A dozen images ran through my mind, because this felt all too familiar. How many times had my mom stormed into hotel rooms where half-naked women had sat up in shock, pulling sheets around themselves? How many times had my brother and I trailed behind her, cheeks flaming and eyes stinging?
“What are you doing in France? How the fuck did you get into my room?” Callen demanded.
Annette leaned back on Callen’s pillow and ran her hand idly over her perfectly round breast, flicking her nipple through the lace of the bra. I looked away. My face felt hot, and I knew it must be flushed with shock and humiliation.
“I distracted the man at the front desk and swiped a key. I didn’t know hotels still used keys. It’s charming. Oh, stop looking at me that way. You’re usually so much happier to see me, Callen darling. Your enthusiasm is usually”—she glanced at his crotch—“bigger. Is it because of her? She can join us. We’ve tried everything else, but not that. I’m game—”
“Shut up, Annette,” Callen growled again, grabbing a throw blanket from the end of the bed and tossing it at her. “And cover yourself up.” Callen glanced at me, his cheeks flushed, his eyes filled with shame. “Jessie…I’m sorry…”
I just stared at him, wide-eyed. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t fully understand what was going on other than that this woman was apparently a regular part of his life in Los Angeles. My head was swimming, and I realized she looked vaguely familiar. Had she been with him at the lounge that night in Paris? I’d only really had eyes for Callen, but now that I was taking a good look at her, I thought she had been there. But hadn’t he been with the French blonde? The one who’d told him to finish with the help?
The happy bubble I’d just been in hadn’t only burst; it had exploded.
Annette sighed, swinging her legs to the side of the bed and standing. She laughed. “The look on your face, Callen. As if you’ve never seen me naked before.”
I blanched, feeling as if I might vomit, and reached for the wall to steady my shaking legs just as footsteps sounded behind me. I caught Annette’s face draining of color as well, her mouth opening and closing before I turned to find a short, balding man standing in the doorway behind us, his eyes moving between the three of us.
“Oh Christ,” I heard Callen utter.
“What is this?” the man asked.
“Larry…”
“You’re fucking my wife?” The man stared at Callen, his expression tense with anger and what looked like horrified surprise.
Annette let out a small cough, grabbing the blanket on the bed and wrapping it around her body. “Larry, darling, it’s just a misunderstanding,” she started, but he cut her off with a venomous glare.
“Of all the disgusting, immoral things you’ve done,” Larry said, directing his words at Callen. “I thought even you had some standards.”
Callen closed his eyes for a brief second, his expression pained. He looked at Larry and then glanced at Annette, and I recognized the look on his face. I’d seen it often on my father’s. Callen was deciding whether or not to lie. He ran a hand through his hair and let out a huff of breath. “Yes, I have slept with Annette in the past. I’m sorry. I have no excuse. Not anymore.” So in the end he’d decided on the truth. My father had never gone that route, and yet I realized maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. Standing here now, I still felt sick and humiliated. Was I the other woman in Annette’s eyes? It felt like that in some sick, twisted way. I wanted to bolt from the room, or better yet, just disappear.
Larry shook his head, his gaze still full of disgust. “I left you a voice message to let you know we were coming to spend a few days with you, figured you could use some company.” He glanced at me. “But you never have lacked for company, have you? One fucking distraction after another.”
“Don’t. Not her.” He looked at me, his jaw tensed, his eyes blank. “Jessie, go back to your room.”
I gaped, blinking at him. What the hell? He was dismissing me? After the beautiful weekend we’d spent together, after we’d made love? Why wasn’t he throwing them out? I glanced back at Annette wrapped in a blanket, her breasts barely covered, the lines of her perfect body easily seen with the material wrapped so tightly around her.
Oh God, this is his life.
She is his life.
Of all the disgusting, immoral things you’ve done… That was his life. Disgusting. Immoral.
Jessie, go back to your room.
If I had momentarily forgotten I was temporary, this was a clear and brutal reminder. I turned without a word, grabbing my overnight bag still on the floor by the door, and practically ran out of the room. I didn’t allow the tears to fall until I was back in my room. I dropped my bag on the floor, pressed my back against the closed door, and sobbed.
* * *
The knock on my door startled me, and I sat up on the bed. “Jessie?” I heard called softly.
Callen.
I had vowed not to go to him after what had happened earlier—after he’d dismissed me. I would not chase him. I would not beg for an apology. For some reason, I hadn’t even considered that he might come after me. It confused me, set me off-balance. I swiped my fingers under my eyes, though my tears had already dried, and tiptoed to the door. I placed my hands on it and rested my ear against the wood, not sure what to do. Not sure I even wanted to see him right now.
“Please, Jessie.” His voice seemed to be directly on the other side of the door, as if he, too, was leaning against it. “Please open the door. We need to talk.” I stepped back, biting at my lip. “Please,” he repeated.
I sighed, the lock making a sharp clicking sound as I turned it and pulled the door open. He took up the doorframe, his big body filling the space, his face weary and regretful. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I shook my head, pressing my lips together, moving back so he could enter. For a second we just stared at each other, the space between us full of tension. “Those people, they were with you that night in Paris at the lounge where I worked.”
He nodded. “He’s my agent, and she’s his wife.”
“Oh.” The word was a whisper, laced with the intense disappointment I felt.
“I didn’t ask her to come to my room. I didn’t even know they were coming to France.”
“He said he left you a message,” I said, closing the door and leaning back against it.
“I was with you, Jessie. I practically forgot I had a phone…” His words faded away.
I closed my eyes for a moment. I had, too. It’d felt like we were in our own world, a place meant just for us. I’d been afraid to come back to the real world and been smacked with the reason no more than ten minutes after setting foot back in the château. If I hadn’t been there, would he have taken her up on her offer? “You’re…having an affair with her?”
He grimaced. “No, that’s not…It’s…” He massaged the back of his neck, looking utterly miserable. After a moment he shook his head. “I’ve done so many things I’m ashamed of, Jessie. I hate the things…” He shook his head again, as if he was at a complete loss for words.
The moment stretched between us. I have no excuse, he’d said before. At least he’d realized it. Still, the whole episode had felt so…low. Tawdry. Immoral, just as his agent had said. I didn’t want to see Callen that way. I knew he’d slept with lots of women. I knew he drank. He’d even told me why, and I’d tried to understand. But this…It made me feel ashamed of him—disgusted—and it hurt. He had always been my prince, first in my imagination, then in my memory, and now in my heart. I loved him. But this?
“Do they have children?” I asked, glancing away. My voice sounded flat.
He paused, studying me, his expression so sad it made my heart lurch. I didn’t want to feel bad for him. He was the villain here. “No.”
Did that make it better? Did it matter? Or was I just making this about me? About my own painful memories?
“God, don’t look at me that way, Jessie,” he rasped. “I never
lied about the life I led. I never promised you anything I couldn’t deliver. You agreed to this. No promises. No regrets.”
“I know,” I said softly. “It’s just…” I shrugged, a self-conscious gesture. I felt so very tender and raw. “You’ve always been my prince, Callen,” I admitted, voicing the thought I’d just had, letting him into my heart. “It hurts to see you as anything else. After this weekend I’d hoped—”
“Stop. I can’t be your prince, Jessie. You have to see that.” Callen swore softly, turning away.
My heart contracted in pain. Did I see that after what I’d just experienced upstairs? Maybe. But I was having such a hard time separating the man I’d spent the weekend with from this man. I couldn’t merge the man who had brought me to an empty church in the middle of nowhere simply because he knew it would fascinate me with this man who seemed without morals or a conscience, a man who could hurt people so easily and so selfishly. “I guess…I…I hoped you’d decide you don’t want to live that way, surrounded by shallow people, becoming one yourself, making choices that leave you feeling ashamed, the way I see you do now. I know you felt what I did this weekend, Callen. I was there. I saw you. That man upstairs a few minutes ago, that wasn’t you. Or at least…it doesn’t have to be. Not anymore.” I reached for him, but he didn’t reach back.
“You’re wrong,” he said, his voice a choked whisper. I let my hand fall, pain radiating through me. “God, Jessie, if I could change for anyone, it would be you. I don’t want to be that man. But it’s who I’ve become. It’s who I have to be.”
He backed away, the look on his face filled with such agony, I could only stare in dismay. If he felt as upset as I did, if he didn’t want to be that person, why was he doing this? “What…? Why? Why do you have to be someone you detest?”
Callen sighed as he turned from me, moving toward the window, where he pulled the curtain open and stared out at the garden. His stance was rigid, his shoulders tensed, and he was quiet for so long, I almost went to him. But something held me back. I felt a heavy anticipation, as if he was weighing whether he should share something with me, as if he was attempting to gather some inner strength. And so I waited, barely breathing.
“I can’t read,” he said, the words so quiet, I almost questioned whether I’d heard them correctly. My heart began beating quickly, and my mind filled with confusion. He turned to me, such naked vulnerability in his eyes that I sucked in a gasp. “I can’t read books, or menus, or signs. I can’t read texts or e-mails. I couldn’t leave you a note at the train tracks when we were teenagers because I can’t write a fucking letter, not even one.”
Wait…what?
I felt frozen with shock, my mind whirling to try to gather any clues that might have told me. I couldn’t think of any. “I…I didn’t know.”
“I’m good at hiding it. I’ve made hiding it my other career, Jessie.”
I stepped forward, drawn to him, to the pain on his face and the way he looked so lonely standing there in front of the window. The light created a halo around him, his dark hair falling over his forehead. “How, though, Callen? I don’t understand.”
He looked to the side for a moment, shoving his hands in his pockets and shrugging, the movement barely noticeable. “I struggled a lot in school when I was a kid. The letters…I couldn’t grasp them. I was finally diagnosed with a learning disability, but”—he pulled his hand from his pocket and brushed his hair back from his forehead—“still, it was so hard. The school paid for this tutor to come to the house, but my dad would watch, and it made me so fucking nervous, so I wouldn’t try, and then I would act out later.” He sighed, the sound full of such weariness it made my heart catch.
“Pretty soon I figured out that if my dad got frustrated enough, he’d end the lesson and then lash out at me physically. I preferred the physical abuse to the humiliation of not being able to understand the letters.”
“Oh, Callen,” I breathed, tears springing to my eyes. “That’s what you meant, all those years ago, when you said you didn’t mind being hit.”
His nod was shaky. “Yeah. Being hit was better than the names he called me. Idiot. Retard. Disappointment. Being hit was better than constantly feeling like a worthless failure.”
“And…the words you hear on repeat in your head, it’s him calling you names because you can’t read? All the praise, all the accolades, yet it’s only him you hear.” I paused for a moment and looked at his forlorn expression. “He steals your magic.”
“Yeah.” The word came out on the whisper of a breath. “It’s why I can’t be alone. Why I’d do anything not to have to be alone. Because when I’m alone, he is all I hear in my head.”
I went to him, unable to hold myself back, even though many things still weighed so heavily on my heart. To leave him standing there alone after he told me the secret he’d held on to for so long was unbearable. I wrapped my arms around his waist, laying my head on his chest and squeezing him to me. His hands came up, threading through my hair, and he laid his chin on top of my head. “Jessie,” he sighed.
After a minute he raised his head, and I tipped mine back to look at him. “I’m sorry about today. I’m sorry you were confronted with the worst of me. I’m so fucking ashamed. But do you see, I’m not your prince and I never can be. I couldn’t write you a love letter if my life depended on it. I can’t even write my own name. I’d just…embarrass you.”
“You’d never embarrass me, Callen, and you can learn. You’re a man now, not a scared little boy afraid of disappointing his father. You could hire a private tutor if you wanted. You read musical notes and symbols. If you can read those, you can learn how to make sense of letters, too.”
He took my arms from around his waist and stepped away, shaking his head. “No. It’s not the same.”
“How?”
“I don’t know for sure. Maybe it’s a right brain/left brain thing. Maybe I’m an anomaly. I have no idea. It’s not like I can research this kind of stuff.” He looked away for a moment. “That day in the boxcar when you showed me the music in your book, it was like…” His face screwed up as if he struggled to explain it, even to himself. “It was like the notes had actual weight, with their round, heavy bottoms and the light little staff on the top. Their shape…anchored them to the paper, and they didn’t twist and turn and fly away like letters and numbers did. Do.” He shook his head. “I can’t explain it, Jessie, but I read those notes. They stuck in my brain, and when I looked at them the next day, they looked the same as the day before and I remembered their names.”
Emotion clogged my throat so that I could barely speak. Oh, Callen. “That’s…I mean, I wish I had known. I wish I had understood how important that music book was to you. I would have brought you every single one I could get my hands on.”
He smiled, and it was soft, sweet, a little sad. “I know you would have. The keyboard, though, it helped even more, especially once I could put a sound to the note. Somehow hearing what the symbol sounded like cemented it in my brain. I became obsessed with music, with how the notes fit together, how they complemented each other, how a string of them changed their feeling. I…”
I shook my head in wonder. God, did he think just anyone could have taught themselves to read music, to play on an old keyboard, to compose music that went straight to people’s souls? “You’re a genius, Callen. You’re a musical genius.”
He laughed, but it didn’t hold much amusement, more pain than levity. “I’m hardly a genius. I’m a—”
“Don’t.” I moved forward, putting two fingers against his lips, halting his words. “Don’t you dare say it. Don’t you repeat what he said to you.” I let my hand fall away, shaking my head. “It’s not his voice you hear in your head, is it? It’s yours. It’s your voice, repeating the words he once said to you, reinforcing them. You still believe they’re the truth, so they still hold so much power.”
He opened his mouth and then shut it, his eyes moving over my face. He let out a shaky breath.
“I don’t know. I don’t even know anymore.”
“They’re lies, Callen, and they always were. Lies told by a cruel, heartless man to a scared, impressionable little boy. You have to believe that before they’ll go away.”
He ran a hand through his hair, sighing before dropping his arms to his sides. “I’ll still never learn to read, Jessie.”
He was wrong, but I let it go for the moment. He’d have to find the courage to try. I couldn’t do that for him. I stepped forward again, placing my palms on his chest, tilting my head to look into his face. “Then write me love letters with your music. Write me songs that make my heart ache and my soul feel full. If you…If you have feelings for me, express them through your songs. I don’t care. But don’t live a life you don’t want to lead. Don’t become something you don’t want to be. Don’t throw away what we have because you don’t feel worthy of me.”
“I’m not worthy of you. How will you feel when you have to constantly read things to me? How boring will it be for you to be with a man who can’t discuss history, or any politics other than those I see on the evening news, or, hell, even the meme everyone laughs at except me because I have no fucking clue what it says?”
I sighed. “Callen, there are books on tape, or documentaries, if you’re really interested in history. I think you probably know that, and you would have listened or watched before now if you really wanted to. If you’re not compelled to learn about history, don’t do it for me. I don’t care about that. I want to hear what you think about the colors of the sunset coming in our window and what your ideas about fate are. I want to hear about the things in your heart and the way you see the world around you.”
“Ah, Jessie,” he breathed, his eyes soft as he gazed at me. He pulled me to him, and for a few minutes we stayed just like that, my ear to his chest as I listened to the steady beat of his heart, his lips on the top of my head.
When we finally pulled apart, he sighed. “I just…I don’t know. You deserve everything, and I want to be the man who can give it to you, but I…I’m not.”