Dance with the Devil Read online

  She could not get herself clean. Forty minutes in the shower under hot water and another twenty under cold until her teeth chattered so hard she bit her tongue; the taste of blood could not wash away the bitterness of what she'd done. She had managed to get herself onto the bathroom floor wrapped in a sodden, chilly towel, but could move no farther than that.

  Jake found here there. She didn't want him to see her like that, but a fever had struck her sometime in between finishing the devil's work and getting out of the shower. She looked at him as though he stood in the waves of heat from a pizza oven, but they came from her.

  "C'mon. Let's get you into bed." Gently, he lifted her, but she roused herself enough to push past him and stumble to the toilet, where she heaved up nothing but stringy brown bile and wished she had the strength to tell him to get away.

  Nobody should have to see her like this.

  Kathleen became aware of a cool cloth placed on the back of her neck. Jake's soothing hands rubbed her back in circles while she shuddered, gripping the porcelain. When the spasms had passed, he helped her up and to the sink, where he put paste on her toothbrush.

  "I can do it," she snapped when he tried to help her brush. "You can leave."

  He didn't leave.

  As he'd done the first night they met, he refused to surrender her to whatever might happen. He helped her into a clean pair of pajamas and tucked her into bed. He sat beside her, reading quietly as she slept fitfully, tossing and turning so much he had to get up and remake the bed where she'd pulled out the sheets from the mattress.

  At last her dreams ceased to plague her, and she smoothed into quietness. When she woke, stretching, no longer sick, the sunlight glimmering through the windows told her it was late afternoon. Jake slept beside her on his back, one arm thrown behind his head. She rolled to face him, letting herself drink in the sight of him while he couldn't see her staring.

  She kept herself from touching him, not wanting to wake him. She traced the lines of his face with her gaze instead, letting it linger on the curves and hollows. The slight crinkles at the corners of his eyes. The fullness of his lower lip.

  He had become so beloved to her, in such a short time.

  Quietly, Kathleen slipped from the bed and went into the kitchen to make a mug of tea that she sat with cupped in her hands but did not drink. Her stomach ached with that weird combination of nausea and hunger, but she wasn't sure she dared yet eat. Instead, she sat in the cool dimness and tried to put everything away.

  She didn't turn when she heard the soft pad of Jake's bare feet behind her. Without a word he took the seat across from her at the table. She waited for him to speak, but he gave her time to be the first to say something.

  "I was supposed to go to an assessment meeting yesterday. To determine if I would be allowed to gain partial custody of my daughter," she said finally. Calmly. Emotionless.

  "And you didn't go?"

  She shook her head. "No. I went. I took a couple sedatives and drank half a bottle of bourbon, and I went."

  She waited for the judgment, but Jake's expression didn't twist into disgust. He reached for and took her hand, tugging it gently away from the now-cold mug. He linked their fingers together.

  "I made it impossible for anyone with good conscience to ever allow me to visit my child without supervision, much less have her live with me. Ever. At least not until she's old enough to decide for herself, and that's...that won't happen, because by the time she is old enough to choose me, I will have thoroughly destroyed any chance of her wanting to." Kathleen took a long, deep breath that still tasted faintly of soot and blood.

  "Why did you do that?"

  "Because I'm an idiot."

  His fingers squeezed. "No. You're not."

  "Because I have an addiction problem," Kathleen said and pulled her hand from his. "I'm sick. I don't deserve to have her in my life."

  Jake shook his head. "No."

  "You don't know anything about it!"

  "You did it to protect her," Jake said.

  Kathleen stood so fast the chair tipped onto its back with a loud clatter that would make the neighbors below her hate her. "You don't..."

  Jake didn't stand, didn't come around the table to chase her. She'd have run from him, if he had. Instead she stood, eyes wide and heart pounding, poised to flee but staying because somehow she could not bring herself to move.

  "Sometimes, we make choices that hurt because we know in the long run they will be better for the other person than for ourselves," Jake said. "That's what love is. Sometimes, it's hurting yourself to keep someone else safe."

  She swallowed the bitterness of tears and let her fingers curl into fists. "What about the rest of the time?"

  He got to his feet and came around the table to take her in his arms. "I guess the rest of the time it's letting someone else help you when you're hurting, no matter why. Will you let me help you, Kathleen?"

  She couldn't bring herself to say yes, so she let him kiss her instead.

  18

  The call from her agent came in the middle of the afternoon, just as Kathleen had pulled herself away from the computer for a drink and a snack. She'd been writing since eight in the morning without more than a few minutes’ break. The more new words she wrote, the less she had to think about the document sitting on her hard drive, ready to be sent off to her impatiently waiting editor.

  "How's it going?" Richard wasn't one for small talk. "Where's the book, Kathleen? Marianne's been riding my ass about it for two months."

  He'd never been the hand-holding sort, either. He was known in the industry as a shark, which was fantastic when he was negotiating top-notch deals for her. Not so great if she were in the midst of a crisis.

  "It's giving me trouble," she told him, which was not a lie. The idea of the book, her best work, finished and ready to go but unsent because it was that or her soul...that was definitely trouble.

  She heard the click of a lighter, then the slow intake of breath. "But it's finished, right? Tell me it's at least done."

  She hesitated. "Yeah, I mean, the word count's there."

  "So send it in. That's what your editor's for. I know you pride yourself on sending in work that's as clean as possible," Richard said, echoing the devil's earlier suggestion, "but just send it in."

  "I can't."

  There was a silence and the sound of another long draw. "Look. I wanted to hold off on this because I thought you'd get your shit together, Kathleen, but I have to ask. Do we need to talk about getting you some help?"

  For a second she thought he meant with the book. Then it hit her. She'd have laughed if it weren't so raw, so terrible, so deserved.

  "I'm not drinking, Richard."

  "You sure? I heard something about a custody assessment meeting."

  The rumor mill. Part of the price of fame. She couldn't buy a pack of cigarettes at the bodega without it showing up somewhere on the internet as bad behavior. She didn't reply.

  "Because there's no shame in it, Kath," he told her, making her cringe at the shortening of her name. "Lots of people get the help they need in rehab. Hell, King spent years working on his addiction issues...."

  "I'm not drinking again," she repeated and knew he didn't believe her. That was the problem with losing your mind, she thought. Once you let anyone see you as cracked, nobody could ever trust that you weren't always on the verge of breaking.

  "Then what is it? Because I have to tell you, they're making noises about bringing legal into this. You're four months late on deadline, and you know it was a tight one to begin with. They put a lot of money into you --"

  "They've made their money on me, Richard, dozens of times over, and you know it. They know it. I never wanted that tight of a pub schedule to begin with, you know I had concerns about what might happen if I got sick or something..."

  Richard coughed. "Are you sick? Is that what this is?"

  "I'm not sick." She closed her eyes, feeling sick enough to vomit. "I'm just h