Amy Bensen 01 Escaping Reality (10 page)

few years back. I stayed across the street for a month. When you come out

of the building, go right a block and then left, and there are two coffee

shops and several restaurants. If you go left instead of right when you exit,

two blocks down in a straight line is a mall. There’s a Whole Foods to the

right of the mall and another grocery store to the left. You have everything

from doctors to hair salons all in a small radius. A lot like New York. Which

is good, since the city as a whole is not. Most people have cars, and I

assume you don’t have one of those being delivered tomorrow.”

My heart sinks at what I haven’t considered, and I fight the urge to

set down my half-eaten second slice of pizza, afraid I will give away how

rattled I am. Instead, I pause on a bite and say, “No. No car,” before

chomping down on more than my food. I now have one more thing I

haven’t thought about and will have to face tomorrow.

“You do have your personal belongings being delivered, right?”

On that question, I abandon eating, setting down my slice and

reaching for my soda, effectively avoiding eye contact with Liam. “Yes. I’ll

have my things tomorrow.” It’s not a lie, I tell myself. Whatever I buy will be

here.

He shuts the lid to his pizza box and I set down my drink and do the

same with mine. I’m not hungry. That’s the thing about lies or almost lies.

They make everything else harder to swallow along with them. I wonder if

that is why he ignored the second half of his pizza. He can’t swallow it with

my lies either. And now he’s just staring at me. He’s good at that, I’ve

discovered, really darn good at fixing me in his bright blue stare and

seeming to see right through to my soul. I almost think his silence is as

dangerous as his questions. He’s analytical, a smart, calculated thinker. I

see it in his eyes, and his job and his success backs up my assessment. I

have to get him to stop trying to piece together my story.

I scoot to the headboard, pull my knees to my chest, and work for

diversion. “You don’t seem like a recluse.”

“Subject of your belongings diverted,” he comments. “Check. That’s

one of the ‘when you’re ready’ topics.” Blood rushes to my cheeks but he

doesn’t give me time to reply, continuing, “I learned privacy from Alex, who

was my mentor. He lost his wife and child in a car accident a year before I

met him.”

“Oh God. How old was the child?”

He moves the pizza boxes to the floor and then sits against the

headboard beside me, and we both turn to rest on one shoulder to face

each other. “I never saw a picture. Looking back, I think seeing her hurt too

much.”

And I wish for a picture every day of those I’ve lost, and it terrifies me

that I can no longer remember their faces. It terrifies me that Liam is so

near, so able to read what I feel. It terrifies me that he won’t be tomorrow.

“To lose a child must be the worst kind of pain.”

His lips draw into a grim line. “I’m told it changed him, though I have

no comparison. I didn’t know him before he lost them. He didn’t talk about

them and he didn’t do press or make public appearances. When I began

getting my prodigy architect buzz, he told me the hype could go to my head

and ruin me, thus forbidding me any press as well. I deviated from his

no-press policy one time, and one time only, when he was still alive. It was

a hard lesson I’ve never forgotten. My ego and desire to share my success

with the world was at Alex’s expense. His personal story ended up in the

papers. He went crazy on me and then crumbled like I didn’t think he could

crumble. That day changed me forever. I forgot about my ego and to this

day I rarely grant interviews and I rarely do appearances.”

A little part of me softens for Liam, and I don’t know what overcomes

me. I reach up and touch his jaw. “Now I know why you’re so tight-lipped

about your accomplishments.”

He grabs my hand and I am somehow more complete because he’s

touching me. “I keep my private life private and I let my work speak for me

elsewhere.”

I want to tell him how much I envy his confidence and sense of

identity that he doesn’t appear to need anyone else to validate. But if I do,

he’ll ask me about who I am and who I want to be and even if I could freely

talk, I couldn’t tell him what I no longer know. “That still doesn’t spell

recluse to me.”

“That started a couple of years ago when a particular reporter

hounded me about an interview. When I wouldn’t give it, she wrote a

scathing piece about me.”

His thumb begins stroking my palm and heat is radiating up my arm

and seems to have set my vocal cords on fire. “Scathing?” I choke out.

“It read pretty much like ‘he’s rich, talented, and good-looking, but

the man is a recluse with the social skills of an ant.”

I gape. “An ant? No, she didn’t?”

“I assure you,
she did
.”

My lips curve and I fight my laughter, and lose. He leans in and

brushes his lips over mine. “You think that’s funny, huh?”

I curl my hand on his jaw and I am charmed at how easily he shares

his story, how wonderful it is to talk to someone, to touch someone. To

touch him. “I don’t mean to laugh.”

“It just happened.”

I nod. “Yes, but not at you. That description is so over the top it’s

comical. And it’s not you.”

“Not me,” he repeats, his hand sliding to my hip. “Are you sure about

that?”

I’ve spent my whole adult life reading people, sizing them up,

weighing them by degree of potential threat, and I’ve trusted him from the

moment I first found myself captured by his presence in the terminal.

“Yes,” I confirm without hesitation. “Yes. I’m sure.” The air shifts around us,

crackling with electricity, and I am empowered by how comfortable I feel

with him despite my situation and the disparity of my experience to his.

“You are rich, talented, and good-looking, but I forgive you all of those

things because you’re charming and funny.”

His eyes shadow, turbulence waving through the heat. “You were

right earlier,” he says, and he pulls me close, molding our bodies together,

his hands spread wide on my back.

My hand lands on the hard wall of his chest and his heart thunders

beneath my palm, telling me he is calm and cool on the outside, but I’ve hit

a nerve and I don’t know why. “Right about what?”

“When you said that I let you see—but Amy, I see more than you

want me to see.”

But not more than I wish he could see. “Then stop trying.”

“That’s not going to happen.” He brushes his lips over mine, his

tongue licking into my mouth in a slow, seductive caress. “We’ve already

gone too far to turn back.”

My hand is on his cheek, my legs intimately entwined with his,

neither of which I remember doing. “Yes,” I whisper. “We’ve gone too far,

Liam.”

“And yet not far enough,” he replies, stroking the hair from my eyes,

his voice rough sandpaper and masculine heat.

The intensity of what I feel in this moment and for this man hits me

like an earthquake exploding from somewhere deep inside, a deep, dark

crevice of my soul. My emotions are all over the place. I do not know where

this man is taking me, and I am as desperate to find out as I am to stop him.

The need to run and hide or stay and fight is equally intense. He must read

this in me because he softly orders, “Turn out the light, Amy.”

Turn out the light.
I do not question his command. I act on my need

for self-preservation, and I turn over and flip out the lamp on the

nightstand, relieved at the sanctuary that is the darkness. Even more so in

the sanctuary that is Liam’s arms as he pulls my back against his chest, his

hand splaying possessively on my stomach. My lashes lower and I relax into

him. I do not know how this man is both the refuge I run to and the reality I

am running from, but in this moment that is exactly what he is to me.

His hot breath fans my neck and his lips brush my ear, the delicate

touch sending a shiver down my spine. I expect him to kiss me again. To

touch me and to fuck me, as he’s vowed. I want him. I even need him

tonight and I inhale, savoring the now-familiar spicy male scent of him, and

this time there is no memory splintering through my mind. There is just the

darkness I hide inside, the soft bed, and the hard man holding me.

***

I blink into the light and don’t move, trying to process where I am

and what is happening.

An unfamiliar closet door becomes the first focal point I manage to

identify and my brain processes where I am. New apartment. Denver. Liam.

I jerk to a sitting position, searching the room to find he is nowhere to be

seen. My heart twists in several painful knots. He’s gone. I glance at the

digital bedside clock the hotel brought me last night and note the time of

eleven o’clock. Of course he’s gone. I was one of his many flings and he has

work to do. How have I slept this late? How did I sleep at all in my state of

mind, and without any nightmares?

I’ll keep Godzilla at bay,
Liam had said on the plane
.
It had been the

truth. He had.

Somehow, some way, this stranger had given me enough peace to

get through the night. And while I should be freaked out that I didn’t hear

him leave, I’m pretty sure my mind used Liam as we had used each other

for sex. For an escape. He had given me something else to focus on instead

of my situation, and clearly allowed me to shut down mentally and hold

myself together.

Liam had been an unexpected gift. Who was gone.

Standing up, I ignore the gut-wrenching feeling of being alone. I’ve

done this for years.

There’s no reason I can’t do it now. Besides, I was never alone or my

handler wouldn’t have known when I was in trouble, but where the idea of

his existence has comforted me in the past, it doesn’t work this time. I can’t

go through this again. I have to have an exit strategy of my own.

One that gets me off everyone’s radar, including my handler.

I walk to the living room to assess the rest of the apartment in the

daylight and my breath hitches as I spot a package sitting on the kitchen

table with a note. I reach for the wall to steady myself, an icy chill sliding

through me at what this means. My handler has a key to the apartment.

Chapter Eight

The air feels thicker, my breathing more labored, and I barely

remember walking to the table. I am simply there, staring down at what has

been left for me. The box is white with an Apple logo on the top, and this

does not seem like good news to me. Is the new phone I received last night,

and haven’t used, already compromised in some way? Am I moving again?

Is this location unsafe? My adrenaline spikes and I grab the small white

envelope and pull the card from inside out.

Amy -

It’s not safe to be without a phone. This is yours to keep and the

service is paid for a full
year. And don’t say “no” when I’m not there to

argue the many reasons you have to say “yes”.

Think about your safety and convenience. Besides, I selfishly do not

want to wait to hear your
voice until I see you again. My number is

programmed in the phone. Text me when you get this
and I’ll call you at a

break from my meeting.

Liam

A sense of relief washes through me and I become aware of my free

hand balled at my chest, where my heart is beating like a drum. I inhale and

will it to slow. I’m okay. Everything is okay. The note isn’t from my handler.

I am not leaving another city. I am not running. I am only hiding. Or maybe I

am running. I don’t know how to define what I am or what I do anymore,

and suddenly I am exhausted when I’ve only just woken up.

I sit down and touch Liam’s signature, blocking out everything else.

He didn’t walk out the door today without saying goodbye. He doesn’t

intend to say goodbye at all. I’m blown away that he took the time before

heading to his meeting to go out and buy me a phone. No one has done

anything like this for me since I was still living at home.
Home
. The word,

the place, the past, crashes over me. Sometimes I dream of throwing away

fear and returning. Sometimes I think that facing the danger rather than

running from it is my better option. But how do you face what you do not

fully know?

My gaze falls on Liam’s neat, masculine script and my lashes lower.

For a few moments, I let myself indulge in the memories of Liam’s velvety,

warm kisses and sensual caresses. I remember the “pi” tattoo and the

numbers that formed a triangle that disappeared deliciously below his belt

line. I remember his husky voice when he’d said,
“Baby, you can examine it,

lick
it, do whatever you want to do to it and me, after I feed you. I promised.

I meant it.”
A shiver of pure desire tracks down my spine, but my eyes land