I put the pieces together. His dog at seven, the party at eleven and how his father yelled at him and how his demeanor had already started to go downhill. I had nothing to do with any of that.
“I was so alone,” he explained from somewhere on the other side of my room. “I couldn’t talk to people. I didn’t have any friends. I was scared all the time.” His voice was thick with memory, as if it all happened just yesterday. “I just wanted to be invisible, and if I couldn’t be invisible, then I just wanted it to end. I was going to run away, because…” His sad voice trailed off. “Because the only other way to escape was to end it all.”
I couldn’t wrap my head around it. That’s what was going through his mind when I met him that first time? What eleven year old wants to die?
“You were so little,” he mused. “When you came into the maze and noticed me hiding and crawled inside and sat down at my side, it was like…”
Like you had a pet again.
“Like I wasn’t alone anymore,” he finished. “So little. So quiet. But it was everything. Feeling you next to me.”
God, what was he doing to me?
“You taught me how to survive that day,” he said. “You taught me how to be strong and how to get to the next minute. And the next and the next. I could never forget, and when you came back in high school, and I had changed into this, because I’d seen so much shit,” he went on, “and my desires had morphed into something ugly and twisted, but I’d fucking survived, nonetheless, and didn’t swallow the bad for anyone anymore, because you had taught me how to get rid of the shit. I finally craved one more thing I realized had been missing when I laid eyes on you again.”
I didn’t understand. I was eight. What could I possibly have taught him to keep him surviving? To keep him fighting? And what was missing from his existence after he’d gotten through all that?
“I wanted something good,” he admitted. “Beauty, maybe? The night of the pool party, the house was quiet. It was just us, but you didn’t know I was in the house, too. I watched you dance.”
I remembered that night so vividly. For the two years after that, I’d looked back on it, excited and terrified, but also with this weird sense of being safe in that closet with him.
“You made the world look different,” he told me. “You always had, and it struck me as odd, because I had hated to watch my mother dance growing up. It was just some elaborate lie that I couldn’t stomach, but you…” He trailed off, searching for words. “It was pure, and it was a dream. I didn’t want to change you. I just wanted to be a part of it all. Of everything beautiful you were going to do.”
He sat there for a moment, and everything in my body hurt. I didn’t realize every muscle had been tightened this whole time. This was the first time he’d ever said things like this. The first time he’d ever really talked to me.
“But I was still me, and I scared you that night, because that’s what I do,” he admitted, sounding like he hated himself. “Something amazing happened, though. You followed. You wanted to feel that edge, too, as long as you were at my side, and for a few incredible days, I felt…”
He didn’t finish the thought, but I knew what he wanted to say. It had felt the same with me.
“When it was time to come clean, I couldn’t,” he said, his voice growing thick. “I just wanted to stay there with you. Behind the waterfall, in the shower, in the ballroom… Just stay with you.”
He rose to his feet, and the walls felt too close, and my clothes too tight, and I couldn’t get my lungs to open, because there was too much to take in and not enough said so many years ago. Why didn’t you say all of this years ago?
“Nothing was a lie,” he whispered.
And then he walked out, and my chest ached so badly, for air or for him, I didn’t know, but I ran to the window, yanked it up, and drew in a lungful of air, feeling everything give way. Slip away, fade, and ease.
My fear. My worry. My hatred.
My anger.
Why didn’t he say all that years ago?
Why?
Damon
Present
The elevator doors opened, and I charged into Michael’s penthouse in the city, turning the corner and strolling into the apartment.
Walking into the great room, I saw Michael, Kai, and Will sitting on chairs and couches, while Rika stood near the wall of open balcony doors, a rare, balmy evening breeze drifting through.
Michael allowed the doorman to let me come up, so he must be intrigued enough to indulge me, and I was glad most of them were here.
I threw the piece of newspaper that I’d folded into an airplane on the table in front of Michael, watching him take it with very little enthusiasm.
He thought he’d have the first word. Nope. I was controlling this conversation.
I looked at Will. “Do you hate me?”
He fixed me with a guarded stare but didn’t say anything.
Then I looked at Rika. “You?” I asked.
She locked her jaw, averting her eyes.
But not answering the question, either.
I’d hurt them the most, and if they could get past this, then I had a chance.
“You’re not my enemies,” I told everyone. “I don’t want that.”
“Then what do you want?” Kai retorted.
I saw Michael open up the airplane to see the article that was in the Post yesterday about the Throwback Night being organized at The Cove this weekend, the old abandoned theme park in Thunder Bay.
I knew they were interested in buying it. It was time.
“I want for us to get back to the plan,” I answered. “To run things.”
We wanted Thunder Bay, and not just a resort. We wanted everything. A whole seaside village as our little clubhouse.
But Kai just scoffed. “We were eighteen. With no clue of the money or connections it was going to take.”
“We have money.”
“No, Rika has money,” Kai shot back. “We have our parents.”
I inched forward. “I’ll control thirty-eight percent of the hotels on the eastern seaboard, twelve television stations, and enough land to start my own state if I want to.”
“When your father is dead,” Will pointed out.
Yeah. Which would happen sooner or later.
“You, Michael, and Kai can have the premier resort destination in three years right here in Thunder Bay,” I explained, “making it the new Hamptons and drawing the elite of America’s major cities.”
“We wouldn’t even be able to get permits,” Michael told me. “Your father and my father have had no trouble convincing the mayor that any jobs a resort will create isn’t worth the business it would take away from their real estate and hotels in the city.”
I cocked my head. “What mayor?”
The four of them stared at me, looking befuddled as they wrapped their heads around exactly what the hell I’d been doing all this time as Crane helped me gather information the past couple of months. Taking down Winter’s father wasn’t just to get Winter.
Kai shook his head. “Jesus.”
“They’ll elect someone new, Damon,” Will argued. “They’re holding a special election in three months to replace Winter’s father.”
“Yeah.” I smiled. “I know.”
And I stood there, waiting for their pea-sized brains to catch up again. Thunder Bay needed a new mayor. One who would give us all the permits we needed to start building over at The Cove.
We had some likely candidates right in this room.
Will dropped his wide eyes, absorbing the idea, while Michael sat back, staring at me.
“You can’t be serious,” Kai laughed out.
But I just cast my eyes to Rika, holding her gaze.
“What?” she asked, seeing me stare at her.
“You’re a good chess player,” I teased. “Politics. It’s the greatest chess game.”
She started laughing. “I’m not running for mayor, so I can protect your business interests, Damon. I don’t want to run that town.”
“Why wouldn’t you?”
She opened her mouth to retort, but got lost for words for a moment. Finally, she blurted out, “Why me?”
“Because Michael couldn’t care less, and the rest of us are felons.”
“Hey, it’s America.” Will leaned back, slumping in his chair with a lazy smile. “Anything is possible.”