by Ren Benton
Every memory he had was tainted by that stain, even the best of them.
He hated the guy in those pictures for being there and fucking it up.
She feigned an exaggerated yawn to stretch out her expression. “Mine are the same.”
“Your baby pictures were in People. You were a ray of sunshine.”
The phrase stuck to his tongue like bits of eggshell, and he knew he’d been duped even before her sidelong look declared him a poor, deluded schmuck. “Any smiling pictures you’ve seen before I was old enough to heed Simone’s warnings that my family’s livelihood depended on my good nature are of Ryan dressed in my clothes. My first two years exist only in my grandmother’s photo albums.”
Image ruled for the woman who made her children call her by name because “Mom” suggested an age she never intended to acknowledge. Hiding a quiet, thoughtful baby until she was old enough — at two — to be bullied into fake cheer for the camera was entirely consistent with the Simone Greene he knew.
And with the Gin he knew. He’d sensed they were two of a kind the first time he saw that cutesy sitcom she was on, but the marketing was convincing enough to sell him the same shiny illusion everyone else bought.
He felt that connection with her and then chose to see the smile because if they were alike and she was happy, then there was a way for him to be happy, too.
To tide him over until he got the opportunity to ask her to share the secret, he started sneaking beer when he was eight. “Since my mom didn’t rent a body double to keep up appearances, you win this round of Who Had a Shittier Childhood, but you’re still trailing on the scoreboard.”
“All part of my strategy. You played your best trauma cards in the early rounds to put points on the board. Now your lead is down to three, and I have a straight royal flush of dysfunction left in my hand. Victory will be mine.”
The night they met, they’d made a game of pain that enabled them to compare scars without breaking each other’s hearts with too many details. Now the boy who would grow to be hailed by Rolling Stone as the King of Angst was going to get his ass kicked in an angst competition by an adorable purple-haired witch cunning enough to throw a game or two to reserve her best plays for a season-winning finish. “Even if I have nothing left up my sleeve, you need five more points to win.”
She made a production of counting off three fingers he was ahead and the fourth she thought would secure her victory.
His chest shook with suppressed laughter as he held up one of his fingers alongside hers. “To beat the pity point the judges will award me when you knock me down and steal my lunch money.”
Her fingers curled into a fist. “Dammit!”
That outburst came out louder than a whisper, earning a disapproving glare from Piper. “We’re trying to watch a movie, children.”
Being chastised for childishness by someone a decade and a half younger wiggled the cork trapping the laughter in his chest, and some of it leaked into his throat to strangle him. He clamped his lips between his teeth to hold it in.
With the wide-eyed innocence of one of his mom’s Precious Moments figurines, Gin lifted her hand and gently pinched his nose shut.
Thanks to a career largely based on screaming, his lungs were in good shape. He could hold his breath until she started to worry about suffocating him and let go, beating her at this game, at least, but the sheer gall of her — like a kitten swatting a tiger — was too... damn... funny.
The laugh rolled out of his mouth. Her triumphant “Ha!” shuddered at the end and broke into harmony with him, a lighter layer that added depth and texture to a duet that fell flat performed with any other partner. He felt rather than saw Matt add his disapproval of the interruption, and he ignored it. It was Gin’s turn, to make up for the round of laughs she’d kicked off before dinner but couldn’t join because the joke hurt too much, and anybody who wanted to take this breath of relief away from her would have to go through him.
She ended up stifling herself, mouth pursed in a tight bud that curled up at the corners. His attempt to join her in being a Very Serious Adult led to a minor snorfling setback that was contained only after she covered his face with both her hands so she didn’t have to look at whatever constipated contortions resulted from his lousy acting.
It was funny until the slow part of his brain finally noticed her touch on his skin and triggered an internal alarm. Every muscle stilled. His mouth went arid. His lungs refused to release a breath that might puff away the pillow of her thumb against his lips and the fingertips delicate on his eyelids.
But his paralysis tipped her off that something was wrong with him. She took her hands away but kept them raised like she was being held at gunpoint, eyes wide to match, mouth stripped of fun as she whispered, “Sorry.”
Sorry was the theme of the evening. Sorry I said that, sorry I hurt you, sorry I touched you, all directly descended from the sorry I’m a worthless drunk he should have offered the night they met and given her a chance to skip the rest.
He’d pretended to be better than he was then. Why would she believe he was better now?
“Lex?”
The little crease of worry in her forehead meant he was officially over the limit for staring like an obsessed creep. Since nobody with flinty eyes and a buzz cut was around to pull him away this time, it was up to him to do the right thing.
He pushed away from the couch and took a step back, then another, still staring but from a respectful distance, then two more because now he was looming, which made even retreat menacing. “See you in the morning, boss.”
3
Boss. If that didn’t remind Gin to be professional, filing an incident report against herself for groping the talent would.
The clock beside her bed blinked off another minute.
Once upon a time, she and Lex had been friends. Yes, he declared an interest in getting her naked, but it wasn’t a goal he aggressively pursued. They could be together, talk, laugh, even make physical contact without any overt sexual overtones.
Without many overt sexual overtones. Six feet four inches of wiry, tattooed, growling wickedness was bound to attract the attention of her girly bits from time to time, like when he was being a musical genius, when her remaining ovary hit the sweet spot in its cycle of futility, and on days ending in Y. The point being, an entire year passed with no fondling, kissing, or merging of organs.
The encounter on the couch felt like that year. He ate her food, they talked about work and had their pity party for childhood dysfunction, and she started laughing because he did and it was rare enough to be a cause for celebration. For a few minutes, they felt like friends again.
And then she put her hands on him.
Slapping him couldn’t have had a more chilling effect. She coached actors’ faces to convey easily identifiable emotions, but Lex had expressions she couldn’t begin to understand — like the one that went from laughter to utter desolation in the space of a blink. She’d seen it too many times without being able to pin down a cause, but she watched as it happened this time, so there was no mystery.
Her touch had devastated him.
Sorry. What a feeble thing to say. She’d abandoned him in the hospital minutes after he came out of a coma. She had no right to pretend they could ever be friends, or anything other than creative colleagues, no right to his laughter or his companionship or his skin.
He’d backed away from her like she was radioactive.
Boss.
She could and would keep her hands to herself, but her mind persisted in violating his space. Every time she closed her eyes, her imagination and memory conspired to conjure images of Lex in bed on the other side of the house, long-limbed sprawl claiming as much of the mattress as possible, sheet kicked aside because he ran hot.
She wrapped herself in a blanket cocoon and pretended not to remember how soundly she used to sleep pressed against his side, absorbing his excess heat, or the way he’d wake her up by unwrapping her and inventing o
ther ways to keep her warm.
Between episodes of pretending, she caught only snatches of sleep. She was staring at the clock when it gave her permission at half past five to give up.
She wrestled out of the blankets and swapped her T-shirt and flannel pants for fleece tights, a sports bra, and a lightweight pullover jacket. Freezing for the first mile motivated her to run faster. By the time she settled into her distance pace and the mind-blank trance that accompanied it, her muscles would be burning enough to make the chill welcome when its frigid needles stabbed through a seam.
She slipped her phone into the kangaroo pocket of her jacket, grabbed her running shoes, and opened the bedroom door.
Light spilled into the hallway separating the kitchen from her room. Pipes hissed as the early riser used the sink.
Damn. She needed to be at least two hours more awake to face Piper’s cheer and Matt’s pleading puppy eyes. Why did they have to hit the road so early?
She practiced her smile as she trudged toward the light. The one she settled on wouldn’t hold up under scrutiny, but it should pass for friendliness long enough to dart through the kitchen and out the front door.
She took a fortifying breath and stepped around the corner.
Lex stood at the sink, throat flexing as he drank from a glass of water. There was no other sign of life.
Her face slumped with relief. “Oh, thank god it’s you.”
“Too early to deal with the children?”
“Too early to deal with anyone. At least you know to stay out of biting range.”
He grinned but wisely had nothing to say. His eyelids looked as heavy as hers felt, like he needed someone to tuck him back into bed.
She leaned against the wall for support and tucked her foot in a shoe instead. If she kept her distance and made no sudden moves, he shouldn’t get spooked again. “Are you having a late night or an early morning?”
“A little early. I wanted to ask if I can run with you.”
She looked up from her laces to see if he was joking but detected no trace of humor. “Since when do you run?”
“Since I moved out of a condo with a heated indoor pool and had to find some other form of exercise.” He yawned and stretched his arms overhead, lifting his sweatshirt and the tee underneath to expose a strip of flat belly that disappeared when his arms dropped. “In anticipation of your next question, I swim since I needed some way to fill what used to be drinking time.”
His drinking habits had been as much of a mystery to her as his songwriting process was to Matt. He never drank in front of her, he rarely demonstrated impairment, and he was so preposterously gorgeous, it was difficult to judge his level of unwellness by the same you look like crap criteria that ordinarily raised questions from concerned onlookers.
The neurologist at the hospital in Baltimore hadn’t known the specifics any better than she had, but he had the excuse that his patient was unconscious when they met. He’d nonetheless been confident Lex’s condition could be caused only by long-term heavy alcohol abuse, far beyond that seen in an “average” alcoholic.
Lex Perry didn’t know how to do anything halfway.
Gin grew up in an industry that often based pay scale on body fat percentage, so she recognized in him now the honed look of someone who spent at least a couple of hours every day working on his body.
At least a couple of hours every day he used to spend drinking.
How blind did she have to be to miss hours, every day, of someone she loved killing himself by degrees?
She’d failed him then. The least she could do now was bear witness to how far he’d come without her. “You’re welcome to join me.”
Guilt made the edges of her words ragged. Lex’s attention slashed toward her like a blade poised to trim away the flaw.
She had a movie to finish before she could submit to a dissection. She headed for the exit. “Try to keep up.”
She regretted challenging him to a race within a minute of hitting the driveway. His long legs gobbled ground while hers took dainty nibbles, so keeping up with him required swallowing without chewing. Good thing he was content to run in silence — she’d choke trying to fit words in her throat alongside gulps of air.
He lost steam at the neighboring driveway that marked the start of the third mile, and she pulled ahead. She tossed a glance over her shoulder. Her intent to gloat about endurance triumphing over speed withered at the sight of him bent over, hands on his knees, face the same dirty gray as the snow cowering under trees for protection from the rising sun.
Her soles scraped to a halt on the asphalt. “What’s wrong?”
His rigid jaw barely moved to grit out his answer. “Years of using my body like a dumpster. I’ll be fine. Go ahead.”
The compulsion to follow his orders had no effect when the order was stupid. “I could use the break. I was feeling like a Dachshund chasing a Great Dane.”
A flare of his nostrils accompanied a black look, as if he doubted the sincerity of her sweat and heaving breaths. His visible effort to stand upright suggested his body wasn’t as ready as his ego for such an ambitious maneuver. “I swear it’s not my first time. I’m usually good for five miles.”
She should have asked about distance before they started. Round trip from this point would have been over his limit under the best circumstances, which these were not. “It’s the altitude.”
“It’s not affecting you,” he snapped.
At least one thing hadn’t changed — he still hated weakness, never more than when it was unbalanced to his detriment.
The familiar pattern gave her a course of action that dampened her anxiety. She couldn’t fix what ailed him physically, but she knew how to tilt the imbalance to knock the legs out from under his bad mood. “I do ten miles at home, but five almost killed me my first day here. It hit me two miles farther down the road. I had to call Ethan and wake him up to beg for a ride.”
Her fingers itched for her phone now, but since witnesses were half the cause of his irritation, inviting another would only make it worse. She could kiss her score goodbye if he got pissed off enough to leave with Piper and Matt.
Nausea snaked through her, worse than what hit her during her first run down this road. She really was a monster if it even crossed her mind to negotiate a trade of his health for her movie.
She reached into her pocket.
“Don’t you fucking dare.”
She ignored the snarled warning and pulled out her phone. His pride made him a terrible custodian of his health. If he wouldn’t put his well-being first, someone else should for once, to hell with the consequences.
“Gin.” His hand wrapped around hers, trapping her fingers against the lock screen. The bitter edge remained in his voice, but the only thing rough about his touch were his fretting calluses. “I’ve crashed into the wall of my limitations harder than this. If you look closely, you can see the dents.”
She raised her gaze from his hand to his bloodless face. “You can’t walk away from the collision like it didn’t happen.”
She expected another round of Lex Fucking Perry can do whatever he wants. What he wanted, apparently, was to surprise her. “It’s easier to pretend it didn’t happen when someone whisks me away from the scene of the accident. I need to see the wreckage and feel my injuries to have any hope of learning where I went wrong.”
Not a day passed that she didn’t examine the ruin that resulted from playing along when he claimed everything was fine. Doing nothing was where she’d gone wrong, she knew that, and he was asking her to repeat the same mistake.
But five years ago, he would have died — and nearly did — before admitting having limitations or going wrong. He’d rebuilt himself without his addiction, without her, with upgrades that were obvious even in the few hours since his arrival. Should she trust his judgment this time?
Should she trust her own judgment where he was concerned?
One of his toughened fingertips tapped the back of the h
and clenched around her phone, and he gave a barely perceptible shake of his head.
Overruling him out of fear of repeating past mistakes wouldn’t heal the damage she’d caused then, and treating him like a child unfit to make his own decisions now would inflict more. She could at least give him a chance to be right. “Ethan can sleep in.”
His thumb dragged across her skin when he withdrew the warmth of his hand. “Finish your run. You can lap me on your return trip.”
She put the phone back in her pocket, and a shiver reminded her she was underdressed to stand still at forty degrees. Her extremities relished getting her blood moving again, but the rest of her responded to the notion of leaving him with a resounding no way. “I barely slept and wouldn’t have gotten much farther anyway. I’m ready to go back if you are.”
Even at a walk, the length of his stride had her beat. She didn’t try to keep up this time, using his lead to surreptitiously assess his condition. No limping or gasping for breath to signal continued distress, but his typically bold gait seemed stiff and mechanical.
When he noticed she’d fallen behind, he slowed to a stroll until she caught up.
She held that pace despite his impatient glower. To divert attention from her obvious enforcement of taking it easy, she asked, “Why running instead of the gym?”
“You said the physical pounding helped get you out of your head. As it turns out, my head isn’t the best place to spend all my free time.”
Is that why you drank?
Countless books, meetings, and therapy sessions agreed there was often a component of using substance abuse to self-treat undiagnosed depression, anxiety, and other disorders that made the mind a prison from which even the most toxic form of escape seemed like salvation — but if he hadn’t trusted her enough to talk about it when he was lying in her arms, he certainly wouldn’t now.