Eighteen
My music.I still have my music.“Okay, guys. From the top again.”
Groans sounded around him. “We’ve already done it six times.” The whine came from Colton’s direction.
“And we’ll keep on going until we get it right. We’ve only got one more practice until our debut.” “A Matter of When”rocked in Seb’s music room. Why couldn’t Henri reproduce the effect here?Maybe because every time you sing you hesitate, waiting for the Italian echo?
“This old-timer needs a nap.” Jake yawned.
“That’s enough for now,” a disembodied voice announced over the speakers. Lucas waved from his vantage point in the unused control booth. “Henri, I need to talk to you.”
Yeah. Lucas, the man who’d introduced him to Seb to begin with. The bastard had a lot to answer for.
“See you later.” Tessa led the charge out of the room, followed closely by Colton and Jake. Michael took time to pack up Sylvia before joining the other traitors in their mad dash for freedom. The man might be a little too attached to his guitar, explaining why he hadn’t snagged a recent girlfriend. Jake didn’t have issues getting dates—the fresh marks on his neck said so.
Lucas stepped into the room, lightly slapping a rolled-up magazine against his palm. Another tabloid, no doubt. Spewing whatever venom sold copies. “When was the last time you talked to Sebastian?”
“About a week ago. Why?”And no, he wasn’t disclosing the circumstances. Lucas owed him an apology about the “don’t hurt him” thing. It’s Seb he should have talked to.
“This.” Lucas unrolled the magazine and opened to the last page. “Othello” topped the first column.
Henri perused the article, hunting Sebastian’s name, but found no mention. “Why isn’t he listed? Wasn’t he supposed to play at every venue?” No one had actually explained how opera touring companies operated; Henri assumed a role to be like a band member. You occasionally shared the spotlight with someone else but never gave your place away.
“He’s not mentioned because he dropped out. After a certainrock starmade an appearance backstage.” Gruffness reared its ugly head into full blown rage. “Exactly what were you doing in Akron?”
“Jeez, dude, chill! I wanted to hear him sing. It’s a free country. So what if I wanted to take a friend to dinner?”
“But he’s not just a friend, now, is he?” The low, simmering growl had Henri ready to shout for help. Lucas seemed ready to blow a gasket, and for the life of him, Henri couldn’t figure out why.
“You fucked him.” It wasn’t a question.
And none of Lucas’s damned business. “Sebastian and I are both grown men. What we choose to do with our own time isn’t your concern.” Henri edged toward the door.
“Listen….” Lucas moved so fast he closed the distance one minute and had Henri pinned to the wall the next. “I sent you to him hoping you’d help each other out, but notthatway. He’d teach you how to make the most use of your God-given talents, you’d teach him to stand up for himself and give him the means to break free of that vulture. If I’d known you were gay, I’d never have sent you to him.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t you get it? He’s not like you. He can’t sleep with someone and walk away the next morning. You? You’re free to do anything you want. Even squandering money like you’ve done the past five years, you lack for nothing. Homes, cars, men, women. And it comes easy to you.” Lucas dragged a hand through his sparse hair. “You take everything for granted and earn more in a year than Sebastian can in ten. And yet every waking moment he devotes to his craft.”
This wasn’t news. Sebastian had said similar things. “And I bought a ticket to hear him perform. How am I hurting him?”
Lucas snatched the magazine from Henri’s fingers and hurled it to the floor. “In opera, it takes money to make money. The guy only makes about $55,000 a year. Do you have any idea how much he pays for acting and dance lessons? How much it costs to travel to auditions? Do you?”
“It’s not like he’s hurting,” Henri countered. “He’s got a huge house—”
“And not one damned thing to call his own.” Lucas blew out his breath in a huff. “His mother was much like Seb—spending every dime to make the big time, only worse—she liked to pretend she’d already arrived. She left a world of debt behind when she died. Debt a struggling tenor couldn’t pay.”
“Why didn’t he sell the house?” A question Sebastian had nearly ripped him a new asshole for asking.
“He did, to Charles, his patron. After Annette’s death I offered to help him, with what little I could. I hadn’t seen him since he was small. Annette and I weren’t on speaking terms for a while.” The anger seemed to drain from Lucas. “I went to visit her in the hospital—I refused to take no for an answer. She told me everything. How Seb’s new patron promised to take care of him. She put a lot of stock in a man she hardly knew.”
A tangled web of lies hung in the air, things said before not matching Lucas’s current speech. “You said you were a family friend and had been watching over Seb his whole life.”
Lucas paced to the far side of the room to contemplate Tessa’s drum set. “I have. From a distance. That’s the way Annette wanted things. And I always gave her what she wanted. Right now I’d like to go back in time, though, and make a few changes.”
He glanced back over his shoulder. There was pain in his eyes, and pleading, when he focused on Henri. “Regardless of how she went about it, she truly did want only the best for her son. I don’t think she meant for him to wind up in involuntary servitude to a man as manipulative as Charles. He promises the moon and takes all of it away for minor infractions to rules no human can live by.”
“I don’t follow you. He and Sebastian are lovers.” The bitterness still burned. When Henri closed his eyes visions of Charles and Sebastian filled his mind.
