Unmistakable

  “That was generous of you,” he says, moving over to the window seat.

  “No. It wasn’t, actually.” I can tell that he isn’t satisfied, so I continue. “I’ve found that people never do things just to be generous. They need to get something out of the deal. When rich people decide to give away a bunch of money, for example, they get their name on a fancy building, or that little warm, fuzzy feeling deep inside, or extra bonus points when they add up their good and evil deeds at the end of the year. Altruism doesn’t exist.”

  He sighs. “Spoken like a true cynic.”

  I can tell that he’s disappointed in me. This was a really bad idea. There are tons of empty seats. It’s not too late to switch again.

  “Yep. That’s me.” I start to reach for my bag, but he places his hand over mine to stop me.

  “I don’t think you’re a natural cynic, Stella. You just play one on TV. Whether or not you had ulterior motives, it was a nice thing to do.”

  “It’s just a freaking airplane seat,” I mutter.

  He glance at the basket of alcohol.

  “How about a toast to cynicism?”

  “What a good idea.” My voice drips with sarcasm. “Hands off the whiskey. That’s all mine.”

  He gives me a bottle and I down it in a single gulp, not bothering to wait for the actual toast. Holden gives me a sidelong glance, but thankfully, he doesn’t offer any fatherly words of wisdom about alcohol consumption.

  As the cabin lights dim, the heady rush of booze fills my head. I grip the armrest and eye the basket in his hand again. He takes the empty bottle from my lap and moves the basket to the floor, where it’s out of my reach.

  “Don’t tell me that you’re a nervous flyer.”

  I’ve never been a nervous flyer. I love flying. I even convinced my dad to let me take flying lessons for my sixteenth birthday. I never managed to get the mythical pilot’s license, mostly because I was too absorbed in the task of getting Luke Dixon to fall hopelessly in love with me, but that’s neither here nor there. Flying is freedom from gravity, from rules, from all of the entanglements that exist in the real world but not in the sky.

  I do my best thinking up here. All of my thinking when I can’t get my brain to work properly.

  As the plane dips, ice runs up and down my spine. I’m paralyzed, pounding my head against the seat until it all goes away. Too many people. No room to breathe. More screaming and it might be me, but I’m not sure. A pinch to the arm. Sweet blackness.

  When I come back to myself, Holden’s voice is faint, as if it’s stretching across a long distance. I force myself to hear. He’s telling me to breathe.

  Touch returns first. I can feel my body sitting rigidly in the chair. So, I’m not actually screaming or pounding my head against the seat. That’s something.

  “Stella. Breathe. Just breathe,” he says, his fingers attempting to rub the life back into my skin.

  I’m shaking too violently to welcome his touch, so I pull my arms closer to myself and take in a shuddering breath as the plane begins to back away from the gate. With that movement, any hope of escape is lost. It’s just me, Holden, a steel cage, and four hours of trying not to lose my mind again. Perfect.

  I lunge for another bottle of whiskey, but Holden snatches the basket away before I can reach it.

  “I want a drink.”

  I’m practically vibrating with need. Surely, he can see that.

  “No, you don’t.” His voice is firm. He closes his fingers around mine, lacing our hands together.

  “Yes, I do. I’m not an alcoholic, I don’t even drink except on special occasions, and I need a drink right now. So, please hand it over.”

  “I am not letting you get drunk before the plane even takes off. You can have another one after we get into the air, Stella, and only if you tell me what just happened right now.”

  He places one soft, sure hand on either side of my face. I see only expectation as I stare into the endless pools of amber and honey, and I know immediately that he’s not the least bit surprised by my miniature breakdown.

  So, the day of reckoning has finally come. He’s been waiting patiently, like a good little shrink, for me to open up. I’ve underestimated again.

  Only a full truth will suffice. He’s earned that much.

  “Flashback,” I gulp.

  “From a plane?”

  “I was on a plane.”

  “Was the flashback of a plane ride, or was the flashback from something else?”

  I’m expecting a clinical assessment of my particular kind of craziness, shock at the fact that I’ve seemingly lost my mind at the beginning of a four-hour flight, horror that he’s going to have to deal with it, but I see nothing but endless patience and understanding in his beautiful face.

  “Both. I was on a plane, having a flashback.”

  “How long since the trauma?”

  “Three years. No full-fledged flashbacks in two, not since that plane ride,” I spit out.

  “That’s really good, Stella. You need water. And you need to breathe.”

  He places my other hand on the aisle armrest, an old trick that I’ve seen my mother use. Give the patient something tangible to fixate on, to anchor to.

  It works. Until it doesn’t. Until the plane lifts from the ground and my world turns sideways.

  I slip into that middle place. There’s no blood, no death, and no pain there, but there’s no life, no joy, either. Time slips away and there’s no way to recover it, nothing but endless quiet.

  The worst part of it is that I never know when I’ll come out of it. For a long time, I didn’t know if I would come out at all.

  It might be hours or minutes, days or weeks. Just as the haze is starting to lift, I hear Holden’s voice, soft and sad and desperate: “Where are you? Where did you go?”

  Then, later: “Who are you, Stella?”

  Chapter 16

  By the time I’m back in my own skin, I realize that the plane has leveled out and the seatbelt sign is off. Holden’s still holding one of my hands and the other is firmly wrapped around the armrest, but I don’t deserve comfort.

  There’s no use in pretending it didn’t happen.

  “How much time did I lose?”

  He anticipated my question. “It’s been a few minutes,” he says quickly. “You started breathing normally after only one, though, and that attack to recovery ratio indicates that you’ve managed to assert control.”

  I appreciate the clinical assessment, and he’s right. It used to be hours before I could snap back to reality, before I could make myself normal again. So, at least I’ve gotten better at managing the crazy.

  I keep thinking that someday this will be all be over, that someday I’ll wake up and Jack and the gun and the knife and the eyes of coal will be nothing but a distant memory, like something in a dream. I know I should move past it, get on with my life, be merry and light and bubbly and blond and frivolous. Maybe I hope for amnesia, for the total wiping away of all of that awful.

  But those memories are the one constant in my life. Every morning when I wake up and every night before I go to sleep, there’s the crushing weight of knowing that I’ll never be quite the same Stella as I was before.

  I think it happens to everyone, to some degree or another—that sudden realization that you’re not who you once were and that you can never get that person back again. It’s why there are so many stories about Peter Pan, and half-grown men and women who never seem to move into that final stage of self-awareness.

  Ugh. I’m losing my mind and I’m still thinking like a shrink’s kid. I look down, into my lap, unable to meet those amber honey eyes, which are undoubtedly filled with pity by now.

  “Aren’t you going to ask?”

  He’s silent.

  “Come on. Say it, Holden. We both know you want to. What’s wrong with you, Stella?”

  There’s a long pause. I know he’s curious. I think he’s trying to decide whether I’m strong enough to
handle his questions. Eventually, he sighs.

  “Trauma. PTSD. If I had to guess, you had no prior history of psychological issues. It’s just plain old trauma, late onset, in your teen years or early adulthood. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have come out of the flashback so quickly.”

  I appreciate his candor, so much so that I freely give up the answer to the unspoken question.

  “My brother died.”

  I’ve never said that to another person before. There was never a need to say “dead,” “brother,” or “Jack” aloud, because I have tangible, physical reminders painted on my body, ones that I can stare at if I need a visceral reminder of the pain. I can’t manage more than a whisper, and I don’t even know if Holden hears.

  It’s a half-truth. Less than a half truth. I don’t say the other part—Jack is dead and it’s my fault and I can never atone. I’m starting to wonder if full–truths even exist, or if we’re all just wandering around, telling pieces of stories and keeping the good and terrible stuff locked away for ourselves.

  But Holden did hear. “I’m sorry, Stella.”

  I abruptly turn to him. “Can I please have another drink now?”

  He gives the bottles a wary look. “If I were in counselor mode, I would tell you that it is an extremely awful idea to give you a drink, given the flashback you just had and the fact that alcohol can be a trigger. However, I’m not your shrink. I’m your friend.” He opens two bottles of whiskey and he clinks his against mine. “Friends don’t let friends drink alone.”

  I’m not sure if he’s just over or underestimated me, but either way, I’m grateful.

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Also, fuck trauma.”

  I laugh. It may come from hysteria, but I’ll take it. I didn’t even know that he knew how to swear. I mean, of course, everyone swears, except for maybe someone’s ninety-year-old grandma in Idaho, but that particular word just seems all wrong coming from Holden’s golden, beautiful face. He swallows the contents of the bottle in a single gulp.

  He offers a free explanation to my unspoken question. “Trauma. Early onset. My vocabulary was more impressive at the age of seven than it is now.”

  I twist the cool glass bottle in my hand before lifting it to my lips. The liquid slides down my throat, but there’s no powerful rush of warmth, no comfort. Holden peers at me out of the corner of his eye and lets out a long sigh.

  “Aren’t you going to ask, Stella? ‘Holden, what’s wrong with you?’”

  “You just told me. Trauma. Early onset,” I reply, tucking the bottle in the seat pocket in front of me.

  “Turning my own tricks against me?”

  “They weren’t very good tricks in the first place.”

  I should be deeply embarrassed about the fact that I just had a mental breakdown in front of my professor at the very beginning of a four-hour long plane ride. My extremely handsome professor that I just might possibly have a crush on. Correction—my blindingly beautiful professor that I’ve been trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to develop a crush on.

  But I don’t feel embarrassed. He has an ease, a way of making me feel like I’m special and normal at the same time. It’s more than a gift. It’s an art.

  “Why did you leave clinical psych?” I ask suddenly.

  “That’s an airplane question, Stella. And it’s a personal thing. Something that I don’t want to talk about right now.”

  Our first conversation, that day in the lecture hall, hangs in the air between us. I called him a douchebag.

  Batting a thousand. Again. I’m a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame. If I ask him, if I pry, there’s no going back. Personal questions with personal answers create an obligation to reciprocate.

  I ask anyway. “I just had a mental breakdown right in front of you, and you’re concerned that you might be giving away too much personal information?”

  “You did not have a mental breakdown. You had a perfectly normal response after experiencing a trigger that unearthed traumatic memories.”

  So, he’s not planning on answering. Fair enough.

  Out of nowhere, the words come. “I lost a patient.”

  I’ve had enough of half-truths for today. “People lose patients, Holden. You had to know that was part of the score.”

  He contemplates that for a second, and as he does, the aloofness leaves his expression entirely. There’s a deep agony in the amber honey, a kind of pain that I’ve only ever seen in the mirror and in Luke’s eyes. The depth of emotion shocks me to my core, but it’s fleeting, and after only a moment, there’s nothing in his face but deceptive calm.

  “I know that now. I didn’t then.” He sighs. “She, my patient, reminded me of someone else, which is a dangerous proposition in my profession, as I’m sure you know. I thought that gave me insight, a way of saving her from herself. I underestimated my ability to understand people. A lesson learned.”

  “What happened?”

  “I lost my temper with her in a session.” He gives me a sad smile. “I have a temper that rivals yours, Stella.”

  My response is automatic. “I find that pretty hard to believe.”

  “Let’s pray that you never have to believe me,” he says, glancing out the window. “She jumped off a bridge later that afternoon. People said that it wasn’t my fault, that she was a loose cannon and that it was only a matter of time before she hurt herself or someone else, but I know that her blood is on my hands. It’s the same as if I killed her myself.”

  “I know what that feels like,” I whisper.

  His eyes meet mine. There’s a question there, one that I will answer.

  “I know what it feels like to have blood on your hands.”

  Chapter 17

  3 ½ Years Earlier

  It’s been two days and two nights since Luke told me that I was a vain, selfish, preening monster. I remember the other words, too, but I’m stuck on vain. And selfish. The fact that I’ve refused to leave my room for the past two days isn’t really doing anything to contradict his words, but that’s what selfish little rich girls do when they get their feelings hurt. If that means I fit his stupid stereotype, so be it.

  There’s a half-eaten breakfast tray in the corner of my room that Rose, our housekeeper, brought up yesterday. It was accompanied by one of her characteristic sighs and a look of great disappointment, both of which I ignored. That’s right. I’m spoiled, too. Can’t forget that one.

  I can’t forget about the almost-kiss, either. There was one moment, just after I screamed and pouted and acted like a two-year-old throwing a tantrum, when I was pretty sure he was going to lean in and touch his lips to mine.

  It didn’t happen.

  Goddamn him and his stupid kiss.

  There are a thousand ways to torture a man. I should be able to come up with something. And revenge will be sweet.

  That’s what I should have been thinking about for the last two days. Unfortunately, I’m stuck on the way he looked at me, like I had the answer to every question he ever asked. I wallow in that one for a bit.

  Until the sound of a faint scream assaults my ears.

  I must be hearing things. The animalistic noise shares nothing with the smooth cadence of Jack’s voice, and that’s the only person it could have come from. The day after the party, my parents left for a week-long business trip, and Rose has the weekend off.

  “Stella! Stella! Stella! St…”

  It is definitely Jack’s voice. And he sounds absolutely terrified.

  He screams my name over and over again. Then, just as suddenly as it began, the noise disappears, leaving nothing but thick, petrifying silence to reach out and coat my insides.

  This isn’t Jack’s idea of a joke. It isn’t one of his silly pranks. Something is very wrong.

  911. I reach for my cell phone, but it’s not on my nightstand, where I normally keep it.

  I glance at the door to my bathroom, where a dozen of pieces of broken plastic and glass are sprawled on the floor. I search
the recesses of my mind and find a vague memory of my arm rearing back to throw it against the wall. Shit.

  A thud of unfamiliar footsteps comes from the far reaches of the hallway, the sound intensifying until I know that they’re getting closer and closer with each passing moment.

  Think, Stella. You love horror movies. What’s the escape route?

  I look at the balcony first, since that’s probably my best chance. The problem is that it’s at least twenty feet in the air, and my always-helpful mother had all the trees cut down so that I would have a better view. While I would might survive the fall, I wouldn’t be in any condition to run for help. There has to be another option. A better option.

  Maybe I can make it down the stairs. I glance hopefully towards the door, thinking that if I can just slip past, then maybe everything will be all right. “Short legs, good burst,” my track coach said once. Short legs. Jackass.

  A frenzied pounding cracks the thick oak of the door. I might have a few minutes before it falls in, but it won’t hold forever. The movement shakes a vase of flowers on my nightstand, and I take it into my hand before it falls to the ground. If I can get a good crack in, I can use the burst.

  The pounding stops, quickly replaced by a deafening silence. I pose myself near the door, ready to strike, even if my entire body is trembling.

  Something in my brain clicks when I hear the heavy intake of breath. The door isn’t going to break down. That means the person on the other side has a gun. And I have a vase.

  The blow is louder, sharper, harder than any noise I’ve heard in a movie theater. Bullets rain through the door, each one ripping a jagged hole near the keyhole and each one ripping a jagged hole in my hopes of escape. I raise the vase over my head and get ready to swing, but before I can release it, rough hands twist my arm behind my back, pulling my skin taut across my bones.

  The vise-like grip is so forceful that I think my flesh might tear away from my body. I struggle against it, not willing to give in.