Endless Possibility: a RUSH novella (City Lights 3.5) (3 page)

I told Lucien how Charlotte had worked so tirelessly to show me a better life, and how I repaid her by leaving her alone with that bastard, Deacon.

“But she is safe now,” Lucien said, his voice tinged with ice.

“Yes,” I said. “Safely away from me. She has an audition next week for a touring orchestra. They go all over Europe, and I know she’ll get in. She’s too good not to.”

“I was under the impression Charlotte felt out of touch with her music as of late. Since her brother passed?”

“She’s getting it back. Finding it again. This tour…it’s perfect for her. It’s her time. I know it, and I think she does too. And she…she wanted me to go with her,” I said, pain squeezing my heart. “But I can’t tag along. I’d just drag her down. She’s spent the last few months living for me. She needs to live for herself.”

“And you don’t think that’s a determination she can make on her own?”

“Of course she can,” I snapped. “And if I weren’t fucked up, I’d do whatever she wanted. But I
am
fucked up—the party last night is proof enough. So I can’t go with her and fuck that up too. She’d keep putting herself before me instead of concentrating on her music. And tour or no tour, I have to figure out how to live. If I can’t do that…I’m not good for her. Not how I am.”

Silence.

I shifted irritably. Admitting to screwing up is hard enough. It’s a million times worse when you can’t see the face of the person you’re admitting it to. I felt like a blindfolded captive waiting for the axe to fall. Or not.

Finally, Lucien’s chair creaked; I imagined he sat back, pondering, smoke wafting around his silver hair in lazy tendrils. “The question remains, then, what are you going to do? You told Charlotte to wait for you. Wait for what?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.” I rubbed my hands over my face. “Feel free to share any bright ideas.”

“Noah,” Lucien said, “even if I had an answer, it is for you to discover. But I would remind you that you have the love of an extraordinary young woman. Please remember that before you bury yourself in self-hatred.”

Charlotte’s words back at the police station came back to haunt me.

“Deacon backed me into the corner of the elevator. He…gripped my chin. Hard. To pry my mouth open…”

I shuddered. “Too late.”

“Quoi?”

“Nothing.”

I rubbed the back of my head where a soft glow of pain began to swell. Apparently the night wasn’t done being monumentally shitty; the Monster was waking.

“Migraine?” Lucien’s voice sounded sharper, jolted by concern.

I nodded and fished around in my tux jacket for my meds. Charlotte, of course, had thought to drop them into my pocket before we left for the party.

“I’m fucking hungover, too.”

The air tightened with Lucien’s surprise. “You drank?”

“Oh, yeah. I’m just full of bad decisions tonight.”

I heard the chair squeak, footsteps over floorboards, and then a running faucet. Lucien returned and pressed a glass of water against my hand. I tossed back the Azapram, washed it down. Then his hand on my shoulder. “Come.”

He led me to his guest room that smelled clean but unused. I sat on the bed and immediately realized how tired I was. The headache was sluggish, slow. I thought the drugs and sleep would catch it before it blew up, but I didn’t care all that much.
Serve me right.

“There is a bathroom across from the bed on the left,” Lucien said. “After you’ve had a chance to rest, we’ll talk and perhaps a solution to your predicament will make itself known.”

“Lucien,” I said before he shut the door. “Thank you.”

“Of course, my boy. Sleep well.”

He said it like a friend, and not like a man paid gobs of money by my father to take care of me, and that was the best goddamn thing to happen to me all night.

I slumped onto the bed. The pain in the back of my head slunk away, and I fell into nothing.

There are few things that remind you of a disastrous night more than waking up alone in a cold bed. I woke reaching for Charlotte. I reached across an empty space for her warmth, for her skin, and the softness of her hair. I wanted her lips on mine, smiling against my mouth as she told me “Good morning.” I’d only been sharing a bed with her in the townhouse for little more than a week, but it had already begun to feel like life.

But she wasn’t in the townhouse.
I
wasn’t in the townhouse. It took me a moment to organize the scents and sounds of the room and remember it was Lucien’s guest room in his Park Avenue condo. He was on the twenty-third floor and had a spectacular view of Central Park. I had been thirteen years old or so the last time I’d been here, and of course hadn’t appreciated the view. Then, I’d wanted only to go higher.

Then, I’d thought I was invincible.

I sat up slowly. No migraine, but my mouth felt like I’d been eating dirt by the handful all night and my stomach wasn’t happy about it. I felt my way around the wall until I found the bathroom door, then had to feel around for the goddamn toilet. I cursed myself for not visiting Lucien more often when I could see the fucking layout of his apartment. And his face. Lucien’s appearance—the exact details—was slipping from my memory, like a sketch slowly erased. My parents too. And Ava. I had Charlotte but only because I touched her face so often. But now that she was gone; what if I lost that too?

The thought made me more nauseated than my hangover.

I took a piss that lasted approximately ten hours, and then fumbled my way toward the kitchen. Mercifully, Lucien heard me and led me to the breakfast table, while he poured me a cup of strong, black coffee.

“Hungry?” he asked. “It’s well after lunch time.”

I shook my head. “Am I keeping you from work?”

“Not at all.”

Lucien, like my father, was semi-retired. He had an office on Wall Street, where he managed my father’s money and real estate deals, and those of several other clients. But mostly for my dad. He was more family than employee, and now spent most of his time handling my parents’ retirement. Since my accident, he’d been relegated to my handler; taking care of me after I’d evicted everyone else from my life.

Why him?

I don’t know what it was about Lucien Caron, but he was the only person I could tolerate, even when in the grips of my blackest moods. There was something constant about him that soothed me, or maybe he was just impervious to my vitriol where everyone else had been driven away by it. And I sincerely hoped that that wasn’t going to fade away too.

“And did you sleep well?” he asked now, his voice mild.

“I guess. I haven’t woken up to any epiphany.”

Lucien made a noise like
Hmm.
I heard the flick of a lighter and then the smell of smoke. “And Charlotte? Will you speak to her today?”

“No,” I said. “That’s the only thing I know to do. To stay away from her. To let her prepare for her audition without interference or distraction from me.”

“Are you certain she will audition at all?”

“Yeah, she will. She’s strong. And brave.” I swallowed. “She’ll do it and she’ll get in. They’d be crazy not to give her a seat.”

“Hmmm.” An exhalation of smoke. “On that note, I have news regarding that transaction you asked me to make in Connecticut.”

“You found a violin?” I asked. “Or did you sell the car?”

“Both, in a manner of speaking.”

Three years before my accident, I bought a 1969 Camaro Z28 Tribute. Black with white racing stripes, monster block, and 450 horsepower after I’d souped it up. I had bought it needing some work, and after I’d spent a year on it, off and on, it was a masterpiece of engineering and speed. I had a buddy who let me drive it at Daytona once, and that had been one of the greatest thrills of my life.

The morning after Charlotte and I had been mugged, and her violin stolen, we went to meet my family in Connecticut. My sister, Ava, had given me an earful about what a lost instrument meant to a musician of Charlotte’s caliber. That, plus Charlotte’s own tearful confession that she felt like “an amputee” had spurred me to action.

“She needs something exceptional,” I’d told Lucien, speaking in French in case Charlotte overheard. “But I’m not asking my parents for it. It’s going to come from me, one hundred percent.”

Lucien had been hesitant. “The type of violin you wish to purchase for Charlotte is cost prohibitive. You could drain your savings or draw from your 401(k), neither option I recommend. Or…”

“Or sell the Camaro.”

“Oui.”

I couldn’t drive it. I couldn’t even stash it somewhere and admire it. It was stowed in a garage in Miami, gathering dust. And yet, it hurt.

I’d spat the words before I could take them back. “Do it.”

Now, I mentally prepared myself to hear him tell me the car was gone. It shouldn’t have fucking mattered. It was for Charlotte after all, but it was quite literally the last remnant of my old life. An actual embodiment of the fast and dangerous lifestyle that was forever closed off to me.

“You found a buyer for the Camaro?”

“I did. The offer is quite generous, and the sale shall be finalized by the end of the week.”

I waited to feel supremely shitty about that, but instead felt like a burden had been lifted.

This. This is the first step toward letting it all go. This moment, right here.

“The violin is another matter,” Lucien was saying. “There is an auction at Christie’s in The Hague for a Johannes Cuypers.”

“A what?”

“A fine violin. Exceptional.”

Exceptional. Exactly what Charlotte deserved. “Good. Get it.”

Lucien chuckled. “Would it were that simple. But I shall do my best to secure it for her before her tour begins.”

Business concluded, a silence fell between us. I could practically hear Lucien’s smile slide off his face.

“Go ahead,” I said. “Say it.”

“And what is it I am to say?”

“You think I’m making a mistake? Or being an asshole, to leave her like I did?”

“You would know that better than I,” Lucien replied evenly. “But am I concerned for her? Yes, of course.”

“It’s the best thing. And aren’t you always telling me that the best thing is rarely the easiest?”

“I have been known to use that phrase from time to time.”

“Well, this isn’t easy. It’s the hardest fucking thing I’ve ever done, so it has to be right.”

“Your conviction is admirable,” Lucien said, “but quite pointless if you haven’t any direction. My support of your leaving Charlotte—a young lady whom I love and cherish as if she were my own—is tolerable so long as you do what you promised. So?” He clapped his hands. “Allons-y. Braille classes? A seeing-eye dog? I’m quite certain there are facilities for the blind in which you can be taught how to live independently. Say the word, and I shall do or acquire anything you need.”

“I…don’t know.” I turned my coffee mug around and around. “I’m willing to take classes, I guess. But…it doesn’t feel right. Or enough. It doesn’t feel like
me.
”

Lucien made a sound like hmmm, deep in his throat. “You need to find your epiphany, Noah,” he said flatly. “And quickly. Charlotte is suffering from your departure, yes? And you are quite miserable without her.”

“Miserable doesn’t begin to cut it.”

I heard a chair scrape; Lucien rose to his feet, his words rained down from on high. “Then it is imperative you answer the question,
What will you do?
with the right answer. And quickly, before it’s too late.”

Four days later, and I hadn’t done a damn thing. My parents wanted to see me, but I had no desire to go to Connecticut and explain my
Planet X
failure to them, nor had I figured out my grand plan. I lay around, wracking my brain for a solution to my problem that didn’t involve sitting behind a desk studying Braille, or learning cute fucking tricks for labeling food cans, or how to cook a meal without burning myself or the house down.

The afternoon of the fifth day, Lucien got the call. Charlotte formally tendered her resignation as my assistant. I wanted to fly at Lucien and grab the phone, to hear Charlotte’s voice, even if it meant her cursing my name. But I glued myself to the couch with white-knuckled fists and listened. It was a short call, and when Lucian ended it, I heard him sigh.