Madame X, стр. 54

Caleb strides away. Toward a sleek, low, black car, Len waiting, holding the rear passenger door. Logan swivels to face me. He is not standing in my way, not preventing me. Nor is he touching me.

Caleb to my left. The condo, what I know. My library. My window.

Logan in front of me. The brownstone, Cocoa. The fantasy of normalcy.

“You are Madame X.” The voice to my left, confident, calm, strong. “And you belong to me. You belong with me.”

“But you don’t have to, X.” Logan reaches for me but doesn’t touch me. Not quite. Almost, but not quite. “You don’t have to. Don’t you see that?”

I feel the pull. An invisible thread, ensnaring my wrist. My ankle. My waist. My throat. It isn’t a scent, or a memory, or a touch. It isn’t sorcery.

I lost twenty years of memory. I lost all I was. I lost me.

But now I have a past. Six years, perhaps only a fraction when compared to the totality of my life, but it is the only history I know. The library. The window. Tea. The way time passes in lulling increments, each moment ordered and known and understood.

Logan . . . he represents the unknown, a future that could be. A dream. A dog to nuzzle my cheek, to welcome me. Kisses in the madness of wild moments, passion that consumes. Disorder, frenzy of need, time like sand slipping through a clenched fist, so many new things.

But then there’s Caleb . . . my savior, my past, and my present. I’ve gotten a glimpse, rare and precious, past heaven-high walls and into the inner sanctum of who the man really is.

Caleb has given me so much . . . a name, an identity, a life.

He is a mystery, and often inscrutable, but he is all I know.

I choke on my breath.

I feel my foot slide backward.

Logan’s eyes distort, and his jaw clenches. He sees the infinitesimal slide of my foot, and he correctly reads the sign for what it is. “Don’t, X.”

“I’m sorry, Logan.”

“Don’t. You don’t know what you’re doing.” He sounds utterly sure of this.

“I’m sorry. Thank you, Logan. So much. Thank you.”

Caleb stands waiting, watching, tall and broad and clad impeccably in a tailored suit, navy with narrow pinstripes, white shirt, thin slate-gray tie. Fingers uncurl from a fist, palm lifted, hand extended. “Come now.”

I cannot make myself break my gaze away from Logan’s, away from the sadness, the need. He, too, sees me.

I back away. Back away.

Logan lifts his chin, jaw hardened, fists at his sides, brow furrowed. Faded jeans, a pale green henley, four buttons at the neck, each one undone, sleeves pushed up around thick, corded forearms. I see his hands—and for a moment, only those hands. They touched me, so gently. I felt a lifetime of touch in what in this moment feel like were stolen moments.

A moment is a fortieth of an hour.

How many fortieths of an hour did I steal with Logan?

They do feel stolen, indeed, but no less precious for that.

Hands, on my shoulders, pulling me back. Fingers that know me, fingers that have peeled away all my layers, night after night, and have known me in the darkness and known me in the light.

I still do not turn away, do not look away, even as I retreat into the shadows around the waiting car.

The interior is cool, and silent.

Dark.

Logan stands in a pool of pale light, framed, illuminated. He watches me and does not blink.

I watch, still, even when Len closes the door, and I must watch through tinted glass.

A low, powerful growl of the engine, and then Logan is behind me, still watching, growing smaller.

A long, deep, fraught silence, as the car returns me to the familiar glass-and-steel canyons, echoing with the ceaseless life of night in this city.

•   •   •

When you speak, your voice strikes chords within me, hammers on the strings of a piano. My entire being hums, and I must turn, must look. Must meet your eyes like darkness of a moonless night.

“You are Madame X, and you . . . are . . . mine.” Your fingers pinch my chin, tilt my head to look at you. “Say it, X.”

The words feel pulled out of me, drawn out, ensnared and tangled up and plucked out of the snarl of conflict within me:

“I am Madame X, and I am yours.”

SEVENTEEN

You do not speak, not until we’ve returned to the high-rise, to the thirteenth floor.

“Why did you leave, X?” Your voice is like thunder in the distance.

“You left first.” I stand at my window, dressed still in my plain jeans, my comfortable T-shirt, cotton underwear and sports bra, my ballet flats.

“So you ran away with another man?” An accusation.

“Yes.” You will not hear any denials from me.

“After all I’ve done for you, after all we have shared, you find it so easy to abandon me like so much trash?” You sound almost human, almost hurt.

“All we have shared?” I put a palm to the cool glass, finding a tiny measure of inner peace at the soothing, familiar view of the cars passing to and fro, the buildings rising black and reflecting shadows and faint light. “What do we share, Caleb? I am nothing but a possession to you. You use me as you see fit, and expect me to stay put and merely wait for you.”

“You act as if I treat you like a slave. Like a mere . . . physical object.”

“You do!” I whirl, and you’re there, and my palms strike your chest, hard. “I am an object for your sexual needs, Caleb. Just like Rachel and the others. Make whatever excuses you wish, you cannot fool me any longer, not as you have them. They at least have the promise of finding value to someone else. Sold as so much chattel, perhaps, but at least they have a goal, a future, a promise of something more. I pace these rooms day after day, day after day, and yet I go nowhere. I accomplish nothing. I have no future. I am Madame X, yes. But who is that? Who am I? And to you, Caleb, who am I? What am I? You enjoy fucking me. I understand that much. But that is something you do to me, not with me. And yes, you’re very, very good at it. I enjoy it. I admit that, freely. But that is not shared, Caleb. And when it happens, it’s just you . . . doing. And then you’re done, and you leave. You leave. You leave. You always leave! You’re all I fucking have, and you’re always leaving me!”

You are strangely silent. How did I get here, up against you? Hands pinned between our bodies, palms to your chest. Leaning against you, as if I cannot stand without you.

I am not entirely sure that isn’t the truth.

You are absolutely still, your chest barely even moving with breath. Your eyes are on me, and they are blazing with heat, crackling with darkfire, as if behind those shadows within you there is an inferno, a sun, an ever-roiling supernova, but it can only be seen or felt when you deign to allow the veil guarding the world from your inner self to be swept away.

A mistake—there is motion, coming from you: Your jaw pulses furiously.

“You think”—a pause for breath—“you think all I do is fuck you? Did I hear you correctly?”

“Yes.” I will not flinch away. Cannot. Must not. “That’s all you’ve ever done to me: fuck. Base, meaningless, and empty.”

“You could not be more wrong, X. Am I monogamously faithful to you, sexually? No. And I will neither explain nor apologize for that. I am who I am. I am what I am. But my time with you, limited as it may be, has never been . . . base, or meaningless, or empty.” You freight those three words, my words, with such acidic venom I cannot help flinching. “So far from that, X. I am not a man to whom emotion comes easily, and that is not likely to change.”

My chin lifts. “I . . . don’t . . . believe you.”