“Get in, Tommy.”
“Or what?” he asks, pouty and angry.
Oh, is that how you want to do this?Some of my thoughts must show on my face, because–with a huff to show how reluctant and upset he is–he opens the door and slides into the car.
Once the door shuts, and he’s locked in the small space with me, a new feeling takes over. It’s a sizzling kind of feeling, located somewhere in my gut, and it reminds me of the time an attempt on my life involved someone sabotaging an elevator I was riding. I free-fell, but the assassin hadn’t counted on not one, buttwoemergency lines. He’d cut one, but the second one caught the elevator before we reached deadly speeds.
Yes, this feels a lot like the time someone tried to murder me by making me fall to my death.
Except I kind of… like it.
“Where were you going?” I ask him after he pouts at the floor for a minute. The car idles on the curb. My driver and Yosef are hidden up front behind the privacy partition, patiently waiting for instruction.
“Nowhere.”
“I can’t take you there unless you tell me, Tommy. I’m giving you a ride. Where were you going?”
The frankly adorable poutiness leaves him, until he’s staring back at me defiantly, fiery and stubborn. “I was just going on a walk.”
He’s pushing my boundaries. Testing me again.
“Didn’t I warn you about lying to me, Tommy?” My voice is almost unrecognizable. I don’t know why it came out husky like that, but that freefall feeling, that floor-is-gone sensation, is stronger now… and I’m enjoying it. It feelsgood.
His eyes widen. “That-th-that was just on the plane,” he stammers, then scowls fiercely. “And that was bullshit, anyway. But if you wanna know the truth, if it’s that goddamn important to you, I don’t want you to see where I was going. I don’t want you to see that much of me, alright? It’s not yours to see, it’s not your business. This is all temporary, and– and– and I want out of it, alright? I don’t need safety from Brian. I don’t care if he comes after me, I’m not doing this anymore. I’m done, I’m leaving, I’m not going to play pretend fiancé just so you can lie about me being valuable and I get locked in Kira’s apartment all day like a fucking dog left at home, and I can’t–don’t,” he corrects swiftly, getting worked up, almost shaking with the force of his words, “Idon’twant to do this anymore, and I won’t. Alright? So no more of this, no more following me and findingme and getting me in the car, or talking to me or staring at me or any of that shit. I’m done, I’m leaving. End of story.”
His emphatic declaration is followed by a hesitation, both of us staring, like he somehow surprised himself as well as me. Something restless and unknown shines in his eyes, an emotion that I can’t interpret. He waits one more second, the tension between us charged with words. Then rolls his eyes and reaches for the door.
No.
“Before you go, I want you to listen to what this will mean, Tommy.” I don’t like the way I sound–urgent and on edge. I don’t know if that’s how I feel, but it’s how my voice sounds. I never talk like this, never rush to stop anyone from leaving. If someone wants to walk away from my goodwill, I let them make their own mistakes. But Tommy….
Why,how, does he affect me this way?
He pauses immediately, before I’ve even finished saying the first word, his stiff back facing me: he doesn’t turn to look at me and keeps his hand on the handle like a silent threat, a taunt, a little ‘See? I can leave any time I want’.
I stare at his hand, not liking it there, and try to figure out what to say that would convince him to stay. Something that wouldn’t be a lie, because I respect him enough not to lie to him.
“Kira introduced you to her circle as her boyfriend. And even though we got rid of the videos implicating you, your face is still in the background of a dozen photos people posted.” I warm up to the argument as I say it, because it’s true and because I think it might work.
Tommy turns to look at me now, his brow furrowed, his shoulders tense. “So what? So what if my face is in pictures? I already told you, I don’t care and it’s not your business what happens to me. It’s no one’s business.”
No one?A specific choice of words. He emphasized them, really pushing meaning into those two words, like those were the most important ones in the sentence. I see. So, Tommy is completely and utterly alone. Another piece to his puzzle, another question answered. Tommy has no one, and maybe never has.
“There isn’t video evidence of what you did, but everyone knows. The story can’t be contained. People talk, and the ones from the summit already have, I can guarantee that. You made yourself, and Kira by extension, the center of a very violent storm of attention. She’s sensitive, Tommy. You know that about her. If you disappear, the speculation will only gain more fuel. Her ties to criminal activities,mycriminal activities, will be called into question again because everyone’s first assumption will be that I had you killed or something ridiculous like that. Investigations will be launched by people who want to see me fall, who won’t care that they will be hurting her in the process. And what if it comes to light that ‘Tommy Claremont’ doesn’t exist? The fact that you were just her rent boy will humiliate her. It won’t matter that it was innocent, that you were just an emotional security blanket, people will assume you were a male escort and they’ll treat her like shit for it. Not directly, not loud enough to get my attention or make waves with me, but enough to hurt her. Small cuts, Tommy, little ones that she won’t tell me about or show me, just like Brian. She never breathed a word of her relationship with him to me. She’s become increasingly private the older she’s gotten, and the vultures that pretend to be her friends all know that about her.”
I watch like a hawk as Tommy falters, and his hand lifts almost entirely off the door handle, until only his fingertips remain on it. He turns slightly more toward me, and I feel like I’m reeling him in, like I’m gently pulling on a line that, if treated too roughly, will snap.
And the way he’s looking at me, that speculative, lost look of his, finally makes me understand his hesitation earlier. That moment he waited after his bold declaration, after his rushed, hastily blurted decision to leave; he was giving me a chance to change his mind.
If he really wanted to go, he’d already be gone.
He wants to stay.That thought rings through me, fills me up, and now I don’t feel like I’m falling at all. I feel solid, and calm. Like I’m holding him in the palm of my hand and all I need to do to keep him is hold him gently enough–and firmly enough–to make himwantto stay.
“I know it’s asking a lot from you,” I try to keep my tone sympathetic. “I know you have a life outside of this, and this isn’t what you signed up for when you originally agreed to Kira’s proposition. But staying with her as your Claremont persona isn’t just to keep you safe from the Vandmorsons, or to reward you for beating that little shitstain son of theirs–who dearly deserved it, by the way, and I once again commend you–but to keep her from getting hurt, as well. She wouldn’t be in the kind of danger you’d be in without my protection, but it would still hurt her. She’s… delicate. And she’d worry about you, you know that.”
He takes his fingers off the door handle, and leans back into his seat with a heavy sigh. His eyes close and his jaw relaxes, but I don’t know if that’s relief or grief or simply fatigue. I watch him, study him, try to learn him. He scrubs a hand down his face, rubs his neck, and my eyes get sidetracked tracing his features.
He’s well-formed. Symmetrical. Strong, clean lines make up all his features, and he has good skin. His lean shoulders press into the seat, and I recall the slim but defined musculature I saw along his torso and spine in the boxing ring when we foughttogether, and when I applied cream to his bruises. My fingers tingled for hours after that.
