Page 59 of Love is Strange
The sound of my husband’s voice wrecks me, causing all my emotions to overtake me at once.
“Um.” I whisper, “No luck right now.”
“Are you okay? You sound distraught.”
His question stings, but I answer him with the best lie I can think of. “I’m just a little worried. He was a good kid. One of my good students.”
As the words leave my lips, everything goes silent. A few days in my own paradise has been reduced to one solid truth.
He was just my student.
Cinder and Smoke
ADDISON KLINE
Abridged Version
Chapter One
This is not a love story…and the quicker you get that into your skull the better off you and I will be,thought Gabriel Cartwright. Despite the words love and need and want and desire being thrown around like a bad habit, sprinkled upon each sentence and injected into each conversation like someone tossing confetti into the air, do not swallow these sugar-coated lies. They are tempting. They are delicious. But they are lies intended to deceive. I am immune to such deception.
My name is Gabriel Cartwright. I learned at an early age, that the only person’s love you could really count on was your mother’s and the loyalty from a handful of friends. Everyone else, well, they really only stuck around to see what they could get out of you. Perhaps, for some it’s money. For others, it’s sex. And then there are those who try to use my kindness and influence to boost their standings in their career. In the end, all those people are exposed. They try to play me as a fool. There’s just one problem with that - I can’t be played. I can guess their next move before they’ve thought of it themselves. It’s really not hard, you see. Human nature gives away their motives and triggers. The average adult is self-serving. They are looking for the next best thing, the step-up, the “in” to the life they’ve always dreamed of. This is how I have survived in the business world.
From a young age, I learned from my mother, the world-renowned psychologist Marcia Cartwright, that life is a series of transactions. In this life, nothing is free. A smile is a trap. A gift comes at a cost. Even in the most intimate of relationships, cunning intellect is required to come out unscathed. One way or another, you pay a cost. You can never let your guard down. You can never let anyone get too close. And most importantly, never divulge all of your secrets, because you will be betrayed in the end.
People are self-serving, and just like in the cut-throat world of corporations and boardroom deals, those in the business of love and lust will eventually betray your trust. In the end, it is a matter of obligation, a matter of priority, and a matter of deception. No one had ever gotten the upper hand with me. This was no time to start. But there is always a first for everything - and in Cinder, I had met my match.
Some of the most beautiful things in nature are also the most lethal. Behind the most alluring of facades, the most cunning of masks, often lies a calculating danger; a cold cruelty. Beauty acts as a mask, and the true nature of the being is only revealed after its prey has been lured in, ready to be devoured. Akin to the deadly beauty of the white oleander, an exquisite flower that is poisonous in all its parts. One touch is dangerous. One kiss is toxic. Cinder is much the same. Once you are affected by her, you are forever altered. Tarnished by the beautiful poison that roams within her.
Cinder.
The name sends shock waves through my body every time I hear it spoken out loud.
I would rue the day I ever crossed her path. Contrary to what I said earlier about being immune to all deception, I must admit that this is a lie. I am immune to all but one. Cinder’s deception would cause my undoing.
* * *
“Hi, my name is Cinder,”she said in a voice as smooth as honey, and as pure as the scent of lavender in air on an early Spring day. “Cinder Alexander.”There was something poetic in the way she spoke. She didn’t need to introduce herself. My soul seemed to recognize her as soon as she entered the room.
Gabriel held his hand out to her and shook it as a kind greeting. “Gabriel Cartwright, Miss Alexander… But everyone calls me Gabe.”
“I know who you are, Mr. Cartwright…” Cinder said with a sly smirk. She tapped on her bottom lip with one of her perfectly manicured fingernails. “I recognize your face from the billboard on the highway.”
Her eyes smoldered as she gazed down at Gabe with his hot coffee in her left hand. Her red lips pursed a little as Gabe told her his name. Guessing from the attire she wore under her barista apron, Cinder was most certainly not from the Upper East Side. It didn’t matter though. At least not to Gabe.The members of the board’s opinions wouldn’t be quite so warm, but I didn’t care. There was something about her; something different. She wasn’t a snob like most women that circled around me.The women who sought to be Mrs. Gabriel Cartwright, CEO of Cartwright Manufacturing; trophy wife to the grandson of the steel magnate and one of New York City’s most eligible bachelors. Cinder completely broke the mold that those other women fit right into.That is part of the reason she was so appealing to me. Her beauty could not be denied, though. Standing at a pint sized five foot one, she was petite but built with supple curves. Her flaming red hair cascaded in waves past her elbows, and her smile was nearly as vibrant as the southern accent that flowed from her lips.
“Where are you from, sugar?” Gabriel asked, hoping he sounded as suave as he meant to.Sometimes I am as smooth as cream cheese being spread on a bagel. Other times, it’s like chewing glass.His voice came out in a low, deep growl. He hadn’t meant it to. Cinder didn’t seem to mind, though.
Cinder’s eyes narrowed on Gabriel’s face slyly. Lifting her eyebrows subtly, she appeared to be amused at his question. “Whatever gave it away?” she asked as her pouty lips curled into a toothy smile.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I say coyly. I can feel a smile tug at the corners of my mouth. “Couldn’t be that Georgia twang, or the smile that comes easier than most ladies around these parts… or the whole lack of snobbery in your sunny disposition,” Gabriel explained.
Cinder laughed. It was a beautiful sound; high pitched and happy. There was no malice in her tone. Every giggle and smile lured Gabriel in.
“Actually, Mr. Cartwright…” Cinder began.
“Please,” Gabriel interrupted as he reached his hand out and placed his palm over top of her hand. “Mr. Cartwright was my father. Call me Gabe.”
Her eyes warmed as she took in my words. “Okay, Gabe. Everyone just calls me Cinder.”
