by Serena Grey
“Stop this…” I whisper.
“How long before it’s you?” His eyes are desperate, hopeless. “Aren’t you afraid that you’ll end up like us?”
“No.” I take both his hands in mine. “Because I don’t see anything wrong with you, Landon. I love you.”
He ignores me and rises to his feet. “I need another drink.”
I get up and face him. Somewhere inside, something is tugging at me, some insecure thought. He’s unraveling because of Ava, because he’s devastated, because he still loves her, because… I silence the thought. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” I say firmly. “This is not the time to fall apart. Think of the negative press, the questions people will ask about the security at the Gold Dust. Think of the fact that Evans is on the run, think of how much he hates you. You have to pull yourself together and manage this.”
Landon sighs and lowers himself back on the seat. His eyes close and I swallow a lump of pain. He’s falling apart because of her. My hand goes to my belly, hovering protectively over where my child is growing. Our child.
“I’m going to ask Jed to call the pilot and make sure you’re ready to leave in a few hours,” I whisper. “The whole world knows she was asking for you. You have to go.”
Landon nods and opens his eyes, and I remove my hand from my belly, afraid that he may have caught the gesture, but once again, it’s almost as if he’s looking through me. I’m going to have a baby. The words play at my lips, but it doesn’t feel right to tell him now, when he’s so haunted by another woman’s pain.
A woman he still cares about, obviously.
“You’re right,” he says. “Of course. I have to go.”
I nod. My mind churning with all the insecurities I’m trying to push aside. Ava is the damsel in distress, and when my prince rides to the rescue, would he become her prince? Was a prince allowed to rescue more than one damsel? Who decided which damsel would get the happy-ever-after?
I almost laugh, the turmoil in my heart verging on hysterical. I have to call Jed. I have to arrange for the plane and tell Esmeralda to pack a suitcase for Landon. I start to walk away, but Landon’s voice stops me.
“Will you come with me?”
I turn back to face him, and this time, he’s really looking at me, and there is entreaty in his blue gaze.
I close my eyes. “Of course.”
IN San Francisco, a car is waiting at the airport to take us straight to the hospital. Outside, a respectable distance from the entrance, there’s another small crowd of press and photographers.
I follow Landon inside, ignoring the camera flashes. An orderly leads us to the ward, outside which there’s a small group of people I assume to be some of the Sinclairs. They greet Landon, but not very warmly, and they totally ignore me, which is fine, as far as I’m concerned.
A doctor soon arrives.
“You’re Landon Court?”
“Yes,” Landon replies, taking the doctor’s proffered hand. She is looking at him with a mixture of respect and admiration, and I wonder vaguely if the hospital is one of those he sponsors. “How is she?”
“She’s asleep right now as you can see,” the doctor replies, pointing a hand toward the window of the private ward where Ava is. “And she’s healing nicely. The attacker missed any major organs, so she’ll be out of here in a couple of days.”
I tune out the rest of the words. Through the open shutters, I can see Ava, looking small and weak in her bed, hooked up to a variety of machines.
Landon’s eyes are turned in the same direction. There’s no way he won’t hold himself responsible, I think sadly.
The doctor says something else to Landon, which I don’t catch, then she turns and walks away.
“She looks…” I shake my head, unable to reconcile the figure on the bed to the beautiful, confident woman I remember.
“I know.” Landon’s voice is grave and his eyes are shuttered. “You should go back to the hotel. I’ll wait and talk to her when she wakes.”
I swallow, trying hard not to submit to that feeling of being relegated, again. “Of course.” I lean forward and place a soft kiss on his cheek. “I’ll see you later.”
The driver is waiting for me downstairs. At the Gold Dust, Claude Devin is solicitous but mostly quiet, so unlike his usual delightful self. As he personally escorts me to the penthouse suite, I feel a small surge of pity for him. It can’t be good for a manager that such an attack occurred during his watch. I undress slowly, tiredly, before stepping into the shower. I remain there for a long time, letting the water wash over my body.
We have to trust each other.
I was trusting Landon, believing, and holding on to every reason he’d ever given to make me believe that he loved me. I’m holding on to all the reasons why I can’t let myself think that maybe, just maybe, Ava was more important to him than I could bear; all the reasons why I had promised him that I would never walk away again.
Not that I wanted to. How could I? I had lost myself in him, so totally, that walking away from him would be as effective as walking away from a part of myself.
And now, there was a part of him that would never leave me.
I imagine him in the hospital with Ava, waiting for her to wake, talking to her, telling her how sorry he was, maybe holding her hand, comforting her. From the small part of his conversation with the doctor I’d paid attention to, I knew he must have taken over her care. It was right that he had. It was the least he could do. Yet, that small gesture, combined with the way he’d fallen apart when he’d learned of the attack… it makes me sad, and that scares me. The fact that even though a woman is hurt, my most overwhelming emotion is jealousy and suspicion that she still held a part of Landon’s heart.
I climb into bed and fall asleep almost immediately. I don’t wake up until Landon slides in beside me, his skin cool from his shower. His arm encircles me, his chest a firm, hard wall against my back.
“Landon,” I whisper his name, turning to face him.
“Shhh,” he whispers, kissing me. His hand slides down my naked body, heating my skin. I kiss him back, wanting him with a desperation that I can’t explain.
His hands shake as he caresses me. He presses my body against his, as if he’ll never let me go. “I love you,” he whispers fiercely as he makes love to me. “I love you so much.”
“I love you,” I whisper back, holding him tight and praying that he somehow manages to exorcise the ghosts torturing him.
THE next morning, he leaves the suite early, probably to go back to the hospital. I have a grapefruit for breakfast before I switch on the TV. Ava Sinclair’s stabbing is a big part of the local news. The attack on the glamorous, thrice-divorced socialite by her unstable brother, and the billionaire ex-lover and owner of the hotel where the attack took place who came immediately to the rescue; it’s like a soap opera, one I don’t find particularly entertaining.
I put off the TV, not willing to watch anymore. I call Claude Devin and ask for Jules McDaniel’s phone number. He gets it for me almost immediately. Jules sounds delighted to hear from me and invites me over.
Their house is a charming two story in a gated community. Cameron is at home, and Jules is obviously at the last stages of her pregnancy. We catch up and have lunch on the terrace before Cameron leaves for work. Neither of them bring up the case that’s all over the news. It’s as if they know how badly I want to escape it, and I’m infinitely grateful for that.
When I get back to the suite, Landon is alone. He’s standing by the windows, drinking from a glass clinking with ice. I have time to look at him, and I see the utter exhaustion in his frame before he turns around and sees me.
His face relaxes into an expression that looks like relief. “I wondered where you were,” he says, his voice soft.
From his face, I can see what he suspected, that maybe I’d left him again. “Claude could have told you. I went to see Jules.”
“How is she?” he asks, his eyes softening.
> “Ready to pop.”
His lips lift in a small smile and he takes a step towards me. “I…” he looks down at his glass. “Would you like something to drink?”
I shake my head. “How is she?”
He knows I’m talking about Ava. “She’s doing great. Evans is still missing, but many people are trying to find him. He wanted some more money, it seems, and when he found out she met with me in New York, it drove him crazy enough to hurt her.”
I sigh, wishing the whole situation would somehow resolve itself as quickly as possible. “What will happen when they find him?”
Landon’s face hardens. “He’ll never hurt anyone again.”
The conviction in his expression is hard to look at. I can’t help thinking how he refused to do anything when Evans tried to hurt him, but obviously, with Ava, the rules are different. I swallow the lump in my throat. “When are we leaving?”
“As soon as you’re ready.”
The journey back to New York is another quiet one. Landon falls asleep almost immediately, probably from the stress. I find a book on my ereader and try to read, until I too, doze off.
At the apartment, we have an early dinner, still in silence. I have so much I want to say, but I don’t know where to start. I don’t even know if I want to say the things on my mind. When his nightmare wakes both of us a few hours later, I find myself wondering whom he’s trying to save this time, Ava or me.
WHEN distance grows between two people, sometimes it’s almost palpable, in the silence, in the polite words, the total lack of real intimacy. I bury myself in my work, unable to find the words to tell Landon how I feel about Ava’s attack and his reaction to it.
On his part, I know he’s also working extra hard by how exhausted he is at night. How he falls asleep immediately after we make love, how he doesn’t have the energy to get up during the night as he usually does, and his nightmares wake the both of us.
Three days after we returned from San Francisco, he stops coming to bed at all, preferring to remain in his study all night. It’s because of the nightmares, I tell myself, not because anything I feared would happen when he went to see Ava actually happened. Not because he can no longer bear to be with me when he’d rather be with her, comforting her, helping her get better.
The Friday morning, when he tells me over breakfast that he’s planning to see a new therapist and has booked an appointment, I only nod silently. I feel almost as if he’s a stranger, a stranger I love with my whole being, but a stranger nonetheless. I feel as if we’re separated by a wall of silence, and I don’t know if the words I have will break the walls or make them thicker.
Later that day, I leave work early for an appointment with my ob-gyn, who confirms that I’m pregnant. I no longer have any reason not to tell Landon. No reason, except the ghost of Ava Sinclair and her brother hanging over us like a permanent fixture in our lives.
When I get to the Swanson Court, there’s a book launch and signing holding in one of the banquet halls, and a lot of fans and publishing industry types are coming and going through the lobby. After a short hesitation where I consider going to buy a book and getting it signed. I move on to the elevators, the possible long wait discouraging me.
The elevator opens almost as soon as I press the call button and I step inside, impatient to leave the crowded lobby. At the last moment, someone steps inside with me, and I look up just as the doors close to find myself staring at Evans Sinclair’s malevolent face.
“Look normal, or I will shoot you. I promise.”
I’m too shocked to do anything, even scream. Terror rises in my chest, choking me. His eyes roam from my face down to my feet and back up, almost black with hate. Everything that was once handsome about his face has disappeared, replaced by the sagging, blotched skin, and hollow look of an alcohol and substance abuser.
“Hi Rachel,” he leers. He sounds almost good-natured, and that makes me even more afraid.
“What do you want?” I’m surprised that my voice isn’t shaking, that I can still support myself on my own feet.
He chuckles. “Let me think… I want my hotel back. I want Landon Court to pay for taking it away from me. I want him to pay for using my sister.”
“You stabbed your sister,” I remind him.
“Shut up,” he sneers. “Don’t forget I have a gun, right here, under my jacket. I could shoot you and leave a nice surprise for your boyfriend.”
From his face, I don’t doubt that he would. If he has a gun. My eyes flick to the small camera at the top of the car. “Why should I believe that you have a gun?” I ask calmly.
He laughs again. “You want me to pull it out? Show you? So your security team will see it in the camera feed. “Good try, but I’m not dumb.”
I breathe. “Then you know hurting me won’t get you what you want? Neither will hurting Landon.”
He shrugs. “I’m not going to get anything back anyway. I might as well hurt you.”
The car stops and he gives me an expectant glance as the panel beeps for the keycard. “Go on,” he says in a singsong voice. “Open the doors.”
I retrieve the card from my purse and slide it into the panel. The doors slide open. Evans is watching me, and he motions with the hand inside his jacket pocket for me to walk inside ahead of him. I do as he wants, and once the doors slide closed behind me, he reaches for me, pulling me inside by my hair.
I fight him then, as soon as I see that the hand under his jacket is no longer holding the gun. I claw at him, my bag clattering to the floor as I attack him with all my strength. I use my nails, my teeth, and I scream, hoping that Esmeralda or one of the other staff is somewhere in the apartment.
He lands a punch on the side of my face, and I hit the floor, almost passing out. I see two drops of blood from somewhere on my face stain the spotless white marble before there’s another painful tug on my hair.
I start to scream again, until I feel the cold metal against my skin.
“I will shoot you,” he whispers. “It’ll be quicker than tossing you over the balcony. I’d like to see Landon Court try to fix you then, like he fixed the Gold Dust.”
He starts to drag me by my hair again, and when he tosses me on the living room floor, I’m crying. It’s not the physical pain that hurts the most. It’s the fear and the regret. Regret that if he kills me, my child won’t ever be born, that I’ll never see Landon again. That the last memories he’ll have of our relationship would be the growing distance, and the silence, not the love that fills me now when I think of him.
Evans is looking at my face and smiling. He squats down, close to me, and his grin widens. “You’re ruining your mascara,” he says, making an exaggerated sad face. Pulling a phone out of his pocket, he takes a picture. “Look at you,” he says in that scary singsong voice. “Not so pretty now. Landon Court’s girlfriend. I saw your pictures at the reopening of the Gold Dust. Did I tell you that your bastard boyfriend used to fuck my sister? That bitch. I think I’ll rough you up a little bit more, send him a few pictures. What do you think?”
My head is beginning to pound where he hit me and I can taste blood in my mouth. “You’ll never get away with this,” I manage.
He shrugs and binds my hands with duct tape, before moving to my feet. When he’s done, he goes to the glass doors that lead to the balcony and slide them open.
The breeze that rushes inside the apartment is cold and biting. In desperation, I start to crawl, even though I know I probably won’t get far. I’m going to die, I realize, tears beginning to flow again. My poor baby. Laurie, Dylan, my family… and Landon! Landon, who will never forgive himself. This will surely kill him.
“Where are you going?” I hear Evans ask cheerfully. He comes over and pulls me to my bound feet, then drags me out to the balcony. “Nice day isn’t it?”
I look out at the city. It has always been beautiful to me from this height, but now it’s just terrifying. Evans releases me and I brace my hands on the balustrade, dragging my f
eet as I try to put as much space between us as possible.
He looks at my efforts, his expression amused. Then he looks down at the traffic below. “Do you think it feels good, when you’re falling?”
My cheeks are wet. I don’t answer. I’m thinking of Landon. Please let there be a way for him to get through this.
“I’m talking to you.” Evans prompts.
“I don’t know,” I whisper through my tears.
He smiles. “I don’t know,” he mimics, then adds under his breath. “Bitch.”
I hear a sound from the living room, and I almost scream, but then Evans reaches for his gun, whipping it out and pointing in the direction of the sliding doors. The curtains are billowing and I’m too far away to see inside, but somehow, I know it’s Landon in the apartment.
“Rachel?” I hear his voice, and even though it’s the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard in my life, I’m still paralyzed by fear. Evans has the gun pointed at the door, and I know he won’t hesitate to shoot.”
“He has a gun!” I scream desperately. “He has a gun.”
Evans ignores me, keeping the gun pointed at the curtains. A moment later, they part, and Landon is standing there. He looks at me, taking in my bound hands and feet. I see his jaw tighten as his eyes go to Evans.
“What do you want?” he asks.
“What do you think?”
Landon looks at me again then turns back to Evans. “You’re not going to get it.”