Page 121 of Close Match

Of course. What do you need?

I need you to find a painting for me.Pressing Send, I wait for the response.

Little dots flash, then stop. Then they start again.Just let me know all the info you can. I’ll see what I can do.

Just like that?Although I’m not surprised.

Always like that.

My fingers fly, giving her the information she needs.

A few hours later, I’m having dinner with Dad and Char when I get a text back.I found it. It’s yours if you want it.

Taking a deep breath, I respond.Here’s what I want you to do with it.Then I tell my sister the hoops I need her to jump through knowing she’ll do it in a heartbeat.

Because that’s what family does in a crisis: they hold you close when you’re broken, and then they help put you back together. At least, that’s what my family does.

God, I do live among the stars. I’m just damned lucky it has nothing to do with the wealth and everything to do with love.

Seventy-Five

Montague

May

“You got a delivery, Parrish,” Jimmy calls out. He’s just come from the hallway leading from the men’s quarters. Likely Mom’s baked something again and he’s waiting for me to bring it out to share. I smile. My mother’s baking has pretty much become legendary here at the center. Seventy days in and I swear everyone’s loosening their belts a little bit.

I flick my hand out in a side wave as I travel down the same hall he just came down. Stopping at my door, I open it with my key. The illusion of privacy is only from patient to patient. There’s nothing to prevent orderlies, therapists, or anyone I signed my rights away to from entering my room to inspect it. Mentally shrugging, I twist the knob. It’s not like I have anything of value here anyway.

Entering the room with my head down, I flick on the lights, frowning because typically when someone’s been in your room for whatever reason, it’s a courtesy by the staff they leave the lights on. I lift my head to see if anything’s out of place when every muscle of my body freezes.

Forgiveness. It’s staring me right in the face. My breathing starts to accelerate to such a degree that I begin to wonder if I’m going to hyperventilate. Just like when I saw it for the first time in Gas Lamp, the painting’s majestic colors begin to hypnotize me, sucking me into the swirl of emotions.

There’s only one person who could have sent it to me.

One.

Taped to the easel it’s resting on is a small white card. Forcing myself to move, I carefully remove the envelope so as not to disturb the painting. Stepping back, I get lost in the storm which seems to depict my life more than ever.

Trembling, I rip open the card, see the carefully scripted words, and fall to the floor. Suddenly the outrageously expensive painting becomes obsolete in comparison to the words on the tiny card in my hands.

Why would I forgive you for being in my dreams? The nightmare is you not having been there at all.

Seventy-Six

Evangeline

June

Isit in my dressing room alone, still dressed in a violet-and-gold ensemble from my battle onstage with Heracles, pain flowing through me. Being inQueen of the Starshas taught me so much about the battle people subject themselves to when their emotions are out of control. Look at the lengths Hera went to over her jealousy because of Zeus’s infidelity?

How does someone recover from that kind of pain?

After all, if pain defeats gods, what does it do to mere men?

Pain breaks men.

Men like Monty.