Comfort Object (45 page)

Kyle's wound wasn't life-threatening, but he'd still taken a bullet to the chest. He'd come through surgery and was resting in recovery. Nell knew all this, but she still shook in my arms.

“I thought she killed him. I really thought she killed him.”

“She didn't, but she might have killed you.” I drew in a deep breath of her hair. Nell, fresh and flowery. Alive. It was redemption. A second chance to do things the right way. “I'm so sorry, Nell. This is all my fault. This is exactly what I was afraid of happening, what's kept me up at night. If she had killed you—” I stopped speaking. I didn't really have words for what I might have done if Leslie Gray had killed my Nell.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “If I stayed with you… I should have stayed with you. I was being selfish. I was tired—”

“Hush.” Why was she apologizing to me? Selfish? I was the selfish one.

I had been the selfish one all along. For my own purposes, I'd exposed her to this danger, but instead of blaming me, she was apologizing. She should have been throwing hateful accusations in my face.

“Rhiannon,” I said.

“What?”

I looked down at her. “She should have hated her husband for what he did to her, what he put her through. But she forgave him. She still loved him.”

She still loved him
. Did she still love me? Had she ever loved me? I thought she had once, but how could she love me anymore?

She shouldn't love me anymore. I steeled myself to say the words I didn't want to say.

“You're like Rhiannon.” I said. “But you shouldn't forgive me.”

I watched her work that out in her mind. Small lines of tension appeared around her mouth, the mouth I wanted to kiss and soothe but wouldn't. She knew. My throat tightened to see the stubborn denial in her eyes. She kept her voice light and controlled. “Forgive you? It wasn't your fault.”

“It was my fault. The only reason she wanted to harm you was because of me. I can't…I can't live like this anymore. I've never been able to live like this. That's why I don't let myself love anyone. That way it's easier not to get upset when the fans and press go after her. And it's easier to let her go…when I have to…for her own good.”

She always tried not to cry but could never accomplish it. She blinked rapidly, and so did I.
Don't look. Don't let the tears sway you. Don't let the pain of this moment keep you from doing what's right.

“You can't control who you love,” she said. Her hands twisted in my shirt, and she looked up at me in supplication.

“I have a lot of control when I need to. You should know that by now.”

“Jeremy—”

Steady voice
. I had to be her dominant. I had to put the rest of it away and do this now. “Nell, I'm sorry. I just can't anymore. I can't chance this happening again. I can't live with this. Someone like me—my girlfriends will always be a target. And making you my wife? Jesus. I might as well paint a target on your head.”

“Jeremy—”

“No. I want you to start applying to colleges. Let me know how I can help. You can start in the fall, wherever you decide to go. I want you to go wherever you want. I want you to be happy. I want you to be safe.”

I took her hand. She made a little fist that made my heart ache, but I pried it open anyway and slipped the ring off. I pushed her tear-streaked face under my chin so she wouldn't say anything further.

“I'll tell my publicist in the morning,” I said, blinking back my own grief. “She'll make it all make sense.”

* * *

“
She'll make it all make sense
.”

Nothing ever made sense in my life except for the truths I manufactured. Only they were unchangeable, exact, easy to provide and manipulate as needed.

And of course, the public and the press made their own sense of things no matter what you did. The confrontation in the hotel room turned into some quiet insinuations that Nell and Kyle had been having an affair under my nose that led to our highly publicized “breakup.” Funny how far off and yet how close to the truth the papers got at the same time. But Kyle healed quickly and got back to working for me. Nell stopped working for me for good.

I still paid her, though. I took care of everything. I bought her a beautiful little bungalow in Hollywood Hills and a fuel-efficient Mini Cooper for her to zip around town wherever she needed to go. A nice, practical car for my nice, practical, quiet little student, and a mountain of mythology books that I couldn't resist sending every week. I found myself inexplicably buying them for myself as well, as though reading them might give me the answers I continued to seek. The answer to why Nell was still so heavy on my mind. The answer to why I couldn't let her go. What was it about her that had caught me? Why her, the simple, quiet, unassuming girl that she was?

“
You can't control who you love
.”

I heard her words in my mind a hundred times a day. And I think she was partly right, and partly wrong. I could control who I loved. I had the control to keep myself away from her at least. But I loved her still. So in that way, yes, she was right.

But I had control. I had the control not to call her, not to e-mail, not to invite her out to lunch, not to drive over to her little bungalow at three in the morning when I thought I would die if I couldn't sink between her thighs.

And I had the control not to beg on my hands and knees for her to stay in LA when I learned, through Kyle, that she'd be returning to Harvard to complete a program I'd never even known she'd begun.

Bravery

I sat on my back porch and watched the sun go down. It was so beautiful, but it would have been even more beautiful if I weren't alone. It was late April, warm spring, but I still felt cold. I thought I would always feel cold from now on.

The doorbell rang. My heart used to leap every time the bell rang, because so often it had been a package of mythology books, an anonymous gift that I knew was from Jeremy. But the books had stopped a few weeks ago. I supposed Jeremy had moved on. I tried not to look at the papers, for fear I'd see him with someone new. Of course, what did it matter? More than anyone, I knew it wasn't real.

I walked to the front door and looked through the peephole. A nervous habit now, one I wish I'd had before, so I could have saved Kyle a hell of a lot of pain.

Speak of the devil.

I opened the door and threw myself in his arms.

“Oh my God! What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to come see you before you took off for the East Coast, you little slut.”

I hadn't seen Kyle in ages, since the night at the hotel, although we'd e-mailed and spoken a few times on the phone.

“Come in!” I couldn't believe he was here. Part of me, deep inside, hoped Jeremy had sent him here, but I knew he hadn't. Even in our phone conversations, Kyle carefully avoided talking about him, I assumed at Jeremy's command.

“You look great. Wow. Like you never even got shot.”

“Ha-ha,” he said as I got him a beer from the refrigerator. He looked at it suspiciously. “Since when do you drink beer, Nell?”

“I don't. I just keep it in the fridge because it…it reminds me of him. How he used to come home from work every day and go right to the fridge for a beer. I know, I know,” I said at his derisive look. “I know I'm pathetic. God, sit down. Stay awhile. For real, you look great. And I've been meaning to thank you in person all this time. You know, for what you did at the hotel. I can't believe you took a bullet for me.”

Kyle gave me that same old smirky smile, and it almost made me cry from the memories. “You know, Jeremy would have killed me anyway if I'd let you die. And it has nothing to do with that stupid crush stuff. Jeremy totally made that up.”

“Oh, okay.” I laughed.
If that makes you feel better
. “He made a lot of stuff up actually, didn't he?”

Kyle's smile faded a little. “The thing about Jeremy is that he does what he thinks he needs to do. Even if it hurts him. Even if it hurts people he really loves.”

“Mmm,” I said. “I guess.”

“So you leave next Wednesday?” he asked, sitting back on the couch.

“Yeah, I'm starting summer session to squeeze a few credits in before the fall.”

“You know, there's no hurry. He'd pay for your college even if you took ten years to get your degree.”

“I know,” I said. “I know there's no hurry. I just need… I need the distraction, you know? I haven't been working, and I can't really go back to the clubs, thanks to you.”

He looked down at his hands and then back at me.

“You know, Nell, he hasn't asked me yet to start looking again. For another one.”

My heart leaped to hear that, but I pretended to laugh it off. “You mean he doesn't have a new girl yet? What has he been doing? That man needs it every day. Every hour.”

“He hasn't been with anyone else,” Kyle said, still serious. “At least no one I've seen. And as you know, I usually see them all.”

I sobered. “Yeah, I know. I remember.”

Kyle sighed. “Anyway, I'm pretty sure there's only one girl on this earth who would make him happy, and that's you.”

I looked down at my hands. They were shaking. “I don't know—I don't think—I really don't think he wants me back.”

“I promise you he does, desperately, but he won't admit it. He wouldn't know love if it came up and spit in his face, as someone once said.” He paused and thought for a long moment. “He'd never in a million years ask you to come back. So you're going to have to ask him.”

“Ask him what? How?” I asked, alarmed by the sudden, new hope rising in my chest. “I can't. I'm supposed to be leaving for school next week—”

“So what? You think Jeremy can't set up a house in Cambridge if he wants? Fly back and forth? You'll be in school for what, two or three years at most?”