Chapter 2 - Revelation

Light began to filter through my eyelids. I heard a faint beeping coming from somewhere behind my head as I struggled to open my eyes. It felt like they had been stitched shut with steel thread. The beeping increased as I began to panic.

Where am I?

I was lying on a bed, but it definitely wasn’t a familiar one. The pillow smelled faintly of bleach. My body felt heavy and ... damaged. Like it was one big bruise. My mouth scorched from desiccation. The fabric over my legs was tight, constricting my limbs together. It felt rough against my skin, nothing like the thousand thread count sheets at Jason’s place.

Jason ...

I sighed.

“Kate?”

My breath caught in my throat as my vocal cords strained to vibrate once again.

Ouch.

I inclined my head toward the direction of the voice.

“Kate, are you awake? Can you hear me?”

Sam.

I tried to raise my hand to my throat in a vain attempt to signal that I needed water — or a new set of lungs, for that matter — but something pulled at my skin and sent shooting pains all the way to my elbow. All I could manage was a moan.

I felt someone lean against the left side of the bed. Fingertips touched my wrist.

“Kate, it’s me, Sam. Are you all right? Do you need anything?”

His face had been close to mine; I could feel his warm breath.

I moaned again and forced my eyes open. I blinked and tried to focus; the light was harsh, unnatural.

Sam was holding a glass of water with a bendy straw in front of my face. He moved the straw to my lips and I sucked on it gratefully. I felt like I hadn’t had anything to drink in years.

"I'll be back in just a minute," Sam said.

I looked around the room as he left, taking in the muted colors and generic watercolor paintings. A muted television was mounted to the wall. There was a dry-erase board below it, but without my contacts, I couldn’t read it. A chair sat below the window to my right. The curtains were drawn, so I couldn’t tell if it was day or night. I looked at my hand, where the pain had started to subside. There was a tube sticking out of it, held in place by white medical tape.

An IV? I was in the hospital.

The smell of sick hit me. I felt dizzy. I wanted to cry, but I remembered I wasn’t alone. Sam was here. Why?

Sam Balfour had been my boss for more than six years now. He had left a PR job in Los Angeles — the West Coast wasn’t for him anymore, he claimed, adding that he couldn’t drink another shot of wheatgrass without fearing he would projectile vomit it all over his client — when the president and co-owner of Carson-Lawless, Mitchell Carson, called and offered him a position at the New York office and a client list that included two Oscar winners and a rising TV star (who went on, thanks to Sam, to win four Emmys that fall). Sam was on the next flight to New York, and he never looked back.

Sam and I started at Carson-Lawless on the same day. We quickly discovered our shared love of Hawaiian pizza, reality television, Riesling, laughing at botched plastic surgery, and reading harlequin novels (though he would never admit the last, even under threat of castration).
Sam was rather successful at the firm, and Mitchell worshipped the ground he walked on. So it wasn’t a surprise when after only a few months it was announced that Sam would be running the New York office. I was secretly thrilled — Sam had become my best friend, but I was starting to see him in a different light.

We went out to celebrate the night the big news was announced, and after five too many glasses of wine, he insisted on seeing me home. We stumbled into my apartment — at least, I did, as I was much more inebriated than he was — and when I gave him the “grand tour,” I pushed him onto my bed and proceeded to unbutton my top. He didn’t protest until I climbed on top of him and kissed him forcefully.

He pushed me away and made up some lame excuse about having an early meeting and left. I took a hot shower and tried to scrub the rejection off of every inch of my skin. It was no use.

We never talked about it again, but I thought about it all the time. Sam wasn’t oblivious, either. While I pretended I didn’t remember any of what happened that night, I still daydreamed constantly, and he caught me on more than one occasion. I probably should have picked a better time than our weekly one-on-one meeting to stare off into space and imagine the two of us walking around Central Park holding hands ... or kissing ... or doing other things that required a lot of touching and very little talking. But Sam wasn’t interested in any of that with me, and that fact tore me apart inside.

Until I met Jason.

Jason was the most beautiful creature that had ever walked the earth. And he had been mine.

That’s right, I reminded myself. Jason was perfect, and you lost him.

I cringed at the thought of our last conversation. I didn’t want it running through my head, not right now. I was already feeling the pain; I must have been drugged up on something, and it was beginning to wear off.

Sam entered the room again. He looked upset, his face pale and drawn.

“Your mother is in the waiting area,” he said quietly. “George is with her.”

“Who’s George?” I asked, beginning to wonder who else might be sitting around, waiting for me to wake up.

“He’s the one who carried you to the emergency room.”

“Oh.” I racked my brain for even the briefest flash of a memory to explain how I ended up here, but came up with nothing.

“Kate, do you remember anything that happened?”

“Not really ... but please, not now.”

“Well, I think it would be best—”

I looked up at him. The color had drained from his face and his mouth had dropped open. My eyes followed his wide-eyed gaze to the door.

Jason was standing in the doorway, holding a bouquet of flowers. They were peonies — my favorite.

Jason? Impossible.

“Jason?” Sam echoed my thought. He looked confused.

Crap. Sam didn’t know about Jason.

No one did, for that matter. I was strictly forbidden from discussing our relationship for two reasons. Two very important reasons.

The first and most significant reason being that Jason Lawless had been unceremoniously ousted from Carson-Lawless a few months ago, and he was currently embroiled in a cutthroat lawsuit for control of the company.

Sure, Mitchell’s name was first on the stationery, but Jason was the one who built the company, piece by painstaking piece, to what it was today. Mitchell may have invested more capital (only slightly), but Jason’s investment meant much more — he had devoted more time, sweat and, yes, tears, to that place than anyone could imagine.

His life was Carson-Lawless, and his life had ended the day Mitchell staged a coup.

Mitchell managed to convince Jason’s most famous clients that Jason was the culprit behind a recent increase — huge increase, actually — in their negative publicity, even going so far as to provide “proof.” Proof that was, of course, created by Mitchell himself. But Mitchell had access to countless resources — and Jason had no counter “proof.”

Once it was announced that these clients would be seeking new representation, Mitchell convinced the staff at Carson-Lawless to ally with him, leaving Jason with no clients, no staff, and, more importantly, no credibility.

The second reason I wasn’t allowed to say anything is because I was still employed by Carson-Lawless. We were strictly forbidden from making any contact with Jason Lawless, so if anyone there knew I was involved with him, I would lose my job, along with the client list I had built over my six years with the firm. The client list that, as of December first, included Jackson Cassius — New York’s “it” guy. Jason and I both knew that losing Jackson would be a huge loss — he had connections. The kind of connections that take a lifetime to forge. And he insisted that he would only work with the firm if I was the one representing him. He actually demanded it.

But these reasons didn’t mean anything now. Jason had left me. And try as I might, I could not win him back. He had avoided my phone calls for weeks. My e-mails to him went unread, and I could only assume he’d trashed my letters without even opening them. I even went so far as to call his parents for two weeks straight, only to learn they were on a relief aid trip in Africa and wouldn’t be back for a few months. I winced as I pictured them coming home to an answering machine full of my sobs.

I looked back at Sam. He was still wearing a mask of bewilderment. I could tell he was trying to put the pieces together in his head. He looked at me.

“Kate, why is Jason here?”

I shrugged, but my face told a different story. I was so happy to see him, I couldn’t hide it in the slightest. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t wondering the same exact thing, so when I said, “Ummm ... I have no idea,” it wasn’t exactly a lie.

Suddenly I heard one of the nurses in the hallway.

“Sir, excuse me! That thing is not allowed in here!”

“The hell it isn’t!” a man bellowed.

I could hear heavy footsteps getting closer, and soon they were outside my door.

A man entered the room, and as I took in his attire, I felt like I was punched in the gut as the memory flooded back to me. He was still wearing a tutu, and he was carrying the snake.

“George,” I whispered.

“George?” Jason asked. “Who’s George?”

I didn’t respond.

“I am,” George said. He looked at Jason. “I saved Kate.”

“Oh,” said Jason. He gave George an appraising look and snorted.

“Kate, why is Jason here?” Sam asked again. He was angry now. Fuming, actually. I could see his nostrils flaring. I stifled a laugh as I pictured smoke coming out of nose.

I looked at Jason, desperation in my eyes now. What was I supposed to say?

“Sam, I’m just here to check on a friend.”

Yeah, like that’s believable.

We were so careful not to be seen in public together, and I was sure I hadn’t given Sam even the tiniest clue about our relationship. For all he knew, I had only met Jason once or twice in passing, and we hadn’t exchanged more than a polite “hello” those few times.

Sam’s disbelief was not surprising, but his response was a slap in the face.

“There’s no use hiding it anymore,” he said to Jason. He looked down at me again. “Kate, I can’t believe this. I hope you have a plan, because you’re going to be fired. Mitchell is in the waiting room.”

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