by E V Darcy
He knew if he wanted that, if he decided not to speak, Ellie would open her arms and welcome him. She’d let him take what he needed and willingly give him more. He sighed as he broke the kiss and rested his forehead against hers, pulling himself together.
‘Or,’ she murmured, her breath mingling with his. ‘We could just go to bed.’
He huffed a chuckle but shook his head as best he could because he didn’t want to break the contact. He didn’t want to lose that line of warmth of her body against his. He couldn’t do it without that anchor and was terrified he’d get lost in the memories and never come back.
‘Kelly was my fiancée,’ he began, his voice lower and gruffer than he thought it would be; the emotions of that time with Kelly were still raw, even after all those years. ‘Like I said, she became my biggest fan.’ He paused, he expected her to say something, but she remained silent and gently hugged him a little closer. He swallowed before he continued. ‘I met her on the set of Entryway. She was just an extra, nothing major. But she was this nervous little thing that intrigued me. I thought easy pickings; a quick afternoon lay to blow off some steam.’
He remembered seeing this fresh, hopeful face looking around the set, curiosity evident in everything she saw and touched. He remembered seeing that and hating it; hating that she wasn’t worn down and disillusioned by the lights of Hollywood. He hated that she still held onto hopes all the glitter was real, that Tinseltown was really going to make her dreams come true. He’d wanted to take that from her, wanted to ruin that outlook completely.
He laughed bitterly as he confessed, ‘I thought she’d be star struck enough to just step into my trailer and spread her legs. Sonya was down that day checking up on me as she was trying to get me to smarten up, to sort myself out. She saw me chatting to Kelly, saw me trying it on with her and marched over to us. She demanded to know how old she was—just eighteen.’
He remembered Kelly talking animatedly about leaving her past behind and making her dreams a reality. Sonya had fallen for her hook, line, and sinker.
‘I said she was legal and, therefore, fair pickings. The next thing I know my face exploded in pain—Kelly had a real arm on her. I totally deserved it.’ He felt Ellie’s hand reach up and cup his cheek and he nuzzled into it. ‘A big part of me wishes Sonya hadn’t been there to stop me, that I’d charmed her into my bed and kicked her out right after, then all the crap that we faced later wouldn’t have happened.
‘But then you wouldn’t have Tyler,’ Ellie reminded him softly.
‘I know,’ he said, finally pulling back to look into her eyes so she could see how serious he was. Tyler was never something he took lightly. He’d do everything again a million times over, to ensure he had his son.
He sighed unhappily. ‘But that’s not what happened. What happened was, I got a broken nose and two black eyes. The director went nuts when he found out and fired her on the spot.
‘She told him to stuff his role, that if this was what Hollywood was like she didn’t want to be an actress. Sonya signed her onto her books immediately, then told me to get myself sorted or she was going to ditch me. She wasn’t putting up with my shit anymore.
‘It took another year and a lawsuit, but I got myself sorted.’ Ellie raised her brow but remained silent. ‘Okay, so I didn’t get myself sorted, Luc, Frank, Sonya and Kelly did. I had an assistant, Faye, she was brilliant. Got me anything and everything I wanted. Booze, drugs, women, anything. Nothing was off limits if I wanted it. She got me into this party one night and I got so wasted I couldn’t drive. I mean I was on the line of alcohol poisoning and overdosing. Faye knew if I collapsed at that party then my career would be over and she’d lose her job, so she bundled me into the car—’
‘Wait, now I remember this story. You had a car accident, some people were killed. She claimed you were driving, but it was actually her.’
Marc nodded and stared out over the top of her head. That night had been his wake up call. The car had veered into the other lane and crashed into another car carrying a family—parents and a baby who wasn’t even one-year-old. He had been so out of it, he hadn’t remembered anything other than being in the car and seeing bright lights. The next thing he knew, he was on the side of the road with emergency crews all around. They’d been thrown from the 4x4 as they’d had the roof down; the family, though, hadn’t been so lucky. The two parents had died. Somehow the baby made it out.
‘If that witness hadn’t come forward…’ He shook his head. ‘So anyway, there I was in hospital and cold hard reality came crashing down on me. By this point, I’d pretty much isolated myself from the people who cared about me. Sonya had struck me off and I kept ditching Frank to go party. Luc and I hadn’t talked for a couple of years, but he was the only one I could think of calling. So I called him.
‘He came without a second thought and the next thing I know, Sonya was back in action and she’d brought Kelly. Apparently, she’d been a terrible actress, but was fantastic at keeping order so Sonya kept her around as a personal assistant. She was assigned to me and took zero shit.’
‘And you two became involved?’ Ellie asked, shifting on her feet. His own feet, though, were starting to protest at their position. He disentangled himself, took Ellie’s hand in his and led her to the sofa. When he sat down, he pulled her onto his lap. Everything he’d told her so far was the easy bit. That was pretty much public knowledge. The car accident had been splashed all over the gossip rags and the twist in the tale, when it went to court, made headlines in the real papers.
Afterwards, the press heralded Marc the redeemed star, bad boy turned good. He’d learnt his lesson and learnt it well.
He created a memorial scholarship in the name of the family, covered their funeral arrangements, set up a trust fund for the now orphaned baby, and he had promoted a national drive awareness campaign.
He also completed an extra-long stint in rehab.
God, Hollywood was such bullshit. What little he had done, would never cover the cost of those lives. Even if he wasn’t the one who had driven the car, he had contributed to their loss of life.
‘It took a couple of years,’ he finally admitted. He rested his head back against the sofa as Ellie snuggled in closer.
‘You don’t have to tell me anything more if you don’t want to.’
He licked his lips as he stared at the ceiling and weighed up the pros and cons of her knowing. If he did want this to work, if he wanted her to stay beside him, she had to know. Now. He couldn’t get involved with her to know this would come between them later.
‘While Kelly took no shit from me, she was also very protective and kept everyone at bay. She organised my life so I was seen at the right events with the right people. She gave me just enough exposure to keep people interested, but not enough for me to cause trouble.
‘The first year was difficult. I had rehab and that was— Let’s just say I never want to go through that again.’
‘That’s why you don’t drink?’ Ellie asked as she brushed her hand through his hair. ‘Even on screen.’
‘Even on screen. I’ve had it as a clause in every contract since. If they want me, they have no reference to my character drinking. I lost out on a few roles, but nothing I lament over.
‘Kelly and I, we progressed into a relationship slowly; it just made sense. I treated her like a princess—she helped save me and I felt shitty over the way I’d first treated her. She said she forgave me.’ He snorted at the thought. ‘But none of us knew. We thought she was a terrible actress, but she’d been pulling the wool over our eyes for years.
‘She had control over my life, every nuance of it. And when we got together it got tighter and tighter, and I never realised. We were already engaged when one day Sonya turned up out the blue, said she’d been trying to get hold of me for weeks. I hadn’t even known she’d called—Kelly had been having all my private calls diverted to her line. I had no clue.
‘When I confronted her, she made excuses, a
nd I loved her, I really did.’ He rubbed his hand over his eyes. The thought of that emotion connected to her now made him sick to his stomach. ‘So I let it slide. I excused her. Frank got angry and quit.
‘It took me a while, but I eventually noticed more and more things starting to come up; clothes I’d picked out to wear the next day were changed, a car I ordered got swapped, the band I wanted for the wedding got cancelled. I practically didn’t go anywhere without her at my side.’
‘You went from one extreme to the other?’
‘Pretty much.’ He lifted his head and looked at her in the dimming evening light. Tyler would be back soon, he reasoned, and he knew he had to finish before then. It had been so long since he’d spoken about how his son had come into the world that he had to get it over with and deal with the fall-out afterwards, so he was put back together in time to ensure Tyler thought nothing was amiss.
‘Finally, Luc got hold of me.’ He caressed her cheek as he spoke, memorising her features; her little nose, the Cupid’s bow of her lips.
‘He’d been told by Kelly to stay away, that he wasn’t welcome anymore. I was floored. Luc was the only one of my so-called friends to stick with me through thick and thin. There was no way I’d give him up.
‘So I confronted her, told her I was fed up of it all, that I was done. The wedding was off. She came back with the fact she was pregnant.’
Marc remembered the argument, the screaming and shouting and then her tearful breakdown with the confession of the pregnancy she’d only found out about that day. He’d told her the timing was so convenient and she told him she’d prove it. They’d both been surprised when they’d gone to the doctors and found her almost twenty weeks along. Well, at least Kelly acted surprised. It came out later she’d known all along. That she’d fallen pregnant on purpose to ensure he never got away from her.
‘Oh,’ Ellie breathed. ‘So you didn’t leave her.’
Marc chuckled darkly. ‘Who’s telling this story?’
‘Sorry.’
‘No, don’t be.’ He kissed her nose and pulled her to him again, burying his face in the crook of her neck; he couldn’t look at her for the next part.
He’d been so scared, yet so excited at the idea of being a dad that he immediately started planning for the baby; he began reading and researching about pregnancy and giving birth, and what to expect afterwards. Kelly had expected them to still get married until he’d said he wanted joint custody. That was when she’d dropped the bombshell.
‘Kelly said that if I didn’t marry her she’d abort the baby. I—I wasn’t the best person in the world, and I completely agree that a woman’s body is hers, so her choice, but to use an unborn child as a bargaining chip…’ He shuddered. ‘It made me realise who she really was. How far she’d really go. That was my child and she knew I wanted it, but would kill it without a second thought.
‘She was already almost five months—nineteen weeks. I looked it up, at that point, the baby’s developed its senses. It can feel. The idea of her terminating when it can feel… I couldn’t do that; it wasn’t the baby’s fault.
‘After she told me that, Luc, Sonya and I came up with a plan. We were going to play along, put the wedding back until after the baby came. We played it off that I wanted the baby involved. In the meantime, we were building up a case, so when Tyler arrived, I could break it off with her and claim custody. We just didn’t plan on her finding out.’
‘Oh shit,’ Ellie breathed. ‘What did she do.’
‘Took an overdose,’ he whispered, ‘and then slit her wrists.’
‘Fuck.’
‘She timed it to perfection. Planned it to a T so I’d find her in plenty of time. But they think that might have had something to do with Tyler’s hearing. That maybe the drugs she took affected his brain somehow. Or that the blood loss she endured affected his own blood supply. They said they’ll never be really sure.’
‘Oh, Marc.’ They sat in silence for a while, Ellie’s hands gently raking through his hair, allowing him to relax into her embrace. He just wished he could have stayed like that forever.
‘Her brother, Roger, was listed next of kin on her medical records; the hospital called him because we weren’t married. Turned out, Kelly had run away from home at seventeen. She’d had mental health problems since she was a child, didn’t connect with people properly, and when she felt she did, she latched on to them and became obsessed. She had a string of harassment orders against her before she had run away.
‘After weeks in the hospital under a psychiatrist, they discovered her obsession with me started when we first met. That day I hadn’t wanted her, just her body, and she was determined at all costs to make me want everything about her. To make it so that I couldn’t live without her. She—’
Marc screwed his eyes shut as he remembered that day. She’d been in a session with the doctor and he’d been watching through a mirrored window.
‘She confessed,’ his voice cracked. ‘She confessed that the moment Tyler was born she was going to kill him—that she wasn’t going to share me with anyone else. And if she couldn’t have me…’ He let out a dry sob. ‘If I didn’t want her anymore, she’d make me watch and then kill me too.’
She had described it all in detail, all the ways she could do it. She’d even mimicked the actions and Marc had found himself throwing up into the waste paper bin in the tiny observation room. Just the idea… It churned his stomach again.
The worst part was, Kelly was lucid when she’d described it. No medication in her system. When the doctor had told her they wouldn’t allow that to happen, Kelly had simply laughed and said they wouldn’t be able to stop her. She’d then described exactly how she could get out of the hospital and hunt them all down.
He felt Ellie freeze against him. ‘Fucking hell,’ was all she said.
‘I couldn’t let it happen.’
‘No, of course not,’ she agreed.
‘So I did something terrible.’
‘Okay?’ He cringed as he heard the hesitation in her voice.
‘I paid them all off. The doctors, they did say that she was a danger to herself and her unborn baby, but we should have gone through the courts. We should have had legal backing and all sorts of paperwork in order to keep her there until the baby was born, then have him signed over to me officially with social workers and everything. But that meant it would get out. The more people who knew, the more chance it had of becoming public, which would mean that one day Tyler would find out his mother wanted him dead. So I paid them to do it quietly.
‘The doctors agreed to transfer her to her brother’s care and we took her to back to New Jersey, to a private clinic I pay a lot of money to. When she hit thirty-eight weeks, they sedated her and induced labour. Then when she’d recovered, they dosed her up again and got her to sign the baby over to me. She’s been there ever since.’
‘I see.’ She paused. ‘Marc, is she still medicated. Are you holding her there against her will and medical advice?’
‘No,’ he finally raised his head to look at her. ‘Everything is now one hundred percent above board regarding her sectioning.’ He’d made sure of that afterwards. Marc had got a good lawyer, who listed that she’d threatened to come and kill him and Tyler and how she was going to do it and had it confirmed by the doctors in L.A. and in New Jersey.
It was just the dates were a little off.
Okay, a lot.
‘Because you did that after Tyler was born… So that there would be no questions of her giving you custody.’
Marc nodded.
‘I see.’ She scooted off his lap and ran her fingers through her dark hair before she held her head in her hands. ‘That’s a lot to take in. Bloody hell, no wonder you don’t do publicity, fans, or… anything.’
‘I understand if you don’t want anything to do with me after this, but—’
She sat back up and looked directly at him as she asked, ‘Would you have told me? If that woman hadn’t appea
red today, would you have told me the truth?’
‘Honestly? I don’t know. I’d like to think I would have.’
She bit her lip as she searched his face, looking for honesty in the dim light. She seemed to reach a conclusion just as the door burst open and Tyler cried, ‘Papa!’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Marc’s tale had been a lot to take in, never mind to live through. While it had been painful to find out the person she’d once loved wasn’t who she thought he was, what Marc had gone through was infinitely worse. She couldn’t begin to comprehend how he had managed to get through what he had and still—
She watched him as he scooped up Tyler and held him at arm’s length, taking in the state of his person. The kid’s face and t-shirt were completely covered in the remnants of ice cream and, from the colours, it looked as if he’d sampled every flavour.
Tyler was busy telling his dad about his trip with Frank and all he’d experienced with the bodyguard; he’d had a fabulous time and wanted his dad to share it all with him. Ellie smiled as she watched Marc take him to the bar and sit him on the counter. He stripped him out of his ruined T-shirt and made to wipe his face with a cloth. The boy wiggled and laughed as his father tried to capture his face with it.
Tyler had a countenance about him that just endeared you to him right away and Ellie believed that could only come from someone who was loved by his family with their whole hearts. Had Marc done something morally wrong? Yes, definitely. Did she ever want Tyler to believe he was never wanted because of his mother’s problems? Hell, no.
Would she have done what Marc had if she’d been in his situation? She didn’t know, but she knew all he’d really done was make it easier and quicker to get his son into sole custody and keep him safe from what he perceived would harm him in the future. Did it scare her that he had that power? A little.