“You’re wasting your time!” calls Alec with an infuriating note of humor in his voice. “And your plane leaves soon. We won’t pay for your a new ticket if you miss the flight!”
I take the stairs up to his floor, not wanting to wait for an elevator. I find him stepping out of his room with his suitcase flung over his shoulder when I leave the staircase and enter our hall.
“Chris,” I say, stopping short. “Alec forged the signature. He just told me everything. He was bragging about—”
“Just stop,” Chris says. The way his eyes look dead and haunted breaks my heart. “I saw the signature on your passport. It’s an exact fucking match. You told me you refused him.” He shakes his head, laughing through his nose cruelly. “Maybe you could write about this on your blog to cash in since you won’t be getting that check from Alec. You can write about how you made an idiot out of me and tricked me into fucking you.”
“Chris,” I say, pleading. “Just please let me prove it to you somehow.”
“I’m done with the second chances. I should’ve known as soon as you told me about Alec’s offer that you were just as fake as all the rest of them.”
“Don’t do this,” I say, falling to my knees and crying, not even caring if anyone comes out of their room and sees me making a fool out of myself. “He’s lying. I swear it!”
He drags his eyes away from me and walks past, not even turning as he yanks open the door to the staircase. “You’d better hurry if you’re going to catch that plane. Have a good life, Lindsey. You were a good fuck, at least.”
I curl into myself, clutching my chest like my heart is about to break into pieces. I don’t know how long I sit in the hallway ugly crying, the kind of crying that will leave my face swollen and give me a headache for the rest of the day. When I’m done, all I feel is numb.
I numbly get my things from my room, numbly get myself a cab, and I numbly take the plane home. How did I ever think that I was only risking a small part of myself by coming here with Chris? I risked everything. I gave him everything. And he threw it away.
18
Chris
One Month Later
I couldn’t bring myself to go back to the cabin. Lindsey would be there, she’d be so fucking close I would be able to practically taste her on the air. No, my parents were going to have to wait a while before I came to visit again. So I took my mom’s journals back home after I called the promotional tour short two weeks ago and flew home. I rented a place in Maine where I could work by myself, where I could work on myself, but more importantly, where I could write.
I read my mom’s journals finally, too. It took me a few tries. The sad part is, I was only able to do it when I remembered hearing the first passage being read in Lindsey’s sweet voice. I imagined all of them in her voice, and somehow it helped me get through them. I got through my mom’s apology, which took the first few journals. Imagine that, she was apologizing to me, when I was the ungrateful shit who made a career out of pissing off her and the rest of my family.
Her big confession was that her and my dad had faked my rejection from Parsons. They thought they could force me into making the “right” decision since I would never have listened to them. It was a shitty thing to do, but it hurt to read how much my mom blamed herself for everything that happened after because of their one real sin against me. I wished I could go back and tell her it didn’t matter, that I would’ve found some way to imagine the world was against me, no matter what had happened or how few mistakes they had made.
What surprised me was the rest of the journals were her love story. She wrote how she met my father, how they fell in love, how they fought at times, and how they decided to have us. She talked about what it was like when we were just babies and we changed her life and all the hopes she had for us.
I read one passage in particular that stuck into me like a seed, burying itself deep where I know it’ll grow and grow no matter what I want. “I remember how I’d lay you on my lap and stroke your little head. You loved that. You’d fight so hard to keep your eyes open, but every time my fingertips ran across your forehead they’d slip closer and closer to closed. I loved those nights, just sitting with you in the rocking chair while you slept and dreamed in my lap. I still remember how comforting the weight of your little body was on me.
“I’d think about how I made you, how I had such an awesome responsibility to honor that. I had brought you into the world and it was my job to make sure I prepared you for it. It was so strange to think that you were growing into a little person, someone who’d have hopes and dreams one day, who’d make mistakes and suffer tragedies and live through amazing things.
“You were my little baby boy. My first baby. And I was still naive enough to think I could help you once you grew up and became your own person.
“This part is hard to write, Chris, but it hurts when I think about how I failed you. I think about your sweet little face and all the things that we could’ve done and shared together, but somewhere along the way I messed that up. I won’t lie and say I know what it was that drove us so far apart, but I’m not going to make excuses and blame you, either. I take the blame for how things turned out between us. I failed you. I failed my baby, and I’ve never forgiven myself for that.”
Reading that passage broke something in me, but it was something that needed to be broken. It was a wall I had built up over the years made out of anger and a bull-headed refusal to let anyone in or feel anything good. I let it break apart when I saw what my own stubbornness had done to my mom, how it had weighed on her, and how I had missed my chance to apologize and make things right before she died.
I said a prayer that night for the first time in my life. It was probably a prayer that would’ve made a priest cringe, but it was the best I could do. I told God he had better exist, and if he did he had better not dare do anything but let my parents move on to a place where they could know what happened to me wasn’t their fault.
And then I started to write.
The words poured out of me like I was writing a book I’d already read a thousand times from memory. It was a tragedy and a love story and a message all in one. It was nothing like my publisher was expecting, but I promised them a book, and they will get a book. I’ve only been here a few weeks in the cabin I’m renting out in the middle of nowhere, but I’m already almost done with my first draft.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t still think about Lindsey. When I close my eyes too long or let my thoughts wander, she’s always there. I’ve made her out to be more perfect in my memory than she possibly could’ve been, which makes it all the more torturous. But I have to cling to the truth: she betrayed me. I’ve found a new part of myself out here, a better part, and there’s no room in the new life I want to build for the kind of women I used to get tangled up with. Despite my heart telling me Lindsey was different, I just keep remembering holding contract up to her passport and seeing the damning evidence of her signature.
Sometimes I worry about how I came in her without protection. It was so fucking reckless and stupid. I could’ve gotten her pregnant. What then? I wouldn’t be able to keep shutting her out of my life, for starters. Either way, it wouldn’t change things between us. Not really, at least.
She. Betrayed. Me.
The new me isn’t going to sit around and whine about it. I’m moving on. I’m writing the book. I’m going to do something meaningful with my life so the woman who used to fall asleep stroking my forehead, dreaming about what I could become won’t have wasted all that hope.
19
Lindsey
Two Months After Germany
My hands shake as I look at the pregnancy test. What did you think would happen when you let Chris cum inside you without protection, Lindsey?
I throw it in the sink, feeling sick, and I don’t think my nausea has anything to do with the positive pregnancy result. I want to punch the universe in the face for making some couples spend years trying to get pregnant, and y
et Chris can do it on his first try.
The worst part is how a not-so-small part of me is happy to have some part of him with me. I can’t believe he decided to trust Alec and his forged signature over me. His stubborn, idiotic decision doesn’t change the connection I felt with him. Stupid or not, being with Chris felt right. More right than anything I’ve ever experienced.
“You almost done shitting in there?” asks Brooke. “I’m about to pee on the ground if you take much longer.”
I wrap the pregnancy test in toilet paper and stuff it as quietly in the trash as I can. “I’m not pooping, I was just—”
“Linddseeeey!” she whines, rattling the door. “Open up! I have to go to work in a few and I don’t have time to pee myself.”
I open the door, trying to look natural. “All yours.”
She rushes in past me and slams the door behind her.
I go back to my room and lay on the bed, trying to imagine how many fans Chris has probably slept with since I left him alone on his book promotion tour. The idea makes me feel even more sick. None of it is fair. None of it.
My biggest regret is that I didn’t find some way to poison Alec before I left, because that man deserves everything bad he has coming in one massive dose. Hopefully a massive enough dose to strike him dead on the spot.
God. I’m pregnant.
I’m in some version of shock because I can’t quite let it sink in. I started suspecting as soon as I missed my period a few weeks ago, but it wouldn’t have been the first time my period had a mind of its own and decided to mess with me. It was only last week when I seriously considered getting a pregnancy test, and only this morning when I finally went through with it, just to shut up my thoughts.
I want to cry when I think about it. I still haven’t found a way to pay for Amelia’s beauty school, and my blog has been earning less and less every month as my readership starts to slip. I’m not even keeping the family afloat as it is. I have no idea how I’m going to manage with a baby.
The obvious answer is to tell Chris it’s his and make sure he takes care of us, but he’s not the only one who’s stubborn. Every time I think of reaching out to him and trying again to convince him Alec was lying, I think how it’s him who should have to apologize to me. I shouldn’t have to grovel and beg him to believe me. I won’t turn my baby into a paycheck. I’ll figure something out.
Without Chris.
20
Chris
Four Months Later
It’s exactly the kind of party I hate, but I’m unfortunately obligated to show at my own release party. It’s a high-brow kind of deal for the publishing execs and all the people who are going to make a shitload of money from my new book. It’s done. I called it Broken Promises, and if my editors and proofreaders are right, it’s going to be a global sensation, just like Lindsey predicted.
Lindsey. Fuck.
I let out a long sigh, adjusting my tie and straightening my jacket. I thought time would make thinking about her easier, but there’s still a gaping hole she left behind. A raw wound that refuses to heal. I’ve lost track of how many times I thought about saying fuck it and giving her another chance, betrayal or not. After all, can I really blame her for being desperate for the money? But I have to remind myself it’s not that she wanted the money. It’s that she was willing to lie to me to get it, that she’d go as far as fucking me just for a paycheck.
That I can’t forgive.
Alec is shaking hands with Trent Greene, who is one of the biggest names in publishing. I watch with a sour twist of my lips. I used to think of Alec as a friend, but I can’t quite make myself do anything more than tolerate him these days. I’ve changed since coming back home, but I haven’t exactly made an effort to strengthen friendships or make new ones. The only person I’ve talked with much is Lydia, who I invited tonight.
She’s over by the appetizers, talking to a guy who looks like a douche. Hopefully she’s not into him, because he looks like a total ass. I chuckle at myself for being protective of her. That is new, and it’s a testament to how much things have changed between us. It’s still not perfect, and it never will be, but I think of her as my sister now. A friend. Someone I can confide in if I need to.
I notice Alec leading Trent and a small group of people over to me.
I grudgingly push off the wall and force a half-smile for them, shaking hands as everyone congratulates me.
Trent squeezes Alec’s shoulder and smiles at me. “The dream team in the flesh,” he says. Trent is in his late fifties and has the permanently red nose and cheeks of a lifetime alcoholic, but he’s not all bad. He does his job well, and he generally treats his employees well, which is rare in this industry.
I make an effort to look jovial, because I should feel good. I wrote a book that matters to me. A book that I can be proud of. This isn’t a “fuck you” to anyone. Hell, it’s as far from that as it could be. It’s a love letter.
“In the flesh,” I say.
“I’ve always said Alec was the only one who could keep you under control,” laughs Trent. “I have to admit, I didn’t think this book was ever going to happen.”
“It wasn’t,” Alec said a little too loudly.
I glance at the drink in his hand and realize he’s had a few too many already.
“Chris needed some provocation,” he says, grinning sloppily. He laughs, doubling over a little and gripping Trent’s shoulder in anticipation of what he’s about to say. “I had to scare off one of his little girlfriends to get him to focus.”
My blood turns to ice. My eyebrows draw down, eyes narrowing. “You what?” I ask.
Alec immediately realizes he said too much, sobering up before my eyes as he waves his hand like he can erase what he just said. “I’m just being dramatic,” he says. “Just fucking around.”
“Tell me what you did,” I growl.
Everyone looks uncomfortable, and one of the woman smiles nervously before dismissing herself from the little circle of people. Trent looks like he swallowed something that’s wiggling its way down his throat.
“Same thing I’ve always done,” Alec says puffing himself up. “All I’ve ever done is give you what you needed to succeed.”
“And what did you think I needed this time?”
“You needed her gone, man. Face it. How much did you write while you were messing around with her. Nothing. She was like creative poison for you.”
“What did you do?” I ask. My voice is a low, gravelly growl, and my fists are clenched. I can barely hear the sound of the music over the thrumming of my heartbeat in my ears.
“I forged the signature,” he says, like he’s annoyed to have to explain something so insignificant. “I had to do something to get her out of your head. Look man, she was just another groupie, another—”
I punch him in the jaw hard enough to spin him around and make him stumble to the ground where his glasses slip from his face and shatter.
“Fuuuck,” he hisses, touching his jaw and glaring up at me. “What the—”
“Get up,” I say, standing over him. “Please. Give me an excuse to punch you again. Maybe I can break some fucking teeth this time.”
He slumps down, shaking his head. “You’re making way too big a deal out of this.”
I kneel, gripping his shirt and lifting him with both hands, ignoring the stunned silence as everyone at the party watches me manhandle my agent, who is half my size. I pin him against the wall and look up into his face. “You can have your fucking cut of the money, I don’t give a shit. But you’re done with me. Got it? Fired. And if I so much as see you again, I can’t promise I’ll stop hitting you until you stop breathing. So get the fuck out of here.”
“Fire me? I’ve known you since we were kids.”
I set him back down roughly, letting him drunkenly lose his balance and knock his own ass on the ground this time. “And now I’m firing you. Don’t ever let me see your face again.”
I leave the party in a rush, no
t caring to explain to anyone or stopping to make apologies. They’ll figure it out. All I know or care about right now is fixing what I fucked up with Lindsey. My first reaction is to feel an immense relief, because I didn’t want what Alec said to be true. Everything felt so fucking right with her. With Alec’s lie exposed, there’s no reason it can’t be again. Except the fact that I didn’t believe her.
My stomach clenches when I remember her trying to explain what I now know is the truth to me in the hotel. Everything inside me felt like shit at that moment and I just wanted her to get a taste of how she’d made me feel, so I told her she was a good fuck and left.
Truth was, she wasn’t just a good fuck. She was the sexual experience of my life, like nothing I’d ever had with anyone else. I haven’t so much as touched a woman since we’ve been apart. I couldn’t even bring myself to think about it. Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to settle for anyone else, even if she tells me I lost my chance and that I need to get lost.
I can’t let that happen though. Wherever she is, I’m going to find her and make this right.
21
Lindsey
Ryan and Claire’s wedding was last week. I did a little guilty Facebook stalking and looked at some of the pictures. Of course, the venue was absolutely beautiful, but it’s not really surprising that I’d think so, considering it was the venue I had told him I was dreaming about since I was a kid. I just thought something was so romantic about lighthouses, and they reminded me of when I was a kid because my dad used to bring us to the lighthouse on Anastasia Cove. It looked straight out of some old sailor’s painting, graceful but strong enough to bear any storm--kind of how I always wished I could be, I guess.
Savage: A Bad Boy Next Door Romance Page 15