Текст книги "The Queen"

Автор книги: Tiffany Reisz

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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

“Then take me to bed.”

“That would be even harder to explain. But if you want to come back tonight, I’d like to give you a proper goodbye.”

“We’ll see,” she said. “I might be in jail by tonight.”

“Again? What did you do this time?”

“It’s nothing I’ve done. It’s something I’m going to do.”

“That sounds foreboding.”

“You remember Milady?”

“I’ve never forgotten her.”

“I inadvertently stole her favorite client out from under her. This apparently was the last straw. She’s blackmailing a friend of mine, stole his phone with pics of him and his doctor girlfriend on it.”

“She’s his doctor?”

“She is. Almost as bad as a priest sleeping with a parishioner, right? Milady’s blackmailing him to force him to blackmail me. So I’m going to kill her.”

“We aren’t under the seal of the confessional. I can report you for threatening someone’s life.”

“I’ll kill you, too, then. That’s one way to keep you from leaving.”

“We both know you’re not going to kill Milady.”

“I might if I knew her real name or where she lives. But I don’t think anybody does. I have to do something, though. She’s trying to hurt me. She’s already hurt a friend of mine. She could probably hurt my client, too, the one who was her client once. Oh, and she cut your hair and wore it in a locket around her neck just to fuck with me. If that isn’t a capital crime worthy of the death penalty, I don’t know what is.”

“You’re still angry about that?” he asked. She could tell her displeasure pleased him.

“A skosh.”

“I’m going to tell you something again, Little One. This time you might like it.”

“Please. I could use a little good news today.”

Søren stood up and walked over to his steamer trunk. He pulled keys from his pocket and unlocked it. On his knees he pushed this and that aside until he seemingly found what he was looking for.

He stood back up and walked over to her with a white envelope in his hand.

“I realize this might tarnish the romantic aura around the memory of me selling a lock of my hair to buy you a laptop,” he said. “But you did tell me she’d threatened you. While in her presence I made, well, let’s call it a preemptive strike.”

Nora opened the envelope and inside it was a driver’s license. She didn’t recognize the name on the license, but she did recognize the photograph.

She couldn’t get a word out at first. Her heart swelled and warmth radiated from the center of her chest out into the world, as if her heart was a cymbal and someone had struck it with a mallet. Her eyes filled with tears and her throat closed.

“Eleanor?”

She raised her hand, needing a moment’s silence.

“You let her kiss you so you could steal her driver’s license,” she said when she could finally speak again. “For me.”

Nora came to him and wrapped her arms around him.

“For you,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “You said she wanted to hurt you.”

“That’s your job,” she said. And hurting him was her job. They were too good at their jobs.

Nora laughed against his chest, wiped her tears on his T-shirt.

“How?”

“She has a phone number clients use to make appointments. I called her. I told her I’d heard she’d threatened you. She said we should meet and talk about it. I agreed as long as we met in public and she wore vanilla attire in case one of my parishioners saw me. It was like stealing candy from a baby. People trust the clergy. Too much perhaps.”

She stared at him, incredulous. “I’m speechless.”

“The words you’re looking for are ‘thank you.’”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Søren bent to kiss her as she rose up on her toes to kiss him. Their mouths met in passion and sorrow. Passion for it was a powerful kiss of hunger and need. Sorrow as it might be their last kiss if she failed.

“I’m giving you her license so you can protect yourself, not so you can hurt her. Try to remember we’re on the side of the angels,” he said.

“So I can’t kill her?”

He shook his head.

“Fine. I’ll talk to her. I might talk to her loudly. But I’ll only talk to her.”

“That’s my good girl.”

“Am I? You’re leaving. Am I still your girl?”

“Forever,” he said. “My love for you isn’t going anywhere, I promise. Only my body.”

“Your body’s my favorite part.”

“I’d be hurt if I actually believed that.”

“You know...” she said, putting her hand flat on his chest. “You know I love you, too.”

“I do.”

“So you know I’ll find a way to make you stay. I will. I promise you I will.”

Søren caressed her cheek, rubbed his thumb over her bottom lip.

“Little One, you won’t succeed, but I will enjoy watching you try.”

She turned to leave him but stopped when he called her name.

“Eleanor?”

“What?” She didn’t turn back around.

“I’ll take my keys back now.”

With a sigh Nora tossed his keys over her shoulder, the keys she’d stolen from his pocket while they were kissing. She didn’t have to look back to know he caught them.

“And my wallet.”

Nora surrendered his wallet.

So much for that plan.

32

Milady

NORA DROVE TO a house on Long Island, a small house, pale yellow and gabled, a bit run-down. She knocked on the front door and waited. An elderly woman in linen pants and a faded blue cardigan answered the door.

“Yes?” asked the white-haired woman with a slight smile. “Can I help you?”

“Is Kimberly home?” Nora asked. “I’m an old friend of hers.”

“Grandma? Who’s at the door?”

And there she was, Milady herself, standing at the top of a hardwood staircase in a plain navy skirt and white blouse staring down at Nora with murder in her eyes. Nora grinned.

“Hi, Kim,” Nora said. “I was in the neighborhood. Want to go for a walk?”

“Sure,” Milady/Kim said. “Let me put on my shoes.”

“Nice to meet you. Mrs. Matsui, right?”

“That’s right. Have a nice walk,” she said as Milady stepped past her and onto the porch.

“Pretty neighborhood,” Nora said as she started down the porch stairs. “Where should we go? Is there a park nearby?”

“I’m not going anywhere with you. Not until you tell me how you found me.”

Milady’s hands were tight fists and her lips a hard line of extreme displeasure.

“Did you really think my priest would let you kiss him for money? A man who took a vow of poverty selling kisses for money?”

Milady glanced to the left and nodded. “We met in a bad neighborhood. I assumed I’d been robbed on the street.”

“That priest. Drives me crazy most of the time and I’ve thought about killing him a time or two but he’s damn pretty and insane in the sheets so what are you going to do?”

“What are you going to do to me?” Milady asked.

“Haven’t decided yet,” Nora said. “Before you get any ideas, let me clarify the situation. I know who you are—Kimberly Matsui. I know where you live—this cute little house in the burbs. I know your family—your grandfather owned a sushi restaurant that you worked in growing up, which is how you know Japanese. You are not, in fact, the daughter of a geisha. You didn’t attend Harvard or any college, much less get kicked out of one. You are the widow of a wealthy man, but you haven’t inherited any money from him yet because the will’s being contested by his children, who claim you seduced and abused their father. I know your whole life, so does Kingsley, his secretary and a few other people who will remain nameless. If anything happens to me, they will destroy you.”

“I don’t deserve that. I didn’t abuse my husband.”

“Did you fuck your last husband to death? His kids seem to think so.”

“My last husband died of cancer. Cancer I nursed him through. We didn’t have sex once the last year of his life—he was too sick.”

“Maybe if you didn’t marry a rich man thirty-five years older than you, you would have gotten a little more sympathy from his kids—his kids who are older than you, I noticed.”

“His children are vultures who hated him for divorcing their poor sainted mother. They only wanted his money. I was his wife, his lover, his nurse and his domme. Of course he changed his will to give me everything when he died.”

“That’s a very sweet, sad story. Should I call the Orange County Sheriff’s Department now and tell them where you’re living so the process server can finally deliver that subpoena you’ve been hiding from? Your late husband’s children would like their day in court over the will.”

“I’d prefer it if you didn’t.”

“You might win the case. Sounds like it’s a stalemate right now. The estate’s in limbo until you turn up.”

“I won’t win. Doesn’t matter that I was his wife, that I took care of him while he was dying. We met at a kink club. I was his dominatrix. I will be laughed out of that courtroom and you know it. True, I can’t get his money while I’m hiding, but neither can his kids, and that’s good enough for me.”

“I could tell them where you are.”

“Are you going to?”

“You have Thorny’s phone so I’m willing to make a trade. My silence for his secrets? And my secrets. And my priest’s secrets.”

“I don’t even know your priest’s real name. You have me at a disadvantage.”

“It wouldn’t take long to find out the real name of the one and only six-foot-four blond priest in the area. There aren’t that many priests to go around anymore. His personal life’s never been exposed because Kingsley protects him, I protect him and our community protects him. We keep each other’s secrets out of respect for each other. You have no respect for our community.”

“I have to take care of myself. I have to take care of my grandmother. There’s no one else to do it for me. And when my best customer leaves me for you, I have to take care of business.”

“Talel has every right to see who he wants to see. If his father found out he was a submissive who paid women to dominate him, he’d be cut off and exiled. You think a domme who regularly blackmails her clients is the right domme for someone in that position?”

“I have to take care of me.”

“Then it’s your decision. I leave it up to you. You ruin Thorny’s life or mine or my priest’s, and I ruin yours. Or you can give me back Thorny’s phone and shut down your fear factory. We all walk away with our secrets still safe. Fair enough?”

Milady rubbed her temple with two fingers. In her vanilla clothes in this vanilla setting she looked nothing like the fierce whip master Nora had seen that night at the Body House. She looked weary and scared, human. Nora almost pitied her.

“You have it so easy,” Milady said, dropping her hands to her sides. “You have no idea how hard I had to work to get where I was. And you show up out of nowhere with the King of the Underground at your side. You punch a man in the nose like a fucking brute and suddenly you’re the queen? I spent two years learning how to work whips in tandem. I apprenticed at a dungeon cleaning cum stains off carpet and blood off needles to learn my trade and you just waltz right in and take it all. You’re not even a domme. You’re a switch. A spoiled switch. Your priest sold his hair to buy you a gift. What have you ever sold for anyone?”

“I certainly never sold my clients’ secrets to save my own ass.”

Milady gave her a threatening look. She took a step forward but Nora didn’t step back. She held her ground. She hoped and prayed this wouldn’t turn into a fight. But if it did...well, it was a good thing Nora kept those brass knuckles on her. She might need them.

“Wait,” Milady said, raising her hand. Nora waited.

Milady walked back into her house and came back out with a padded envelope. She passed it to Nora.

“Thorny’s phone. I will forget everything I know about him, you and your priest, as long as you conveniently forget everything you know about me. The minute a process server shows up at my door, I’m making phone calls. Deal?”

“Deal,” Nora said taking the envelope from her. “Have a lovely day. I’d say I’ll see you around but you’re banned from King’s clubs.”

“Your ‘king’ can go fuck himself.”

“He probably would if he could figure out how. You could try being a little nicer. You know, not blackmailing your clients. I like my clients even when I’m beating them and calling them pathetic little boys. I respect them, and they respect me.”

“I loved my husband. I respected him. Every other man is just a paycheck.”

“Now you know.”

“Now I know what?”

“Now you know why your clients keep coming to me. They’re not paychecks. They’re people.”

“I might believe you if you didn’t charge two thousand dollars an hour. Go top somebody for free and then lecture me about treating clients like people.”

“I did top somebody for free,” Nora said with a grin. “Today even.”

“Who?”

“You,” Nora said. “Now behave. I wouldn’t want to have to punish you. But I will if I have to. Say ‘Yes, Mistress’ if you understand.”

Milady’s entire small frame vibrated with barely concealed fury.

“Yes, Mistress,” she said.

“Good girl.” Nora winked. Then she turned and started toward her car.

“What’s it like?” Milady called out after her. Nora turned around.

“What is what like?”

“Being loved like you are.”

“I told you. I take care of my clients and they—”

“Not your fucking clients. Him. Your priest. He sold his hair to me to buy you a gift. My husband had a fetish, and I was the embodiment of it. But he didn’t really love me. He respected me, cared about me. But it wasn’t love. What’s it like being loved like that?”

Nora answered in a word.

“Exhausting.”

Once in her car, Nora called Juliette and had her dig up Thorny’s address. She arrived a little after nine and prayed he was home and not out on a job with a client. She tried not to think about how much it hurt knowing he’d fucked her solely to blackmail her. He’d used her and Nora wasn’t a fan of getting used. Not like this anyway. She did the using, not the other way around. It wouldn’t have hurt nearly so much except she’d enjoyed it, enjoyed having a boyfriend for a day, enjoyed waking up with someone in her bed and cooking breakfast together and changing the sheets and watching TV on the couch. It had all been an act, but it had been a good act and maybe she was just angry at herself for wanting something she couldn’t have so much she’d fallen for the act.

She knocked on the door to Thorny’s apartment and waited. He opened it and she saw the fear on his face when he looked at her.

“Crisis averted,” she said, and handed him his phone.

“Oh, thank fuck.” He kissed his phone and shoved it into his pocket. “Thank you.”

“Take this, too,” she said. “It’s Milady’s driver’s license. It’s expired but that’s still her address. Don’t use it to hurt her. She’s agreed to back off all of us. But it’s insurance.”

“You’re a goddess, Mistress.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“I’m leaving? That’s something you don’t know.”

“Leaving?”

“I told Nadia what happened. She was freaked out but not angry. She said that the big hospital out in Seattle offered her a job a while back. They still want her. She’s going to take it so we’re moving out there. Fresh start where nobody knows who I am.”

“Good idea. Seattle’s beautiful. Just watch out for volcanoes.”

“I already have this waiting to erupt in my head,” he said, tapping his temple. “What’s one more volcano?”

“I’m glad you’re going with her. Gather ye rosebuds, right?”

“Well, you know that old Bible verse—I go where she goes—or whatever it is. I haven’t been to church in a long time so don’t quote me on that.”

“You’re butchering the poor Book of Ruth. She and Naomi deserve better than that.”

“Were they fucking?”

Nora pursed her lips at him. “No. Ruth was Naomi’s daughter-in-law. Naomi’s husband died, and both her sons. She told her two daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah—”

“Oprah?”

“Orpah. She was a Moabite, not a talk-show host. Anyway, Naomi told Ruth and Orpah to go back to their families and find new husbands and start new lives. Orpah went away but Ruth refused to leave Naomi. What she said to Naomi was, ‘Do not ask me to leave you or forsake you / For wherever you go, I go...’”

“What?”

Nora stopped. She cocked her head. She laughed.

“That’s it,” she said.

“What’s it?”

“Nothing.” She looked at Thorny and grinned. “I mean, everything. I just figured something out. Thank you. Couldn’t have done it without you, Thorny.”

“Couldn’t have done what?”

“I hope you and Nadia have a very long and sexy life together. I have to go.”

“Don’t go. I owe you...so much. I owe you a ton. I can pay you or something?”

“You just helped me figure out how to save my priest.” She patted him on the cheek and resisted the urge to slap it just once to punish him for fucking her over. Considering how many men she’d used for sex the past couple of years, she gave him a pass. It had been very good sex after all.

Nora left Thorny and ran to her car. Tomorrow Søren was taking his Final Vows. The day after he’d leave her for Syria and for the rest of his life.

She turned on her car but she didn’t drive home.

Søren had told her two years ago to finish her Ruth story.

Tomorrow she would finally write the ending.

33

Final Vows

ON THE MORNING of the last Sunday in August, Nora stepped into the two-hundred-year-old Jesuit church in Harlem where Søren and fourteen other veteran Jesuits would take their Final Vows that day. Half an hour before the service began the pews already creaked with the weight of friends and family packed shoulder to shoulder waiting to watch their priests take the last vows they’d ever take in their lives. If they made it this far, they weren’t likely to leave the order. They’d been in it for twenty years at least, each and every one of them, and they’d decided to stay in the Jesuits until the end. Søren would die a Jesuit. That was what she wanted for him, because that’s what he wanted for himself. But he could be a Jesuit here, close to her and Kingsley. He didn’t have to go across the world to a war zone to do it. She’d give everything to keep him here, keep him safe.

And if everything was what he asked, everything was what she’d give him.

Nora walked nervously down the center aisle, the red carpet runner beneath her feet muffling the sound of her kitten heels on the hardwood. She looked for a seat somewhere close but not too close, where she could see but not be seen. Too late. A hand snaked out from a pew on the right and grabbed her wrist. Nora started and looked into the eyes of a young woman with dark hair cut in a stylish bob and a wearing a dress that cost more than Nora’s monthly mortgage payment.

“Don’t you dare act like you don’t remember me,” the woman said, her voice stern and imperious—exactly like her brother’s.

“Claire.” Nora felt the profoundest sense of relief when Claire wrapped her in a near painful embrace.

“Elle,” Claire breathed. “Too long.”

“Way too long,” Nora agreed, swallowing hard.

“You have to help me.” Claire sounded scared, desperate.

“I will,” Nora said.

“You will?”

Nora nodded against Claire’s shoulder.

“I do love him,” Nora said. “I didn’t leave him because I stopped loving him.”

“I know,” Claire said. “No could stop loving him once they start.”

Claire released her from the crushing hug, but held on to Nora’s hand. She didn’t seem ready or willing to let it go and Nora was grateful to her.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Claire said. She had tears on her face. “I can’t do this alone.”

“I didn’t want to come.”

“Neither did I,” Claire said. “But I can’t tell him no.”

“Did you ask him not to leave?” Nora asked.

“I didn’t ask, I begged.” Claire stared straight ahead. She and Søren both had similar profiles—the same ears, the same cheekbones, the same ironic tilt to the mouth when they smiled. But Claire wasn’t smiling.

“Did he tell you anything about why he’s going?”

“One of the priests who visited him after his motorcycle accident is going, too. He’s the one who asked him to go. I can’t believe he said yes.” Claire squeezed Nora’s hand harder.

“I can,” Nora said. She didn’t want to believe it, but she could. She’d left him. Kingsley had staked his claim on her. She’d refused to return to him. What was keeping him here? Nothing.

“What are we going to do?” Claire asked.

“Pray.”

“Will it help?” Claire asked.

“It won’t hurt.”

The music started, a hymn Nora recognized. “Be Thou My Vision.”

All at once the entire assembly rose to their feet. Nora glanced around as everyone sang the hymn looking for any familiar faces. At last she found a row of them standing in the balcony.

“Did he pick the music?” Nora asked Claire.

“I don’t know. Why?”

“This is his favorite hymn.”

“His church seems to know it well.” Claire turned her head and looked up to the balcony. “I can hear them up there singing it.”

“Who?”

“Sacred Heart,” Claire said. “They’re all in the balcony. Over a hundred of them came.”

Nora looked back and up and saw faces she recognized including Diane’s and Diane’s family. She should be up there, Nora thought. She should be with Søren’s church. But she couldn’t be. She hadn’t just left him, she’d left them, too.

“That’s a third of the entire church,” she whispered to Claire.

“See?” Claire said. “Told you. Once you start loving him, you can never stop.”

Nora did love him and she would never stop loving him, which was why when he and the other fourteen Jesuits walked down the aisle and he turned his head to look at her, she smiled for him. He didn’t smile back, but she could tell he wanted to. She wished Kingsley were here to hold her other hand, but she didn’t blame him for not coming. He’d had to stand idly by and watch Søren marry Kingsley’s sister years ago. He couldn’t and wouldn’t stand idly by and watch the only man he’d ever loved pledge himself to yet another rival.

The Final Vows ceremony involved a full Mass and all fifteen priests assisted. They looked almost angelic in their off-white vestments lined up side by side. They were a motley crew from all over the world—Africa, Asia, South America, Mexico and the United States. Søren was one of the younger ones but not the youngest. Most definitely the handsomest. At least her in opinion.

When it came time for Communion, Nora went forward. She hadn’t taken Communion since before she left Søren. So it was fitting that she walked to his line and when he held up the wafer that was the Body of Christ, she let him place it on her tongue. When she swallowed it she felt an old wound she’d forgotten about. Then the old wound was gone, healed. The fissure in her heart sealed itself up and scarred over. The church sang a new hymn and the words spoke to her heart—Come home, come home...ye who are weary come home.

Old words. Trite words. And yet they cut Nora’s soul to the quick.

Nora was weary. And Nora did want to go home.

One by one each of the fifteen priests made their vows. When Søren knelt to speak his vows, Nora breathed in at the sight—the rare sight—of Søren, penitent and humble. When he spoke the vows, his voice was strong and clear and unwavering. His words carried throughout the church like an updraft and if Nora had wings she would have been able to fly.

“I, Marcus Lennox Stearns, make my profession, and I promise to Almighty God, in the presence of the Virgin Mother, the whole heavenly court and all those here present, and to you, Reverend Father Haas, representing the Superior General of the Society of Jesus and his successor and holding the place of God, perpetual poverty, chastity and obedience...”

The vow recitation continued until every last priest had said his final commitment. The rest of the Mass passed in a haze. In the heat and the humidity and the fear she would fail at her task, Nora could barely concentrate on the words. Not that it mattered. She knew the Catholic Mass by heart. The words were tattooed on her mind and branded on her soul. She rattled them off without thinking.

When the final hymn was sung and the time came for everyone to leave, Claire put her arm around Nora’s waist and together they walked down the aisle. A few minutes later the fifteen priests who’d taken their public and private vows appeared on the street to be greeted by their loved ones.

“Go,” Nora said to Claire. “You’re the only family he has here. He’ll want you to meet his church.”

“Can I see you again?” Claire asked. “He’s leaving and I don’t...” She stopped and swallowed hard, catching her breath. “I’d like to be around someone who knows him and loves him. I know it’s not the best idea but would you consider it?”

“Maybe lunch?”

“I’d like that.” Claire smiled and Nora could see her fighting tears.

“So would I.”

“Are you going to talk to him?” Claire asked, desperation in her eyes and hope in her voice.

“I’ll wait until he’s alone. Go. He needs you.”

“He needs you,” Claire said. “But I’ll go tackle-hug him in my own special way. He probably needs that, too, even if he won’t admit it.”

“But be gentle. He’s still recovering from the accident.”

“I’ll tackle-hug him gently,” Claire said and squeezed Nora’s hand one more time before releasing her. She ran to Søren, and Nora laughed as she saw Claire, now a grown woman of twenty-nine, throw herself into her big brother’s arms the way she had all those years ago when Nora had gone with him to his father’s funeral. Nora was grateful for Claire’s presence in his life. She was Søren’s solid ground, and she had a gift for taking that pompous priest and turning him back into a human being with one tackle-hug and a playful insult.

“Frater!” Claire said, clinging to him as if she’d die the second she let go of him.

“Behave yourself, Soror,” Søren said, patting her on top of her head. “Don’t scare my congregation. They’re under the impression you’re the normal one in the family, and we wouldn’t want to disillusion them.”

From a distance of about twenty feet, Nora watched as Søren introduced Claire to every member of Sacred Heart who’d come to his profession of Final Vows. Nora could see from their faces and hear from their words that none of them knew yet Søren was leaving forever that week. Knowing Søren he’d decided to depart without a long drawn-out goodbye. No going-away parties. No fanfare. Only an announcement from the pulpit made by the interim priest that Father Marcus Stearns had been called to the mission field. He sends his love and asks for your prayers.

With any help from God and a little luck, no one would be making that announcement.

When at last the final parishioner had give Søren a handshake or a hug or a kiss on the cheek, Nora stepped out of the shadows and walked to him. Claire said something in his ear and walked away after throwing Nora one last pleading look.

An eerie calm came over Nora. A calm and a focus that seemed to come from outside herself. She was a woman on a mission and the mission was all that mattered.

She reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a folded rectangle of paper.

“I’m glad you came, Eleanor,” Søren said. “It’s good to see you in church again.”

They were in public. The chance of being overheard was too great to speak the truth to each other. They’d hide behind platitudes and code words. But she didn’t have to hide, not with what she wanted to say to him.

“It was good to be in church again. Maybe I’m not so lapsed after all.”

“I could have told you that,” he said. “Claire’s taking me to dinner this evening if you’d like to join us. I think you two would get along swimmingly.”

“I have other plans. Just wanted to stop by and give you something.”

“You don’t give a gift to a priest upon taking Final Vows,” he said. “It’s not like a First Communion.”

“What I want to give you is a Bible verse. I memorized it for you. Is that an acceptable gift?”

“Always,” he said. “What’s the verse?”

“The Book of Ruth, chapter one, verses sixteen and seventeen.” Nora took a breath and recited by heart. “‘Do not ask me to leave you or forsake you for wherever you go I will go, wherever you stay I will stay, your people shall be my people and your God my God. Wherever you die, there I will be buried. May the Lord do so and more beside if anything but death separates us.’”

Then she handed him the folded piece of paper from her pocket, the one she’d acquired on her very special errand.

“Eleanor, this is an airplane ticket in your name.”

“Destination Syria,” she said. “Where you go, I go. If you go to Syria, I go with you. And I won’t come home until you come home. I will not leave you. I will not forsake you. Where you die, I will be buried. And those are my Final Vows.”

Then she took her ticket out of his hand, turned and walked away.

She meant every word of her vow. If he was going into a war zone, she would go, too. Nothing could stop her. Going with him to Syria was the one trump card left in her hand. She’d made the largest bet of her life, and she wasn’t bluffing.

Nora went to Kingsley’s town house and found him sitting in his office, staring out the window at nothing, nothing at all.

Kingsley glanced over his shoulder at her and then turned back to the windows.

Nora sat on the desk behind him and waited. A moment later Kingsley turned in his chair and rested his head in her lap. He’d fired her two days ago but none of that mattered now. She combed her fingers through his dark hair as if he were a sick child who needed a mother’s touch.

“How long have you been sitting here brooding?” she asked.

“For hours.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when you needed me,” she said, tugging his earlobe.

“I forget sometimes you need a life outside of work.”

“I do. But you’ll be happy to know I will never ever be seeing Thorny again during work or after hours.”

Kingsley took a heavy breath. She felt his chest moving against her knees.

“That doesn’t make me happy. Relieved, yes. But not happy. I do want you to be happy.” He looked up at her with wounded eyes, open and vulnerable, and she caught a glimpse of the teenage boy he’d been when Søren had first loved him.

“By going back to Søren?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Why?” Nora touched Kingsley’s face, brushing her fingers over his cheek.

“It’ll keep him here.”

Nora tilted his chin up to meet her eyes, dominant talking to submissive now.

“Is that the only reason?”

“I miss him,” Kingsley said, whispering the words like a confession. “I miss how things used to be with the three of us. And I know how much he loves you. I wish I could imagine you with someone other than him, but I can’t. I wish I could imagine the three of us moving on and having our own lives without each other, but I can’t. Fuck, I even miss getting shit-faced with him at the rectory. We ended up on the roof once, and I still don’t remember how we got down. I miss him, Elle. It’s not even the sex. We haven’t had sex in over ten years. It’s him. It’s us. It’s our friendship. No, not that.” Kingsley looked up at her with sorrow in his eyes. “He’s all the family I have. If he leaves, he’ll take my family away from me.”