for something. “What did he say to you?” she asked quietly, and I was surprised by the delicate catch in her voice.
“Why don’t you go and ask him?” I suggested, not backing down.
She sniffled and stood, glancing at Damon one final time. “If you need me, come find me.”
Her offer made me furious. I locked eyes with Damon, and he must have seen it because he told her coldly, “I won’t need you.”
She reared back like she’d just been slapped, and, without another word, turned on her heel and left the dressing room. The door slammed with a loud thud, and I felt a small moment of victory that Damon had stood up to her. We stared at one another for a long time. When he opened his mouth to speak, I thought he might say something about yesterday, about Blake, but he didn’t. Instead, he surprised me with concern for my friend.
“Is Julian all right?” he asked, and I could tell he genuinely cared.
I stepped forward and gestured to the chair Alicia had just vacated. Damon nodded his permission for me to sit.
“He’s okay. I just get so angry when stuff like this happens because he truly doesn’t deserve it. Julian was never dealt the easiest cards in life.”
“No?” said Damon.
I shook my head, struck with the sudden urge to tell him everything. I held Julian’s pain in my heart daily. Perhaps sharing it with someone would lessen the burden, and I knew Damon would never tell another soul. I inhaled a deep breath before I spoke.
“When he was a little boy, Julian’s mother was an alcoholic and would leave him alone in the house for days on end. She’d disappear with whatever man had caught her eye that week, and he’d have to fend for himself. But it was worse when she brought the men home, every one of them a new kind of scumbag eager to unleash abuse on the boy with a mother who didn’t care what they did to him. He’s suffered terribly with depression all his life because of it.”
Damon stared at me sadly and asked, “Does he take any meds?”
“Yes. He’s been on an even keel for the last few years, but I’ve been seeing troubling signs in him lately. I’ve even checked his pill bottles to make sure he hasn’t stopped taking his medication. It all started with this ridiculous fling with Alicia. I told him from the start she’d only hurt him, but he wouldn’t listen. Now I fear he might start back at his old habits.”
Damon took my hand into his, his warm touch soothing to my frantic heart. “Old habits?”
I let out a breath and worried my bottom lip. “He started using heroin when he was seventeen. It went on until his early twenties, when I finally managed to convince him to go into rehab,” I explained, feeling a little like history was repeating itself with Blake. “He’s been clean ever since, but it was only a few months after he got out of the clinic that he started selling his services as an escort. He told me it was either sex or drugs, that he couldn’t live without both. And I understood his reasons, knew he needed the stimulation of at least one of those things to stem the horrors of his past. At least if he was smart about it, the sex wouldn’t kill him like the drugs could have. It was the lesser of two evils.”
Damon squeezed my hand as he surmised, “And you don’t want him to go back to the greater evil.”
“No,” I whispered. “No, I don’t.”
“Come here, petal,” he said, voice gruff as he pulled me over into his lap. I didn’t resist, needing his warmth right then. Damon ran his hand up and down my back as I buried my face in his neck.
“I’m so sorry about Blake,” I murmured after a time, voice watery. “I’m sorry he lied and you had to go through all that.”
“Hush. It’s over now,” said Damon.
He held me for a long while, until one of Jacob’s assistants gave a quick knock on the door, calling Damon to the stage to begin the day’s rehearsals. Reluctantly, I crawled from his lap and we walked to the stage in quiet, lots of crew members passing us by, looking harangued with preparations for the opening night. When we arrived, the entire cast was sitting on the stage floor as Jacob stood before them.