Fix It Up: Torus Intercession Book Three, page 17
“You kept track of them.”
“I did. In case something happened where I couldn’t pay Evans, I wanted to be able to reach out and warn them.”
“They owe you a lot.”
He shook his head. “I’m the one at fault. I put them in a compromising position.”
“No,” I corrected him. “Evans did that when he took video of you with them. You had an assumption of privacy, and that was violated.” It didn’t escape me that now I’d violated his privacy as well.
“That’s very true.”
“Not to mention you were underage.”
“Yes.”
I took a breath. “Evans…he showed the footage to your father, right?”
He nodded. “Yeah. He wanted money in exchange for his silence, but my father told him to go fuck himself. He didn’t care who saw me screwing around.”
Something occurred to me. “In the video of you being beaten, you were already bleeding before they started whaling on you,” I managed to get out.
“My father slapped me around a bit as soon as Evans showed him the tape.”
Of course he had.
“Why did you care about the video of you being hurt by those guys getting out?”
“Oh, I didn’t, just the one of me having sex. Evans thought I cared, made a big deal about me looking weak, calling me a pussy, and I never corrected him because, what was the point? He thought it mattered to me that I was crying and begging for them to stop, but I had nothing to be embarrassed about. There were three of them, all full-grown men, and I was just a kid.”
Yes, he had been. Just a slight, gangly, sixteen-year-old boy being knocked around by three men who had height and muscles and meanness on him.
Nick cared only about the boys he’d had sex with. He wanted that video to protect them, just as he wanted the videos of his father hurting the horses to protect the animals. How he looked when he had his arm broken was of no importance to him.
“Evans never understood that the video of me getting the shit kicked out of me would play perfectly well in the media,” he quipped. “Everyone would feel so fuckin’ sorry for me. I mean, imagine the outpouring of sympathy for poor Nick Madison. No wonder I’m tortured, right? My father didn’t care if those guys killed me or not. I could milk that shit for years of endorsements.”
But I already knew he wouldn’t have. If that video had ever found its way into his possession, he would have destroyed it in a heartbeat. The bravado he was showing me at the moment was easy to see through.
“Did you watch them beat me up?”
“Only to the point where your father left and then again, briefly, when they grabbed your arm before they broke it. I couldn’t listen to the screaming.”
His eyes filled then, and he glanced away.
We were quiet, and my mother rose from her seat, picked up the guitar, and carried it to the open case on the kitchen table. When she returned, she took a seat beside Nick, bringing a box of tissue with her.
“You know,” my mother said gently, “you’re one of the bravest people I’ve ever met.”
He turned to look at her.
“I hear what you’re trying to do, push away your own pain, both the physical and emotional, as inconsequential, but, darling, it’s anything but.”
He was working very hard not to fall apart. I could see the strain on him.
“You’ve been so strong,” she said, her voice breaking. “Your mother would be so proud.”
“No,” he countered. “I lost myself and––”
“You lived,” she corrected him implacably, “and you triumphed. You had the resilience to get out in the first place, and then beat your vices.”
His gaze remained locked on her.
“How glorious you are.”
Her words, the strength in them, the certainty, girded him, and after several minutes, he wiped his tears away and returned his focus to me.
“Did you see the horse video?”
I shook my head.
“What if my father talks and tells people about me fucking those guys?”
“He won’t. He’ll be under a gag order, but beyond that, I suspect his lawyers are going to advise him to plead no contest in court, hoping they can get the charges against him reduced. He’s going to cooperate and be on his best behavior to make sure of that outcome, which means shutting his mouth and playing the game.”
“It’s only my word against his.”
“No, honey,” I said, my voice going out on me, ending in a whisper. “There’s a video. The authorities can see what he let happen to you. He says why he not only allowed it but ordered it to happen. He talks about seeing the footage of you having sex and wanting to teach you a lesson.”
“That’s right,” he concurred with a deep sigh. “It was so long ago, and I’ve worked so hard to forget it that I realize sometimes that pieces of it are actually gone from my memory.”
“Just so you know,” I stated, reaching for him but stopping myself before my hand grazed him, “two of the men who beat you are dead, the third is in prison for life for killing another man before what happened with you.”
“Dead?”
“Yes.”
“Two of them?”
“Yes.”
“And the last is in prison?”
“He’ll be charged with your assault as well, and the gag order will include him.”
He got up then, brushing by me, and walked to the kitchen table where the guitar was lying in the case. Tenderly, he traced the neck, staring at it like it held all the secrets of the universe before he walked back, leaning on the wingback chair across from where he’d been sitting moments ago.
“Will they take all the horses away from my father?”
“Your father’s going to jail,” I told him. “That’s a fact. I would think that the land and everything on it will be sold to pay off whoever’s gonna sue him. You might be able to get the horses at auction if that’s what you want. I’m sure you can have your lawyer make a deal to purchase them and have them taken to your sanctuary. I don’t know what can be done about the land, your sisters probably have some say in that, but you could talk to your lawyer. If you can buy it, then the house and stables can be bulldozed to the ground.”
“How do you know I want to raze the house and stables?”
I shrugged. “It’s just a guess.”
He nodded quickly. “My father’s arrest will still be all over the news, and social media will go nuts.”
“Yes,” I said solemnly. “And people are gonna ask you about it, so you need to decide what you wanna say on the subject.”
“My sisters always defended him,” he whispered. “They never believed me.”
“You told them?”
He nodded.
“You never told Mr. Cox.”
“No. He has no idea.”
“You should probably call him here shortly, wake him up and get the PR machine runnin’,” I apprised him. “You need to get ahead of this so it’s your narrative and no one else’s.”
I watched his eyes narrow as he looked at me.
“Say it, whatever it is.”
“You violated faith too.”
“Yes.”
“You did the wrong thing.”
“I did,” I agreed. “And I will pay for it.”
“Even though you did it for all the right reasons, it’s still wrong.”
“No question.”
“You could have come to me with the phone and asked me to play the message.”
“Absolutely.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“My gut said to act. To beg for forgiveness later but to annihilate the threat now.”
“And you did.”
“Yes.”
“Would you forgive me if I’d invaded your privacy like that?”
I had to think. “I don’t know.”
“And yet, you want me to forgive you.”
“More than you can imagine.”
“It was horrible, and if it were anyone else but you, that would be it,” he said, standing to move to the end of the couch and sitting down close to me. “But you…you’ve made a home for me, and it’s become my normal, and I need to thank you for that.”
“You did it yourself,” I informed him gruffly, my voice faltering.
“But you put a foundation in place over the past almost three months, and I’ve gotten used to it. I had no idea how much I was missing something solid.”
I nodded. “It was Mr. Cox’s call.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “But you were the one with the patience to be there.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I just held his gaze.
“It’s terrible, what you did,” he whispered. “And great at the same time.”
I waited for him to make a decision about me, and I felt utterly powerless as he passed judgment.
He leaned forward and put his hands on my thighs just above my knees. “Here’s the thing, the last time I had solid ground under my feet was before my mom died.”
“When was that?” my mother asked.
He turned to look at her and then got up and went to the glass doors that led out to the porch before turning and leaning back against them.
“My mother passed away when I was seven,” he told her. “And the next day, my father sold her mare, even though I begged him to let me keep her.”
Jesus.
“I ran after the horse trailer they took her away in. I went a long way, and I got lost. Our mailman, he saw me and took me back.”
Please God, let that be the end of the story.
“That was the first night my dad hit me,” he confessed, turning and staring out at the patio. “I remember thinking that I wished I could be in the ground with my mom.”
The strangled sound my mother made was not a surprise. When she got up and staggered toward him, he had the good sense to pivot and face her, opening his arms. She was a good hugger, my mother, and I didn’t know anyone who needed her more than him. Even me. I was more than ready to step aside and let her love on him.
Rubbing my eyes hard with the heels of my hands, I stood up and went to the dining room table, leaning over to rest my forearms on the back of one of the chairs. “It would be helpful for you to talk to someone, don’t you think?”
“Like a shrink, you mean,” he stated, not asking a question.
“Yeah,” I said, glancing at my mother. “And I bet she has an idea for someone who can help.”
She took a step back to look up at his face, her smile serene. “As I said before, you’ve been so very strong, but I think Locryn’s right and you need a lifeline.”
“I’m not going to break or––”
“Of course not,” she insisted. “But you have been through a trauma that you’ve never discussed with anyone until right now, with us.”
After a moment he gave a slight tip of his head in agreement.
“So it might behoove you to work through those feelings instead of having to drink or do drugs to numb yourself.”
“You don’t understand,” he told her. “I don’t spend my days thinking about how a day didn’t go by without my father knocking me across the room just for breathing wrong.”
The anger that swelled inside of me was hard to choke down. I had the urge to fly to Lexington and see if my boss’s friend would give me some time alone in a cell with Sterling Madison. Not that it would do anything but make me feel better. If the man was not learning about karma right then, he certainly would soon. His whole life was about to change, and it would never be the same.
“Nick, sweetheart,” she soothed him. “We all learn these different coping strategies so we don’t have to do the hard work and face what needs changing so we can live our best life.”
He kept his gaze leveled on her, listening.
“Don’t you think it’s time that you faced the past so you can move forward and make your future ghost-free, as it were?”
“Perhaps.”
“I have an excellent person for you to meet. She’s right here in Sedona, and you and I could go tomorrow and speak to her if you want.”
He stared at her, and she waited patiently for his answer, just like she did for everyone. I’d never seen her rush anyone in my whole life.
“And who is she?”
“Well, she’s a board-certified psychiatrist, but she utilizes a holistic approach and will absolutely do what she can for you, naturally and organically. I don’t see her in her capacity as a psychiatrist but in her role as a healer, meaning that we do a lot of talking, along with Reiki healing.”
“I’m not broken,” he told her. “I’ve been dealing with this for––”
“Of course you’re not broken.” She was adamant, and he was taken aback, judging from the look on his face. “You’ve been horrifically betrayed by the one person who was supposed to love and cherish you. It’s no wonder you don’t trust anyone, and it makes perfect sense that you’ve been dulling the edges of your memories with whatever you could get your hands on. If I were you, I’d be in and out of rehab as well.”
“I’m not some textbook case of––”
“Nick, love,” she replied, her voice so kind, steeped in acceptance, that it was impossible to miss. “You have been so very, very strong,” she whispered, smiling at him through the tears now welling in her eyes. “But it’s time to try something new, don’t you think?”
He stared at her, his own eyes swimming, and then turned to me.
“Jesus, kid, it’s all gonna be so much better from right now. I swear to God.”
His eyes didn’t leave me.
“I hope you know I only wanted to help by going after Evans.”
Quick nodding from him.
“I won’t let anything, or anyone, hurt you ever again,” I choked out. “Even me. I won’t hurt you either, I swear. Just gimme one more chance, and I promise I will make sure you have a clear path from here on out.”
“How can you make that vow?”
“It’s what I was hired to do,” I said, exhaling deeply, finally getting it, understanding why Jared insisted we leave things better than we found them. “Shit.”
And in the midst of the horror, he laughed. “You’re just so eloquent.”
“I’m tired as hell,” I groused at him. “Now promise you forgive me for blowing up your whole life.”
“You took it into your hands, you made decisions without asking me or telling me,” he answered. “But I feel like you’ve been doing that since we met, right?”
“Yeah, well,” I agreed, my eyes leaking again, “I’m a fixer, for fuck’s sake.”
“Do I look fixed to you?” he baited me.
“Not yet,” I murmured. “But you will be.”
“I know, Loc. I think I can actually see it from where I am right this second.”
“That’s great and all, but you didn’t answer the goddamn question,” I scolded him. “Do you forgive me?”
“Yes, Locryn Barnes,” he apprised me, his voice cracking on a sob. “You’re breaking things down to build them back up, and like I said, I can see it now.”
“And so?”
“I forgive you,” he whispered roughly.
I was so relieved I had to grab hold of the chair to keep myself steady, but a moment later, when Nick rushed across the room, lunging at me, as I was wrapped in his arms I realized I could lean on him. We could lean on each other, at least for a little while longer.
Eleven
The following week was a whirlwind.
As predicted, the news hit about Nick’s father, and his PR team, or more precisely, Mr. Cox’s team, went to work.
Nick flew to New York to speak to Anderson Cooper about his abusive childhood and his road to recovery.
He spoke to a reporter from BBC One, Katherine Vine, who came and visited him at my mother’s house and enjoyed sitting on the patio as much as he did. Her story covered the scandal with his father’s horse farm.
Dr. Davida Saxon, my mother’s therapist, and now Nick’s, was thrilled with all the talking he did about what happened to him. Facing it all, she told him, was the hard part; the rest, understanding the mental and emotional fallout, was the part that would take work. He had no problem doing that, and they made plans to Skype once he returned home, and he’d fly out at least once a month to check in, in person.
He made statements on Twitter, thanked everyone for being in his corner, and received a flood of support from peers and fans alike. The outpouring of concern and acceptance moved the record executives to give him a yearlong extension on his record contract. No one wanted to be accused of making demands on Nick Madison, not with what he was going through. It all made for great press for him. Mr. Cox was thrilled with both me and Torus, and Jared called to give me that news the following Tuesday.
“I talked to Mr. Cox today,” Jared explained, “and we agreed that as soon as you get Nick back to Santa Barbara, hire him another assistant, since you reported that you were planning to release Mr. Donovan, you’re clear to leave. We’ve more than satisfied our contract, and with the extension on the record deal there’s nothing more to do.”
“That’s the official word?”
“It is.”
“And so, what, is Nick off the hook for the conservatorship?”
“He is, and Mr. Cox told me that he has a conference call scheduled with Nick in the next couple of days to let him know.”
“That’s great,” I said, happy for Nick, so pleased at the changes he’d made.
“You’re to be commended. You did an excellent job.”
“Only because everything I thought about Nick was completely wrong.”
I had thought I was dealing with a spoiled, out-of-control, drugged-out, alcoholic, bad-boy rock star, but nothing could have been further from the truth. Nick Madison had been dealing with extraordinary circumstances, and many people would have reacted the same way.
“You need to give yourself just a bit of credit here, Loc.”
But I wasn’t so sure.
The following afternoon, Nick was sitting in what had become, in the past two weeks, his place. He was out on the patio, strumming the guitar, writing in his notebook, and my mother was taking a nap, she’d informed me, before she started making dinner. I had continued to work in the flower garden on the side of the house, which needed at least three more guys, along with me, to get it into shape. It was a mess, and I’d been pruning and weeding, mulching and creating some sort of walkway through it, since morning.
