Chapter Thirty-Seven

Patrick groaned. His eyelids were glued together. Had he gotten himself into another fight? Everything was foggy, like he had been drinking heavily, passed out, and then woke up still drunk. Not to mention he ached everywhere. What had happened? He would kill for a glass of water, even just a sip.

He attempted to open an eye, found it too painful and stiff, groaned again. Wait, why couldn’t he put his hands on his face? His arms stretched, his shoulders tense. And cold…

Patrick tugged experimentally, then shocked himself fully awake. Handcuffs?

“Oh good, you’re up,” said a cheerful voice. A cloud of too-strong tuberose engulfed him, and the mattress beside him sank.

Patrick whipped his head around, then regretted it immediately because of the throb in his temples.

“Kim?” he whispered, his voice full of gravel and fatigue. “Kim? What the fuck is this?” He tugged again at the handcuffs.

Kim giggled, lay down beside him, and rested her head on his chest. Seriously, had she bathed in the perfume? Patrick tried not to gag. “Oh, my God, Patrick.” She sighed contentedly. “I can’t tell you how long I’ve waited for this.”

The heat of his anger suddenly iced into fear. “What?”

She lifted her head and tilted it toward him coquettishly. “Oh, Patrick, like you haven’t known!” She ran one hand down his chest, which he noted was now bare. What had happened to the shirt he had worn to the gym? He checked quickly, noted that at least he still had his shorts in place. He had loved that shirt, damn it. He and Anita had picked it out in Tokyo.

“Seriously, Kim, just let me go.” His impassioned plea would probably have benefited from some water.

She sneered at that, her face turning on a dime from blushing rose to Annie Wilkes. “Why?” She thrust a hand against his bruised ribs and pressed hard, like squeezing water out of a zucchini. Pain lancinated through him. “So you can run back to your little blonde whore?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Patrick gasped. The pain, oh my fucking God, the pain. “Please, can I just have some water?”

“Poor baby!” The insipid debutante had returned, all solicitous and cooing. She slid off the bed, grabbed a bottle of water, and inserted a straw. “Here, baby.” She held the straw out for him, and despite his misgivings, he drank as much as he could tolerate. Poisoning seemed better than thirst. “Baby needs to drink.”

Gross. “What did you do to me?” At least his voice was better, buoyed by the water. He tested the handcuffs as quietly as he could.

Kim laughed, tossing the long blonde ponytail behind her shoulder. She had changed into a bright-yellow sundress with little bows on the shoulders, and she tucked her bare feet underneath her as she perched next to him on the bed. “Sweet, silly Patrick,” she cooed, running her finger down his cheek. “I’m saving you.”

“Saving me from what?” Patrick hated the thrill of desperation in his voice. He tugged again at the handcuffs. The last time he had used them, they had been covered in neon pink marabou, and the experience had been far more pleasant. Less fraught with peril. “Kim, I have to get back. I have to compete tonight.”

A storm crossed her features, darkening them. She leapt from the bed and crossed her arms over her chest. “Back to her?” Her eyes spat fire. “Why? Because she’s so pretty and smart. All the boys like her.” She turned on her bare feet, stomped over to an open suitcase, and started shuffling things around.

Had he stumbled into a horror movie after he had left the gym? Patrick needed a different strategy, needed to get his mind working properly. Where was his phone? Probably useless since he couldn’t use his hands, but still…

She was still throwing items of clothing, lingerie, black rubber tubing on the floor from her bag of crazy.

Patrick cleared his throat. “Kim?” She whipped around, her loam-colored eyes now murderous. “I’m sorry, Kim.” The tension visibly released from her body. “Look, I know you’re a really nice person.” She approached the bed again, quietly this time. “I’m just, um, having trouble understanding why you’ve tied me up.”

She had calmed. She climbed onto the bed beside him again, put a hand on his cheek. “Isn’t it obvious?” She bent close to him and brushed her lips gently against his. “I’m in love with you.”

****

“Stop jiggling the table.” Rodrigo rolled his eyes.

She stilled the rhythmic tapping of her knee with her hand.

“What’s with you today? I would have thought last night’s showcase success would have calmed your nerves, not made you into a knotty ball of them.” Rodrigo had a low tolerance for frailty.

Patrick still hadn’t called, and she had run out of excuses to leave the ballroom to check her phone. “I don’t know. I just feel like something’s wrong.”

The announcer called out a new heat, and Rodrigo smirked. “The only thing wrong is that you and your students have been mopping the floor with mine. And this program is going too quickly.” He grimaced. “At least we should be able to break early for lunch, right?”

It had been nearly five hours since she had argued with Patrick. Five hours was enough to cool off, right? Her leg resumed its rhythmic tapping.

She noticed Rodrigo staring at her closely. “What?” she barked. A few of her students were seated at the table near them, watching the performances and chatting, but they all turned to stare at her. “Sorry.” She needed to get a grip on herself. This was not the professional behavior she needed to display.

Anita picked up her phone and strode quickly out of the ballroom. One more call, that was all she needed. Just one more call. Patrick couldn’t avoid her forever.

“Anita, wait!”

She turned to see Rodrigo following closely behind her. He put his arms over his chest and stared at her. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

“Nothing.” She fixed a small wrinkle on the plain black dress she wore for pro/am competition. She wished she could talk to her mom, or even her dad. But they wouldn’t understand. Her mom would tell her she was being an idiot, and she should just be with Patrick, like it was an easy decision. Her dad would probably tell her this never would have happened if she had gone to medical school. “I just, um, I just haven’t been able to reach Patrick, that’s all.”

Rodrigo’s face softened. Though he had at least a couple of decades on her, he had few wrinkles to speak of, likely due to his fondness for retinol and sunscreen. But despite his affected sneer, his eyes had always been kind. It was why Anita had hired him.

“Look, Anita.” He placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Patrick is the very definition of a good man. He is not going to leave you high and dry.”

“But, I—” Unbidden, the tears welled in her eyes. She couldn’t do this, not now. She most definitely did not have time to fix massive mascara mistakes. “You don’t know, Rodrigo. I—I said some things to him.”

“You two have been friends since you were teenagers. You’ve never fought before?”

“Not like this.” Anita crossed her arms over her chest, the memory of Patrick’s heartbroken and bruised face scarred into her memory.

“He cares a lot about you. And he is definitely not the type to run from his commitments. So give him a little time.” He gestured back toward the main ballroom. “After all, the professional competition doesn’t start until six, right? And that’s only if things run on time, which we know they never do.”

He smiled and then, clearly bored by the exchange, reentered the ballroom.

Anita stayed, arms still crossed protectively over her chest, while she chewed on her bottom lip.

Rodrigo was right. That in itself was a bit of a miracle. Patrick would not run away from a promise. But if that were the case, where was he? Why hadn’t he at least returned her text or John’s call?

She saw a sudden stream of people exiting the ballroom, heard snatches of conversation. Early lunch break.

Her heart clenched. Not all these people, not the hustling and schmoozing. There was only one face she wanted to see.

Patrick would help her if she was in trouble. She owed him the same courtesy.

****

“What?”

Kim had tried kissing him again, tried pressing his mouth open with her tongue, but had found it too dry. Now she was busying herself getting him a new bottle of water and humming to herself.

“Patrick! Don’t be so shy. I know you’ve noticed it. There’s just this—feeling when we’re together.”

Revulsion? Anger? Happy ignorance? He kept his mouth shut. She had the look of a kettle about to boil over.

Kim brought him the water and held the straw to his lips. “I don’t think you ever noticed me back then. I didn’t look like this. I was like thirty pounds heavier.” She pulled one hand through the long blonde ponytail. “Extensions and dye. It’s not really my color, I think, but I know you like it. But even back in Irish History, I knew. I knew that you were the one for me.”

Now he did gag. “Irish History? You went to Villanova?”

She giggled with delight, kissed his cheek, and pulled away the water bottle. “You do remember! I tried joining the ballroom dance club, but I wasn’t very good, and it hurt my back. You were so busy touring with Anita and Gabriella and all of them, you never really noticed me.” Kim looked at him shyly. “Why would you? I had to become what you wanted, I knew that. Gabriella was so pretty, but God, she was so full of herself.”

“Yeah.” Patrick wracked his brain. Gabriella had been his partner for two years while they were at Villanova. She had been an engineering student and a wonderful dancer, better at Standard than Latin, from an Italian family in Rochester, New York. He had broken up with her because he thought she was too paranoid. She kept telling him someone was taking things from her, just little things, but they were noticeable. A hair clip, a shoe brush, the calculator she used for her advanced calculus courses. The showcase gown Anita had worn.

Pieces of a puzzle clicked into place in his brain. Shit. He was going to die here.

“Anyway, I went to all the competitions to cheer you on. And you were so wonderful. So strong and graceful. And kind. I’d never met anyone like you. But it was just so difficult to talk to you!” Right. No one could ever be introduced in a ballroom. Kim had positioned herself over him, her arms close together to enhance her cleavage and her hands on his chest. He had an almost uncontainable desire to scream, “Get off!”

“I’m sorry,” he managed. Was he still to be held responsible for how he acted in college? His mother’s voice rang in his ear: never stop being a gentleman. Oops.

“And then I lost track of you for a while.” A shadow crossed her features, and she was gone again, reliving some past Patrick had no desire to know. “You were off doing those international competitions with Eva. I would watch them when they were on TV, but I never had the money for travel.” She turned away from him on the bed. He wondered if she wanted him to soothe her somehow, but then again, his hands were manacled to the bedposts. So, fat chance. “I figured you had moved on, and I had missed my chance.”

“What did you do then?” He heard a phone vibrating somewhere in the room, and his heart leapt. Maybe he could tell her he had to go to the bathroom. Anything to get unshackled. Then maybe he could find his phone or call John or security or—something.

“I was around, odd jobs and such.” The faraway look in her eyes reminded him of a true crime documentary he had seen once, where the sociopathic female protagonist gaslit her competition before beating them to a bloody pulp. “I missed you so much, though.” Her face brightened infinitesimally. “Then I saw you were coming home, to Lewis. You were working with Anita and started your website, which of course I followed from your very first post.” Patrick could barely remember his first Philly Proud blog post; it had the veil of something unreal and unfinished, like a picture you drew as a child that you later found as an adult. “You had just been to a Phillies game, and you gave the most wonderful account of it!” She clasped her hands together in reverie. “So I knew it was time to come home. Just a matter of time before I’d find my way back to you. I was willing to wait. Of course, Nikita was very easy to convince—”

“Wait, Nikita?” A light dawned in his memory. Good God, he was an idiot. “Chris. You’re Chris, her assistant.”

Kim whirled in delight, whooping, and kissed him again on the lips. Her breath smelled like diet cola and strawberry lip gloss. “You are so wonderful! I knew you would figure it out, even though I changed my hair and I was wearing color contacts at the time. I called it my Clark Kent disguise. I wasn’t sure how to get you to see me. You had retired from dancing. But then I saw your articles in the Inquirer.” Her features settled into a self-satisfied expression. “It was so easy to convince Nikita to do an interview with you. She was always such a vain person.”

Patrick could remember the quiet assistant talking with him on the phone, trying to joke with him as she set the interview particulars, standing in the back of the room with her clipboard and phone clutched to her dress.

“I didn’t quite figure how much she would like you,” Kim now said quietly. “I should have. How could she not want you? She kept asking me to call you back, arrange a drinks meeting, book a hotel.” She spat out the last word. “Every word was like a dagger in my heart. Here you were, finally, right in front of me. And Nikita wanted to take you away and keep you for herself.”

Patrick’s stomach tautened, and his arms stilled in the handcuffs. He did not know what to say, because what did someone say to his kidnapper who had chained him to the bed? Uh oh.

“Fucking bitch!” Her entire face tightened into the scream. “She never cared about anyone else. She never really cared about you. She saw that I liked you, and she wanted to take you from me.” She did not lose the hard mask as she clipped, “She got what she deserved.”

Damn it, he was a grown man, and he was about to wet his pants. Of all the people the ballroom community had debated as potential murderers, no one had really considered Chris. Chris had always seemed an asexual being, a humanoid drone, plain and sinking into the wallpaper. And then she had disappeared, lost to the investigation, forgotten to all who had ostensibly known her. Patrick wracked his brain, tried to remember conversations, events, anything that could link Chris to the woman currently in front of him. Normally he was better at remembering faces.

Now, reminiscing through her lens, Patrick could see how she had tried to show him her feelings. There had been the innocuous chit chat on the phone, the way she always had his Americano on hand, how she had tried to keep him by her desk instead of buzzing him straight through to his interview. Mentally, he kicked himself for just assuming this attention was routine. He was not just an idiot, he was a vain idiot.

“Well, anyway.” Kim literally shook away the more intense veneer from her features. “After Nikita died, you disappeared, and I couldn’t figure out where you’d gone. It was difficult to find a new boss, someone I knew you would be drawn to. A conduit.” Her eyes snapped to his. “That’s what I needed. And then I found Melanie Templeton. It was almost too easy. She was so lonely, she just wanted to be adored.” Kim sneered again. “But she seemed like just the kind of person you would want. Blonde, statuesque, controlling. So I became her. And then her dickhead husband tries to tell me to leave her alone? I wasn’t doing anything. I was just being her friend.” Kim spat the words, lost in her reverie. “I had to clear my path back to you.” Her voice iced over. “And then I saw you with that bitch.”

“Anita?”

“Don’t you dare speak her name! She doesn’t deserve you, doesn’t want you.” Kim rubbed her hands up his sides, her fingertips pressing into the bruised muscles.

“You left the lighter?” Patrick remembered the small tchotchke with the engraved Wildcat he had found outside the studio, the night he and Anita had kissed.

“Yes! I was so pleased you had found it. I thought for sure you might recognize me then, little Christina Blake.” Her features clouded. “But you didn’t.”

“Did you poison Anita?” Maybe he could somehow wiggle his wrists from their binding. Nope. Metal handcuffs were a bitch.

“She deserved it.” Kim stared at him with eyes that had turned black. Ice chilled Patrick’s spine.

“Why are you telling me all of this?” This never ended well for guys like him.

Kim grinned widely and clasped her hands together in a ludicrous romantic gesture.

“Patrick!” She curled up again beside him on the bed, nestled her head into the angle of his shoulder. “Oh, my darling, darling, sweet, sweet Patrick.” She pressed her cold lips to his cheek. “I’m telling you because I love you. We are going to be so happy together.”

Fuck.