Black Tangled Heart

by Samantha Young

  I thought in that moment that I’d feel euphoric or hopeful … or anything.

  But I was numb.

  Everything I’d been focusing on since getting out of prison was suddenly swept out of my control.

  And Jane …

  I knew deep down that she deserved better than me. She deserved someone who wouldn’t have put her in danger because of his own fucking vendetta.

  The truth of that hurt so much, I went someplace else inside me. Someplace where I could feel nothing.

  So that’s what I felt in the end.

  Numb.

  34

  JANE

  I knew something was very wrong when Jamie didn’t show at the hospital the next day to pick me up. Apparently, he’d asked Asher to do it.

  Dread swam in my gut.

  The pain in my face had decreased, but the pain in my ribs had only worsened. Every time Asher took a corner, I had to bite back a growl of frustration. Asher had brought me a pair of sunglasses so I didn’t have to walk around looking like I’d just gone ten rounds with Tyson Fury. Truthfully, however, I was glad to be out of the hospital. Especially after the police showed up to interview me about Kramer’s attack.

  Reliving it wasn’t pleasant, and although Asher was by my side, I resented Jamie’s absence.

  “The FBI might take jurisdiction over this case since it’s connected to a major crime committed by Foster, so expect more interviews,” Asher warned as he drove toward my apartment.

  “Why didn’t Jamie come?” I asked.

  “He didn’t say.”

  Fifteen minutes later, we walked into my apartment, and I drew in a deep breath as images of yesterday’s attack flooded me.

  No. I wouldn’t be afraid of this place. I wouldn’t allow that. I couldn’t.

  It was easy to tell myself that.

  Harder to feel.

  I gazed around, noting the door and table were already fixed.

  “Ivy.” Asher read my expression. “She’s pretty impressive.”

  “I need to thank her.” Jamie told me last night about how Ivy had come to my rescue and stopped Kramer from getting away.

  “There’s time for that. Why don’t we get you settled in?”

  My eyes caught on a huge bouquet—beautiful, expensive white roses and pale pink peonies. “Who?” I strode toward the coffee table and took the card out of the bouquet. Ivy must have placed them here for me. The card read:

  Margot, we’re so sorry to hear what happened. Thinking of you and wishing you a speedy recovery. Sandy, Joe, Vale, and all the team at Chimera.

  “The production team.” I glanced over my shoulder at Asher, wondering how they knew about the attack.

  “Ah. I called in for you and explained what happened. I hope you don’t mind.”

  The idea of fielding questions about the attack when I returned to work made me a little nauseated, but Asher had probably saved my job. “No. Thank you.” I caressed the rose petals. “It was sweet of them to send these.”

  “More people care about you than you think, Jane.”

  I didn’t know why. I was horrible at letting anyone in. “Asher?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you forgive me?”

  He took a tentative step toward me. “Baby, for what?”

  “For shutting you out when I discovered you were deliberately stopping me from finding evidence that might implicate Foster.”

  Asher sighed. “You’ve been hurt a lot. And I did lie. But we’re past that now, right?”

  “You’ve been doing something so dangerous and so emotionally draining with no one to talk to about it. You amaze me. Thank you, Asher. You are one of the bravest people I know.”

  Emotion shimmered in his eyes as he crossed the room to hug me. Carefully.

  “If you need to talk about it,” I whispered, “I’m here.”

  “One day I will probably take you up on that. But right now, you need some sleep.”

  I shook my head as we pulled back from one another. “I want to see Jamie.”

  His presence across the hall was a pulse in the back of my head. I was so focused on him, seeing him, I could shove aside my throbbing headache and the need to sleep for a little longer.

  However, when I knocked on Jamie’s door, there was no answer. I knocked harder. Called his name. Receiving no response, I returned to my apartment and dug the spare key to his apartment out of my kitchen drawer.

  “Jane, what are you doing?” Asher asked, following me across the hall.

  “He gave me a key for a reason.” I unlocked the apartment and stopped as soon as I stepped inside.

  All his boxes were taped back up and piled by the door.

  Next to a suitcase and the punching bag he’d hung in Sheila’s bedroom without her permission.

  My stomach dropped.

  “It might not mean anything.” Asher hovered at my back.

  Each step was agony on my ribs, and I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was lie down and sleep for a decade. Now, however, adrenaline was spiking, agitating me. Seeing his laptop on his desk, I crossed the room, my gaze zeroing in on the papers folded beside it.

  Not caring if I was violating his privacy, I unfolded the papers and saw the top one was the rental agreement for the Porsche and the one beneath it—

  The papers fell from my hands as I stumbled back in disbelief.

  “Jane?” Asher sounded far away. “Jane, what is it?”

  I blinked, staring blindly out the window.

  A receipt for a plane ticket.

  To Boston.

  “Jane?” Hands clamped down on my shoulders and I jumped, wincing as pain flared through my ribs.

  “Shit, sorry.” Asher held up his hands warily. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  I tried to breathe normally. “No, it’s fine. I’m sorry.”

  “What are you sorry for?”

  “I don’t …” I touched my forehead. My head was throbbing. And I felt sick.

  Was it the concussion or the realization that Jamie McKenna was planning to abandon me?

  “We need to get you to bed.”

  I shook my head. “Tylenol first … and then I need you to drive me somewhere.”

  Jamie wasn’t at the rental place handing over the Porsche, and he wasn’t at his favorite coffee house. For a while, I sat in Asher’s car and panicked that I should have stayed put at the apartment and waited for Jamie to come home. That I might have missed him with all my bad Sherlocking.

  Then a thought occurred to me, one I couldn’t shake, and soon I was directing Asher to a house on a quiet suburban street in Glendale. A house that had a back deck that looked out over the Verdugo Mountains and held within it my best and worst memories.

  Somehow, I wasn’t even surprised to see Jamie’s Porsche parked outside it or to see him in the driver’s seat staring at the house.

  I’d long since given up figuring out the cosmic tie between us.

  “Can you wait for me?” I asked my friend.

  “Of course.”

  Taking a deep breath, I got out of the car and walked at a pathetic, sloth-like pace across the street.

  Jamie startled as I opened the car door and eased myself into the passenger seat beside him with less speed than an octogenarian. He met my eyes with a flat, blank look. Trepidation filled me.

  “How did you know where to find me?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “I guess I realized after I found the receipt for the plane ticket that you might want to come here to say a final goodbye.”

  When he didn’t answer, my anger took over my fear.

  “Were you going to say goodbye to me?”

  Jamie cut me a dull look. “What good would it have done?”

  I felt my heart crack right down the middle, and it hurt worse than anything Frank Kramer had done to me. “You don’t love me.”

  Just like that, his anguish overwhelmed the blankness. “Love you,” he hissed. “I love you so fucking much,
I can’t bear the thought of what happened to you. Or that I put you in that position. You took a beating for me, Jane. And not just physically. I’ve hurt you so much. I’ve almost destroyed you.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Why would you even want to be with me?”

  “Jamie.” I tried to reach for him, but he flinched back. “Jamie.” I hardened. “You are not to blame for yesterday, and you give yourself too much credit. Kramer and Steadman were on to me when I first grew close to Asher. We’re just lucky they hadn’t seen me with you, or it could’ve turned out a lot worse for us. Especially knowing Foster has ties to a crime family.

  “As for everything else, Lorna caused the bitterness between us, and I thought we’d moved past that. So if you’re running away because you feel guilty, then don’t. It’s completely misplaced.”

  “It’s not just that.” Jamie ran a hand through his hair, resting his elbow on the steering wheel as he gazed up at the house. “I’m fucking lost, Jane. I’m so lost … and I didn’t even know how far gone I was until Asher told us that Steadman had been taken care of. I got back to the apartment and realized that what had been driving me since I got out of prison was this determination to make them all pay. And that’s gone. Out of my control.” He glared at me. “Who am I now?”

  “You’re Jamie,” I replied, not afraid for him. I knew he’d find his way back to himself. His writing already gave him purpose. “Pen name Griffin Stone. The man I love, and a talented writer.” I turned toward him, wincing with the movement. “I’m not saying it will be easy or that we don’t have a rough road ahead of us. But I think we can do anything as long as we’re together.”

  He was silent for a moment, processing my words.

  Stupid hope rose within me.

  Hope Jamie crushed when he turned to me and said, “I won’t screw up your life any more than I already have.”

  For a moment, I didn’t know whether to be angry or heartbroken or understanding or defeated.

  Then it hit me. I could be all those things.

  But I’d survive them.

  “I love you,” I told him. “I’ve loved you for half of my life. And I know I’ll never stop loving you.” Our eyes met and held, his dark with pain, mine with acceptance. “But I can’t keep doing this. I know what it’s like to live without you, and it was like walking around every day with this hole inside me.” Tears slipped down my cheeks despite my determination to be strong. “But I survived you, Jamie. I survived you then, and I will survive you now. You know why? Because I have to believe that one day, someone will come along who loves me so much, he could never imagine a world in which he’d abandon me.”

  Jamie’s jaw locked and he looked quickly away.

  “I just need to make peace with the fact that you’re not that guy.”

  Swiping away my tears, I reached for the door handle and pulled. “I hope you find yourself. I really do.” I choked back a sob. “Goodbye.”

  As I crossed the street, I met Asher’s concerned gaze and my face crumpled.

  It felt like I couldn’t breathe.

  I stumbled to a stop as I gasped for air, my arms wrapped around myself as I sobbed silently through the pain. I’d only just gotten Jamie back, and now I’d lost him again. As brave as I’d sounded in the car, I didn’t want someone else to come along and love me. I only wanted him. Why couldn’t he let it be him?

  Strong arms wrapped around me and I melted into Asher.

  Then his scent registered.

  It wasn’t Asher.

  “Doe, don’t cry,” Jamie pleaded in my ear. “I’m sorry, baby, don’t cry. Forgive me for always making this so damn hard on you.”

  Anger, relief, and fear flooded me, and I grabbed onto him, my fingers curling into his shirt as I breathed him in.

  “I’m so fucked up.” He squeezed me closer, hurting my bruised and battered ribs, but I didn’t want him to let go. “Loving me will be nowhere near as easy as it will be for me to love you. You get that, right?”

  I lifted my head and he gently wiped at my cheeks, trying not to press where I was stitched and swollen and bruised. “It might not be easy now, but we’ll find our way there.”

  “I’m a selfish bastard who can’t walk away from you. The minute you said goodbye, I knew I couldn’t do it. I don’t want to survive without you, Jane.” He bent his head toward mine, eyes blazing with emotion. “Aren’t you sick of just surviving?”

  I nodded, wrapping my hands around his wrists. “I vote for living instead.”

  His answer was a careful, loving kiss. When he lifted his head, he slid his arm around my shoulders, drawing me into his side.

  Asher waved at us, giving me a relieved smile, just before he pulled from the curb and drove away. Jamie guided me back to the Porsche, and we both stopped to look up at the house.

  “Let’s live instead,” he repeated before turning to me. “But not in Los Angeles.”

  I smiled a little, remembering our plans when we were kids to live somewhere quiet where he could write and I could paint. Despite the hell of the last twenty-four hours, I felt happiness soak through me like sunshine prickling my skin. I’d missed that feeling. I hadn’t felt it in a very long time.

  “I’ll go anywhere with you, Jamie McKenna.”

  Epilogue

  FIVE YEARS LATER

  JANE

  Colorado

  The sound of eighties music filtered into the lake house from the deck. Jamie liked to write chapter notes by hand while he listened to the radio out there.

  While the distinctive vocals of Phil Collins sounded in the background, I took a sip of iced tea and turned the page in the sci-fi novel Asher had recommended. These days I was tired a lot more quickly and the second bedroom that had become my art studio was in the middle of being packed up.

  Jamie had hired a contractor to build a separate studio for me, but it was Sunday, so our peaceful retreat was thankfully free of construction noise. Still, we were enjoying the lake house while we could because we’d be returning to Portland in a month. We split our time between a city that had a relaxed, creative vibe that fit us, and our little slice of heaven near the Rio Grande River in Colorado.

  Usually we spent the entire summer in Colorado, but we wanted to be closer to the city since I was six months pregnant with our first child.

  Caressing my belly, I grew distracted, as I often did lately, and stared out of the sliding glass doors that led onto the deck and provided a beautiful view of the lake. Trees surrounded the edges of our land, and the lake glistened like a sheet of glass beneath the afternoon sun. I could see the back of Jamie’s head where he sat in his chair, daydreaming about the characters currently renting space in his imagination.

  Sometimes I couldn’t get over how far we’d come. How the seven years that had shaped us so greatly often felt like they were a part of another life. I knew Jamie didn’t quite feel that as much as I did. His years in prison were filled with memories that would stay with him forever. I had my own memories, too, that I’d never be able to let go of.

  Yet, if someone had told me five years ago that Jamie and I would have the life we’d always longed for, I’d never have believed them. There were bad days when I waited for the other shoe to drop, but Jamie liked to kiss those days away. He reminded me that we had what people everywhere hoped to find and never did. That for all the bad that had happened to us, our love was the balance point.

  Therapy had helped us both a lot, and although we were each reluctant to take that step, it was one of the best decisions we ever made. We’d only ever been good at letting each other in—no one else. It wasn’t easy to open up to a stranger, but for the sake of our relationship, we knew we had to deal with our own issues separately to make us stronger as a couple.

  It wasn’t easy. There were a few bad days back then. Especially with everything else going on.

  We decided to see our own therapists not long after Kramer attacked me and while we were unable to leave Los Angeles. We couldn’t�
�we were caught in the middle of several cases brought against Foster Steadman and Frank Kramer.

  It wasn’t until around eight months later that we felt we could move on from LA. I’d suggested Portland after working on set production there. I’d loved the vibe. People were friendly, the food was amazing, and there was a genuine appreciation for quirkiness and creativity. There were a lot of hipsters and vegans and backyard chicken farmers, but there was just something about the place that felt right. Moreover, despite being a California girl, I liked the rain.

  Only a month after moving into a house in the Northwest District, Jamie proposed. We married in a small ceremony with only Asher and Irwin Alderidge as witnesses. Alderidge was an interesting fellow. I wasn’t sure I cared for a ruthless CEO being such close friends with my husband, but I knew the man had saved Jamie’s life, so I couldn’t begrudge him the friendship. Plus, it was obvious he genuinely cared for my husband.

  My husband.

  I caressed the platinum wedding band and citrine-and-diamond engagement ring on my finger.

  It took awhile to get used to that. When I changed my name after the wedding, I went whole hog and returned to using Jane.

  I was Jane McKenna now.

  Life in Portland was exactly what we needed. While Jamie’s writing career grew from strength to strength with his second runaway bestseller, Doe (which was a love story and not the personal attack Jamie had once hinted at), and Brent 29 went into production, I built on my art career. It wasn’t easy. But it was the life we’d always envisioned.

  The only moments of real gloom were when we got pulled back to LA for the cases against Kramer and Steadman.

  It took two long years, but Foster lost everything. His production company went bankrupt, and he was sentenced to a combined thirty-three years in prison for involvement in racketeering and drug and human trafficking.

  I could never have imagined the depths of his wickedness.

  In the case against him for serial sexual assault, there was a long list of accusations from women against whom Foster Steadman perpetrated acts of sexual violation and coercion, in which he threatened to ruin or make their acting careers. He was sentenced to another twenty-five years for those.