Naked (19 page)

“Let's go see if there are any monks in there,” she said, standing up abruptly.

“HOW MUCH?” SAM ASKED, POINTING
at a bucket that was filled with big bunches of pink lilies wrapped in cellophane.

Daydreaming

“Ten dollars,” the shopkeeper answered curtly.

Sam picked out a crumpled ten from his wallet, handed it to the man, and grabbed one of the bunches.
It was only as he stepped away from the deli that he felt like a true idiot.
Flowers. From a deli, no less. Such a cheap form of truce.
Nothing says sorry quite like pink flowers!
Sam shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut. This kind of cliché had no place in his relationship with Gaia. It had nothing to do with them.

But words hadn't worked. So what else was there? Maybe just the rituals left to the thousands of other couples who struggled to keep their shit together: flowers, makeup dinners. . . couples therapy. Sam snorted at that one. But the thought alone was enough to dampen his mood even more. Buying flowers for Gaia was lame. Period.

How do you know?
Sam's inner voice countered as he waited for the light on Columbus Avenue to change. True, he couldn't say anything for sure when it came to Gaia these days. She had closed herself off to him, as he had done to her. They were strangers now.
Which was why a gesture—any gesture—had to be made. Before it was truly too late.

Sam hurried down West Eighty-third Street toward Central Park West, tightening his grip on the dripping flowers. As Sam neared the Mosses' opulent apartment building, he wiped a hand across his chapped lips and wished for the millionth time that week that Josh Kendall would die.
Car accident, mugging, hit, whatever.
The means didn't matter, only the end: Josh lying in a pool of blood. Out of Sam's life once and for all.

But even if Sam had it in him—even if he were another person, capable of murder and not himself—he knew the story wouldn't end there; Josh was just a link in the chain. The directives, the threats on Gaia's life, the orders to ferry packages from place to place. . . all of it filtered through Josh from some other source, one who kept well out of the way, deep in the shadows.

Them,
as Sam liked to say in his private thoughts.

What could he say to Gaia as he handed her these flowers? He could never communicate to her that everything he did was out of love—including all of his silences, all of his disappearances, all of his night-mares. . . because Josh had made it very clear that Gaia would be harmed if
one microscopic speck of information
passed from Sam's lips to her. A small, bitter smile tweaked the corner of Sam's mouth
as he considered his boldest moments, when he'd truly thought he could walk away from all of this with maybe just a black eye from Josh as punishment.

So much for daydreaming.

Sam hesitated on the corner, eyeing the awning. The uniformed doorman was lurking outside the glass doors. It was a different guy from the other night, though—this one was older, shorter, and fatter. Good. The doorman from the other night probably thought Sam was nuts. He wouldn't be too far off the mark, either.
Apparently love brought out crazy sides of a person.
And losing love? That prospect could turn a guy psycho.

Still. . . this new doorman did pose an obstacle because he would have to buzz up to Gaia to let her know that Sam was here. And she probably wouldn't let him in. And what if somebody else answered? Someone like—

Brendan.

Sam stiffened.

Well, well.
Think of the devil.
Brendan Moss marched out the doors, nodded politely to the doorman, then paused on the sidewalk to zip up his windbreaker. Sam felt a familiar expanding hollowness. He knew this sensation well. It came to him all the time now: despair. He also knew he should try to get the hell out of there before Brendan saw him, but his legs seemed to have frozen solid....

Too late.

As Brendan glanced down the avenue in Sam's direction, his stout features hardened. He immediately strode toward him, his footsteps falling like bricks. “What the hell are you doing here?” he barked.

Sam blinked. “I'm here to see Gaia,” he said softly.

Brendan's face was a mask of stone. He shot a hard stare at the flowers.

Was it only a matter of months since Brendan had stopped being his friend? Looking at him now, his face a smear of hatred, Sam felt like years had passed since they'd shared suite B4 in the NYU dorm. And evidently Brendan felt like it had been only minutes since they'd had their fistfight. Jesus. Sam still found it hard to believe that he could have so much anger inside himself, such an ugly streak. It seemed surreal. Still. That had nothing to do with seeing Gaia.
And God knows,
Sam thought, looking at Brendan's coldly glittering eyes,
he wasn't exactly a loyal friend to me. . . .
Okay, maybe Brendan hadn't deserved all of the rage he'd gotten. But he'd deserved a good chunk of it, yes.

“Get the hell out of here,” Brendan spat.

Now this. Did it all have to be so hard, so complicated? Couldn't Brendan just step back for once? Drop the hatred? Cut Sam one tiny bit of slack? “Brendan, man,” Sam said. “Please. Gaia and I have stuff to talk about. We—”

“I haven't forgotten what you did to Mike,”
Brendan interrupted in a low, harsh voice. “If you think I'm letting a killer near Gaia, you're sadly mistaken.”

A killer.

Sam shook his head. There was no point in trying to pursue this conversation. Without another word, he turned and headed back across west Eighty-third, to the opposite corner. There was a garbage can there. He dropped the flowers on top of a half-eaten sandwich and a newspaper, shoved his hands into his pockets, and walked south. Maybe Brendan had done him a favor. After all, it was better to have Brendan Moss tell him to get lost than Gaia.

What a piece of luck.