Exposed (Madame X, #2)(13)

“I’m saying you created my identity. And I’m beginning to feel as if it doesn’t fit. As I’m wearing a dress that is either too tight or too loose. Too tight in one place and too loose in another.” I pause to breathe, and it is a difficult task. “I am . . . unraveling, Caleb.”

A long silence.

And then: “You are Madame X. I am Caleb Indigo. I saved you. You’re safe with me.”

My outbreath becomes a tremor. “Damn you, Caleb Indigo.”

“I saved you from a bad man. I won’t let anything bad happen to you ever again.” Your hand twines into mine. There is sorcery in your touch and in your voice, weaving a palpable spell over me.

You pull me to my feet and lead me out of the museum.

Into your Maybach. Classical music plays softly, a cello solo wavering gently. I focus on the strains of music, seize it like a lifeline as Len slithers the long car through the sludge of traffic, taking us back to your tower.

Your hand rests on my lower back as we stand in the elevator. You twist the key to the P, for penthouse. We rise, rise, and I can’t breathe. The higher we go, the more constricted become my lungs.

At the penthouse, I am greeted by the black couch, upon which and over which you have f*cked me so impersonally, more than once, and I am panicking, gagging on my trapped, rotten breath, on the slamming knot of my pulse in my throat.

You step out, expecting me to follow, but I spin the key abruptly. Not for the lobby or the garage or the third floor or the thirteenth floor. Any floor, at random. You sigh and watch me, let me go. One hand in the hip pocket of your perfect suit, the other passing through your thick black hair. A gesture of frustration, irritation, resignation.

I do not even know which floor I get off on. I find a staircase leading up, and I climb. Climb. Until my legs ache and I’m sweating in my three-thousand-dollar dress, I climb. A door appears where the stairs finally end. I can climb no more, my legs turned to jelly. I twist the silver knob, push. The door sticks, unused to being opened, and then suddenly flies ajar. I stumble, lurch out onto the roof of the tower.

My breath is stolen, and I take a few slow, awed steps farther out onto the roof.

The city is spread out around me in the darkness of night. Squares of light glow from high-rises across the street and across the city. The sky above is dark, charcoal gray, a crescent moon shining low on the horizon.

When did it become night?

How long was I at the museum, alone, staring at the portrait? That long? I have no memory of the car ride back here, only the sensation of movement and blurred faces passing and cars, yellow taxis and black SUVs, and the cello playing quietly.

I move to the edge of the building, a long walk across white stones scattered on the roof. A silver dome twists off to my right, and to my left a fan spins in a large concrete block, roaring loudly.

Stare down, fifty-nine stories down at the sidewalk. The people are specks, the cars like toys. Vertigo grips me and shakes me until I’m dizzy, and I back away.

Collapse to my bottom, knees splayed out, unladylike.

I weep.

Uncontrollably, endlessly.

Until I pass out, until my eyes slide closed and sobs shake me like the aftershocks of an earthquake, I cry and cry and cry, and I do not even know truly what I weep for.

Except,

perhaps,

everything.





FOUR


I am drowning in an ocean of darkness. The sky is the sea, dark masses of roiling clouds like waves, spreading in every direction and weighing heavily on me like the titanic bulk of Homer’s wine-dark seas. I lie on my back on the rooftop, leftover heat from the previous day still leaching out of the rough concrete and into my skin through the thin fabric of my dress.

I sense a presence as I wake up, but I don’t open my eyes. Perhaps you found me. There are only so many places I can be. I feel you sit beside me, and your finger touches my hair, smooths it off my forehead.

But then I smell cinnamon, and cigarettes.

I crack my eyes open, and it isn’t you.

“Logan.” I whisper it, surprised. “How are you here?”

“Bribes, distraction, it wasn’t hard.” He shrugs. “You weren’t in your apartment. I don’t know. I just felt . . . pulled up here. Like I knew I’d find you up here.”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

He fits a cigarette to his mouth, cups his hands around it, and I hear a scrape and a click. Flame bursts orange, briefly, and then the smell of cigarette smoke is pungent and acrid. His cheeks go concave, his chest expands, and then he blows out a white plume from his nostrils. “No, I shouldn’t.”

“Then why are you?” I sit up, and I’m self-conscious of the fact that my dress is dirty and wrinkled and has hiked up to nearly my hips, baring far more of me than is proper.

“I had to talk to you.”

“What is there to say?”

Your eyes flick shamelessly over me. A breeze kicks up, and my nipples harden, my skin pebbles. Perhaps it isn’t the wind so much as Logan, though. His eyes, that strange and vivid blue, his proximity, his sudden and unexpected and inexplicable presence on this rooftop, in my life.

“There’s a lot I could say, actually.” His eyes, certainly speak volumes.

“Then say it,” I say, and it is a challenge.

Smoke curls up from the cigarette between his fingers. “Caleb, he’s not who you think he is.”