Beginnings and Ends (Short Story) Read online

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  The Unsung Hero

  The Defiant Hero

  Over the Edge

  Out of Control

  Into the Night

  Gone Too Far

  Flashpoint

  Hot Target

  Breaking Point

  Into the Storm

  Force of Nature

  All Through the Night

  Into the Fire

  Dark of Night

  Hot Pursuit

  Breaking the Rules

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  “When Tony Met Adam”

  “Beginnings and Ends”

  FIGHTING DESTINY SERIES

  Born to Darkness

  Beginnings and Ends is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A Ballantine Books eBook Original

  Copyright © 2012 by Suzanne Brockmann

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-54053-9

  www.ballantinebooks.com

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Other Books by This Author

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Excerpt from Hot Target

  Chapter One

  From Shadowland, Episode 60, “Eighth of Nine Lives”

  Starring Robin Chadwick Cassidy as Joe Laughlin

  Los Angeles, present day

  Richie West ambushed me. The meeting is supposed to be about my contract for the next Pierce Cane movie, but I realize within seconds of walking into his office that this is about my past few weekends and the current rash of rumors.

  “Academy Award nominee Joe Laughlin! Thank you for coming in! Close the door, Maureen, close the door! It’s hard for me to meet for lunch these days.” Richie gestures grandly to the cast on his ankle, his foot elevated on a stool with a maroon velvet cushion.

  I turn to see Rich’s assistant expertly keep Billy and Freedom and the rest of my entourage out of the room as she closes the door behind her, leaving me alone with my manager for the first time in years.

  It suddenly occurs to me that Richie went to Aspen with the intention of breaking a bone, purely so that he’d have a reason for this closed-door private meeting.

  “Sit down, sit down,” Richie continues, but I stand because now that I’m here, I know what’s coming.

  “Skip the bullshit,” I say. “What the fuck is this?”

  His smile vanishes and his eyes turn hard as he glares up at me. “An intervention.”

  I do sit down then, leaning back in the chair to further telegraph my disdain. “Fuck you.”

  “You’re pushing your luck,” he tells me sternly. “Harder and farther, every year. It’s getting out of hand. The rumors—”

  “There’s not an A-list actor out there who isn’t surrounded, twenty-four/seven, by a cloud of rumors—”

  “But with you, they’re all true.”

  “Not all of them,” I counter with a shrug even though my heart is racing. “I’ve never used heroin. And I’ve never killed anyone. At least not intentionally.”

  “Skip the bullshit, Joe.” Richie intentionally throws my own words back at me. “You know damn well which rumor I’m talking about.”

  I gaze at him across the wide expanse of his desk, daring him to say what neither one of us has uttered, even though he’s worked for me for over five years.

  “I know that you’re gay.” He doesn’t say it, but I don’t have to search too hard to see the judgment and condemnation in his eyes. Or maybe I’m imagining it.

  “We need to strategize,” he says instead. Gently. Quietly. “You need to let me help you get this nightmare under control. Your mistake was in going this alone. What, do you think you’re the first? You’re not. And you’re not the last, either. Far from it. It’s just not that big a deal. I’ve written a press release. That, plus you making a brief statement, will end this shit for once and for all. And then—”

  I can’t take it anymore. I’m up and out of my chair, but I don’t run to the door. I go to the liquor cabinet that makes up one entire wall of his massive office. I don’t bother with a glass. I just grab the whiskey and take a long hit, straight from the bottle. It burns, but it’s a familiar burn so I have some more.

  Richie, for once, just sits and silently waits for me.

  This is surreal. I never dreamed that this day could come, not in a million years. A press release and a brief, personal statement and the bullshit that is my miserable charade of a life will be over? Once and for all, he said. If Richard West really believes that the world has progressed to a point where an A-list action star can come out of the closet, and it isn’t a huge fucking deal, then things are better than I ever imagined.

  And maybe it’s that particular thought that brings me back to the real world—the angry, ugly, hate-filled one in which we really live.

  I turn back to Richie, bottle still in hand. I don’t put it back because I’m pretty sure I’ll need more. “Read it to me.”

  “What?”

  “The press release,” I order him, fighting to keep the panic from my voice. “Fucking read it to me.”

  He shifts some papers around on his desk before giving up and waking up his computer, finding the file and reading from his monitor. “From the offices of Richard West and Associates, for immediate release, June twenty-fourth—”

  “For the love of Jesus God,” I say.

  Richie bristles. “If I hadn’t started there, you would’ve shouted about that. And, for the record, it’s already done. I sent it out this morning.”

  The world shifts beneath my feet.

  “Without showing me?” I stumble back to the chair, because my legs won’t hold me. “Without asking me? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “I didn’t see that you had a choice after last weekend’s antics,” Richie informs me, a tad sanctimoniously. “It’s my job to protect you—”

  “Just read. The fucking. Thing.” The voice that comes out of me is from between clenched teeth.

  Richie sniffs and makes an overly dramatic I’m in pain so you’re an asshole for being mean to me face as he shifts his injured foot to a more comfortable position and then reads, “Academy Award winner and current nominee Joseph Laughlin announces his engagement to Irene Anderson. The couple will be married, immediately, in a short, private ceremony in Las Vegas.”

  I stare at him in a mixture of shock and disbelief.

  A roar fills my ears, drowning out Richie’s words as I realize the motherfucker didn’t out me after all. Instead he has me getting married.

  To Irene. Who is also one of his clients. Who’d been the candy on my arm for the past few weeks of this relentlessly dull and still ongoing awards season.

  Jesus, I’m so fucking stupid. I can’t believe I actually thought Richie West was going to guide my coming out, like a Sherpa leading me to a higher plain where honesty and truth prevailed. I can’t believe that I didn’t know—instantly—that if I did come out, he would drop me like a stone. He’d be certain that I would never again open a picture in this town.

  And he’d be right.<
br />
  Richie leans toward me, and I force myself to hear what he’s telling me.

  “Here’s the prenup.” He hands me a hefty document that’s covered with brightly colored Post-it note tabs and arrows. “Have Irene sign it exactly where it’s marked. And here’s the confirmation number for your flight to Vegas. You’ll be staying at the Grande, in their honeymoon suite. My driver just picked her up, they’ll be here momentarily. You don’t need to go home to pack—you can get whatever clothes and shit you need when you get to the hotel.”

  I like Irene—she’s beautiful in a quirky way. She’s also funny and smart. She’d be my fag hag if she knew. Fuck me, does she know …?

  Richie reads my mind. “She doesn’t know anything. But I tipped her off to the fact that you’re madly in love with her. Pop the question in the car to the airport, and after she swoons, she’ll say yes.” His phone rings and he picks it up. “Okay, great,” he says to whoever’s on the other end. “He’ll be right down.” He hangs up the phone and looks back at me. “She’s here. Bong, bong, bong, bong.” He makes wedding bell sounds, which is a really dickish thing to do.

  I don’t move. I just sit there, clutching that bottle.

  “If you’re going to make this work,” he tells me, speaking slowly as if talking to an imbecile as he reaches into his desk drawer and pulls out a small paper packet that he then tosses to me, “you’re going to have to fuck her. Regularly. Often enough so that she glows when she’s in public.”

  I open the packet and the little blue pills are unmistakable. Viagra. “I don’t need that,” I tell him, tossing it back.

  What I don’t tell him is that I already have some of my own. I carry it with me, in case of emergency. But somehow he already knows that.

  “Let me know if you run out.” He puts the packet back. “Oh, and while you’re gone, I’m gonna hammer out a deal with Ventura Studios. For Awaken the Dawn, that costume drama that you turned down last month.” He smiled. “Because it’s a perfect vehicle for your new bride.”

  The douchebag is using my predicament to turn Irene into a star.

  And wasn’t that why I hired him? Because he has the reputation to bitch-slap a losing scenario into a major win.…

  Richie hits the button for his intercom. “Maureen! Come escort Academy Award nominee Joe Laughlin to my car downstairs.”

  The door opens and Maureen is back. She tries to take the bottle from me, but I won’t let it go, and she quickly surrenders, focusing instead on getting me up and out of my seat.

  As I’m walked out of Richie’s office and down the hall toward the main door, my boys are there in the lobby, waiting for me. Billy’s perched on the receptionist’s desk, and curiosity and concern are in his brown eyes as he looks up. “What the fuck was that about?” he asks.

  And the world shifts for me again, because Richie West now knows a secret that I’ve managed to keep from my best friend from fifth grade, my wingman, my chief of staff. Billy has no clue who I really am. Billy, who’d told me just last night that he was crazy in love—with Irene Anderson …

  Maureen keeps me moving even as she stops the boys from following. “The party Joe’s going to this afternoon is a private one,” she tells them primly, and they grin and nudge each other, imagining me between a pair of smooth, soft legs.

  I get into the elevator with Maureen. And because I’ve opened that bottle, she pushes the button for the garage with pursed lips. I don’t give a shit. I tip my head back and drink it, all of it.

  This is the only way I’m going to make it through the next few hours, days, weeks, months, lifetime.…

  I’m not just going to fuck Irene in that honeymoon suite at the Grande, I’m going to fuck Billy, too. And then, after my new bride is asleep, I’m going to slip out of the room and find some stranger to fuck in some back alley, behind the piles of trash.

  Because that’s what I always do.

  That’s who I am. That’s what I’ve become.

  As we descend to the private level of the parking garage, I find myself thinking about Tommy.

  I wonder what he’ll think when he hears the “happy” news.

  Chapter Two

  Boston, present day

  The first thing that Jules Cassidy did whenever he came home from work was to secure his sidearm in the lockbox he kept in his home office.

  The second thing he did was search for his husband, Robin. This evening he found him up in their bedroom, lying facedown on their bed, his jacket still on, fast asleep.

  Robin’s character was having a really rough week.

  The good news was that Shadowland, the Art-Urban-written-and-directed series in which Robin played a closeted gay A-list actor named Joe Laughlin, was a bigger hit than ever.

  The bad news was that playing Joe for all these years had sucked the energy out of Robin. Yes, it was a wonderful, challenging role. And yes, Robin was brilliant, giving a nuanced performance that got him Emmy and Golden Globe noms galore.

  But slipping inside the skin of an alcoholic, substance-abusing, self-loathing, fear-driven, craven man was not the easiest thing for Robin to do, day after day, year after year. Particularly when Joe was on a downward spiral.

  Joe’s manager was urging the actor to get married to some female starlet, to quash some rumors that weren’t really rumors at all.

  Jules checked the clock on the bedside table—it was barely 1830.

  Even though the idea of peeling off Robin’s boots, jacket, and jeans, and then shucking off his own suit and just crawling into bed with his husband was tempting, Jules had skipped lunch.

  His stomach growled loudly as if in preemptive protest—so loudly, in fact, that Robin awoke.

  The lack of recognition in his eyes as he lifted his head would’ve been weird, had Jules not witnessed it before. Robin had gotten so deeply inside of his character that now, in that cloudy place between waking and sleep, it was Joe Laughlin who was looking back at Jules.

  But Joe didn’t stick around for long. It was really just a fraction of a fraction of a second before Robin returned. And tired as he was, he managed to smile at Jules with genuine pleasure. “Hey, babe. Did you come home for lunch, too?”

  “Uh-oh,” Jules said, taking off his tie and kicking off his black FBI shoes, eager to put on his sneakers. “I hope you weren’t needed back on set.”

  “No, I have the afternoon off,” Robin said, missing Jules’s verb tense. But then he saw what time it was. “Had the afternoon off.” He flopped back over, onto his back. “Oh, crap, I was going to do the laundry—have it all done by the time you got home.”

  “We can pay people to do the laundry,” Jules pointed out. “Whereas paying someone to sleep for you …? That’s not likely to make you any less tired, sweetie. You’ve gotta do that for yourself. So, good job.”

  “But I like doing the laundry,” Robin protested weakly from beneath the arm that he’d thrown across his eyes. He made an exasperated sound. “I was going to cook dinner, too, have it ready when you got home.”

  Jules sighed as he went into their enormous walk-in closet to hang up his suit. “You really don’t have to do penance for the things Joe says and does.”

  Robin was silent, back in the bedroom.

  “You know,” Jules continued, raising his voice a bit so Robin could hear him, “it’s been a while since you’ve gone to a meeting.” As a recovering alcoholic, when Robin first got out of rehab, he’d attended one and sometimes two AA meetings a day.

  Again there was silence before Robin finally spoke. “I do know,” he called back. “But the idea of you having to go with me, to have to take your weapon back out of the lockbox just because I might need protecting—”

  “That’s not a problem,” Jules interrupted him.

  “I know,” Robin said again. “But you’re tired, too.”

  “Also not a problem.”

  Robin appeared in the doorway to the closet, still wearing his jacket as he leaned wearily against the frame. “
God, I just can’t get warm today. What is wrong with me?” He shivered a little, crossing his arms as he watched Jules pull on a pair of jeans, fasten the button at the waist, then zip. Robin’s hair—blond this week—was charmingly, adorably messed, but his face still looked tired despite his lengthy nap.

  And his blue eyes were haunted.

  “What makes you … bring up my going to a meeting tonight?” he continued.

  Jules shook his head and shrugged. “No reason. I just thought it might help.”

  Robin nodded. “Tonight … I might need help,” he said.

  Jules didn’t hesitate. He reached for his shoulder holster, which he’d hung on its hook on the wall. “Then let’s do it.”

  But Robin caught his wrist. “Something bad happened today,” he admitted when Jules turned to look at him. He released Jules’s arm and ran both hands through his hair, which made it stand up even more. “On set.”

  And okay. Those were not words that Jules wanted to hear. Not tonight—not ever. But there was one thing in life that he didn’t doubt—and that was that Robin loved him. Loved him.

  Jules exhaled hard. And made himself inhale after. Breathing was good. He managed to make his voice light. “What did Joe do this time?”

  Robin laughed his disdain and frustration as he hugged himself again, rubbing his arms for added warmth. “This wasn’t Joe. This was—God, I can’t even blame the PA, because he’s new and he honestly didn’t know. And I can’t stop thinking about it—or the fact that I probably should have called you right away, right when it happened. And my coming home and just sleeping away the entire afternoon is freaking me out, and I wish I could go to a meeting and talk about it, but I can’t—not without being afraid that everything I say is going to show up in the tabloids tomorrow, unless they restrict the meeting to only those people I trust, and I can’t ask them to do that, because AA has to be open to everyone, and that’s not even touching on the fact that it’s a pretty major problem for everyone else in the meeting when there’s an armed FBI agent in the back of the room. It kinda deals a death blow to the whole anonymity thing and—”