Loving Lies

by Linda Kage

  Pulling Tess’s knuckles to his mouth, he kissed them softly. “But I need some kind of entertainment to me get me through the next few hours.” Because sitting there, watching Aubrey’s end of the year play was going to drive him batty for sure. The first time some guy in tights started singing soprano, he was probably going to detonate from the agony.

  But he seemed to be the only person dreading tonight. The performing arts center was packed; they’d already been shuffling along behind the crowd for five minutes just to get into the auditorium to find their seats. When someone squeezed past Tess, knocking her off balance, Jonah caught her around the waist just as she tumbled into him. Straightening her back upright, he glared at the kid cutting in front of them and nudged the guy—probably a little harder than he needed to—with his cane in order for Tess to regain the personal space she’d just lost.

  “Watch it!” he and Bailey barked at the same time, Bailey appearing at Tess’s other side to help him flank her and keep her protected.

  Hearing each other say the same thing at the same time, Bailey and Jonah grinned at each other over Tess’s head, and Bailey held out her balled hand for him to fist bump. As he clashed his knuckles with hers, pleased she was as protective of his girlfriend as he was, Tess gave a weary sigh.

  “It’s like going out in public with two bodyguards.”

  “Hey, own it, princess.” Bailey lifted her chin regally. “Only the truly important get more than one bodyguard.”

  And Jonah had to agree Tess was one truly important person. Grinning, he pulled her even closer to kiss her hair. He loved her so much it was ridiculous.

  As they shuffled along and entered the main arena, a pre-show singer stood on the stage in front of the closed curtains and sang an upbeat ditty next to a single piano which accompanied her performance.

  Bailey moaned. “God, shoot me now.” When the people in front of them glanced back and sliced her a dirty look, she returned it with one of her own. “What?”

  Tess elbowed her silently while Jonah rolled his eyes, unable to contain his grin. Waving his cane in her direction to remind her what had happened to him, he said, “Ixnay on the ooting-shay.”

  “Oh, whatever. If people are going to be so sensitive about it, they need to—”

  “Bailey!” Tess squeezed her arm as she hissed out the warning. “Filter, remember?”

  Bailey huffed but shut up. “Fine.” She was silent the rest of the way to their seats.

  Jonah figured the turnout had been so big because of people’s sensitivity, though. With protestors waving signs outside to warn everyone away, it had only gained the play more attention. There were even two news vans parked outside, interviewing individuals over whether or not they thought the play should continue.

  Flopping down in the seat corresponding with her ticket, Bailey glanced up at Jonah and Tess. “There better be vendors walking the aisles, selling drinks and popcorn and shit, because I’m already starving.”

  “It’s not a ball game. And I told you to eat a snack before we left.” Tess sat beside her. “It’s going to be at least three hours before the show’s over. Then we’re taking Aubrey out to supper, remember? We’re supposed to meet him forty-five minutes after the curtain closes at the side entrance he told us about.”

  Jonah silently groaned as he eased down next to her. But three freaking hours in these snug little seats with cushions that would no doubt be killing his back before the curtains even opened sounded about as fun as going to the dentist for a root canal.

  As Bailey begged Tess to dig through her huge purse to look for a snack for her, Jonah rubbed his thigh and propped his cane in the space between him and Tess. He turned his attention to the singer and watched her for a moment. She wasn’t half bad. There was a certain soothing quality about her performance, easing the tight nerves in his chest. Blindly reaching for Tess’s hand, he squeezed warmly when she immediately took his fingers.

  Life was good, he decided. It wasn’t the same as it had been a year ago. But it was almost better. He’d give anything to have Sean back, but adding Tess, Aubrey, Bailey, and even Paige, Logan, and Samantha to his life had filled it with a love and friendship he’d never realized he’d craved.

  When his phone vibrated in his pocket, he pulled it out to see Aubrey’s number and immediately smiled. “Aren’t you supposed to be getting ready, or something?” he asked.

  “Omigod, Jonah. It’s a bust. Did you see all the protestors out front? No one’s going to show up.”

  “Well, I see all the people crowding into the auditorium right now, and I’d say you’re dead wrong. It took us damn near five minutes to reach our seats.”

  Aubrey gasped. “You’re here? Right now? You really came?”

  Jonah shook his head, not sure why his friend sounded so shocked. “I said I was coming, bud. And it’s about two minutes until the play starts, so…where else would I be? This place is packed.”

  “It is?” He could tell Aubrey was beaming by the awed tone in his voice.

  “Yeah. Now get off the phone and get into character or whatever. You better give me a damn good show for making me sit through this.”

  Aubrey laughed. “Yes, sir. Oh, wait. What do you think of my background? I swear there are at least twenty layers of paint on that thing because I just couldn’t find the perfect color. Do you like it?”

  “The curtain’s still closed. I can’t see it yet.”

  “Oh. Right.” Sounding disappointed, Aubrey sighed. “Well, tell me afterward. You’re still picking me up—”

  “At the side entrance,” Jonah repeated dutifully since Aubrey had gone over it with him about fifty times already. “Forty-five minutes after the show. Yes, we got it. Now go break a leg.”

  Bailey snorted as he hung up. “Yeah, because wouldn’t it be so cool if both of you were hobbling around on canes.”

  “Shh.” Tess tapped her knee as the lights dimmed and the curtains opened.

  All three of them gasped when they saw the castle prop background Audrey had been raving about. It took up the entire width of the stage, and the turrets rose until they disappeared into the valance curtain.

  Heaps of tulle fabric had been used at the base of the castle to give it a foggy—or maybe cloudy—dreamlike look. And obviously-fake but artistically-designed tree props made a little forest on the right side, which Aubrey would call stage left.

  Ugh, after listening to so much of the kid’s babbling, Jonah was actually beginning to learn theater terms.

  “It looks like a fairy tale,” Tess breathed next to him.

  “Or like a medieval wedding threw up on stage,” Bailey said.

  Both Jonah and Tess hushed her just as a girl appeared in the open tower window of the castle.

  And the play began.

  Two hours later, Tess nudged Bailey, who’d fallen asleep, and the three of them stood to applaud with the crowd.

  Jonah shook his head, wondering how the hell he was supposed to tease Aubrey and pretend he’d hated every minute of this damn play. It had actually made him smile and laugh and ache in places because of all the freaking singing, dancing actors.

  And Aubrey…who knew his own roommate would be such a sensation?

  “He stole the entire show,” Tess leaned up to tell him.

  He nodded and grinned as Aubrey stepped forward next in the line of actors and actresses on stage to take his bow. Jonah could honestly admit he was happy for his friend. The roar of the clapping and whistling rose throughout the auditorium, and pride swelled in his chest as a beaming Aubrey straightened and waved giddily to his adoring fans.

  “Yeah,” Jonah agreed. “He did great.”

  If only Sean had been able to see it.

  After the last person took a bow, Aubrey stepped forward again.

  “And now to honor our fallen friends and classmates who were taken so tragically from us only a few short months ago, we’d like to have a candlelight vigil in memory of the eleven souls who lost their li
ves on this very campus. Eleven very important people who were adored by so many of us…” He paused when he got a little choked up. “Tonight I burn my candle for Sean Thompson, who taught me how to love and be loved. His life was cut short too soon, but he’ll always live on in my heart.”

  With a watery smile, he turned to an assistant who approached him with a basket full of candles. As he picked one out and lit it, he turned to light the candle of the next actress who’d taken one from the basket. They went down the line, spreading light and hope across the stage. Once every person on stage had a lit candle in their hand, they began to sing.

  The music was more gripping than anything they’d played all night. It held every member in the audience enthralled. Jonah glanced at Tess just as she turned to look at him. When she mouthed the words, I love you, he followed suit, whispering it right back. Then he turned his attention back to the stage as the melody came to a crescendo.

  But just as the last note of the song rang through the auditorium, a handful of people stood up in the front row of the audience and began to shout, “Hypocrites. Frauds. Phonies.” Then they began to throw—

  “Holy shit. Are those tomatoes?” Bailey turned to gape at Tess and Jonah. “They’re actually throwing tomatoes. People really do that?”

  Jonah shook his head, confounded, and turned back to stare up at the protestors as they kept slinging vegetables at the actors. This certainly hadn’t been part of the plan.

  When one girl on stage was hit and bright red juice exploded in her face, she screamed and retreated further back into the stage. The rest of the performers scrambled backward to safety with her, shielding their faces with their arms.

  Jonah stood up, as did half the audience. He wanted to rush forward and help Aubrey, somehow stop the tomato-slingers. But then one of the actors dropped his candle—right into a fluffy ball of tulle at the base of the homemade castle, constructed of wood, cardboard, and at least twenty layers of paint.

  Chapter Thirty

  IT HAPPENED SO FAST.

  One second, the actors were screaming in fright, and protestors were shouting insults while audience members bellowed at them to stop. In the next, the stage ignited, and fire sprinted up the tower of Aubrey’s beautiful castle.

  A pregnant pause followed as everyone seemed to freeze, held horrifyingly captivated by the sight. But then reality kicked in, and pandemonium reigned.

  “We’re getting out of here. Now!” Jonah grasped Tess’s hand and yanked her to the aisle.

  Thank God he had an end row seat because the doors were already crammed with people, shoving and fighting to get through when he looked toward them.

  “Oh! Your cane.” Tess tried to jerk away from him and return to their seats. But he wasn’t having any of that.

  He tightened his clamp on her fingers. “Forget it.”

  But Bailey popped up behind him, waving it triumphantly. “I got it.”

  When it found its way into his hand, he didn’t use it as a crutch but as a cattle prod, fencing people off when they crowded in too close. More screams and cries of terror filled the auditorium; the air was layered with the acrid stench of smoke. Behind him, something popped and sparked as if the fire reached the stage light cans, making them explode. A second later, half the lights went out. And a breath after that, the fire alarms went off, producing another round of hysteria throughout the crowd.

  Pulling Tess in closer until her front was molded to his back, he made her wrap her arms around his waist and hook her fingers through his belt loops. “Do you have a hold of Bailey?” he shouted back to her over the rising sounds of chaos. When she told him she did, he nodded. “Bring her in close.”

  After they passed through the bottleneck of the door into the lobby, they still had the front doors to fight their way toward. Jonah was used to being shoved and shoving back, though he usually had on hefty shoulder pads when he was doing it. But this was exactly why he’d gotten a scholarship to Granton, so that was what he did now, bowing his head and plowing forward, ignoring every stabbing pang that throbbed up his bum leg.

  A girl about five people ahead of him went down and was trampled under the stampede.

  Jonah, Tess, and Bailey reached her all too soon because the momentum of the crowd behind them pushed them forward so fast. Stopping to help her was like fighting a wave in the ocean. He could barely manage not to trip over an already bloody leg as he was swept along toward the entrance.

  “That girl.” Tess sobbed against him, her entire body trembling. “Oh, my God. Someone needs to help that girl.”

  “Jesus,” Jonah uttered. He glanced over his shoulder and barely caught sight of some hero lifting the battered body off the floor and throwing her over his shoulder. But looking back might’ve been a bad idea because Jonah was shoved hard into the person in front of him, where he accidentally knocked another girl to the ground.

  “We gotta get out of this place,” he muttered, bracing his body with all this strength to keep from being pushed forward anymore. Gritting his teeth, he reached down and grabbed the fallen girl’s arm to help her back to her feet.

  He, Bailey, Tess, and the girl he’d swiped off the floor couldn’t reach the open warm night soon enough, but when they did, they all sucked in their own lung full of fresh air.

  The crowd kept surging, urging them along, away from the building. As soon as they hit a free pocket of space across the street, Jonah stopped his group to check all three girls over and make sure they’d come out okay. But Tess was too busy hugging him as soon as he turned around for him to look her over very thoroughly.

  “Are you okay?” she demanded, patting him down. “How’s your leg? You’re not using your cane to walk with.”

  “I’m fine. It’s fine,” he assured her. He glanced over her shoulder. The stranger he’d picked up off the floor was already rushing away, finding someone in the crowd she knew, so he turned his attention to Tess’s best friend. “Bailey? You okay?”

  “Oh…hell,” Bailey murmured, too busy staring back at the performing arts center to answer him.

  He looked over, and his chest dropped into his stomach. He almost expected to see big orange flames licking out the roof of the building, but there was nothing, not even smoke escaping yet, just a frenzied mass of people pushing and shoving and trampling each other to escape the front doors.

  “I can’t believe we were just a part of that.” Tess clutched his arm, as she echoed exactly what he’d been thinking. How the hell had they come out of that place alive? He clutched her close, glad she was alive and in his arms. So very thankful…until she went and added, “I hope Aubrey got out okay.”

  Aubrey? Jonah jerked a sharp glance her way. “What?”

  He’d been so concerned with getting her to safety, he’d completely forgotten about his roommate…his roommate who’d been mere feet away from the castle when it had caught fire.

  “Shit.” He scanned the crowds. When he didn’t spot anyone in costume, he began to panic. Big time.

  “I don’t see him,” Bailey said, sounding freaked.

  It was her sense of alarm that set him off, because, damn, if Bailey was losing her cool, then things had just gotten real.

  He let go of Tess and started limping-slash-jogging back toward the center.

  “Jonah!” she cried.

  He could tell she was following, so he held up a hand. “Stay here. I’ll be back.”

  People were still flooding out the front doors, a mass exodus of panicked proportions. No way could he get back in that way. But no way could he leave Aubrey inside alone.

  Remembering the entrance where they were supposed to meet his roommate, he fought his way through terrified, confused, and sobbing people so he could round the side of the building. It was fairly crowd-free here. Able to move more easily up the alley, he really put his cane to work, skipping the last few feet to the side door just as three coughing, hysterical actors shoved their way outside.

  He caught the door before it
closed, because he had a feeling it was locked from the outside. “Did you guys see Aubrey? Do you know if he’s still inside?”

  When no one claimed to know where his roommate was, dread clutched his heart. He couldn’t lose another friend. He just couldn’t. Since he and Aubrey had found each other, Jonah had always figured Sean’s ghost had somehow brought them together because he’d wanted Jonah to look out for his boyfriend. Well, no way was Jonah about to let Sean down.

  But someone crying out his name made him falter and glance back. “I told you to stay back,” he shouted just as Tess and a panting Bailey reached him.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” She tried to manually pull his arm away from the door he still held open. “You are not going inside there, Jonah. No. No way.”

  “I have to find Aubrey.”

  “What if he already got out somewhere else?” Bailey said. “There’s so many people; he could be anywhere.”

  Jonah merely shook his head. “He’s still inside. I know it.” His instincts were going crazy, screaming at him that his friend was in trouble.

  “Then wait for the fire department,” Tess pleaded, her eyes filling with tears as she tugged on his arm again without any success. “Listen. You can hear the sirens. They’ll be here in just a few minutes.”

  But what if Aubrey didn’t have that long? He couldn’t explain how he knew his roommate needed him; he just knew it. He couldn’t wait; he couldn’t just stand here, doing nothing. He had to find Aubrey.

  “Keep her out here,” he told Bailey. Her eyes flared, but she bobbed her head without complaint.

  Tess wasn’t so easily persuaded, though. “No!” she screamed, grabbing for him again, except her friend had already hooked an arm around her waist and was dragging her away. “No. Jonah, please. Don’t do this. Don’t go in there.”

  He slipped inside to keep from seeing the terror on her face, hoping to God that wasn’t the last time he’d ever see her. But as soon as he entered a narrow back hall, a haze of smoke started to make him cough.