Fearless: Complicated Creatures Part Three (21 page)

“I feel like I usually feel these days.”

“And that would be?”

“Restless,” he answered curtly.

And that restlessness only continued to ratchet higher with each passing day. It didn’t seem to matter how preoccupied he was with work or his family. There was an uneasiness that kept him on edge, like he was poised for flight at any moment.

“Have you been in therapy before rehab, Jack?”

“Sure,” he answered easily. “Boxing.”

Carmichael laughed lightly. “You’re standing at my window like you want to leap out of it just to get out of here.”

Jack said nothing. He wasn’t wrong.

“So did you feel that way before?” his therapist asked from behind him. “Restless, that is.”

Jack turned. “Before what?”

“Before you relapsed,” Carmichael clarified. “Did you feel restless?”

It was on the tip of his tongue to deny it, but now Jack considered the question.

Had he?

His mind retraced its steps, thinking about how he’d felt before things had gone pear-shaped, how he’d felt in the months even before Samantha had ever darkened his doorway. Jack considered the work he’d been doing, the women he’d been seeing.

“I suppose in a way, yes,” he said, moving away from the windows. “I’ve always been active. I had a hard time sitting still growing up.” He scratched his cheek. “Add to that the insomnia, and I’ve never been very good at being patient,” he admitted wryly.

“So restlessness is a natural state for you?”

He shrugged. “I suppose to some extent.”

“Is that why you used?” Carmichael asked bluntly, pinning him with his blue eyes.

Jack sighed, fiddled with his cuff link in a poorly-disguised attempt to gauge how much time he had left in the session. It should be easier to talk about by now. God knew, he’d been telling the same story for months. But if he was even a little honest, the shame that blanketed him since London hadn’t totally abated—no matter how many times he was told he had a chronic, relapsing biological disease. It didn’t matter how often he’d been told his impulses with drugs were involuntary compulsions, the result of chemical and physiological urges that hampered his ability to resist his own intense cravings. But any way Jack looked at it, the truth was he was just an addict, and every day was a struggle to regain control, dignity, and some kind of relief.

“I tell myself it all started in good fun. A bit of this and that, but the truth was, I always more than liked it,” he found himself saying. “I
needed
it—to take the edge off; to relax, to sleep, to numb out, to feel good. Whatever.” Jack shook his head. “I did everything but inject, because I thought if I didn’t do that, I wasn’t an addict, and what I did wasn’t a problem.”

“It’s not uncommon to play games with ourselves,” Carmichael pointed out, resting his chin on his hand. “To set limits that we think help confine the problem to a narrow set of parameters so we believe we still have some kind of control over it.”

And there it was
. The constant reminder that Jack didn’t have any control. Not really. To a man who had prided himself on building a business worth billions, who had only ever done what he wanted his entire life, that reality was a vicious punch to the gut. Besides everything he’d accomplished, all the money he was worth, and all the power he wielded—Jack had been leveled by his own lack of control, his own lack of discipline.

“I’d like to suggest something to you,” Dr. Carmichael continued. “Something I hope you will consider.”

Jack met his frank gaze. “Alright—what?”

“You’re here because you have an addiction to narcotics, yes—but I’d like to suggest that the issue might be larger than your biochemistry.” His therapist paused, steepling his fingers. “Have you considered that your restlessness might have more to do with an addiction to the euphoria of monumental wins with incredibly high stakes?”

“You’re talking to me as if I’m some sort of adrenaline junkie.” Jack frowned. “You don’t see me hurling myself out of planes or swimming with sharks, do you?”

“
Aren’t
you an adrenaline junkie, Jack?” Carmichael pushed back reasonably, his head cocked. “What do you do with your time? Your business is leveraging high-stakes buy-outs of multi-billion-dollar enterprises, and you also gamble the equivalent of most people’s mortgages playing poker to unwind,” he pointed out. “You have impromptu boxing matches with professional fighters to work out, and you’ve made a hobby of chasing some of the most glamorous, high-profile women in the world. If those aren’t prime examples of your taste for the high wire,” he shrugged, “Then, Jack—I don’t know what is.”

“Are you suggesting drugs are the least of my problems?” Jack quipped.

“I’m suggesting we look at the bigger picture related to your personality and personal preferences as the source of the behavior.”

Jack shrugged. “I think it’s much more simple. I like making money, spending money, fighting, and fucking. That makes me a pretty typical heterosexual man, don’t you think?”

Carmichael chuckled. “That’s a vast oversimplification, Jack—and you know it. You’re several tax brackets away from the average Joe, and the last time I checked, the typical heterosexual man doesn’t get to date movie stars and swimsuit models in the same year.”

Jack shrugged again. So he’d had a proclivity for playing with fire long before Samantha came along. He lived life at the extreme edges—but something about being with her transcended all those previous exhilarations, making them feel diminutive and inconsequential. What could be enough after her? What high as thrilling?
Christ
, he was in trouble.

“Getting high gives you temporary relief from the constant restlessness you struggle with, Jack.”

“You’re saying I used one addiction to manage another?” Jack asked, looking at him.

“Is that so crazy?” Carmichael responded amiably. “What you really seem to jones for is the euphoric spikes associated with taking
and winning
incredible, outlandish gambles,” he continued. “Your relationship with Samantha Wyatt for example. Your feelings for her were the highest emotional stakes you’d ever played. Pursuing her became the ultimate high—an intoxicating and exhilarating gambit. And when you lost, you upped the stakes by risking your company, your fortune.”

“I was also high when I made those decisions,” Jack pointed out.

“Yes, because you were seeking psychological and emotional relief, where you couldn’t have one through a relationship with the one person you wanted above all others. The drugs were an easy fallback. Instantaneous feel-good.”

Jack considered Carmichael’s points carefully before he admitted, “It wasn’t enough though.”

“Nothing outside of you will ever be enough, Jack,” Carmichael replied. “That’s the wisdom of the ages, and yet we always fail to see it. It’s so much easier to address the void with other people, things, and circumstances. We’re all looking for quick fixes all the time—even as our dissatisfaction continues to grow.” He paused. “What else did you do when you realized Samantha was gone? Do you recall?”

Jack’s mouth thinned to a hard line. He remembered enough of those black days. “I tried to fuck her out of my system.”

Carmichael nodded. “How did sleeping with other people make you feel?”

Jack looked out the window.

“Lonely.”

Carmichael waited.

“I don’t want anyone else, alright?” Jack admitted, rubbing a hand over his face. “Everyone I’ve slept with since is just a weak substitute. She’s inside me now.” He unconsciously touched the strange, empty ache in his chest.

“Nothing outside of you will ever be enough,”
Carmichael had said. But wasn’t having Samantha back enough? Wasn’t having a life with her beside him the only thing he wanted that he couldn’t have?

“Jack, it’s no surprise everyone else feels like a weak substitute. You’ve led a charmed life, by your own admission. You rule and strategize from a throne, and yet you picked a woman who lives at the very epicenter of danger.”

“I never said I was sane, Doctor.” Jack slanted him a look.

Carmichael laughed. “You know, there’s an old Irish saying my father was fond of: Men either find themselves in God, or they lose themselves in women.”

He frowned. “That sounds…painfully accurate.”

“Maybe.” Carmichael shrugged. “Maybe not. I’d like to suggest that you may have found yourself in this particular instance, Jack. You’ve been safe and protected all your life, controlling and directing the scenes—taking calculated risks. Samantha doesn’t just take risks—she
is
the risk,” he pointed out astutely. “She’s the unexpected thing you yearn for.”

“Everybody’s got a gateway,” he remarked, searching for levity though his heart felt heavy.

Carmichael considered Jack a moment before speaking. “Jack, a
femme fatale
is a woman who is utterly in charge of her own sexuality, who’d take charge of yours as well. What is more existentially exciting to a man at loose ends in his life than a woman who represents an archetype of dangerous, compromising, and otherwise deadly situations? Nice try, but Samantha’s not a gateway—I’d wager she represents the most powerful high you’ve ever encountered. Ask yourself, Jack: Are you in love with Samantha because of who she is? Or is she just the ideal personification of your favorite fix?”

March—Evening

Tel Aviv, Israel

R O X A N N E

R
oxanne was waiting
for Avi in his apartment when he arrived home the next evening, her legs kicked up on his coffee table as she drank one of his fine Bordeaux’s from a hand-blown wine glass.

The moment he swung open his door and spotted her, he sighed, tossing his keys onto the counter. “That was a new lock,
neshama
.”

“Seriously?” she replied, sipping the wine. “I broke in here faster than last time. You’ve got to up your game, Avi.”

“Or I need to associate with less women with a skill for B&E,” he countered, loosening his tie as he approached. He set his briefcase down on the sofa before taking a seat beside her.

“I see you helped yourself to my wine collection,” he drawled, extending an arm over the back of the sofa.

“Oh, I did,” Rox winked, holding up the glass. “I don’t know anything about wine, but this is some good shit, Avi. You know your stuff.”

“
Le vin est le professeur du goût, le libérateur de l’esprit et l’illuminateur de l’intelligence
,” he replied smoothly, plucking the glass from her fingers and taking a sip himself.

It was an intimate move, and she rather liked it.

“The extent of my French is how to say I don’t speak French,” she told him.

“It’s a quote from the poet, Paul Claudel,” he told her, holding the empty glass out. “It means, ‘Wine teaches taste, frees the spirit, and illuminates ones intelligence.’”

“Sounds about right,” she agreed, pouring another measure from the bottle of Château Latour sitting on the table. He followed her with his eyes as she set the bottle back down next to her gun, a compact and very easy-to-conceal Walther CCP 9mm she’d picked up earlier in the day from a guy who’d tried and failed to mug her. Poor bastard. Now he was laid up with a broken arm and she had a shiny new toy.

Avi slowly reached into his suit jacket, pulling a standard-issue Mossad .22 LRS pistol from the holster. He laid his gun down on the coffee table, next to hers. It was a striking visual: two compact up-close-and-
very
-personal lethal weapons, sitting side-by-side next to a thousand-dollar bottle of wine. Another strangely intimate move Rox liked more than she cared to admit.

Avi sat back on the sofa, stretching his arm across the back as she sipped the wine, his fingers twining in the tips of the dark auburn tresses of her wig. Rox was dressed rather dramatically this evening. She had on black leather pants and a lacy black top with peekaboo glimpses at the La Perla lingerie she wore underneath. Her makeup was sultry, eyes lined dark with kohl, her lips painted a deep shade of red. Rox told herself she hadn’t dressed for him—that it was just another disguise among hundreds—but the truth was, she kind of wanted to figure out what his type was, and she was wondering what he’d like.

“You look like a dominatrix tonight,” he murmured, the side of his mouth pulling up slowly.

“Oh, yeah? I was going for Sunday School teacher.”

Laughter erupted from him, deep and amused. “In what? The Church of Jezebel?”

“Avi, everything I like is either illegal, immoral, addictive, expensive, or impossible. You could say the followers of Jezebel are my kind of people,” she replied with a wink, enjoying the banter.

“That’s not quite right though. You’re no Jezebel,
neshama
.” Avi slid a hand over her arm, his hand warm through the lace. “You’re Lilith.”

Rox smiled quizzically. “Is this the hooker part of the story where I say, ‘I’ll be whoever you want me to be?’”

He took the wine back, sipping slowly. “Lilith was a shapeshifter. The first wife of Adam according to Jewish mythology,” he explained in that rich, deep baritone of his. “Lilith was banished from Eden because she refused to be subservient to him.”