He edged himself around the door. Upon exiting his room, he stuck his back to the corridor wall—and his jacket rubbed against it and knocked a cardboard cutout of a Yule log to the floor. Too conspicuous, he scolded himself, and he forced his body into a relaxed stride. He needed to pass as a visitor.
The facility was decked out for Christmas, with tacky decorations on either side of the hallway that were so distracting, he nearly ran into a woman coming out of the next room.
“Oh, excuse me!” she said, sounding embarrassed.
“No problem,” he muttered without turning his head and walked quickly away.
He passed a set of couches where a guy lay reading, his head propped up on one of the armrests. A tower of board games teetered next to him. What kind of hospital is this? There were no hospital gowns anywhere, just a handful of people meandering in tracksuits and sweats.
He focused his gaze straight ahead of him, blinking back the bright lights above, and weaved himself through the busy hallway and meal carts in search of the nearest exit. He inhaled through his mouth to avoid the stench of hospital food and disinfectant. He caught sight of the redheaded aide coming around the nurses’ station and quickly ducked around a corner.
He welcomed the dimness of the cool stairwell but not the way each downward step aggravated his shoulder more. He shifted over to the left railing, leaning his weight on his good side, and carried on, gaining speed and confidence until he was taking the metal steps two at a time. He became dizzy within seconds; it was the most activity he’d experienced in days. He staggered on the landing, feeling a fever rise up the sides of his face. He collapsed back onto the stairs to catch his breath. His good hand flew up to his bad shoulder. A warm stickiness seeped through the bandage and covered his hand, making him shudder.
His body wasn’t ready to leave, but he couldn’t wait for it to heal. The longer he stayed, the greater the chance others would learn he was alive. He was too vulnerable in that hospital room.
He pulled himself up. His heart raged even louder inside his chest. He continued moving, but more tentatively, and his lightheadedness and nausea subsided somewhat. He finally reached the exit door. He leaned his full weight into it and staggered out to the parking garage.
She’s here. He almost collapsed with relief.
“Where to, boss . . . hungry?” Jade grinned.
“Hardly.” He blanched at the mere thought of food. His body melted onto the backseat. He sucked in some air and reclined on his good side, bracing himself against the seat in front of him. “Where’s the pickup spot?”
“I have the car keys, clothes, and our new IDs in here,” she said, motioning to the backpack next to him, allowing her hand to softly brush his.
“You’re not coming with me.”
“Just thought you could use some company. You know, a travel buddy.” She ran her hand through her hair, watching him in the rearview mirror.
He didn’t move.
“Shit, we could be so good together. All the fun you want, right here baby . . .” Her hand skimmed the length of her body like she was a model on The Price Is Right.
“For all the drugs that you want, right?”
“Why not? A girl can party and play.”
Deacon shook his head. “You never learn, Jade.”
CHAPTER 4
christmas eve night
BABETTE CLOSED HER EYES IN THE HALLWAY OUTSIDE of Deacon’s hospital room and took a few breaths. She fished around in her purse for the syringe and tapped its case with her fingernail when she located it. She must have appeared to be praying, judging by the sympathetic face she received from a passerby.
Mind your own business.
She’d been flooded with sweet relief the night she learned Deacon had been shot: one less problem to endure in her intolerable life, along with a title she never wanted— mother.
Her euphoria hadn’t lasted, though. Seeing him still alive and possibly brain-dead, she’d felt robbed. I didn’t sign up to take care of a vegetable. She’d spent the past two days convincing herself of what she had to do before Kingsley returned to town and heard the news. Both of their lives would be better for it.
Her hand trembled over the door handle, unsure if she possessed the guts. She ground her teeth into a snarl and squeezed her wrist to steady it. One-two-three-four-five. No, again! One-two-three-four-five.
A powerful chemical smell assaulted her senses inside the room, stopping her breath short, along with the rest of her. The bed lay empty. Not just empty—stripped, cleaned, and ready for the next sorry soul. All evidence of Deacon’s existence had been eradicated.
She marched out to the hallway to recheck the room number. Her nostrils flared. She strolled back into the room and rested a hand on her hip.
Dr. Klondike would have called her if he had died.
No, she thought, he walked out of here and he’s not coming back.
Finally, that kid grew some balls.
CHAPTER 5
christmas day
GRAY, DIRTY SNOW LINED THE CURBS LEADING THE WAY to her house. The roads and sidewalks lay dark and wet. The trampled white lawns with sled tracks and a one-eyed, leaning snowman stretched into one long, forgotten playground.
When did it snow? Hannah wondered. The days since Deacon’s death had blurred together, similar to the neighbors’ property lines, under a blanket of frost.
A couple of the neighbors stood outside greeting the holiday company that was coming up their walkway, balancing wrapped gifts and trays of food with cordial smiles. They stopped to stare as the Zandanas’ station wagon passed. Others, she noticed, preferred to watch the show from their windows.
“Don’t these people have a life?” Hannah muttered, mostly to herself. Her eyes shot briefly over to her father behind the wheel.
He pressed his lips together in response.
It was their first exchange, if you could call it that, since their visit with her mother and little sister in rehab that morning.
What exactly do they expect to see? She narrowed her eyes at the unapologetically gawking welcoming committee, then sank lower in her seat. Her life was more of a freak show than ever, thanks to her having witnessed the only murder to ever take place in their small town. The fact that both her mother and Kerry had been whisked away via ambulance a couple of weeks earlier for nearly succumbing to a Valium overdose, her little sister swallowing her mother’s happy pills to be just like her, hadn’t exactly helped either.
She caught sight of Gillian standing with the other members of her mean-girl coven, Leeza and Taylor, in her driveway. True to form they all turned in unison toward the Zandanas’ car.
Leeza’s sneer and fake mean-girl laugh (complete with hair toss) and Taylor’s pitying headshake were the same as always. Gillian’s face struck her as odd, though. The redhead’s eyes were wide and bug-eyed.
What’s her deal?
The awkward silence between Hannah and her father only grew louder when they arrived home, the air as foreign as it was fragile. She watched him rotate around the kitchen, opening the fridge and cabinets and coming up empty. A couple of times he looked like he wanted to call out to her mother but stopped himself.
He appeared lost in his own home.
Hannah closed her bedroom door at the sound of her father’s heavy footsteps retreating upstairs to his room. I guess that’s it, then. Merry Christmas to you too, Dad.
Inside the quiet of her four walls, Hannah’s pain and loneliness flooded forward as if from a fractured dam. Her eyes jetted around the room, unsure how to contain the emotions. She dug her nails into her forearms, trying to make it stop. She flung herself on the bed and rolled onto her back. She couldn’t stay still. She threw her legs off the side and edged herself off the bed until her butt reached the floor. She grabbed her diary from underneath her mattress.
I have nothing now with you gone, nothing to look forward to, just a cold, drowning emptiness. It hurts so much, Deacon. Even after we broke up, I th
ought of you every day, knowing I still loved you. My life came alive with you in it, from black and white to Technicolor. Good and bad. We could have gotten through the bad. Hearing you and Toby argue in the park, now I know what it was like for you to live in that house, feeling like I do here, dismissed and ignored. We were so alike in that way. Imagine that, you and me sharing the same secrets. I don’t want to wake up and relive all over again that you’re not here. That your breath no longer touches your lips. I’ll never look into your eyes again or have your hands on me, your arms holding me, making everything better as long as I was with you. Why did this have to happen? Please. Why did you leave me here all alone with no one, no one who can possibly understand?
Hannah swept the tears from her cheeks. Her eyes drifted from the page and stared off to the side.
I wish we both died that night.
If only.
She began to rewrite the night of his shooting in her head. As she did, the two of them came into focus, lying in one another’s arms like they were playing out the final scene in Romeo and Juliet.
She clutched her pen tighter.
My father finds me in the park. He regrets how he treated me, berating me for my acne, and calling me names like “harlot” and “whore” when he didn’t like the clothes I wore. He realizes it all, but it’s too late. Isn’t it, Dad?
Mom is crying for me, wishing she had been a better mother and not pushed me away all those times when I begged her to hold me. She regrets never coming to my defense during one of Dad’s tirades and telling me I brought my father’s ugly words on myself.
Gillian, the evil one who set everything in motion, getting Toby to bring his father’s gun to the park that night—supposedly to scare me into keeping her secret from everyone—sending Jade to tell me that I have to go to Gossamer Park because Deacon is in trouble and is trying to make things right between us . . . she doesn’t cry.
I get Deacon’s note warning me it’s a trap and still I go . . . for him, always for him.
Those wicked girls and the kids who were mean to me all these years feel guilty now. They whisper, “We never really knew her. He must have really loved her. Heard they died in one another’s arms. Deacon Giroux and Hannah Zandana are famous now. We never knew it was like that between them. Now they’ll be together forever.”
Hannah wiped the snot streaming from her nose. God, I’m pathetic.
Who’s going to help me escape this house of pain? I want the nothingness inside of me to burn again. I don’t want to go back to the old me, before there was you. I want to feel wanted, feel loved. Who’s going to love me now?
Hannah pulled her legs to her chest and buried her nose in her knees. How had everything gotten so screwed up?
Merry f-ing Christmas, family.
CHAPTER 6
“MERRY FUCKING CHRISTMAS,” DEACON BREATHED INTO his coat collar. He drove faster down the highway. The frosted road lay riddled with swerving tire tracks. He didn’t care. He rechecked the rearview. His injury would not interfere with his vigilance. He’d make sure of it. This was still his life. They weren’t going to hijack it.
He gripped the steering wheel firmly, trying not to over-correct. He clenched his jaw against the headache looming between his eyes. This jalopy Jade had gotten him would have to do—if it didn’t fall apart first. It was disposable anyway, with fake plates and registration. One of their dirtbag drug clients had owed her a favor. Deacon hadn’t asked. With Jade, it was best not to know.
He rubbed the side of his face. The skin there was still raw and chapped from the night in the park—the night his asshole, half-wit half-brother had shot him and he’d basically been kidnapped. Was that just four days ago? Seemed impossible.
He glanced in his rearview and side mirrors again and released a sigh. So far he hadn’t been followed.
What the hell am I going to do? God, she thinks I’m dead!
He needed time to think, and a place to hide and plan his next move. More importantly, he needed cash. He’d left everything in Darien. What Jade had given him would only last a week, maybe two.
Think. Think. Who could help me on Christmas?
A mile down the highway, he passed a sign for Massachusetts. His head jerked back, and he nearly skidded off the road.
Thomas . . . of course, Christmas break.
If not much had changed, his old boarding school classmate would be the only one in the dorm over the holiday break. Next truck stop, he’d call. It was worth a try. Those cops would never know to look for him there. Plus, Thomas was loaded. His father owned a big commercial transport business.
Deacon’s eyes spread wider. My half of the cooler.
He drove faster.
He’d find some way to get a message to Hannah to let her know he was alive.
Give me time.
This was still his life.
CHAPTER 7
“WHY DID YOU HATE THE BOY SO MUCH?” KINGSLEY SAID in a low voice, looking forlornly into his tumbler. He leaned against the large ivory credenza across from Babette, swirling the contents of his glass in circles so the brown liquid left a caramel-colored mountain range along its edges. His white tongue jutted out like a cat’s to lick the inside clean, his teeth clamping down on the rim.
Babette’s nostrils flared as she waited for her husband’s disgusting ritual to end. She turned from him and filled her glass generously at the bar. She replaced the phallus-shaped crystal stopper precariously atop the carafe, challenging it to fall to the hardwood below and shatter into a million beautiful pieces. Her mouth watered as she envisioned the blood that would course out if she ran a piece of the jagged glass across her beloved husband’s neck. The thought aroused her. She took a rough swig; she was far from quenched.
Her fingertips flew up to her choker. One-two-three-four-five. She felt giddy from her fantasy. Her fingers hungered to touch each pearl in order. She repeated the sequence, careful not to miss a single bead, before continuing up the rest of the strand.
Behind her shoulder she sensed her husband’s idiotic sadness sucking the oxygen from the room. She knew those pitiful eyes of his, crushed over the loss of their only son. She held back from laughing while he waited for her answer.
“Well?” he demanded. “Answer me. You’re acting happier than I’ve ever seen you. Not like a mother who just lost her only child.”
Babette buzzed the air in the back of her throat. “Christ, not this again, Kingsley.” She laughed tightly and began playing with the hair on the back of her neck. “Oh, my aching neck . . .” One-two-three-four-five.
“Quit it, Babette.”
“What?”
“I can see what you’re doing. That obsessive counting of yours, always fucking counting.” He said this last part under his breath.
She spun around, baring her teeth. Her manicured talons coiled around her shapely hip. “I’ll tell you why! From the moment he was born, the way that kid looked at me—always needing this or that. Needing something all the time. Things I didn’t have to give. Not like you were ever around. He’d talk your ear off until he got what he wanted. Talked me into the ground. God, the tantrums he’d have just to embarrass me. I’d walk away and act like he wasn’t mine. Like the time I left him at Bergdorf’s . . . on purpose.” She peered back at her husband, watching his eyes swivel around the room. Why the hell does he keep licking his lips?
“I didn’t give a damn, King. Store security called me and I sent the chauffeur. I didn’t grow up with a mother. I never needed one, survived fine . . . though people talked. ‘Poor Babette . . . poor little baby.’ Such bullshit. I’m glad my mother jumped and ended her life. She was weak, just like him.”
Kingsley moistened his lips again. “I wish I could have seen him before he was . . . you know . . . gone.”
Babette sauntered back to the bar to top off her highball. “Kingsley, he died the night he was shot, I told you that. There was nothing you could have done.”
“I would have come home earl
ier. Did you have to wait until Christmas morning to tell me?”
“Why spoil your trip?” she deadpanned, her back still turned.
“There’s something else,” he said. “I want Brenda’s son to live with us. He’s pretty shaken up after . . . the accident . . . and could use a stable home. He can have Deacon’s old room.”
Her shoulders dropped away from her ears as she released a long sigh. Old room. She suppressed a smile and walked over to her husband, one high heel in front of the other, like a catwalk model. She couldn’t contain her delight. I’m finally free.
With a smug grin, she clinked her glass against her husband’s, though his hand never moved.
“As long as he doesn’t start calling me Mom, we’ve got a deal.”
CHAPTER 8
milton, Massachusetts
“SO, WHO ARE THEY AND WHAT DO THEY WANT FROM you?” Thomas asked, tipping back his third beer and trying to grasp that he wasn’t still dreaming.
Four years had passed since his former boarding school buddy had moved back into his parents’ Connecticut house. No longer boys, they were now young men, months from graduating from their separate schools, and the air between them had colored; an unspoken wariness existed now that hadn’t been there before.
Thomas heard about the shooting days before, along with everyone at school, and had planned to properly mourn his friend’s death the rest of winter break with a couple of close friends: vodka and cocaine. But when the phone had rung a few hours earlier, his bender had come to a screeching halt.
The extra lines of blow he had done that evening had made his temples pound when he pulled the phone up to his face, still half asleep. He’d tasted the sourness of the coke dripping from his nose into his throat. He’d reached over for the plastic cup next to his bed, taken a mouthful, and spewed warm vodka everywhere, his tongue and throat burning worse than before.
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