In Flight (41 page)

I ran across the crowded street without even looking, propelled by panic.
 
I didn’t want to see him.
 
Horns honked, but I didn’t care.
 
A taxi had to careen to a halt mere inches from me.
 

I glanced inside.
 
It was empty.
 
I got in, dragging my suitcase topped with my flight bag in beside me.
 
I directed the driver to my hotel.
 

He looked at me like I was crazy, but I reached into my flight bag, fished out my wallet, and thrust a twenty at him.
 
I would normally never take a cab.
 
It was an ungodly expensive way to get around.
 
But at that moment, I would have paid just about anything just to get away.
 
I wanted to get to my room and curl into a ball.
 

I knew Stephan would still be out.
 
I debated calling him.
 
I knew he would drop whatever he was doing and come back to comfort me.
 
I wanted that.
 
But I dismissed the idea almost immediately.
 
It was a selfish instinct;
 
to pull him away from a fun night and into my misery.
 

I got gracelessly out of the cab when it stopped.
 
I felt around for my room key, relieved when I found the card still in a pocket.
 
I didn’t want to talk to anyone, not even the the friendly hotel staff.
 

I nodded at the girl manning the front desk when she called out a greeting.
 
I didn’t recognize her through my blurred haze of misery, even though she called me by name.
 

I moved quickly to the elevator.
 

I felt a wave of relief when I finally let myself into my room, bolting the door behind me.
 
I’d had some crazy, paranoid idea that James was chasing me, trying to catch me before I could lock him out and never speak to him again.
 

I just leaned against the door for long minutes, trying not to lose it.
 

Of course, I’d known James had a long line of ex-lovers.
 
Of course, I’d known he was a womanizer.
 
Of course, I was a fool.
 
When he’d told me he’d be exclusive, I had just believed him, as though a man like that wouldn’t be a consummate liar.

I left my suitcase at the door, deliberately making myself go through the usual motions.
 

I pulled the top cover off of the bed, tossing it into a heap in the farthest corner of the room.
 
I knew they never washed those things.
 
I set the alarm by the bed, and then the one on my phone, plugging it in to charge.
 

I saw that I had eight missed calls.
 
I just turned off the vibrator as well as the ringer, so that it wouldn’t wake me with calls or messages.
 
I’d set it up to only make noise as an alarm.
 

I unpacked the minimum.
 
Just toiletries and my extra uniform.
 

I moved to the adjoining door.
 
Even though I had been spending the day away, we had arranged to adjoin, as usual.
 
I opened my side, relieved to see that Stephan had already done the same.
 
I

 
heard movement in his bathroom, and jumped.
 

“Ste-Stephan?” I called, really hoping it was him.
 

He strode out of his bathroom at my call.
 
He was shirtless, wearing only low-slung navy cargo shorts.
 
“Hey, Buttercup.
 
Some knucklehead got barf on my shirt, so I had to come back to change.”
 
He moved towards me as he spoke, drying his hair briskly with a towel.
 

He got a look at my face and froze.
 
Scant moments later I was being enfolded into his arms.
 
He held my face to his bare chest, stroking my hair.
 

“Oh, Bee, what is it?”

I had managed not to cry until then, but his sympathy undid me.
 
I heard a broken sob escape from my throat, as though from a distance.
 
I never cried, especially not like this.
 
I wet his chest with my hopeless sobbing.
 

How had I let this happen?
 
I asked myself, again and again.
 
I had been so certain that I wouldn’t let my heart get involved.
 
But in the end, I’d had no control, even in that.
 

I felt a horrible crush of guilt as I realized that Stephan cried with me.
 
He had always been like that.
 
He couldn’t watch me suffer and not suffer himself.
 

“Shh, it will be okay,” he told me, his voice soft and soothing, despite his tears.
 
“We will survive it, Bianca.
 
Whatever it is, we’ll survive it together.”
 

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Mr. Duplicitous

Suddenly, there was a furious pounding at the door.
 
It vibrated as heavy fists beat against it.
 

 
“Bianca, open the door.
 
We need to talk.
 
Don’t lock me out.
 
Open the door.
 
Now.”
 
James’s voice rang clearly into my room, since he was shouting to wake the dead.
 
He pounded relentlessly.
 
I had never heard his voice at any level even approaching a shout.
 
It startled me, to say the least.

We tried to just ignore him in silence as he pounded at the door.
 
It went on for a good five minutes.

Each blow to the door made me tense up, until I was just a quivering mess of nerves.
 

It brought me back to my childhood as almost nothing else could.
 
The door pounding, my father breaking it down and beating us because we’d had the nerve to lock him out.
 
Almost every violent episode in my childhood had begun with fists reverberating against a door.
 
Just like this.
 

I was such an emotional wreck at that moment that I reverted back to a habit I thought I had weaned myself off of years ago.
 

Abruptly, I shot out of Stephan’s arms.
 
I found the safest looking hiding spot, on the far side of the bed.
 
I curled in on myself, arms wrapped tightly around my legs.
 
It was purely a child’s defensive stance, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself.

I heard the door swing open, then Stephan’s voice, colder than I’d heard it since the last time he’d spoken to my father.
 
That hadn’t ended well.
 
I was really hoping this scene wouldn’t end up similarly.
   

“Don’t do that.
 
She doesn’t want to see you.
 
Just look at her!
 
What have you done?”
 

His last few sentences were strained.
 
I heard the sounds of a hard struggle, and I knew that James had rushed inside of the room, heedless of the huge blond man filling the entrance.
 
Stephan had blocked him, from the sound of things.
 

The scuffling sounds paused for long moments.
 
I knew that either James had stopped trying to get past him, or Stephan had James pinned in a good enough hold to restrain the other man.
 

The sounds of a struggle began again in earnest.
 

“Just let me see her.
 
I just want to make it better.
 
I’m not here to hurt her, Stephan,” James said, and his voice sounded like it came through gritted teeth.
 

“You’ve already done that!
 
Look at her!
 
What did you do?”
 
Stephan’s words were a furious roar this time.
 
“You need to leave!”
 

“I see her,” he said, his raw tone making me cringe.
 
“Bianca, just hear me out.
 
That woman was just a friend.”
 

I heard the sound of a fist meeting flesh, and a soft grunt of pain out of James.
 
I thought it sounded like a blow to the stomach.
 
That worried me.
 
I knew that Stephan’s gut punches could do some serious damage.
 
Best-case scenario would be just a few days of coughing up blood.
 

“What woman?” Stephan asked, sounding angrier by the minute.

“Please, just let me go to her.
 
I can’t see her hurting like that.
 
It’s killing me.”
 

“So leave.
 
You made her like that, and you need to leave.
 
If she wants to talk to you, she has your number.”
 

“Bianca,” James said again, a break in his voice.
 

The sound of a body slamming into the wall finally got me to turn my head around, just enough to see.
 
Stephan had an arm at James’s throat, but James was still struggling fiercely to get past him.
 
He wasn’t trying to fight, just move past the roadblock of Stephan.
 

Stephan, on the other hand, looked like he was on the verge of murder.
 
I could see the hard muscles straining on his naked back furiously.
 

“Just say you’ll hear me out, Bianca.
 
If not now, then later.
 
But promise me you won’t just shut me out completely.
 
Promise me, and I’ll leave.
 
If that’s what you want,” he gasped.
 

It wasn’t my first inclination to agree, but seeing Stephan being pushed to just this side of murder went a good way towards convincing me.

My voice was a quavery mess, but I finally managed to speak.
 
“I’ll give you my word, just like you did, when you said we were exclusive.”
 

That seemed to send Stephan over the edge.
 

“Fucker,” he roared, punching James hard in the stomach again.
 

I cursed myself.
 
I had only made things worse.
 

“We were.
 
We are.
 
I never lied to you.
 
I tell you the truth about everything, even when it hurts, because I want you to trust me,” he told me, his voice labored and harsh from the blows.
 

His words made me so furious that I forgot that I was trying to defuse the situation.
 
“You said you didn’t date.
 
That was a lie, since I met your date for tonight.”
 

Stephan slammed James against the wall, cursing.
 
“You Bastard.
 
You swore to me that you wouldn’t hurt her.
 
But I haven’t seen her this hurt since the last time her dad got his hands on her.”
 

That seemed to take all of the steam out of James.
 
He stopped struggling even as Stephan tried to push him through the wall.
 

“Bianca, please, you can’t just leave me.
 
Just agree to talk to me again, when you feel up to it.
 
I’ll let you pick the time and place, but I can’t just let you go without a fight.”
 

“Fine, if you’ll answer one question for me first.”
 

“Anything.”

“First, agree not to come near me, so Stephan can let you go.”

His eyes held a desolation that I could see even from across the room.
 
“If that’s what you want.”

Stephan let go of him abruptly, pacing across the room, his hands in his hair.
 
He hated when he lost it, more than anything, and tonight he’d been pretty damn close.
 
I felt a crushing guilt at the knowledge that it was all my fault.
 
I vowed never to become involved with another man.
 

“You can come to my house monday afternoon, at five.
 
We can speak then.”
 

It was hard not to feel anything when I looked into his seemingly sincere, pleading eyes.
 

“Sooner, please.
 
Waiting until Monday will be pure torture.”
 

I shook my head, holding my ground firmly.
 
“No.
 
Monday.
 
Now answer my question.”
 

He nodded.
 
He shoved his hands in his pockets, looking absolutely devastating in his black tux with it’s crisp white shirt.
 
His hair was messed up from the struggle but still somehow managed to just look artfully disheveled.
 

“Have you fucked Jules?” I asked.
 

He tensed up, and I knew the answer before he spoke.
 

“Yes.
 
But it’s been a long time.”
 

I didn’t want the question to leave my mouth, but it did anyways.
 
“When?”
 

“A year, at least.
 
I’m not sure exactly how long.”
 

And he’s known her for years
, I thought.
 

 
“Was it just the one time?”
 
I asked.
 

He closed his eyes.
 
“No.
 
But it never meant anything, I swear.”