Black Lies

I slid off the stool, my heels finding the floor, my hand catching the bar. “Sure.” I smiled, the man’s face unchanging, his delight at gaining a seat hidden by scruff and dirt and tough.

“Sit back down.” A growl of a statement from Lee, who lifted his head high enough to catch my gaze. Stared at me with an order in his eyes.

“I should be leaving anyway,” I said, my voice low enough not to carry. God, I didn’t need this. Drunk Lee, who’s already bloody from one stupid fight, defending my honor in a place I should have been intelligent enough to avoid.

Lee lurched to his feet, swaying slightly as he turned to face the man behind me. A man who, unfortunately, hadn’t budged, still only a step away, girlfriend still suction-cupped to his side. “What the f**k’s your problem?”

I pulled on his arm. “Lee.” A word that earned me a moment, a glance in which everything froze and he looked at me and I saw everything he couldn’t say in that one moment.

He couldn’t buy me cars. Couldn’t drown me in diamonds and buildings and trips to Dubai. Couldn’t even pay for the beers filling his stomach. But this, this was one thing he could do. He could stand, fight, bleed for me. This, something that Brant would never do. A situation our alternative life would have never put ourselves in. This was Lee’s world. Here he was king. Here he would slay the tattooed dragon and be my hero. His eyes burned the air between us and I let out a shaky breath. Released his arm and sank back onto the highly contested stool.

“You guys ain’t drinking. Make room for someone who is.” In two sentences I saw yellowed teeth, a sneer I would cross the street to avoid, and a tightening of Lee’s entire body. I saw his punch telegraphed a million ways from Sunday. Had a moment of admiration at the flex of his back muscles when he lunged forward, a right hook missing my insulter by a good two feet, the man leaning back and easily avoiding the punch.

I closed my eyes. Couldn’t see any more. Pushed off the stool as the smack of fist against flesh sounded in the loud space. A space that suddenly fell silent, the push of the crowd inward as a dozen bodies quieted and strained for a better view. I opened my eyes in time to see Lee stagger forward and land a punch, the man’s head snapping back in an unnatural fashion. I surged forward, plowing between the two, my eyes catching ahold of the other woman in this equation. She snapped a wad of gum and looked away, bee lining for my open stool, her concern for these men nonexistent as long as her seat was secure.

“Stop, Stop!” I screamed the words into Lee’s face, his pause long enough for me to shove him back into the crowd, the sea of bodies swallowing the two of us whole, the bar not big enough to accommodate a crowd shift without relocating the population, the swell cutting us off from the offending party. I linked my arm through his and pulled, dragging him to the door and out to the street.

I expected curses, exclamations of male power, an attempt to return inside, but he only stumbled. Once forward, once backward, then sat, his knees buckling in such a fashion that his descent to the ground was almost graceful, a plié leading to his seat, on the dirty curb, his arms resting, folded, on his knees, his head falling to his forearms.

I sat next to him, as carefully as I could. Aware, as my butt hit the concrete, that I was condemning my linen pants to an early death sentence.

Silence. I was at ease in the silence. It fit in this moment in time, reminded me of other times, other places. A reprieve from the insanity of tonight. I hung my head and wondered what I was doing. I should be at home. In my quiet home, neck-deep in a bubble bath, a book in hand. Or curled in the hammock on my back deck. Listening to the ocean until I fell asleep.

“You’ll never do it.” His words were a slur of depression, thickened by alcohol and desperation.

“Do what?” I kept my head down, eyes closed. I didn’t want to see the face that accompanied that statement. Didn’t really want to know the answer to the question I had just asked.

“Leave him.” A long silence, broken somewhere in the darkness by the crunch of glass and a curse. “You won’t, will you?” I felt his eyes on me, forced myself to lift my head and give him the respect of eye contact.

A destroyed man sat before me, his arms around his knees, a shiver against my soul. I had seen this man in so many different lights, but this was the weakest. This is the one that touched me deepest and hurt me the most. The one that I, in some ways, loved the most.

I stared at him and said the only thing I could. “No, I won’t. I won’t ever leave him.”

He broke the contact, rested his head back on his hands, and silence fell back over the street.

Then, with a forward heave and strangled cry, he tipped forward and vomited onto dirty asphalt.

A cab took us to my house. I hated leaving my car, but didn’t want a drunk Lee in the vehicle while I was driving. I needed both hands, in case of a hiccup during the twenty-minute drive. There was no hiccup. He laid down across the seat, his head in my lap, a loose hand resting on my thigh, as if to reassure him of my presence.

He snored a few times during the drive, hard bumps silencing his sleep, his head rolling against my lap, prompting new fears of a second vomit incident. But the cab pulled through my gates without event. It dropped us at the front, an extra twenty bucks convincing the driver to help me carry him to my bed. And there, his clothes stripped off, my duvet pulled up over his bare chest, he slept. I laid on my side in bed next to him and stared at his beautiful face. Stared and thought and tried to sort out the mess of feelings in my head.

When I woke up in the morning, he was gone, along with the cash from my wallet.

Truly gone. His cell phone dead. Jeep found, supposedly abandoned, by my private eye. No sign of the man who held a large piece of my heart. I didn’t see him again for seven months.

I tried to forget him.

Tried to accept his disappearance as a blessing.

Things in my world with Brant went on. Life was smooth, no stress. The iTunes deal closed, Brant doubled his wealth, and life carried on. But every time I was away from Brant, I thought of Lee. Wondered. Missed. Turned down another proposal from Brant, this one over candles and lobster on the upper deck of his yacht. I almost accepted. With Lee gone, I had to fight from saying yes. But I didn’t.

I had to know if Lee was still out there.

Had to dig back into the darkness, verify his existence, find out more.

I just wasn’t cut any other way.

Chapter 43

Brant

I keep the ring in my office, in the main drawer of my desk. Its box is worn, my hands turning the velvet over too many times to count. More than it was built for.