Abduction (67 page)

“Looking for Devan?” he called up, trying to make his presence known while he was still at a comfortable distance, but obviously startling the guy a little.

“Yeah,” the guy answered with hesitation approaching suspicion.

“She's probably still in the shower,” Vaughn offered to explain why she hadn't answered the door, and began fishing for the key in his pocket.

“It's you,” the guy said in a voice edged with disbelief, Vaughn put on the smile he'd mastered for those who recognized him on the street, and put out his hand.

“Hi. I'm Vaughn.”

“Jeremy,” the guy said as he unenthusiastically took the proffered hand.

“Jeremy.” Vaughn could feel his own, warm smile melt through the forced one.

“Come on in. I'll tell Devan you're here.”

He nudged the key into the lock and twisted the knob—a bit awkwardly, with the wine and Thai food weighing his wrists down—and got the door open.

“Thanks. I was just swinging by to see if Devan wanted to grab coffee. But I'll just see her tomorrow. “

The guy looked a little worn down. Hurt, maybe. Vaughn tried to give him his warmest smile.

“You sure? We ordered way too much food.”

“Thanks. I ate earlier. Just tell Devan I said 'hello.'”

“All right. I will.”

Vaughn left the bags in the kitchen and four strides got him to the bathroom door.

Her apartment was so tiny, but so cozy with her things—kitschy bits of art, photos, books and books and more books—it was like a little nest. He rapped lightly and she opened. Steam wafted over him, warming, dampening, then chilling him faintly. She grinned up at him, holding a towel modestly in front of her wet nakedness, only half 610

teasing. He wondered, affectionately, if she'd always stay a little shy, that way, or if, as time went on, she'd be as comfortable naked in front of him as he was with her. She went up on her toes and he bent down for her kiss. God, he was happy.

“Were you hounded by crazed fans and paparazzi all the way to Thai Star and back again?”

“I think I evaded detection. We'll know I failed if the next issue of the Enquirer has a picture of me with a fudged aspect ratio and a headline reading “Aging Rock Star Struggles with Pad Kee Mao Addiction.”

She gave him a coy grin and pushed the door a couple inches, and half hidden behind it dropped her towel and slipped on a robe. Bathroom burlesque. His body wanted her again already. When had he ever been so insatiable? Not even in college.

“I did run into your friend Jeremy, though,” he segued rather lamely when she reappeared from behind the door.

“Jeremy?”

Her expression was somehow reminiscent of the one on Jeremy's face when he'd introduced himself.

“I invited him in, but he seemed to have other plans. He said to tell you 'hello'.”

“What?” she asked the next morning, after they'd eaten and showered and she'd gotten dressed.

He was gazing at her so strangely, his eyes glinting, his lips curved subtly, his fingertips tracing the sleek texture of her simple dress.

“Just...look at you. This is how you look, dressed in your own clothes. Isn't that funny? I had no idea. We spent all that time in my place, you dressed in my clothes, then in the things he made you wear. I like seeing you in things you picked out, being here in your place, among your things. Your books, your pictures. All these little facets of your life, reflecting you.”

She smiled, but her throat had that swollen, wet feeling of pending tears. His tenderness, his palpable adoration kept doing this—swelling her up with warm joy until it hurt and she was ready to cry. Especially now.

“And what will you do with yourself,” she asked, “while I'm off at school?” Shit, she didn't want to go. She wanted to stay, cocooned with him in her tiny studio, like twins in the close, safe warmth of the womb.

“I've got rehearsal. So I will have to force myself out of this sweet little nest of yours, even though I'd really like to stay, waiting for you here. But when are you done with classes?”

“Seven.”

“Well,” he said, his soft smile subtly widening his mouth, “if you don't have other plans, would you like to come over to my place after?” She smiled. Then laughed. “Yes.”

He grinned and cocked an inquisitive eyebrow.

“Every time I've tried to imagine you in your house,” she told him, “I've imagined the cabin, transplanted here to Seattle. It's going to throw me off if you live in a different structure.”

His expression had gone suddenly tender.

“What?”

“I don't know. Just thinking of you thinking of me. While we were apart.” At eight Vaughn picked her up because, he'd said, his place was next to impossible to find until you knew your way. After turning off the arterial onto a narrow paved road just wide enough for two cars to pass, they wound their way up, out of the neighborhood below, toward the top of a hill so thick with trees that when the house came into view it took her by surprise. The other surprise was that, despite its lofty and deceptively remote-feeling locale in the heart of the city, the house itself looked modest.

A medium-sized ranch style house of the same 1970's architecture as the homes they'd left behind at the base of the hill. The garage door yawned wide and they rolled in.

“It's a fluke, Vaughn told her. “The developer had this place built for himself, then ran out of funds before the development was finished. Then some other rich recluse bought the lone house on the hill and the surrounding land. She died shortly after I'd started looking for a place, after Edi and I split.”

He led her by the hand into the split-level living room, with it's warm-hued wood paneled walls and hardwood floors, the conversation pit carpeted—was that shag?—in a pale yellow, and an enormous fireplace of dark, rough ledgestone. And one wall running the length of that room and the dining room was a series of floor-to-ceiling windows looking out, past a wooden deck and over the lake.

“Do you like it all right?” he asked her.

“I love it.”

She'd been a little afraid he'd live in some ostentatious mansion—something befitting the lifestyle of a celebrity. But this felt so him, so warm and easy, with its spare arrangement of furniture that was heavy, but with clean lines.

“I'm glad,” he said, his voice soft, and kissed the crown of her head.

After the grand tour he poured two glasses of wine and they cooked dinner together. The first sip of merlot seeped into her veins and suffused her with a lifting warmth. Everything felt poignant. Vaughn's tender smile each time he looked at her.

The comfortable warmth of his kitchen. Even the trivial task of rinsing and cutting up the string beans. She knew it was funny, that she should laugh at herself, but she couldn't.

After dinner they were curled up in front of the fire, sipping wine. It was like being back at the cabin again.

"Dev."

"Hmmmm?"

His intent gaze burned away her drowsiness, brought on by the meal and the wine. She focused. Waited. Then he looked away and laughed softly before he brought his eyes back to hers.

"I can't believe how I feel like such an awkward teenager around you, sometimes."

His hands shook as he playfully fingered an ornament on her bracelet. But then he dropped the little silver Janus, cradled her head in his hands, smiled, and kissed her tenderly on the mouth. Then, holding her gaze, he said in a soft voice,

“We've been apart a long time, I know, and after such a short time of getting to know each other. I don't want you to feel any pressure, like I'm pushing you to rush into 614

anything. But after everything, I don't want to pretend with you, about where I see things going.”

He took a breath, let it out, and with an adorable, bashful smile, finally came out with "Dev, I'd like us to live together."

"Live together?"

She was pretty sure she didn't understand what he meant.

"Yes."

"Be a couple?"

"Yes," he laughed at her incredulity.

"Partners?"

"Yes," he said, soft and serious. “I want you in my life, Dev, not out on the periphery somewhere. And I want to be in your life. Just think about it, Dev. There's no rush. I just know what I want, and there's no point in not saying it. But it's all right if you don't know yet, what you want this to be. Or if you do, and it's different than what I want."

“Yes. Yes, I want to live with you,” she managed, even though she could hardly breathe.

Joy could be so heavy, an avalanche crashing down, almost crushing. Under that weight she felt strangely helpless. Almost afraid.

“God, I'm happy, Dev,” Vaughn said in his low, easy voice with his serene smile.

But his eyes looked slightly startled, and his hands were still shaking as he kissed her.

“So happy.” Then he whispered that he loved her and kissed her again.

“Here,” he said, coming back to where she was lying by the fire, holding out to her a white rectangular box. “I'd like you to have these.” Still flushed and a little limp from their lovemaking she propped herself up on her elbow.

“What is it?”

“Letters. All the letters I've written you since we got back. I wrote you almost every day,” he added. “But the letters never came out right.” She didn't know what it was she was feeling—it was so close to happiness, that she'd been so much on his mind all those days, through all those months she'd missed him so wretchedly, and so close to sadness, the thought of him hurting, the way she'd been hurting, missing her the way she'd missed him.

“When I got your package—the letter and your book—I can't tell you what it meant to me. How deeply unhappy I was, and how much it helped, hearing from you, you letting me know you were all right. That you were still my friend. And your book.

Dev, I don't know how I could have pulled it together, worked through everything, without it.”

He smiled, his eyes pink and shimmery.

“Reading everything that happened, told through your words, it changed how I saw it. How I feel about what happened. About my part in things. Your book made it possible for me to live with myself. Possible for me to come back to you. I wish I'd been able to do that for you, but it feels right, you having these now.” 616

She struggled and broke the surface of her sleep, then tried to dive under again, to find the calm depths where she'd been so, impossibly happy. But her heart pounded in her chest, she couldn't catch her breath. The night forced itself on her. The quiet. The darkness. The warmth.

Tears rolled down her cheeks. This darkness, this quiet was not the nighttime of her Capitol Hill studio. This darkness wasn't faintly lit by the glow of nearby streetlights, or cut in two every few seconds by the headlights of passing cars; this quiet was unbroken by the sound of traffic and the voices of tipsy passersby. She was really here.

In his house. In his bed. The heat of his body, the rhythmic sound of his breathing proved it again.

Relief broke her down and she slipped away before the sound of her crying woke him. She wanted him, so she sought the white rectangular box, took it to the chair by the window, and switched on a light.

The first letter:

My dear, amazing Dev,

I can't believe I've parted myself from you. I sit here, remembering how, just this
morning you were in my bed, with me, that I felt you against me, that I could look at you,
hear you. I feel your absence so acutely. My whole body seems to know you're not in
the next room, not just outside where I might see you pass by the window any moment.

You're gone. I parted us, when the only thing I want is for us to be together. It seems
like the most perverse masochism. But the worst thing, the thing I can barely face, is
knowing I'm hurting you, again, when the most important thing to me is sparing you any
more hurt. When I think over our time together, it seems I've hurt you at every turn, and
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the more cruelly the more I've come to care for you. And today, as we got back to the
city, I felt I had to choose between hurting you one way, or another. I tried to choose the
smaller hurt, Dev. But I know it was still cruel.

Please believe me, Dev, there's nothing I want more than to be with you now.

And know I'm not just a coward. I am scared. I'm scared you'll wake up one morning, or
look over and see my face at some particular moment, and realize what it meant, the
things I did to you. And I'll watch that realization flicker over you, watch your affection
turn to resentment or fear or hate. It will devastate me—that moment. But I didn't leave
you today because I'm afraid of that pain. What really scares me is the thought that
you'd be with me, for days or week or months or, god, even longer, and that one day
you'd realize it was all a mistake, that you'd been loving the man you should have
hated. And after that, you'll doubt yourself. Hate yourself.

I can stay away to spare you that. The thing that makes it hard is I'm not sure I'm
right. But even if you can forgive me for everything, and really love me, I don't know how
to be with you, filled with guilt, hating myself. I hurt you. You may not think I did, but I
do. I don't know how to live with that, even on my own. I can't do it with you. Not yet.

Maybe someday. But maybe not.

And the last:

Sweet Dev,

I'm scared I'm never going to figure out a way to get back to you. It's been so
long. Just months, I know, but it feels longer. I'm afraid it's because it's beginning to feel
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like the start of forever. The lifetime I'll spend without you. I hate that I robbed us both of
what I feel sure could have been an exceptional love, an amazing life together.

Sometime during the night Vaughn woke, and the first thing his senses told him was that Devan was not in his bed. He found her, finally, curled up, small and fetal, in the big armchair by the living room window, surrounded by a litter of white rectangles on the floor. Before she noticed him and silenced herself and started wiping at her face with her palms, he heard her sobbing softly.