Icy Pretty Love (19 page)

I thank the gods of proper clothing decisions that I thought to pick a black shirt and pants. Then I follow him.

I expect him to get into Geoff’s car, and I have no idea what I'll do if he drives away from me, but he doesn't. The Parisian night is thick with cool fog and city sounds, the figures of drunk young people stumbling around with wine bottles, but Cohen doesn't stumble. He's easy to pick out because he walks with such purpose. Wishing I'd grabbed a jacket, I hug myself and chase his faraway silhouette. Thank the gods of decent stalking weather for the fog.

We keep this up for about half an hour. Twenty-five minutes in, I'm freezing and all too aware of the monsters that could be hiding in every dark alleyway. I don't believe in fairytales—the only monsters I'm scared of are the human-shaped kind. I'm far enough behind Cohen that anyone could think I was walking alone.

But I'm in Paris, not LA. Presumably, there are fewer men with guns here. And if I do get attacked, Cohen's only a cry for help away. Though I'm sure he would then be immensely curious as to why I was following him in the middle of the night.

After a while, the amount of drunk young Parisians thickens. We're in a party district. It starts out with bar after bar, loud boys spilling out with girls on their arms, and occasionally the other way around. Then the flashing lights get more intense and the lines get longer. Clubs. Bizarre. Cohen never struck me as the clubbing type. Loud noises, big crowds, drunk idiots—in fact, I'm surprised clubs don't top the list of things he hates.

But that doesn't stop him from slowing down in front of the flashiest club of all, with the longest line and the meanest-looking bouncer.

I duck behind a crowd of people surrounding a fight, and watch. The line is miles long, and I'm not looking forward to waiting out here with the dregs of society until I can safely sneak in. But Cohen bypasses the line, striding to the front. He doesn't say a single thing to the bouncer. The man takes one look at Cohen and lifts the velvet rope, and Cohen disappears into the mess of manmade fog and flashing lights.

I've solved my mystery, then. Cohen likes to go clubbing. But something doesn't sit right with me. For one thing, it's completely out of character for him. For another, why is he so secretive about it? People his age go clubbing all the time, especially rich up-and-coming billionaires with the world at their feet.

I dart across the street and get in line.

It doesn't take as long as I thought it would, but it still takes pretty long. About an hour of standing uncomfortably between two big crowds of twenty-somethings in the world's most intense makeup. All the girls here are fully equipped with sheath dresses and stiletto heels. They look like weapons, and I look like I took an accidental tumble off the top bunk and into my wardrobe, which is just about accurate. I wish fervently that my shoes matched. If nothing else, it's a pain in the ass to walk with one leg propped half an inch higher than the other.

Eventually, the line moves up. The closer we get to the bouncer, the scarier he looks, as if Hagrid had shaved off every hair on his body and adopted Hitler's personality. I'm suddenly aware of the fact that I didn't bring my purse, and therefore my I.D.

The man glances at the I.D.s of the girls in front of me, ushers them inside, and stops me short. I make a show of hunting through my pockets and splash on a horrified expression.

"My I.D...? Where'd it go? Oh, no, I must have dropped it!" Please, gods of convenient languages, let this guy speak English. "Do you think you could let me in anyway? My friends are waiting for me."

This dude could give a rock a run for its money in the Most Expressionless competiton. For that matter, he could give Cohen a run for his money as well. Nevertheless, I sidle up closer and lower my voice to a fuck-me timbre.

"Help a girl out?" I purr.

"No I.D., no entry," he says. The man has the voice of a foghorn at dawn.

"S’cuse me." The guy behind me pushes forward. He's twenty-something and cute, if a little bullish, with a drunk wobble to his step and a cocky smile. "She's with me, Edward.”

The man's brow furrows deeper than the Mariana Trench. "She gets me in trouble, I kick your ass."

"Fair enough!" the guy says, handing over a few euros—lucky for me, it looks like girls get in free—and pushing forward. I flash the bouncer a smile and dart after my drunken savior.

"Thanks so much!" I say as soon as we're inside, over the distant boom of the music. All around us, people are shedding their jackets and milling toward the coat check. "You really saved my ass."

"An ass like that is worth saving." The guy waggles his eyebrows downward, and I roll my eyes. But he catches himself. "S'cool. Us Americans have to stick up for each other. I could tell by your accent. And hell, a girl who ditches her jacket on a night like tonight just to avoid the coat check fee doesn't deserve to be turned away at the door."

"Yep, that's exactly what I did," I laugh. "I'm gonna go dance." Read: find Cohen. "Thanks again."

"Wait!" he protests. "Let me buy you a drink."

I want my wits about me, especially if I can't find Cohen and have to trek home alone. "No thanks. I'm, uh, already drunk."

His disappointed face fades into a blender of a hundred others as I push forward onto the dance floor.

I've been in clubs in L.A. before, so the wild mixture of lights and bass, heat and bodies, isn't unfamiliar to me. It is, however, a pain in the ass. I'd much rather be home, safe and warm, in my insanely expensive bed. Stupid Cohen and his mysterious clubbing habit. I'm going to give him a piece of my mind when I find him.

Which is a stupid idea, because he's an adult well within his rights to go clubbing at night if he wants to. I'm the one being a creepy stalker.

I stop, the only one not moving in a sea of bobbing heads and thrashing bodies. What am I even doing here? If I do find Cohen, what am I planning on saying to him? I don't want to destroy the tenuous trust he's placed in me. But now that I've put so much effort into getting in here, it seems like a shame to leave.

Maybe I'll just hang around for a minute, see if I see him, see who he's dancing with...

Oh. There it is. Great job, brain, concealing my true intent from myself this long. I'm stalking him to find out if he's meeting a girl here. That's a new low of stupidity and misplaced envy. Hadn't he said he wasn't capable of a relationship?

Maybe he only said that because he's already in one, a wicked voice whispers in my ear.      

Well, so what if he is? He doesn't owe me the truth. He doesn't owe me anything. I'm leaving in a week and then I'll never see him again.

My heart hurts at that. I wish it wouldn't.

"There you are!"

It's Drunky McDrunkPants, back again for round two. He seems to be personally very proud of himself for sneaking a girl without an I.D. into a club. At any rate, he looks like he expects repayment.

"Was wondering where you'd got to," he says, sliding his arm around me like I'm his girlfriend and like I hadn't already shot down his offer of a drink. "This place is crowded. We Americans gotta stick together, yeah?"

Great. An uber-patriot with a superiority complex. I gently pry his arm off my shoulder. I'm used to playing nice with men who pay me for it, but I charge a lot more than a little help with a bouncer. "Look, I'm waiting for my...fiancé. Also, I think I might have to jump out a window if you say the phrase 'We Americans' one more time."

"We Americans," he whispers into my ear with a wide smile, seemingly under the impression that we're flirting. I sigh. Maybe I should just get out of here. Leave Cohen to his mysterious midnight shenanigans.

"It's been fun, buddy, but I should be heading out," I say, wondering if I can convince a cab to give me a free lift home. It wouldn't be the first time I've played the wide-eyed lost girl card.

"But you just got here!" His arm snakes out, and he seizes my wrist. "One dance. Come on. I love your style, the whole mismatched I-don't-give-a-fuck theme. Other girls wear way too much makeup."

He thinks I'm some sort of innocent. I want to laugh. If only he'd seen me in one of my Friday night LA getups. "I'll pass."

"Come on," he insists, tugging me toward the thick mass of dancers, where he probably thinks he'll be able to rub his body parts all over me with impunity. "I got you in here."

"Let go!" I snap, yanking back, but his grip is firm. "Lay off, asshole!"

His expression changes, hardening. "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were a fucking bitch."

Men are all the same.

He still has neglected to let go of me. I'm about to yell louder in the hopes that one of the people around is sober enough to help, when someone steps in. Not just someone. Cohen, tall and imperious as ever, an island of firm intensity in a crowd of people whose limbs seem to have come unhinged.

"Take your hands off her," he says in a low, dangerous voice.

This guy is even stupider than I thought, because his fingers remain on my skin just one defiant moment too long. It happens so fast that I barely have time to process it—Cohen's fist swinging up and plowing sharply, cleanly, into the other guy's face. We Americans flies backwards and skids a few inches on his butt, bright red blood already snaking a trail down his face. He covers his nose with one arm and stares up at Cohen, terrified.

Cohen takes a step forward, and I can tell by the cut of his jaw and the muscles bunched along his neck that We Americans is about to get a hell of a lot worse than a bloody nose. I grab his arm. "Drop it. I'm fine."

He stops, but the movement is funny, like it's in slow motion. He turns his head to look at me. Even in the dimness and flashing jagged lights of the club, I can tell something's off about him. It's his eyes. His pupils are dilated, his irises sharpened, like he's more awake than anyone has ever been.

"What are you doing here?" he says after a few moments, as if the question has finally occurred to him.

"I followed you," I say. It would only complicate things to lie, and I have a bad feeling about this. "I wanted to know where you've been sneaking off to every night."

Another long pause, eventually followed by a "None of your business."

But he doesn't sound angry. He sounds...distracted. Like his head is somewhere else and this is only barely managing to keep his interest.

"Cohen," I say, biting my lip. "What's going on?"

He says nothing, simply stares at me like I'm some beautiful alien who's landed in his backyard.

I sigh. I'm not an idiot. My friends have done drugs before. I'm not a stranger to that world. But I thought that Cohen, with all his cool perfectionism, his high-and-mighty attitude, surely would be.

Now I understand what Renard was talking about. Why Cohen’s father threatened him so easily. What Annabelle meant when she talked about his stability. If I had to make calculations by how often he sneaks out at night, Cohen's a habitual user. I'm amazed at how well he hides it during the day.

I put my hand on his arm. "We're going home. Now."

"Rae," he says, covering my hand with his. I'm not even sure he's conscious of doing it. "You shouldn't be here."

"No shit, idiot. Neither should you. We're getting a cab. Hope you have cash."

I lead him out of the fog-filled mess and into the cool night air. It clears my head a little, and I look at Cohen. Knowing him, he probably knew the exact precise amount to take of whatever he took—enough to get him high, but not enough to push him over the edge. A stranger could look at him and believe him to be was perfectly in control of his faculties. But I know better. He looks...different. The mask he ordinarily wears has been stripped away, and I can see the emotions in his face, like I’m looking through a dusty window whose blinds have finally been drawn back. He's starting to get annoyed that I'm here, finally, but there's something else there as he gazes at me. Something more raw.

I tear my eyes away and hail a cab.

We drive home in silence. With each block, I get angrier. How could he be doing something so stupid?

By the time we get back to the apartment building, I'm more or less fuming. Renard is awake, a newspaper folded across his lap, and he doesn't say anything as I drag Cohen across the lobby and toward the elevator, though his eyes widen in surprise. No more secrets, Baldy. I know everything now. And I'm not standing for any of it.

We get to the apartment. I shut the door behind us. Cohen stands in the center of his living room, looking out the window, at the dulled stars scattered over the soft gray shapes of buildings in the distance.

I throw the keys on the floor. The clatter makes him look up.

"What the hell, Cohen?" I say tightly. "Drugs? Really?"

He watches me, his eyes dark. "You're disappointed in me."

"Of course I'm disappointed in you! Do you know how many of my friends I've seen waste away and burn their lives on a pyre of that shit? And you have a hell of a lot more than they did to live for. Is that where you go every single night you sneak out? I know about all the nights, Cohen, I live with you and I'm not stupid."

"I try to be quiet," he says.

"I'm used to staying up late," I snarl. "How long have you been doing this?"

He leans against the wall, pressing a hand to his forehead. Suddenly he looks exhausted. "I don't know. Years. This—going to Paris—was supposed to be a fresh start for me." He laughs bitterly. "But that was a lie. Father just wanted me shipped out of the way so I wouldn't be an embarrassment to him.”

I sigh. That's how Ashworth Sr. was able to threaten him so easily. He could probably have Cohen thrown straight into rehab if he wanted. Although now I'm not so sure that would be a bad thing. "Why do you do it? It just seems so...not you."

"I can't sleep." Suddenly his voice is gravelly. "If I sleep, I have...awful dreams. The only thing worse than those dreams is lying awake, knowing they're gathering in the darkness, waiting for me. They come with the night. The memories. There's only one way I know of to drive them away."

I sit on the couch, hoping he'll sit down with me, but he doesn't. I wish the apartment was homier. More flawed. Standing in the middle of all that perfect furniture, he looks like someone who wandered into a sample home showing by accident. "Memories of what, Cohen?"