No More Masquerade

by Angel Payne

  His stare turned the texture of cracked black glass. “And if I had called?” he retaliated. “Don’t bother answering. I can give you this one, Claire. You’re brilliant enough that the call would’ve been traced, even if I used a burner phone for it. Then you’d be knocking on my door, and we eventually would’ve been doing this. Exactly this. Three months ago or three days ago, this would have ended up…like this.”

  I sprinted my gaze across the cabin, willing to trade my favorite shoes for something substantial to hurl at him. Everything worth anything was secured to the damn walls except the bed pillows. I had to be happy with clawing my hand through my hair. “Well, I hate this.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, yeah? Well, guess what? I don’t accept it. Or any of this bullshit. Dammit, Kil—” I stopped short at his sudden pounce across the cabin. When he twisted the door handle and rammed the portal out into the narrow hall, I instinctively stepped back. “You’re completely serious about this, aren’t you?”

  He kept his gaze fixed down the hall. “Yeah. I am.”

  Damn him. He looked so tall and perfect and glorious, standing there with the cabin’s golden light glinting on his long hair and rippled nakedness, that my heart actually ached. My chest squeezed on the damn thing as I stepped outside the situation for a moment—and saw myself as the service whore he was dismissing me as.

  “I can’t believe this,” I rasped. “I can’t believe you actually thought a toss in the sack was going to send me peacefully on my way.” I stepped closer to him, hating that the motions carried me closer to the door, as well. “Do you know me, Killian? At all?”

  “I know you too damn well,” he finally said. His tone was crisp—and forced. “That’s exactly the problem.”

  I tore my dress off the bed. Put it on with furious jerks and stabs. “The problem, huh? Thanks for clearing that up. I’m now the ‘problem.’ I was wondering exactly where I fit into your new, artistic, fucked up life.”

  He grunted. “Nothing’s a fit in my life anymore, Claire.” He sent a reluctant swallow down his tense throat. “So needless to say, I won’t be here the next time you look. Don’t bother coming back.”

  Every ounce of joy he’d just defrosted from the winter in my heart was frozen again, blasted by an ice storm as vast as it was devastating. Part of me still tried to be stunned while the other part tore off one of the ice daggers hanging from my soul then jabbed it into my stupid, hopeless heart. “This is truly how you want it to be now?”

  “No. This is how it has to be now. I get no choice in the matter. All of my choices were made for me, remember?”

  I was damn near grateful for the rage that fired back at the ice. “Whoa. You’re—you’re kidding, right? That’s how you’re playing this?”

  The glass in his gaze turned into ruthless lead. “Believe me, baby, I want to be kidding. I want to be playing even more.”

  Now that I stood just inches from him, I jabbed up my chin and braced my feet. “Oh, boo hoo hoo for you, baby.” I stabbed a finger into the middle of his chest. “You are Killian fucking Stone. No one does anything for you! The pity-me trip is for losers and wastes of DNA like Trey. Even when you disappeared, I never thought you capable of this bullshit, Kil. Ever.”

  He clamped a hand around my wrist and pushed it away. “I’m not Killian fucking Stone anymore, Miss Montgomery—and you may be the only person deranged enough not to remember.” Inexplicably, the backs of his eyes gained bemused little lights. “But hey, I am glad you wanted to take a little trip down Memory Lane, baby. Four months is a hell of a dry spell, right?”

  Behind my own eyes, an all-too-familiar heat began to surge. Shit. Not now. Not again. “Fuck you, Killian.”

  He left the door open and moved into the bedroom, giving me room to leave. “Alfred can show you back to the parking lot.”

  “Just…yeah…fuck you.”

  I was so angry my knees shook with each step up to the yacht’s deck. I wanted to punch Alfred when he appeared out of nowhere. He was a smart man, instantly sensing it and wisely stepping out of my way.

  The air on the dock was so refreshing, it took my breath away. Oh wait, that was the rush from finally setting all my emotions free. Not that it felt great. Not that it would ever feel great again.

  The moment my feet hit land again, I jogged toward the parking lot. Even in my kitten heels, even with tears blinding my vision. I needed to get as far away from that damn boat as I could. I stopped beneath a huge palm tree, catching my breath and shoving away my tears before getting back to the parking lot. I had to pull myself together or Michael would go after Killian now like a damn Claire-Bear vigilante.

  Before that happened, I had another gallon of tears to shed.

  The dream that had kept me going for months…was done. As in done. As in one of the most devastating experiences of my life. I almost wished it were yesterday again, and I still wallowed in the emptiness and the aching.

  At least then, I’d still have hope.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Killian

  I’d never believed in reset buttons.

  Even during the years when I hated Killian Stone with my whole being, yearning to bail on his life like the identity refugee I was, I never edged an inch toward the button. I’d sucked up, dug in, and dealt with the path life had laid before me. Made it the best I could.

  And then it had gotten really good—those months of showering Claire with all the milk and honey that Stone could bring, actually earning every beautiful drop of her love—before it had all gotten ripped apart.

  I shook my head while leaning back against the door of my truck. I’d slammed it a minute ago after parking a few houses up from Claire’s, along with the vow that I was done with falling back on victim statements like that. The mindset that had dragged the “Asshole Quotables” to my lips three nights ago, and driven Claire from the yacht in confusion and rage.

  Which was the goal…right? Devastate her once or keep destroying her. Those were the choices, man. You stuck with the former instead of leading her on with hopes of having “her Killian” back—a dream as pointless as even trying to find that man anymore. God only knows how hard you’ve been looking for him.

  You did the right thing, ace. Amputated the limb of yourself from her life before you paralyzed her.

  Which is exactly why you’re hanging out in the dark near her house, fumbling with the words you came here to say.

  Loser.

  I swore then kicked at the ground. Wasn’t the first time the rebuke had grabbed me by the nuts and squeezed during the last seventy-two hours. I accepted and bore the pain, admitting I’d royally fucked up on the delivery if not the message—and acknowledging she deserved a better truth than the psychobabble BS I’d pulled on her. The whole truth. That though I’d love her until my dying breath, I couldn’t ever be with her again. That despite what the sappy songs said, sometimes love wasn’t enough. Not for me. Not with me. Whoever the hell “me” was anymore.

  Did I wish I was like one of the guys up on the boardwalk, happy with life as it came, willing to push the damn reset button every time the sun rose? Only every minute of every day. But I was the schlep who’d been allowed a free pass into the castle only for a few glorious years and during that visit, had managed to snag the most beautiful princess in the land. Trouble was, she still deserved a prince—not just the one in pinstripes but the one with the noblest heart. The one who wouldn’t be mocked, whispered about, and laughed at everywhere they went.

  The man who could love her with everything he still was, not a shadow of what he had been.

  She didn’t—and wouldn’t—see that. Because she was Claire. Because she saw the best in the world, in everyone. She still brought out coffee for the paparazzi in the morning. Fed the neighborhood’s three stray cats. Hell, from what I could gather from the gossip magazine pictures, she’d even started up a friendship with Margaux. She had no concept that though her world had been bleak without me,
it would be pure hell with me. The press would turn. The whispers would start. The daggers would be unsheathed.

  And every day I subjected her to that would be another reminder of what was impossible to give her anymore.

  All of me.

  Well. Now that I was clear about that cheery news…it was time to share it with her, too.

  On determined steps, I approached her house. During the trip, I lowered the top of my hoodie and attempted to finger-comb my “Jesus” look into submission. Like that helped. The shit felt like Bigfoot’s pelt beneath my hand. That was likely for the better, anyhow. I’d played with the idea of having Alfred trim the shit up for me but Claire would have a better time accepting the finality of all this if I came in with the hippie look she hated.

  I was so preoccupied with the self-style session I didn’t see the pile of dog crap on the sidewalk. As I wiped my shoe across her next-door neighbor’s lawn, the irony didn’t escape me. Tonight on “America’s Got Talent”: Killian Klarke will step in shit yet again! Cue applause!

  I really had to get off the boat more at night.

  I turned to make the cut across Claire’s lawn—but was jolted to a total stop by a sound I’d hoped never to hear again. Her sobs. Wrenching. Hard. And nonstop. To any passerby on the street they likely would have blended with the normal noises on the hill, but I was ten feet closer and a thousand times more sensitive to the sound.

  Because I’d desperately prayed not to hear it tonight.

  Her outrage? Her girl snarls? Her adorable gift for creative profanity? Fine; I’d take that. Any of it. All of it. But dammit, not her tears.

  I gritted the f word at the feces clinging to my foot before treading closer to the fence on ninja steps. As I approached, I swore I could hear fate’s laughter on the wind along with her sobs. Arrogant fucker.

  I arrived just in time to hear her blow her nose and mutter a soft thanks to someone.

  “No problem.” The source of the encouragement was easy to recognize. Michael Pearson, her teammate—or so I’d assumed until tonight. What the hell was he doing here? Had he done this “lean on me” routine with her before? The guy’s good looks were the kind of shit that turned heads, female and male. On top of that, he and Claire had great rapport and a solid base of friendship.

  He was exactly the kind of prince she needed.

  The kind I’d all but told her to go and find.

  I suddenly hated every bone in his body.

  She blew her nose and sniffed loudly. “I can’t stand this part. Oh God, Michael, I really can’t stand it.”

  “I know, sweetie. I know.”

  Yep, it was official. I hated him. And coiled my hands into fists as I eyed the fence, wondering how hard it would be to tear the thing out of the ground on my way back to hauling her out of his arms and ordering his hands off of her.

  Because you’re suddenly willing to take over the job again? Because what you’re prepared to provide for her, emotionally and spiritually, has changed so damn much over the last thirty seconds?

  I swore at the dog shit on my foot again.

  “Sister mine. Come here.”

  My head snapped up at the new voice in the conversation. New to me, anyway. I’d never heard Margaux sound like that before. All the hallmarks of her inflection were still there, the sarcastic blend of world-weary woman and insecure girl, though a fresh element made her seem an entirely new person, at least through the fence.

  Affection.

  I listened to the scrapes of chairs and the rustle of bodies—and fought to get a better look at things through the fence slats. Was Margaux actually hugging Claire? For support? Just “because”?

  “Thank you,” Claire rasped through her tears. “Thank you both so much…for coming over so fast.”

  “All you had to do was send the bat signal up.” Michael borrowed a little of Margaux’s wryness. “Besides, we were just sitting around—err, I was just sitting around—bingeing on the new Walking Dead.”

  “Is it any good?” Margaux’s query reminded me of Nurse Karin Nelson’s fake charm. A question asked when the answer was already known.

  “You can finish it here if you like,” Claire offered. “Or just watch your friend Claire Montgomery, the zombie who craves the one human being she can’t have.”

  Michael grunted. “You sure he’s still human?”

  “Hey.” The reproach actually came from Margaux. The pattern of shadows across the patio indicated something had been tossed at him, too. “No chopping the balls off a girl’s boo when she’s still got it bad for him.”

  “So I can chop his balls off next week?”

  “I’ll still be in love with him next week.”

  Her voice crumbled on the last word. Sobs took over her body again. I snarled softly, realizing I’d picked the wrong fucking night at the wrong fucking time to come here and do this—whatever the hell this was.

  The answer to that made me take a step back, scattering stones out of the side path as I did. I glowered at the results, a demonstration of my conclusion if there ever was one.

  Stones. Flung apart. In the dark. Because of haste and subterfuge—and selfishness.

  I’d come here for the wrong reasons. For my benefit, not hers. To assuage the garbage pile of guilt in my gut, ignoring what it would do to her to see me on her front porch before I turned and left her again. The reset button hadn’t been pushed, nor could it be.

  She needed to move on.

  And I needed to let her.

  No matter how deeply it eviscerated me…I needed to let her.

  Every muscle in my body screaming as if it had been torn off its bone, I backed farther away. The concrete of the sidewalk couldn’t have come any sooner beneath my feet, bringing the hard, cold smack of reality with it. That was it. My castle days were behind me. I fought to silence the sound of the drawbridge chains, clanking through my head with morbid finality.

  “Well, damn. Came out here to retrieve my phone and look what I found instead.”

  Margaux’s quip, though soft, halted me faster than a whip around my ankles. I jammed both hands into my jacket pockets and turned, locking my teeth around a smile. “We never run into each other under dull circumstances, do we?”

  “No.” A genuine chuckle left her lips. They weren’t plastered down in her normal crimson lip stain. I liked the new shade. The lighter pink was flattering on her. “Think the world would explode if we tried a normal brother-sister chat over coffee sometime?”

  I looked toward the sea of city lights spread below us, letting her watch the smile fade off my own mouth. “I’m not your brother, Margaux.”

  “Well. A girl can dream.”

  I slanted a quizzical glance. “Didn’t you say that when you wanted me in the Biblical sense? And let’s face it, you were a little relieved to know you didn’t make a half-naked pass at your real brother.”

  “No,” she answered with a definitive nod. “I’m still ew’ed out.” She tilted her head, too. “Probably because I keep hoping the karma wheel hears my prayer and turns you back into my biological brother again.”

  I felt my brows drop before replying, “You’re after a specific reaction to that, aren’t you? I just can’t tell what it is.”

  Margaux did one of those female huffy things, a double stomp disguising a shift of weight. “By all that’s holy, Killian. You really don’t get it, do you?” She folded her arms when I gave her nothing but a searching stare. “Okay, I’m going to assume, by the stench of that dog crap on your shoe, that you just tromped through the grass to spy on us over Claire’s back fence—so the issue of you shattering her heart has been covered by the conversation you overheard. With that done, I’ll move along to the subject of your company—or should I say, what’s left of it.”

  I whipped up my head. “SGC?”

  “You have any other ‘company’ these days?”

  “What’s left of it?” I echoed. “What the hell do you mean?”

  “Really?” she
teeter-tottered her head. “Okay, when was the last time you picked up a copy of the Journal?”

  She didn’t need to explain the verbal shorthand. There was only one “Journal” in the world of business and it emanated from Wall Street. I winced, privately admitting to a slight hard-on from simply hearing the word again.

  No.

  I whirled and paced, staring hard at each step I made. There were scuffed deck shoes on my feet now, not polished Cole Haans. And one of them still reeked of dog shit. “That’s not my reading material anymore and you know it, Margaux.”

  “And I call bullshit on your ass. You crave the Journal like a thirteen year-old lusts for the Hot Topic catalogue. It’s your crack, Mr. Maverick of Magnificent Mile.”

  I was grateful she could see only my back now. God only knew what the woman would do if she witnessed the shit-eating grin flowing across my lips. Maverick of Magnificent Mile. That sounded a hell of a lot better than enigma.

  No.

  It was the second time I’d had to tell myself off in this futile exchange. Margaux had made her point with shameless transparency—and part of me actually wanted to hug her for the effort—but in my life now, “cool” was defined by a strong offshore breeze and a round of crab legs at Miguel’s before an afternoon in front of my easel or sketchpad. Nothing else. Nothing else.

  But ignoring what she’d just said would be like denying I had blood in my veins. Or that it suddenly felt like somebody sliced open my carotid and was letting the stuff form a puddle beneath me. Floating in the muck would be giant chunks of my incredulity—and dread. Fearing Trey would drive Stone Global to ruin was a hell of a lot easier than hearing he actually was.

  Despite the insight, I pivoted back around and ordered, “All right, tell me.”

  She rocked back on one of her booted heels like a model pausing on a runway, complete with the too-cool-for-the-rest-of-you gaze. “Well, you know I’m not good at the actual numbers and shit. That’s Claire and Chad’s department. I only handle the part about making the messes look pretty—which means I’ll have job security for years after the Trey-ster gets done calling every shot at SGC from the wisdom of his ass.”