Winter's Heart (33 page)

A sharp, piercing pain stabbed his heart and Winter pressed the mute button on the T.V., hoping to catch one last glimpse of the deathly duo but the camera never panned back. Besides, they were probably gone long before the first question was answered. Tilting his head back, he stared at the ceiling, wondering what the truth was.

Flynn couldn’t have done it because it was Flynn.

Flynn had to have done it because no one else could have.

Pulling his laptop back onto his lap, his hand hovered over the mouse as the pointer hovered over the video icon. He hadn’t watched the finished film since he spliced the tapes together nearly six weeks before. At first he had been sleeping with the girl in the film and then last week she broke his heart and he couldn’t bear to see her lying, exquisite face.

Taking an unsteady breath, he double clicked the icon and the video came up and the screen capture he had used for the menu screen startled him. She was naked from the waist up and smiling at him and the picture filled him with eternal longing and burning desire. He didn’t have to press play because her eyes were shining with open and genuine love and his stomach clenched with loathing. Only he wasn’t sure if it was for her or for him. Either she was guilty or she wasn’t.

Setting the laptop back down, his eyes drifted shut as the two contradictory facets of Flynn battled back and forth in his pounding skull. Pressing his thumb and his forefinger into his eyes until there was only blackness, he wondered how long it had been since he had gotten any sleep. Every time he had drifted off in the last week he had seen her face smiling back at him, taunting him, enticing him, and he’d wake with a violent start.

In a hazy fog, he grabbed the damn laptop again and inexplicably found himself on her profile page and it had a new status:

Flynn Rogers
is: DEAD! You bastards killed a sweet, beautiful, INNOCENT girl. May you all rot in Hell!

As he read, a voice screamed the words out loud in his ear, emphasizing every last sound and syllable and he thought his heart might be shattering in his chest. Ice filled his veins as he read and re-read the words, unable to believe them.

“It’s hard to breathe, isn’t it?” Flynn asked, suddenly standing before him in a flowing white gown, looking ethereal and beautiful and unbearably sad.

“Tell me I’m dreaming,” he begged, drinking in the sight of her.

“Of course you are,” she purred, straddling his lap and dragging her fingers through his hair. His hands went to her hips, curling into the familiar flesh as his body hardened. “You’re so certain it could only be me that you refuse to close your eyes and re-live the worst moment of your life to figure out who it actually was.”

“Who else could it be?” he asked, desperate for her to answer even though he knew she was only a dream.

“Melissa.”

He jerked awake, almost knocking his laptop to the floor. Hadn’t she mentioned Melissa’s name when he had confronted her? Was she innocent or was his mind playing tricks on him because it
had
been so long since he had slept?

A few minutes later, a knock at the door dragged him away from his incessant circling of thoughts. Stills stuck his head into the room and softly murmured, “There is an Addison Holmes here to see you, sir. Shall I let her in?”

Addison. Pushing his hands through his hair and grabbing a chunk in the back, he pulled. Should he see her? She was just as much a victim of all of this as he was, if not more so, but what could she possibly want from him? Not trusting his voice, he nodded and a split second later, the door opened, making him realize she wouldn’t have taken no for an answer.

“Thank you for seeing me, Winter,” she said, floating into the room with a taller bearing than she had had the last time he had seen her. With a slight smile at Stills as the butler closed the door behind her, she faced Winter and heaved
a sigh, “I should have known my secret lover was you.”

“Why?” he asked, genuinely curious, though his relationship with her was one of the last things he wanted to talk about. “I didn’t know it was you.”

She chuckled softly, not offended by his brash words. “Because you are demanding but generous in everything that you do. Because you are kind.”

He rolled his eyes because he wasn’t kind. Her soft gasp drew his attention and he saw that she was staring at his laptop, at the image of naked Flynn. Slamming the lid closed, he muttered, “Sorry.”

Delicate color stained her cheeks as she slowly met his eyes. “She must’ve loved you a great deal.”

Afraid to hope, to believe he had been wrong about Flynn betraying him, he reluctantly asked, “What makes you say that?”

Nodding towards the closed laptop, she murmured, “Because in the video she completely exposed herself to you, made herself utterly vulnerable, gave you her trust, and yet there was never fear in her eyes.”

His lips quirked up into a reluctant smile, “You saw all of that in an image you viewed for, what, two seconds?”

The delicate color became a florid red as she glanced away and muttered, “I saw the video.”

Stilling, the gears in his head slowly cranking as he tried to comprehend what the girl was saying, he asked, “What video?”

“Um,” she cleared her throat, looking anywhere else but at him. Fingering the tie of her wrap dress, she mumbled, “She sold the video, too. It was released last night and has already gotten millions of hits.”

Was it possible to die a thousand deaths in a single moment? Hadn’t she already killed him by selling all of the things he told her in confidence? But how did she even know about the video? Unless she found out he hadn’t destroyed the recordings like he promised he would and she had exacted revenge for what she perceived as his betraying her first.

But to sell their sex tape? Was money really that important to her that she would do something like that? Unless she had lied about not being an actress and saw the video as her chance to break into the business. For some, notoriety was just as good as popularity, as long as it came with fame.

Unaware of his tumultuous thoughts, Addison continued speaking, “You were the Beast that night, weren’t you?” At his absent nod, she continued, “You recognized me….”

“I recognized the mask,” he said dumbly.

At her little frown, she nodded, “You recognized the mask but you didn’t even blink. Even then you were in love with her.”

Tilting his head to the side, he asked, “Why do you think I’m in love with her?”

“I saw the tape,” she said in a slow, measured tone, as if that explained everything. At his blank look, she rolled her eyes and took a deep, steadying breath. Standing up, she untied her wrap dress and let the material slide to the floor. Her body was exactly as he remembered, from the curves of her breasts to her slender thighs and everything in between, except now she had a shaved pussy that glistened with her arousal. “Since it’s over between you and the girl, I was maybe wondering if you’d like to resume our relationship, only without the masks this time.”

Without needing to think twice, he grabbed the dress and wrapped her back into it, calmly shaking his head no as he freaked out on the inside. She pressed her hand against his thickening penis, “But you’re hard.”

Of course he was hard. Addison was a beautiful woman and he hadn’t had sex since he took Flynn in an alcove at Storm’s party but Addison wasn’t who he wanted. Tying her dress closed, turning red when he realized he had tied her arms to her side, he stammered, “I’m really not interested in starting anything right now.”

Pushing her arms through the sleeves and tightening the tie around her waist, she blushed profusely as she realized he wasn’t going to accept her offer. Smoothing the front of her dress down, avoiding his eyes as he avoided hers, she stammered, “She didn’t seem the type, did she?”

His penis was still trying to figure out why he didn’t take Addison up on the offer to fuck her while his brain was telling his penis to go fuck itself and it took him a moment to realize she was talking. “Pardon?”

“Flynn,” she said, saying the name that lanced his heart and stabbed his gut. “I mean, I only spent a few minutes with her that night and, shoot me if I’m wrong, but there was something about her, wasn’t there? Something that made you want to tell her all of your secrets because you knew she’d take them to the grave.”

Exactly! That’s exactly what it had been like! And like a fool, he had spilled all of his secrets, including secrets that weren’t his to spill. Bitterly, he sneered, “Appearances can be deceiving.”

She nodded her head in agreement as she started towards the door. “I guess so. I mean the horrid lies she said about Melissa were completely unfair.”

Actually, the things that were written about Melissa were fairly accurate but he wasn’t going to contradict Addison because Melissa worked very hard to cultivate a warm persona.

“Maybe I should be grateful to the little bitch,” Addison said with a sigh, as if her heart weren’t quite into the name calling. “Because of her, the writers are taking my show into an entirely new direction, giving me a much juicier role. Instead of playing another fucking virgin, I’m going to be a college student who leads a double life, the virginal Maxie trying to figure out college and the high end prostitute Vixen trying not to fall in love with her clients. It’s actually quite exciting.”

“Congratulations,” he said numbly, not giving two shits about the new direction her show was taking.

Twinkling, she leaned in and added, “If it weren’t for Melissa I’d never have this series but if it weren’t for Flynn, I’d just be another young actress trying to launch yet another television series that was doomed to failure.”

After Addison left, his thoughts were even more tortured and convoluted. He was going to have to track down Flynn and talk to her again. And this time he was going to have to listen.

“Daddy!!” Storm cried, running into the room with a monster smile on his cherubic face. Winter squatted down as the little boy flung himself into his arms and hugged him with all of the love he had in his little body.

Closing his eyes, he held his son and breathed in the little boy’s clean scent. If Flynn was innocent, he was going to have to grovel and beg for forgiveness. But if she was guilty, he would fucking destroy her.

Holding his son in his arms, he was almost certain it was going to be the former and not the latter, and she had the power to destroy him completely if she couldn’t forgive him.

“Chin up, Peanut” her father said as he nudged her chin upwards, offering her a warm smile as he looked at her with the increasingly familiar concern.

Forcing an expression to her aching face, she smiled up at him, “I’m okay, Daddy.”

When she had returned home, she had holed up in her room because the dam had cracked as soon as she saw her daddy waiting for her at the airport. Ugly tears coursed down her cheeks, smearing the white and black face paint and making for a ghoulish appearance. He hadn’t said a thing, about the article, about her outfit, about Winter. Instead, he had taken her into his arms and held on tight as he guided them out of the busy O’Hare Airport and to his parked car. He settled her into the backseat, where she promptly curled up into a ball to try to keep the pain from tearing her apart, and then he climbed into the front seat and drove home.

Her mother fluttered uselessly around her, offering food or drink or anything, before finally sitting on the edge of Flynn's bed and rubbing her back, murmuring nonsense words meant to comfort. All they did was bring home the fact that her heart had been ripped from her chest, torn to shreds, and set on fire.

After four days of raging tears, she was all cried out and back to that comfortable numbness that had sustained her that first week. The week she turned twenty-two. But it quickly became impossible being around her family, who loved her to pieces but were walking on eggshells to keep from upsetting her. She tried to tell them that she wouldn’t break but they didn’t listen and the silence became deafening.

Unable to stay, not knowing where else to go, she had begged her father to let her stay in the trailer at one of his construction sites. She knew it wasn’t entirely legal for her to live there but it was only temporary until she pieced the charred remains of her heart back together and figured out what to do next.

“Now, no one should bother you out here,” her dad told her, standing in the doorway as he prepared to head home for the night. “But if they do, 9-1-1 is on speed dial and there’s a bat right here next to the door.”

He patted the baseball bat that he had brought with them that afternoon and looked around the small trailer as he stalled for time, obviously reluctant to leave his youngest child on her own. “I gave the crew the morning off so you’ll be able to sleep in….”

“You didn’t have to do that, Daddy,” she interrupted. It wasn’t like she’d be getting much sleep anyway. When she fell asleep, her emotions decided to resurrect themselves and she woke up with tears on her face. “But thank you.”

“The port-a-john is just down the way,” he said, pointing out the portable toilet he had pointed out at least three times already. “If you have to go in the middle of the night, be sure to bring the baseball bat.”

“Okay,” she laughed, the sound foreign to her own ears.

Blowing out his breath, he softened his voice and murmured, “It won’t last forever, you know. The pain will ease and it’ll get better.”

“I know,” she replied, wanting the solitude as much as she wanted her daddy to stay and make it all better. But there was nothing he could do. She just needed time, lots and lots of time. Luckily, she was only twenty-two, so she’d be ready to get her feet wet in the dating pool by the time she was, oh, let’s say forty.

Instead of leaving, he came back inside and hugged her where she sat. “I wish I could take all of your pain away, Peanut. I could kill that boy for hurting you.”

“It wasn’t his fault entirely, Daddy,” she said, still defending Winter as she returned her father’s hug. “The evidence is overwhelmingly against me and to be honest, I don’t know who else could have done it, either. If I was on the outside looking in, I’d be pretty damn positive I was the culprit as well.”

“You didn’t do it,” he rumbled with utter certainty and it made the cold remains of her heart spark and glow a little to know she had such unwavering support from her family. 

“Still, it hardly matters since the world hates me anyway,” she said with a sad pathetic smile curving her lips.  Standing up, she walked with her father to the door, knowing that her mother was back at the house anxiously awaiting his return. “And nothing is going to change that.”

“Once the truth is known….”

“
If
it’s ever known,” she corrected. Shaking her head in resignation, she continued, “It won’t matter. A lie travels half way around the world, gaining traction and size, while the truth is still lazing about in bed thinking it’ll be all right because it’s the truth. Silly truth doesn’t realize that lies are far more powerful and harder to defeat, especially when the world would rather believe the lie.”

“Are you sure you weren’t a philosophy major?” he chuckled, the sound as sad and resigned as her heart.

“And I would be just as unemployed with a philosophy degree as I am with a Lit degree.”

Looking uncomfortable, he shifted from foot to foot before he worked up the courage to ask, “Do you think Winter….”

“No,” she said without hesitation before he could even ask the question. “There’s no way in the world Winter would have written that article and if he did, he would have used his own name. He’d never purposefully let someone else take the fall for him; he’s just not that guy.”

“You still love him.”

“I think I’ll always love him.” Uncomfortable with such a raw admission, she nearly pushed him out the door. Giving him one last hug, she whispered, “I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you, too, Peanut,” he whispered. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She nodded her head as he finally left, waving goodbye as he climbed into his truck and drove off. Standing there, staring out over the nearly complete house, she sighed in almost relief. As she watched, another car pulled out of there and she briefly wondered which of the crew was just now heading home. Not giving the car another thought, she closed the door and bolted it shut, not that the lock would keep a determined intruder from breaking in but it offered a little peace of mind.

Collapsing onto the bench behind the built in table, she lay back and stared at the ceiling overhead, wondering how her life had changed so completely overnight. Wondering what she did to deserve it. Maybe this was the price a mortal paid for falling in love with a god… well, an American god. Maybe the hate mail wouldn’t have been so scathing if she had been worthy of him, at least in his fans’ eyes.

Closing her eyes, she let her mind drift, trying to keep it away from thoughts of Winter, of Storm, of anything in California, including her sister and Harry. She didn’t want to think about them in case her bad karma rubbed off on them and ruined their happily ever after since she was the one who brought them together. What if she was the reverse Midas and everything she touched turned to shit? She’d have to move far away from everyone she loved just to keep from infecting them.

She’d have to become a hermit and learn to live off the land.

With a wry smile at her flights of fancy, she let the sounds of the night lull her into oblivion.

The desperate need to pee woke her a few hours later. Even though it was a new development and she doubted there was anyone out there lurking in the shadows, she grabbed the baseball bat because she knew it would make her dad happy.

Doing her business in the small enclosure, she heard a car door slam but didn’t think anything of it until she saw the shadow moving around inside of the trailer. Her father’s car was long gone so she knew it wasn’t him and the car that
was
parked there was unfamiliar and a rental if she wasn’t mistaken. Great, it was just her luck that the one night she decided to sleep there some lowlife decided to break in.

Holding the baseball bat up in ready position, she debated whether or not she should face the burglar. Or possible rapist. If she went in there, there was a very good chance she’d end up dead on the outside, not just on the inside. Even though there was no one around for miles, she decided to make a run for it, figuring she’d meet up with the main road and flag someone down and beg them to drive her back to her parents’ house.

Spinning on her heel to run, the door creaked open and a painfully familiar voice rasped, “Flynn, don’t go.”

Winter? Winter! What the fuck was he doing there? How did he find her? Her lower lip trembled as emotion she thought dead and gone came roaring back to life and she slowly turned around to face him. The light spilled
around him, as if he had fallen from heaven but had enough of the divine to still be cast in its Grace. The hard angles of his face were only softened by the curve of his full lips while his black hair looked as if it had been tugged to within an inch of its poor life. He had a haunted look as he stared at her with the eyes of a condemned man and it made her heart quake and her eyes water but she refused to cry.

He swallowed as he asked in a soft, familiar voice, “Where’s the money?”

Pain lanced through her because his question was so absurd and she threw her head back and laughed, a cold, mocking sound that hurt her soul. Forcing her feet forward, she said, “It’s in my super-secret account in the Cayman Islands.”

“Liar,” he breathed as she pushed past him, trying to ignore the way her body lit up in response to his nearness. Crowding her space, he stalked her over to the counter and pressed his front against her back and whispered, “There was never any money.”

“Right,” she sneered, her body stinging in prickly pain as blood once again flowed through her no longer sleeping veins. It was as if her entire body was waking up after being asleep for a thousand years and it hurt. She wanted to roll her shoulders, arch her back, anything to ease the torment but if she did, she might accidentally touch him and then she’d be a puddle on the floor. Unlike Winter and Melissa, she didn’t have an excellent cleaning service. “Because I wanted to ruin your life,
my
life, for shits and giggles. That’s brilliant, Winter, seriously brilliant.”

“Because you didn’t sell the story,” he rasped against her ear as he put his hands on her hips and pulled her against his hard body. Nuzzling her ear, reminding her of the explosive chemistry between them, he breathed, “I would have figured it out sooner but the night of the party I saw you and Frankton.”

Trying to claw her way through the sensual fog, she managed a single word. “Who?”

“The man who handed you the envelope,” he explained slowly, turning her around and carefully watching her face. “I saw the smile you gave him when you saw what was inside but I dismissed it at the time. And then the article appeared Monday morning in his paper and it… short-circuited my rational brain that knew it couldn’t have been you. What was in the envelope, Flynn?”

Scanning his face with her eyes, seeing the hope mixed in with the pain, his own confusion, she softly explained, “It was the payment to Gilded Dreams for the party and a note from Melissa wishing us the best. I smiled because you were finally free.”

Scrubbing his hands through his hair, he bit out, “Fuck me.”

Seeing the firm set of his jaw, the tight press of his lips, the guilt and the relief, she asked, “If you no longer believe it’s me…”

“I don’t think I ever truly believed it was you,” he interrupted. “But I’m pig headed and stubborn and I couldn’t see the forest for the trees.”

She smiled slightly at his admission before she continued, “Who do you think did it?”

“I honestly don’t know,” he said, his eyes troubled as he stared at her with an emotion she couldn’t quite read. Shock? Relief? A strange expression twisted his features as he closed his eyes and swallowed thickly, “But if I had to take a guess, I would say Melissa.”

Her eyes slid closed as she heard the heartache in his voice. He continued talking, “I should have confronted her before I came to you but I couldn’t bear another minute of not being with you, of you hurting because you thought I believed you capable of such treachery.”

She nearly collapsed as a massive burden was lifted from her shoulders. It didn’t completely erase the blistering pain of being accused in the first place but it was a start. His hands wrapped around hers and she opened her eyes and looked up to see that he was still troubled. “I have one last thing to ask you and whatever answer you give me, I’ll believe, no matter what.”

Her stomach flipped over on itself, not wanting to hear the question, afraid of the words that were about to come out of his mouth. When he stared at her with a mixture of regret and longing, she nudged him, “Go ahead.”