THE great room in Nathan’s Californian home was a tranquil haven of warm white décor, oversized white sofas and rich hardwood flooring. Rustic wrought-iron chandeliers hung from the ceiling and the art on the walls had heavy, bleached wood frames that resembled driftwood.
The warmth from the open fire that crackled in the hearth did little to defrost my frozen limbs, and I shivered despite my resolve to stay strong.
‘Tell me again?’ Nathan paced, a tumbler of amber liquid in his hand. My heart clenched. He was beautiful. Magnificent. He’d abandoned his jacket and his waistcoat was open along with the top few buttons of his shirt. His hair was a tousled mess, and my fingers itched to feel its silkiness. I rubbed them on my thighs to ease the burn.
‘I didn’t know who she was. I thought I’d injured her. She’s a very good actress.’ My bitter laugh reverberated in my hollow chest and I held out my frigid fingers to the flames before me, desperate for some heat to fill the void my naiveté had created.
‘What did you tell her?’ He came to a stop before me, his emerald eyes reflecting the licks of fire from the hearth as he hid the accusation behind a mask of rigid control.
I cringed, shame heating me where the fire had failed to. ‘I thought she was a guest. She said she’d been dumped … women talk.’ My explanation was so lame I bit my lip until the metallic tang of blood replaced the taste of humble pie. ‘I didn’t mention your name. I didn’t even mention my name—she won’t know who I am.’ I willed my words to be true. She was probably somewhere filming her latest instalment of celebrity gossip at my expense. At Nathan’s expense.
And what about my family? The credit for this round of public humiliation lay firmly at my feet and I’d only have myself to blame for any ramifications. I glanced at my watch, calculating the time in the UK—I’d call Matty as soon as he awoke and warn him not to talk to anyone out of the ordinary.
Nathan’s silence was ear-piercing. I filled my hands with fistfuls of gauzy fabric from my skirt to preoccupy them and prevent me shaking the reprimand I deserved from him. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think …’ The humiliation was back, diluting my shame with a potent dose of indignation. ‘If you’d told me, I wouldn’t have been so upset and I would have looked where I was walking. You said you’d look after me—I’m not used to your world, remember?’
He halted, his body rigid, his stare harsh and uncompromising. ‘Told you what? To not talk to fucking journos? I’d have thought that was self-evident.’ He resumed his pacing across the large fireside rug.
Bitter words squeezed past my teeth. ‘I didn’t know who she was, and I meant you could have told me about Tia?’
My thoughts tumbled over themselves, trying to form an orderly queue in my mind. Guilt, pain, anger and fear swirled around, struggling for dominance. Aware I was in the wrong, my guilt latched on to the indignation Claudia’s goading revelation had triggered.
‘Are you telling me this was all about some stupid fucking photo shoot?’ His voice dropped to menacing levels and I hugged my arms, throwing up a barrier between his ire and my vital organs.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d dated her?’ Rage simmered, a slow boil ready to spill over at any second. ‘You asked me to watch you grind against her, to press your lips to her skin, to stand there while she touched you, smelled you, all the time convincing me it was acting, and you didn’t think to tell me she knew exactly what the real experience felt like?’
I was boiling mad now, frustration and pain pouring from me in a tumble of angry words and accusatory glares. ‘I trusted you, believed you when you rushed home to me desperate to wash her off and replace her scent with mine.’ I found the small wound inside my cheek again, probing at it with sharp teeth to still the well of humiliation threatening to fill my eyes.
His glare registered shock for the briefest of seconds before hardening into bitter chips of stone. ‘Tia and I were nothing—a couple of quick meaningless bangs years ago, before she moved on to someone richer, more famous. Why would I tell you about that? About a woman who used me on her climb to the top? Besides, I didn’t even know it was her I’d be shooting with that day until we arrived at the studio.’ He gripped the back of his neck, finishing his drink in a quick swallow before placing his glass on a nearby table. ‘What other little secrets did Trudy Bergman tell you about me? I know how you girls just love to share.’ His tone had a knife twisting in my belly, its blade toughened surgical steel honed with pinpoint accuracy.
I felt certain he’d hear my gasp as the pain stole my breath, but he gave no indication of triumph his words had found their target, keeping his rigid back turned to me. I was nothing special after all. Just another woman who’d used him, taken a piece of him and sold it to the highest bidder. Did he believe the worst because deep down, like many in his profession, he’d acted because he didn’t feel good enough just being himself?
My shoulders slumped with defeat and fatigue, the anger leaving me like a gush of blood staining the carpet. I’d failed him on two counts tonight. I’d betrayed him and worse, I couldn’t heal him. Not from himself and his own destructive self-doubts. But he’d failed me too, betraying me with an omission that had chipped away at my resolve to lower my guard and welcome him into my life. Failure crushed me, the concrete blocks tumbling from a great height to quash any hope I harboured that we might be able to build a future from our unconventional union.
Gathering my dignity around me like a defence force, I swallowed down my humiliation, storing it for future dissection. ‘I’m sorry you feel that I deliberately spilled my guts as some sort of revenge.’ He had the good grace to reveal a flash of regret in the gaze he turned to me. ‘I would never do that—’
‘I’m not accusing you of that. Trudy Bergman will clearly stop at nothing for a good story.’
I shrugged, numbness settling into my limbs like lead. ‘But it was Claudia who told me about you and Tia.’
He whirled around. ‘Claudia?’
I took no solace from the bewildered shock in his eyes. ‘Yes. Your … friend cornered me in the ladies’ room to give me her fascinating take on your relationship with Tia, along with a charming demonstration of the perils of snorting narcotics.’
He collapsed into an armchair, his elbows braced on his spread knees and his forehead buried in his hands. The urge to reach out and caress the soft skin at the nape of his neck, to brush my lips over it until he groaned, to lose control and lead us both from this bleak wilderness into the haven of unique pleasure we conjured in each other was overwhelming. But the euphoria would be passing, requiring dose after dose to banish the problems we’d still have when the effects wore off. Clearly an addiction, even one that could create such amazing highs, was still an addiction and ultimately bad for us.
‘I regret not telling you about Tia. It seemed … irrelevant, but I can see how it appears.’ Fatigue marred the perfection of his arresting eyes, and compassion for him swelled inside me as guilt and humiliation duelled for control of my nervous system.
I hadn’t worn it in a while, but I pulled the lapels on my metaphorical white coat tighter across my chest and channelled my bedside manner. This was what I did, what I was good at. Making people feel better. Although I knew my skills were inadequate to heal the gaping, raw-edged hole of my own misery. ‘Let’s get some sleep. We can talk more in the morning.’
He stood, pulling me forward so the front of my ice-cold body was pressed along the length of his warm and comforting one. ‘I’m sorry, Soph. You’re right. Let’s sleep on it.’ He pressed his lips to my hair and I shuddered at the rightness of being in his arms. But the honest me knew. The wrong had set in and it would spread like a plague, infecting us until the right was only a distant memory.
***
I was running. The light was blinding like the blaze of a million camera flashes. Instead of fleeing, my legs propelled me forward, the screams of fans luring me towards the glare and a fall I already knew was going to be painful.
I sat up, my lungs gasping for air and my hand reaching blindly for my phone on the bedside table. The ringtone pierced my eardrums in the blackness of the room and I fumbled to answer just to make it stop. My heart thumped against my ribs, the responding pulse humming in my head and the tips of my fingers. I’d awoken too many times in the middle of the night to the harsh shrill tones of a pager to know this could only be bad news and even as I croaked ‘Hello’, I was swinging my legs from the warmth of the bed.
‘Soph?’ My mother’s voice doused me with a bucket of icy water, chasing away the last vestiges of sleep. ‘It’s Dad; he’s had another heart attack. You need to come, love.’
The years of training served me well as I boxed up my personal emotions, employing the professional, fact-finding mode to ascertain the salient features from my distraught mother. As I spoke, I pulled on yoga pants and checked my handbag for my passport.
‘I’ll be on the first flight.’
As I disconnected the call, I became aware of Nathan’s solid warmth behind me, his hands heavy on my shoulders anchoring me when I would have crawled out of my skin and spun into the inky black nothingness of the sky. I clutched his fingers with one hand, sucking the last drops of comfort from him in preparation for the losses ahead.
We’d shared a bed last night, lying side by side, lost to our own thoughts as we’d tossed and turned until a restless slumber had claimed us. But we hadn’t shared our bodies or our souls, the chasm between us magnifying the scant space between our bodies on the mattress, making it as impassable as the Grand Canyon.
Releasing him, I moved to the bathroom to collect my hairbrush and toothbrush. I couldn’t waste time on regret, needing to focus all my energy on my dad. I closed my eyes, biting back the surge of panic. Please wait for me, Dad. I’m coming.
When I returned to the bedroom, Nathan was on his phone talking to Jake about flights. He held the phone between his head and his shoulder as he tugged on his jeans. He must have garnered enough information from my side of the phone call to piece together what had happened.
Too restless to stand still, I stuffed a change of clothes into my bag and moved to the hallway, my fingers fumbling on the screen of my phone for the information they sought. Within seconds, I’d placed an international call to the hospital housing my father, explaining who I was to the ward sister and asking to speak to the doctor caring for him. It wasn’t good news, but knowledge of the enzyme levels in his blood, ECG findings and medication he was receiving comforted me. He was alive and I was going to him.
From somewhere, Nathan found my hoodie, sliding it onto my shoulders to cover the T-shirt belonging to him I’d worn to bed. He dropped my trainers onto the tiles in front of me, holding my arm as I stepped into them like a dutiful child.
‘My father’s suffered a heart attack.’ It was the only explanation I could offer.
He nodded. ‘Jake’s booked you a flight—it’s the last seat. I’ll follow you on the next one available.’ I was buried in his chest, his arms banded around my shoulders, too numb to register the warmth or the comforting scent of him. ‘I’m so sorry, Soph. I’ll come to you as soon as I can.’
I nodded, my face rubbing the clean linen of the T-shirt he’d donned. My head was full of test results and complications of myocardial Infarction, leaving no room to ruminate on last night and the unfinished discussion on where we’d taken a wrong turn. But my body, as if working independently of my mind, seemed to know this could be the last time it would find itself in this happy position. I was too numb to register the pleasure, but my senses absorbed every scrap of this moment, saving it up, storing it until a time when I would need it most. His heart thumped a vital rhythm beneath my cheek, which moved up and down with the expansion of his chest as he breathed. His arms around my back were a steel band, holding the parts of me together else they scatter in the breeze.
I lifted my head, my face in line with his neck, and pressed my lips to the soft skin at the hollow above his breastbone. Filling my nose with one last indulgent glut of him, I stepped from his arms and clutched my jacket over my chest.
‘Can you give me a ride to the airport?’ My eyes were dry and gritty with unshed emotion.
He was heartbreakingly beautiful in that moment—sleep-rumpled and with a sprinkling of stubble on his jaw, his worried eyes haunted and wary. ‘Sure.’
If I’d had any strength to spare, I’d have rushed to him, soothed him, consoled him and told him I would be okay. But I was bereft, flailing, insubstantial, as if at any moment I would shatter and cease to exist.
An hour later, as I passed through airport security, I turned one last time to fill my vision with the sight of him beyond the barriers. I lifted my bag onto my shoulder and raised a hand to him, my eyes memorising his beauty, turning away when a group of fans, finally recognising their idol, swallowed him up from view.