by Joey W. Hill
As Robert’s heart leaped into his throat, she nodded. “You will get some of your answers. Those you don’t, I will help as I can, when we meet.” She looked toward the shadows, pointed. “But for now, I think you should go check on him. He didn’t go to the restroom, Mr. Bauer. He headed for the back door.”
The spike of alarm gave wings to Robert’s feet. Despite her certainty, he checked the backstage area fast, then he was out the rear door. It took two steps to confirm Ange was no longer in the building.
The caramel-colored suit jacket was on the ground.
Robert called Ange’s name, shouted it. He checked the car, then searched the parking area. From there he worked outward, combing the well-tended grounds around the auditorium. The parking area started to fill with arrivals for the ballet.
He checked a nearby city park, then re-canvassed all the immediate surroundings before getting into the car and using it to cover more area. He stopped endless times to probe shadowed alleys between buildings. He rolled up next to pedestrians, asked them if they’d seen him, watched their expressions change from wariness to sympathy or curiosity before he continued onward.
Ange was out in thirty-degree weather and slushy, icy snow with no jacket. Robert kept his hand on the coat, folded in the passenger seat. In some crazy way, he thought the contact would help him find his way to Ange, like scent did a bloodhound.
By the time he stopped a couple hours later in a Krispy Kreme parking lot, he was bone-cold and his hands were shaking. As the light of the neon sign flooded into the BMW, he told himself he needed to calm down.
Ange was a grown man. Yet Robert kept being pummeled by the memory of that very first meeting six months ago, Ange on his ass in the alley by Robert’s store, bleeding from the mouth, bruised from the beating he’d taken from a bunch of thugs, the green eyes lost as lost could be.
No. He was just wandering, getting a grip on the ghosts that had risen from his past tonight. That Robert had stupidly stirred up.
Guilt wasn’t going to help anything. “Shit. Take a breath. You’re just scaring yourself half to death, and you can’t think straight that way. That won’t help him.”
He purchased a large coffee at the drive-through, then chose a parking spot. As he drank coffee, he called up his browser on his phone.
North Carolina was a long way from New York City, and a million tragedies were reported on the news. One that happened in the dance world wouldn’t have registered in Robert’s world. Not before he’d met Ange.
Bracing himself, he entered the key words Helena had suggested. The answer came at the very top of the search results:
Dancers shot onstage at Markham Company theater. Suspect kills himself…
As Robert read the details, his heart twisted, torturing him with the reminder of how Fate, once it had you in its grip, could be a cruel son of a bitch.
Clarissa Wyndham, 21, was fatally shot by Angus Corwin, 27, while rehearsing for a performance of the Nutcracker. Wyndham had recently broken off a relationship with Corwin. The shooting occurred Tuesday afternoon at the Markham Company theater.
Corwin allegedly entered the theater and fired thirteen shots at the stage. Wyndham and another dancer, Leo Seichek, died on stage. Also critically wounded was Ange Fournier.
Wyndham and Fournier were leads for this weekend’s upcoming Nutcracker performance. This is the second year Markham has offered a version of the popular holiday season ballet. Critics have put it at the top of the list of worthy competitors with the classic New York City Ballet’s performance. Fournier was also recently cited as “a star whose rise could be as breathtakingly high as his grand jeté.”
Robert clicked the phone off, put it in his pocket and laid his head back on the seat. Then he snarled, hit the steering wheel several times with the heels of his hands. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
Yeah, guilt-tripping himself was pointless, but fuck if he wasn’t going to do it to himself anyway. The alternative was losing his mind over Ange’s whereabouts and imagining worst-case scenarios.
He’d been so proud of himself, so excited about giving Ange this Christmas gift. Because Ange loved to dance so much, it had never occurred to Robert that the gunshot wounds had connected to the dancing itself. But Ange’s reaction to his visualization about dancing in air had been a flag. Not a big one, but Robert should have pursued it more. Not let himself off the hook with a decision to hold off on a deeper exploration of Ange’s issues until after Christmas.
Trauma didn’t observe a holiday schedule, for fuck’s sake.
He’d been so out of practice as a Master, so arrogant, he’d missed the signs. If he’d paid closer attention, he could have read the shadows in Ange’s face more quickly, the shift in the type of tension he was experiencing, and headed this drastic reaction off. Instead he’d been so sure he was in charge, the Master bolstered by his sub’s trust and devotion. He’d gotten sloppy.
If ever anything could be called a trigger, dropping Ange backstage at the ballet he’d been preparing to perform when he’d been shot would certainly fucking qualify. Of all the stupid, fucking mistakes he could have made…
As bad as the guilt was, the fear was worse. It was cruel and jagged, slicing into his lungs and making it hard to breathe. Robert pulled Ange’s jacket closer, smoothing it with his palm, remembering the heat of Ange’s body beneath it. The pump of his heart, the smile on his beautiful mouth. If Ange wasn’t clearing his head, if he was lost in it, then he was wandering the city streets with no situational awareness, not even of the cold.
That possibility meant only one thing that mattered. Robert’s ten seconds of self-flagellation and imagining terrifying what-if scenarios were over. His sub needed him. Robert had to find him. It wasn’t just Ange’s mind that was in danger—his very life could be as well.
He kept going, looking. The fear didn’t abate, but it wasn’t in control. He was focused and thorough. He gave police patrols a description of Ange, told them he was a past violent trauma victim who might be experiencing a PTSD episode. They listened, told him they’d keep a lookout, and Robert believed them, particularly those he could tell had run into that situation, personally as well as professionally.
“I love you,” he said, more than once, to the silent inside of his car, to the spirit of Ange, out there somewhere. He said it with fierceness, with fear, as a plea to any force that would listen to what he considered a three-word prayer. If he’d had any doubt how much Ange mattered to him, not being able to find him when he might be in trouble drove it straight through his heart. In a situation like this, Cupid’s arrow felt like a railroad spike.
He lost track of how many times he left his car to talk to street people, couples walking home from restaurants. He had to assume Ange had stayed on foot, but if he was wrong and he’d boarded a bus, Robert would have fuck-all idea of where he ended up. He had to stick to the idea he was still within range.
At four in the morning, he was back at the store for the third time, hoping against hope he’d find Ange there. He didn’t. Robert laid his keys down on the store counter, and braced his hands there. He closed his eyes, dropped his head down between his sunken shoulders, giving himself the moment of weariness. He was going to lose his fucking mind.
He ticked off all the places he’d checked, some of them more than once. He’d gone to Charlie’s, to Sully’s, gone home. Hit the homeless shelters. Returned to the theater, banged on the backstage entrance insistently enough to earn the ire of the security guard sitting just inside, but his desperation had gotten through. They hadn’t seen Ange, but when he called Helena with the card she’d given him, he discovered she was still there, attending a cast party in the dressing rooms. When he explained the situation, his voice hoarse with cold and worry, she told him she’d come to the back entrance to talk to him face-to-face.
As she emerged, wearing an ivory wrap over her clothes, she said something to the security guard. He disappeared back into the building with a more sympatheti
c look toward Robert.
“Do you have any idea where he might go, things I might not know?” Robert asked.
“I wish I could help you.” Worry lines creased her forehead, her eyes sad. “But you see, Ange disappeared on us, too. After he got out of the hospital, he left his apartment, paid his rent, vanished. We were his family. He was not in close contact with his parents, but we checked with them, nonetheless. They didn’t know where he’d gone, either. None of us did. It never occurred to us that he left the city, but obviously he did.”
The idea that Ange might be headed somewhere hours away, where Robert had no chance of ever finding him again… Hell, the kid hadn’t seemed to know his last name for the first several months. When Robert insisted on having it, needing to put him on the payroll officially rather than continuing to hand him cash off the books, it seemed like Ange had to dig his surname out of some forgotten closet in his soul.
Robert had built up his business using a lot of networking, contacts in the hobby and collectibles world. He provided guidance to the marketing firm that handled his social media presence and advertising, but it wasn’t second nature to him to go to the computer to search for anything except the toys he was tracking down. If he’d searched on Ange’s name months ago…but how could he have suspected a homeless kid had been a famous NYC dancer who’d light up a bunch of search results?
He was on the guilt train again. Hell, on that note, what if Ange had hit the Amtrak station? He could end up in DC, or back in NYC, brimming with millions of people…
No, he couldn’t even consider it. It wasn’t happening. He would find him. He would.
The security guard emerged with a steaming cup of coffee that Helena pressed into his hands. “You look frozen,” she said. “Please drink this. He’ll turn up. I know he will. Your love for him is so obvious. It will call him back to you.”
Returning to the present and his store, illuminated by the six Christmas trees he’d switched on—maybe to add to that beacon Helena had mentioned—Robert stared down into the display case. He resisted the urge to hit it. Cutting open a major artery by accident wouldn’t be useful.
He was exhausted. He’d have to go home and get some sleep. But he couldn’t handle stepping into the space and reliving everything they’d done there together. Or seeing the small things that Ange had already done to change the space, make it more open to life and love, to living again. He couldn’t. He’d sleep in Ange’s cot in back.
Think, think, think…
Robert pushed aside everything he thought he knew, and focused just on Ange. He remembered last night, when he’d brought Ange to his bedroom. Ange’s expression, his sensitive fingers moving over the Lehmann clockwork toy. The baker’s cheerful face and sweet smile, the chimney sweep with his broom slash flogger. When Ange looked over his shoulder at Robert, his expression had reminded Robert of the night he’d met him, that openness.
Everything, good and bad, kept leading him back to that first fateful meeting. How he’d felt—
Well, fuck.
Robert bolted away from the counter. Of all the stupid places not to have checked…
He barely dared to hope, but his gut said it made so much sense. In case he was right, as he passed the small office area, he grabbed the extra coat he kept hanging on a rack in there.
He shoved his way out the side door and into the alleyway. As his gaze coursed over the dumpster and a couple trash cans, Christmas past and present overlapped. He remembered Ange’s long legs, clad in ratty jeans and even rattier sneakers, no socks despite the cold, sticking out from behind the dumpster.
Now he saw those same legs, only they wore Dolce Gabbana slacks, his feet in cowboy boots, though the boots were a lot more scuffed than when he’d last seen them.
Robert’s heart seized up, because those expensively clad legs were limp as a rag doll, dropped on the ground and abandoned.
“Ange.” He still wore his suit, so in his dress shoes he slipped on an icy patch and nearly fell, but he got there. As his gaze penetrated the darkness behind the trash receptacle, he made out the shape of Ange lying in a half-sitting up position, his head resting against the hard metal, eyes closed. But his lips were parted, and he was breathing.
“I’m here, Ange. I’m here. It’s me. It’s okay.” Robert knelt next to him, already stripping off his jacket. He pulled him away from the wall to get Robert’s still body-warmed coat around him, then double-layered it with the coat he’d grabbed. The green shirt was dirty, suggesting Ange had fallen or leaned against a lot of less-than-clean places tonight. But Robert didn’t see any blood or sign of injury.
The vest was gone, the shirt’s pearl snaps open to his waist, exposing the pale skin to the elements. That, and his lack of a jacket, explained why Ange felt like an ice cube. The kid was giving his heart a complete workout tonight.
When he lifted him away from the dumpster, Ange thankfully lifted his head. His expression was bleary, out of it, but he was conscious.
“Who am I?” Robert demanded, giving him a little shake. “Tell me, Ange. Answer me.”
“R-Robert… Master. Help. Safe.”
A little sigh, and Ange’s eyes closed, his head tipping forward to rest on Robert’s chest.
Shit. “Okay. Okay.” Robert held him tight, rubbing his hands up and down the coats pulled around Ange, helping to warm him as much as to reassure himself. He was here. He was okay. “Come on. We need to get you where it’s warm.”
Robert hauled him up to his feet, keeping a secure arm around his waist, a palm flattened on Ange’s chest. Ange stumbled the first step or two, but then regained enough awareness to use his legs, show Robert that he had feeling in them. He also had a cough. The temperature wasn’t low enough to risk frostbite, but prolonged exposure to the cold without the right kind of outerwear wasn’t good for anyone except penguins.
Robert took him straight to the car and folded him into the passenger seat. The house was less than a couple minute drive. He could get Ange into the cast iron tub, warm him up. Robert knew how to deal with cold. Once Robert got Ange out of his clothes, as long as he didn’t discover any injuries he couldn’t see now, home was a better place for Ange than a medical center.
He pumped up the BMW’s heater as he turned over the engine. Ange lay against the seat, his head turned toward Robert. Robert glanced at him, then looked again, seeing the tears running down Ange’s face. No words, just all the suffering of the world in those big green eyes.
Robert cursed softly, reached over and gathered him in, holding him tight once more as the warm air blew on them. “It’s okay. I’ve got you. It’s okay.”
“I’m so sorry. So sorry.” Ange shuddered once, that hard shake, and then he was weeping against Robert. He grabbed Robert’s shirt, fingers clutching the muscle beneath, as if he was afraid Robert was going to let him go, let him spin away on the current of those feelings.
No worries of that. If Robert could figure out how to do it, he’d never take his hands off him again.
“No sorries needed, kid. You’ve done nothing wrong. Nothing at all.” Except scare the life out of him tonight. When Ange was in his right mind, Robert was going to take a permanent strip off his hide for it. But right now, he was just grateful to every god and guardian angel and Ange himself for not taking him beyond Robert’s grasp.
His boy had come home to him. Help. Safe. Those thoughts, the unconscious knowledge of where he could find them, had been the lifelines that had brought Ange back to Robert. It told Robert exactly what his job was right now. To provide those things, in whatever ways Ange needed them.
Chapter Nine
When Ange’s sobs had died down some, leaving him even more exhausted—and he was pretty close to comatose now—Robert drove back to the townhouse. He did it one-handed, keeping his other arm around his passenger. Ange leaned against his side, over the console, his forehead pressed to Robert’s shoulder. There seemed to be no strength left to him, so Robert was glad for his own str
ength. It helped him get Ange into the house. They took the lift up to the master bedroom floor. Once there, he guided Ange into the bathroom, made him sit on a folded towel on the commode seat as Robert ran the bath.
He’d imagined sharing this tub with Ange under far different circumstances, but Robert wasn’t complaining. Ange was here, watching Robert with empty, red-rimmed eyes. When he dozed off once or twice, Robert adjusted him so he was propped against the adjacent bath counter until the water was ready.
He undressed him, pulling off the boots. Where the vest had gone was a pointless question. He removed the shirt, unfastened the slacks, got him out of everything but the collar, which was still securely buckled on his throat.
A thorough body check confirmed nothing but a handful of scrapes and marks likely to turn into bruises. Probably from where Ange had run into things, or slipped and fallen on icy patches of ground.
Nothing dire, but the marks reminded Robert of what could have happened. His hands briefly tightened on Ange, a reproving squeeze he didn’t follow up with any scolding. This wasn’t the time for that.
When he began to take off the collar, Ange surged out of his half-doze, his hands closing over Robert’s with near-violent intent. His green eyes were wild, his gaze wheeling around the bathroom.
“Ange.” Robert spoke sharply, bringing his sub’s focus to him. “You’re here. I’m not taking it away. I’m taking it off for your bath.”
Ange blinked at him, his rapid breaths settling. Robert saw a spurt of shame, but he touched his face, shook his head at him. Telling him it was all right. Slowly, Ange nodded, relaxing by increments. Robert set the collar aside then guided Ange into the tub, holding onto him until he was fully seated. Robert had added eucalyptus, Epsom salts, even some lavender bubbles. Anything he’d found in his mother’s bath supply basket he thought might soothe and restore. He was glad he hadn’t pitched them, despite how rarely he took a bath himself.