Sweet as Sin

54

Throughout dinner, I struggled to fight back tears. When they spilled over, Grace would just hand me a napkin and continue munching on her kebab.

“Don’t you have that work thing in Santa Barbara this week?” she asked around a mouthful of marinated beef.

I’d been booked for a fashion shoot at the uber-swanky Bacara Resort, for the fall collection of the couture wedding dress designer Reem Acra. It was scheduled to be shot over the course of four days. I, along with a small army of models and support staff, were scheduled to arrive midweek and stay through the weekend. I’d been so excited about it—the trip was all expenses paid—but now I was grateful merely for the fact that I could escape LA for a few days.

I nodded, pushing my plate away. “Perfect timing.”

Grace didn’t have to ask to know what I meant. Better than anyone, she knew that burying yourself in work is one of the best ways to avoid real life.

Real, shitty, painful life.

“You can stay here as long as you want, kiddo. You know that, right?”

The tears began to spill over my lower lids again. I stared at my plate, watching the remains of my meal swim. “I hate men,” I whispered.

Grace reached over, took my hand, and squeezed it. “Hey.”

I looked at her.

“If you ever want to go lezbo, I’m totally on board. I’ve been a certified man-hater for years. The only thing they’re good for is their c***s. And half the time they’re not even good for that.”

She grinned, and I had to laugh through my tears. “You like c**k too much to give it up.”

“That’s unfortunately true. Maybe I could just be a part-time lesbian.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works.”

Her grin grew wider. “Honey, you’d be surprised.”

I groaned. “God, that just sounds like twice the heartache.”

She squeezed my hand again, then rose from the table to clear our plates. “The trick, my love, is to not let your heart get involved in the first place.”

I watched her scrape food into the trash, load the dishwasher, and tidy up, all the while contemplating what she’d said. I didn’t think it would have been possible to not let my heart get involved where Nico was concerned, even from that first day we’d met. But Grace was a serial, short-term dater, never getting serious with anyone, never settling down. I knew her lack of memory about her past made her distrustful of the future, so she didn’t count on anything but the here and now.

Most of the time that made me feel sad for her. Right now it made me think she was a genius.

“I’m going to change before we head out.” I rose from my chair, rounded the table, and was about to give Grace a hug when something on her computer screen caught my eye. I stopped dead in my tracks.

She’d been checking her email. On the right side of the screen there was a bar of rotating ads, and the one currently appearing at the top was for TMZ. Its headline read, “Supermodel Goes Supernova.”

The picture beneath showed a wild-eyed Avery Kane screaming at the photographer.

I couldn’t help myself. I leapt on that computer and clicked on that teaser before you could say “glutton for punishment.”

The article was short and full of speculation. Avery had disappeared from rehab the day prior without notifying staff, only to surface hours later at a prominent producer’s house party in Malibu, where she was photographed pacing around a pool, shouting into a cell phone. She was next photographed on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, emerging from the Hermès store wearing enormous sunglasses that did nothing to hide her sunken, sallow cheeks. a*****e employee, carrying an armload of boxes, accompanied her to the Rolls at the curb, where she got into a scuffle with a Japanese tourist who was trying to take her picture with his cell phone. The article quoted the tourist as saying Avery was “crazy” and “high.”

Except for a few additional pictures of Avery earlier in her modeling career, there was nothing more. No mention of her returning to rehab. No sightings of her with Nico.

I collapsed against the back of the chair, stunned and sickened.

Where had Nico gone with Avery after they left his house?

It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. I told myself that over and over. Except, of course, it really did.

I was about to rise from the chair when something in one of the pictures made me gasp.

It was a shot of Avery on a catwalk in Milan. Sleek and stunning, she was striding away from the camera wearing an evening gown that featured a back that plunged all the way to the dimples at the base of her spine. Her tawny hair was upswept in an elegant chignon so her entire back was exposed.

And there, in all her creepy glory, was the mother of death, Nyx.

Avery and Nico had matching tattoos.

At least I made it to the kitchen sink before my dinner made its way back up.