I Belong to You (3 page)

Three

Mark . . .

I’m cold inside and out as I exit Riptide, for reasons that have nothing to do with the snow that’s now blowing in fierce gusts. As I slide into the Escalade, Jacob eyes me in the rearview mirror. “Everything okay?”

“Fucking beautiful.”

“Does that mean go to the hotel, or a bar?”

“Sex is my drug, not booze.” Especially not scotch, considering the last time I’d drunk-dialed Ms. Smith and flown her to San Francisco. “Go to the Omni on Madison Avenue.”

“Got it,” he assures me, tapping his GPS.

He pulls away from the curb, and during the three-minute drive I replay my encounter with Ms. Smith. By the time the hotel doormen open our car doors, I tell myself there was no other way than making her hate me. This woman sees beneath my skin, and the sense of freedom in being unable to hide from her is dangerous. Instead of containing what I feel in some moment, when she’s nearby, I get lost in it and in her. She makes me weak enough to forget my control. And I think it’s pretty clear I’m not one of her better choices, either.

Jacob and I enter the white-tiled lobby, a sparkling chandelier above our heads. Due to the late hour and the weather, only a few patrons are sprinkled across the room. “The front desk,” I say when I don’t see any manager I recognize. At the counter, the clerk quickly looks up the alias I’ve registered under, as I did during my mother’s blood infection, and sees the flag on my file. As I follow the woman leading us to a private office, Ms. Smith’s
“I’m a gateway”
plays in my head, causing a twist of guilt in my gut. She’d have ended up hating me anyway, no doubt rightfully so.

The manager who helps us is no one I know, a pretty blonde whom I barely register outside of her remote resemblance to Ms. Smith, who seems to want to play around in my head. She does whatever check-in computer work that is needed while Jacob engages her in conversation to ensure our privacy.

The woman is efficient and quick, as is Jacob’s glance at our room numbers and the knowing look of disapproval when he sees we’re on different floors. Leveling a stare at him, I dare him to challenge me and he gets the message. We cross the quiet lobby to the elevators, the silence between us lurking, not comfortable.

I hired his team for a specific list of reasons. That list does not include ensuring that I don’t carry out my vow of vengeance, spoken in a moment of torment in front of his boss. But the news that Rebecca was most likely dead and in the Bay, knowing that she’d struggled for years with nightmares of drowning in the Bay, had been torture.

We enter the elevator, riding to his floor in silence. “My room at eight in the morning,” I say when the elevator halts. “That should give us plenty of time to get to my parents’ apartment and then the hospital for my mother’s treatment at ten.”

Jacob punches the button to hold open the door. “I’ve been thinking about tomorrow. You mentioned the press had tracked you to your parents’ apartment during your last stay, even though the apartment had a private garage that should have prevented you from being detected. I can’t help but think someone on the building staff is being paid to tip them off.”

“What are you saying?”

“Your mother wasn’t aware of her surroundings the last time you were here, but she is now. Since you haven’t warned her yet about what’s being said in the news, and you were pleased with the hospital’s protocols for high-profile visitors, I think you need to surprise your mother there.”

My lips thin. “I don’t like it, but I’ll do it. Change the meet-up time to nine.”

“Check. My gut feeling, and they’re never wrong, is to talk to your mother sooner rather than later.”

“I don’t like how that sounds.”

“My gut feelings saved my life many times in the service.”

I inhale and let it out, wishing like hell I had time to let my mother recover from her treatments before she has to deal with any of this. “I’ll expedite the talk, but I need to pick the right moment. In the meantime, I need you to get me past the leak in my parents’ building.”

“Already on it. I have backup coming to the hospital tomorrow, to cover you while I meet with the apartment security head.” The elevator buzzes in protest of Jacob holding the button. “My time is up.” His lips curve on one side.

As the steel doors close a cluster of thoughts rushes at me almost instantly, and I force it away, leaving my mind blank. It’s all about control.

The ding signaling the twenty-first floor sounds and I go to my regular suite, turning on the living room/office fireplace before three rapid knocks sound on the door—my regular bellman. Before placing my bags in the closets, he offers me a large yellow special-delivery envelope with my name typed on the front.

Adrenaline rushes through me. It’s the information that I’ve been waiting for for a full week. Feeling like I finally have ammunition for the vengeance I fully intend to enact, I double his tip and send him on his way.

Once I’m alone again I slip out of my jacket, loosen my tie, and settle onto the living room couch. Opening the envelope, I find a stack of papers and, conforming to my request of complete invisibility, a disposable phone with a number taped to the back. From this point forward, there are no names. He is “Doc,” a nickname he uses for his precision at delivering whatever his clients need. As far as he’s concerned I’m nobody, which suits me well.

Setting the phone aside, I begin going through the comprehensive documents. Everything I could ever want to know about Ryan Kilmer, from birth until present, including a complete list of all business transactions his thriving real estate business has ever made. Squeezing my eyes shut, memories jab at my mind of the many times that I’d invited him and Ava into Rebecca’s and my most intimate moments. She’d hated them both, which was why I’d chosen them. To make her hate me. To make sure she didn’t want them. And I did it all under the guise of Master. I was such a bloody fucking asshole.

Cursing, I push to my feet, walking to the glass door and stepping into the blast of snow and wind, intentionally tormenting myself. My hand closes on the freezing railing, a punishment for my actions, though I can never punish myself enough. Before me there is only white and gray, a flicker of lights muted in the core of the murkiness.

Ms. Smith asked who I thought had helped Ava, and the answer is Ryan. Fucking Ryan. I don’t give a damn about his alibi for the night Rebecca died.

And considering our many profitable business transactions, I can think of only one motivation for Ryan’s actions. The same as Ava’s for killing Rebecca, and trying to kill Sara. Pure envy. Maybe of me and Rebecca, or perhaps of the power the club had become for me. I, of all people, know how easily jealousy forms and the poison it inevitably becomes. I curse again and turn my face to the blurred sky.

I shouldn’t have done a lot of things I did where Rebecca was concerned. And I should have done a lot that I didn’t. Ultimately, everything that has happened is my fault—but I’m not the only one who is going to pay.

I silently vow that by morning, I’ll have a plan to unravel Ryan’s life and his money train. And then I’ll dial that phone, and let the real games begin.

*  *  *

It’s three in the morning when I finally lie down, having left a message for Doc to call me. In my hand is Rebecca’s journal. And as many times as I’ve promised myself that I won’t read more, I can’t help myself. It makes me feel like she’s still alive. It makes me feel guilty and hate myself. It makes me focus on doing right by her in death, if not in life.

I flip open a page, to an entry I’ve read before and I know will shred me, and start reading:

Lunchtime, Friday

Another nightmare. They were gone for months and now they are back, tormenting me as much as ever. I bought a book that said I should write them down to start understanding them, but they still mean nothing I can decipher in any way. But I keep writing them. So, here goes . . .

It started again with me hanging from a railing on the edge of a cable car that’s somehow operating without a driver, and my dead mother is with me. We’re both on the step hanging off the side of the car, but several feet separate us. As the car slowly climbs a hill the air is calm, but my emotions are in a frenzied dance. I remember how I felt as I write this. I don’t seem to be able to see what I’m wearing, and for some reason I need to know. It’s a silly detail that seems irrelevant, but maybe it’s symbolic of some event in my life. . . . I really don’t know.

My mother isn’t smiling in this version of the nightmare, and she did when she first started visiting me. She looks angry, but ten years younger than when she died. The long, sleek brown hair she’d lost during her lung cancer battle is back; her pale skin absolutely luminous. Then I had the sudden realization that we weren’t alone. A man in a suit is sitting near the back. There’s never been anyone but my mother and I in these nightmares, and a sense of foreboding overwhelms me. I strain to see this new visitor, but his face is oddly in the shadows.

The car begins to top the hill and my mother hisses, “Don’t look at him.”

I cut my attention back to her and now her hair is short and thin; her body is thin, her skin now ashy. Memories of her lying in a hospital bed fighting for her life come back to me. “Who is he?” I ask curiously.

“Just don’t look at him. He’s dangerous. He’s poison.”

“Who is he?” I demand.

“No one I ever want you to know.”

And then it hits me. “My father. Is this my father you refused to tell me about, even on your deathbed?”

“There are things it’s best you never know,” she says, repeating what she’d told me then. We start rolling down the hill and she lets go of the rail, balling her fists at her chest. “Do you know how much your anger hurt me when I was dying?”

“Grab the pole,” I order, panic rising inside me. Our speed increases and I repeat more urgently, “Grab the pole!” We hit a bump, and I scream as she tumbles to the street and then vanishes.

Deep, evil male laughter radiates through the wicked wind that lifts my brown hair. My gaze goes to the faceless man and I climb up the step, past the seats, to the center aisle. The car is racing down the hill, too fast for the rails, and I have to grab the edge of the seats on either side to steady myself. “Stop laughing!” I demand, but the laughter just gets louder and louder. “Stop laughing!”

Anger and confusion collide in me, and I don’t even think about the danger to myself. I rush at him, charging forward, but when I get to him he vanishes as my mother had. He’s gone, as if he were never here.

Suddenly the car jumps the rails and takes flight. I gasp, trying to catch my balance, but I fall, sliding down the middle aisle. Scrambling for a grip somewhere, anywhere, I manage to grab the steel bottom of a pole and hold on. Hanging on never saves me in these nightmares, and I remember being conscious of that fact, but unable to fully conceive it. I want to live. I want to survive. (I think that maybe I will survive when I fully grasp the meaning of these nightmares.)

Squeezing my eyes shut, I prepare for what I know comes next. The cold splash hits me like a shock of pain. It’s so real, and it never gets easier, no matter how many times I’ve done this before. I never accept death. As the freezing bay water seeps through to my skin and bones, I swim, trying to find an exit before we go underwater and the trolley drags me down with it. But I can’t get there quick enough, and I’m shivering, my teeth chattering, as the roof is upon me, my hand pressing against it. Inhaling, I draw in a deep breath a moment before the force shoves my head under the water. I’m near a door. I’m going to get out this time. With one hard pull on a pole, I jerk forward to the exit. And all of a sudden my mother’s there, her eyes shut, hair floating upward. She’s dead. Like I’m about to be. And then everything is black. . . .

That’s the last thing I remember before I sit up in bed, gasping for air, the real world coming back to me. I’m in “his” bedroom, in his bed; the spicy male scent of him is everywhere, a sweet jolt of reality.

My Master’s hand comes down on my back. “Easy,” he says. “You’re okay.” He pulls me into his arms and holds me tightly, stroking my naked back, which still tingles from the flogger he’d used on me before bed. And I want to be tied up again, have him take me to a place that leaves no room for the fear I’d felt in those moments underwater.

I whisper his name, the name I never dare write for fear someone will find this one day here at the gallery and read my words—but I said it then. I had to, and he didn’t correct me, as if he knew how much I needed him to be just him, and real—for us to be real. For there to be more to us than a contract. And sometimes, like in that moment this morning, when he’s holding me, when he’s gentle in a way I know he’s not with anyone else, I let myself believe that we are more.

He leaned back then, stroking the hair from my eyes as he promised, “I’m here. You’re here. We’re okay.” But that gnawing feeling I’ve been battling, that we wouldn’t be okay for long, had already returned and I can’t help but worry that’s what my nightmares are telling me. I’m about to lose someone else I love. Him. Us. Lately I feel like I’ve already lost me, like I don’t know who I am anymore. Like Rebecca Mason is just a girl who used to exist and left nothing behind worth remembering.

He laid me down and made love to me, then. Not fucked me, not flogged me. Made love. And it turns out I needed that far more than the flogging. For just a little while, all those other feelings faded. A year ago, that tenderness would carry me for weeks—but now, only hours later, I need more.

*  *  *

I wake at 8 a.m. to the alarm and Rebecca’s journal lying on my chest. For several minutes I stare at the ceiling, replaying some of the hundred drowning entries, most of which involve me in some way. Scrubbing a hand through my hair, I set it aside, although letting go of it cuts me deep in my soul.

I want her back. I want to fix what I didn’t do right, though I’m not even sure where the right and wrong began and ended. Maybe at hello. But I’ll never get the chance to find out.