Endless Possibility: a RUSH novella (City Lights 3.5) (2 page)

“I know.” I press his fingers to my lips. “But this time it’s different. You’re going to be fine.”

He nods and we both know that my words are just nothing more than hopeful wishing.

“I have some good news about your book,” I say brightly. “Yuri couriered a printed manuscript over. So you can hold it. Feel the weight of
your
book in your hands.”

Noah frowns. “It isn’t even finished yet.”

“I think it’s his way of encouraging you.” I give his arm a squeeze. “It’s exciting. Len Gordon really wants it! Of course, I’d be
more
excited had you let me read it,
ever
—”

“It’s not finished yet,” Noah says again, and I jerk my gaze to him. He’s not excited or thrilled, but looks angry. Or fearful. Or both, each emotion vying for center stage. “I wanted to finish it before you read it. Before anyone read it. But it doesn’t have an ending.” His hazel eyes search for me, his hands holding mine clench tighter. “I can’t see the ending, Charlotte. What is it going to be?”

“Happy,” I say. I
declare
. “It’s going to be a happy ending, Noah.”

He closes his eyes, ending their fruitless search. “I’m so tired, baby. I want to sleep now.”

I nod, and kiss his lips. “Of course,” I say, though I want him to keep talking to me until he feels better, but I realize, with a dull pang, I have nothing to say. No way to help him.

He slips away to what I hope will be a restful sleep, unbroken by pain, and I lie beside him, watching over him, our hands entwined. I struggle to keep my thoughts away from the What Ifs; the myriad things that might come out of the doctor’s mouth when morning comes.

But the desire to help Noah is strong and makes me restless. Noah is sleeping and I need to let him, but I need to hear him too. To know his thoughts, to hold as much of him close to me as I can, in this dark hour.

I look to my bag, to where his book lies. He didn’t want me to read it until it was finished, but I have to. I have to know how we got to this place, and why he kept his pain from me. I had to know what happened to him in Europe. He made peace with his blindness, but
how
he came to that was a long, arduous journey that took its toll on him. I wanted—no,
needed
—to know what he gave up and suffered for me. For us.

I carefully disentangle myself from him, and slip off the bed. I take the manuscript out of my bag, and sink into the chair by the window. The book is thin, not more than one hundred pages, bound in thick paper, punched three times with those brass page fasteners. I open the book to the opening page, still in its rough, unpolished fonts and format.

Endless Possibility

A memoir

Noah Lake

Dedication

For Lucien.

The god of my dark universe who said, “Let there be light,” and so there was…

Charlotte

The light in my darkness. The reason I live instead of exist. You are the dawn of my every new day.

My endless possibility.

I blink away tears at these words, and turn to the first chapter. 

I read about Noah’s first loves: adrenaline, speed, fear. I read of some of his exploits with
Planet X,
and of his ingrained wanderlust, to never stop traveling and experiencing the world in all its splendor. I read of the events prior to his accident and then the accident itself; a harrowing descent into pain and darkness. I’m horrified to discover his recovery was so much worse than I’d ever known; so much more vivid in his own words than the awful Google photos of his injury I had seen. More terrible words like craniotomy and cerebral spinal fluid; shunts and screws, grafts that turned septic…And pain. So much pain. My love endured so much pain, I can hardly fathom it.

With tears blurring the pages, I read Noah’s description of the day he was told the blindness was permanent; a heartbreaking list of experiences and places and people he’d never see, including the faces of his own children.

I read of his rehab and the amazing care of his therapist, a wise man named Harlan Williams—a man I instantly wanted to track down and hug for how he took care of my Noah through the worst of his grief.

I read of Noah’s lonely, hopeless retreat to the townhouse here in New York, and of his succession of assistants whom he sought to drive away as he had his family.

And then I read about myself, of the day we met face-to-face, and here is Noah writing about hope and the start of something new and good. Us. Our messy, beautiful, up-and-down love that began with a job interview he didn’t want to give with a young woman who needed only a little bit of security and peace to rest her bruised heart.

I read on, until I came to what I was looking for when I picked up the manuscript in the first place: the place where Noah and I were broken apart, so that he could undertake what he thought of as the quest to put us—and himself—back together.

This was the part of our story I didn’t know, and this was what I needed to read: what happened to him in Europe and after; why he drove himself to the brink, and how he still didn’t feel as if it were enough.

I’m scared for what I’m about to read, as this is
my
journey into the black unknown.

With a shaking breath, I turn the page, and plunge in.

I left her.

Just writing the words now, weeks later, still punches me in the gut. I left Charlotte and it was the worst thing and the best thing I had ever done.

The party at
Planet X
had been a disaster, just as she’d tried to warn me it would be. The humiliation of wandering the ballroom alone, a castaway with nothing to buoy me and no ability to see the shore was survivable. But Deacon McCormick trapped my Charlotte in an elevator and tried to force himself on her. That was unforgivable.

I didn’t say a word at the police station while Charlotte relayed what happened, but on the inside I was screaming. Deacon had grabbed her chin, had tried to pry her mouth open to worm his tongue inside until she’d used the pepper spray my sister had given her.

My knuckles ached where I’d struck Deacon when he and Charlotte had spilled out of the poisoned elevator, and so I concentrated on that during the police statement, to try to keep from going mad with rage. I flexed my fingers mercilessly, savoring the pain. But those bones should have been broken. My hand didn’t hurt enough. I hadn’t hit him
hard enough
. I listened to the fear and humiliation in Charlotte’s voice as she relayed what happened, and I wanted to kill Deacon. I wasn’t a violent guy, but at that moment, had he been in front of me, I would have beat him until it was me they were throwing in jail.

That incident showed me how far away I was from being capable of giving Charlotte the life she deserved. My stupidity and pride had put her in the worst of situations. The anger and bitterness were still there, lurking beneath the surface. My fruitless desire to have things go back to the way they were, to pick up my life where it left off, was as potent as ever…a poison that was seeping between Charlotte and me, and ruining us. I had to leave.

I had no plan. We got back to the townhouse and I immediately went to my room and began packing, grabbing clothes at random. I needed to get out quickly, before I could change my mind.

Charlotte brought me my sunglasses and cane—from Valentina of all people—and I was wracked all over again. Thanks to Deacon’s lies, Val had kissed me, and Charlotte had probably seen that too.

“What are you doing?” Charlotte asked, her voice breaking and filling with tears.

Saving us,
I wanted to say, but that sounded too heroic, and I was anything but. I was trying to outrun the humiliation of my own failure. I’d had many that night, but above all, I had failed to protect Charlotte. Deacon, I realized, had hit me much harder than I had hit him. He hit me where it hurt the most, and Charlotte had almost paid the worst price.

It was time to go. She cried and I held her, felt her clutching my shirt, heard her tears and pain. I asked her to wait for me. I didn’t even know what I was saying, what I was asking. Wait for what? For me to get my shit together, I supposed, though I hadn’t the first idea how. But I’d been a selfish ass for months, and this was the first thing I’d done that felt like giving back. It felt horrible and heartbreaking, but there was nothing left for me to do.

“I love you, Charlotte,” I told her. For the first time. Telling her as I left her. Leaving
because
I loved her. “I love you more than my own self and that’s the only reason I can walk out that door tonight.”

I kissed her then, to taste and feel her one last time, but also to silence her. If she told me not to go, I’d have given in. The pain in my heart was a lead weight. Collapsing to my knees and begging her forgiveness would’ve been so much easier. And wrong.

So I kissed her quickly and left her, and shut the door behind me.

I stepped onto the sidewalk in the early morning hours. It was still quiet; the air felt thick with humidity, maybe rain. I dug my white stick out of the luggage and tapped my way down the sidewalk until I felt the curve of the curb. I rounded the corner, out of sight of the townhouse should Charlotte think to come after me, and fished my cell phone from my pocket. I’d told her I’d called a cab, but that was a lie. I had no plan, no idea what to do next. I told my phone to call Lucien.

I was still wearing a tux, for Christ’s sake, though I’d long ago torn off the bow. I ripped the top three buttons of my shirt open as I waited for the call to go through, feeling like I was suffocating. Lucien’s sleep-thickened voice answered.

“Allo? Noah?”

So much concern. And I’d treated him so badly. This man, who’d been like a second father to me. Who’d put up with me, who hired assistants for me while I systematically fired them or drove them away. But for one. He’d brought me Charlotte, and had I ruined that too? All the bullshit I’d barricaded myself behind was falling away, leaving me naked and exposed out there on the street. Lost.

“Lucien,” I croaked, my voice sounding as broken down and raw as I felt. I said something I hadn’t said to anyone since the accident. “I need you.”

I hadn’t been to Lucien’s high-rise condo in a decade. I vaguely remembered tasteful art—mostly glass sculptures and Waterford crystal—and the smell of his Dunhill cigarettes. As he led me inside, the scent of that smoke and his expensive cologne were like a shot of nostalgia in the arm. He sat me down on a leather chair—if it was the same as I’d remembered, it was a deep green color—and lit a cigarette.

“So,” Lucien said, exhaling. “Tell me.”

“I left Charlotte.”

“So I have observed. Why?”

“To save us.”

From outside the windows, I felt the warmth of the sun on my arm and the sounds of the city coming back to life while I was dying inside. I told him everything that happened at the
Planet X
party, the words pouring out of my mouth—a torrent of shame I needed to let out before pride dammed it back.