Release Me (Stark Trilogy 1)

“At first I liked it. Loved it, actually. I was so damn young, but even then I loved the precision and the timing. And the power. Damn, I could hit that ball. It was a crappy year—my mother was sick—and I took out all my frustration on the court.”

I nodded. I got that. When I was younger, I lost myself in the computer or behind a camera. It was only when that stopped being enough that I started cutting. Somehow, everyone finds a way to cope. I think of Ashley and bite back a frown. They find a way—or they don’t.

“I started staying after school and the gym teacher coached me, but pretty soon he said that I’d blown past him. My dad worked in a factory and I knew that we couldn’t afford a coach, but that was okay. I was a kid, only eight, and I just wanted to play for fun.”

“What changed?”

“The teacher knew my mom was sick and that we couldn’t afford lessons. He mentioned me to a friend, and before I knew it this local pro was working with me, free of charge. I loved it, especially when I started winning tournaments. You might have noticed that I’m slightly competitive.”

“You? I’m flabbergasted.” I take off my flip-flops and dangle them from my fingers so that I can kick my toes in the surf. Damien is already barefoot, having left his shoes with Richard at the hotel. I don’t think many men could walk barefoot on a beach in a tailored suit and look damned sexy doing it, but Damien does. It was like a reflection of his confidence. That whatever he wanted, he would simply take.

Like me.

Pleasure trills up my spine, and I smile. Despite its rather crappy beginning, this is turning out to be an exceptional day.

There are a few people on the beach, but it’s a weekday and not very crowded. Even so, the sand has been picked clean, and I can’t find one decent shell, just bits and pieces, but the ripples that the water leaves as it surges in and out are beautiful in their precision. I drop the shoes so that I can take the lens cap off and focus, wanting a shot that includes the ridged sand and the white froth of the waves.

Damien waits until the shutter clicks, then hooks his arms around my waist. I feel the light pressure of his chin against my head. “Will you tell me the rest?” I ask. “What changed for you?”

“Success,” he says darkly.

I turn in his arms. “I don’t understand.”

“I got good enough to attract a bastard of a professional coach.” His tone is so low and biting it gives me chills. “He made a deal with my father—he’d train me for a percentage of my prize money.”

I nodded; his first professional coach had been in the Wikipedia article I’d read. They’d worked together from the time Damien was nine until he was fourteen. That’s when his coach had committed suicide. Apparently he was cheating on his wife.

I can’t help but think of Ashley, and I don’t want to raise those kinds of ghosts for Damien. Instead, I ask, “Did competing make it shift from fun to work?”

Damien’s face darkens and the change is so quick and so dramatic that I actually look up to see if something overhead cast a real shadow. But it is just him. Just the reflection of his own emotions. “I don’t mind hard work,” he says flatly. “But everything changed when I was nine.” There’s a harshness in his voice that I don’t understand. It occurs to me that he hasn’t answered my question.

“What happened?”

“I told my father I wanted to quit, but I was already earning prize money, and he said no.”

I squeeze his hand. Once again, he’s evaded my question, but I don’t press. How can I when evasion is an art I know well?

“I tried to get out again about a year later. I was playing all over the country by then, internationally, too. I was missing so damn much school that my dad just hired tutors. I focused mostly on science, and I loved it. I read everything I could on every subject, from astronomy to physics to biology. And fiction. Man, I ate up sci-fi novels. I even secretly applied to a private science academy. They not only accepted me, they offered me a full scholarship.”

I lick my lips. I’ve figured out where this is going. How could I not see the way the story was developing? We are so alike, he and I. Our childhoods ripped from us and driven by the whims of a parent. “Your parents said no.”

“My father did,” Damien says. “My mother had died a year earlier. It was—” He draws in a breath, then reaches down to collect my shoes. We start walking down the beach again, heading for the massive pier that makes up Stearns Wharf. “I was ripped up the year she died. Numb. I let it all out on the court. All the anger, the betrayal.” His jaw is tight with the memory. “Hell, it’s probably why I played so damn good.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, and my words sound hollow. “I knew you were attracted to the sciences. All anyone has to do is look at the businesses you’re in. But I never realized it was a lifelong fascination.”

“Why would you?”

I tilt my head up to eye him. “You’re not exactly a blank slate, Mr. Stark. In case you haven’t noticed, you’re something of a celebrity. You’ve even got a Wikipedia page. But there’s nothing on it about turning down a scholarship to a science academy.”

His mouth tightens into a thin line. “I’ve worked hard to keep my past off the Internet and away from the press.”

I think about what Evelyn said about Damien learning to control the press at a young age. Apparently, she was right. I wonder what other bits and pieces of his life Damien Stark has kept close to the vest.

I lift the camera and look through the viewfinder, aiming it first at the sea, and then at Damien, who puts up his hands as if to ward me off. I laugh and snap a few images in quick succession. “Bad girl,” he says, and I laugh more.

“You bought the camera,” I say. “You have no one to blame but yourself.”

“Oh, no,” he says, and he’s laughing now, too. I dance backward as he lunges for me. I’m happy to see him smiling again and the melancholy of visiting the past fading from his eyes. I lift the camera and take another set of shots.

“And she keeps piling on the punishment,” he says, following his words with a tsk-tsk noise.

I let the camera hang from its strap as I raise my hands in mock surrender. “I’m a free agent today, remember.”

His grin is positively devilish. “I may not be allowed to act on it,” he says, “but that doesn’t mean I can’t keep a list for future reference.”