by Elaria Ride
Luke turns to me again, this time with pain in his eyes. “I’m so, so sorry,” he whispers. His hand strokes the side of my face. “This is all… everything is…”
“No,” I murmur, shaking my head. “No. This was… this whole thing was crazy. You did nothing wrong!”
Luke gives me a dry chuckle. “I wish you were right,” he says, finally rising to sit in the chair. He’s wearing the same clothes as the day I broke up with him… as the day I found out what happened.
“But Mariah, there’s something I need to tell you.” He sighs, raising a hand to forestall an interruption. “Please. You’re tired and you’re weak, but please… I need to explain.”
He swallows, staring down at his clasped hands. “I never got to tell you about my military experience. We kind of got… distracted.” I smile through chapped lips, but he continues.
“I joined the military fresh out of high school,” he begins, an air of hesitation in his voice. “Worked hard, got promoted. But eventually, my senior officers started making noise. I was getting too obsessed with my surveillance. Not giving myself a break.” He shrugs. “They were right. Not that I cared to hear it. So what did I do?”
Luke sighs, leaning over in his seat. “I formally left the military. Got hired through a contractor who didn’t care if I was too focused on the job.” He winces. “That is… until I stuck my nose right where it didn’t belong.”
There’s a pause. I wonder if he’s waiting for me to interrupt, but then he takes the reins. “So. After leaving the military, I worked for a private contractor. I was hired to monitor the emir and emira of Kashfar, who were getting threats severe enough to warrant private protection.”
He sighs again, staring at his hands. “Something about the case seemed off to me from the get-go. I knew the emir was hiding something. He was cagey and weird whenever we’d ask for basic documents. He denied access to friend and family contacts. We were paid too well to complain, but his refusal made logistics and monitoring very challenging.”
Luke shifts in his seat. “At some point, I became obsessed with finding the missing pieces. Which is bad, because I’m not hired to investigate; I’m hired to surveil. My behavior made my work-obsessed dad happy, but the royal family? Yeah. Not so much. And the deeper I looked, the more I found. And what I found out wasn’t pretty.”
He peers up at me. “This part is confidential, ok? I mean, I think it’s been declassified, or will soon, but I don’t want to get you—”
“—I won’t say anything,” I rush to assure him.
Luke gives me a grateful smile. “Thanks. I mean, I gave up any chance of keeping this completely classified when I arrived at the studio with a full police presence. And ignored Russ’s demand on the envelope.” He clears his throat. “But I’d appreciate you keeping this quiet… more out of respect for the emira, yeah?”
I have no idea what he’s talking about, but I spare him a nod.
“Right.” Luke clears his throat. “So the emira was our official charge because she was the one getting most of the threats. After the third middle-of-the-night transport to a safe-house, it started to annoy me that she was the one dealing with the bullshit when her husband was hiding something. So. I followed my instincts, and one day, I stumbled upon the emir’s second cellphone.”
He lets out a low whistle. “He was having quite the affair with an emir from a neighboring country. There were sexts, dick-pics, selfies, you name it. It was bad enough to earn a public outcry in the US, so you can imagine how that would’ve gone over in an extremely religious society. Anyway, that night, I went to our hotel and pieced together everything I knew.”
Luke barks out a humorless laugh. “I probably looked like some crazy conspiracy theorist with red yarn and a bulletin board, but by morning, I had a working theory that Emir Abbasi knew exactly where the threats were coming from. I dug up his bank statements and found missing sums of cash. These told me it was likely that someone, probably from the other emir’s country, was blackmailing him. I could even pinpoint a pattern: if he didn’t produce cash by a certain day of the month, his wife would get a death threat.”
Luke shakes his head, disgust apparent on his face. “By then, I’d really bonded with Emira Abbasi. She’s such a sweet lady. Became like the grandmother I never had. She never treated me like a servant, unlike basically everyone I’ve worked with — present company excluded, of course.”
He shoots me a wry grin. I arch an eyebrow.
“Ok, ok, I’m wrapping it up. Like I said — for a country with those values, this is career-ending, if not life-ending.”
Luke swallows, something deeply uncomfortable flitting across his handsome face. “And I wish the life-ending part weren’t true, but you’ve probably read the headlines yourself.”
I nod. I’d read the headlines just like everyone else… but when the news reported it, they’d praised the elimination of the terror suspect who’d been killed along with Emir Abbasi. Just goes to show how different life is when you’re living it and not reporting it.
“Pretty soon, I was like a damn robot,” he admits. “I was obsessed with finding more and more proof of the affair. I didn’t tell anyone because I was afraid they’d pull us out and declare it an inside job. I was hardly eating or sleeping. I sure as hell wasn’t doing my job well. There was a banquet at the palace, but I was so cocky, so arrogant, so certain of the blackmailer’s pattern that I convinced myself he wouldn’t strike for another week.”
Luke looks up to meet my eyes. “With my contracting company, the guidelines stated that we need to protect the person who hired us, regardless of who was being threatened.”
Wait, what? I cock my head, about to object, but Luke raises a hand in explanation. “It’s cold, it’s heartless, but at the end of the day, it’s corporate; we protect our income source. As it turns out, though, I was pretty shitty at maintaining that military-style detachment. When the blackmailer — who was apparently the emir’s brother — crashed the banquet and fired off two rounds right where the emir and emira were standing?”
He shakes his head, looking away. “Yeah. I think you can guess which one of them I pushed out of the line of fire while another officer tackled the shooter.”
Oh. I blink, trying to process it all.
“So… that’s why you got sent back?” I venture a moment later. “Because you had a heart?”
Luke chuckles dryly. “Well, technically, I got sent back because I failed to protect our income source. That would have ended my career, honestly, but to everyone’s surprise — and mine most of all — a postmortem investigation revealed the other emir’s brother was responsible for terrorist attacks in the US.”
He runs a hand down his face. “Suddenly I went from being a failure to an American hero. Or hottie guard,” he offers with a shrug.
“If the stars hadn’t perfectly aligned,” Luke continues, his voice filled with guilt, “I would be broke and unhireable. Instead, I was able to blame my failure to protect the emir on deteriorating mental health — which was probably true — and told to reapply for another position in eighteen months after a full psych eval. So.”
He lets out a final sigh. My head spins, but everything makes perfect sense. This is why he hates both pity and praise. This is why he’s fiercely noble, to a fault…
“And yes,” he adds with a shudder. “If we’re going to focus on what broke us up in the first, Russ did vaguely tell me to flirt with you when they hired me. It was weird, but I figured that’s show business. I never once considered that your dad had no idea.”
I take the silence as an opportunity to explain myself, too. “For my part of it,” I venture, swallowing. “Those pictures you saw… they were from around eight years ago, back when I was young and naïve. Chase Harlan told me that if I took pictures like that, he’d get me more gigs. Make me look sexier.” I turn away in self-disgust. “We never had sex, but you saw those photos yourself. Me in his lap. Kissing his neck.” I shudder, still u
nable to face Luke. “Instead of getting me gigs, he used them to make me feel cheap. To hold them over my head. Then suddenly, he stopped… and in retrospect, I credit Russ for that.”
I shake my head. “He was good for one thing, and one thing only: getting Chase Harlan off my back. I never knew exactly why the texts from Chase stopped, but now that I’ve seen the full scope of what Russ can do, I have a good idea.”
Luke peers back at me in horror. “Mariah. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I was mostly upset that you lied, anyway. I never meant to imply you were—”
“I know,” I whisper, shrugging. “I know you didn’t.” I heave a sigh and gesture at him. “Now,” I say, in a theatrical voice you’d find on a children’s show. “Your turn to share!”
There’s split-second pause before we both laugh.
“Ok,” Luke agrees, spreading his palms. “My turn to explain how I got involved in the first place.” He looks away with a swallow. “When I took this job, I was pretty fucked up. I had pretty severe PTSD. Therapy wasn’t enough, so I reverted to a pastime that now seems disgusting and objectifying.” He makes a face. “I started sleeping around. You’ve seen the magazines yourself. I guess Russ saw me splashed on a couple and decided I wouldn’t go for you because they’re...”
“Models,” I supply with a whisper.
“Right.” Luke peers up at me. “But what he didn’t know was that I was only with them because they looked nothing like you.”
Oh.
“I never led them on,” he promises, his eyes deep with sincerity. I bite my lip. I know he didn’t. “I slept around a little. I moved on. Truthfully there were only two or three, but you know what the press is like.” He winces. “I’m not proud, but I was hurting. I’m just glad they took it for what it was: a series of one-night stands, to which all parties agreed.”
There’s an awkward pause. I rip my head away. I know he’s thinking of how Tori enters the scene, but I’m not ready to hear what happened to her. Not yet.
Luke clears his throat and continues. “At the same time, I started collecting your magazines. Just like Tori said. I immersed myself in this weird little crush, just to take my mind off things. I never thought in a million years I’d see you again, much less fall in love with you.”
Tears fall in a steady stream down my face.
“So... in conclusion,” Luke adds, his voice rough again. “I’m sorry. I know I’m a perv. I know I objectified you. But let me be clear.” His eyes snap up to meet mine. “I fell in love with you as a real woman, not as a media goddess. Not as the fake person you have to pretend to be.”
Luke brushes the tears away from my face. “If you never want to see me again, I completely understand. But I just had to tell you.” His voice quivers. “I had to explain that my feelings for you have nothing to do with your family or your fame or the person I thought you were. I’m in love with you, Mariah Matthews. I know we haven’t known each other long, but—”
I interrupt him with a fierce, lunging kiss... and just like every other time, it’s heaven the second his mouth touches mine. Luke moans in surprise but doesn’t hesitate to kiss me back, just as hard. The machines around me scream in alarm as his hand cups the back of my head.
“Mariah,” he moans, his eyes fluttering shut. “Please.” He pulls back with a pant and gives me another piercing gaze. Neither of us really notices the nurse bustling in to reset the monitors.
“No, Miss Matthews!” insists the nurse, pushing me back against the bed again. “You need rest! You’ve been through something very traumatic, and—”
“Will you be my real girlfriend?” blurts Luke, his eyes never leaving mine.
I give him a watery grin and lean over to grab his hand. “Depends,” I whisper, my lips curled in a smirk. “Will you be my hottie guard?”
Epilogue: Luke
It’s so dark I can’t see my hand in front of my face.
I draw an unsteady breath, my fists clenching as I get a bearing on my senses. My heartbeat pounds in my ears with a deafening pulse. Each passing moment of silence fills my veins with more and more adrenaline.
And yet, I wait.
A year ago, standing alone in the darkness would have made me feel vulnerable. I would have tried to control the situation by cracking a joke or barking a command. I would have stopped at nothing to dominate the energy in the room… simply because I was afraid of the unexpected.
Now, though, I realize there’s grace in letting go. In trusting my instincts.
In trusting her.
“Lights up,” soothes Earl’s voice in my earpiece. “Ready in three… two…”
“Roger,” I murmur back, my eyes focusing ahead. After lots of therapy, I’m finally able to separate anticipation from the need to control. This part is the most terrifying — the split-second between the go-ahead and the visual confirmation that everything is ok.
That she’s ok.
I draw another deep breath. The logical part of my brain knows she’s fine — better than fine. Mariah’s in her element. There’s nowhere else she’d rather be. This is her favorite thing to do.
A wry grin crosses my face. Ok… maybe her second favorite thing.
Overhead lights flood the stage a second later, exposing the minimal set she chose for the tour. Gone are the over-the-top flashing lights and hot pink backdrops — the pieces of a personality she’d been taught to sell before she realized how much more likable she is without all that. Before she accepted what I’ve always known: she doesn’t need to fake it to be adorable.
And yeah, it goes without saying that a backup singer isn’t part of the tour, either. Even now, I swallow in disgust when I think about that whole ordeal. How all of that had transpired right under our noses… how two very, very mentally ill people went unchecked in their psychotic scheme until the worst almost happened.
It wasn’t until a week or so after the incident that we got the full story — or as much of it as possible, given that Russ wasn’t around to confirm it. Yeah. I took a human life that day... and honestly, I don’t have a lot of regrets. The second after the Nashville PD blasted the door open, I saw Russ with a raised gun — and without an ounce of hesitation, I shot him. Right on the spot. He’d collapsed on Mariah, unfortunately. Between that and the trauma of the incident, she’d taken a little longer to recover.
As it turns out, Russ was crazier for a lot longer than anyone knew. I’m still kicking myself for missing so many obvious red flags, but the man was a master manipulator… the type unafraid of committing murder, for Christ's sake, all in the name of “restoring purity” to a world he’d decided was unclean.
As we discovered after searching his apartment, Russ’s ultimate goal was to start a cult. It sounds absolutely bonkers, but the printed pamphlets and self-made religious texts scattered around prove that he wanted Marie, and then Mariah, to behave as female figureheads of his cult… to act as “purity guardians.” Then, when neither of those had worked, he started on Plan B: Tori as the replacement.
It was alarmingly easy to get her to comply. All Russ had to do was keep an ear to the ground in Nashville, to chase the gossip over the most recent rising stars — and the inevitable gaggle of crazies that crop up whenever there’s fame. He bailed Tori out of jail and hired her for the job after hearing about how she’d nearly thrown herself off the roof for the sake of a one-night stand.
Apparently, he wanted to return society to days of yore, when women only existed to reproduce and act like ladies. Or at least as he decided women should act. So yeah… in retrospect? It’s obvious that dude was nuts.
But between his smooth talking — and the fact that he hired me to investigate in the first place — he went undetected for far too long. Apparently, some childhood trauma with his mother left that dude broken and unstable. He’d just been better at hiding and channeling it than your garden-variety psycho.
But Russ is dead now. As much as I despise his memory and all the pain he inflicted upon the Matthews f
amily, I also acknowledge that he’s no longer a threat. Unlike Tori. Even in the stage's darkness, I feel my stomach knotting when I think about that freak… Part B of the psychotic duo that almost took the love of my life off the face of the earth. It’s a small consolation that she’ll spend the rest of her life behind bars, without the possibility of parole.
And poor Earl… poor, sweet Earl, who’d never really recovered from his wife’s death — a death he’d spent twenty years believing to be a suicide. It took Mariah referencing a cryptic comment from Russ about “the first time” for us to get the full scope of what really happened to Marie. Apparently, Russ, much like Tori with Colt, decided that Marie loved him. We have no idea how long she spent quietly rejecting his advances, but Earl said she was stressed in her final days. When her remains were found on the train tracks, no one questioned whether foul play was involved.
To me, it’s pretty obvious Russ hit her with an intramuscular injection and left her when she wouldn’t agree to be his. Russ had never been happy with Mariah’s so-called “whorish” behavior in the interceding years — but he hadn’t intervened until Earl contacted him about the Country Soul Tour. When more fame presented itself, Russ saw his chance to do what he always wanted: get famous for shaping a woman into an idealized vision of what all women should be.
Even now, I laugh a little when I think about it. Despite being around Mariah for most of her life, Russ hadn’t really known her. At all. Then again, he’d never known any woman that well. Regardless of what our relationship looks like in the bedroom, Mariah is the last person to submit — to anyone.
A cool wave of relief swoops through my stomach as my eyes finally land on her. The audience is nearly as excited as I am — because there’s Mariah Matthews, in all her glory. She grins into the darkness of the crowd amid their whoops and hollers, her cheeks flushing a cotton candy pink. Even now, it amazes me how dainty and poised she looks while balancing on a stool, a baby blue guitar strapped to her chest.
