Chapter 12

Vy

IF SHE DIDN'T COUNT THE BUTTERFLIES in her stomach, she'd say the flight was the most relaxing flight of her life. Grudgingly, she had to accept that her friends were right about him. The man had an aura of power and patience and she wanted to bask in his light.

"You are amazing," she mumbled, reaching for his hand, while her eyelids, weighted with sleep, slid closed.

When she woke up, he was still holding her hand. He shifted in his sleep and gripped her hand tighter when she tried to take it away. She watched him mesmerized while he slept. As it happened so often, he caught her staring. He opened his eyes suddenly and held her gaze for a long time.

"Does this count as sleeping together?" she asked abruptly, trying to break the tension with a joke.

"No," he said, and the way he looked at her raised dangerously her inner temperature.

"Well, tough," she said. "That's exactly how I'm going to tell Carter the story."

"Do you tell him everything?" he asked.

"Pretty much," she said. "Not that he returns the courtesy," she added thinking of what her father told her.

"He's not trying to be your best friend," he pointed out. "He is supposed to be your mentor. Not to burden you with his problems."

She scowled. Did he think they were still at Sing and she was still TC's hopeful contestant? Carter had taught her little by little to become independent. He often treated her as an equal. He demanded as much of her as he demanded of himself. But King wouldn't get that. From what her friends said, he was the teacher type.

"You don't understand," she said. "He burdens me with plenty of stuff. I just found out that he's been through…" she paused, and settled for "something serious. But he didn't tell me."

Andrew nodded. "The cancer," he said.

"Cancer?" she exclaimed. "He had cancer?"

He pursed his lips and she imagined him holding back some very graphic curses for betraying the confidence. He knew about TC's illness, in even more details than her father apparently, and he hadn't meant to betray his confidence.

"I… Yeah, I think that was it. What did you find out about?"

"How the hell do you know?" she asked, ignoring his question.

"He told me. Before Celebrity Jungle."

The vertigo she felt had nothing to do with flying. Her father had mentioned that was the time when TC made his will, but telling King made it harder to accept that he hadn't confided in her.

Something clicked in her head.

"Oh, man, that was what the black roses were for! He was saying good bye."

"Excuse me?"

She waved her hand. "Never mind," she said. "It doesn't matter."

"I sent you the black roses at Dusk," he said.

"You? Why?"

His dark gaze roamed over her face before he spoke.

"I came to hear you," he said eventually. "You were very good. I wanted to tell you that, but I didn't think it would be a good idea to tell you in person."

"That's strange," she said. "Because I got black roses a lot. Every time I sang at Dusk."

"Almost every time," he said. "After the Jungle… I tried to stop coming to see you."

"To hear me," she said, but he looked away without accepting the correction.

She had loved those flowers, and she hadn't tried very hard to find out who sent them. She had thought that the mystery surrounding the flowers was better than anything she might have found out who was her admirer. She'd been wrong.

"Are you telling me you were in the audience?" she asked.

"Each time," he said, staring at the back of the seat in front.

She thought back at her performances there, adding King's gaze over her. All the excitement of singing in front of dozens of people didn't compare to the tension she felt coiling inside to know that he had watched her.

When they announced they were getting ready to land, he offered her his hand and she took it without arguing.

She clung to it, feeling ridiculous to be afraid, but unable to push away the panic. He rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand, making her shiver. She wanted more of that.

How could something as simple as holding hands with him make her happy?

#

An hour later, they were having coffee waiting for the plane that would take them from London to Orsino, and they ended up talking about Carter.

"Do you have any idea how much it hurts?" she asked. "That he told you, but he didn't tell me?"

It stung when her father told her about Carter's health. She was almost getting used to the idea that Carter hadn't deemed her trustworthy enough to tell her about his illness, but to find out he had told Andrew...

"He only told me because he didn't want to disappoint you," he said. "He wanted you to have that moment. He felt bad enough about what happened in the jungle."

"You told him?" she asked horrified. "You told him about-"

"No," he interrupted her. "I never talked to him about us. He came to ask me to change my mind and go into the Jungle, after I turned down the offer to be special guest. He knew IBC was going to-"

"What did you just say?"

"That IBC was going to mess with the rules."

"No, not that. He came to you? He, Tim Carter, came to you, Andrew King, his bitter rival, to ask you to be on Celebrity Jungle to what?"

"To try to keep IBC from interfering."

"He," she said again, pointedly, "asked you," she made another pause for emphasis, "to protect me?" She made another pause. "Am I getting this right?"

"Yes. I know this shows he cares about you, but it also shows he wants to manipulate you. Apparently, that's more important than whatever he feels about me and I was the only one he could reach out to."

"I'll straighten things out with Carter, don’t you worry," she said. "But do you really think you protected me? How did you stop them interfering?"

He hung his head.

"Exactly," she said. "All you did was cost me the last challenge."

"I'm sorry," he said. "I was afraid for you. You kept pushing your limits. You could have gotten hurt."

"You trust me as little as Carter," she said bitterly. "You two are so much alike, it's not even funny."

"Vy!"

She looked away from him. At that moment, she couldn't stand the sight of Andrew King.

"You were risking your life. And for what? For a prize that meant nothing to you. I'm not going to apologize for being scared for you. You acted like a child who has no clue she can get hurt. You're not unbreakable!"

"I'm not," she said. "You and Carter proved that on the stage of the Summer Festival. You both made sure I got broken. And about the Jungle, you're wrong about that, too. I never cared about the prize. It wasn't a matter of pride. It's just how I am. When I take on something, I don't hold back. I give it all I have. It doesn't matter if it's a stupid Jungle challenge, or if it's the song my mentor asked me to sing to perfection."

"You did," he said. "You sang it perfectly."

She shook her head. "You can't understand. I lost both of you that night. Carter broke my heart because he lied, and you… you've played with me for too long. You know what I sang to you that night. "

He watched her with his enthralling black eyes for a long time, but she could feel the distance growing between them. She shook her head and turned to leave, but he took her hand.

He looked up at her while he spoke.

"When we came from the Jungle, I saw you with your boyfriend, and I walked away. After the Summer Festival, Christine called. I thought I could fix something unfixable. I have it on a good source that I'm very stubborn."

"It doesn't matter," she said, and pulled her hand away slowly, but firmly. "I can't play this game any more."

"It's not a game to me." He ran his thumb over the base of his ring finger. "I'm divorced. I've been divorced for a long time, but I didn't know how to deal with it. "

"Do you understand how hard it is to accept this after seeing you with your family?"

He paraphrased the song Carter had written for her.

"I come bearing more scars than you can see. I wish I could be new for you, but I'm not. I have more of a past than the family you saw. But I'm yours."