Lindsey frowned. Kent did seem to have a bottomless wallet.
“Are you going to come back to comics?” the kid asked.
“I don’t know.” Kent handed the kid a hundred. “Take him to the hotel restaurant and get both of you dinner. Don’t let him have any more alcohol.”
“Get him water,” Lindsey said. “He’s going to need it.”
“Okay.” The kid looked brighter now. He took Kent’s place at Frank’s side.
“Did I ever tell you about when I was working with Stan Lee before he did Spiderman?” Frank asked as the boy led him away.
“No,” the kid said.
“You know,” Kent said as Frank and his escort walked away. “I’ve often thought one of these conventions should do a panel. Frank Kloss—Did I Ever Tell You About When… What do you think?”
“It would have to be three hours long with an intermission. Come on, we should get to the table.”
The judges’ table sat to the side of the stage. Kent switched Frank’s placard with Julian Westwood’s so he could sit next to Lindsey, and wrote his name on the blank side. Lindsey watched him form the clear block letters of his name the way he always did. When he signed his art, the only legible letters were K and F, but when he signed anything else, he printed his name with bold letters. He added a tiny sketch of a heart-shaped woman’s face surrounded by a tangle of hair, which no one in the audience would be able to see. Only when he grinned at her as he set the card in place did she realize the sketch was a very stylized caricature of her. Lindsey wanted to snatch up the card and look at it more carefully, but didn’t.
She really didn’t need to. She could see the picture in her mind’s eye. The woman in the quick sketch had been beautiful. Beyond beautiful. The eyes sparkled with mischief. The mouth had been lush and seductive. In the middle of the contest, Lindsey found herself touching her lips to see if they felt like what he had drawn. She vaguely remembered feeling that way. That happy, that eager, that lovely. She hadn’t felt it in a long time, though. But did he still see her that way?
Apparently oblivious to her confusion, Kent sat beside her, enjoying the costume contest. At one point he even walked around the table to inspect the Beast of Morimar costume. The thing looked like it had just shambled out of an Old English folktale, and he gave it a very high score.
His arm brushed hers every time he wrote down a score. His thigh nudged hers under the table with less frequency, but more intensity. At first, she tried to figure out if he was doing it on purpose, but by the time the host brought the finalists up, she was struggling not to nudge back. As the Beast of Morimar labored up the stairs again, Kent leaned over and whispered something in her ear. She couldn’t hear over the sensation of his breath on her skin. Clutching her pen was the only thing keeping her hand from venturing up the inside of his thigh to test his resolve.
“So,” he said as the ballroom drained out at the end of the contest. “You wanted to talk after the contest.”
“Yeah, let’s go.”
“I figured we could—what?” He blinked at her.
“Let’s go.”
“Go where?” Kent asked. He felt supremely stupid about now. For the last three hours he'd wanted nothing more than to tangle his fingers through her hair and kiss her. Then he wanted to throw her caveman style over his shoulder and carry her back to his room. He had felt pretty certain she would rather talk somewhere nice and public, and now she was switching up the rules.
“My room,” she announced. She walked past him to the stage stairs and threw a come hither look over her shoulder before descending into the crowd.
Kent stared after her for a full ten seconds before it occurred to him that he should follow. She might change her mind if he wasn't fast. Kent dove into the eddy of people, trying to dodge the snagging fingertips of fans who wanted to tell him how great they thought he was. Slipping past them as quickly and politely as possible, he welcomed them to stop by his table tomorrow. By the time he reached the doors, Lindsey was nowhere in sight.
Kent ran up the down escalator because the up side was packed. When he reached the skywalk, he regretted the decision. The crowd moved like blood through a clogged artery in the plastic tube. He could have gone outside and crossed the street faster.
But he spotted Lindsey through the Plexiglas turning the corner away from the parking deck, so he allowed himself to be carried in. She used to love to play this game. She would tease him through a panel or a session of booth duty, and then take off for their hotel room with him in hot pursuit. By the time he’d catch up with her, she’d be naked and pretending impatience.
She hadn’t been teasing him during the contest, but after four years without her, just feeling the heat of her naked forearm on the table next to his had been exciting. His body thrummed with the need to feel more of her pressed against him.
The skyway opened up ahead, and he saw her turn away from the elevators. She was taking the stairs. Kent quailed at the thought of climbing six floors, but one look at the lines outside the elevators, one of which, in accordance with tradition, was out of order, and he decided quicker was better.
In the cinderblock stairwell, the light tap of her feet on the stairs and the sound of her breath echoed down to him. His body tensed, remembering her kiss when he first arrived at the Con. Had it only been yesterday morning? It felt as if he’d been chasing her for days. Her mouth had been hotter and sweeter than he recalled. Their interlude last night had almost been enough to make him believe the last four years didn’t exist.
“Lindsey,” he called up to her, glad the work he did on the farm kept him in good enough shape so he wasn’t winded after three flights.
Lindsey rewarded him with a giggle that echoed down the stairwell. He started taking the stairs two at a time.
The fire door on her floor clanged when she opened it, but was still easing closed when Kent reached the landing. He paused in the hall, studying her door. For a sick moment, he thought back to the last three times he’d stood outside her door. Her locked door. He didn’t think he had enough ego left to stand outside that door again, locked out like a schmuck.
But if he turned away now, he would have gambled and lost by his own choice.
If the door was open, he decided he would go in and let nature take its course.
If the door was closed, he would keep walking down the hall, go back to his room. Two days of chasing her on his knees had to prove something. He’d promised himself he would try for the three days of the Con to win her back. Too bad he’d underestimated how badly he’d hurt her, and he couldn’t keep hurting her any more. To be honest, he also didn’t want to throw himself at her feet so she could kick him anymore, either.
From here, her door looked closed.
Swallowing, Kent walked down the hall as nonchalantly as he could manage.
She had flipped the bar out to block open the door. Kent pushed it open feeling like he’d just won the lottery, the big tri-state Powerball lottery.
“I was beginning to think you’d gotten lost,” Lindsey said as he pushed the bar back in place and let the door fall closed behind him.
While he’d been dithering in the hall, she’d been preparing. She had closed the curtains and lit one lamp on the far side of the room. She leaned against the desk, watching the door. The angle of the lamp cast her face into shadow, but he heard the tension in her voice. While he’d been in the hall worrying about his ego, she’d been in here wondering if he was going to show up at all.
Kent summoned up his best rakish grin. “I didn’t get lost. I had to take a breather. I didn’t want to be out of breath before I got here.” He crossed the room with four long strides. “I hoped the heavy breathing would come a little later.”
Lindsey laughed and held out her hand.
* * * *
Later, Lindsey rested her cheek on his chest. A black hole of uncertainty reopened in her chest. She had hoped for a few minutes of afterglow, but that wasn’t happening.
Instead, she was already worried about what would happen in the morning when he left. Or if he came back to her, when he left later. It was inevitable. He’d already left once. She had no assurances. He’d even refused to promise last time.
“You left because I asked you to marry me,” she said.
“Yeah, I guess that was part of it.” He snuggled her closer, pulling the blankets around them. “Let’s talk in the morning, okay?”
In moments, he was asleep. Lindsey lay awake for a long time afterward, trying not to remember and failing.
About eight months after he moved in with her, she broached the subject of marriage. He dodged. So she waited two months before bringing it up again. He dodged again. For the next few weeks, she discussed the subject endlessly with her friends. They all swore Kent would never marry her. They gave her all sorts of clichéd reasons like ‘why buy the cow when the milk’s free’ and ‘Kent wasn’t the marrying kind.’ One woman in particular, Maria, advocated the view that Kent was just using Lindsey to forward his career. In a desperate bid to prove them wrong, Lindsey asked him to marry her.
Less than a month later, he was gone.
Lindsey woke from an uneasy sleep. She felt nauseated. Gray light seeped under the curtains, but it was far too early to be this awake. Kent had wrapped himself around her. She couldn’t stay here.
She worked her way out of his arms and replaced herself with a pillow. Kent, she knew from experience, could sleep through street construction and never woke before ten, so she showered before dressing, packing her things and leaving the room. At the desk downstairs she stored her bags, left word that her room shouldn’t be disturbed, and asked for directions to an all night diner.
* * * *
Kent searched the bed before he opened his eyes. He was kind of hoping he was still asleep, but he knew better. So he sat up, opened his eyes and searched the rest of the empty hotel room. Only the used condom dangling from the rim of the trash can and a plastic button on the floor even hinted Lindsey had been there the night before. He'd slept like the dead thinking everything would be okay now. It was the first solid night’s sleep he’d had since he started negotiating with Gary to get Lindsey to this Con.
Con. Such an appropriate word. He’d conned himself into believing this would work. He’d conned Gary into helping him. And then he’d briefly conned Lindsey into going along with him. Now the jig was up.
He fell backward onto the bed. Good God, what was he supposed to do now?
He had forgotten how much he wanted her. How much he missed her. How broken he’d felt without her. There wasn’t anything he hadn’t done to fix his mistake, and she still rejected him.
Last night, he’d thought he couldn’t throw himself at her feet one more time to be kicked.
This morning, he knew he’d been wrong.
* * * *
Lindsey stared at the cinnamon roll in front of her. She’d left the other one at the booth before her panel hoping someone would eat it. She’d spent three hours in a scary diner studying the cracked floor tiles and drinking decaf coffee because she didn’t think her heart could stand the strain of too much caffeine right now. One more bad jostle, and it might just quit. Frank patted her knee under the table. Sober, he’d returned to grandfather mode. At Lindsey’s other elbow, Amy deflected questions so Lindsey could sit in numb silence communing with her cinnamon roll. Up here on stage she knew everything she did would be analyzed, but she couldn't summon the energy to care.
She couldn’t figure out why she was so stupid. What was that joke definition of insane? Doing something the same way twice and expecting the outcome to change? Twice she’d given herself to Kent Farrington, and twice she’d gotten ‘can we talk about it later.’ Twice. And worse, now everyone was looking at her with doe eyes. She wondered if she had, at some point, died and ended up in hell. Maybe the plane crashed on the way here, and her personal hell manifested as a convention with Kent Farrington pursuing her and pushing her away. And it was going to happen forever.
Danny Peterson answered another inane question. She never would have hired that boob to write one of her books if he hadn’t been forced on her. She glared down the table at him. He represented everything that was wrong with comics, right down to his doughy body. At least Kent’s attentions over the last two days had distracted her from how much she hated this business.
“I have a question for Lindsey.”
Lindsey winced. She didn’t need to look up to recognize that voice. When she did, the sight surprised her.
Kent was dressed in last night’s clothes, which looked like they had spent the night on the floor. One of the cuffs hung loose around his hand, but he’d buttoned the other one in a useless effort to look put together. Lindsey flushed, remembering what had happened to that missing button. The closest he’d managed to combing his hair had been a hand though it. She could tell because one side flipped to an independent angle. And he hadn’t shaved at all. He never appeared in public without shaving. The room was thunderous in its silence.
“What do you want?” Kent asked. He said it as if he wasn’t speaking through a microphone twenty feet from the stage where she sat frozen.
Lindsey managed to draw one deep breath to keep from fainting. Amy shifted toward her. Lindsey looked at her. Obviously Amy was in the throes of deciding how best to shield her. At least one person was. But then on the far end of the room, Lindsey noticed the doors open. Gary walked in looking like he might just murder Kent Farrington in front of a hundred witnesses. So once again her private life was erupting very publicly.
“I have to go,” Lindsey announced. She stood up and walked to the side of the stage nearest the door. A swell of chatter rose around the room as every one of the fans began speculating. She would end up in the Comics Buyers Guide over this yet.
“Well, Lindsey, what do you want?” Kent demanded into the mike. “You can’t just walk out on me. Not again.”
“You started it.” She shouted over the heads of the fans seated between them. The microphone on the table picked it up, causing her accusation to thunder through the room. She needed out of here. This was a private problem and somewhere in the room, some geekboy with a laptop was uploading video of the whole encounter to the Internet right now. She lunged off the side of the stage and tried not to run toward the doors at the back of the room.
Kent paced her, walking up the center aisle. “Come on, cut it out already. You’re just being impossible.”
“I'm not being impossible.”
“I’ve done everything I can think of. I did everything you wanted.” Kent leaned too close to the seats and tripped over a chair leg. “Everything, Lindsey. What do you want?”
“You didn’t do everything.” Ten more feet, Lindsey thought. Just ten more feet and she would be out of this room and this horrible situation. Gary stood in the door, smoke still coiling out of his ears.
“What else was I supposed to do?”
Lindsey stopped and glared over the heads between them, forgetting for a moment that she didn’t want to be having this conversation in such a public venue. “I am not going to let you walk in and out of my life like it’s a revolving door.”
“I wasn’t going to do that.”
“Really?” Lindsey started stalking for the door again. Gary moved into Kent’s path so she could escape. Apparently Gary was also on her side. She would have to make it up to him for thinking he had something to do with Kent being at the Con. “I didn’t hear any kind of commitment to the contrary.”
“You didn’t give me time. Lindsey, look.”
“No.” Lindsey started to lower her face so she wouldn’t see anything by accident, but the flummoxed expression on Gary’s face stopped her. She stopped two feet short of the door, registering the return of utter silence to the room.
“One ring to rule them all,” someone murmured.
Lindsey looked back. Kent stood in the aisle, and every eye in the room was either glued to what was in his hand or tryin
g to get a better look at it. Cameras and cellphones appeared all over the room.
In Kent’s hand was a ring. From where she stood, the diamond winked at her.
“What’s that?” she demanded.
“It’s an engagement ring,” a chunky girl with purple hair in the back row answered. “Kent Farrington wants to marry you.”
“What?” Lindsey sputtered. She felt like she had all the pieces to the puzzle, but some of them had grown and others shrunk until nothing wanted to fit together.
“I want to marry you, Lindsey.” Kent stepped closer, holding the ring out in front of him. “I was going to ask you this morning, but you didn’t give me a chance. See, I told you I was finally the man you needed. I’m even ready for this.”
“This?” Lindsey tried to ask, but the words came out in an unintelligible moan.
Kent took the last step toward her and held out his hand for hers. “I’m ready to be the man who will promise never to leave you again, and who can take care of you without taking over. I’m ready to be your husband forever.
“I'm sorry I walked out like I did,” he continued. “I was scared. I was turning you into someone else. I thought if I left you would go back to being her. And then I realized that I didn't want to be me without you. Her.” Kent frowned. “This doesn't make any sense. I can't explain. I just want you to be happy. And I want to be happy with you.”
Lindsey stared at the ring. The pieces started to fit together, but not in the way she’d expected. When Kent disappeared four years ago, she’d shut the door on the idea that she would ever be married to him. Even when he showed up here to torment her, she never imagined he would want anything more than to get back in her bed, and temporarily at that.
But he had a ring.
“Aren’t you going to tell him yes?” the purple haired girl demanded.
Lindsey glanced at her. The girl looked so hopeful. This morning was probably affirming her faith in the real world.
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