by J. Kenner
Then he'd gone and shot that fantasy all to hell, and suddenly Kiki wasn't in his life anymore. She was relegated to his memories, and he'd learned to live that way, like a man missing a limb.
But now she was back, filling his thoughts, and part of him wanted to run to her. To shake her. Kiss her. To make her understand that they'd had a second chance handed to them on a shiny silver platter. All they had to do was dig in.
But a bigger, saner part knew that she was right. They weren't the same people anymore. And while the attraction was there on both sides, the trust wasn't. She was skittish.
He got that.
He was the one who'd left, after all. He'd been an idiot, and he'd been paying the price for years.
Looked like he was going to keep on paying for a little bit longer.
Fuck.
It wasn't quite midnight, and since he couldn't sleep, he might as well work. By now, he should have received the latest reports on the prototype from the overseas production facility, and he could spend a few hours going through the evaluations and looking for functions that need to be tweaked before the final rollout.
That, at least, was a plan with two potential upsides. Either his concentration would be so laser-focused on the work that there was no room for Kiki in his brain, or else he'd fall asleep from the tedium.
Twenty minutes later, he was leaning toward the tedium side of the equation when his cell phone chirped, signaling a text message.
In Austin. My wife's abandoned me. You still up? More important, you up for drinks?
Noah grinned. Speak of the devil; he hadn't realized his friend Wyatt was in town, and seeing the text now, when he could really use some company, was almost like a gift from the gods.
He tapped out a quick reply.
About time Kelsey realized she was too good for you. Come to my place. I've already downed two fingers for you. You're welcome.
Since he had no idea what part of the city Wyatt was coming from, Noah settled back at the desk, prepared to get a bit more work done before his friend showed up. But his ass had barely hit the chair when he was startled by a loud rap on the door.
He pulled it open and found Wyatt standing right there. Which didn't say much for the building security, considering the elevators were operated by a six-digit password.
"What the hell? Were you waiting in the lobby?"
"Pretty much," Wyatt said, striding in. He was Noah's height, with golden brown hair and whiskey colored eyes that were crinkled with amusement.
"Where's Kelsey? Because if she's seriously left you, I should probably get word to her that I'm on the market."
"I'm meeting them at Griff's house later," Wyatt continued. "He's got a place in East Austin that he refurbished to turn a few of the rooms into a studio."
Now that Wyatt had mentioned it, Noah remembered hearing that Griffin was moving to Austin to work with a local production company that was producing his wildly popular podcast and adapting it to a web series.
"It's a pretty sweet set-up," Wyatt continued. "We drove his truck out from LA, along with the rest of his furniture."
"In other words, he owes you."
"Big time." Wyatt's smile reached his eyes. "I can trade on this for years."
"And if I hadn't been home?"
"That's the beauty of your new address. Such a convenient location. I would have just met up with them at whichever bar they landed at." He turned in a circle, taking in the open floor plan, the minimal furniture, and the collage of photographs on the back wall. "You've got good taste."
"Yeah, some asshole of a photographer twisted my arm until I bought some."
"The bastard."
Noah grinned. "How about that drink?"
Wyatt followed him to the kitchen, then parked himself on one of the stools tucked up under the breakfast bar.
On the way, Noah had grabbed his glass and the bottle. Now he pulled down a fresh glass for Wyatt and poured generously. "A local distillery," he said. "Welcome to Austin. And tell me how the hell you got to my door. Don't tell me the passcode lock is turned off on the elevators, because if it is, I'm having words with security."
"It's on."
"So, what? You opened the trap door and shimmied fifteen stories up the cable? Lyle's the action hero, not you. And even he needs a stunt man."
Wyatt spread his hands, looking smug. "I used your passcode."
"I never--"
"You didn't have to," Wyatt said, no longer with a teasing tone. "Anyone who knows you could make a solid guess."
Of course.
"Right," Noah said, his voice flat. "Pretty transparent." The code was the day, month, and year of his daughter's death.
"Oh, shit. Listen, Noah, I didn't mean to--"
"I'm fine. Really. So, you just came for Griff? Or do you have work lined up, too?" Even though Wyatt was kicking ass with his show, he still did some commercial work, and it wouldn't surprise Noah to learn that he'd come to Austin to take shots around the beautiful city.
It took Wyatt a moment to answer, and Noah was certain he was debating apologizing again for bringing up sad memories. Noah hoped he didn't.
Besides, he was the one who'd set that code, and he'd done it purposefully. Because he wanted that memory every time he rode the elevator.
He could live with the pain of losing Diana now. It had been torture at first, but the pain had dulled into a dark gray hole in his heart. What he couldn't live with--what he would never risk--was that a day would go by without at least one small memory of the little girl he'd loved so much. And so he had the code.
He kept his focus on Wyatt, who must have finally decided against apologizing, because he said, "No work for me, but on Monday, Kelsey's speaking to some local dancers about her experience in my show and filming The Far Side of Jupiter."
"That's wrapped, right?" Noah recalled that Kelsey's work on Wyatt's show had helped her land a role in a film adaptation of Jupiter, a Tony Award winning musical. "When's the release?"
"Not sure. Next year sometime. I guess I should probably know that." He frowned slightly, and Noah had to laugh. Not only did Wyatt's wife have a major role in the film, but Wyatt's own mother had worked on the screenplay and, Noah believed, acted as a producer. But despite Wyatt's deep Hollywood roots, he paid very little attention to the business. Hell, he'd gone so far as to change his name so that his status as Hollywood royalty wouldn't thwart his desire to make it on his own in his profession.
Wyatt sipped the bourbon, then slid off the stool. He crossed to the window and looked out over the now-dark river.
Noah took his own glass and settled into the big, ugly armchair. When he'd moved in, he hadn't had time to deal with furnishing the place, and so he'd let Carina hire someone for him, giving them free rein so long as they stuck to minimal, contemporary furniture.
But he'd insisted on keeping the chair. The ugly, battered, sore thumb of a chair.
He took a long swallow of his own drink and sighed with pleasure. For the first time since Kiki left, Noah finally felt relaxed.
Across the room, Wyatt turned away from the window, then leaned against one of the support beams while he looked back at Noah. "Okay, enough catching up. Pleasantries over, time to get real. You going to tell me what's up?"
So much for shifting gears. "What makes you think something's up?"
"Oh, let's think. You joked about being on the market--and yet you haven't been on the market since I met you. And you used Kelsey as part of the schtick, even though you had to know I'd either kick you in the balls or ask you what's wrong. So there you go," he added. "Now tell me what's up."
Noah hesitated. The truth was . . . well, the truth was that he'd never told anyone the truth. Not even Kiki--not all of it. Maybe not even himself. Not fully, anyway.
But it was time. He needed to put it out there. Articulate his thoughts. Most of all, he needed someone to be his mirror. And if Wyatt dropping by tonight wasn't kismet, he didn't know what was.
; "There was a woman," he began. "Before I married Darla, I mean." He drew in a breath. "She was . . . hell, she was everything. It sounds lame, but--"
"It doesn't," Wyatt assured him, moving to sit on the couch opposite Noah. "Go on."
"I need to start from the beginning. I was twenty-four," he said. "I'd dropped out of college after my first year, because school was starting to interfere with my success. And by then I knew I'd made the right decision. I was mostly writing video games, but I was doing some innovative shit, and I'd gotten noticed. I was getting all sorts of offers to buy my little company."
"So you were going gangbusters," Wyatt said. "That I understand. Just stay away from the tech talk, and we'll be fine."
"I hired a lawyer and looked at the up and downside of selling--and ultimately decided to hold on to my little corner of commerce. I had the lawyers help me get some venture capital so I could expand into virtual reality and artificial intelligence, and that's when I met Darla. She was in college and working as a file clerk with my attorney's firm. We met, hit it off, started dating."
"Fell in love," Wyatt filled in.
"Honestly, no." Noah took another sip of his drink. Not so much because he wanted it, but because he needed the time. Had he ever admitted that out loud?
"No," he repeated. "We got along great. The sex was fine. We had a lot of the same interests, and we could go out to dinner and always find something to talk about. We started spending all our free time together. I don't know if she truly loved me, and to be honest, I never thought about it. Not really. One day she told me she loved me, and I said the words back. It felt like it was time." He looked at Wyatt. "Does that make sense?"
"Sure." He considered his answer. "I think so."
"Not your experience, though. Not with Kelsey."
Just the mention of her name made Wyatt's eyes brighten. His mouth curved up, and he said very simply, "No. Not with Kelsey. We were just kids, but she grabbed hold of my heart, and I damn well knew it." He met Noah's eyes. "I'm sorry you didn't experience that."
"I did. Just not with Darla."
Wyatt leaned back. "All right. Go on."
"Darla and I'd been dating about five months when I met Kiki. She's a musician, and she and some friends were starting a band. She'd blasted through UT in three years--she's originally from Texas--so she could race to LA to make it big, and she was doing some freelance scoring work at my company. She showed up at my desk, I took one look at her, and it felt like I was tumbling out into space."
From the look on Wyatt's face, Noah could tell that his friend understood the feeling.
"You got together."
"We did. We worked together for about a week, and we both fought the attraction every step of the way. Because otherwise it would be unprofessional, right? But then we gave in. One Friday we went out for Happy Hour, and midway through our second drink decided to officially call it a date. That date ended Monday morning when we both went back to work."
"And then you told Darla."
Noah nodded. "And then I told Darla." He drew in a breath. "She was hurt, but break-ups aren't supposed to be pretty and I was as gentle as I could be. The thing is, we probably would have gone merrily along if I hadn't met Kiki. I probably would have ended up proposing. We were comfortable, and--"
He shrugged. "Well, that was about it."
"A lot of people live their lives without a grand passion. Sometimes, maybe that's enough."
"Maybe. I don't know. I think it was enough for my mom."
"Your mom?"
Noah nodded. "My real father abandoned her when she got pregnant. Said he couldn't deal with being a dad and had no intention of getting married. She had me, struggled, and ended up marrying my stepdad when I was almost ten. He was a nice guy, and a great father, but they weren't a couple. They were two people who didn't want to be single. I wanted more. Hell, I wanted Kiki."
Wyatt went to the kitchen and returned with the bourbon, then poured them each another shot. "I already know how this story ends. You ended up with Darla. And the two of you had a baby. I'm guessing she told you she was pregnant."
"Yeah." Noah slammed back the entire drink. "Fuck. To this day, I don't know if I did the right thing or not. But I know it hurt like hell to do it. She told me the day after I proposed to Kiki. Can you believe it? We'd been apart for almost four months, and I was at the office, a little hung-over because Kiki had said yes, and we'd done some serious celebrating."
He could still remember the way his head had pounded that day. He'd gone to the office even though it was Sunday to try to clean up some troublesome code, and Kiki was celebrating--and working--with her best friend, Celia. Their band, Pink Chameleon, had burst onto the scene after a single Kiki wrote blew the lid off both MySpace and YouTube.
That led to a manager and a record deal. They'd already been touring around the Southern California area, and they'd gained a pretty big following. But their new manager booked them for a national tour that was kicking off soon. The proposal had been in part because Noah wanted his ring on her finger before she hit the road with the band.
"So that Sunday, Darla came to my desk. She told me she was almost five months pregnant. That she'd never been regular, and she didn't think anything of it until her clothes started fitting too tightly. She said she was scared. That she loved me. That she didn't make enough money to take care of a baby. She said she wanted her baby to have a father, and that she and I had been so good together.
"She said," he continued, his voice tight with emotion, "that she knew I was a better man than my father, who'd walked away from his responsibilities."
He lifted a shoulder, needing to get past this part of the story, because it hurt too damn much to think about it. "So I married Darla. I did the right thing." The word sounded like a curse.
"And that's the moment that my life went off the rails. That's the moment when I destroyed everything."
9
Noah felt his body stiffen as the memory flooded back, heavy and gray and so full of guilt. The look in Kiki's eyes as he'd stumbled to get the words out. The raw, ripped feeling inside him because the last thing he'd wanted was to hurt her, and yet he couldn't stay. He couldn't walk away from Darla, from his child, and it was so damned unfair that she had to pay the price, too.
"I broke her heart--hell, I broke her spirit. She didn't even yell or cry. She just looked . . . I don't know. Dead inside. Later, I saw an article that said she'd dropped out of the band after the first stop on their tour, and the words sliced right through me. I blamed myself, but I also knew I couldn't do anything--I couldn't even call her, because I was the last person she'd want to hear from."
He started to pace the room, needing to move, as if that way he could stay ahead of the memories. "After that, I couldn't bear to know what was happening in her life. I put up a wall. I shut out that part of my life. Because I knew I was doing the right thing."
"Your baby needed a father," Wyatt supplied.
"But it was more than that. I couldn't be what my dad had been. I thought about being a weekend dad. Paying expenses. Bringing the child to my home with Kiki for weekends and holidays. But that wasn't fair to either the baby or Kiki."
"And you didn't think it would be enough, anyway," Wyatt said, with a perceptiveness that Noah appreciated. Guilt still clung to him, of course it did, but it was some small comfort to know that someone at least understood.
"It wouldn't have been. Not for me. I grew up hating my dad for walking away."
He forced himself to stop pacing and to meet Wyatt's eyes. To see the sympathy and the regret. "I just kept telling myself that I had to. That I couldn't be my father. That I had to take responsibility for the woman I'd gotten pregnant and the child I'd brought into this world. I hated myself for what I'd done. For what I was doing to Kiki. And all I had to hold onto was the belief that I was doing the right thing."
"Noah . . ." Wyatt's voice trailed off, as if he just couldn't find the words.
Noa
h stopped at the window, then looked out into the night. He'd destroyed so many lives by doing what he'd believed was the right thing. If he'd just stayed with the woman he wanted, Darla would be alive. Diana would be in school, growing up and breaking hearts. And Kiki would be his.
Stop it! The order was stern, and he pressed his forehead to the glass, willing himself to push down the guilt. But how could he, knowing what he'd destroyed?
He exhaled, his breath condensing on the glass. He watched it, focusing on the uneven edges as the condensate started to fade. "You would have thought the marriage would be awful, considering the circumstances. But it wasn't. I have to give Darla credit. And me, too. We worked hard. We really did. I didn't want to wear the ring only for show."
He moved away from the window and leaned against his desk, wanting the support that his work gave him. A tie to keep him from plummeting too far down into the past.
"And Diana," he continued, then fell silent as he gathered his words. Even now, his heart swelled when he thought of her. "She was the most beautiful baby in the world. I loved that kid like I never thought I could love anything or anyone. And smart. You could see it in her eyes. She saw everything, and I swear she understood most of it."
He closed his eyes, fighting back the swell of tears building in his chest, threatening to break out past the emotional dam he'd built so long ago. "She was almost one when the three of us went to Mexico City. I had a conference, and after that we were going to a beach resort."
"They were kidnapped," Wyatt said, and Noah nodded. Wyatt already knew that part of the story. He'd been there for Noah when, after seven long years, Darla had finally been pronounced dead.
"And now Kiki's back."
Noah dragged his fingers through his hair. "I'm that transparent?"
"I figured it was a good guess."
"I wasn't expecting to ever see her again," Noah admitted, "and then she's here."
"And there's still a connection?"
Without thinking, Noah's gaze shifted to the half-wall that separated the bedroom area of the studio from the rest of the space.
"I see."
"Then you have better vision than I do, because I've lost all perspective."