Conquest (21 page)
Jesse brushed his hand up and down Evan’s chest. “You did it again today. You didn’t answer my questions about why you quit making music.”
Evan kept his eyes closed. “I never quit making music.” “But you haven’t put out any new albums.”
“That doesn’t mean I quit making music.” Evan took a deep breath and sighed. He pushed himself up and got out of bed, swiping his boxer-briefs off the floor as he headed for the door. “Come on, if it’s so important for you to know.”
Jesse sprang out of bed and hopped into his boxers as quickly as he could to follow Evan. He reached the hall and saw Evan moving down the stairs in the dark. Silver light from the moon streamed through the windows to illuminate Evan’s skin, making Jesse feel like he was chasing a specter through night. He caught up to Evan as he turned right at the bottom of the stairs, going to the opposite end of the mansion from the kitchen and family room.
Evan led him through the dining room to a closed wooden door that peaked high and sharp in Gothic style, carved in arches and lines, making it look as though it’d be at home in any seventeenth century church. When Evan had given him a tour of the house, Jesse remembered this door led to Evan’s office in the tower that rounded the far corner. He’d only gotten a quick peek inside when Evan cracked open the door saying, “And this is my office. All boring, nothing interesting,” and shut it again. Now he became instantly enamored with the space.
He walked into the middle of the circular room. Dark walnut bookshelves curved around the walls and towered above to a second landing. A narrow flight of spiral wooden stairs wound up to the second landing and still more bookshelves, though all the shelves on both levels were bare save for a handful of car magazines and maps of various countries.
Two large, arched stained glass windows overlooked the front lawn, one on the first level, one on the second, and under each was a wide plush seat built into the light gray stone wall. The wall to his right was paneled in dark wood squares carved in relief and climbed to the second level, where the wall continued to the ceiling in the light gray stone. Swords of various designs hung on the wall; an English long sword, a rapier with a sweeping hilt, two Chinese broadswords, three katana, and two wakizashi.
Evan stood in front of the wood paneled wall behind a massive desk of dark mahogany that had a laptop computer, a printer, pads of paper, pens, and empty sheet music all neatly organized. He pressed on the square of one wood panel. It sank in, clicked, then slid to the side, showing a safe behind.
Evan punched a code into the safe and opened the solid steel door. “Yeah, I’m sort of a collector when I see one that strikes me.”
He retrieved a fireproof box from inside the safe and set it on the desk. He opened it, revealing pages and pages of sheet music. He sat down in the black leather chair behind the desk and pushed the box toward Jesse.
Jesse sat on top of the desk and leafed through the songs. “There has to be over fifty songs here. And they’re complete with lyrics, music, everything. If you have all this music, why haven’t you recorded a new album?”
Disbelief dropped Jesse’s jaw. “Haven’t felt like it? How can you say that? What about your fans? Don’t you think you owe it to them—”
Jesse stared at him in silence for a moment. “But, I don’t understand. You don’t want to make albums, but you keep writing music. Why?”
Evan slid the chair between Jesse’s legs and put his hand behind Jesse’s neck, pulling him down for a kiss. He rubbed his other hand up Jesse’s thigh. His fingers slipped in the front hole of Jesse’s boxers and grazed his cock. Though it responded instantly to his touch, Jesse broke the kiss and pulled Evan’s hand away.
He kept Evan’s hand in his and tried to will his steadily rising organ to lay at rest, but it now listened better to Evan than to him, and despite seeing the hard line pushing against Evan’s boxer-briefs, he knew Evan was trying to escape talking by arousing him.
Jesse laid his hand on the side of Evan’s face and bent toward him, keeping his voice gentle, but firm. “I want to know.” He sat back, holding up the sheet music and gesturing at the house. “There has to be a reason for all of this. You disappeared, running all over the world,
alone
. Then you come back and buy this house,
alone
. I know you like your privacy, but all the time I’ve been here I haven’t even heard the phone ring, so you must not have that many friends anymore.”
“I never had that many to begin with,” Evan mumbled. He stared down at the desk. “Do you ever give up when you have your mind set?”
Evan thumbed at the corner of a pad of paper, his voice barely audible in the silent room. “You know, when I first started singing, I never expected it to take off the way it did. Being a one hit wonder was fine in my book. All I wanted was to earn a lot of money really quick to help my dad. When I was sixteen, he was diagnosed with throat cancer, and by the time the doctors caught it, or I should say by the time he went to a doctor, it was already very advanced. He went through treatments and operations to have tumors removed, and finally his whole voice box had to be taken out. Even though he hid his pain, I know it broke his spirit to lose his voice, even if it was only a shadow of what it had been when he was healthy. It was my mother who convinced him to do it, and he did it because there was nothing he wouldn’t do for her.
“I told you earlier today he was from England. When he lived there, he worked steadily as an opera singer in a midsize opera house in London, and he would have made it to the highest level, but he met my mother when she was in London on an exchange student program, and when it came time for her to return to the States, he came with her. Before he could even try to start his career here, my mother got pregnant with me. So he gave it up and spent his whole life working as a mechanic to support us.”
Evan raised his eyes to Jesse, a sad smile on his lips. “He used to call me his little prodigy. He taught me to sing and all he knew about music, and worked twelve to fourteen hours a day to pay for lessons on whatever instrument I decided I wanted to learn next. After I played one for a while and mastered it, I’d get bored and want to switch. There were times when I’d have two instructors at once, and never did he complain that it was too much.”
Evan’s smile faded, and he lowered his gaze again. “When he got sick, I was willing to do anything to save him and decided the best way to do it would be to take advantage of the skills he had helped me hone. I knew that if I could get the right exposure, my voice would be able to take care of the debt from the doctors and him not being able to work, and I thought once I signed with a record label, I’d have enough money where I could send him to the best treatment centers in the country. So when I learned that a huge classic car restoration shop was doing a hot rod Christmas float for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and they needed a singer, I jumped all over it.
“I went down to their shop to audition and instantly got it. When I was on the float, I made sure to fluctuate my range and improv with the crowd so there was no question that what people heard was my real voice. After that, the car shop was flooded with labels looking to sign me, but I went with Phoenix because my dad felt he could trust Greg, and Phoenix actually cared about the product they were putting out. I didn’t care either way so long as I saw a check.” Evan took a deep breath as he finished.
“He was, but all the money in the world can’t keep cancer from spreading. He died right before my first tour started. I guess that’s why I threw myself into music so hard. I felt like it was all I had left. I felt like I had to do it for him.”
Jesse nodded. Evan swiveled his chair toward the safe. He pulled out a photo album and turned back to the desk. He scooted back in the chair, patted it between his legs, and Jesse hopped off the desk to sit in it with him. Evan wrapped one arm around him and laid his chin on Jesse’s shoulder as he opened the cover.
Jesse’s eyes widened at the picture of a breathtaking man with amazingly blue eyes holding a beautiful little boy on his lap while they both played the piano. “You look just like him.”
Jesse chuckled and pointed to a picture of Evan and his father sitting on the floor playing with Matchbox cars. “Look at little baby Evan. You were so cute.”
Jesse looked at a photo on the next page, showing Evan as a toddler held in the arms of a stunning woman with long, dark brunette hair. “Is that your mom?”
“Yeah,” Evan grumbled.
“You don’t sound real pleased about it.”
Evan gazed at the picture of his mother. “Things are tense between us. They have been ever since my father became sick. She’d get so angry at him, as if it was his fault he got cancer, then I’d get pissed at her and we’d end up fighting, but I think there’s a part of her that resented him for never continuing his career and when he got sick, she couldn’t keep it in anymore. When they were young and first met, he had probably seemed exciting to her, being an opera singer. Then he ends up becoming a mechanic to support his family, and I think she looked down on him for that.
“After he passed away and my career was rolling, I never saw her except a Christmas here and there, then three years ago she decided to remarry and begged me to come to the wedding and meet her new man. I went, and never felt so disgusted in my life, watching her hang on him, him on her. The guy’s a notalent hack of a painter and it was so obvious he was only with her because I set her up very nicely financially, as my father asked me to do, and to top it off, the guy’s daughter, my new
stepsister
, was trying in every way possible to let me know she was game for being more than siblings by law. When my mother started cooing how the jackass was her one true love, I left without saying goodbye.
“The last time I talked to her was a couple months ago and she spent the conversation trying to convince me to wire some extra cash to her account because her man had lost his ass, or that is to say, a good portion of the money I gave her, playing stocks. I hung up on her and haven’t talked to her since.”
Evan shrugged. “It’s not a big deal, really. We were never that close. She used to complain all the time about my father spending money on lessons and instruments for me. He always gave her everything she wanted and did whatever she asked, except when it came to me. With me, he did what he thought was best for
me
.”
Evan slowly turned the pages of the album, telling Jesse memories from some of the more humorous photos. Jesse listened and laughed at the stories, all the while feeling that with each memory Evan shared, they were growing closer, and even though Evan hadn’t specifically said why he quit recording music, he felt that all Evan shared with him was a big step.
Evan embraced Jesse with both arms and laid his head against him. “A couple, but I’ll show you another time. I’m feeling pretty beat right now.”
Evan nodded. He tightened his hold on Jesse. “Did you mean what you said earlier today? About wanting to have a real relationship with me?”
“Of course.”
“You really…
like
being with me that much?”
Jesse looked, trying to see Evan’s face, but couldn’t since he
Jesse knew it wasn’t “nothing,” but also knew Evan didn’t want to talk anymore. He patted Evan’s arms. “How about we go back to bed, and I’ll give you a backrub until you fall asleep?”
Jesse hopped up from the chair. He wrapped one arm around Evan’s waist, glancing at the photo album before walking out of the office.
The sound of a piano floated up from downstairs. Jesse bolted upright, instantly awake, and saw the bed empty beside him. He jumped out, snatched his boxers off the floor, hopping toward the door on one foot, then the other as he struggled to put them on and dashed down the stairs. The music grew louder as he neared the bottom. He sprinted across the entrance room, through the family room, and slid to a halt in the doorway of the music room.
Sitting shirtless in his black running pants, Evan’s fingers glided over the keys of the ebony grand in his classically inspired ballad “One More Time” from his fourth album of the same title. The morning sun fell over him, the gold and copper streaks in his hair shone against the backdrop of darker chestnut. Though his eyes were closed, his fingers never touched a wrong note. He took a breath and began to sing,
“
I walk alone,
Still feeling the warmth Of your body close to mine. The seasons change,
Night turns to day,
But I remain the same. My tears chill my skin, Imitations of the ones I caused in your eyes
The night I said goodbye.
Despite all the tears I’ve cried, And all the pain they’ve brought, I’d shed them all one more time To see you smile again.
If seeing me hurt pleases you, Then I’ll cherish this pain forever.
I’ll never ask you to forgive me.
How could I after all I’ve done?
But before my body leaves this world I beg for the gift of your smile one more time.