Ch 25

Louis Seuratti's likeness stared at me when I woke again. I would have strangled him all over again had he been alive, him and his mocking glare. I expected he glared at me from hell as I occupied his guest room. Perhaps he enjoyed this arrangement better as now I would no longer be spending time with his wife.

My eyes struggled to stay open through the swelling. I had thought that I had slept for quite some time after Madeline had stopped over but the room was still dark, save for a single lamp by the bedside. As much as I knew I should stay conscious, I didn't want to be awake, mostly because I had no desire to speak with anyone.

I felt terrible. Lack of restful sleep had made me groggy, while the lack of food made me feel nauseous. The pain had not dulled as I had hoped. If anything, I felt worse than I had before. Time had made me acutely aware of every bruise, scrape and laceration. I was aware of myself. In loneliness I thought too much, and there was nothing to befriend me more willingly than solitude.

A burden rested on my shoulder; the weight of regret which I had never felt before. Alexandre was on my mind. Alexandre, my son, who had more at risk than anyone else did. He would not meet his mother, not now, not ever. I had made certain ofthat whenI was escorted from Suite 241.

There would be heartache for Alexandre though that he could tolerate. I feared for his safety. What would happen if he met the vicomte? He had wanted me dead, there was no doubt, but he had failed to kill me—or succeeded in making me remember my misstep for a long time. I had a feeling it was the latter as the vicomte didn't seem like the sort of person who would be denied. He did, after all, win Christine. Luck to them both, as far as I was concerned. They deserved one another.

Alex deserved none of what had happened—and what I feared would happen.

My eyes burned and I knew my emotions had the best of me. I hated the feeling of emotion, hated the weakness it showed. I blamed it on my pain, on my physical pain but there was something much worse that I couldn't deny. The physical pain I could harness. The physical pain I could tolerate, if not control. But everything inside my head was beyond my capability. I had betrayed my son.

My anger had boiled over by the time Julia came into the room. I had pulled at my eyes as I waited for her, plucking out what felt like all of my eyelashes. It hurt like all hell but I could see, and what I saw when she walked through the door was a look of surprise and remorse. She must have thought I would still be asleep and blind when she came into the room again.

Her face paled when she looked at me, when she dared to look at it. In a heartbeat I decided I hated her. She had no right to disarm me so completely. The mask was one thing, but my wig as well was nothing more than degrading. There has never been much to my appearance. I have always realized it. How callous and uncaring, how vile and disgusting she was in my eyes. I hated her. I had to hate her for what she had done to me.

"Where is the compress?" she asked. That was her placid greeting. I had a greeting of my own. If she thought I had forgotten how she had humiliated me she would have another think coming.

"The floor," I answered her, keeping my eyes on her as she walked the length of the room and retrieved the compress. "Give me a towel. Now. And find me something for the pain."

She looked at me sharply but did as I asked, mocking me by retrieving a soft white hand towel that was already on the bed. She said nothing before turning away to pick up the compress I had tossed aside. Once she looked away, I covered my face with the towel and arranged it over my head.

"Oh, Erik," I heard her mutter once she turned around to face me. She brushed dust off the compress and turned it over in her hand, refusing to look me in the eye. Served her right to avoid my gaze after all she had done. "The skin won't breathe if you keep it covered."

"Are you satisfied now?" I snapped at her, ignoring the remark.

She sat down by the bedside and reached for the pitcher of water. "I left some extra pillows earlier. If you can sit up—"

"Answer me. Now. Right now. Answer me. Is this what you wanted? Does this satisfy you at last?"

She looked at me again, her hazel eyes narrowed, questioning. She brought the cup of water to my lips but I refused.

"You need to rest."

"I said answer me."

She scratched her head and sighed. "Did I want the next time we saw each other to be you lying in an alley? No, Erik, no I didn't. Why would I want that?"

"Did you do this," I started again, purely for the sake of arguing with her. I searched the side table and grabbed the mask streaked in red and shook it at her. Had I known what she had done with the wig I would have thrown it in her face. I was so enraged, so completely humiliated by her. "Did you do this so you would know?"

"Know what?"

"Everything!" I shouted, pointing at the covered half of my face. I slammed the mask onto the desk and heard it crack, then I lifted the towel in hopes of frightening her away. "Everything!" I screamed again, letting the towel fall into place.

She leaned forward and ran her finger along my forehead, moving the towel aside. "You've stretched one of the stitches." Before she finished speaking, a warm trickle ran between my eyes. Of course she was correct. I had busted a stitch far enough to draw blood again. She turned to grab a washcloth. "Hold still."

"Just leave it," I muttered.

"I can't."

"Yes, you can, Julia. Put the rag down and leave. If this is to be my room, then leave me in it."

"Your son will be staying here soon," she said quietly. "I imagine you heard Madeline when she came over earlier. I have no other room. He must stay with you."

My heart sank but foolish pride won out. "He is not allowed in here. Do you understand me? I won't have him in this room."

"Where will he stay?"

"It's your house. Find a place for him or send him back to Madeline." I don't know what I would have done if she would have sent him back home, though I knew without a doubt that she wouldn't do it.

"He's your son."

"What of it?"

I could see it in her eyes. She understood without words that Alex had never seen what I looked like without the mask and hair. She frowned at me out of remorse for my own vanity.

"There is more to love than appearances," she muttered. She glanced across the room at the portrait on the wall of her handsome dead husband. "Kindness, for one."

How I hated Julia for not arguing with me, for not telling me how juvenile my words were, for not at least meeting my tone of voice. She wet another rag and squeezed it out over a fresh bowl of water. Sheturned back and stared at me a moment. I knew what she would do. She would remove the towel. She would test her bravery again, hers and mine.

"Why are you doing this?" I persisted.

"It will be infected if I let it go."

"Why do you care? We have nothing. Nothing."

"But we did."

"No, we didn't."

"Erik we had a relationship for how many years?" she started.

I don't know why I insisted on her hating me. She was the only thing I had left. Alex I had still as well but already I refused to see him before he was even staying in the house.

"Erik—"

"We never had a relationship," I said before she could finish.

Julia paused. I saw in her eyes that she was mustering the strength to continue. An intelligent woman, she had to have known I was acting only in spite. After all she had done to refuse my games, she finally relented and played. She had reluctantly given in to my malevolence.

I watched in terror as she dropped the rag into the bowl and sat back, folding her hands in her lap. She said nothing for a moment as she considered my words. I regretted it, but as much as I regretted what I had started, I would never take it back. We both knew that.

"Then what was it?" she questioned at last. Her lips pursed with anticipation. She knew it would not be something she wanted to hear but she had to know.

"An arrangement," I answered.

Her head turned to the side. I could almost feel her placing a cigarette into my mouth. All I needed was a blindfold to await my own execution. I had certainly drawn back the hammer and handed her the pistol.

"An arrangement?"

"Nothing more."

Her brow arched. "For your benefit?"

"I'm a virile man. Why else?"

"Then to you I am nothing more than a whore?"

"No," I said, and I drove my own dagger deep. "I never had to pay you."

She stared at me for a long time andweighed my words, judging me as she well deserved to do. The clock ticked in the corner, counting out the seconds that passed where neither of us moved. She appeared different than I ever remembered. Older, perhaps, more tolerant as well. I had never seen her wear anything lilac in color before and I couldn't help but let my mind wander away. The color made her skin look paler and her eyes more green than blue. I should have told her how painfully green her eyes looked, how exceptionally serene and…beautiful. She looked beautiful. But I didn't.

Eventually she shifted and I expected she would leave but she didn't. She wrung out the wash cloth, lifted the towel covering part of my face and my head, and cleaned the wounds, not once batting an eye as she washed the terrible half. When she was finished, she poured a glass of water and left it on the table for me.

"I doubt anyone has ever told you before. I can't imagine why anyone would want to speak with you, you're so condescending toward anyone who dare think anything of you," she said as she gathered the sullied linens and prepared to leave. "As much as I would rather not, I care for you and I want you to know something: There is something much worse than being ugly on the outside. I could look at you with indifference as long as you never spoke to me again."

She looked at me once, her eyes red, her face swollen with the urge to sob. She was stoic not to break down before me, stoic and stubborn as well not to show weakness. We were both the same in many ways, which made everything worse.

"If you were not in such terrible pain I would never forgive you for what you said to me." Her eyes flashed to the painting on the wall of her dead husband, her murdered husband. Then she looked back at me. A tear fell down her cheek but she ignored it. "No one has ever hurt me the way you just did, Erik. I'll remember what you said for as long as I live."

That was a thousand times worse than being beaten in an alley. My face flushed.

The door opened and she walked into the hall. I could barely see any longer. With her back turned, she added. "God knows why, but I'm warming broth for you. If you're awake in an hour, I'll have Alex bring it to you." She stopped and I heard her sigh. "Along with something for the pain."

There was nothing in the world strong enough to remove the pain I felt seeing her stand there after all I had said to her. The door started to close behind her but I called out, a noise so feral that she jumped when she heard it and turned immediately.

I couldn't let her leave this way.I looked her straight in the eye and forced myself upright in bed. For a moment I thought I would pass out again but I didn't.

She dried her eyes as she turned and stared at me, unwilling to be the first to speak.

"I'll regret what I said for as long as I live," I blurted out.

"Because it's only about how you feel in the end, isn't it? Erik, go back to sleep."

"No, wait," I pleaded. There was more. I knew there was more struggling to come to the surface, begging to be set free. For so long I had kept my foot over all feeling save anger.

Julia did as I asked and stood with her back against the door frame, bloodied towels and a water basin cradled in her arms. She no longer cried. She was beyond tears for herself and far beyond shedding a single tear for me. As much as I wanted to be a coward, I held the gaze when I said something I hadn't even realized.

"I'll regret it because I do love you. I've always loved you."

For a moment we stared at each other. I waited for her expression to change, for her to nod or smile. That moment felt like balancing precariously on the tight rope a hundred feet above the ground. All of the pain I had felt drifted away as I waited for her to answer me, to say something, anything in return.

As much as I expected her answer, it didn't make it any easier to accept.

"You know lust, you know obsession, you know how to keep yourself guarded, but love? You don't know love. Neither of us do. That's why our 'arrangement' worked so well."

"Julie—" I had never called her Julie before, only Julia, and usually I didn't even use her name. It made it easier to leave her each night. But now I didn't want her to leave me.

She snorted and glanced back one final time then continued out the door, shutting it behind her with her foot.

I knew Julia had finally shut me out.