Ronan
I sag defeatedly against the trunk of a tree as she runs away from me. Shaken, I reach for my pack of cigarettes, open it, grab another one, and place it loosely between my lips. As I’m lighting it, I notice dispassionately how badly my hands are shaking. I bite my lip after taking a deep drag and blowing out the smoke. Hope and fear that the trace of her flavor is gone from my mouth blend as one, but I can still taste her and it’s fucking torture.
Fuck.
When I make it back inside the house, I go in search of Rachel. I find her talking to Alan and Loretta Vanderhall, the smile on her lovely face stiff and unnatural. Ah, she knows.
Wrapping an arm around her waist, I whisper in her ear, “Want to get out of here?”
She places her hand on top of mine, nodding. As we walk toward the exit of the house, she says hollowly, “She’s lovely, Ronan.”
“Don’t give her another thought. She’s part of the past.” I stare at her and grab her hand, bringing it to my lips and kissing it. “I’m looking at the future, and that’s all that matters.”
That next morning, I quit work and give Carl a call. My first interview will be with the Times magazine, and it’s set to take place in two weeks.
I will forget you, Blaire. I will. I will conquer my love for you even if it costs me my own soul.
Blaire
I MAKE MY WAY BACK to the party in search of Lawrence, except I don’t want him to hold me anymore; the magical moment we shared on the dance floor forgotten. I don’t have it in me to continue fooling myself, not when every fiber in my body is begging me to go back to the garden. Not when my skin still tingles with the memory of being in Ronan’s arms after going so long without him.
The large trees surrounding the garden seem to be closing in on me, making me feel claustrophobic. I begin to walk faster toward the warm light of the house, a light that promises temporary shelter from all the darkness surrounding me. For a brief moment, I hope that my feet will carry me to a place where binding memories don’t exist, where I can be free of my past. But then again, running away, or wanting to escape, won’t solve a thing. It’s not my past that holds me prisoner. It’s my fucking heart.
I pause when I spot Lawrence. Sorrow for him, for us, fills me. My feet feel as though they are stuck to the ground. I take a few moments to compose myself and try to hide the tempest raging inside me behind the perfect façade. He lifts his head and smiles that rare, earth-shattering smile of his as his gaze connects with mine. When I can’t return the gesture, his disappears.
I’m so sorry, Lawrence. So sorry. I told you I was not worthy of anything good. I’m poison.
I look away from Lawrence, afraid that he will see through me. That’s when I observe Ronan walking back from the garden. His face is set in a hard line but he remains as beautiful as ever, maybe even more so now because I know he isn’t mine. I’m not the only woman in the room who notices him, either. Far from it actually. Desirous eyes everywhere follow his trajectory. His step is easy and sensual and so different from before. My mind tells me that he’s the same man that made me believe in summertime and sunshine but as I stare at him, I know that man is gone and has been replaced by this stranger.
I want to scratch my eyes out when he wraps an arm around his companion’s waist possessively and brings their bodies close together. The intimate gesture suggests that he knows every inch of her, and well. And the way she’s watching him shows that she is, too, blinded by his light and everything that he is. My head spins while my chest contracts with such incapacitating pain that I find it hard to breathe.
Ronan …
Yeah, babe?
What happens when this ends?
It won’t.
It will. Everything ends.
I know it won’t, and you know why?
I don’t, but tell me. Make me believe, Ronan.
He takes my hand in his, uncurls my fingers, and places my palm on his chest. You feel this, Blaire? It’s yours and it will always be. That’s why.
Feeling faint, I place a hand on the wall next to me for support as the realization that I drove him away and into the arms of someone else assails me. It serves me right that he’s moved on.
“You’re making a fool of yourself. Stop staring at him,” I hear Lawrence hiss angrily in my ear as he wraps his hand around my upper arm, his fingers constricting.
“Go away, Lawrence,” I beg. “Please leave me alone.”
“He came with someone else, Blaire. Let him go.”
I watch Ronan and the blonde woman disappear in the crowd, draining the room of color. Crestfallen, I turn to face Lawrence, his expression unreadable once more. “What would you have me do? Deny my own heart?” I shake my head, laughing madly. “I can’t. Not tonight.”
He grabs me by the arms, his touch turning painful, fury flaring in his gaze. “I don’t give a fuck what you want or what you do, but I won’t be made a fool of.”
“But you are a fool, Lawrence.”
“Get your things. We’re leaving now,” he says quietly, a deadly tone in his voice.
I shake my head. “No.”
“What are you going to do, Blaire? Go to that boy and beg him to take you back? And if he does, how long before his love for you chokes the life out of you? Before you feel trapped in his arms again? Sooner or later you’ll come back to me, begging me to fuck you and offering me your body for my money.” He pauses. “We’ve been there already, haven’t we?”
“I won’t. I can change,” I say weakly.
“Frankly, I’m growing bored with you and your show of emotions. Come with me now and stop lying to yourself.” When I hesitate, he extends his hand to me. “Come. We’re beginning to draw attention to ourselves.”
I stare at his hand as my heart and my head fight with one another. My head wins. I take his offered hand and go with him.
Lawrence is right. I can’t change.
“I want to go to my apartment. I don’t feel like spending the night at your place,” I say after the car has been moving for a while.
“No.”
“No, what?”
Lawrence is looking out the window and sitting as far away from me as possible. “You’re not going back to your apartment tonight so get it out of your head.”
“I said that I want to go back to my apartment and that’s what I’m going to do. I don’t need your permission.” I’m about to press the button to lower the partition separating us from the driver and give him my instructions when Lawrence speaks.
“Careful, Blaire. I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Normally I wouldn’t heed Lawrence’s warning, but the dangerous edge to his voice and the energy he’s radiating makes me stop. “What are you going to do? Force me to fuck you?” I spread my knees apart as I pull the skirt of my dress up, revealing my legs and bare pussy. “Why bother to go back to your house when you have all you need right here and now.”
“Again, careful there, Blaire…”
“Or what? What are you going to do to me, oh mighty Lawrence?” I slide my dress off my shoulders, the fabric pooling around my waist and hips.
“You like what you see? Why don’t you finish what you started before? It’s yours.” Naked from the neck down with only his diamond necklace against my skin glimmering in the dark, I smile insolently. “But no matter where and how you take me and all the gifts you shower me with, I won’t ever be yours. I’m looking at you and it’s him I want. It’s him I’m thinking of. It’s always been him.”
I want him to get mad at me. Inflict pain on me. I want him to hate me, hit me, physically hurt me. Maybe then the guilt and pain breaking my chest will stop and numb me from the inside out.
He moves so fast that I have barely any time to realize what his intention is before he’s over me and his hands enclose around my neck, making it hard to breathe. The venom of my soul has contaminated him.
I can’t move. I’m at his mercy and some disturbing part of me rejoices in that
fact. Take away my will to say no, Lawrence. Make it easy for me to deny my own heart. Make it easy for me to hate myself. Please forgive me, Lawrence.
“Don’t mention him in my presence again,” he warns, loosening his fingers.
I manage to laugh even as his fingers are wrapped dangerously close around my neck. “It doesn’t matter. He’s—”
Before I have a chance to finish my sentence, Lawrence covers my mouth with his. This kiss is as fatal as a bullet to the heart. It tears me open and makes me bleed. It’s like dying a slow death each time his lips touch mine, but the masochist part of me wants that pain, that nothingness that he brings me. I shove him, kick him, and scratch him. I invite his wrath, his maddening fury. We struggle for dominance. My life in his hands, his pride in mine—both of us doomed.
Freeing one of his hands, he brings it down between us, pushing my legs apart as he unbuckles his belt, unzips his pants, pulls out his cock, and thrusts inside me. My vision begins to blur with the lack of oxygen as he moves aggressively, remorselessly in and out of me, but I love it. I wrap my legs around his waist, bringing him closer to me while my fingers go to his hair and pull violently. The anger is edged on his face. The degradation of my being in every swift and brutal thrust of his hips into me. And so help me, God, but I want him, need him with an animalistic hunger that scares me. He fucks me so good. He fucks me until he’s marked every piece of me. I cry out in ecstasy spiked with pain when I come undone, an atomic bomb going off inside me as a frenzied Lawrence reaches his own temporary madness and spills himself inside me.
A second or an eternity passes by before Lawrence lets go of my neck and pulls out of me as though my skin were burning him. He pushes himself off of me and sags against the seat, a shudder running through his body. His face pale, he watches me with bleak eyes as I sit up and bring my hands to my neck and try to suck in as much air as possible. My lungs burn but my body sings with the memory of his cruel touch.
“That was very foolish of you, Blaire. Don’t ever provoke me again.” He runs a hand that shakes a little through his hair. “But if this is how you want to be treated, Blaire, so be it. I don’t give a damn.”
Once I’m dressed, I turn to gaze out the window and close my eyes as I feel my eyes burn with tears that won’t fall.
What have I done?
A small, mocking voice inside my head answers my own question. “What you’re best at, of course. Destroying everything around you.”
I’m sitting on the cold, unmade bed as I watch the sunrise through the glass windows of Lawrence’s bedroom. Clasping my arms tighter around my legs, I recline my head on my knees. As the rays cast their warm light on the floor and push the darkness away, I wish that I could disappear along with them. Maybe if I did, I wouldn’t be able to poison and kill beautiful things anymore.
I think of Ronan and his sweet smile when I first met him, and then I see the man from last night. So cold. So hardened. So full of hate. And I know that it’s my fault. I destroyed him and his beauty.
I think of Lawrence and how he looked at me and kissed me on the dance floor, offering himself to me. And what did I do? I took his offering and shattered it in my hands, feasting on his pain.
But the morning light has brought crystal clear clarity. And with it a slow, all-consuming realization that I can’t continue living this kind of life, hurting the people who least deserve it—I can’t. Lawrence deserves better. I know what I must do to atone for my sins, to purge the evil inside me once and for all. I close my eyes and bask in the peace of knowing that the end is near, even as I try to suppress the pain threatening to consume me from within.
I get dressed with the few clothes that Lawrence’s money didn’t buy and go in search of him. After we’d returned from the masquerade, he stormed off into his library while he instructed the staff of the house not to bother him for the rest of the night. Standing outside the room, I take a deep breath and open the door without bothering to knock. He lifts his head and looks in my direction. His gaze instantly finds me. It’s a simple action but when our eyes lock and I’m able to see the naked pain in his, I feel the earth shake beneath my unsure feet.
I take an unsteady step toward him. “Lawrence … I—”
“I must say that I’m surprised to find you still here. I would’ve imagined that you’d be on your knees doing what you do best with that boy by now.” He puts the book in his hands down on the coffee table next to him. His lips flatten, his tone contemptuous. “What do you want?”
“I came to say good-bye. I’m leaving.”
“Then leave. No one’s stopping you.”
Flinching, his words whip me raw, but I deserve his anger and hate. Shame paints red flags on my cheeks. “I know that anything I say right now won’t be apology enough for the way I treated you last night.” My throat suddenly feels constricted. “Of how I truly feel about you. But I’d like to explain why—”
“Enough!” He stands up and moves to stand by the window to look out onto the street, burying his hands in the front pockets of his pants. “I’ve had enough of your lies to last me a lifetime, Blaire. You don’t have to put up an act for me anymore.” He clenches his jaw, “And if it’s your money you’re worried about—don’t give it another thought. It’s yours. I don’t want it.”
“Lawrence, please. Listen to me,” I beg, rushing toward him. With trembling feet, I close the space between us until I’m standing right behind him. “Won’t you just look at me?”
“Why should I? Haven’t you had enough?” I hear him say with utter scorn vibrating in his voice.
I step around Lawrence and force him to look at me. I pause momentarily at the sight of the pure hatred filling his eyes before forging on. “Lawrence, please … listen to me. I’m so sorry for everything. I’ve been so selfish.” Wringing my hands, the emotions that have threatened to spill over since last night finally let loose and come crashing down, making the room swirl around me. Tears begin to fall down my cheeks, but I don’t care. “I’ve hurt you—my dear friend—and it’s tearing me apart. You’re the last person who deserves this kind of treatment, and I can’t do this anymore. I care too much for y—”
“Damn it!” He grabs me by the arms and begins to shake me forcefully, the bite of his fingers numbing. “Don’t you get it? I’m done with your fucking lies!”
“I’m so sorry,” I sob, “so sorry.”
“Do not dare to apologize! I don’t want your apologies.” The hands that clutch my arms in an iron grip grow still. Leaning down until our faces meet, he hisses savagely, breathing as though it cost him every ounce of strength in his body, “I wanted you—you, Blaire! Can’t you see? I fucking love you!”
His confession stuns me, leaving me speechless. Then Lawrence pulls me in an embrace that chokes the life out of me, but I let him because I want to stop breathing.
“To love you is to self-destruct, Blaire, but I seem unable to stop.” The words are torn from his chest. I cry in his arms for everything that will never be and all the wrongs I’ve done, and the sorrow corroding me. I’m breaking at his feet, and it’s only fair that I do.
With anger and frustration ruling his every move, Lawrence lowers his lips and begins to trail desperate, searing kisses across my face, tasting my tears and the pain hidden in them. I bury my hands in his hair, pulling him closer to me as his savage mouth continues to brand itself on my skin, the crest of my cheeks, my closed eyelids, everywhere he can reach. When my lips search for his, Lawrence yields momentarily, a tremor passing through his entire body.
I know that this is good-bye.
“Fuck!” he curses angrily. Abruptly, Lawrence pushes me away like I was burning him, his chest rising and falling rapidly. “Go! Leave and don’t ever come back.”
Standing by the door, I take one last look at the stoic man standing by the window. And as I stare at him, taking in his stormy features one last time, I finally understand what I’ve been too blind to see, what my heart has denied for so long.
The truth becomes as clear as the morning sky and I can’t deny it any longer. I love him. I love him. It’s not the same love that I feel for Ronan, but it is just as overpowering and all-encompassing.
I pause with my hand on the doorknob and speak the one truth that I can give him. “I love you, Lawrence,” my voice breaks.
He glances back and our eyes meet for what I know will be the last time, anger replaced by despair. “But not enough to stay.” Lawrence turns to look straight ahead once more, dismissing me as an already forgotten thought.
“Good-bye, Blaire.”
Ronan
“WAKE UP, SLEEPY HEAD!”
“Hmm …” I reach out to touch the warm body that should be lying next to mine and find nothing but an empty pillow. “Come back to bed, Rachel.”
“Not a chance. Open your eyes, Ronan!” she exclaims, her voice brimming with excitement.
I grab her by the waist and pull her on top of me, feeling her long legs straddle my waist as her laughter echoes in my ears. Opening my eyes, I find her staring at me with a big smile on her face. I lift a hand and stroke the side of her small, perfect tit covered in silk with the back of my fingers, enjoying the sensation of her body trembling under my touch.
“Now, this is a view to wake up to,” I say, observing the tips of her hard nipples outline the cream material that covers them.
“You’re insatiable,” she teases. “But look!” She reaches for an item lying next to her and shows it to me. It turns out to be a magazine with my face stamped on it. The title of the cover claims me as the next prodigy in photography.
Excitedly, Rachel opens the magazine and flips the pages swiftly until she finds the article she’s interested in. Giving me a saucy look, she clears her throat with aplomb and begins to read.
“Ronan Geraghty, the face of a Hollywood heartthrob with a one of a kind, rare talent: his lens. When I first heard rumblings that the Carl Brunswick, owner of the very exclusive and what is considered to be the Holy Grail of art galleries, The Jackson, had taken under his wing a new talent, my interest was immediately piqued.” Rachel pauses to smile at me.