by Laura Leone
He looked down. After a moment, he asked, "Did you really think I'd do that?" When she didn't answer, he said, "I've been honest. You have to be honest, too. Is that what you think of me?"
He felt a little sick when she didn't answer immediately.
After a heavy moment, she finally said, "I understand why it seemed... No, to be fair, why it was the best option in your life once upon a time." She paused. "But I don't understand why you're still doing it." When he didn't reply, she continued, "Ryan, you have everything going for you—"
"No, I don't."
"You're intelligent, good-looking, charming—"
"A great escort," he said with grim irony.
"You could do something else with your life. Something you wouldn't have to hide from people or lie about."
"Like what?" He shook his head. "Sara, I have no work history, no skills, and I have an arrest record."
"You could get out of this life," she insisted.
"I tried," he snapped. "It didn't work. I'm stuck, Sara."
She stared in surprise and waited for him to say more.
He reached for his wallet, threw some money on the table, and stood up. "Macy will be standing at my front door with his legs crossed by now."
Sara rose, too, and followed him out of the bar.
Chapter Eleven
Now he was avoiding her.
Sara sighed despondently and stared at the blinking cursor on her computer screen.
When she'd been miserable in her day job... When her comfortable but unsatisfying relationship with her boyfriend, Nathen, had ended after two years... When her mother was dying... Sara had coped with those hard times by throwing herself into her work and disappearing into the world of her novels. Immersing herself in the fiction she created, and which often controlled her as much as she controlled it. Writing was not only Sara's passion and her obsession, it had also been a solace to her in times of grief. It was a healthy, satisfying, productive means of exorcising her demons and focusing her energy when the rest of her life was going to hell.
And now, when she needed her concentration so much, when her career was on the line, when her very identity as a writer was in question... She had produced a grand total of two paragraphs all day. And they were both crap. She'd probably have to scrap them.
Damn Ryan!
The one good thing she could say about his behavior lately was that it had taken her mind off being dumped by her literary agent last week.
Sara peered into her coffee cup, saw nothing but congealed dregs there, and scowled.
Ryan had been so sweet, so supportive, and so intelligent in his reaction to her agent dumping her. How could he be such a comfort to her sometimes, and drive her so nuts at other times?
Ever since bringing her home from the bar so he could take Macy for his walk that evening, he'd been ducking her company. When he couldn't avoid her, he kept the conversation superficial. This had been going on for five days now.
How could he tell her such personal things... and then behave since then as if none of that had occurred between them?
She wondered if her reaction had hurt him, if she'd offended or distressed him that evening in the bar. She'd tried to broach the subject since then, but—on the rare occasions when he deigned to be in her company—he kept shifting the conversation, evading the topic, and avoiding another serious discussion.
How could he do this to her?
Sara wiped some dust off her monitor, realized she'd have to do some cleaning before her housewarming party on Saturday, and went into the kitchen.
Ryan was intuitive, intelligent, sensitive, kind, funny, attractive, and personable. Sara thought that he was surely the strongest and bravest person she'd ever known, and she could scarcely imagine how resourceful he'd needed to be to survive the challenges he'd encountered as a boy.
How could a man like that think he had nothing better to do with his life than prostitution?
Whenever she was with him, she felt simultaneously more excited and more comfortable than she'd ever felt with anyone in her life. Didn't he feel it, too? And if he did, how could he simply trot off to more dinner dates and sexual encounters with other women?
For God's sake, stop thinking about him, and think about your damn book, would you?
She was about to pick up the coffee canister, but she paused a moment to consider how tense she was, then picked up the canister of decaf, instead.
The story of Ryan's life was a nightmare which began the moment his mother died. Sara thought about what a loving, nurturing parent she must have been, to have raised a boy who could survive what Ryan eventually survived with his soul, his sense of humor, and even his sense of honor intact.
Oh, yes, he was honorable. He could have continued lying and gotten anything he wanted from Sara, emotionally and sexually, and he knew it. But, instead, he had chosen to be honest with her, even knowing how she might react.
How I have reacted.
She poured water into the coffee machine, turned it on, and stood there watching it brew as she wondered if she should just go ahead and sleep with Ryan, despite what she now knew.
He had said what was between them was different. That he felt he needed a different word for it.
If it's not the same as what he does at work...
Regardless of how many women he'd had sex with in his life—or how many women he'd had sex with in the last month—Sara accepted that it didn't mean anything to him. Not only because she chose to believe what he told her, but also because of the way his loneliness reached out to her. As hers, she supposed, reached out to him.
She wondered if his loneliness had intensified beyond bearing since the two of them first met, as hers had.
He found unwanted animals, adopted them, and spoiled them. They were something for him to love, someone for him to come home to. They were the family he'd lost in childhood and so far hadn't replaced in adulthood. They were something he could protect and tend. He rescued them as no one had rescued him.
Until Catherine.
Oh, man, I can't believe that woman!
She had a hell of a hold over Ryan. He was so grateful to her for getting him off the streets, he couldn't see how she had exploited a helpless adolescent. He was actually loyal to her. He felt he owed her his life. And that he deserved the existence he was stuck in.
What can I do for him?
He could have chosen to maintain a casual distance from Sara ever since she'd moved into this apartment. He could have retreated from their friendship rather than let it lead here, to this stark exposure of all that he chose to hide from people who knew him as Ryan. But he hadn't. He had continued moving forward with their relationship, knowing full well that he might lose her affection and respect after being truthful with her. He was that brave.
She wished she knew what to do. How to respond to the naked honesty he'd shown her. How to give him the kind of support and confidence he had such a talent for giving her. Good God, how would she ever have gotten through the past couple of months without Ryan's friendship?
What could she give him in return for all that? How could she help this lost man, this abandoned soul, this wayward altar boy fallen so far from grace?
What can I do for him?
She thought back to their dizzying embrace in the stairwell last week, after her tears had faded. When she recalled the tension in his touch, the hunger in his gaze, she knew perfectly well what she could do for him, though it seemed an absurd paradox, given what he did for a living.
Was Sara, by rejecting him sexually now that she knew the truth, merely confirming what Ryan thought about himself? That he wasn't good for anything besides prostitution, that he was just a cleaned-up street boy, that he had nothing real to offer a woman—only the façade which Catherine had created?
Or maybe Sara was just trying to rationalize a choice she increasingly wanted to make despite her better judgment.
Gosh, no, I just think it would be so good for him if I went t
o bed with him.
What a good Sumerian she was.
Because he doesn't get nearly enough sex.
She felt like beating her head against the wall.
It wouldn't be just sex. It would mean something to him. He had said so. And that made it different for him. It would mean something to her, too, and that made it...
"It would mean something to me," she murmured.
And it would mean something to him.
Sara sat staring at the coffee pot and suddenly couldn't remember why anything mattered beyond those two facts.
"Sara?" he called from the living room.
"Yagh!" She jumped in startled fear and dropped her coffee cup, which crashed to the floor and shattered into a million pieces.
"Sara?" Ryan came into the kitchen. His gaze took in the broken cup and Sara standing there with her hand over her pounding heart. "Did I startle you? Sorry."
"Where did you come from?" she snapped.
"The balcony," he said. "You left your doors open, so I—"
"I've been leaving them open so you'd know you could come in if you suddenly felt like lowering yourself to spend some time with me."
He looked a little wary. "Is the writing going badly?"
"What makes you think that?" she said defensively.
"Oh, your mood."
"My mood is your fault!"
"And you're on the same page you were on the last time I looked, which was two days ago."
"You looked at my computer screen?" she demanded. "You looked?"
"It's sitting right out there in the open, Sara."
"I live alone!"
"You left the doors open for me."
"I didn't think you'd come in!"
He lifted one brow. "Do you want me to leave?"
"No," she said quickly. "You should help me clean up. You made me drop the cup, after all."
His lips twitched. "Okay. I'll help. But do me a favor and lay off the caffeine."
She handed him a broom. "Where have you been?" she demanded.
"Today? I took Adam for a meal again."
"Adam? Oh! That kid?"
"Yeah."
"He finally gave you a name?"
"Yes." He added wryly, "After I'd fed him four times and let him keep a hundred dollars of my money. Trust doesn't come cheap."
"He trusts you now?"
"No, I guess 'trust' would be an exaggeration. But today was the first time he came over to talk to me when he saw me, instead of panicking or trying to bolt."
"So he's decided you're not a sadistic pervert who wants to torture and kill him?"
"Actually, no, I don't think he's decided that yet. But he's getting a little closer to it."
"I hate to imagine what that's like. To be so helpless. To be a kid all alone in a hostile and dangerous world, with no rights and no protection."
He nodded and continued his task. Sara folded her arms and watched in silence as he swept the floor thoroughly. She noticed the final faint discoloration had faded from his eye since the last time she'd seen him. That meant he'd be going back to work any moment. In fact, maybe that's why he'd been so scarce lately; maybe he was already working again.
He gave her an amused look. "When you said I had to help, you really meant I had to clean it up for you, didn't you?"
"Why won't you quit this life?"
The plaintive question was out of her mouth before she even knew she was thinking it, let alone contemplating saying it aloud.
He sighed and rested his forehead against the broom for a moment. "I tried. I can't. That's why I've been avoiding you ever since you asked about it. Because this..." He made a vague gesture indicating the two of them. "...this will only hurt you. And I don't want to hurt you."
"Too late now."
He met her eyes. "I'm sorry."
"What do you mean, you tried? How? What happened?" When he didn't reply, she said querulously, "Try harder."
He gave a startled puff of laughter. Then he bent over to sweep the little pile of rubble into the dustpan. "A few years ago, I decided I wanted to quit. Catherine didn't take me seriously at first. Then she was angry. We fought about it a lot."
"She inflicted guilt, of course," Sara said with a sneer, sitting down at the kitchen table.
"Well, she did a lot for me, Sara." He emptied the dustpan into the garbage can then sat down at the table, too.
"Ryan, I believe you when you say she saved your life that night." It still made her feel dizzy with horror to think of him brutalized, alone, and lying unconscious in the dark street at the age of sixteen. "And, given the things that happened to you, maybe she saved your life twice over by taking you off the streets for good." She shook her head as she added, "But if you did that for Adam, would you think it entitled you to turn him into a prostitute and make him work for you?"
"No. But if you did that for Adam, wouldn't you wind up one day encouraging him to become a writer?"
"Ryan," she said sincerely, "I wouldn't encourage anyone to become a writer."
He chuckled, his mood shifting suddenly. Then he asked, "Have you thought over what we talked about a few days ago?"
"Constantly."
"So are you going to do it?"
Go to bed with you?
"Sara?" he prodded.
Am I going to do it? Maybe I really am. What do I say now?
"Well?" he asked. "Are you going to write to some of those agents?"
"Huh?" She blinked. "Oh! That conversation."
"Yes, that conversation, Sara.".
On one of the few occasions they'd spoken in recent days, she'd been trying to decide whether or not to query a couple of literary agents now, or wait until the book was done. Although Sara had dark superstitions about discussing a work-in-progress with anyone, let alone showing it to them, she nonetheless felt it would be smart to hire a new agent before she completed the manuscript, so that the agent could start marketing it as soon as it was done. That would be a more economical use of her time than searching for an agent only after the book was finished. On the other hand, agents tended to respond more intelligently to a completed novel, since partial books and book proposals were only shadows of what they would become when finally completed. So Sara had been having trouble making up her mind.
But after talking it over with Ryan, and considering his sensible opinions, she had decided to start looking for a new agent now rather than waiting.
"Yes, yes," she said absently, "I've sent queries to a couple of agents. Don't change the subject. Catherine took advantage of you when she turned you—"
"Catherine doesn't think of prostitution—or sex—the way you do, Sara." His briefly improved mood flattened again as they returned to this subject. "It's just business to her. A lucrative one. She probably thought she was doing right by me when she started training me to—"
"Oh, good grief, Ryan! You don't know nearly as much about women as you think you do. She knew exactly what she was doing."
He held up a hand to forestall further argument about it. "Anyhow," he said, "when I told her I was getting ready to quit, we fought about it. Meanwhile, I decided I wanted to put aside a pile of money, so I wouldn't wind up in the street again as soon as I stopped working for her. I'd spent every penny I'd ever earned. On clothes, a car, dining out, a nice apartment I'd moved into a couple of years earlier, other stuff... I didn't really know where it went. I'd been stupid about money—"
"You hadn't had anyone to teach you. And I'm sure she encouraged you to spend it as fast as you earned it. It would have been a way for her to maintain control over you."
"So, with an eye to leaving the life altogether, I started doing tricks on the side, in addition to my tricks for Catherine. To make extra money."
"That had to be a little... tiring."
"I was young, and I ate lots of protein." His voice was dry. "Before long, she found out I was free-lancing. I'd never seen her so mad at anybody. I agreed to stop it—but I was lying. And when she found out I wa
s still doing it, I thought she'd have a stroke, she was so enraged."
By then, their fights were legendary among the rest of the employees. The two of them went round and round in circles, and he supposed people listened outside the door while he and Catherine shouted at each other. He didn't understand why she wouldn't let him quit working for her. She had let Jason leave, she let other people leave. So why wouldn't she let him leave?
Sometimes she'd flatter him: There was nobody else like him, he was her number one boy, there were clients whom only he was charming and smart enough to satisfy. Sometimes she'd make it personal: He was her favorite, there was something special between them. And sometimes she'd get straight to the point: She had saved his goddamn life, she'd taught him everything he knew, she'd made him what he was, and now he belonged to her.
"Well," said Sara. "At least she was frank about it."
"I drove her crazy," Ryan said. "I pushed her, I lied to her, I challenged her, I goaded her. I decided I'd either make her let me go or I'd make her kill me. I wanted out, and I'd do whatever was necessary to get there."
Sara could see that he'd brought the same determination to his escape from Catherine that he'd brought to his escape from his father or his survival in the streets. However, unlike those earlier challenges, Catherine was clever. She also, Sara could tell, had an emotional hold over Ryan that made her a more powerful foe. Yes, there was loyalty, gratitude, and guilt mixed with Ryan's resentment and disillusionment. Even he knew that. There was also, Sara suspected, a more primal connection, too. Ryan had been infatuated and sexually obsessed with Catherine for a long time; and she was the woman who had taught him to make love, after all.
All of that put together, Sara guessed, ensured that, however determined Ryan was, it had nonetheless been a complicated and difficult decision for him to leave Catherine.
And that amoral, opportunistic bitch had done everything she could to make it even more difficult and complicated, Sara thought angrily as Ryan told her about their fights and Catherine's attempts to manipulate him.
"And then I got arrested," Ryan said wearily. "For the second time. I was doing a free-lance trick in..." He paused and shook his head. "It's pretty sleazy, Sara."