“Are you afraid I’ll say something I shouldn’t?”
“I wouldn’t have invited you if that were the case. However, I’d advise you to be careful. I’m trusting you.” Her fingers compress around my bicep as she nods. “What’s your poison?” I ask.
She scans the room up to the second floor balcony and over the crown molding along the ceiling. “They’re even richer than you.”
“Helpful when it comes to charity functions.”
She looks back at me while biting the inside of her bottom lip. “I was never much of a drinker. Can you order for me?”
“Gladly.” I get her a glass of red wine and keep her close as I roam the party and make my presence known. In the wake of this week’s headlines, it’s important as ever to maintain a sense of normalcy. Cataline’s Hero fell days ago, so I haven’t bothered sharing the news with her. When the story broke, not even my own publications could skirt publishing the photos.
Cataline shows me someone new at the party. She’s the woman in the crimson dress: sophisticated, sexy, restrained. Hardly the same girl I kidnapped months ago. I don’t know how to feel about it. Mostly she’s composed, smiling and nodding at the right times, but I note how her fingers curl in and out of little fists. Finally, mid-conversation with two other couples, I still her hand with mine. She blinks up at me as I lace our fingers together. Her mouth opens slightly, and she squeezes my hand. I wonder how it would be to kiss her here, claiming her in front of all these people.
I only break our gaze when the mention of Hero draws me back into the conversation. The mayor and his wife have joined the group, so I bend my mouth to Cataline’s ear. “Will you refresh our drinks?”
She nods and leaves with my glass.
The mayor shakes his head, talking to the man next to me. “I know as much as you do. Nobody suspected he was anything more than a vigilante—trained fighter or soldier, something like that. Chief Strong’s been working around the clock, looking for an answer.”
“We were shocked,” says one of the women. “Brian insists it’s something extraterrestrial, but I told him that’s absurd.”
“Whatever it is, it can’t be good,” says the mayor. “We’ve been fielding phone calls all week from concerned citizens. I don’t even want to know what the force is dealing with, what with the FBI all over them.”
His wife shudders. “What if one day he suddenly turns on us? Can you imagine that, a man who can’t be killed? I do hope he’ll just go away, and leave us alone. What’s your take, Calvin?”
I’m struggling for an answer when something across the room catches my eye. “I think Brian’s onto something,” I tell her. “It was only a matter of time before the aliens found us. If you’ll excuse me.”
I step away from the group and just out of Cataline’s sight as she accepts two drinks from the bartender. A man I don’t recognize won’t stop smiling at her. I’m not in the habit of listening in on people’s conversations, mostly because there’s nothing worth hearing. Now, though, I’m rapt as he leans in and speaks.
“You look familiar,” he says, “but I can’t put my finger on it. Have I seen you at one of these before?”
She glances around the room so quickly that it’s almost imperceptible. “It’s my first time. I’m a guest.”
“Of?”
“Calvin Parish.”
“Aha. I wasn’t aware he had guests.”
“Meaning?”
“He never brings anyone to these things.” The man grins and whispers loudly, “He’s a bit uptight if you haven’t noticed.”
She smiles at the floor but answers clearly and loudly, probably for my benefit. “Oh, I definitely have.”
“Rob,” he says, sticking out his hand.
She hesitates a moment, unmistakable fear in her eyes. I can see her newfound wariness fighting with her innate politeness. That a strange man scares her doesn’t surprise me. “I should really get this to Calvin.”
“Oh, come on, chat with me for a minute. You’re the only other person in the room under thirty. What’s your name?”
“Cataline.”
“Nice to meet you, Cataline.” He cocks his head. “You do seem a little young for such a stuffy event. And much too pretty.”
Her forehead bows to the ground again as she smiles a little. I can see that it radiates warmth, even though it’s not directed at me. Suddenly I’m too far from her, and this man is too close.
“Thank you,” she says.
An unusually long silence stretches between them as her eyes travel up to meet his again. His eyebrows lower, joining in the middle as he studies her. Something about the way he’s looking at her propels me out of the shadows and briskly forward.
“Hang on. I think I do recognize you,” he says. “Aren’t you the girl who was kidnapped?”
Her eyes widen instantly. “What?”
“I’ve seen flyers downtown with your picture.”
“My picture?”
“Are you?” he asks. “Are you the girl who was kidnapped?”
My heart is racing as I approach her from behind, restraining myself from clamping my hand over her mouth.
“No,” she says, and I almost stop in my tracks. “It must’ve been someone else.”
“Shit, are you okay? You don’t look so good.” He touches her arm. If I react how I want, I’ll draw unwanted attention. “Should I call someone?”
“Cataline.”
She whirls around at my voice and immediately huddles into my chest. My arms instinctively surround her trembling shoulders. “Is there a problem here?” I ask the man.
“I’m sorry, no—”
“What’d you say to her?”
“I thought—I’m sorry. Nothing.”
“You’ve clearly upset my girlfriend. Give me one reason why I shouldn’t level you.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Parish. I was mistaken.”
I lean over her head and glare at him. “Stay the fuck away. She’s with me, got that?”
Cataline’s fingers curl into my shirt as I watch him leave.
“Shh,” I say into her hair. “It’s okay, Sparrow. I’m here.”
“Flyers?” she whispers.
“Frida, I think. She’s the only person I know of who’s never given up looking for you.”
“Oh, God,” she says into my chest. “Poor Frida.”
I roll my eyes. “Yes. Poor Frida.”
Her hands still clutch me, and I fucking love it. I love that for once she needs me. In this moment, I am her solace; I’m good Calvin to her. I take a chance and stroke her back, running my hand up her neck. I kiss the top of her head, careful not to disturb her nest of hair.
She doesn’t respond at first. We stand that way until she says, “You called me your girlfriend.”
“I know.”
She looks up at me finally, our eyes locking together. “I’m sorry for this morning,” she says. “I know you were trying.”
“You pushed me. You wanted me to lose control.”
“Ever since I found out about Hero—about you . . . I feel numb. Different. Everything is turned inside out.”
As she’s talking, her eyes grow warm and alive again. The eyes she used to stare at me with in the office, like she might love me in some weird way. Eyes I’ve seen here and there over the past few months, but not since the night she learned the truth.
I can’t help myself. She’s a magnetic force field, and I’m a man without a chance. I lower my head, hungry to gobble up that bottom lip of hers that’s quivering, begging for me. Doing what I do, being who I am, I’m never unprepared. But that’s exactly what I am when she shoves me away.
“I can’t,” she says, and I’m left open-mouthed with empty arms. “This isn’t what we are. I don’t want you. I don’t love you. And whatever this is, I can’t do it.”
My last promise to Cataline was that I’d let her be, but what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. I’m leaning against a brick wall near her apartment, imp
atiently waiting until a black town car pulls up. Cataline gets out with a small duffel bag and nothing more.
Norman’s right behind her, watching while she puts the bag at the doorstep of her apartment building. People pass them by, oblivious. The look she gives Norman makes my throat constrict. All I got in the car on the way home from the charity event was a cold shoulder and no explanation.
“I don’t know what to say,” she says to Norman. “It feels wrong to say thank you or I’ll miss you, but that’s what I want to say.”
He nods, and I’m sure the sentimental old man has tears in his eyes. “I want you to know, if you ever need anything, you can come to me.”
They hug, and she kisses him on the cheek. Then he’s gone, and she’s alone. Since he doesn’t take her upstairs, I know he knows I’m here. She approaches the building’s entrance and pushes the button to her apartment with an unsteady finger. She’s biting on her thumbnail when a voice comes through the speaker.
“Yeah?” Cataline just stares. “Hello?”
“Frida?” A silent beat. “It’s me, Cat.”
I realize I’m holding my breath until Frida says, “I . . . I’ll be right down.”
Cataline sighs and closes her eyes, and I have to remind myself why this is right. I want to bolt across the street and take her in my arms, crush her in a hug that reminds her I’m not just a bad memory but a real person who needs her, who no longer knows anything without her.
Frida bursts through the door and almost knocks Cataline over with the force of her hug. They cling to each other like they’re in danger of drowning in their own tears.
“Oh my God,” Frida chokes out. “Where have you been? What happened?”
I justify spying because I need to know what she’ll say. In fact, I wouldn’t care if she went to the police and told them everything. Exposed me as Hero. She deserves that kind of justice.
“You wouldn’t believe any of it,” Cataline says, gripping her friend by the shoulders.
“Was it the Cartel?” Frida asks.
Her answer is immediate. “Yes.”
“I knew it,” Frida says tearfully. “I knew you didn’t run away. I never gave up.”
“It’s over now. It’s over. He saved me.”
“Who?”
“Hero.”
Frida’s mouth falls open. “Hero? Were you afraid?”
“Afraid?” Cataline asks. “Of Hero?”
Frida shakes her head quickly. “One thing at a time. Come upstairs. Tell me everything.”
There’s supposed to be this moment where she feels my eyes on her and pauses to turn around, but she only follows Frida inside. I leave before I’m tempted to listen to the whole fucked-up fairytale.
“I’ve got this, Melinda,” I say. “Go home to your boys.”
“You sure?” she asks.
“I’ll close up tonight.”
She winks at me. “You’re a good boss, Cat. See you Monday.”
“Monday,” I agree.
I lock the door behind her. The sun has just set through the floor-to-ceiling windows, and the room is darkening quickly. I flip on two yellow lights, just enough to finish my paperwork. My eyes wander around the gallery. Do you see? I want to cry out. I’ve done it. I’ve done it without any of you. Without your money or your support. I’m speaking to all of them—those who left me with nothing, those who never gave me anything, and those who took everything away. It’s my gallery, with my signature on the checks, my sweat in the floorboards, my brushstrokes on the walls. I was there every step, building from nothing. Do you see?
Instead of pride, I feel my usual, inexplicable defeat. My arms are heavy at my sides. This feeling never seems to leave, but it’s been months since it weighed this much. As if on cue, my phone rings. I rub my eyes and return to my desk.
“Hey, babe.” Grant’s voice puts me at ease. “How’s it going?”
“As of today, my exhibit is officially the gallery’s best yet.”
“Wow,” he says, and I can hear the smile in his voice. “You’re a star.” He smiles because he’s proud and he loves me, fissures and all. He’s patient; he’s sweet. He worships my body when we make love. He is not Calvin. “Coming over for dinner?” he asks.
“Actually, I have some things to wrap up. Can we hang tomorrow?”
“You know, if you lived here, I could see you tonight.”
I nod, familiar with his teasing. “So you keep saying.”
“I know you’ve got a lot on your plate and that moving would be a pain in the ass, but . . . once it’s done, things will get easier. Not just financially.”
“I know, honey. I promise it’s on my mind. Along with a lot of other things.”
“Okay. As long as you’re considering it. Did you lock the gallery door?”
“Yes.”
“I worry about you there by yourself. I don't like that you’re so close to the East Side.”
“I’ll be careful. Love you.”
“You too. Call you in the morning.”
I hang up and stare at the phone for a minute before setting my face in my open palms. I do this most nights without meaning to—take a moment to myself once I’m completely alone. Sometimes to remind myself that I’m doing what I love. Sometimes to think about my parents. Sometimes I wonder about Guy Fowler and why he set the Cartel leaders up knowing Hero would knock them down one by one.
But tonight I don’t think about any of those things. Like most nights, I only think about Calvin. Not Hero, and not my captor. Just Calvin.
I replay the look on his face when I told him I couldn’t do it. Three years later, it’s just as clear. It’s seared into my heart because I’d never seen him look like that before. I’d seen anger, domination, frustration, maybe even remorse in his eyes. But this was something else—pain that came from the depths of a man I never got to meet.
Nobody ever knew my soul like Calvin, even if it was a forced entry. Not before then, not since then. That’s what I’m thinking when I hear a noise and look up. Calvin stands in the doorway, one shoulder against the doorframe as he watches me.
My heart’s in my throat in an instant. Some slivered-off piece of relief floods my system, like part of me was afraid I’d never see him again. I guess that part was wrong.
“Cataline.”
“Calvin?” My elbows are still on the desk, my hands frozen where my forehead had been. “What are you doing here?”
His eyes scan the walls, lingering over my photographs. “I had to see with my own eyes,” he says quietly. “Why now?”
I follow his gaze. The exhibit took me this long to present, but it still threatened to reverse the progress I’ve made the last few years. My hell, plastered in color, black and white, and sepia against eggshell walls. Yet, in being surrounded by photographs taken in the mansion, I’ve also found comfort because they take me back to him.
“Why are you sitting there, your head in your hands, looking miserable?” Calvin asks. “You of all people know what misery is. It’s not this.”
“I think I should be the one asking the questions.”
He glides a hand through the air, an invitation.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
“I read about the exhibit.”
“So?”
“I watched you take some of these photos. I know what they mean to you.”
“That’s it?”
He sighs and after a moment, walks further into the room. “Tell me one thing.”
My hands drop into my lap. I shouldn’t be surprised that he’s just broken into my gallery after three years and is demanding answers from me.
“Are you happy?” he asks.
Years ago, I would’ve asked him what he cared if I was happy, or why it mattered to him. I would’ve asked him what right he had to know that about me. But all this time away from him, missing him, has loosened the angry knot that replaced my heart when I left. “I don’t know, Calvin. I don’t think I know how to be happy.”
>
“Do you still not love me?”
“That’s two things.”
His lip twitches into a half-smile. “Do you?”
The question dangles in silence as I look at him. He absentmindedly slicks hair away from his forehead and then burrows his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He’s not wearing his glasses, only a dark, pullover sweater with pushed up sleeves and he’s just Calvin.
“You broke me,” I say just above a whisper. “And nobody can put me back together but you.”
He inhales a deep breath.
The confusion I’ve always felt since the mansion throbs in my veins, heightened by his presence. “Why are you here? To torment me?”
“Because I love you. And I’m not a strong enough man to bow out like I should. After three years, that love hasn’t waned. Because I’ve always loved you, since you were a little girl, I just didn’t know I was allowed to.”
“Who says you are now? Who says you’re allowed to love me? After everything we’ve been through, how could we possibly be anything but what we were in the mansion?”
“I want to set you free. Let me heal what hurts.”
“You hurt,” I say, tearing up as I place my hand over my heart. “Here. You put the wounds here, and now you want to heal them. You’re the captor who wants to set me free.” I ask him the questions I haven’t stopped asking myself since the night I learned the truth. “How can you be evil and good? How can I love and hate you? How can you be both my savior and my enemy? How can I want both punishment and forgiveness for you?”
He latches onto the word immediately. “Forgiveness?”
“I forgive you,” I say.
“For what I did to you?”
“No. I forgive you for my parents.”
Unfiltered pain crosses his face in a way that I know he couldn’t have hidden if he tried. “How could you forgive me for that?”
I rise and walk from the desk to where he stands. “Because it was never your fault,” I say, holding his gaze. “You’re not responsible for their death, for my childhood, or for me.”
“I am,” he says. “I’ve failed you, over and over.”
I flatten my hands against his chest. “It’s not your fault,” I say with an unsteady voice. “But I know you need to hear that I forgive you.”
Hero Page 26