The Big O Series

by M. S. Parker

  "Ah..."

  "Darling!"

  My mother's familiar, ebullient voice sounded through baggage claim and I winced a little. "I think my ride is here."

  He was still watching me with expectant eyes, and for half a second, I thought about saying yes.

  Have a nice life...

  "I can't," I said, the words tumbling free. "I'm just down here to see my parents." And get away from somebody who hurt me.

  "Of course." He nodded. "I understand."

  He stepped away just as Mom drew even with me, and she gave me a wide-eyed look. "Was he asking you out?" she whispered – not too quietly either.

  "Mom..."

  "He was, wasn't he?"

  "Mom," I said again. My face was so hot now I knew my cheeks probably rivaled my hair. I'd started wearing makeup again, so hopefully that was concealing some of the blush, but I doubted it was covering all of it. "Come on. I want to get my bag and go."

  "He's very cute. You should say yes," she said, walking with me as I headed toward the conveyor belt just as the red light flashed.

  He was cute, but there was no way in hell I'd say yes now, even if I didn't still have thoughts of one sexy Jake King dancing through my head. "I came here to see you and Dad, not date."

  "Honey..."

  Spying my bag and the chance to escape, I grabbed it and spun around, giving her a bright smile. "Okay. I'm ready! Besides...he just headed out. Too late, now."

  Dad was waiting at the curb for us with the car, a shiny black SUV rental. He greeted me with a quick kiss on the cheek and cupped my chin, turning my face from one side to the other. "Aren't you looking lovely?"

  "Thanks."

  He pinched my chin the way he had when I'd been a small girl, then let go. "Your mother said you sounded unhappy earlier, but you look quite well to me. Is everything alright?"

  I hesitated, not wanting to get into...well, anything. I didn't think they'd approve to hear I'd been having an affair – of sorts – with a male prostitute and now I was mooning over the fact that he'd ended it, all because he thought I'd gone to the press.

  No.

  That so wasn't something I wanted to get into with my parents. Our relationship was finally returning to something resembling normal, but we weren't so close that I felt comfortable discussing anything like that with them.

  No way in hell.

  I liked Philadelphia.

  It didn't have the frenetic, fast-pace lifestyle of New York, but there was never a lack of things to do either. I could even order in Chinese in the dead of the night – which I liked.

  They might not have a dozen different theatres all vying for your money crammed into a couple of square blocks, but they definitely had a love of the arts.

  And I loved the Forrest Theatre – Dad had bought tickets for a Broadway play when he heard I was coming to town and that made everything seem a little better. For the time being at least.

  Mom and Dad often traveled to Philadelphia, so I'd been coming here off and on most of my life and had seen everything here from plays like A Christmas Carol to Les Miserable to Stomp and Lord of the Dance.

  The outside of the magnificent theatre was unassuming. It was tall and made of pale stone, sitting on one of Philly's narrow, tree-lined streets. But on the inside, it was...beautiful. Walls that gleamed like pale gold in the dim lights, interspersed with rich accents of deep red. The chandeliers overhead sent splinters of light down to shine on the stages. People dressed in everything from semi-formal attire to jeans and t-shirts. I'd surprised my parents when I emerged from my hotel room in a dress of snug, red jersey. I'd planned to wear the dress for Jake, but that plan was out the window now. I might as well wear it for me.

  Both of them had looked a little dazed at first, and I thought maybe one of my boobs was hanging out, but a quick look down revealed that the sweetheart neckline, while sexy, wasn't all that risqué. "What's wrong?" I'd asked.

  Mom, to my horror, had teared up before stepping up to hug me. "You're just...beautiful, honey. That's all. You're beautiful."

  Now, as we followed the usher to our seats, I was cursing the shoes I'd worn, a pair of black heels with ankle straps and pointy toes. I hardly ever wore heels. These were comfortable as far as heels went, but they were still high heels, and thus...miserable. The usher gestured to our seats, and I nodded my thanks as I took my seat, along with my mother. Dad didn't sit until we did and sipped my wine as he leaned to murmur to my mother. She laughed and both of them looked at me before exchanging glances again.

  They'd been doing that all night.

  "What?" I asked, getting exasperated.

  "Nothing." My mother lifted her cocktail to her lips, sipping as she focused her gaze on the stage. Of course, there was nothing there.

  "Don't give me that. You two have been giving me odd looks all night." Wiggling my toes inside my shoes, I settled more comfortably in the chair and put both my purse and the program in my lap. "You two might as well tell me what's up. Otherwise I'll keep pestering you."

  Dad laughed.

  Mom sighed.

  I found myself smiling.

  It felt good to do that. I didn't smile enough with them – with anybody really. It was because I didn't let myself get close to people. I already knew what the problem was, and although I understood the subconscious reasoning behind it, it didn't lessen the impact on my life.

  I was lonely.

  There was distance between my parents and me, a distance that was only slowly beginning to heal, despite the fact that it had been more than eight years since everything with Parker had started.

  They blamed themselves.

  They shouldn't, and I'd told them so. I was the one who hadn't gone to them, who'd believed my uncle when he lied and convinced me that nobody would believe me.

  It wasn't my fault either.

  I was only now coming to accept that fact, really.

  It was his fault – just his.

  Reaching over, I took my mother's hand impulsively and squeezed. "I love you guys," I said softly. "I don't tell you enough."

  "Baby..." Her eyes softened, and she leaned in to hug me, enveloping me in a cloud of perfume. As she pulled back, she gave me a watery smile. "Your father and I have just been talking about the difference in you. Even since Christmas. It's like..." She laughed, a little self-consciously. "It's hard to describe, but you've reclaimed that tenacious, stubborn persona you had when you were a child."

  She didn't say the words before Parker.

  But they hung in the air all the same.

  "It's a lovely change," she continued, hurrying on as if those unspoken words were going to drastically alter the tone of the night. "Don't misunderstand me. We're delighted. And it's not like you weren't a delight to us all along. But you seem stronger now. Happier too."

  I had been.

  I'll be that way again, I told myself. No matter what. I wasn't going back to hiding the way I had been the past few years.

  "We've wondered...is there somebody you're seeing?" she asked softly.

  The words surprised me, but maybe I should have been expecting them. Mom almost always seemed to ask, as though she believed if I found the right man, he'd make everything better. But I knew better. "Nobody in particular, Mom." And I swallowed down the instinctive jerk of guilt that rose, because it was the truth. I wasn't seeing anybody.

  Not anymore.

  Twenty-Seven

  Jake

  "You know, when you told me you wanted to meet and discuss Whitley McCrane, I was hoping you had something juicy for me."

  The cat-eyed blonde sat across the table from me, watching me with a smirk on her face. She also had a glint in her eyes that worried me more than a little, but fuck it.

  "Just what did you have in mind?" I asked.

  She cocked a brow. "Details about the affair you're having with the senator's wife?"

  "I'm not having an affair with the senator's wife," I said with a shrug. It was nothing more than the
truth. I was paid to have sex with her. There was a difference.

  Heidi Kramer watched me for a long moment, turning over what I said, clearly trying to decide if I was lying or not. I didn't care what she decided at the moment, although I should. I'd made enough of a mess for Whitley. "I'm inclined to believe you. But there's something between you and Mrs. McCrane. I can see it," she said musingly. She tapped her finger against her chin and continued to study me. "I just can't decide what it might be. You're definitely not a cop."

  "No." I almost choked on my drink, pounding a fist against my chest to clear my airway. "I'm definitely not a cop."

  "Interesting reaction." Her brow winged up even higher. "So you're not her current...love interest, you're not a cop. Are you going to tell me just why you're so determined to find out who my source is?"

  "No." I smiled at her.

  She smiled back. "I didn't think so. Maybe we should stop playing games with each other." Leaning forward, she said softly, "I don't reveal my sources, sir. So...you're shit out of luck."

  The gym Whitley used in Manhattan was the same one I used, although I rarely visited. My ridiculous gym fee didn't exactly go to waste though.

  Sometimes, the place came in handy because it was the safest place to meet up with would-be clients or talk to current clients if we needed some level of privacy.

  Not many would think that a whore would use a gym to set up meets with his clientele. But then again, Platinum wasn't the standard gym.

  There was security on the doors – discreet as hell, but security all the same. Phones were allowed, of course, and people were welcome to selfie themselves all day long. But if anybody was noticed photographing somebody else – and it was watched for – the staff would make one polite request to see the phone and the pictures before the membership was revoked.

  It wasn't much of an issue there. The people who paid that fee did so because they wanted the privacy afforded within these walls.

  I met Whitley in the café where she sat near the windows. The privacy-tinted glass afforded a stunning view of the city, and she was taking it in over a smoothie some putrid shade of green when I sat down.

  "I'm sorry about all of this, Whit," I said, not sure how I was going to be greeted.

  To my surprise, she slid me a warm smile and covered my hand with hers, lacing our fingers as she always did. "Jake, honey...don't be. I'm not."

  I blinked and shook my head. Finally, I asked, "What?"

  "You heard me," she said, a laugh in her voice. She tugged her hand free and stretched, arms high overhead as she brought them forward, linking her fingers and rounding out her shoulders to release the tension in her muscles. "I'm not sorry. Not one little bit." She lowered her hands back to her lap as she settled more comfortably in her chair. "You want to know why?"

  "Ah...yeah. That would be nice."

  "I feel..." She closed her eyes, head falling back. I could see a slow smile curling her lips as she sank back into the padded cushions of the chair. "Free, Jake. Do you know how good it feels to be free from something that's chained you down for so long, you forget you were chained? You just get used to it, after a while. The chain becomes a part of you. But I'm free now."

  I smiled at her. "Free."

  She nodded and took another sip of her drink. "Now, I don't have to worry about what happens if my husband finds out. I don't have to worry about what happens if somebody else knows. Because everybody now knows...and you know what?"

  "What?"

  "The sun still rose. It will set today, and it will keep on happening. The world found out and it didn't end." The grin faded from her face as she looked away. "My marriage might. But let's be honest. It hasn't been a real marriage in a very long time, if in fact it ever was. I signed on to become a politician's wife. I should have known that would involve never being happy, shouldn't I?"

  Sympathy squeezed my chest, even though I was happy for her at the same time. "I'm sorry things have been so hard, but it's wonderful to see the smile on your face."

  She inhaled deeply. "Jake, I'm okay. Why look so grim?"

  It was confession time. I'd held this in for way to long. "I told a writer," I said flatly. "I've got a feeling she was the anonymous source. I...fuck. She told me this story about how she'd been raped by her uncle and...hell. I don't know. We were talking and what happened to you slipped out. I told her just the other day, then this hits the press. It's the only thing that makes sense."

  Whitley cocked her head. "How do you think it makes sense?"

  "The same thing happened to you."

  "No." She laughed, but it was a sad, strained sound. "The boy who raped me, awful as it was, was someone I'd gone out on a date with. I barely knew him. Having somebody from your own family..." She shook her head.

  "I'm not even–"

  "Don't say it, Jake," Whitley said in a voice as hard as any I'd ever heard from her. She leaned forward over the table, her eyes intent on mine. "Maybe she told, maybe she didn't. It doesn't make sense to me why she would, but why assume she made up a story about being raped by her uncle. I mean, did you tell her about me before or after?"

  "I...before. Actually, she told me a couple of days before. She'd had a nightmare..."

  Her mouth tightened. "Was it a real nightmare?"

  The sound of Michelle's whimpers, followed by the broken little cries echoed in my ears. "Yeah. It was real. Too real."

  "And you're still sitting here thinking she made something up to...what? Soften you up for information about an incident only a very few people know about?"

  The way she said it made me feel foolish. And worse.

  But... "If it wasn't her, then who could have gone to the press? You just said yourself very few people know."

  Whitley was quiet a moment, her finger tapping the side of her glass. "Does she know about you? What you do, I mean?"

  "Yeah."

  "There you have it." Whitley gestured with her hand, palm open and up, a little tada moment.

  But I didn't understand her big reveal, and she didn't explain right away.

  "Don't you see, Jake?" Head cocked, her gleaming ponytail falling to trail over one shoulder, she watched me. "Why would she have reported you and I were having an affair? That's not what we have going on and you know it. I pay you for sex, for companionship. I pay you so I won't be so fucking lonely. But what would come off as more tawdry in the eyes of the press? You and I having an affair? Or me paying a handsome young man like you for sex?"

  As the light dawned, and a sick feeling spread inside my gut, she settled back in her chair. "You understand now. Here I am, almost forty years old and paying a young stud for sex. That would make me look a lot worse in the press than you and I having an affair. Hell, if I go to the press and talk to the right people about how my husband really is..." She shrugged. "They'd have me looking like Mother Theresa by the time it was all over. Not a woman alive would blame me for looking outside the marriage for something...more, even if it is something I had to pay for."

  I barely heard the rest of her words though. I was too busy seeing the look in Michelle's eyes. She told me she hadn't broken my trust.

  Had she been telling the truth?

  No, some part of me insisted. It still made sense.

  But that was the stubborn bastard who just couldn't accept that he'd been wrong. And it wasn't about being wrong, even. It was because if I had been wrong, then I'd put that look in her eyes. I'd put that pain on her face.

  I didn't want to think that might be possible.

  "It feels good not carrying that ugly weight inside," Whitley said, drawing my attention back to her. "Like I said...I feel free. I think I'm almost grateful even, you know that?"

  Dragging my eyes back to her, I waited.

  She continued, that faint smile returning to her lips. "I think I'm going to talk to a lawyer, see about getting a divorce...finding my own life. Washington never did make me happy, you know. And I'm not going to let him use this against me. If I do
that..." She blew out a breath. "Wow. I really will be free. For the first time in my life. I think I am grateful." She got up then and came around the table, pausing by my side. "Thank you, Jake."

  As she bent to kiss my cheek, I covered the hand she'd put on my shoulder. "For what?"

  "For listening. For caring. For helping me feel good about myself...for just being you."

  She left then, her sneakered feet silent on the gleaming black marble. Once she was gone, the quiet became almost deafening as I thought about just what it was I might have done.

  Twenty-Eight

  Michelle

  Aunt Blair picked me up from JFK.

  I'd taken a cab there, but when she texted me yesterday to ask if I wanted lunch and I'd told her I was in Philly for a few days, she offered to pick me up and we could get lunch after.

  Now, as I sat across from her at one of our favorite bistros a few blocks away from Times Square, I couldn't stop thinking about an interview I'd read online from Whitley McCrane.

  She'd given the interview to one of the online sites last night and it had since been read and shared hundreds of thousands of times.

  It wasn't because of the 'alleged' affair either.

  That was barely even remarked on.

  Whitley knew how to spin the media, that was for certain. She'd found somebody to talk to that understood women's issues and the entire focus was on her rape. Much of the story was about how freeing she found it to no longer have to pretend that the entire ordeal hadn't happened, not to have to hide away from it anymore.

  "Darling...you're a million miles away again," Aunt Blair said softly.

  Shifting my gaze to her, I thought again about what Whitley had said in that article.

  Freeing.

  What would it be like to be free? Free of the nerves and the fear and the insistent shame that crept up on me when I was unaware?