Freefall (The Indigo Lounge Series, #5) (33 page)

“You already know the answer to that, or you wouldn’t know what to ask.” My fingers scramble up to cup her shoulders, compel her to look at me. “But I can’t explain to you the hell of living with this every day, of knowing it’s my fault my son is no longer with me. Not until you’ve had a child of your own.”

She shakes her head. “You’re wrong. I do know,” she murmurs hollowly.

I feel a little hope when her hand lifts toward me. But it hangs between us, then drops as her face convulses and a dry sob rips from her throat.

“Baby, please, if you know...if you have any inkling of what I feel, then don’t write me off. Tell me what I can do to fix this. I know you think I’m a monster—”

Her teary laughter cuts me off. “Trust me, I know what real monsters look like. Actually, no I don’t.” Her self-flagellation flays me. I move to tug her into my arms, but she pulls away and folds her arms around her middle. “I don’t know what my monsters look like, and I’ve never wanted to know. What sort of person does that make me?”

I hesitate, then attempt to save the life I can see slipping away from me. “There’s no right or wrong way to deal with what happened to you. You wanted to put what happened to you behind you. But...if you ever want answers, I can help.”

“Oh, you mean
Seven
hasn’t come up with any yet?” she asks with a voice devoid of emotion.

Blackness encroaches, and I scramble to stay above the void threatening to swallow me up. “Shit.” I stop to regroup. “She found a property in the Hollywood Hills area that matches what you described, but the house was pulled down and rebuilt three years ago. She’ll carry on looking if you want.”

“I don’t want.”

Shock spikes through me. “What? Why not?”

“Did you stop to think there might be another reason why I wouldn’t want to know what happened to me? Why I wouldn’t want justice for myself?”

The bleak echoes in her voice have deepened, shadowing her beautiful face, shrouding her precious body. I scramble harder to follow what she’s saying. “Why wouldn’t you want justice?”

She shakes her head in deep mournful. “You seem to think I hate you for all the things you’ve done. I don’t.”

I know I’m not safe, that the ground beneath my feet is shifting and cracking, ready to swallow me whole should I misstep. But I move toward her anyway.

“If you don’t hate me, then why are we fighting?”

“We’re not fighting. It’s just the ugliness, which we both know lives beneath the surface, coming up.”

“No, this is me. All me. Kitten, you have nothing to feel ugly about. You’re beautiful.”

“
No!
”

I reel at the tears filling her eyes. I reach out for her and my hands are shaking. She evades my grasp, and the soul I thought I didn’t possess shrivels at the stark emptiness I see in her eyes. “I’m not. Please...I’m not,” she repeats. “I’m so, so far from beautiful that...oh, God!”

She releases a God-awful sound, and crumples before my eyes. I catch her before she falls. She moans and tries to get away from me. I hold on tighter, tuck her face against my shoulder for far more selfish reasons than the comfort I freely offer her. When she’s in my arms, I can dare to believe that there will be a way back for me.

I run my fingers through her hair and plead, “Keely, baby, please. Tell me what’s going on.”

She sobs quietly for another minute. Then she raises her wet, guilt-ravaged face to mine. “What you said just now, about me not knowing the hell of losing a child...?”

I frown, and try to backtrack. “Yes?”

“I said you were wrong. I wasn’t being empathetic. I was being factual. I
know
how it feels to lose a child.”

The naked agony shrieking from her is the final string of code that connects the dots. Vision of her on the beach at Montauk and in the shower afterward; the outbursts that guarantee she would get punished. Her certainty that she didn’t have anything to live for. The facts whizz through my brain at top speed as she staggers away from me.

I follow, needing to tell her she can lean on me if she wants. We can be battered, broken halves of a jagged whole. But she’s staring at me with those big, guilt-soaked eyes again, and the force of her pain is so visceral it paralyzes me.

“You loved your son, Mason. Enough to find answers. I gave birth to mine and gave him away without a single question or protest minutes later. Which one of us is a monster now?”

Shock rains on me and I watch her drag herself to the door. I can’t lift a finger to stop her. The depths of what was done to her are too much for me to fathom.

So I stand still. And I drown.

Her hand trembles as she turns the handle. Then her back tenses.

“Oh, by the way, the message Cassie left? She wants you to call her back ASAP. Her exact words were, ‘tell him the head of the institute wants to know which way to go concerning Max Peterson.’”

Keely

S
ix Days Later

“Thank fuck that’s over!” Bethany flops into the club seat next to me on Zach’s private plane, and secures her seatbelt over her Zac Posen dress and matching shoes combo. “Don’t get me wrong, I love the Indigo Lounge and everything Zach’s built. But no matter how extensively you vet them, the guests are
always
an unknown variable. Case in point - Fake Rack Olga The Ogre for me last year, and Tetanus Titus with you this trip.” She stops and giggles, then purses her adorable lips. “Hmm, I think if we put our heads together, we can come up with some idea of personality yardstick to measure them with. Or beat the crap out of them if they misbehave. What you do you think, Keels?”

I drag my frozen heart and aching body out of its icy morass, and force my head to bob up and down. “Yeah, sure. Whatever.”

Fuck, moving my mouth hurts and my eyes water when I blink. Every second for the past week, I’ve wanted to lay down and die. From the moment I revealed the true depths of my rotten soul to Mason, and seen the frozen shock in his eyes, I’ve been a piece of toxic driftwood, bobbing toward a great and final plunge into nothingness.

Except the nothingness never arrived. Instead tidal surges of pain keep me afloat, and while the occasional twisting current would pull me under, it’s never enough to do away with me.

Bethany has put her wedding preparations on hold to make me her personal project. I’m sure Zach hates the very mention of my name by now. All week, I’d secretly hoped he would do something about it. Hire a team of hit men to take me out, so he can have his Bethany back. Instead, the big pussy had indulged his fiancé, who in turn had stood by me, held my hand when tears defied me and dared to fall.

Her heart broke for me when I finally told her what I went through at nineteen, and I had to fight to stop her getting Zach on the case when I told her about the emails. And we cried in each other’s arms when I told her about the child I’d given birth to, then given away.

She grabs my hand now and squeezes as the plane taxies and surges into the sky. Her face is a tableau of sadness and worry. “What can I do, Keels? I can’t stand seeing you like this.”

For a hot little second, I hate her for not throwing me off the edge of a cliff when I our positions were reversed and I been smugly confident I knew what she was going through. 

“You should’ve told me to go fuck myself when I tossed out relationship advice to you last year,” I murmured around a throat that refuses to work properly.

She smiles. “Are you telling me to go fuck myself now?”

I try to grip her hand, but my fingers are too weak, so I let them go slack again. “Of course not. What I’m saying is you haven’t judged me once this week, whereas I was Judgey McBitch when you were going through that stuff with Zach last year. I whined about you not telling me straight away, when I kept my own shit from you for years. Then I was an ass to Zach for daring to want you back after he hurt you.”

“No, Keely. You listened when I needed you to, and encouraged me to take a chance with Zach. I don’t know what’ll happen with Mason—”

“Nothing will happen!” Even the sound of his name is like a blowtorch to my skin. “You didn’t see his face, B. He...he lost his, for god’s sake. I gave mine away—”

“After you were violated so horrifically, you spent months in hospital.” Her fingers twist through mine and I see her heartache for me. “Perfectly health, well adjusted women take that option every day. No one can judge you for that. No one has
a right
to. And if Mason thinks he can, well...he can fuck right off. There, I can be bitchy about him in return.”

A drop of liquid falls onto my white jumpsuit, and I realize I’m crying. Bethany’s face twists and swipe at my cheeks. “Dammit. Sorry, B. I don’t mean to...I can’t...God, it hurts so fucking much!”

As soon as the seatbelt sign goes off, she unbuckles hers and pulls me into a tight, deep hug. The next minute, I’m bawling my eyes out, each sob ripping me to pieces all over again.

“I’m sorry,” she croons over and over in my ears.

I love Bethany, but in that moment I wish for other arms around me. I yearn for the stronger arms of the man I’ve fallen in love with despite all the signs pointing to it being the biggest mistake of all.

I was so stoned with shame and self-recrimination when I stumbled out of Mason’s suite, it hadn’t occurred to me that would be the last time I saw him.

Now I wish I’d taken one last look at his face. Stayed a minute longer in his arms when he’d pulled me close.

Delayed my confession by another day?

I suck in a tortured breath. I would have still ended up here, like this, wishing every breath would be my last.

You have a hell of a fucking lot to live for!

Pain lances me when I hear Mason’s voice in my head. God, I bet he wishes he’d known the depths of my sins when he’d made that assumption.

More tears flow.

“Oh God, Keels. Tell me what to do,” Bethany begs.

I take pity on her and pull myself together. For one thing, if I return her to Zach as stressed as she is right now, he’ll serve my head up on a silver platter. While that thought is palatable right now, that would stress Bethany out even more.

“You want to help me?”

She nods. “Whatever you need.”

“Get the stewardess to rustle up some Dom P. I’ll go clean up and we can get pissed in style. Yeah?” I croak.

She looks uncertain for a few seconds, then she nods. “Umm...okay. Let’s do it.”

###

T
he limo drops us off at my place when Bethany refuses to go home until she’s sure I’ll be okay.

She knows better than anyone that I won’t be okay for a long time, so I don’t bother putting up a protest.

I lean disconsolately against the wall while she grabs my mail. She hands it to me as we enter the elevator. After I shut my front door, I toss the mail on my console table. A couple slip off and drop to the floor.

I bend to pick them up, and see the unmistakeable seal at the back of a heavy, rectangular envelope.

My blood runs hot, then cold, then freezing. I make a sound that probably isn’t human, and Bethany hurries to my side.

“What’s wrong?”

My fingers tremble as I clutch the envelope. “
Omigod, it came. It actually came
.”

Bethany gasps. “What did you say?”

I repeat it, and turn the envelope over. I want to lift it to my nose, sniff hard to see if Mason’s scent clings to it. Of course, the likelihood that he doesn’t send out his own invitations is quite high. Plus this invitation most likely came straight from the White House—

“My God.”

I look up and Bethany’s wiping a tear from the corner of her eye, while grinning like a freaky circus clown.

“What?” I demand.

“What you said kinda freaks me out a little. That was my first thought too, when I saw Zach’s Indigo Lounge envelope.” 

I let out a defeated sigh. “Baby girl—”

“No.” She grabs my hand. “It’s my turn to help you, and we’re doing things
my
way. Open the envelope.”

My whole body shakes as I slide my finger carefully beneath the gold crest. I lift the flap and remove the invitation. I see my name next to Mason’s and my heart squeezes hard enough to make me dizzy.

“Shit! Don’t fucking pass out on me,” Bethany cries.

We walk arm in arm to the living room and collapse on the sofa. I lie there, wide open and defenseless against the waves of pain as Bethany talks about designer fittings and make-overs.

“No,” I croak when it all becomes too much.

“What do you mean, no?”

“I’m not going.”

“Yes, you are. It’s the fucking White House. Refusal could be treasonous.”

I manage a weak snort, which fails miserably.

When she launches into another shopping list of things I need to get me ready, I sigh.

“Mason said he’d send me a dress. And shoes. And
trinkets
.” I attempt another snort. It works this time, and suddenly I can’t stop. I laugh and cry until I’m a giant wrecking ball of hysteria, rolling around on my living room floor.

But as quickly as the mania begins, it ends, and I curl my knees to my chest and hug my heartache close. I don’t know how long I lie there or when I give in and let sleep claim me.

When I wake, there’s a blanket over me and a pillow beneath my head. Bethany’s on the floor next to me, with a steaming bowl in one hand, and collection of DVDs in the other.

My gaze meets hers and she gives me a heartbreaking little smile. I nod and shuffle my broken body upright. I take the bowl of chicken soup from her, and she slides the first episode of
Game of Thrones
into the machine.

I drink my soup. And let the carnage onscreen wash over me.

And I wonder if the rock of agony in my stomach will ever leave me.

###

T
he dress arrives two days later. I refuse to open the Valentino bag and shoebox when Bethany shows them to me. I ignore her huff as she goes to hang it in my wardrobe.

The diamonds arrive two days before the Friday event. This time, I’m alone at my apartment, having finally convinced Bethany that I can take care of myself, and that I’m going to Washington D.C.