The Same Time (Time Series book 2)

by Brona Mills

  Anger’s been boiling in me all day at the thoughts of having to run away from these people who are willing to help me. But what if I really could get Nathan to leave me alone for good? Leave the country? It won’t work. Nathan keeps coming back, and apparently, I keep dying every time he shows up.

  ‘How the hell does a contract keep a man like that from coming back?’ Even David is getting mad with the ridiculousness of it. Nathan isn’t just going to sign an agreement not to hunt me down again.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Mike turns to me. ‘You must have something on him.’

  Why? Because he beat me and is an asshole, you figured out he must have a load of secrets, some of which I might know?

  ‘Something we can use as a bargaining tool, to keep him away,’ Mike adds.

  Nerves turn to nausea in the pit of my stomach. I can’t tell anyone. I’ll end up losing Max if I tell.

  Mike continues, not noticing my unease. ‘Audrey said Nathan can’t come back into the US, and with the money we give him he stays away for good.’

  ‘Who’s Audrey?’ I ask confused. Who the hell have they been discussing this with? ‘How can you be sure he won’t come back?’

  ‘I don’t know. What I do know is it works. Stella, you need to stay here, talk to David, and work out what you can use on Max’s dad. I have to go find us a lawyer.’

  Mike gets off the coffee table, and I stare at his back as he walks out the door without another word.

  ‘What the hell was that all about?’ Pamela says.

  Max gasps. ‘Mommy, Granny said hell.’

  Mom pokes Max in the belly, tickling his side and making him laugh and cheer at the same time.

  Mike is gone for hours, leaving his secret girl in his room. I’m not as nervous as I was this morning. If Nathan knew where I lived, he would’ve been here by now. Even if he saw I wasn’t alone, he would have made his presence known. Having David here is calming, even though he’s been in his room for the last hour, with the girl who’s spent the night with Mike. When Mike arrives home, he goes straight to his room. I busy myself in the kitchen, waiting for them to come speak to me.

  I’ve cleaned the counters three times when I hear David shouting. I can’t decipher the words. He’s mad. What would he be angry about? Maybe they’re arguing about the girl. Oh Christ, my heart drops into my stomach. What if she’s the one he’s supposed to marry?

  David quiets down, and I tiptoe to the edge of the kitchen, waiting for one of them to storm out. Mike appears first. He looks frazzled. ‘Don’t worry, I have one more place to go, and then I think we have this all figured out.’

  Mike returns early evening and goes straight to his room. David comes out with a handful of papers he folds over and slides in his back pocket.

  ‘We have the money sorted,’ he tells me.

  ‘How much do you have this time?’ I sigh. David has been handing over everything he has to me at all points through time.

  ‘More than you paid him the last time. We have half a million for Nathan, plus the lawyer’s fees and some leftover to keep us going. But it’s not enough. We need something on him that will keep him out of the country. Mike has it worked out with a lawyer. A good one. He says if we can get something to bribe him with, we can pay him to stay away. And there’s more. We need to prove to Nathan that he’s lost the control he had over you. If you’re with someone else, he’ll finally see you’re no longer his. He needs to see you as someone else’s.’

  ‘What, like yours?’ I scoff.

  David flinches. ‘I don’t think of you as property. You know that. But that’s how he sees women. If I stand by and be the good guy, letting you choose how to live your life and who to be with, he’ll think I’m weak. He’ll think he can get past me and order you around. I know it’s vulgar, Stella, but if he thinks I’m controlling you, like he used to, it might be enough to get rid of him. You said it yourself. He keeps coming back. We can dangle enough money in front of him, it will make him look weak if he squanders it all this time.

  ‘We have a good thing, Stella, and I don’t want to hide. I know you didn’t want Max to find out yet, but I think that’s bullshit. I think you didn’t want another relationship yet. But I’m not him. I treat you exactly how you deserve to be treated. If Nathan’s as bad as you let me think he is—you must have something on him. What about the cop friend he used to threaten you with?’

  ‘I can’t tell you. I’ll put you all in danger.’

  ‘Fuck that, Stella. Hell, he probably already thinks you told us, so we’re probably in danger anyway, if it’s even that big a deal.’

  ‘Fuck you, too, David,’ I scream.

  ‘Tell us. It’s the final thing we need to get rid of him.’

  ‘Tell me how you got the money first, ’cause I know you don’t have money like that lying around. What do you mean you got money to pay him off? How did you get that kind of money, David?’

  ‘What’s all the yelling about?’ Mike asks from the hallway.

  David faces him, pointing back at me. ‘She has something we can use on him, but won’t tell us.’

  I stare Mike down. ‘Where did you get the money, Mike?’

  ‘I got it from a friend. It’s a loan, that’s all,’ he answers.

  ‘And is your friend going to come looking for their money back with a baseball bat?’

  ‘I have a contact at the studio.’

  Liar, if he had a contact, he would have used it already to get himself a job.

  ‘You’ve already done so much work for me,’ Mike continues, ‘and we’ve not even made any money yet. Consider this your retainer. But we need to know what you have on him.’

  I sink into the couch. I can’t keep this from David much longer. He’s right. If Nathan finds out I’m in another relationship, he’ll assume I’ve already spoke about it. I curl up into a ball, wanting this whole thing to go away. ‘Can’t we just leave it alone? If we have the money, we don’t need anything else.’

  ‘He’ll come back, Stella, just like this time. We have to fix this properly,’ David tells me.

  I’m beginning to realise that even with DD helping me, and David in my life now, Nathan will continue to show up, threaten me and Max every time he needs money. It should have been him who died that night. If I could go back in time and change one thing, it would be that. I was already pregnant. I would still have Max, but that fucker would be the one dead instead.

  The tears flow as I argue back and forth with myself. I can’t keep this inside much longer. Nathan keeps coming back and I know full well what he’s capable of. David wouldn’t betray me by telling the police I was involved. He wouldn’t risk me losing Max, and Mike is too invested in me helping with his career. I need to trust them—they’ve earned it.

  I raise my head. My gaze settles on David’s brown comforting eyes. ‘He killed someone.’

  Four years earlier

  Friday, September 24, 1993

  Hollywood, California

  ‘Sit at the bar and look pretty,’ Nathan tells me. ‘I want you as a distraction. I want the guys to be jealous of what I have. ’ He grabs my chin and squeezes too tight. ‘But don’t distract them enough that they actually think they can fuck you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that.’ I keep my voice soft as he walks the three feet away to the table his buddies are waiting at. He’s already been drinking. Cards will piss him off tonight. He always loses. Sitting in a bar pregnant is going to look pretty nasty in a couple more months, when I really start to show. Maybe Nathan will let me stay at home.

  I order a soda and perch on a stool. No time to grieve for your father a week after he died when your boyfriend might just send you to meet him.

  I close my eyes when the image of my father swinging from the back of his home office door flashes into my mind. The things I’ve learned in this short week is that no matter how good your life looks to others, there are always things you have to hide. Like, who knew you could look like a millionaire while wa
llowing in debt? No matter how hard my father and I worked at the business, he still lost it all. Now, I know how hard it is to cut a rope and the helplessness of calling an ambulance for someone who was already dead. I knew right when I used my shoulder to push the door all the way open, that he was already dead on the other side.

  Nathan couldn’t hide his delight when he found out my dad was dead. Not that he despised Dad, but I saw the dollar signs in his eyes. I’m the only child to a Hollywood legend. It scares me to think what’s going to happen when he realises I won’t inherit as much as he thinks I will.

  I should have figured out working with Dad each and every day, that no matter how much he was succeeding in bringing his business back to life, inside he was already done. The rise and fall, the first divorce, then the second divorce on the table. I saw his life crumbling again. I just never envisioned him tying a boat rope around a door handle, tossing it over the top and tying it into a noose.

  I run my hand over my stomach and wonder if Nathan will have a miraculous turn around when he becomes a father. If he’ll love his child, like my father loved me. It’s not that he’s violent all the time, but the worst part is the fear, wondering if this is the time he’ll lose control and not get it back until it’s too late. But he has me, knocked up and friendless with a dead father and a broke mother who couldn’t get her shit together if it killed her—or maybe me. My back stiffens from waiting around and the soda runs through me as fast as the glass is continuously refilled. I swear I’ve taken three trips to the bathroom in the last ten minutes. When I hop off the barstool, Nathan darts his eyes to me. How the hell is me peeing pissing him off?

  I lower my head so I don’t make eye contact with anyone. The guy sitting at the table near the restroom gets up as I pass, nearly bumping into me as he steps back.

  It was my fault. My eyes are on the floor, and I don’t dare lift them to start a conversation. Bathroom Guy doesn’t turn around as he mutters an apology but lets me through the archway to the restrooms ahead of him.

  Great, now Nathan will think he’s my secret lover. I pee quickly and open the stall door, adjusting my skirt at the same time. I don’t even wash my hands so I can be back on my assigned seat before Nathan can possibly assume anything happened in the bathroom. I walk to the card game and touch his shoulder so he knows I’m back. ‘You need anything from the bar?’ I finger the Ralph Lauren shirt he’s wearing. Despite being excited when I found a shirt in his size at TJ Maxx a few months ago, I hate that he thinks I still like it when he wears the clothes I bought for him.

  He swats my hand off his shoulder. ‘No.’

  He watches Bathroom Guy return to his table. With his back to us, Bathroom Guy downs the rest of his drink. When he starts to turn around, I spin to my stool to face the bar. If Nathan thinks I’m looking at him, we’ll both be in trouble.

  ‘You got room for one more player?’ he asks, approaching Nathan’s table.

  Nathan nods to the empty chair. A new player means at least another hour. I order more soda with three cherries and take my time sucking as much liquid from the cherries as I can.

  I stare out the passenger window to the parking lot. The only view is the darkened door to the bar, and my heartbeat doubles. Nathan’s waiting for a fight.

  ‘You need to calm down. You didn’t get screwed over. You lost,’ I tell him.

  ‘I don’t lose.’ He shoves a finger in my face.

  ‘Can we go? I want to lie down. My legs are killing me in these heels.’

  ‘We’ll go when I’m good and ready.’

  After a few minutes, three of the guys from the card game come out. Two of them are Nathan’s regulars, who shake hands with Bathroom Guy and head off in different directions.

  ‘See, I fucking told you. They screwed me. They know each other.’

  ‘Maybe they were being polite. That’s what normal people do when they’ve spent an evening together.’

  His lips curl up at one side. ‘Is that what you did? Spend an evening with him? I saw how many times you disappeared to the restroom. No one else pissed that much.’

  ‘No one else is pregnant, Nathan.’ It doesn’t really matter whether I antagonise him. He’s a dick whether I’m nice to him or not.

  He starts the engine and swings the car around, following Bathroom Guy out of the parking lot.

  I swallow hard and buckle my seat belt. Nerves prickle my skin and chill me down to my legs. I turn the heat up as we follow the car around the hills in complete darkness. Neither car is travelling fast. Bathroom Guy must know he’s being followed. It’s not like Nathan is subtle about anything.

  Nathan flashes his lights. The car up front pulls over, and the driver’s door opens.

  Nathan puts the high beams on, blinding the man, and steps out.

  I glance at the clock. I want this fight over. I don’t really care what happens to Nathan. Maybe I’ll get lucky and Bathroom Guy will finally teach him a lesson. I hear Nathan’s yelling. It’s like a Rottweiler snarl you can pick out a mile away. The other guy doesn’t look like he’s putting up much argument, but he must say something that pisses Nathan off, because he jabs one quick punch to the man’s stomach, and the poor guy falls to his knees.

  Shit.

  I lean forward and turn the full beam off, but it’s no good. Nathan still has his arm bent like it’s stuck inside the guy. He didn’t even put his full force into the punch, that much I could tell. I’ve seen Nathan punch before; I’ve been on the receiving end of it once or twice.

  Nathan slowly retracts his fist from the guy’s midsection. He wipes something on his jeans and turns around, slipping whatever he had into his back pocket. He stabbed him. Fuck. Fuck. What the hell do I do? I feel sick, but I can’t even breathe properly. Nathan takes measured steps back to the car, the other man behind him, still on his knees. By the time Nathan gets out of my line of sight, the guy is sprawled on the dirt.

  ‘What happened?’ I breathe when he gets into the car.

  Nathan grabs my phone out of my hand and tosses it back inside my purse. ‘Taught him a lesson, was all.’

  ‘Jesus, Nathan. What did you do?’

  ‘Guy’s a pussy. Wouldn’t be surprised if someone comes along after us and finishes him off.’ Nathan pulls onto the road. ‘We went straight home, got it?’

  I nod and try to keep the tears back, but a few escape and I rush to swipe them away.

  ‘Hey, don’t worry, baby,’ Nathan croons and pulls me towards him. ‘Nothing is going to happen to me. No one is ever going to know we were here.’

  I keep my eyes open when he hugs me. No need to get caught off guard. His designer jeans that he can’t afford are covered in blood. I smell the bar on his shirt. ‘Remember, I have friends who can help me out of a legal mess.’ He pulls my face up to look me in the eye. ‘Don’t I?’

  ‘You sure do.’ I clench my hands when he touches the scar on my lip. The doctor told me not to touch it. To let it heal as much as it can to minimise the scarring. Don’t pick the scab or cover it with make-up just yet. But Nathan touches it every chance he gets. Like he wants me to have a permanent reminder of him.

  ‘If you ever tell anyone about tonight’—he glances at my belly—‘I’ll make you an accomplice. Hell, you are one; being there, agreeing to keep it quiet, leaving the scene of a crime. You were the one who set up the honey trap. Everyone in the bar saw you whoring with him in the restroom. Who’s going to believe you weren’t involved?

  ‘My friends will help me out. They’ll make sure you go to jail. What kind of mother would you be, giving birth in prison? And me, shit, I can get out early. I’d get the baby before you were out of jail and make sure to raise it right.’ He sneers before softening his tone. ‘Let’s forget about this and concentrate on the reading of your dad’s will tomorrow. It’s going to be a big day for us.’

  The reading of a will is supposed to be an emotional time for me, and it genuinely is, but fear dwarfs all other emotions. I loved my dad, and
I wish to god he hadn’t done what he did. But I’m nervous. Rumours of his financial burden have started to surface. I know for a fact his financial mess is more than a rumour.

  Nathan parks and I get out of the car and follow him around the back of my dad’s house to my pool house. When Mom had to move in with Cici and Isaac, Dad let me move in here when I turned eighteen, despite the new wife objecting. I wonder what will happen now that he’s gone—how long I’ll have before the heartless bitch throws me out?

  I toss my purse on the entertainment stand and turn on the TV to the news station. Nathan is already gone to the bedroom. I can wait out here until he’s sleeping. We were on a main road. It won’t take long for someone to find a guy lying next to a car with the door open and lights on. It’s too late for me to call an ambulance. It won’t help the guy, not now. And the police will trace the call, know that we were there and left him.

  Nathan’s playing on his phone in the bedroom. Someone keeps texting him. He’s trying to hide it ’cause he switched his phone to silent, but the idiot doesn’t know how to turn the vibration off. I pull the movie blanket off the back of the couch and curl under it. Resting my eyes with the TV volume on low, I settle down for the night.

  When I wake at seven in the morning, Diana Koricke is covering the story about a body found on the main hills road. She’s no longer my favourite anchor woman.

  Thank god it wasn’t me. I choke on my cry. What the fuck? Some guy is dead, and all I can think of is myself. I wrap the blanket around my shoulders, bury my face in a cushion, and let it all out. I must have cried for an hour. My face is blotchy when I get up and toss the blanket into the wash.

  Nathan never wakes before ten, so I text my mom.

  I’m in trouble.

  Her immediate reply surprises me.

  Is it Nathan? What did he do?

  How much should I tell her? How much can she actually help?