up at my apartment and beat the shit out of me, bursting my stitches and sending me back to the hospital, but I refused to press charges. I hated him by then, and knew he was being an asshole for taking out all his anger and grief on me, but part of me believed I deserved it for not protecting her and, in some ways, provoking the fucking bastard who killed her.”

  I turned back around in my pacing and froze when I realized Reagan had walked over to me. She wrapped her arms around her body, wary of my reaction. I tried to show her I was fine, but my hands were twitching, the emotions talking about Keira created buzzing inside me like energy. I felt as if I were going to combust from the heat of holding everything inside. She stared at me with wide eyes. Her expression was guarded, and I half expected her to ask me to leave, even though I knew that wouldn’t make sense. I hadn’t hurt Keira, not like Cyrus made it sound.

  “You gave up photography after she died?” Reagan asked quietly.

  I nodded, shifting from one foot to the other, desperate to burn off everything I was feeling. That usually meant hitting the gym, hard. Leaving Reagan tonight…I couldn’t do it. Not until I knew for sure what she was thinking. Whether Cyrus had scared her away or not.

  “Why?”

  Shaking my head, I didn’t understand why she would ask me that. The answer should have been obvious. Part of me was angry she’d ask it and made me answer when she already had to know the answer. “Because I couldn’t pick up a camera without thinking about her and what it led to,” I snapped.

  “It didn’t lead to only bad things,” she said.

  “What?” I barked. “What do you know about it? How can you say that when she died like she did?”

  Reagan stepped back, scared by my raised voice and clenched fists. “You gave her back something she loved,” she whispered. “You reminded her of what it felt like to be part of the art, rather than just someone who appreciated it. That’s not a small thing.”

  “You didn’t even know her!” I was yelling, scaring her even more, but she tightened her arms around her body and held her ground.

  “No, but I know what that feels like.” Swallowing, she sucked in a frightened breath and looked at a spot over my shoulder. “That was with a stranger. Even though Brandon is amazing, I can imagine what the same experience would have been like had it been with someone like you, someone she trusted and loved as a friend, if not more.”

  Her words stole my anger, and my strength. “Loved?” I almost laughed, but couldn’t seem to make the sound. We’d officially dated three weeks and I never told her I loved her. Neither had she.

  “I don’t think she would have asked you to be the photographer at that first shoot if she hadn’t,” Reagan said hesitantly.

  “Why not?” I demanded.

  Reagan shrugged, but her words were stronger than before. “I’m sure she knew what it would do to her relationship with Cyrus. That’s a big risk just to renew a modeling career. But she had you backing her up. When he turned his back on her, I think she knew you’d be there to step in and be everything she needed you to be.”

  Sinking down into an armchair that looked to have been a secondhand purchase, I let my head fall into my hands. “But I failed her. I fucking let her die when I should have been able to protect her!”

  “You know that’s not true,” Reagan said. “Maybe Cyrus blames you, but there’s no way she would have. The only thing she might have been upset about was you giving up photography.”

  Snapping my gaze up to hers, my anger at her presumed familiarity with Keira softened as soon as I saw the hurt in her eyes. Whatever it was had nothing to do with me or Keira. Reagan had let slip hints of her past over the last several days. Too much had been happening to attempt piecing them together, and my head was in no place that night to do much more. Somehow, she understood more of my pain than I was expecting, even when I couldn’t bear to tell her everything.

  Reagan sat on the arm of the couch nearest me. Her hands were in her lap, twisting at her shirt again. “When you first found out Brandon had used me as the model, you started to say something about how if I was going to sit for anyone it should have been…. You never finished, but you were talking about you, right? If I were going to pose for a photographer, you wanted it to be you, not Brandon.”

  Gaze still directed at the floor, she refused to look at me as she waited for my answer. “Yes,” I admitted, ashamed at the desire, but aroused by the possibility.

  Finally, Reagan lifted her chin and looked at me. “Well,” she said, her chest heaving as nerves threatened to take over, “I’m offering.”

  “What?” I asked. Shock made that one word harsh, clipped.

  Reagan flinched, but didn’t back down. “I’m offering to sit for you. If you’re willing to pick up your camera again, all you have to do is say when.”

  Amazed by her offer, I struggled to respond, and could only get out another question. “You’re serious?”

  Her fingertips were turning white under the pressure of her grip. “Yes.” It came out as hardly more than a whisper, but her expression was determined.

  I sat back in my chair, con
fused by how we had come to this conversation. Touching a camera again terrified me. Passing on the opportunity to have Reagan model for me, there was no way I could walk away from that. How could I really accept? She didn’t understand what she was risking. Exhaling slowly, Rudolph’s request that I send something for the charity auction echoed in my mind. So did Marie’s insistence that Reagan might be the key to me stepping back into my passion.

  Damn it, Marie. How the fuck had she ended up being right about this?

  ***

  I hadn’t expected him to leave last night.

  Before he left, he said he needed some time to think. About what, I wasn’t entirely sure. Our relationship, or whatever it was? Taking his camera out of storage? Keira? Telling me about her?

  Marie intimidated me, a lot, but being out of the office and up on the fifth floor with her proved to be a relief. My stress levels were maxed out. A break from having to deal with Mr. Gabriel, the enthusiasm of my coworkers over his dating announcement, Emily’s sky high excitement and need to know every detail, and my usual workload was more than overdue. Even if that meant spending the morning being bossed around by Marie Thibodaux.

  “I have to say, Donovan seems to be having a positive influence on you,” Marie said as she strode up. “Aside from you lackluster wardrobe at your interview, I thought you were too mild mannered to be put in charge of prima donna photographers. You’ve really developed a strong grasp of balancing control with creativity.”

  “Oh, well, thank you, Marie.” I tried not to let my surprise at her praise show, but that wasn’t easy. Marie did not hand out compliments offhandedly.

  She gestured for me to follow and started toward the elevator. “Let’s just hope you’re as good of an influence on him. God knows he needs it.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked as we reached the doors and stopped.

  Marie pushed the call button and gave me a withering look. “Please, after the shit move he pulled at that pre-print staff meeting?” She rolled her eyes. “He’s so used to being in control at work, and back when he was behind the camera, that when he decides how something is going to be, he assumes everyone else will be on board without discussing it beforehand. Keira would have had his balls for something like that.”