Beginnings and Ends (Short Story) Read online

  And the video fades to black.

  I can see that, during the time we watched it, there’s been another ninety thousand hits.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Irene tells me. “It’s going to be different, but that’s going to be good.”

  She’s moving around my office, taking an assessment of the damage, reviewing the early fallout. There are hundreds of messages on my home phone, and she picks up my cell and reports that there are similar numbers of texts, emails, and calls on that number, too. GLADD has contacted me, as well as Out and The Advocate and HRC and PFLAG and The Trevor Project and The Courage Campaign and … The list goes on and on and on.

  Over on the shelf is the lockbox for the handgun and I look at it, sitting there.

  “Whoa,” Irene says, as my phone comes to life, vibrating in her hands. She looks up at me. “It’s a six-one-seven area code.”

  Six-one-seven was Boston. It could be Tommy’s cell. I look back at her. It could also be the Boston Globe. Or thousands of other people that I absolutely don’t want to talk to.

  But I hold out my hand, and she hands me the phone, and I hit the button that’ll accept the call.…

  “I’m still in town.” It’s Tommy, and his voice through the phone is rich and warm. I close my eyes, glad I’m already sitting down. “Wanna go get breakfast?”

  There’s a challenge in his words, and I know what he’s really asking is if this is real, or if I’m going to do a shitload of damage control and endless spin—say I was drunk, say I was kidding, say Irene and I have started a new Web project, were rehearsing a new movie, or researching a part. Deny, deny, deny.

  I look up to see Irene frozen, watching me, hope in her eyes.

  “He wants to go out for brunch,” I tell her, tell him, too. “You’re in L.A. and it’s Sunday. It’s called brunch.”

  He’s silent on the other end, waiting for a real answer.

  If I go with him to get breakfast, if I appear out in public, if we’re seen together, there’ll be no turning back.

  I look from the lockbox to the wall that isn’t spattered with my blood and bone and brains.

  And for the first time in years, I’m not afraid.

  For the first time in years, I am alive.

  Chapter Six

  Boston, four months later

  In true Art Urban fashion, the final segment of Shadowland that the cast and crew filmed was the final scene of the entire series. It didn’t always work out that way in Hollywood, but Jules suspected that Art had his assistant director set up the shoot schedule that way on purpose, for Robin’s sake.

  Or maybe Art himself liked the closure that this would bring.

  Jules stood on set and clapped with the rest of the crew when Art announced, “That’s a wrap.”

  He knew he was lucky to be there—it was a closed set, with a minimal crew.

  Robin had told him that Art didn’t want the ending leaked. And maybe that was true, but Jules suspected that Art still hadn’t decided exactly what the ending was going to be.

  They’d filmed the complete scene, but it was entirely possible that Art would edit it so that the screen would freeze or fade to black immediately after Irene handed the phone to Joe.

  That way the audience could decide for themselves if it was, in fact, Tommy on the other end of that call.

  Out on the studio floor, Robin was talking and laughing with Art and Meg, the actress who played Irene. No doubt Meg was still trying to convince Art to write one more scene. A true romantic, she wanted the series to end with Joe in Tommy’s arms, in a big Hollywood kiss.

  Jules was just as happy not to have to sit through the filming of that particular scene. It was hard enough watching the clips of Joe’s hunger when he looked at Tommy, in the restaurant sequence.

  And as if Jules’s ever-present jealousy sent out some kind of super-bat-signal, Robin looked up and saw him. He quickly disengaged himself from the ongoing conversation, and practically ran toward Jules.

  Which was nice.

  “Hey,” Jules greeted him. “That was amazing.”

  “When did you get here?” Robin asked.

  “About an hour ago,” Jules said. “You didn’t hear me come in? I felt like a foley artist escaped from his cage. Every move I made created a racket.”

  Robin smiled as he shook his head. “I was really in the moment.”

  And … that was why Jules didn’t want to have to watch the filming of a big Hollywood kiss. “Penny called,” he told Robin as he held out his phone so that his husband could see the photo that their surrogate had sent—a snapshot of the home pregnancy test with the big pink stripe running right down the middle. They’d lucked out by finding her on their first trip to L.A., four months ago. They’d met her over and over again since then, and had even flown her out to Boston to spend several weeks with them, and she’d remained awesome, so they’d pulled the trigger. So to speak.

  “Holy crap,” Robin said, looking closely at the picture. “We’re pregnant.” He looked up at Jules. “Are we really pregnant?”

  Jules nodded. “It’s still really early, and there’s a lot that can go wrong so we should remain cautiously hopeful, but … We’re pregnant.”

  The look on Robin’s face was one that Jules would remember forever. It was a mix of joy and hope and love with just the right amount of new-parent terror.

  “Today is a really good day,” Robin said as he handed back Jules’s phone.

  “It is,” Jules agreed as he put it in his pocket.

  It was then that Robin grabbed him and kissed him. And kissed him.

  It was a Hollywood-worthy kiss, but their story wasn’t over.

  In fact, it was just beginning.

  If you loved Beginnings and Ends, then you won’t want to miss Suzanne Brockmann’s New York Times bestselling novels that tell the story of openly-gay FBI agent (and kick-ass romantic hero) Jules Cassidy:

  Hot Target

  Force of Nature

  All Through the Night

  “Jules Cassidy is one of the most charming and original characters in popular fiction today.” – Library Journal

  “[Brockmann] brilliantly combines superbly crafted, realistically complex characters with white-knuckle plotting.” –Publishers Weekly

  Read on for a sneak peek of Hot Target.

  COSMO’S MOTHER was driving him crazy.

  Well, okay, to be fair, it wasn’t his mom, but rather her choice of music that had pushed him out of her condo, into his truck, and back down the 5 to San Diego.

  He parked in the lot next to the squat, ugly building that held the offices of Troubleshooters Incorporated. The sun was warm on the back of his neck, as he crossed to the entrance door. As usual, it was locked—apparently Tommy Paoletti had had no luck yet finding a receptionist for his personal security company. But he had installed a system that would allow him to let people in without having to run all the way to the door, twenty times a day.

  A surveillance camera hung overhead, and Cosmo looked up at it, making sure Tommy would be able to see his face as he hit the bell.

  The lock clicked open as a buzzer sounded, and Cosmo went inside.

  “Grab some coffee, I’ll be right out,” Tom shouted from one of the back offices. “How’s your mom?”

  “Much better, thanks,” Cosmo called back.

  And she was. Right after the accident, when Cosmo had first gone to see her, she’d been in a lot of pain. Her face had been almost gray, and she’d looked old and frail, lying in that hospital bed.

  But she’d been home a few days now and was feeling far more like her old self.

  Which was great.

  But, dear sweet Jesus, if he had to listen to the soundtrack from Jekyll & Hyde one more time, he was going to scream.

  Cos took his coffee and sank down into one of the new leather sofas in the Troubleshooters waiting room. Buttery soft and a light shade of honey brown, they replaced the former mismatched collection of overstuffed chairs
—thrift-shop rejects—that had cluttered the area in front of the receptionist’s desk.

  Whoa, the walls had been repainted, too.

  Tom’s wife, Kelly, had been threatening to redecorate for months, insisting that the image Tom was trying to establish for his new company shouldn’t be “piss poor and tasteless to boot.”

  “Are you here for the meeting?”

  Cosmo looked up. The woman coming down the hall toward him was a stranger. She was wearing a pinstriped suit that had been tailored to accentuate her feminine shape. Petite, with blond short-cut hair and delicate features in a launch-a-thousand-ships face, her blue eyes were coolly polite. Professional. Ivy-league intelligent.

  Her hands were ring free. Both of them. Her fingernails were short, bitten down almost to the quick—a direct and intriguing contrast to the career-woman persona.

  She took a few steps closer and tried again. “May I help you?”

  “No, ma’am,” he finally answered her, then mentally kicked himself. Talk, asshole. She mostly certainly could help him. He would love for her to help him. And at least be polite. “Thanks.” More. Explain. “I’m waiting for Commander Paoletti.”

  She finally smiled, and it transformed her from breathtakingly beautiful to full-power-defibrilator gorgeous. He wanted to drop to his knees, and beg her to bear his children.

  “You must be one of his SEALs,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Stand up, fool. But, Christ, don’t spill the coffee.… Too late. It splashed over the edge of the cup and onto his fingers. Gahhhhd, it was hot.

  She pretended not to notice as he pretended that he hadn’t just been scalded. She even held out her hand to shake. “I’m Sophia Ghaffari.”

  Sophia. It was a beautiful name, and by all rights, violins should have started playing when she said it. She looked like a Sophia, she dressed like a Sophia, she even smelled like a Sophia.

  He tried to wipe his fingers dry on his pants, but it was hopeless. “Cosmo Richter. Sorry, I’m …”

  … A freakin’ idiot.

  He crossed to the coffee setup, where he found some napkins, thank the Lord.

  But Sophia didn’t run out of the room screaming Save me from cretins!, as he wiped his hands. “You must be here to help out with the Mercedes Chadwick job.”

  “I’m not sure,” he admitted, turning back to her. “Tommy said something about an easy op in L.A.”

  “That’s the one.” She was holding the files she was carrying against her chest with both arms. “She’s a movie producer—and I guess a screenwriter, too. She’s been getting death threats.”

  His chance to touch Sophia, to shake her hand, now that his hands were clean, had apparently passed. What a crying shame.

  “Hey, Cos.” Tom Paoletti came out from the back, smiling his welcome. He looked at Sophia. “Soph, you better get going if you’re intending to catch that flight.”

  “Yeah. It was nice meeting you,” Sophia told Cosmo.

  As she hurried down the hall, Tom led Cosmo back toward his office. “You’ve got … how many weeks of leave left?”

  “Three weeks, two days, seventeen hours.”

  His former SEAL CO smiled. “Well, at least you’re not counting the minutes.”

  Cosmo glanced at his watch. And fourteen minutes.

  “And you’re sure you don’t want to use this time as a vacation?” Tom asked.

  “I’m quite sure, sir.” Like many SEALs in Team Sixteen, Cosmo wasn’t good at taking vacations. After just a few days, he got bored. Restless. “I just want to be able to check in on my mother once or twice a day.” He got down to business. “So tell me about this Hollywood producer. What’d she do to piss people off enough to make them want to kill her?”

  “I don’t need personal protection—a team of bodyguards? God! This is absolutely ridiculous.” Jane Chadwick told Patty, her new college intern.

  Patty didn’t seem convinced, so she turned to Robin, hoping for just a teensy bit of brotherly support.

  But Robin wasn’t paying attention. He was giving Patty one of his “hey there” smiles. The girl, naturally, was dazzled. Of course, she was impossibly young and didn’t yet have the mileage that would enable her to see past Rob’s gorgeous face to the lowlife womanizing scum within.

  “Yo,” Jane said, clapping her hands sharply. Half-brother. At times like this, it helped to remind herself that they shared only a fraction of their genetic makeup. “Robin. Focus. Patty, go call the studio back and tell them no. Thank you, but no. I’m perfectly safe. Be firm.”

  Unlike many young movie-loving girls who made the pilgrimage to Hollywood, Patty’s freckled-face cuteness wasn’t an act. She wore kneesocks and actually meant it. Jane didn’t know her that well yet, but, unfortunately, being firm didn’t seem to be high on Patty’s skill list.

  But at least she was out of Jane’s office, closing the door behind her and releasing Rob from her captivating spell.

  “If you touch her,” Jane told him, “I will kill you and I will make it hurt.”

  “What?” Rob said. Mr. Innocent. He made that sound that was half laugh, half indignation. “Come on. I was just smiling at her.”

  One thing was certain, her too-handsome half-brother was a brilliant actor. If they could get this movie made, and—most important—if they could get it distributed and seen, he was going to be a star.

  “Besides,” he added, “you of all people shouldn’t be making idle death threats.”

  That was supposed to be funny. Jane didn’t crack a smile.

  “That wasn’t a threat,” she said. “It was a promise. Let me put this in terms you’ll understand, Sleazoid. If you sleep with her, she’ll think she’s your girlfriend. And when she finds out that she was merely your Friday night distraction, she’ll be badly hurt. Now, maybe you don’t give a rat’s ass about Patty’s feelings, but I do. And I also know what you do care about, so listen closely. If you break her heart, she will quit. And if she quits, you will become my personal assistant, and you won’t have a single minute to yourself from that moment until we are done making American Hero. Which means, in sleazoid-speak, that it will be two months before you have sex again. Two. Months.”

  Her little brother laughed. “Relax, Janey. I’m not going to sleep with her.”

  Jane just looked at him. She liked Patty. A lot. The girl was smart, she was sweet, she was way overqualified for this glorified gofer position. The lack of backbone could be worked on—besides, Jane had plenty of that to go around.

  Best of all, though, despite being paid only a stipend, Patty also liked Jane. It was a win/win situation.

  As long as Robin kept his own little win zipped up tight inside his pants and out of the equation.

  Problem was, Patty had a serious crush on Rob. Which meant that it was going to fall on him to keep his distance.

  God help them all.

  “You need to lighten up,” her brother told her now. “What is it Variety calls you?” He reached for a copy of the trade magazine that was out and open on her desk, and started to read the latest section that Patty had highlighted. “ ‘Never too serious, party-girl producer and screenwriter Mercedes Chadwick heats things up at the Paradise.…’ ” He looked at her over the top of the oversized page. “Who are you, you too serious she-bitch, and what have you done with my real sister, the party-girl producer?”

  Jane gave him the evil eye that she’d perfected back when she was six and he was four.

  It didn’t scare him as much anymore. “Look,” he said, “I know you’re freaked out by these e-mails—”

  “But I’m not,” Jane said. “I’m freaked out by the fact that the studio’s freaked out. I don’t need a bodyguard. Robbie, come on, it’s just a few Internet crazies who—”

  “Patty told me you got three hundred messages just today.”

  “No,” she scoffed. “Well, yeah, but it’s, like, three crazies, each sending a hundred e-mails.”

  “You’re certain of that?” />
  “Yes,” she told him.

  Robin was silent, obviously not believing her.

  “Really,” she insisted. “How could this possibly be real?”

  More silence. “Who’s paying?” Robin finally asked.

  “For my lifetime of sin?” Jane responded. “I am, apparently.”

  He gave her a get-serious look—which was vaguely oxymoronic. Robin, telling someone else to get serious. “For this added security that HeartSong Studios wants to set up,” he clarified.

  “They are,” Jane said. Her budget for this film was already stretched thin. She was using her personal credit cards to pay for craft services. No way could she afford around-the-clock guards.

  “Then I don’t see what the big deal is,” Rob said.

  “You don’t understand,” Jane said. And he didn’t. Her brother, while not exactly simple, presented his true self to the world at all times. Well, except for lying to her about Patty.…

  Robin was a player and he didn’t try to hide it. Too many women, too little time—he’d said as much in his first interview with Entertainment Weekly. Consummate actor that he was, he came across as charming. The reporter—a woman, natch—portrayed him as boyishly honest about his inability to resist temptation, rather than selfish and spoiled.

  To be sure, his being spoiled was partly Jane’s fault. As his older sister—well, after she’d ended that phase where her every waking moment was devoted to tormenting her wimpy little freak of a half-brother—she’d bent over backwards to try to make life as easy as possible for him.