No Magic Moment (Secrets of Stone Book 4) (35 page)

I leveled a questioning stare. “So? We’d all suspected as much.”

“I missed Claire…like the fucking sun. That was why I kept moving. Too long in one place and I’d begin to think about what an ass I’d been, what a failure the world had painted me to be…how I thought I’d failed
her
.”

“‘The world’?” I snorted. “You mean the three-point-five percent of the population who gave a damn about your real birthright? The herd of sheep led by the ‘financial experts’ who take consulting gigs with news media just to write off their facelifts and bad toupees?”

Before I finished, he’d pivoted around, arms folded—a cocky smirk spreading his lips. “Funny how small it all seems now, right?”

So this was what the view looked like—from the corner one had just painted themselves into. “Do you have a real point?”

He turned and restarted the methodical pacing. “I stayed on the move. Couldn’t stay in one place for too long. If I kept moving, nothing would…hurt. Didn’t have a rhyme or reason, just shifted to the places where it became easiest to lop off more pieces of myself and leave them behind.” He stopped. The hunch of his shoulders got bigger. “By the time I hit the other side of Texas, I wasn’t sure who the guy in the mirror was anymore—not that I was peering at too many mirrors by then. I just…couldn’t figure it out. Who the fuck had I become? The only answer that made any sense was the face I couldn’t forget, mirrors or no.”

I nodded in quiet understanding. “Claire’s.”

“She knew…everything,” he confirmed. “You know that, right? All of it; all the secrets about me. Even before Trey took them public, she knew them and she didn’t care. She knew me, loved me, for me.” He lifted his head, illuminating the new torment across his features. “And then I left her.”

For a long moment, I studied that prominent profile. Amazing. Even in the midst of a self-flogging, Killian Stone was the picture of composed command. I wondered if the guy had ever lost his shit, even in front of Claire.

Finally I asked, “Why?” Asked, not accused. I was sincerely curious about what had driven him to vanish from society for half a year.

His reply was simplicity and complexity in one. “I was lost,” he explained. “
He
was lost. At least I thought so. The man Claire Montgomery fell in love with, everything I assumed she valued in him, was stripped away after Trey worked his ‘magic’ with my reputation. Once I ran off after that bar fight, I was stupid enough to think I’d embarked on some romantic vision quest, out to find the man I really was…”

“And you learned Yoda was really just a Muppet?”

We shared a short laugh.

A
very
short laugh.

“Trouble is, it took me four months to realize it,” he uttered. “And when I did, the need for her—to see her, to hear her—hit me like one of the trucks parked outside the Texas burger dive I sat in.” His face contorted harder. “Like she was the key…back to me.”

I didn’t say anything. Talking got difficult when a guy felt like someone had pried open his head, dug out his most terrifying thought then let that oh-so-awesome freak flag fly.

“One of the drivers lent me his phone. I couldn’t punch in her number fast enough.”

My heavy swallow matched his. “But she didn’t pick up?”

“Oh, she picked up.”

“And?”

“And I couldn’t say a fucking word.” He slowly shook his head. “From the moment she uttered her greeting, it was—well, it was hell. She had no idea it was me on the line and I still heard it all in her voice…the pain she’d been through…the battles she’d waged to get through the days we’d been apart. Until then, I had no concept of what I’d done to her. She’s such a rock, you know?”

I didn’t disguise my disappointment. “Rocks break.”

He smacked a hand on the wall. “They also survive.”

“A lot of times, after breaking.”

“Not a lesson I didn’t learn, my friend—the hard way. I turned to dust, because I’d done the same to her. I had no clue what to do for her—or for me, at that point. I couldn’t speak.”

“Not one word?” I fired back. “As in, letting her know you were okay and not balls-up in a gutter somewhere? Telling her you missed her? That you still loved her?”

“I was a moron.”

“Damn right you were.”

“Selfish.”

“Still no argument.”

He cocked his head, exposing his face fully to me again. “That wasn’t even the end of it.”

Surprising, how his confession
wasn’t
a surprise. I lifted a black stare, the same one I used on Keir when he dropped in a “workout surprise” of fifty more soft sand burpees. “Shit.”

He coiled and uncoiled his fists. “After I gave the driver back his phone…I asked if he knew where I could get a gun fast.”

I shot back to my feet. “What the fuck for?”

He gazed back out over the water. Other than that, he was as unreadable as the walls around us.

“
Killian
?”

More of the human stone wall thing. The harsh jerk of his shoulders didn’t herald unicorns and pixie dust, either. “As I said, I was in a bad place.”

“You don’t fucking say.” I wasn’t bound to the granite-for-blood thing, and thank God. I stomped from one end of the little shore to the other. “How
much
of a bad place?”

“I’m still here, aren’t I? I got as far as buying the thing, making off to the bathroom then lifting the barrel to my mouth—then stopped cold, trying to remember if I’d ever read anything about the proper angle for blowing one’s brains out.”

“Christ fucking wept.”

“Now you understand why I didn’t tell anyone I’d returned to San Diego, and was living on the yacht.” His eyes raced with determined shadows. “I refused to be away from her any longer but couldn’t be near her, either. Not in that fucked-up state.”

“I take it you found a good shrink, too?”

A smile floated across his lips. “I saw Doc Straten before even moving my shit aboard the
Queen.
”

“And he was the one who encouraged you to paint.”

“Smart young bucko.” His smirk widened before totally fading again, committed once more to his audition for gargoyle status. He did prove his feet still worked, turning toward me once more. “That hour, alone in that bathroom with that gun, was the most selfish thing I’ve ever done in my life, Michael.”

I stopped and pounded a stare into him. “Don’t think I’ll deny you that one either, man.”

He took another step. Raised his chin and folded his arms as if he moved through water, graceful but resolute. “So when are you going to pull the gun out of
your
mouth?”

Now I was the frozen one. A thousand daggers of ice in one’s bloodstream usually did that. After a breath finally made its way to my lungs, I blinked in harsh disbelief.

Idiot.

How the hell hadn’t I seen that coming from a hundred miles away?

The answer hit with furious clarity.

“You’re pushing apples and oranges,” I seethed. “Freud-talking your cash-out from humanity doesn’t erase the fact that you did it, or the agony you caused. It sure as
hell
doesn’t qualify you to read the roadmap in
my
head.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Didn’t know that shit was such a state secret.”

I stabbed a figure between his chest and mine. “We aren’t the same, Killian.
This
isn’t the same!”

“Hmmm.” He rolled his head a couple of times, a deceptive ode to relaxation. As he fastened his stare to me once more, nothing about him was remotely relaxed. “I’m not sure whether to call bullshit on your ass now,”—in one lunge he pinned me against the rock, forearm caging my sternum—“or maybe now. Yeah, this is better.”

I growled and shoved back. Kil pressed in harder, backing up the motion with a glare dark as coal, snorting like a damn rhino.

“Fucking hell!”

“Took the words right out of my mouth.” He bared his teeth: the rhino turned black adder. “That’s a good thing, considering I’d get myself all riled up and want to turn this into a true choke hold.” He cocked his head, looming closer. “Not that it won’t be out of the question, once I consider the state you left my sister in.”

I relented on the escape effort, though not without a deep snarl. My lungs stretched for air, heaving my body beneath his clutch.
Jackhole
. He knew what a
mention
of Margaux would do to me. “You think I enjoyed any part of what I did?” I countered. “Any part of those decisions? Any second of hurting her like that?”

His glare turned incredulous. “That’s what you’re calling it, eh? ‘Hurting her’? Awww. So noble, so tragic. Poor, poor Saint Pearson. You had to ‘hurt her to save her’, yeah?” He nodded, seeming to reach a secret satisfaction. “No wonder you’re sleeping for shit. And I’m really fucking glad.”

I grimaced as if hit by a toxic stench. “Margaux is strong.”

“Just like Claire was?” he countered. “Like a rock, right?”

“I’ll be a blip on her radar in a month!”

He released me with a brutal shove. Laughed without a shred of mirth. “Holy hell. That bubble of delusion you’re living in must be really fun, Pearson. But hey, you’re right on target, calling out my bad in comparing my fuck-up to yours. I got that really wrong, considering I slept next to hobos with a better grip on reality than you.”

“Shut up.” The words were weary and angry and frustrated, perfect accelerants for the rage that finally exploded, driving me away from the wall. “
Shut up
, okay?”

“Not a problem.” He spun toward the passage that led back out to the orchard. “Mustn’t dent the bubble, after all.” Stopped short to swing the side of a fist into the tunnel’s support frame. “Man, I was a moron…thinking you were made of tougher stuff. That supporting Claire through all my bullshit would help you save Margaux from yours.”

He’d barely uttered the words but the cavern’s ventilation picked them up, blasting them back through the air. Not that he needed the architectural help—after speaking the words that delivered my second paralysis of the night.

Save.

Margaux
.

“Save Margaux.” I’d said it so many times over the last month. As a vow, as a credo, as a promise, as a fucking plea to any higher power willing to listen—but never like this. The words crawled from my gut like a question, tearing past every conviction I’d had since deciding to let her go, in those bleak hours in the UCSD waiting room. I’d never known terror like the slime that crawled over me that day. As my exhaustion had progressed, the memories of Mom received nerve-shaking overlays. I began to see Margaux’s covered in bruises and blood, instead. When Margaux finally appeared in the waiting room, I’d been petrified to look. Was she real…or a wraith?

It was the worst moment of my life. But it had given me the courage to make that clean break. Snap her off, set her free…keep her safe.

I’d clung to that feeling just to keep going. Remembering the fear meant keeping alert, staying alive…staying sane.

Remembering the fear.

Welcoming the fear.

“Holy. Shit.” Both words choked up from my gut.

It’s paralyzing you, Michael…trapping you…

“Holy. Shit.” It needed to be repeated.

Mom was right. And fuck me, Killian was right. I was so addicted to fear, I’d woven a damn superhero suit out of it—“to keep everyone safe.”

You fucking fraud.

The suit wasn’t to keep everyone safe. It was to keep everyone out.

Even myself.

Now, I was trapped inside the thing—even with the knowledge of Declan’s carcass at the bottom of the Atlantic—with the zipper glued shut.

“Killian!”

He scuffed to a stop outside the tunnel’s entrance. Said nothing as I caught up, though his face reflected something new. I prayed like hell that it was hope.

“Did you drive the Aston Martin up?”

He cracked half a grin. “Knowing I was going to get in some mountain hairpins? What do
you
think?”

I smiled back. It was damn awesome to be feeling the vibe behind it again. “Can I talk you into pushing the RPMs higher back to the city? With a guest passenger?” Though the car came damn close, I wished it was a space-age transporter. Every cell of my body threatened to explode with the need to crush my princess in my arms again.

Kil split a blinding grin of his own. “That is entirely possible, my friend.”

A sensation surged me, strange but welcome. Took a couple of seconds to recognize it. Exhilaration. Despite that, as we walked back to the main house, the suit of fear tightened again. “Shit. What if she refuses to talk to me? What if I’m too late?”

Kil grunted and punched my shoulder. “You want to give my sister more credit than that?”

“What the hell does that—”

“Pack a bag, dumb shit. You’re not too late.” He slanted a knowing glance. “Just one helpful hint, if I may?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

“Keep your head out of your ass this time, yeah?”

*

“What’s going on?”

Mom appeared in the doorway to my room, obviously startled by the way Kil and I had barreled into the house. Poor woman probably hadn’t heard that much pounding on the stairs since I was eight, dragging in my friends from our superhero skirmishes in the orchard to demand an afternoon snack.