AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I may have my reasons for mistrust when it comes to Kathryn Tremont, but it’s obvious that she means something to Avery. What’s also painfully obvious is the fact that Kathryn’s health is even worse than I realized. She’s little more than a bag of bones in my arms, the vibrant force of nature I met when I first arrived in New York eaten away by the cancer she’s been fighting off and on for nearly a decade.
At the mansion’s back door Avery and I are met by a couple of household staff, one of them an olive-skinned male who looks attractive enough to be a runway model and young enough to be Kathryn’s grandson. The other attendant is a sturdy middle-aged female wearing crisp nurse’s whites, her graying ginger hair scraped into an austere bun on top of her head.
The male’s eyes go wide with alarm as soon as they light on us, a small, helpless noise leaking out of him. The nurse looks equally concerned, but wastes no time getting to work.
“Stubborn woman. I tried to tell her she was in no shape to be going out tonight.” Pushing aside Kathryn’s apparent flavor-of-the-month, the nurse motions for Avery and me to follow her. “All right, let’s get her in bed and comfortable so I can stabilize her and check her vitals.”
Avery walks soberly alongside me as we follow the attendant through the sprawling residence. Instead of going upstairs to one of the ten bedrooms I know are located on the second floor, we are led past a pair of tall double doors that open into the opulent salon at the front of the house.
The art-filled chamber where Kathryn used to entertain the most elite of Manhattan’s social scene has been transformed into a private hospital suite. The fortune in paintings and sculpture still remains inside the high-ceilinged room, but the new focal point is a king-size adjustable bed draped in a champagne silk duvet and flanked by wheeled medical machines and portable IV stands. A table cluttered with enough prescription bottles and pain killers to outfit a small pharmacy sits off to the side of the bed.
Christ. I knew Kathryn’s condition was grave, but I wasn’t prepared for this. I keep my shock contained as I place her on the mattress. At least, I think I do. Avery senses my reaction as soon as our eyes meet.
“Kathryn’s been living down here for more than six months now. The stairs have been out of the question for a long time, and the elevator only makes her nausea worse.” As I move away from the bed to let the nurse take over, Avery gives me a sad smile. “She’s going to be livid when she finds out she had to be carried into her house like an invalid tonight.”
I grunt, knowing it’s true. “Especially by me.”
“Probably,” she admits, lifting her shoulder in a vague shrug. “Thank you for being here, Nick. I didn’t mean to pull you away from your other business tonight. Another late night with a client?”
She’s looking at my dark suit and white dress shirt, which is unbuttoned at my throat. Although she doesn’t say it, I have to wonder if she’s picturing me having dinner with another female like Simone Emmons from last week. If she suspects I’m being anything but honest with her, it’s too hard to tell for all the weariness I see in her face.
“I was on a video conference with my team in Melbourne when you called. We’re in the middle of acquiring a large residential tower over there and some of the Australian regulations are slowing the whole thing to a standstill. I left Beck in charge of the meeting and drove straight over to get you.”
“I’m sorry,” she murmurs. “I didn’t know who else to call.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about. Business can wait. I don’t want you to call anyone else.” I give in to the urge to sweep aside a tendril of golden hair that curls against her cheek. “I’m here for you, Avery. That’s never going to change.”
The fact that she doesn’t withdraw sends a warm current of hope through me. I’m not going to bullshit myself into thinking she reached out to me due to anything more than necessity or desperation tonight, but it’s a start.
Avery glances toward the bed, where Kathryn’s nurse has begun to attend her. “I ought to see if there’s anything I can do to help.”
I should offer to do the same, but being in a room so full of sickness and painful, prolonged dying is almost too much for me to take.
Before a lot of old rusty memories have the chance to churn to life in my head and make me feel like any more of a pussy, I nod at Avery. “It’s all right. Take all the time you need. I’ll be here if you need me.”
“You don’t have to wait around, Nick. It could be a while before I’m comfortable leaving her.”
“Avery, I’ll be here.”
She stares at me for a long moment, then turns away and quietly goes to Kathryn’s bedside.
I don’t linger in the room. The cloying scent of antiseptic is already drilling into my skull, though not sharp enough to mask the odor of disease. All of it makes my throat close up and a cold sweat break out on the back of my neck.
I step out to the hallway and breathe in the cool, fresher air.
It’s been roughly thirteen years since I’ve been inside this house. I was a kid, barely twenty when Kathryn Tremont brought me here for the first time. Our relationship was brief and mutually advantageous. She was looking for someone new to decorate her arm at social events and make her feel alive in bed. I was looking for myself. I was trying to figure out who I might be able to become in a city that was about as far away from my father’s home in the Florida Keys as I could get with nothing but one good hand to work with and a hundred bucks in my pocket.
It was Kathryn who introduced me to this glittering world I also inhabit now.
She gave me a taste for fine things. She introduced me to people who taught me about money and business—albeit, not as their peer, but as the disregarded boy-toy who quickly learned the value of listening and observation. I absorbed every conversation I heard. I learned everything I could from the rich, arrogant fucks who talked as openly around me at cocktail parties as they did any other unimportant service attendant.
I wanted to be one of those rich, arrogant fucks too. I wanted to be as different as I possibly could be from the poor, powerless kid I was when I left Florida.
I wanted to belong in this immense, indomitable city.
I wanted to own it.
And I was so damn sure I could—until the day Kathryn unwittingly invited my past back to haunt me. To be fair, I know she didn’t realize how deeply I hated my art, especially then. It was a reminder of where I’d come from, what I’d lived through. A reminder of everything I’d lost simply because of the fucked up world into which I’d been born.
