Chapter 6

six

“I’m not goinginto the hall tonight,” Mark says as we walk across the bridge into Lyonesse. “So your services won’t be needed.”

“At all?” I ask, glancing up at the bright afternoon sun.

I’ve barely worked today.

The glass doors open for us as we step inside, both of us nodding at Ms. Lim behind the desk, who is wearing the keys at her waist again.

“Some days will be twenty-four-hour days, Tristan, and I can’t help that. So enjoy the easy days when they come.” Mark presses the button for the elevator and we both get inside, me hitting the button for the third floor and then hitting the button for the top floor on his behalf. “Besides, I’m sure you have more moving and unpacking to do.”

I don’t, but confessing that feels a little pathetic. Who wants to admit that their entire life can fit into a stack of totes?

“Yes, sir.”

And when the doors open on my floor, I step off like I have something to do with my afternoon.

* * *

I do manageto fill a few hours. I unpack all the totes—clothes and books mostly—and take a good inventory of the kitchen, which is already stocked with utensils, small appliances, and even some food staples. As a club employee, I can order a meal from Lyonesse’s impressive kitchen whenever I want, but I’m too much of a soldier to crave butterfly salads that look like they bleed. I go to a grocery store instead and stock up on food that’s half teenage boy and half the kind of bullshit you eat when you want to stay in shape. My cupboards are now bursting with sugary cereal and macaroni and cheese, and my fridge is full of eggs, vegetables, and fruit.

My father calls just as the sun decides it’s done for the day, and I only hesitate a moment before I pick up the phone. “Hi, Dad,” I say, realizing that my free hand is gripping the polished concrete counter like I’m braced for battle. Which I am.

I make myself let go as he answers.

“Blanche is packing for the trip home, so I thought I’d take a moment and call.”

I don’t respond. If he wants to make this a fight, then he has to be the one to start it.

He’s smart enough to know what I’m doing, but he’s also the one who has a new wife he wants to keep happy and who might walk back in at any moment so he finally gives up and speaks. “Of all the jobs, Tristan. Of all the bosses.”

“I thought you’d be happy that I’m working with family,” I say.

“You know I’m not. First of all, he owns that business.” My father has a gift for keeping his voice inflectionless and still managing to convey layers of meaning inside a single word. “Secondly, you know what he used to be.”

I do know. “It’s not my job to approve of his résumé.”

“His résumé.” My father does the thing again, the word résumé coming out evenly but still carrying with it a wealth of disapproval. “We are soldiers, Tristan. We fight fair fights. His résumé is a résumé of death.”

“It’s in the past.”

“Hardly in the past for the families of those he’s murdered. You’ve heard about Chi?in?u?”

I suddenly feel like I’m at a congressional hearing. Which is not uncommon with Brigadier General Thomas. “I don’t think so.”

“He located a nest of Carpathian terrorists in an apartment. He was supposed to bring their leader in, arrest him formally, and instead every single one of those men went missing. There was nothing there for our Moldovan military partners to find, not even blood spatter. They just vanished into the darkness. The next month, we’re all suddenly privy to a huge packet of intelligence on terrorist cells in Eastern Europe.”

“That’s hardly proof of—”

“And Brussels? Three diplomats found dead in their beds on the same morning, all three of apparent heart attacks, all three of them set to vote on a crucial EU bill that next day?”

“You can’t know—”

“Rome, the month before he left. They found a priest torn apart in his own sacristy. A priest, Tristan. I was told they had to rip out the floor and the walls because the blood had soaked the grout and stained all the plaster.”

“Dad, stop.” I’m gripping the counter again. “It doesn’t matter.”

“You’re protecting a man who murdered people, tortured them, priests and politicians and people that deserved a fair trial at least. And that’s who I know about—Tristan, there’s a reason most of what Mark did was never written down.”

“I’m not apologizing for what he’s done, or condoning it. But I need a job, and this is something I can do,” I say.

There’s a pause, and I know what’s coming. I know what’s coming because it’s come before.

“If you hadn’t left the army—” my father starts.

And for a minute, all I can see is Aaron Sims, standing in front of me, his gun aimed at my head, his eyes desperate and pleading. Sims hadn’t wanted to kill me.

I think?.?.?.?I think maybe he wouldn’t have.

But I still had to kill him. Kill him where the mountains were high and the trees were thick and where we were so, so far away from where we’d been born.

I had to kill my best friend, and my father thinks I should still be in the army.

“I have to go. I’m on duty right now,” I lie. “I’ll call later. Love you.”

I hang up as quickly as I can and then brace both hands on the edge of the counter and lean over it, breathing hard. The combat stress counselor told me to breathe in a special, count-to-four way when the memory of Sims got like this, when I could see him and smell the evergreens and feel the cloying winter mist on my cheeks.

Sims is dead and I killed him and I have to breathe now.

After a minute, I can stand up straight, and after another minute, the memory is just a memory again.

A hero. My father called me that when he greeted me as I stepped off the airplane. You did a hero’s job, Son. Stand proud.

Here I am shaking in a near-empty apartment instead. I need something to do. Something to—

I can’t be here alone with my thoughts a second longer. Before I can think better of it, I’m shrugging on my ill-fitting jacket and taking the elevator upstairs.

If the door is closed, I’ll know for sure he doesn’t need me. I’ll do push-ups until I can’t think anymore. I’ll walk across the bridge and then go for a run so long that I nearly lose my way in the dark. Something.

But the door to Mark’s office is cracked, and so is the door inside that leads to the hallway and his suite beyond.

I tell myself I’ll just peek in, just to satisfy my very natural, very professional concern that he might need me for security and then go back to my apartment.

But the door to the roof is propped open. Mark’s up on the roof.

I’m just doing my job. He could be with more of those supplicants from last night or meeting with strangers who would benefit from knowing he isn’t unprotected before they get any ideas.

But my certainty evaporates as I emerge from the stairwell and see him leaning against the far railing, a glass in hand.

He’s alone. Alone and clearly deep in thought, and I’m intruding.

I take a step back, meaning to retreat before he can see me, and then I hear my name.

“Tristan,” he says. He doesn’t raise his voice, and so my name comes with the slow wash of water against Lyonesse’s shores. “Come here.”

Regretting the impulse that led me up here in the first place, I straighten my shoulders and walk toward him. He turns as I approach, taking a drink of his whatever-it-is on the rocks and then leaning backward against the railing. Watching me.

“Sir,” I say, getting ready to apologize. “I wanted to make sure that you didn’t—”

He waves a hand. “It’s fine. Stay with me a minute. The sunset is wonderful from up here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you want a drink?” he asks. “There’s a little bar over that way.”

“No corseted waiter tonight?” I say before I can stop myself.

But I’m not punished for my sarcasm. There’s something almost like a smile to his voice as he says, “There’s only you. And alas, no corset. Yet.”

I must not hide my expression fast enough because he does laugh now, a low noise that ripples through me like the ending note of a song.

“Go fix yourself a drink, Tristan. But be quick, the sun’s about to set.”

I shouldn’t make myself a drink in front of my boss, not while I’d normally be working, but the thought of going back down to my empty apartment and staring at the ghost of Sims isn’t any more appealing. So I remind myself that I’m not in the army anymore, and I venture into the small, roofed area that serves as a bar and staging station for food. There’s an excellent selection of European beer—something I did enjoy about my deployments very much—and I help myself to a ?ywiec porter.

I go back to the railing and Mark looks at my drink. “I have a small fortune’s worth of single malt back there, and you brought back a beer.”

“I like it.”

Even if it does remind me of Sims. Of R & R in Warsaw, drinking until we stumbled down to the river and passed out. Of another R & R island-hopping in Greece, until we found ourselves standing in front of the temple of Poseidon outside Athens and cracking open the cold drinks we’d smuggled in, daring each other to duck under the ropes to find Byron’s name chiseled onto one of the pillars.

Mark clinks his glass to the neck of my bottle and then we both take a healthy swallow.

“You don’t have whiskey either, sir,” I point out.

“Juniper berries are a superfood, which basically makes gin a cold-pressed juice,” he says. “I’m looking out for my health.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now watch.”

We watch, the silence easier than it should be, given how restless and strange the silence had been in the car earlier. The sun sinks in slow splendor over the flat river and the city beyond, the horizon broken by the Monument and the Capitol and the cranes against the sky like predatory birds perched in wait. Orange and pink fade into violet and blue, a few brave stars try to burn their way through the city’s glow, and all of it is rendered in duplicate by the river stretching before us.

The traffic and the river make a kind of soothing symphony to it all, and the beer is good, and Mark next to me makes me feel—aware, I guess. Of the breeze tugging gently at my jacket and of the way my clothes feel on my skin. Of how often I lick my lips and swallow.

When I turn to look at him, to tell him he was right about the sunset, he’s set his glass on the ledge and is already looking back at me. Watching me. I don’t know for how long.

“Hold still,” he says, voice low. “I can see the sky reflected in your eyes. It’s quite arresting.”

I am fixed by his words, by his attention. I don’t think anyone has ever said something like this to me. I don’t think anyone has ever murmured hold still to me as a directive purely for their pleasure.

I?.?.?.?I don’t dislike it.

If I were thinking clearly, I might say it was to be polite, to placate my new boss, to figure out what, exactly, was going on. But I’m not thinking clearly right now. All I’m thinking is that he’s so close and that the last of the sunset’s behind him, framing perfectly the rugged cheeks and jaw, the high forehead and long eyelashes. The bluntly gorgeous features that make him equally hard to look at and look away from.

That smell—clean summer rain—is all around me. Mark’s hand lifts to the lapel of my jacket; I feel his touch wisp up to the lapel’s notch and then trace down. His fingers curl into the fabric, holding me.

I can’t see the lingering sunset in his eyes, only the sparkle of countless city lights. His full lips are parting.

His head tips toward mine.

The kiss is soft, so soft, for how firm his lips are. They brush against mine once, twice, before slotting with unutterable pliancy against my mouth. His hand continues fisting in my jacket as our lips part together, in tandem, and I hear him pull in a long breath through his nose, as if scenting me.

The idea is so crudely physical that it has me shuddering, even before his tongue dips into my mouth with excruciating skill, grazing against mine in measured demands until I open even more.

His fingers tighten slightly in my jacket and there’s a small release of air from his nose—he’s pleased. Pleased that I opened for him. His tongue reaches deeper, demands more, until we are kissing fully now, nothing held back. He tastes like juniper and citrus and cinnamon.

Instinct has me reaching for him, reaching for more, but he releases my lapel and catches my wrists before I can touch him. The kiss breaks wetly, abruptly, and we stand there, breathing hard with his hands tight as manacles on my wrists.

He lets go of me suddenly, with a hard shake of his head, like he has to make himself.

“What—” My voice is hoarse, shaky. I want to reach up and touch my wet mouth, but instead one hand goes to rub at my wrist. “What was that for, sir?”

Mark says, finally, “It seemed right that at least one of us should get what they’d hoped for.”

What they’d hoped for.

A kiss.

And then he takes his glass from the ledge and leaves the roof.

I stay there in the dark, trying to pin thoughts and logic to what just happened. Reminding myself that I’m standing on top of a building where a kiss is the most innocent act possible, that Mark probably kisses people as often as he shakes their hands.

Reminding myself that he is my boss. My new stepmom’s brother. Possibly an evil man.

But when I finally go down the stairs, past the closed doors of Mark’s suite and down to my own floor, I can’t remember any of it. I can only remember how his mouth felt against mine and how that kiss was even more tender and silky than I’d imagined a kiss could be before I came home.