by Lux, Vivian
"...prestige piece. I mean, you should really consider this as an Oscar push. You've got the chops, that much is amply clear, and if they're not going to take you seriously, you gotta tell them where to get off. And if you're not up to it, then I will, gladly...."
"Hey, Jen?" I interrupted. I was on overload, and if I didn't get somewhere quiet...fast... "I'm so glad you called, but I'm here at the studio and Jonathan is waving..." I lied so smoothly, I half expected to look up and see Jonathan doing just that.
"Oh, yes, go! Go, go, my viral celebrity. I'll send over the scripts I think are worth a read-through." I heard the ruffling of pages and Jen muttering for a second before she popped back on the line. "I'll be in touch!"
"Great." I smiled. Acting.
Chapter
Rane
I turned out didn't have to decide between Maddie and my brother. It seemed like Maddie had already made the choice for us.
Slumped in my wheelchair, I stared out the window of the therapy room. The bright sunshine outside seemed surreal, like something from a book or a movie instead of my real life. Real life was the gray of a hospital room.
Maddie hadn't called, hadn't come by, in over two weeks.
She was staying away...just like Keir wanted.
And I hated it.
"Can you make a fist?" the therapist prompted, drawing my attention away from the window.
I scoffed. "Of course," I muttered.
This was my third appointment. There had been no progress. My hand still lay useless at my side, curled up like a claw.
I was bored of this.
The very act of lifting my arm felt alien to me. Instead of the smooth, strong motion I was used to, my arm felt creaky. Rusty with disuse. I looked down at the white blimp thing at my side. It still didn't register as belonging to me.
"Make a fist now." The therapist nodded encouragingly.
Her hyper-positivity irked me. I shifted in my wheelchair, an uncomfortable pain settling into my lower back. I moved to stand up and stretch it out.
"Easy, easy now, Mr. Wilder," she said. "Walking exercises will come next."
"I don't need exercises to be able to walk," I told her. "I just need to stretch." I hefted my foot off the leg brace, and it fell to the tiled floor with a thump. Shifting forward, I dug my elbows into the armrests and began working my way towards the edge of the seat.
"Mr. Wilder, I'm going to have to ask you to wait." The little therapist placed her hand in the center of my chest and pushed.
She was a small, sturdy little thing. Before my accident, I could have lifted her with one arm, given her a piggyback ride around the perimeter of this room, and then laid her down on the table and fucked her into oblivion right afterward. Now, this little thing pushed me back into my place like I was no stronger than a gnat.
I looked down at her smooth, strong hand. Disgust and anger fought for control of my body.
"Make a fist now." She smiled brightly.
"What's the fucking point?" I asked.
"To regain mobility in your hand?" she parroted robotically.
I looked at her. "I'll say it again. What's the fucking point? Fuck this. Fuck all of this. I'm done. Bring me back to my room."
If I thought I was going to get a break there, I was mistaken.
"Jesus Christ, don't you have somewhere to be?" I exploded.
Keir was leaning against the radiator, one of his ever-present paperbacks dangling from his fingers. His working fingers.
"I'm going to chalk that nice, brotherly greeting up to the pain," he replied.
I grunted as the attendant lifted me back into bed. Keir averted his eyes until I arranged the sheets back around my legs. "What do you want?"
"The video just passed ten million hits, Rane." He eyed me sidelong. There was a hopeful tone in his voice. "Ten million."
"Huh." I looked away. What the fuck was he doing showing me the video with Maddie?
"Were you in therapy when I got here?" Keir prodded.
"Yeah." If he was trying to fix things between us, I sure as shit wasn't going to make it easy on him.
"How's it going?" he asked.
"Bad."
"Are you only going to answer me with one-word responses?"
"Yup."
Keir inhaled sharply. "I didn't tell her to stop coming, Rane. She did that all herself."
"You got what you wanted, though. That's what matters, right Bulldog?"
He winced. "I wanted you to make the right choice."
"And how the hell is that something you get to determine, hmm? Why do you think you know what's best for me?"
He closed his eyes. "You really like her, don't you?"
"I don't like her. I fucking love her. And she's gone because you stepped in and made the decision that we shouldn't be together. You of all people should know how that feels."
Pain rippled across his eyes. "Yeah," was all he said.
I closed my eyes. I didn't want to talk about it anymore. What's done was done.
But Keir wasn't ready to drop anything just yet. "How did your appointment go? That was your third, right?" he asked, a little too eagerly.
"Third. And final."
"What???"
"It's bullshit. I quit, Keir. You know how to play guitar. You do it. Clearly that part of my life is over."
"You have to be shitting me."
"I'm not. I'll do something else with my life. I'm young. I've got options."
"It's not just about you, you selfish prick!"
"Well, maybe it should be. It's my life, after all. You seem to want to fuck it up, like you get a say in who I get to be with. Well, I get to have the same fucking say in yours then. I quit. I'm done. With therapy, with this hospital, with Ruthless, with Maddie. Fuck it."
Chapter
Madeline
I edged around him warily.
Keir raised his eyebrows. "You can sit down. I'm not going to bite you."
"You sure about that?" I said. I felt like a dog with my hackles raised. I walked around the chair, putting it consciously between us. "You sure look capable."
He leaned back on the rickety cafe chair. I chose this place as neutral ground. He couldn't very well kill me in public, right?
"I didn't call you here to tear you a new one."
"Oh yeah?" I challenged him. "Why did you call me? I thought you hated me."
He at least had the grace not to flinch. "Not you, personally. I hated the idea of you."
I sat back in the chair. "Care to explain?"
Keir steepled his fingers and pressed the tips into his chin. I had seen Rane do the same thing a million times, it felt. He was so like his brother, but so different, too.
"Okay," he finally said, leaning forward and leveling his gaze on mine. "Okay, you got me. All I knew about you, I knew from the tabloids. Rane doesn't read that stuff, but I do. I read about industry news, I read the interviews, the articles. I have to know. It's a game, all of this, and I'm playing to win. And the only way that I know how to win is to know everything about my competition."
"You think I'm competition?" I asked, surprised.
"No. Not in so many words. What I'm saying is, I knew about your… issues, before I knew you. So, fuck me, Maddie, what was I supposed to think? Here you were, this person known for being unstable, known for being a liability, and you were coming into my territory and moving in on my brother, the person that I love more than anything."
"I wasn't moving in," I hissed. "Whatever you think of me, whatever you think I'm capable of doing. However crazy you think I am, I would never do knowingly break up a family."
"I know."
"You do?"
He looked at his hands and exhaled. "I know," he repeated. "I know it wasn't you. You were staying away, trying to help, I see that. Thank you. It's my brother. He's a stupid, stubborn, asshole, but he's my brother and I know him well enough to recognize his fingerprints all over this. I'm not blaming you, Maddie. I'm asking you for your hel
p."
I sat back in my chair, surprise knocking the fight right out of my lungs. "Oh…" I exhaled.
He sighed a heavy, explosive sigh. "You know probably more about me than I know about you now. From Rane. He's the talker in the family. Likes to tell stories, likes it when he's got the attention on him."
"A bit," I hedged.
"So, you know then how it was for us growing up. Mom gone, Dad working all the time. It was just us. He's my older brother, but I was always the one that was the adult. I'd watch my brother fucking up and figure out what to do differently. How to fix it. I thought that's what this was. Rane fucking up. Rane making another bad decision. But I get it now." He looked up at me, and I swore there was something just like pleading in his eyes. "You're the best thing for him, Maddie," he said emphatically. "In fact, you're the only thing he needs right now."
I swallowed hard. "I don't know if it's a good idea… I mean, I've already messed up so much…"
"Messed up? You’ve done exactly the opposite of messing things up. Rane's given up. He's stopped his therapy, stopped trying to get better. You know how he gets. When he decides something's over, he just lets it fall through his fingers, throwing it away before it can slip through his hand. He's doing this now. You're the only thing I've ever seen him fight for. Fucker was ready to fight me from his hospital bed when I told him what I thought of you. I never saw him like that, Maddie. Willing to stick his neck out." He covered his face with his big hands and dragged them down his skin. "Make him work," he said. "Make him care again."
"How do I do that?" I whispered.
Keir shook his head. "If I knew, I wouldn't be asking you."
Chapter
Rane
"I want you to listen to something."
She walked into my room like she was stepping out of the dream I had just woken from. "Maddie?" I blinked.
She walked past my bed and set her phone down on the radiator. Then she pulled a small speaker out of her giant-ass bag.
"What's this?" I asked.
She looked incredible. Maybe absence really did make the heart grow fonder, because she looked fucking edible.
She also looked pissed.
"I spent last night downloading and listening to this," she announced.
Then she turned on the speaker. A familiar three-chord progression blared out of the tinny little speaker. I was confused as fuck.
"Are we listening to Ruthless?"
"We are."
"I thought you didn't like rock."
"I don't. I also don't like quitters."
"Who's a quitter?"
"You," she spat.
She was still looking at me like I was a puzzle she couldn't quite figure out. "What?" I finally said, angrier than I meant to sound. She hadn't come by in weeks, and when she finally did show up, it was to cop an attitude with me?
Instantly, she snapped shut like a book, and her lips pressed tightly together. "Keir told me you're not doing your physical therapy," she said crisply.
How much longer until my next dose of Vicodin? It seemed like it was never going to come. "Oh, so you and my brother are all chummy all of a sudden?" I shot back.
"He called me. Asked for my help."
"What the fuck? Your help with what?"
She stared me down. "With you. With telling you that you need to do your therapy, Rane."
I shook my head. "You don't understand," I told her flatly.
She leaned forward on the bed. "Oh yeah? Try me. Make me understand why you refuse to do what’s necessary to get your life back on track."
I waved my hand and was rewarded with the sharp, stabbing pain. I could taste hot panic in the back of my throat. "Because that part of my life is over, okay?" I said. I fought to keep my voice from rising. "It's over and it's useless to keep trying to do something when it's clear that ship has sailed. It's pathetic to keep holding on to hope. Whatever. So I'm not going to be playing guitar anymore. It's fine. So I can't be part of Ruthless anymore. It's not a big fucking deal. That part of my life is gone, and the sooner you all get that through your heads, the sooner you can all leave me in peace."
If I thought that would shut her up, then I clearly had hit my head far harder than I thought. Maddie lifted her chin, exposing the curve of her long white throat. My body, broken as it was, couldn't help but respond to the sight of that creamy skin. I could still taste the way her freckles felt under my tongue.
Her eyes snapped. "You're giving up, huh? Don't want to work at it? It doesn't come easy, so whatever, fuck it, right? If at first you don't succeed, fuck it, right? That's your mantra, isn't it?"
I glared at her. How was it possible to love someone and want to strangle them with equal passion? "Yeah," I said flatly, "that's my mantra. That's what I've lived my whole life believing, and nothing you can say is gonna take that away from me. I am who I am, Princess, and one little pep talk isn't going to change that."
Her eyes darkened and a fucking shadow passed across her face. And just as suddenly, all of the anger bled out, stark white, and her lip trembled. "So, if something doesn't come easy, it's not worth working for?" she asked.
There seemed to be a whole hell of a lot more meaning in her words than I understood.
But I still clung to my stubbornness. "That's what I said, isn't it? It's the universe telling you to stop busting your ass for something you can't have."
"So you and I…"
Fear seized my stomach. "I wasn't talking about you and me," I said quickly.
She shook her head. "No, you're clearly talking about us, even if you don't realize it. We were doomed from the start; we knew it. There's too much standing in our way—our parents being together, your brother, my career, your injury. It's the universe telling us we're not supposed to be together," she singsonged in a mocking little tune. "Don't you get it, Rane? We should just stop trying. This thing has just gotten too hard."
I felt my hand open and close, but this time, I didn't give a shit about the pain. "Madeline, wait."
But she was already sliding off the bed. She waved her hand. "No, no, I get it. It was good, but now it's over and it's not worth fighting for. Good luck, Rane," she said.
And then she walked out the door.
Chapter
Madeline
I kept it together right up until the second I opened the door to my car. And then I burst into tears.
Hot, angry, wracking sobs consumed me. I folded my arms against my chest and clutched myself, rocking back and forth as I cried harder than I had since I was a child.
"Stupid, stupid, stupid," I chanted, smacking my steering wheel with each word.
How could you not want to fight? How could you not want to do the thing you were born to do? How could you just give up, that easily? All I knew how to do was fight. All I knew was to keep going, never pausing to take my eye off my goal. And it had worked, right? It had worked because he'd helped me. And here I was, ready to help him. Friend, lover, stepsister, whatever the hell I was to him, I was here to help him, and he was too goddamn stubborn and lazy to see it.
I was such a fool.
An elderly couple walked out of the building and shuffled over to the car near mine. The lady peered in, nearsightedly, and her mouth made a tragic 'o' shape.
I looked at myself in the rearview mirror. My hair was hanging in my face, stuck fast against white skin, slicked down with my own tears. My eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, and my cheeks looked like I had been slapped repeatedly. I exhaled and pick up the phone.
"I need you to work your magic," I told Harlow.
She met me in the parking lot of the studio, her kit in hand. "Should I even ask?" she asked me.
"You can probably guess," I told her, leaning back in my chair as she cleaned me off.
"Drizzle?"
"The very same."
"He being an ass?" She dabbed at my puffiness with concealer.
"In the way only he can." I chuckled grimly.
"Ain't love grand
?" she asked.
I opened my eyes and looked at her sharply. She waved her hand. "I know you're in love with him," she said.
"He's my stepbrother—well, not officially yet, but he will be. Our parents rescheduled the wedding and everything."
She dipped her sponge into her palette. "And? Remember Jax and Lily? Their parents are married, too." She shook her head. "You celebrity types, you like to make your own rules. Seems like the only people who will put up with you are members of your own family. And stop blushing!" she told me. "I could see you guys together the first day I met you. Rane's awesome. He's a lazy fucker, but you're like the exact opposite of that. I guess opposites really do attract."
She dabbed lipstick in the center of my bottom lip. "Press," she ordered. I did what she told me.
Chapter
Madeline
(Two months later)
The Sunday morning of the wedding dawned damp and gray, with threatening clouds boiling up over the western horizon. It was the perfect weather to match my mood.
Since leaving the hospital on that terrible day, I had filled every spare second of my life with work. Jen was right, I was suddenly a hot commodity again. Once my Skyline Drive scenes were in the can, I was flung back into the world of stardom. My face was back on the cover of magazines. "Mad Maddie No More," "Princess Parker Grows Up," "Back From the Brink." I smiled on the late shows and told the sanitized, upbeat version of my story.
And every single one of them asked about Rane.
I wasn't so polished yet that I could say his name without stumbling. In the two months since I last saw him, not a day went by where I didn't pick up the phone. Just friends? I would say, for a little while? I miss you.
But I put my phone back down again, every single time, my hands shaking with the swirl of emotions that threatened to burst free the second I heard his voice again.