by B. D. Roca
Her eyebrows lifted delicately.
“I spoke about Charles’ fragility because you’ve run from it once already. When you were sixteen and demanded to leave that school? It was because of your relationship with him, wasn’t it?”
Kemp paled. Naively, he’d never imagined she would bring this up.
Her brows still raised, she glanced around at the other occupants of the dining table and leant back, utterly at ease, hands folded in front of her. “You were at an elite school, doing so well—and then I get that phone call from you demanding to drop out of the place. Immediately. Remember?”
Charles turned from Maxine to stare at Kemp with a shock he could not hide, lips parted and horror in his eyes.
Yeah, Charles was remembering, all right. He was remembering how after that one night between them when it had all gone too far, Kemp had disappeared pretty damned fast. He’d had his reasons, but now was absolutely not the time to share them.
“That had nothing to do with—”
“Kemp, dropping out of that school made no sense. Academically you were flourishing—a first. Which meant the classroom wasn’t the problem—it was the time you spent with Charles. You two shared a dorm room for several years. Did you think I didn’t understand what that would mean, sweetheart?” Her red mouth curled in amusement. “You’re my son. I understand you. Of course I knew what sharing a room with him would mean. You could say that I thought of it as an experiment.”
Charles listened to Maxine’s low, assured voice with a growing nausea. Humiliation tore at him. He’d been insane to think she wouldn’t come here without the full intention of tearing him to pieces.
He just hadn’t seen exactly how she could use Kemp as a weapon.
Less than an hour ago, Charles had told Maxine’s children the ugly truth. It had not been easy.
“I paid her off,” he’d said simply. After Maxine’s call to Viva that morning, and her demand to see both her children, he’d had little choice. “It was a legal agreement. If she had held to the terms of the contract, neither one of you would have had to deal with her ever again—unless you wished to. It entailed her returning to the States, but was never about permanently severing ties.”
Viva had demanded, “So why the hell did she just call me?”
Because the woman was an egomaniac? Angry that she’d been bettered, terrified of losing potential access to further cash?
Nothing made sense anymore. Not after what Maxine had just said.
Charles had never forgotten what it felt like in the aftermath of Kemp’s disappearance from the school. He’d been sixteen. Finally feeling that he owned his own life. All due to Kemp.
Then after one ill-judged evening, Kemp had gone. He’d felt abandoned.
He’d lost any remaining trust in human nature, but Kemp’s desertion had been its own dark gift.
He’d taken more interest in the team dealing with his holdings, determined not to become some sad, embezzled cautionary tale. He’d decided on art schools in Sydney and New York, and methodically chosen the first of a string of lovers.
All of it had felt like going through the motions. Nothing had replaced the rush he’d felt just being in Kemp’s company. Just talking. That had been his mistake. Wanting more. Just… wanting.
Kemp had taken away the last shred of magic when he’d left, no explanation, no nothing, although Charles could guess why he’d chosen to go. That night they’d finally pushed it too far. Crossed a line.
And Maxine had sensed what must have been Kemp’s revulsion in his demand back then to leave and now was using it to tear Charles to pieces. For once, he could not think of a single word to deflect or defend himself with. Somehow, he got to his feet, threw Maxine a remote glance.
Acting, of course. He was merely acting. In a few minutes, he’d fall apart totally. She wanted to tear him apart. Her weapon had been the beautiful memory of him and Kemp in their younger years. Her instincts were impeccable.
“I’ll leave you three to your discussions,” he said. He gave Kemp and Viva a brief nod. “You now have all the information you need to make your own decisions.”
That much at least, was true. As he went to move away from the table, Kemp caught hold of his wrist.
“No, Charles. Stay, please.” Those grey eyes pinned his, a message in them for him alone. His thumb briefly stroked over the pulse racing in Charles’ wrist. “You’re a member of this family now. My family. I want you to hear this.”
Charles’ gaze was pinned by Kemp’s. Reluctantly, he sat down.
Kemp turned his attention to his mother. “This is about the money, right, Maxine? Just like it’s always been. Let’s throw all the damned cards on the table. The video on that USB—yeah, Viva and I know about that—is the wildcard you weren’t counting on, right? Your second marriage is a mess, and you’ve been looking around for your next big payday. So you arranged for the first break-in at this place—the one that got Stephen beaten to a pulp—but that turned up nothing. You were looking for dirt on Charles, right? But no dirt. So next you hit both Charles and me up for a payout. Except Charles messed you up with that genius surveillance video. Doesn’t make you look like mother of the year.”
“No,” Viva spat. “It most certainly does not.”
Kemp returned his attention to Maxine. “You got pissed off and scared—so fucking scared—that Charles has that ugly, filthy dirt on you. So you arranged for the second break-in at this place, the break-in at my place hunting for it—and Charles lands in the hospital.” Kemp rose and paced deliberately around the table to his mother. He leant down, face to face, and said too quietly, “It’s over, Maxine. The way you treated Viva disgusts me. Coming here today with the sole intent of tearing Charles apart with your cruelty was the last straw.”
Maxine had drawn back in her chair. Her cheeks were hotly flushed. “I’m owed more than the scraps Charles has offered. I’m your mother. You owe me. You can’t cut me out.”
Charles wondered if the others sensed what he did: a strange hollowness, the absence of any sense of right and wrong, that had always powered the woman.
There was only the base impulse to claw it all her way. All of it. Money. All the money. Anything to plaster over that deep lack in her. Fill that void.
Kemp had straightened up. “Owe you? You hauled up the loss of Charles’ mother and my own piece of ancient history for your amusement. You think I can ever forgive that?” He shook his head. “The glory days are over, but you just had to regain control. Oh, and remind us of family financial obligations just in case we were planning to forget. Just in case the next guy you land isn’t quite loaded enough.”
Maxine eyed him with disdain. “Don’t you judge me. You’re surrounded by Durant wealth. I expect to be adequately provided for.”
Viva lifted her chin. “That’s going to end.” She looked over at Charles. “You can’t keep paying her, Charles, even if you meant to protect us. You cannot finance the woman who covered up Richard Durant’s disgusting behaviour.”
Kemp came to stand beside him, a hand resting on his shoulder. He flexed his long fingers, but it was in reassurance. Charles could almost feel his strength flowing through that touch.
“You’ve been on your own in this too long, Charles,” Kemp said huskily. “And you fought our battles for us for too long. Let Viva and I fight for you now. It will be an honour.”
And like that, Charles saw it all with stunning clarity. Viva’s grey eyes, pale and cool as Kemp’s, were calm and trusting on his. He remembered every minute of that horrific tape. Could only imagine exactly the hell this formidable woman had been through. Kemp was watching him steadily, every ounce of the tough, indifferent facade dropped. That look told him he’d been drawn into their circle of family. The walls that had once held him outside now enclosed him within. Kemp’s formidable loyalty and support were his, if he chose to accept them. His lean, powerful hand was warm on Charles’ shoulder.
Viva and Kemp were handing him ev
ery ounce of their faith.
He gave one nod. “If that’s what you want.”
Kemp’s face was all the answer he needed. The look on Maxine’s face when he turned to speak was its own reward.
“We’re done, Maxine. Consider our financial agreement null and void. You’re on your own.” He met her hard, bitter stare. “Although don’t ever consider that you’ll be off the radar of my advisors. I don’t believe anyone in this room trusts you enough for that. Be most cautious, Maxine. Most cautious. Do you understand me?”
Her frozen shock was answer enough. The outrage behind her glittering eyes. The weight lifted from him was almost a shock.
It was finally done. It was over.
Chapter Twenty-Three
After Williams took Maxine away in that shiny SUV, Viva called Red. Kemp ached to be alone with Charles. They had too much to discuss. He hated the pain in his eyes.
While they waited for Red to turn up, Viva paced out on the terrace. Eventually she sat down and turned the black USB over in her hand.
Birdsong rang out in the silence. She tapped the USB against the glass tabletop.
Charles watched her with something like sympathy. He said, “It’s a strange thing, isn’t it? So small, yet so dangerous.” She opened her palm to stare at it. He added, “It’s up to you what you do with the USB. All I can tell you is that every day it’s been in my possession, it felt like a loaded gun. I did you no favours handing it to you.”
Viva nodded.
Abruptly she glanced around and got up, filched one of the fat white pebbles from a planter, and knelt on the ground. In moments she’d smashed the thing—that item that Charles had guarded so implacably for so many years—to a wreck of broken plastic and shreds of crushed metal. She swept them up, and taking hold of Charles’ hand, poured them into his palm.
She said fiercely, “I don’t want the burden of this thing. And now you’re free of it too. It’s served its purpose.”
“Yes, it most certainly has.” His fist tightened to white knuckles around the shards.
The minute Red’s car swung out into the road, Charles headed for his Lexus. Kemp watched him for a moment, feeling helpless. As the Lexus rolled towards the gates, Charles braked for a moment. “I need some time to think. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
Kemp watched as he left, the solid gates closing behind him.
Then he glared up at the endless blue sky. “Fuck it,” he bit out. “Screw this.”
The two of them had not gone through the last few days—no, fuck—the last decade, for it all to end because Charles needed time to process. Process what? Maxine’s toxicity? Process that shit long enough, and he’d lose all faith in even breathing.
Kemp marched inside the house, grabbed his wallet and phone, and went in hunt of Williams’ security dude. He found him in the garage, running some checks over the SUV in there.
It took some persuading, but the keys were handed over, and Kemp headed out onto the road.
The problem was, he had no idea exactly where Charles would go to seek some calm headspace.
An art gallery? A museum? Yeah, maybe. They’d walked through a fair number during their time in Europe together, learning one another again. But something told him Charles needed something different. Not that Charles was bothering to answer his phone to confirm that.
Kemp flashed on Eden, that little seaside town Charles had wound up in after the atomic-level implosion of his first show at that gallery. Baroque, magnificent photographs on the walls, Charles’ career projected like a rocket to next level, but a clusterfuck of social media pounding at his brain space. Every bit of skin torn off his nerve endings.
He’d needed calm and privacy. Hence, Eden.
Just like now.
Praying that Charles hadn’t headed down to Eden again—he really wasn’t up for a six-hour-plus drive—Kemp thought about the next best thing. Well hell, a simple swim in the sea had always helped him. A walk on the beach. Sand under his bare toes.
Amateur level next to Charles’ Eden road trip, but it was worth a try.
Problem was, Sydney was a city gilded by beaches. He started with the obvious spots and worked his way around a few, feeling like a man hunting for a needle in a haystack. Too bright, too brash. Then it hit him. He headed back, turned off Vaucluse Road, and pulled in by Nielsen Park.
Charles had clearly had the same idea hours back. The black Lexus was parked a few vehicles over. Yes. Triumph spiked. Kemp tested the bonnet and found it had cooled. He’d been here a time, while Kemp had been bouncing all over Sydney like a blue-arsed fly. Of course Charles would choose this place. The beach here was private, a little bit of a secret, and stunningly beautiful.
Much like his man.
Tramping along a foreshore walking track that lead through scrub and offered rare harbour views might have entertained Kemp at any other time. Right now he was on a quest.
Eventually the track led him down to Milk Beach. It was a small crescent of silky sand, enfolded by tough green vegetation and rocks. Some teenagers mucked around on the water’s edge. A toddler ran giggling along the sand, watched by his parents. And there was Charles, back to him, sitting on one of the flat outcroppings of rock, arms locked around his knees as he stared out at the yachts moored on the smooth water.
The salty breeze tumbled the blond waves back from his forehead. He turned his head as sand scuffed under Kemp’s Docs.
His eyes widened. “Kemp.” He said in disbelief, “You found me.”
Kemp gave him a ridiculously triumphant grin. “That I did.”
“How?”
Kemp’s grin faded. “Because I know you. Because I care. What happened back at the house with Maxine—” He held up a hand as Charles started to say something dismissive. “No, she wanted to hurt you with that school-times story. And she did, didn’t she?”
That beautifully cut mouth tightened, and Charles looked out at the water again. Kemp sat down next to him on the rock.
“It’s true,” Kemp said flatly. “What she said. The night after we—well, after you and I finally got hot and heavy in that dorm room after all the long glances and the midnight talks, I—I panicked.” Such a poor way to describe what had been the most intense experience of his young life.
By that night, Kemp was far from a virgin. Charles had one of his waking nightmares. Kemp had always kept a certain distance during them before, tried not to let Charles realise he knew about those nightmares. This time Kemp couldn’t keep that distance. He’d crawled onto the bed, the duvet a wall between them, and switched on the bedside lamp as if it would banish away those horrors.
“Are you okay, Chaz?” he’d asked softly.
Maybe it was that then-new nickname, the hushed midnight intimacy of it. Maybe it was the fact he’d grown increasingly aware of Charles’ sheer physicality in a way that was ripping under his skin all the damned fucking time.
Charles was off limits.
Friendship, yes. He could permit himself that. Fuck, he couldn’t have denied himself that. Charles’ cool, clever mind had grown to fascinate him. The striking talent once he picked up a camera. The dry humour. The wicked observations about the over-privileged idiots around them.
But anything more… well. What had ended Charles’ father, what Richard fucking Durant had inflicted on Viva, was a fresh bloody wound torn across Kemp’s mind and heart. He’d failed Viva. Hadn’t protected her. Had been a waste as a brother.
But Charles’ eyes had been wide on his face, hot breath rushing past those full lips in the aftermath of whatever fucking horrible thing the guy had been thinking about.
Kemp had automatically reached out a hand.
And it had been on.
Crazy stuff. Innocent stuff in a lot of ways. Kissing roughly, too roughly, tasting blood, touching each other’s bodies urgently and coming too fast. Not even getting naked, just hands pushing and finding.
But it had been intense and wild and a hundred times more in
timate and personal and true than anything else Kemp had ever done.
And he’d done it with Charles. The one person he could never allow too close.
Charles was clever. Charles could never be permitted to find out just how his father had died, no one could, and the closer Kemp got to Charles, the more likely that became. Maxine had warned him Viva could go to jail.
He couldn’t betray his sister that way.
So in the morning, in a fierce panic, he’d called Maxine. He’d been out of the place the next day.
“You terrified me,” Kemp said now, eyes fixed on the distant water. “You fascinated me, you were this incredible new continent, this mysterious place full of wonders and possibilities that I was discovering and… and at first it was innocent, but then that fascination got all wound up in just… fuck, Charles. All of it. Wondering what it would be like. Wanting to touch you and taste you and knowing you were totally off limits.”
Charles turned to him, and his face was harrowed. “But why, Kemp? Why did you just leave like that? No explanation, nothing—”
“Because I was gutless. I’d broken my own rule,” Kemp got out, rubbing his hands over his face. “Jesus, my sister had—she’d killed your father, Charles. Self-defence, accidental, his victim, all those things, yeah, but Maxine had pounded it into my head that Viva could go to jail for it. Either way her life would be torn apart.”
“The closer you got to me, the more danger there was I’d find out just how my father died that night?”
Tortured, Kemp nodded.
He said, “But of course you already knew what’d happened because that’s what a hardcore, fucking terrifying individual you were.” He shook his head. “I wish I’d known. I don’t know if I was ready for it, though.”
Charles nodded at that rough admission.
“I missed you, Charles. So fucking much. But it was all or nothing and… I’d failed to protect Viva from your father. I couldn’t fail her a second time.”