“I was going to do it, you know. I was going to kill myself.”
“Gabe, really. You don’t have to tell me this.”
“But then I thought, Why should I be allowed to rest in peace, after what I did? I should have to wake up every day, every day , and see their faces. Hear their screams.”
Gabe started to cry. Lexi stood rooted to the spot, unsure what to do. Then instinct took over. She wrapped her arms around him.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“It was!” he sobbed. “It was my fault. I should have been there. If I hadn’t been late. If I hadn’t stopped to change that stupid tire! Oh God, Lexi. I loved them so much!”
He clutched at her like a drowning man clinging to a buoy. Then suddenly he was kissing her, they were kissing each other. Lexi could taste the hot salt of his tears in her mouth, his face pressed against her cheek, her neck, her breasts. There was a terrible desperation to the way he ripped her clothes off, pulling her down onto the cold flagstone floor. As if by making love to her he could somehow bring himself back to life.
He entered her with an anguished cry, like an animal in its death throes. Lexi gripped him tightly to her. Closing her eyes, she could feel the pain flowing from his body to hers. It’s all right, Gabe. It’s all right, my love.
In the beginning, Max used to make love to her the same way. Desperately. As if Lexi could save him. But that was another lifetime. Gabe was not Max. Gabe was good and decent and kind. Gabe was suffering because he had loved. Max suffered because he could not love. Because he was broken.
Like me.
Maybe Gabe and I can save each other?
When Robbie came downstairs later that morning, he found his friend and his sister fast asleep on the couch, entwined in each other’s arms. He smiled.
Paolo put on some coffee. “I wouldn’t look so happy if I were you.” He nodded at the sleeping lovers. “That’s trouble.”
“Why? You said yourself that Gabe should find somebody. That he needs love to live again.”
“Yes, but Lexi?”
Robbie bridled. “Why not Lexi? God knows she could use someone normal in her life. Someone to break her of this obsession with Kruger-Brent.”
“I love your sister, Robbie. You know that. But lovers can’t ‘fix’ each other.”
Robbie thought: You’re wrong. What about us? We fixed each other.
“Give it a chance. She loves him, you know. I’m convinced of it. When he went missing, she pined like a lost puppy. Lexi acts tough on the outside, but she feels things deeply.”
Paolo said nothing.
He hoped he was wrong, for all their sakes.
TWENTY-FIVE
GABE, LEXI AND ROBBIE WERE IN LEXI’S NEW YORK APARTMENT, playing cards.
Gabe was explaining the rules. “The game’s called hearts. The aim is to dump as many hearts as you can on your opponent, without winning any yourself. Every heart counts against you, so the ten of hearts is minus ten points, the ace is minus twenty-five and so on. The most dangerous card in the pack is the queen of spades-the black Mariah. If you win her, that’s minus fifty points. With me so far?”
Robbie said: “I think so. Losing is good, winning is bad, right?”
“Sounds like a stupid game to me,” grumbled Lexi.
She was not in a good mood. Normally she loved having Robbie stay over. They saw him too rarely. He was a good, calming influence on Lexi and Gabe’s fiery relationship; a reminder that their love ran deeper than the silly arguments and competitiveness of daily life. But today, not even Robbie could lift her spirits.
Lexi had spent the morning watching helplessly as Kruger-Brent’s share price rallied, up almost twenty points. For years she’d been quietly pursuing her Jenga strategy: buying up strategic parts of the Kruger-Brent empire piece by piece, through anonymous shell companies. The idea was that if she could only remove the right piece at the right time, the whole edifice would collapse in on itself. Max would be fired. She, Lexi, would return in a blaze of glory to lead the company back to greatness.
But it hadn’t happened. Kruger-Brent was like a giant spider. Every time you cut off one of its legs, it grew back. Max was winning the game. The bastard was beating her.
Her temper was not improved when she comprehensively lost the first two rounds of the card game. “This is ridiculous. Whoever heard of a game where you’re not supposed to win?”
Robbie laughed. He adored the furious look on Lexi’s face. It was the same look she’d had at age six when she lost at Chutes and Ladders, and demanded that either he or the nanny agree to a rematch.
“You are supposed to win. But you have to win by losing.”
“Actually, there’s another rule,” said Gabe. “I didn’t tell you about it before because it basically never happens. But if you somehow manage to win all the hearts and the black Mariah-if you get every conceivable penalty card against you, in other words-then you have an option either to halve your own minus points or double your opponents’.”
Lexi was quiet. A few minutes later, her bad mood miraculously evaporated. Scooting across the couch, she wrapped her arms around Gabe and kissed him.
“Come on, then, let’s play. Whose turn is it to deal?”
Robbie watched Gabe’s face light up.
“What was that for?”
“Nothing. I love you, that’s all.”
Later that night, Gabe and Lexi made love for the first time in weeks. Lexi had been so preoccupied with work recently, she’d been neglecting Gabe. But tonight she made up for it, teasing and caressing him till he begged to get inside her, whispering her undying love in his ear. Afterward, Gabe fell into a deep, contented sleep.