Pursued by the Rogue (The Fairy Tales of New York Book 1) (11 page)

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D
awn didn’t know
how she managed to walk into Sully’s on Thursday evening one week later for her monthly get together with Faith, Zel and Mercy, but she did. She’d considered sending her apologies by text and just not showing up, but she owed them a little more than that. She was planning to cut ties with them before too long, yes, but this time she’d at least do it face to face.

There was no sign of Finn as she made her way towards the end booth where the others waited, and for that she was truly grateful. Composure could only stretch so far and hers was already stretched thin. Once her mind had been made up when it came to getting tested, she’d been able to make an appointment with Aaron Chen. Aaron had waived some of the pre-counselling requirements of the testing procedure on account of her extensive knowledge of the genetic diseases and the ethical questions surrounding genetic testing, and he’d been able to fit her in to get the blood test done immediately, but there had been no fast-tracking the wait for results, and there would be no waiving of the after counselling requirements once those results came in. Aaron had made that very clear.

All the theoretical knowledge in the world mattered little when shit got personal.

“Ladies,” she said when she reached the booth. “You started without me.”

“We thought you weren’t coming,” said Faith, signaling the barman for a drink for Dawn.

“I got held up at work and truth be told the thought of bailing did cross my mind. But I’m here now and boy do I need a drink.”

“CEOs,” teased Mercy. “Always the same.”

“I’ll have you know I’m unique,” said Dawn. “Just look at my face. On second thoughts, don’t.” She knew she looked tired and drawn. That’s because she was.

“I have a remedy for those bags under your eyes,” said Zel. “Sleep. What have you been doing? Running the country?”

“No, I’ve been honing my company’s forward research plans and bringing venture capitalists on board.”

Zel’s eyes narrowed. “You’re letting people buy into your company now?”

“I’ve never wholly owned the company. I used other people’s money from the start. Right now we’re expanding. Rapidly. It’s time.”

Otherwise known as getting all her ducks in a row before she stepped back from day to day management altogether.

“You should have said,” said Zel. “I could have approached my brother and The Madison Foundation on your behalf.”

“Is your relationship with your brother even functional?” Mercy asked, and Zel suddenly found her mojito fascinating.

“Well, no. My relationship with Seb is as broken as ever. But he’s a good businessman.”

“Can I quiz you about the business of running a medical research company at some point?” Mercy asked Dawn. “The Master of Business student in me wants to know more.”

Mercy was from a family of vintners whose very good wines held significant global market share. She’d come to New York to get a Master’s degree, and maybe, just maybe, get away from her parents’ loving reach. “How’s the study going?”

“Well, I’m not yet ready to hunt down venture capitalists for my next brilliant idea, put it that way.”

“You don’t need to,” said Dawn with a grin. “You’re already expanding at a pace your family is comfortable with.”

“My father’s not that comfortable with it,” Mercy said. “He wants to market our next rosé in the premium price range. I want it to be an award winning mid-range wine. Maybe I should
threaten
venture capitalism.”

It was Dawn’s first real smile in a week. “Perfect.”

“He’ll make you come home,” warned Zel. “He’s done it before.”

“Not this time.” Mercy lifted her chin. “I’ve earned this.”

“Oh, shite,” muttered Faith.

“I think we’re boring her,” said Mercy.

“No, just intimidating me beyond belief.” Faith’s attention was focused somewhere over Dawn’s right shoulder. “Finn’s playing here tonight, which I thought would be a good thing because it usually is. And then he rocked up two hours ago breathing fire and brimstone and making everyone want to throttle him. He’s in a mood.”

Zel straightened. “What kind of mood? A playful mood?”

“More of a
God help anyone who gets in his way
mood.”

“He’s a passionate man,” said Mercy. “I approve.”

“He’s a pain in the arse,” muttered Faith. “And I’m worried about him.”

“Can you talk to him?” asked Mercy.

“I don’t need to.” Faith reached for her half-empty brew. “The minute he picks up his violin and puts the bow to it, his music will tell me everything I need to know about what’s wrong with him. It’s his gift.”

“His
gift
?” Mercy queried. “Sounds more like the curse of a caring, intuitive sister.”

Dawn let their words wash over her without comment as she adjusted to the thought that Finn wasn’t elsewhere this evening. He was right here. And she was so screwed.

“Didn’t Finn ask you out a few weeks back?” Faith suddenly asked her.

“He did, yes,” she offered with a smile that bordered on cool, never mind the turmoil within. “Nothing came of it.”

The fact that Finn was here and she was here was bad. This was his place of safety, not hers. And Faith was looking at her as if she knew things she had no business knowing.

“He asked me something weird about you the other day,” said Faith, still watching her closely. “He asked me if you’d ever been sick at school. Only time I could remember was on altar wine night.”

“Well,” Dawn said faintly. “It was really bad wine. And we did drink rather a lot of it.”

A violin sounded in Sully’s bar, low and mournful. Tuning took place but Dawn couldn’t see it. She wasn’t facing the stage tonight and no way was she about to turn around.

If she looked, she’d fall in thrall all over again. There was something about musicians, the way they wove a spell over a crowd. She
knew
what he could call forth with that violin. “I should go,” she muttered, wondering if there was a back way out that she could sneak through.

“You just got here.” Now Zel was looking at her oddly as well.

And then Finn’s voice came across the microphone, rough and warm as he greeted the crowd and told those who didn’t already know that he’d grown up here and that every now and then he headed back here to touch base with his family and with his roots. He told them that an old violin teacher of his was here in the crowd tonight and that he hoped he didn’t disappoint him.

“I’ve been composing,” he said next. “Because every now and again I decide I’m Beethoven. And I hope you don’t mind but tonight I need a test audience and you’re it. It’s around seven minutes long and it’s not the kind of music I usually play here. If you let me get through it all, I’ll stand you all a drink. It’s called
Sorrow.
”

“It’s for all the things that never were,” he added quietly, after a moment’s hesitation.

“Oh, Jesus,” whimpered Faith, and Dawn agreed.

Why didn’t he just walk up and rip out her heart and be done with it?

From the first note it was clear that this music was personal. Grief flowed and love wove around it, thready but unbreakable. Anger rose and wept. Accusation. Indignation. And underlying all of it a sorrow that went soul deep. Two minutes in and not a word was being spoken. Dawn sat as silent as the rest of the audience, head bowed and her eyes fixed on the wooden table in front of her.

Three minutes in and silent tears were streaming down Dawn’s cheeks and there was nothing for it but to let them flow. Mercy’s hand crept into hers and squeezed, but Dawn was trembling with the effort to stay contained and barely felt it.

Haunting loneliness crept into the music and stayed there.

She’d tried to explain how much losing the baby had haunted her. He’d listened and said little. What could he have said? He hadn’t felt it.

Not then.

This here, this was personal. It was as if he’d crawled inside her skin and lived in it. Every thought and feeling she’d ever had, this was Finn, exposing it, playing it, with a depth of understanding that she couldn’t comprehend.

He knew what it had been like for her.

He knew.

Seven minutes after he started, Finn lowered his violin to a room full of hushed silence. Not one cough or clinking glass.

Dawn turned in her seat, she had to see him, just once before she left, never mind the tears that still flowed. She had to see what he’d done to himself in order to play what he’d just played, but his face was downcast, a study of shadows lit only by the outside light from a nearby window. He sat on his stool, fiddling with the strings near the bridge of his violin.

As the silence continued.

And then somebody, Faith’s father, JP, moved. “Sweet
Jaysus
, Finn. Care to cheer us
up
now?”

Finn glanced up at his father, eyes wet but his features composed and said, “Sure.”

He lifted the violin to his chin again.

“Wait,” said an old man sitting at a table for two over by the window. “Let it sit a while.” And he started clapping.

Others joined him.
Everyone
joined him, including Dawn. And pretty soon there were catcalls.

Finn summoned a grin from somewhere. How did he
do that
after having just bled out in front of a crowd? “Gimme a minute,” he said and stepped from the stage and handed his violin to the old man who’d told him to wait.

Then he headed towards her.

Dawn stood as he approached, her trembling hand still firmly clasped in Mercy’s. She’d pay for the damage. A new hand, maybe.

He stopped in front of her and studied her face, before reaching out with both hands to cup her cheeks and wipe his thumbs over the tearstains beneath her eyes.

“I would have been there for you if I’d known,” he said, and then kissed her gently on the mouth. “I would have understood. You didn’t have to be alone.”

And then he left her again and went back to the old man who held his violin, and then got back up on that stage again and closed his eyes and started playing fast and loose with an Irish jig. Cheerful music, and if his soul wasn’t in it, well maybe he masked it for many with his technical brilliance.

It was time to go. Past time for her night with the girls to be over, but her legs weren’t working too well. Five minutes, then.

Dawn reached for her beer but decided against raising it to her lips. Instead she wiped at the condensation on the glass, drawing fairground stripes on it and let the silence stand.

This was the end. The end of everything. It was time to say goodbye to these wonderful women.

“Dawn?” Faith asked quietly. “What was that?”

“Sorrow, I guess.”

Felt like it.

“Why?”

Was there any harm in telling? She’d already told Finn. Perhaps the truth would help them let her go. “Finn and I got together once. Early on. At your brother’s twenty-first. It was kind of beautiful.”

Faith sat back against the wall of the booth and eyed Dawn narrowly. “So?”

Dawn took a deep breath. “I paid for it afterwards. That night, when we were drinking the altar wine?” She tried a shrug on for size but it slid from her shoulders and landed somewhere at her feet. “I was miscarrying.”

Silence met her statement. The same kind of silence that Finn’s music had met.

“Finn
knew
?” asked Faith finally, her voice dangerously quiet.

“No. Not then. I told him the other day.”

Faith’s brows drew together in a frown and her eyes flashed fire. “For heaven’s sake, Dawn, why? Why tell him now and not then?”

Good question.

“Anything
else
you haven’t told us?” muttered Zel, looking shell shocked, but otherwise neutral. A little bit like Switzerland.

So much more she hadn’t told them, yes. “My father has Huntington’s disease. I don’t know if you know what that is, but it’s ugly. He lives but he has no speech left and barely any movement. From dropping a glass to what he is now in fifteen years. I only found out about it a couple of years after I left St. J’s. It’s genetic.”

“Meaning?” said Zel.

“I have a fifty percent chance of inheriting it. I think I might have it. I have some of the symptoms.”

“Is trembling one of them?” asked Mercy gently and Dawn choked back a sob.

“That’s just trembling.”

“Oh, Dawn.”

Mercy reached out to touch her wrist, silent comfort and she wanted it, she did. She just didn’t think she deserved it. “I took a test. I’ll know for sure soon.” She stood abruptly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come here. This is Finn’s home, not mine.”

“How soon?” Urgency laced Mercy’s voice as she reached out once again and clasped Dawn gently around the wrist. “Dawn. When do you find out?”

“Tomorrow. At two o’clock.”

“We could stay with you afterwards. Slumber party,” Mercy offered instantly and Zel nodded. Even Faith nodded, but Dawn shook her head.

“No. My mother’s here. So’s my aunt. They’ll keep me company.”

“What about afterwards?” Mercy was nothing if not persistent.

Dawn smiled and tried to find the strength to make a final, decisive break, but she couldn’t. Mercy’s mercy was her undoing. “Some other time perhaps. Afterwards, I think I’m going to go see my dad.”