Picture Perfect (21 page)

“What did you do?”

Alex shrugged. “I sat outside, mostly, and watched the older kids pulling catfish. You've never seen anything like it—no poles, no lines—they just reach down into the mud and wait and then they haul these twenty-pounders out against their chests.” He sighed and rubbed his hand down his face. “Anyway, one night instead of stopping off at Beau's, my papa took the boat further up, telling me it was time we did some camping. I was maybe nine or ten, and I asked him why we'd be camping out in the swamp, instead of one of those fancy campgrounds set up for tourists on Lake Pontchartrain. He told me they were for queers, and then he steered over to the shore. He tossed a tent I hadn't noticed out of the bottom of the boat, and then handed me up too. ‘I'll be right back,' he told me. ‘You get us some dinner, and I'll take care of the firewood.'”

Alex hugged his knees to his chest as the night became several shades cooler. “Well, needless to say, he didn't come back. Left me with the sun going down to figure out how I was going to eat and where I could pitch a tent without worrying about sleeping with a water moccasin. I got into such a state of panic I was sure my heart would just freeze over, and wouldn't that serve me right after being told it was finally healthy.

“That whole night I waited, too scared to move in case my father came back and I was gone. I watched that mist and thought every goddamn shadow was him, every stir of Spanish moss was his boat come back. About ten o'clock I was starving, so I took off my sneakers and waded into the swamp and thought about what I'd seen those kids doing all those nights outside of Beau's. I reached down, feeling through the mud. It took me two hours but I got the hang of it, and when the water moved around me and the cold brushed against my leg, I grabbed with all my strength and pulled up a catfish. Smallest thing I ever caught, and the best one I ever tasted.”

I thought of Alex, nine years old, standing in the dark, shaping the shadows with his fear. I thought of him standing with a spear in the middle of an African lake. I remembered the way he'd startled earlier when that animal screamed in the night. “When did he come back?” I asked.

“The next morning. Found me with the fish skeleton and the ashes of a fire and told me I'd made him proud. I started to cry.”

My eyes widened. “What did he do?”

Alex smiled. “Took me to Beau's at seven a.m. and bought me my first whiskey,” he said. “And he kept leaving me off in the bayou, about once every other month, until I could look him in the eye the next morning and act like I'd loved every minute.” He took a deep breath, but in the quiet I could hear the rattle at the back of his throat. “So that,” he said, “is why I don't like camping.”

“And why,” I added softly, “you became the consummate actor.” I took his hands and kissed the tips of his fingers. His eyes were nearly black with pain, and I could see him trembling just the slightest bit, the one thing he could not control.

My cheek was pressed against his damp chest. I understood what he needed. I had been there, after all. I wanted to speak but I was careful not to show pity, so I chose the words that could either close the subject or offer Alex a lifeline. “I don't know how you did it,” I whispered.

Alex kissed the top of my head, gentle, tender.
He doesn't want to talk about it anymore
, I realized, and as if the unspoken sentence had decreed it, the tension drained out of Alex's shoulders. I wondered whether he would bring up a different topic of conversation, like maybe the wedding, or simply pull me close for comfort and try to sleep.

Alex's voice cut through my thoughts. “How I did it was easy,” he said softly. His hands ran over my shoulders to my collarbones, the touch of a lover, as if he had no idea that his words and his actions stood at odds. “I used to stay up all night thinking of my goddamn father,” Alex said. “Of my hands around his throat, squeezing out the life.”

 

F
OR THE SECOND TIME THAT NIGHT
, A
LEX HAD FALLEN INTO A DEEP
sleep, but this time he was having nightmares. He lashed out, striking me across the stomach and waking me. He was speaking in French, but so lightly that even if I had understood the language I wouldn't have known what he was saying. I sat up and brushed his hair back from his temples, feeling the fever that flooded his skin.

“Alex,” I whispered, thinking it was best to shake him into consciousness. “Alex.”

He sat up and rolled over, pinning me to the ground with his body before I could take a breath. He was staring through me, his eyes pale and shining. One arm was braced across my shoulders, keeping me still, and the other pressed my neck down to the ground, fingers gripping at my jaw.

I tried to speak but Alex's palm pressed against my windpipe. Panicking, I thrashed and kicked my feet.
He doesn't know what he's doing. He doesn't know who I am.

His fingers tightened and my eyes teared. Flailing with my legs, I managed to bring my knee up to his groin. Alex howled in pain and rolled away from me, leaving me flat on my back to let the world swim dizzily into place, to suck bright white air into my lungs.

Alex sat up, holding his hand against his genitals. I tried to speak, but nothing came out of my mouth, and instead I rubbed my hand up and down my throat. I tried not to think about what Alex would have done if I hadn't freed my legs.

“What's the matter,” he said, still a little dazed.

I dragged myself up to my elbows. “You had a nightmare,” I rasped. I swallowed past the pain.

Maybe it was the light that hit me when I half sat, but Alex suddenly seemed to come to his senses. He reached one finger to the curve of my neck, touching the five red marks that by tomorrow would be bruises. “Oh God,” he said, pulling me into his arms. “Oh, Cassie, my God.”

That's when I started to cry. “You didn't mean to do it,” I sobbed, and I felt Alex shake his head. “You didn't know it was me.”

Alex held me away from him so that I could see his face, cut with the pattern of shame. “I'm so sorry,” he said. Without another word, he pushed himself up and walked to the opposite edge of the campfire, lying down on his side, facing away.

I watched him, and letting only seconds go by, I picked up the blanket and stretched out beside him. Whether or not he realized it, he needed me. The very worst thing for him would be to sleep alone.

“No,” Alex said. He turned to me, revealing even more fear and rage in his eyes than when he'd been gripping my throat, but I realized that this time it was directed at himself. “What if I do it again?”

“You won't,” I said, and I believed my words.

Alex rolled over and kissed me, touching the marks on my jaw and throat as if this time his fingers could erase the ache. He stared at me until he took the absolution offered in my eyes. “Cassandra Barrett,” he said softly, “you are one of a kind.”

 

M
Y WEDDING GOWN CAME FROM THE
B
IANCHI FACTORY IN
B
OSTON
; my silk slippers were sent from the bridal district of New York City; fresh white roses and stephanotis had been flown in from France for my bouquet. The crates and cartons traveled Africa by train, then Land Rover, accompanied by a small, dark seamstress who asked to be called Mistress Szabo, and who was responsible for the last-minute alterations that would make the ensemble seem as if it had been spun only for me. She knelt at my feet while I fingered the pattern of seed pearls at my waist and watched Jennifer run down a wedding checklist for the thirtieth time that morning.

“Miss Barrett,” the seamstress snapped. “You will not fidget.”

I stood at attention, which was very easy to do in the stiff white satin and mounds of petticoats. I wondered how everything could possibly stay pristine white on the jeep ride from the lodge to the small wooden chapel. I wondered how I'd keep from ripping off my veil and letting it fly into the wind; kicking free my shoes and hiking up my heavy skirts to run through the hot, familiar sand.

“There,” Mistress Szabo pronounced. She pulled herself to her feet, her knees creaking, and clasped her hands in front of her. “
Sì, bella
,” she murmured. She wove her way to the narrow bed and whisked Jennifer toward the door. “Come, come,” she said. “The bride needs a minute to herself.”

Jennifer checked her watch. “We're ahead of schedule,” she said. “You can have five.”

I didn't really want to be alone, but I didn't want to be with them, either. I stood in front of the cheval mirror with a crack down the middle, seeing my face split into halves that did not quite line up.

With the exception of Alex's engagement ring, I wasn't wearing any jewelry. But my throat was ringed with the proof of Alex's nightmare, a necklace of amethyst bruises. I had borrowed pancake from the makeup trailer and applied it before Mistress Szabo arrived, but that didn't keep me from knowing what was underneath.

I closed my eyes and made myself think of Connor. There had been a time, not too long ago, when I believed that he would have been the one I married, if he had still been alive. And if he'd been here—even if he hadn't turned out to be the groom—he would have told me to make Alex wait. To take a little more time to come to a decision.

But I didn't want a little more time. I wanted Alex.

At that realization, I understood why, lately, I hadn't been dreaming of Connor as much; why it had been getting more and more difficult to picture his face. He was leaving me. I had made a decision; Connor had accepted it. He would no longer play devil's advocate; he would no longer intrude on a good night's sleep; he would no longer be the one taking care of me.

I sat on the edge of the bed, wiping under my eyes to catch the mascara and trying to even my breath. I felt the same ache in my chest that I'd felt years ago when Connor had died by degrees in my arms. For a moment I remembered us the way we had been, sitting side by side beneath a summer sunset, building our childhood with bone-clean Popsicle sticks and hot whispered dreams. And then I let him go.

 

“S
TOP
.”

I could barely hear my own voice, but the chauffeur of the limousine—God only knew where Alex had found one in Tanzania—immediately screeched the brakes. Before he could turn around and inquire what I needed, I had opened the door and started running.

I figured someone would come after me. And would have caught me, too, because I couldn't really gain speed in a twenty-pound gown, a corset laced tight around my waist. I slowed only once to kick off the low-heeled slippers, thinking that I could run faster barefoot.

My veil streamed out behind me in a misty fog and sweat started to run down my neck and the sides of the dress, but no one was following. When I realized that, I slowed down, half hopping, pressing my hand to the stitch in my side.

I couldn't go through with this wedding. Our relationship, our attraction, had not been crafted in the real world. I was supposed to believe that a few magical weeks under the African sun would erase the differences between our lifestyles, that I could come home and slip into Alex's glittering Hollywood whirl without missing a beat.

All I had ever wanted was an affiliation with a university, a professorship, and a stunning piece of research. I had never even pictured someone like Alex, so how could I fit him into my plans? I sat down in the tall grass in the middle of nowhere, my skirts making a cloud around me.

It might have been hours; the only way I had to measure time was by the fact that I'd lost my veil and that my pancake makeup had pooled in a brown edge around the sweetheart neckline of the wedding gown, no doubt revealing my bruises. Alex's footsteps whispered through the tall grass, and he crouched down beside me. “Hi,” he said, picking a blade and setting it between his teeth.

I could not look at him. “Hi,” I said. He grasped my chin and pulled my head up until I saw him, breathtaking in his black tails and snowy shirt.

“Jitters?” he asked.

I shrugged. “You could say that.”

His eyes flickered to my throat. Guilty, I reached for his hand. “Alex,” I said, taking a deep breath, “maybe this isn't the best idea.”

“You're absolutely right.”

Stunned, I blinked at him, wondering if he'd bolted from his own limousine and, purely by chance, had wound up at the same spot on the plain that I had. He squinted into the sun. “I shouldn't have planned such a
fais-dodo
. A big shindig. It would have been better to do it quietly, just you and me, without everyone around.” He turned to me. “I guess I figured this was the kind of wedding every woman wanted. I just temporarily forgot that you aren't every woman.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of canceling it entirely.” There, it was out in the open. I hunched forward, waiting for Alex to yell or jump to his feet, to contradict me.

“Why?” he asked softly, and it was my undoing.

I knew he was thinking of what had happened the night we went camping, but that was only part of it—I certainly didn't blame him; it was more a matter of my being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The problems ran deeper than that. I hadn't known he was racked by nightmares. I hadn't known how much he'd been forced to survive on his own. I sensed that the Alex Rivers I knew was just the very tip of the iceberg, that strange currents and dark passions were somewhere underneath the surface.

“I don't know anything about you,” I said. “What if the Alex who saves me half his breakfast and plays Marco Polo in the pond behind the lodge is just another character you're playing?” The unspoken sentence hung between us:
What if the real Alex is the person I saw the other night?

Alex looked away. “I think the line is: For better or for worse.” He stood up and turned his back to me. “I told you before I wasn't acting out my attraction to you, Cassie,” he said. “And I suppose that you'll just have to believe me. As for the rest, well, like anyone else, I'm a lot of different people rolled up into one.” He faced me, pulling me upright. “Some better than others, I'm afraid.”