by Laura Leone
She looked as if she'd never really seen him before.
"I told you I wasn't who you thought I was." When he saw tears gather in her beautiful dark eyes, he said desperately, "I told you the truth would make a difference between us, Sara."
Tears started to roll down her cheeks, glinting in the golden candlelight.
"Aw, Jesus, don't." He rested his elbows on his knees, put his aching head in his hands, and stared at the floor, unable to look at her anymore. "Please don't do that."
She tried to speak, but she choked on a sob.
"Please, stop," he whispered.
"Wh... Why?"
"Because I can't stand it," he said desperately. "I can't stand making you cry."
"No, I mean... I mean, why do you do it? Why do you sell yourself like... like some..."
"Like a whore?"
"Like some thing!"
He kept his gaze on the floor. "This is the way things worked out."
"What are you talking about?" She made an angry noise and shifted in her chair. "Worked out? How do things just work out this way, Ryan?" When he didn't answer, she added sharply, "Or, now that I've had my hand inside your pants, should I call you Kevin?"
His head snapped up at that. "No."
"Why not? Isn't that the name you use when you're working?"
He was stung by her comparing what happened between them to what he did on the job. "Almost all escorts work under a phony name, Sara. For privacy, for protection." He didn't know the legal names of any of Catherine's employees, and they didn't know his, either. When he was in that world, he was Kevin. "But I don't use my working name here. I don't use it with you."
Sara glared through her tears. "So do I owe you anything for your time this evening? What's the fee?"
"You couldn't afford me, Sara," he snapped.
"Oh, is that why you threw me on the floor a little while ago?" she snapped back. "Because if we'd gone through with it, you knew I couldn't have paid you?"
"Jesus, Sara!"
She rose to her feet and demanded shrilly, "Was that a business decision?"
He rose, too. "You're the one who insisted on knowing the truth!" he shouted. "You're the one who had to have details!"
Their agitation again disturbed the dog, who now rose to his feet, too, and started whining. They both ignored him.
Sara shouted back, "How could you keep lying right to my face every single day since we met?"
"Goddamn it, Sara, do you think I ever wanted you to know any of this?" He was angry and hurt and bitterly ashamed. "Do you think I haven't been going crazy trying to figure out how to tell you, or else how to give you up so I'd never have to tell you? So you'd never look at me the way you're looking at me right now? Right now, Sara!"
She gasped, then closed her eyes and pressed her hands to her face. "Oh, my God. I can't believe this is happening. Oh, God."
He watched her shoulders shake. Longing to touch her, and knowing he shouldn't try, he said in quiet despair, "I'm sorry."
She tried to speak, swallowed, then lifted her tear-streaked face to meet his eyes. "I'm sorry, too."
Their gazes locked, acknowledging the hurt they'd inflicted on each other, sharing their regret over it. Connecting exactly the way they'd become so accustomed to connecting with each other.
"I should never have let this happen," he whispered to her. "Getting this close to you."
"It wasn't just your choice to make," she said on a watery sigh. "I knew I'd probably get hurt. And I knew there were things you weren't telling me—possibly important things. But I couldn't... Didn't want to..." She gazed at him for another moment. "I couldn't stop."
"I couldn't, either," he admitted. "But I should have, and I knew it."
"But whatever I imagined you were hiding..." She shook her head. "Well, I never imagined anything like this."
"I know."
"I don't think I knew anything like this really happened."
"I wish you still didn't know," he said. "But Sara... We nearly became lovers tonight. And I couldn't do that without telling you what I am."
"What you are..." She shook her head. "But, Ryan... or Kev—"
"Don't."
She looked at him.
"Please, don't," he said. "Don't ever call me Kevin."
"I... All right."
"Promise me. Not even if you get really mad at me again. Just... promise me you'll always say 'Ryan,' okay?"
"Okay. I promise."
"Because I..." He looked away for a moment, trying to find a way to say it. "I've never worked you, Sara. And I promise I never will. I know I haven't been honest, but I swear I've always been sincere with you."
"Then..." Her eyes overflowed again as she asked brokenly, "Then is this real?" She made a gesture indicating the two of them. "What's between us. Is it real?"
He wanted to touch her so much. "It's so real it's eating me up." He closed his eyes. "It feels like the only real thing in my life."
She made a little sound, twisting the knife in his heart. After a long moment, she said, "Well, I understand why you didn't tell me the truth when we met. This isn't really the sort of thing you can tell a new neighbor. But—"
"I don't tell anybody. Ever. I mean, not anybody who knows me as Ryan. This is a separate life. In this life—Ryan's life—you're the only person I've ever told."
She glanced at the chair where they'd come so close to making love. "Because you had to tell me."
"Yes." He folded his arms over his chest, because that made it easier to control the impulse to reach for her. "But I guess I'd have had to tell you sooner or later, anyhow, Sara, even if we never wanted... what we wanted tonight. Even if there was no risk of me hurting you that way." He tightened his arms against his own body. "Because I've never liked anybody as much as I like you, and I guess you're also the person I respect most—and trust most—out of everyone I've known."
"Ryan..." She sounded so surprised, he realized she hadn't known just how much he treasured her, even if they hadn't known each other that long.
"So I didn't like lying to you. I didn't want to keep doing it. It already felt like a violation of our friendship. Of your trust in me. Apart from the way it's made me..." He drew a shaky breath. "...try to keep my hands off you. Because I knew if I touched you, I'd have to tell you the truth. And then you wouldn't want me to touch you again."
She gave a little start, as if she'd forgotten what his revelations meant in terms of where their relationship had been about to go; where they'd both been longing, for some time, for it to go.
"So I didn't touch you, but I wanted to," he said. Her gaze softened, and he felt a foolish hope unfurl inside his chest. "And I still want to."
"Oh." Her voice was barely audible.
His heart was pounding so hard he wondered if she could hear it. "Now that you know the truth, and maybe we're both kind of tired of talking... I'd really like you to come into the bedroom with me and stay the night." He heard her startled breath and saw her gaze shift uneasily from him, to the bedroom door, and back to him. "But if you don't want to do that," he added, "now, or next week, or ever... I understand."
"Um..." She nervously started trying to smoothe her tangled hair. "I don't... Um, I don't know, Ryan. I..."
His heart sank.
Come on, what did you expect? he chided himself.
"It's okay, Sara," he said.
She glanced over her shoulder at the balcony door, as if longing for escape now. Then she turned back to him. She looked uneasy and unsure of what to say.
You knew it would be this way, he told himself. You knew.
Sara suddenly hugged herself and gave a bitter puff of laughter. "Lately, I'm not sure there's anything, not even success, that I've wanted as much as I've wanted you to invite me to bed."
"And I don't remember the last time I wanted anything as much as I want you in my bed."
He saw the effect his words had on her and felt guilty. He knew exactly the right things to say to g
et what he wanted now. Just as he knew how to do things to coax her into his bed. She was very smart, but he was an expert at this. He'd been taught very well, and he had excelled at his lessons. One way or the other, even against Sara's better judgment, he could seduce her if he wanted to. Especially in her current state of emotional confusion.
But, as truthful as that line about wanting her in his bed had been, saying it to her right now was unfair. And saying or doing anything that would be deliberately calculated to manipulate her... No, that wasn't the way he wanted things to be between them.
She said, "Everything's different now, Ryan."
"I know."
He wanted the affection and the warmth. He wanted the heat. He couldn't even remember when he'd last wanted sex as much as he wanted it now, with her.
"I'm just really... pole-axed by this," she said.
To sink inside of her, to melt and meld with her, to give her pleasure, to feel her touch everywhere, to know every inch of her skin, to share himself as he never did...
He said, "Of course you are."
That might be worth eternity in hell... But it wouldn't be worth losing whatever regard she had left for him. Even if not touching her was starting to feel like starving, he was pretty sure that it was nonetheless better than losing her friendship or being unworthy of her trust.
He had never worked her like a client, and he never would. He had promised her that, and he meant it.
She said, "I never thought I'd say this if you asked, Ryan... but, um, no. I... I don't think I can stay."
You knew it would be this way.
He nodded, suddenly unable to speak.
She said, "I'm sorry."
"D..." He pressed his lips together and got control of his voice. "Don't apologize. You're right. You shouldn't... I know this wouldn't be right for you, Sara. I knew it from the start."
Her face crumpled a little. "But, Ryan, I d... I don't underst.." She lowered her head, sniffed, and wiped impatiently at her eyes. "I don't understand why you..."
His throat hurt so much it was hard to say, "I'll get you some tissues." For the first time since they'd met, it was a relief to leave a room while she was in it. He fled to bathroom, which was wedged behind the bedroom, and leaned against the sink there for a minute, trying to pull himself together.
After a few long, dark moments, he lit the candle he kept on the vanity for nights when the power went out. He nearly flinched when he saw his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He'd forgotten about the damage from the fight with Derrick. The fresh bruises combined with the emotional stress to make him look like an improbable specimen for an expensive hired lover.
"You had to know a woman like her wouldn't want you," he said to his reflection. "And you knew the longer you didn't tell her the truth, the more it would hurt her when you finally did. You're a shit."
He picked up the box of tissues from the top of the toilet tank and headed back to the living room.
When he got there, the room was empty. Sara was gone.
The French doors were ajar, and Macy stood with his head sticking outside, letting the drizzle hit his nose. Ryan pushed him aside and stepped out into the light rain. In the faint glow of the city lights, he could see the tread of Sara's shoes on the wet surface of the balcony, going from his apartment to hers. Her French doors were closed. There was no lock, and she knew he knew it; but her silent departure was enough to bar him from pursuit, and she probably knew that, too.
He tried to stifle the sudden flood of despair.
Come on, what did you expect?
He'd known it would be this way.
Re-entering his apartment, he stumbled a little as Macy suddenly turned and pushed past him. The dog went to stand by the front door, then turned his head to look at Ryan expectantly.
"Right," Ryan said wearily. "Time for your walk." As he went into the bedroom to get a shirt and some shoes, he said over his shoulder, "But I am not carrying you back upstairs tonight."
Chapter Eight
Ryan wasn't surprised when he found the young pickpocket in Cow Hollow the next afternoon. While watching the kid work the crowd outside of Catherine's townhouse yesterday, Ryan had noticed that he had more guts than brains. So it wouldn't occur to the boy that it was a mistake to come back here right after having lifted a wallet in this neighborhood; he thought that success here yesterday promised success here today.
Ryan wore sunglasses, a baseball cap, an old sweatshirt, and even older jeans. He felt sure the kid wouldn't spot him, but he maintained his distance, even so, as he kept the boy under observation. After a while, he felt downright embarrassed that this kid had been able to frisk him; the boy was about as deft a pickpocket as Sara was an electrical engineer.
Sara...
He had tried not to want what he wanted, but he couldn't help it. Ever since meeting her, he'd fallen under her spell. Tumbling into the colorful warmth of her nature was so natural, so inexorable, he hadn't known how to stop. Hadn't really wanted to stop. Because, when he was with her, for the first time in years, he was happy.
He sort of remembered happiness from his childhood. So long ago. But until meeting Sara, he hadn't realized that he'd given up expecting to feel it again. And he'd forgotten how powerful it was. Even more powerful than sex, which Catherine had always told him was the most powerful force in human experience.
Happiness. Yes, he'd given up thinking of it in relation to himself. Until Sara made it float inside of him like a water lily surfacing above all the muck.
He certainly never saw happiness in his work. Not among the other prostitutes he knew. And not among the women who, each for reasons of her own, paid for an ideal companion. He gave his clients pleasure; that had become easy by now. But not happiness, which he'd learned long ago couldn't be bought and sold.
He thought sometimes he gave it to Sara, but now...
Now he had ruined it. He was bound to ruin it, of course; he'd known that from the start, and still he hadn't been able to leave her alone. Because she gave him happiness; and he had wanted it more desperately than he'd ever realized.
And if he'd been anything else but what he was, maybe they'd be together right now, sharing a meal after hours of satisfying sex. They'd be sitting together on her living room floor, or maybe holding hands at the neighborhood café... Sara making him laugh, Sara delighting him with the way she saw things, putting the world into perspective, or pulling it way out of perspective and somehow making sense of it that way. Sara laughing at his jokes, because such a funny woman thought he was funny, too. Sara listening intently to him, because such a smart woman nonetheless seemed to find his thoughts worth hearing.
Maybe they'd be with each other, right now. Happy...
If I'd really been just a model. Or...
He should stop dwelling on it. He'd already spent all night on it. At times angry and hurt, at other moments disappointed but resigned. And wondering if there was a better way he could have explained things.
Oh, like what?
There was no good way to explain what he was to a woman like Sara.
"But didn't she want you to be real?" she had asked him.
How could Sara, to whom sincerity meant everything, understand that the whole point of someone like him was that he wasn't supposed to be real?
Years ago, Catherine had taught him that a real man belched at the table, farted in bed, scratched his crotch in public, wanted sex when a woman didn't, or didn't want it when a woman did, interrupted a woman and looked bored when she talked, made her feel self-conscious about her breasts or her thighs or her stretch marks (even if she'd gotten them bearing his child), ridiculed her opinions, second-guessed her financial decisions, was rude to her friends... and was the reason that a woman who could afford it came to someone like Catherine to procure someone like him.
Even if Catherine was unduly cynical about men in general, the comments of various clients over the years had revealed to him that she was at least partially accurate about
their men.
He wasn't supposed to be real; he was supposed to be ideal.
Women who hired someone like Kevin rarely mistook an escort for the real thing. They almost never wanted the real thing. And it usually got messy if they did.
What Ryan had with Sara, though—whatever it was... that was real.
It might also be over.
Feeling morose and tired, he continued shadowing the pickpocket, casually following him around the elegant neighborhood where Catherine ran her business, watching him make bold and clumsy tries for another score. Finally, a woman standing on a street corner and wearing a leather backpack purse felt the kid fumbling with its clasp behind her. She whirled around, shrieked, and clobbered him, drawing the attention of a dozen people.
Ryan shook his head and wondered how in the world he had let someone this sloppy take him yesterday.
Well, I'd had a hard day. I guess I was a little distracted.
The kid started backing away from the woman and several other people who were now crowding around, too. He was shaking his head in denial and holding up his hands in pretended innocence. The woman didn't buy it. She advanced on him angrily, seized his sleeve... then reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a cell phone. The kid started struggling, and the woman clung to him fiercely as she started talking into the phone.
Calling the cops, no doubt. After all, that's what normal people did when someone tried to steal their wallets.
Ryan waited, wondering what would happen. The kid, obviously in a panic now, finally succeeded in twisting roughly out of the woman's hold and escaping her grasp. He dodged past someone trying to stop him, then ran down the street as if he had wings on his feet.
Ryan started after him, pleased. If, as he suspected, the kid would respond to this scare by retreating to his rabbit hole and hiding there until he regained his nerve, that would make Ryan's day considerably shorter. He'd anticipated having to tail the kid for many hours before finding out where he holed up; so this unlucky break for the pickpocket was a lucky one for Ryan.
As Ryan reached the small crowd gathered around the woman who had grabbed the boy, he heard the woman, still on her cell phone, telling 911 what the kid looked like and which way he was going. Ryan shifted his direction just enough to grab the woman's cell phone as he ran past her.