“Do you want Cat?” Pam nudged the envelope so the silver corner stuck out over the counter edge.
He removed the towel from his shoulder again, twisted it between his hands. “There’s this other guy sniffing around. They’ve known each other longer—”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“And the last time we saw each other, I think I acted pretty badly. I might have been jealous, I don’t know. I didn’t really listen to her.”
I didn’t even say good-bye
. The Burned Man’s appearance had refused to let him.
Since the day he’d walked away from her and Michael in front of the Margaret, Xavier had actually picked up the phone in his kitchen and tried to reach her at her hotel room. When she wasn’t there, leaving a message felt too weird. He regretted that now.
Xavier now eyed the envelope where his full name had been written out on the front.
Xavier Jones
. That stupid last name Nora had picked generations earlier and then bestowed upon
him like a newborn, the day after she’d rescued him from the Plant.
“Did Cat drop that off herself?” he asked.
“Don’t know. It was in the main mailbox. Do you want her?”
After he recovered from Pam’s abrupt change of subject, he turned around, leaned his ass against the counter, and took in the sight of Shed’s kitchen, the place that was more home to him than where he put his head at night. He knew the location of every single pot and pan, the number of steps from the burners to the
garde-manger
station.
He met Pam’s understanding eyes and replied, “Almost as much as I want to cook.”
Two other people were handing their invitations to the Drift
Gallery door guard when Xavier jogged up at twenty ’til midnight, his breath shooting sharp, white clouds into the frigid air. One of the coldest nights of the year—below zero, for sure—and Xavier was already sweating through his shower. Off shift at eleven, up the frozen streets to shower and change at his house, and back down to town, in a half hour.
The paper had been removed from the gallery’s front windows. Bright light spilled out onto the sidewalk, making the ice glitter. Even out on the street, the buzz of the crowd beat at his brain. The people inside, standing shoulder to shoulder and drink to drink, wore clothes he didn’t even know where to buy.
An ocean of Primaries, and he was about to purposely throw himself into it.
Why
had he come exactly? Did he do this for himself—to prove he could, to take that next step into the Primary world, to knock the Burned Man down another notch or two—or was he here for Cat? To be here on her big night, to help ease her nerves?
With red, numb fingers, he slipped the invitation out of the silver envelope and tilted it sideways, reading what she had scrawled along the side:
I really want to see you.
He lifted his head, blinking into the frightening brightness inside. An elaborate set of drapes covered the walls, linked together by a pulley system near the ceiling and dotted with purple tassels. No art yet, but everyone inside was here to see it. To see Cat. And she had asked for him.
Fuck it. None of this was about him. His selfish kiss on the sidewalk in front of Michael, his “moping,” as Pam would call it…his problem was that he constantly internalized everything, circling everything back around to him.
That’s
when he got into trouble. When the ghosts came back, when he retreated into himself, when he acted like an ass.
Tonight was about Cat.
“Sir?” The doorman, shifting on his feet, wore a parka built for an Alaskan dogsled race. A scarf wrapped around his face, showing only his chocolate eyes. “Are you going in?”
Yes. Like a soldier, he was going in. He nodded.
“Name?”
“Xavier. Jones.”
The doorman looked to his clipboard and flipped through the pages that crackled like cellophane.
Xavier’s fingers found the small patch of duct tape on the elbow of his coat. It was the first winter coat he’d ever bought, and it had seen better days. Scratching that little imperfection usually gave him an odd sense of peace. But right then and there, it felt like a label: Misfit. Hanger-on.
Secondary.
“You’re good to go in,” the doorman said.
Almost midnight. Xavier opened the door to a blast of laughter and conversation. The steady beat of bass surged somewhere underneath the voices, but otherwise the music was completely drowned out. He stamped up the three narrow steps into the gallery space and wedged himself into the solid wall of bodies. The scene was dizzyingly homogenous: pretty people balancing drinks and napkins with hors d’oeuvres. Same tone of conversation. Same muted colors.
He inched along the perimeter of the room, his back brushing the drapes and making them flutter. A tuxedoed server asked for his coat, but he declined, embarrassed of anyone else handling the sad thing. Besides, he didn’t intend to stay long. Just enough to see Cat, to let her know he’d come for her. That he would continue to do so, whenever she asked.
Draping his coat over his arm, he craned his neck to scan the top of the crowd, looking for the familiar brown, wavy hair. Instead he found Michael, and Michael found him.
The other man talked with a couple, but focused steel eyes
on Xavier. Michael held a crystal glass filled with what Xavier guessed to be whiskey. If Michael took it with ice, it had already melted. Xavier told himself to nod, to be the better man. Michael just lifted his glass to his lips and shifted his gaze back to the couple, but not before Xavier saw the veiled surprise.
Cat hadn’t told her benefactor Xavier was coming. That made him happier than it should have.
A brilliant burst of color fluttered in his peripheral vision and drew his attention toward the back hallway. All the breath punched from his chest as he watched Cat sweep into the main gallery.
In a room of people clothed in black, she wore a dress the color of tangerine: long sleeved, skin tight from shoulder to mid-thigh, and covered with sparkles that threw out tiny bolts of light. She’d somehow taken the wave out of her hair, and it hung straight and shiny over one shoulder. She was talking with Helen Wolfe, balancing a champagne flute in one hand and gesturing with the other. Helen pulled a woman over to introduce her to Cat, and Cat looked the new woman right in the eye, shook her hand, and listened to every word she said. Other guests passed by her, touching her arm or shoulder, saying words that made a luminous smile draw across Cat’s beautiful face.
Xavier had chosen to stay on Earth, but Cat was clearly meant for the stars.
Her eyes widened. She looked up and immediately found Xavier, as though he’d called her name. Her smile magnified. It lit her entire body and fought with the radiance of that dress.
She began to move toward him, a slow process made all the more agonizing by his anticipation. She stopped just outside the reach of his arms. He had no idea what to do now, what was appropriate or what she wanted. Vaguely he felt several pairs of eyes on them—one of them assuredly Michael’s—but couldn’t bring himself to care. He could see every freckle on her face.
“You came,” she said on an exhale.
“I did.”
“I’ve missed you,” she said. “I would have called, but I don’t
know your number and I know how you hate the phone. And we’ve both been so busy…”
And he missed
her
. The feeling shot through his gut, hard and swift as a bullet, then circled back and hit him again, this time a straight shot to his heart.
“Come here.”
She teetered forward the same moment he opened his arms. He still held his damn coat and could only grasp her with one arm, but just that was almost more than he could handle.
Her dress was backless.
The shock of warm, smooth skin underneath his palm sent bolts of lust straight to his dick. He groaned, then bit it back. Suddenly he was acutely aware of the condition of his hands: the dryness and scratchiness from washing them so much during the day, the way he didn’t trim his nails so much as rip off the rough edges with his teeth. The knife-cut scabs that just seemed to rotate locations every week.
Before he let her go—and before the Burned Man’s hissing laughter escalated into something he couldn’t ignore—he let his cheek brush the silk of her hair.
As he stepped back, he realized he hadn’t had to fold himself in half to hold her. “Did you grow over the past three days?”
Holy shit, he’d done it again. Made her laugh. She pointed at her feet and the shoes that exactly matched the shade of her tanned legs. “Ridiculous heels.” Her grin faded. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”
“So was I.” She nodded in understanding, and he pushed back his hair. “I was watching you before, talking to people. You’re amazing, Cat. You don’t need me.”
That’s when he saw her break. Her cheeks cracked; worry and nervousness seeped into the lines at the corners of her eyes and made her husky voice quiver. “This is much scarier than I ever thought. I definitely need you.”
He would give anything to possess the ability to not wear every single emotion on a sign around his neck. She did it so beautifully, like art itself. And she’d shown it to him and him alone.
Maybe she saw him in a similar way to how he saw her. Maybe they were each other’s keys, meant to open a door to
something new, but then disappear after they’d each passed through and into someplace else. By the way she regarded him now, head tilted, long hair swishing across her chest and shoulder, it seemed she might be thinking the same thing.
Helen’s voice boomed through the gallery. In the corner, standing on a riser, the curator spoke into a microphone perched on a long stem, welcoming everyone. Midnight. The “big reveal,” Cat had called it. Helen was talking about Michael Ebrecht and how he’d discovered this new artist, and how if Cat moved to New York or L.A., her prices were sure to go up. Xavier barely listened. He studied Cat’s face. How easily and smoothly she erased any doubt or nervousness from her smile. How she threw back her shoulders and seemed to meet the eyes of everyone in the room, simultaneously. She gave the crowd a little bow, palms pressed together as if in prayer.
Then Helen went to the wall edge, where she lifted the tasseled end of a purple rope and gave it a good yank. In a coordinated, almost wavelike movement, the white curtains lining the wall swished apart, gracefully sailing into the corners, revealing Cat’s art.
The room burst into applause, underscored by several audible gasps.
Xavier knew she painted water. Had prepared himself for the moment when he saw how she viewed the element that had caused him so much pain. He just hadn’t expected to love the paintings so much.
The crowd ambled closer to the walls, leaving Xavier and Cat in a widening space in the center of the room. He turned in a slow circle, taking in each body of water. Her paintings were grand in scale, most taller than her. Three on one wall, two on another, and a great, wide one—of an ambling river under moonlight that reminded him of a stripe of glittering stars—taking up the whole wall just to the right of the entrance.
It might have been the only time Xavier would ever agree with Michael. Cat’s passion was evident, and even though Xavier knew nothing about art, it was clear she was a star.
“What do you think?” Now that they were essentially alone, her voice came out so small, so unsure.
He ripped his eyes from the one whose pale turquoise waves
brought him instant, conflicting feelings of serenity and agitation. How on earth had she done that?
“Cat, they’re…magical.”
He didn’t know where that word came from, and even though it hurt him a little bit to use it, it made her beam.
The paintings were wonderful and enigmatic and emotional, but they just reinforced the fact that the two of them were destined to be separate. Because in his heart, he didn’t know how he could manage to stay with someone who continually reminded him of all that he’d escaped. In a way, it almost made their time together feel less frightening. She would leave, and her inexplicable relationship with water would make it a hell of a lot easier to let her go.
Except that he didn’t want to.
“You are,” he told Cat, and paused incredibly long because there were simply too many ways to end that thought, “very talented.”
He couldn’t say anything more, because his throat had closed and a terrible pressure settled in his chest.
“Thank you.”
Some guests shook their heads at the art, and Cat took it like a champ, choosing to look elsewhere. But many others came over to talk to her, and Xavier stood to the side, listening and watching. She may not have had real magic, but she had
something
.
Then Michael stepped in. His whiskey glass barely held two drops. “Helen wants you to meet a buyer. I’m sorry. Did I interrupt something?”
“No.” Cat shook her head, but took a long time to look away from Xavier. “A buyer already?”
Michael grinned, and it owned an inordinate amount of personal pleasure. “They’ve been primed well. All they needed was the store to open.”
One hand rose to her chest. She looked a little pale. “Which one?”
“Ocean #16.”
He nodded toward the prominent painting near the window. “An agent and his wife. I guess they just won some sort of bidding war.”
“Great.” Cat smiled like a jewel but Xavier noted the wistfulness as she gazed at the painting in question.
“They’re leaving soon.” Michael pinned Xavier with a direct stare. Xavier wouldn’t rise to it. Not again. This was no competition for Cat. Clearly that’s exactly what Michael wanted, and if Xavier made it out to be one, it’s what the Burned Man wanted to see, too. He wouldn’t do it. This was Cat’s night.
“That’s my cue,” Xavier said to her.
“No. Don’t go.” She touched his chest. “Not yet.”
“Go do what you have to do. I’m glad I got here in time to see the curtains come down.”
“Cat.”
Michael reached out and grabbed her elbow, but she yanked it away.
Xavier bent down and said, just for her, “I’m not running away again.”
It didn’t matter what her response might be. It felt fucking amazing to say.