The Darkest of Shadows (35 page)

I decided I should be happy that he included me in the list, and it didn’t even sound like an add-on. That, and I could appreciate what he was saying. I had seen far too many times when Lawrence had been left standing in a crowded room without a single person to guard his back. I understood the falseness of associations, and I was happy that Nicholas and Lawrence had found that with each other. Even though they were not technically the same level of power in the business world, Nicholas understood the game enough to not play into the madness of it, and Lawrence played the game far too well to be blinded by any falseness on Nicholas’ behalf. Their friendship was merely that of two men who found they had a strange affinity to each other, and business played no part in it.

I reached out and gripped his hand with mine. “I’m glad you’re here,” I told him honestly. “I’m glad that you’re his friend.”

“I’m glad I got you drunk, and he got pissed at me,” he said in response and I laughed.

“Do you want to meet some businessmen, or do you want to head straight to the bar?” I asked him. Lawrence and I should have been mingling with the guests, especially Lawrence, but it seemed harsh to expect Nicholas to have to stand around while we made small talk with everyone else.

“I believe I’m to mingle,” he told me. “And I believe there was some point about not getting into trouble, but I might have imagined that part.”

“You didn’t imagine that at all,” Lawrence’s voice informed him from over my shoulder. “I was very clear about that, if I remember correctly.” But he was smiling when he said it. “If you get her drunk again, we’re going to have serious words,” he warned, and there wasn’t quite as much amusement in his words this time.

“What if she chooses to get drunk?” he queried.

“I’m trusting you to ensure that doesn’t happen.”

“Oh, hardly fair,” Nicholas exclaimed. “Now, what am I going to do to pass the time?”

Lawrence shook his head. “I can’t believe I’m letting him loose in here.” He kissed me on the side of the check, a chaste and totally appropriate gesture in this room. “Go,” he prompted. “Patrick is waiting. Nicholas will take you, and I’ll keep the hordes happy till you get back.”

We shared a much more intimate look than the kiss had been, and with a final squeeze of his fingers, I walked with Nicholas through the crowd back toward the doors where we had entered.

“Ready?” Nicholas asked, after he had escorted me across the foyer and down a side hall to another door.

“Let’s get this over with,” I replied, and he swept the door open in a grand style. I had to laugh at his antics, as he followed me through the door into what looked like a study, a quiet, old English manor library with rows and rows of books and old leather furniture. And over by the window, Patrick waited. He nodded once to Nicholas, who gave me a long look before saying, “I’ll be waiting just outside.” And then he was gone, and for the first time in a long time, I was standing alone with Patrick.

“Hello, Lilly.” His voice was much more moderate, calmer.

“Hello, Patrick,” I replied. “You’re looking well.”

“I’m sorry about earlier. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“It’s fine. That’s the reason I asked for this meeting. You have something to say, and I’m a little tired of being dragged around, so please, say whatever it is that you need to, and maybe we can be friends again.”

He walked closer to me, not in an alarming way; he moved smoothly and slowly and finally stopped beside two matching wingback chairs near a cold fireplace. “Please, have a seat.” He indicated one of the chairs, which, after a moment’s hesitation, I took. “Are you happy?” he asked after we were both settled.

“Yes.” I was as happy as I was able to be, but he didn’t need to know the specifics.

“Do you love him?”

I really didn’t want to answer that question because he would read more into it than he should. “I’m not going to talk to you about Lawrence’s and my relationship.”

He nodded, then tried another approach. “Is he good to you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you miss me?”

He was just full of questions. “I miss our friendship.”

“Did we ever have more than that?”

I shook my head. “No, but I told you that from the start. It’s not my fault if you chose to ignore that.”

“I fell in love with you,” he admitted.

“I didn’t intend for that to happen, and I’m sorry if I gave you any encouragement in that respect. Please believe that I never wanted to hurt you.”

“Does Lawrence know that you can’t love him?” He was fishing there, hoping that I’d admit that I didn’t love Lawrence.

“Lawrence accepts who I am.”
Unlike some
.

“And I don’t?” He was getting angry, ever so slightly, as the questions continued.

“You want to change me into someone that I’m not. You can’t accept that I’m not ever going to be what you need, what’s good for you.”

“You are good for me; you’re exactly what I want,” he countered.

“I’m not good for you, Patrick. I’m so very far from what’s good for you that I can’t believe you don’t see it.” I watched his face, knowing that he couldn’t, wouldn’t see the truth of my words. “Don’t you see how unstable I make you, how confused you are when I’m in your life? You make decisions that you would never contemplate; you fight against Lawrence, the one man who could make or break your career. You are so close to losing everything.”

“I can’t help how I feel about you.” He sounded a little unsure, and I wondered if maybe I was getting through to him.

“You don’t know me well enough to be in love with me, Patrick,” I assured him. “You know nothing about me. You have spent time with me, and I would consider us friends, but that doesn’t give you the right to love me or to consider a future for us.”

“I know enough to know that I want you in my life,” he replied.

“And I can be, as your friend,” I told him. “I can’t be more than that.”

“But Lawrence can be.” He snorted.

“Yes, he can.” Now I was the one getting angry. “Because he understands the limits of what I can offer him, and he doesn’t push me for more. You want a fairytale, and I can’t give that to you.”

“What if I said I wanted to go back to what we used to have? Just you and me, no strings and no responsibilities.”

I shook my head. “We can’t turn back the clock. I can’t forget what has happened, and I can’t pretend that me being with you isn’t a lie. You deserve better than that, and I won’t allow you to belittle yourself in that way. You are a strong, honorable, and wonderful man and there is a woman out there who fits you, who owns a piece of your heart, and for you to settle for me is not right.”

“So it’s really over between us?” he asked, sounding infinitely sad about that fact.

“I’m sorry if anything I did hurt you.” I meant that. “I understand who I am, and I accept that I’m not a good person, and I’ll take the hurt I gave to you and add it to my own, because that’s what I deserve. Please don’t feel sad. You could make this a good change in your life.”

“Who said you weren’t a good person?” Patrick’s eyes flicked to mine and I saw pain in their depths.

“It doesn’t matter,” I answered, waving away the question. “Are you going to be all right?”

“Considering I feel like I’ve had my heart ripped out and stuffed back in my chest in tiny little ragged pieces, I’m fine.” He shrugged, and the reality of his words hurt me. “I’ll be fine, I’m sure.”

“I’m sorry, Patrick.”

He laughed, but it was a bitter, hard sound. “You don’t have anything to be sorry about,” he said. “You didn’t set out to have me love you. I do remember your words that first night, but I believed that I could change you, that I could make you love me in return.” He sighed. “Whoever did a number on you, Lilly, did a really, really good job.”

My face blanched of color at his words, and it must have been stark enough even with the dim lighting of the library that Patrick noticed. “Are you all right?” he asked, as he bounced forward on the chair and picked up my hands as they limp in my lap. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

He tried desperately to rub warmth back into my hands, but I couldn’t feel anything. His words had opened a floodgate in my mind and allowed the harshness of my memories to run ragged through my thoughts. The pictures, the horrible, gruesome pictures, images that I had kept hidden for such a long time popped up in my mind and sent me ever so much closer to that crazy place in my mind that wasn’t the answer.

I couldn’t stop the images, I couldn’t; once they started, I couldn’t stop them. I groaned, or maybe screamed, or maybe I didn’t make any sound at all, but what I did do was allow the blackness that tinged the edges of my vision to claim the rest of my mind. Oblivion was the only thing that could help me now.

.

Fifteen

When I came to, it took me a moment to work out the difference between the sounds around me, to distinguish between the voices and to realize that the hands that now held my own were Lawrence’s. I didn’t need to open my eyes to know his touch, and I wasn’t quite ready to open them yet anyway. I needed to rebuild the walls around my memories. They were fragile and raw, and they needed a great deal of work before they would stand strong again.

I could hear movement around me, then Patrick’s voice. “I swear, I didn’t do anything. I didn’t touch her.” He sounded horrified, worried, scared, many emotions.

“Well, something happened,” Nicholas said plainly.

“I just said that someone did a number on her and the next thing I know she was screaming and holding her head and then she passed out,” he explained. “I didn’t mean to frighten her. I swear. We were OK. We talked, and we were OK.”

Lawrence’s fingers pulled tight against mine for a moment, then his voice, deep, tight and infuriated, responded, “Get out, Sloane.”

“What? No,” he responded. “I want to make sure that she’s all right.”

“Get out before I do something both of us might regret.”

“Ah, I think it’s probably time for you to leave,” Nicholas added, and I heard movement, which I assumed was them moving around the room. “Leave it alone now. You had your talk with her, and you said that everything was OK now. Leave her with Monterey; he’ll take care of her.”

It was quiet for a few minutes, then I felt Lawrence’s lips against my forehead and heard his whispered words. “Do you want to open your eyes now, baby? He’s gone.”

Lawrence knew I was conscious; he knew me well enough to tell the difference. I opened my eyes.

I was lying on a daybed in the library, with Lawrence squatting beside me. His face was a shadow of worry and fear. It hurt me to see those emotions. I reached out my hand, only slightly shaky, to rest it against the side of his face. “Sorry.” I hated that I made him this way. I hated that I was the only one that seemed able to ruffle his perfect world.

He held his hand over mine and pushed it more firmly against his face. “Don’t be sorry. It wasn’t your fault,” he told me. “Are you OK?”

With his help, I managed to swing my legs off the sofa and sit up. It all seemed less real when I wasn’t lying down. “I think so,” I finally replied.

“That one surprised you?” He asked and I knew exactly what he meant. I had promised him once before that if I felt like I wasn’t coping, I would tell him, and he would help me try and deal with it. He could have thought I broke that promise tonight, but instead of becoming angry, he attached himself to the only other explanation. I didn’t see it coming, either. The moment was unexpected, and the very nature of the shock was what made my reaction so severe. I could fight against the gradual aggression of the pain, but I couldn’t win against a sledgehammer slamming into my brain.

“Yeah, it caught me off guard,” I agreed. “It wasn’t Patrick’s fault. He didn’t say or do anything to hurt me. It was just me being stupid.”

“You scared me a little there,” he admitted, as he settled beside me. “But you freaked the shit out of Patrick, too, so I totally forgive you for scaring me.”

I laughed softly, my fingers curling with his as they lay between us.

“Do you need anything?” he asked, his eyes making a thorough study of my face.

“Just a moment to recover.” I glanced up and noticed Nicholas leaning against the wall across from us. He nodded silently in greeting but didn’t encroach upon our space. He looked solemn and serious. “I think I want to talk to Reed.” I needed something, some comfort, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was I was looking for.

Lawrence pulled his phone out of his pocket and handed it to me. “Do you want Nicholas to leave?” he asked, and then amended it. “Do you want me to leave?”

“No.” Strangely, the thought of him leaving was not comforting to me at all, it was terrifying. “Please stay.” I looked deep into his eyes and hoped that they told him what my words couldn’t. That I needed him just as much as I needed to hear my sister’s voice.

With a nod, he settled against the back of the daybed and pulled me back to rest against his chest. I slipped my legs up to curl under me and lay wrapped in the strength of his arms.

“I’ll come back in a little while,” Nicholas said as he walked across the room toward the door.

“No, it’s OK, Nicholas.” My words stopped him near the door. “You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to, but I think if you saw what happened before, then you at least deserve to have the choice about seeing the rest. I won’t mind if you stay.” Lawrence kissed the top of my head. I think I surprised him more than I did myself.

“I’d like to know that you are all right,” Nicholas admitted after a moment’s pause. “But I don’t want to upset you further.”

“You’re not going to hear any secrets. I’m just going to call my sister. She makes me feel better.”

“Then I’ll stay.” I nodded as he settled on the lounge across from us.

There was no answer on Reed’s home number, so I dialed the mobile and hoped that she would pick it up—and considering the hour, she better answer. She picked up on the third ring.

“Hello?” Reed’s sleepy voice was hesitant and slightly worried when she finally answered.

“Hey, Reed,” I greeted her in a tired voice.