His breathing was shallower, and he shifted in agitation. “What aren’t you telling me, then?”
But I couldn’t let it go. “Do you think I’d cheat on you?”
“Is it cheating if I’m stuck in here for five to seven?”
“Yes,” I snapped. “I am yours. You are mine. That has never changed. What the hell do you think I’m doing out there?” I gestured behind me. “My life is in limbo, Jamie. It’s not even living. It’s just wasting time until you’re out.”
His own eyes were bright, and he shook his head at me. “I’m not asking you to do that. I don’t want that. I want you out there, being happy.”
“Well, I’m not. I’m not happy.” It was the truth, whether or not he wanted to hear it.
“Skye was right.” He sank back in his chair, looking so goddamn weary. “She warned me that the way we feel about each other would fuck us up in the end.”
“Only if you lose faith in me.” I leaned forward, my hand pressed to the glass. I was terrified. Terrified of losing him. “I will wait however long it takes for you. Do you understand me?”
Jamie swallowed hard, a shimmer glazing his eyes. He blinked rapidly as he looked away, swallowing again and again, as if swallowing back his emotions, until he had himself under control.
“I love you, Jamie.”
He glared at the ground but nodded tightly. Without looking at me, he pressed his hand to the glass where mine was and then put down the phone. He waited a moment, head bowed. His hand strained against the glass, he pressed it so hard.
Standing up, he caressed the Plex as if caressing my palm and then walked away without looking at me.
Hot tears rolled down my cheeks.
Two days later
JANE
* * *
“You do realize you’ve barely said a word in two days, ever since you got back from your visit with Jamie.”
I looked up from sitting crossed-legged. The words in my art history paper blurred on my laptop screen, I’d been staring at them so long. The interruption from my roommate, Cassie, would have been welcome under normal circumstances.
However, I’d barely said a word in two days because I didn’t know what to say. It felt like Jamie was slipping through my fingers, and I was terrified of losing him. If I didn’t talk about it, the possibility seemed less … possible.
“I haven’t?” I evaded.
Cassie leaned against my doorjamb. She wore a wry, unhappy smirk. “Come out with me and Cal tonight. His friend, Rig, is having a party.”
“I don’t feel like it.”
“Hmm.” She pushed up off the jamb. “Do you want to tell me what happened with Jamie?”
“Nothing happened.”
Something flickered over Cassie’s expression. Something like disappointment. “You know … in all the time we’ve been friends, I’ve told you almost everything there is to know about me. You were the only one I told about Cal in the beginning … And yet, you never talk to me.”
I stiffened with discomfort. “That’s not true.” It wasn’t. Cassie knew I’d been left at a police station as a baby. She didn’t know about my adoptive parents because no one but Jamie knew that. But she knew about foster care. She knew about Skye. Lorna.
I’d told her about Jamie and what he meant to me.
That was more than most people in my life knew.
“It is true, Jane.” Cassie sighed. “I saw how hard it was for you when Jamie went to prison. You’re strong, and you got on with it. But the last few months … it’s like you’re not even here anymore. You’re stuck inside your head, and I’m thinking that’s not a great place to be right now. So … talk to me. You can trust me.”
The urge to confide in my friend was there. To tell her about how Jamie was acting. To get her advice. To have her, hopefully, reassure me that Jamie was just dealing with things that I couldn’t possibly understand but that it didn’t mean he didn’t love me anymore.
However, trusting people wasn’t exactly my forte these days.
I stared at her, mute with frustration. I wanted to trust her. But I was scared to.
And more than that, I was terrified if I said the words out loud, if I told her about Jamie’s behavior, that by making it real I’d only be ushering on the demise of my relationship with the man I loved.
As irrational as I knew that was, the fear choked the words in my throat.
With a sigh of dejection, and not a little anger, Cassie bit out, “Fine,” and strode from sight. I heard our apartment door close behind her seconds later, and tears pricked my eyes.
I should have told her.
I should have reached out to my friend and maybe changed the course of our friendship over the years.
Because I’d know, within only a matter of hours, that not voicing my fears over losing Jamie wouldn’t stop it from happening anyway.
I stared at the crumpled paper through blurred vision. It felt like someone had shoved a knife in my chest. I couldn’t breathe.
It was Jamie’s handwriting.
I’d know his handwriting anywhere.
The paper had wrinkles like it had been balled up. And then folded carefully into a square.
It was short, succinct. No need to sign it.
I looked up at Lorna. Her expression was flat.
Like she didn’t care that she’d just delivered the kind of news that had torn my world to shreds. “He doesn’t mean it,” I whispered.
Jamie couldn’t mean it.
No. I felt my head shaking no, no, no.
Lorna stood, staring dispassionately down at me. She’d flown in from the East Coast to visit Jamie and some old high school friends. She said he’d asked her to deliver this letter to me. Which she’d done, only hours after Cassie left the apartment. “He blames you too. Don’t you get that? If you’d just kept your mouth shut about those damn diaries, he’d be in his last year at school. He’d have a future.” Her voice broke. “You leave him alone, Jane. He’s all I have left, and I won’t let you hold him back anymore.”
I was barely even aware of her leaving.
I just kept reading the letter … over and over.
Remembering our visits over the past few months.
How he’d stopped saying he loved me.
It hurt like grief.
It was an agonizing pain greater than any physical pain I’d ever felt. I didn’t know how to breathe through it. I wanted a black shroud of numbness to fall over me and take away the pain.
Jamie didn’t want me anymore.
Four Years Later
JAMIE
Twenty-six years old
* * *
In a perfect world, she’d be as haggard and as ugly as her weak soul.
Instead, Jane was even more beautiful than I remembered. Even more beautiful than the shots of her I’d seen online.
My freedom was within reach. I was up for parole, and things looked good for me. From within the confines of prison, I’d found a literary agent who wanted to find a publisher for the book I’d written.
Yeah, things were looking up for Jamie McKenna.
I just wished seeing her wasn’t still a knife in the gut.
No, correction: I’d had a knife in the gut.
Seeing Jane was much worse.
When they told me she’d requested a visit, I was shocked as shit. Four years ago, the love of my goddamn life ghosted me. The visits stopped with no explanation.
I guess she didn’t need to explain.
It was obvious. She couldn’t take that I’d changed. I knew I hadn’t made the visits easy for her, but I’d stupidly assumed Jane would stick by me through anything. What a naive asshole. The time apart was too much for her. What future did I have with a criminal record? She was only nineteen back then. What kind of life was it for her to wait around for her boyfriend to get out of prison?
The rational part of me understood. The Jamie who loved her back then had even wanted that for her.
However, J
ane hadn’t even taken time to face me. To come to the prison and tell me to my face that it was over between us.
Instead, she just never showed up again.
Maybe I could have forgiven that, if she hadn’t reinvented herself as Margot Higgins and started spreading her legs for the son of the evil fucker who took my life for five years and ruined my sister.
What was Jane doing here? I thought as I strolled across the room toward the booth where she was waiting. Had she heard I was up for parole, that I was probably getting out soon? Did that make me worthy of her time again?
Fuck her.
I sat down, staring at her. She had the phone pressed to her ear, waiting.
Those stunning, hazel-green eyes stared into mine, and the longing I felt was so devastating, fury erupted from me. I grabbed the phone off the hook, held it to my ear, and didn’t give her a chance to speak. “What’s it like to fuck the son of the man who raped Skye and framed me for a crime I didn’t commit?”
Her shocked gasp sent blood pumping to my dick, and I resented her for that too. Those plump lips parted, eyes filled with pain. Or was that guilt?
“I hate you,” I told her. I was cold as ice. “You disgust me.”
You abandoned me and then took up with Asher Steadman. What the hell else did you expect?
The boy who used to love her wanted to believe there was a reason she’d hooked her star to Asher Steadman. Because the Jane I knew would never have done that.
In saying that, the Jane I knew would never have abandoned me either.
“When I get out, I’m heading back to Massachusetts,” I said. “I expect I’ll never have to look at your fucking face ever again.” It was a warning.
Slamming the phone on the hook, I pushed back my chair and walked away from her.
She needed to stay out of my life. I had plans to put in motion, and I didn’t need her screwing them up.
Not until I was ready.
Then I’d be back for her.
And Jane Doe would wish she’d never laid eyes on me.
Part II
The Present
Chapter 16
JANE
* * *
It was the last place I wanted to be.
I was surrounded by famous and not-so-famous faces, features blurring as guests moved around me, some nodding hello, others stopping to chat. I smiled, asked questions I couldn’t remember the answers to seconds later, and willed the minute hand on the giant, frameless clock above Patel’s fireplace to move faster.
Patel Smith was the Academy Award-winning producer on the movie I was working on. It was the second time I’d worked for Patel. The first time was five years ago, and I was a mere art department assistant at the time. Now I was his art director.
Despite the uber-contemporary (and expensive) home in Laurel Canyon—a house he bought two years ago after a landslide scared off its previous owner—Patel insisted he wasn’t “Hollywood.” It was obvious by his home and car that he liked the money, the sun, and the lifestyle, but according to him, he was still the working-class guy who grew up in Liverpool, England.
While his wife, Shireen, lived a designer life, Patel didn’t seem interested in conversation unless it was about books, film, music, or Liverpool Football Club. Since I had no interest in soccer, I fell upon books and music as my go-to topics for conversation with Patel. But mostly we talked about set design.
Patel’s house had a panoramic view of Los Angeles and an infinity pool that merged with the sky reflected in it. As Shireen told everyone who entered the house, they were lucky not to have lost everything in the cyclonic fires that had ripped through the Hollywood Hills a year ago.
I personally thought the house was a risk.
Beautiful, but unreliable.
Who wanted to invest themselves emotionally in something that might get wiped out by a landslide or climate change?
The party was a crush. Patel wasn’t a guy who just invited actors and “important” crew members to his parties. Everyone working for him got an invitation. It was a large cast and crew on this movie, and I didn’t know everyone by name.
The cast and crew appeared and disappeared through the rotation of guests while I longed for Asher’s steadying presence.
Strike that. If I was wishing for stuff, I wished to replace the spritzed partygoers with the bitter scent of linseed oil, pungent turpentine, and the piney aroma of a new canvas frame. Instead of the mansion, I wanted to be in my bedroom/art studio in my apartment in Silver Lake.
I’d spent seven years building a career I never meant to pursue. Not that I was unhappy, but working in Hollywood was far more frenetic than the future I had envisioned.
I chose this life. And for what? I was no closer to my goal, even with Asher’s help.
These parties reminded me of all the things I could gladly do without. I was an introvert by nature and being forced to schmooze was akin to someone scoring their nails down a chalkboard.
Still, I might never have wanted this life—to be dealing with people day in and out, collaborating with production designers, delegating, keeping to deadline, working crazy hours—but I didn’t mind it. The movie Patel was directing and producing was a musical, which meant elaborate, expensive sets and a huge amount of work I could disappear into.
Filming would start on Monday, so Patel’s party was kind of a kickoff event that I’d felt obligated to attend. For now, I estimated I had to put in another hour at this party before I could leave without being rude. While the cast might not have to work tomorrow, I’d be up at the crack of dawn and on the lot to make sure the set Patel wanted to work with first was ready.
I squeezed through the crowds gathered in the open-plan sitting room and strode into the kitchen. The music playing throughout the house, mixed with the cacophony of voices, meant I couldn’t even hear my booted heels click against the ceramic-tile floor. Like the living room, the kitchen also had a bank of bifold glass doors along one wall that looked out onto the infinity pool and the city beyond. The doors were pushed all the way open as guests wandered in and out of the house.
Seeing a waiter pick up a tray of hors d’oeuvres, I moved toward him and took a few. As I reached for another, the waiter eyeballed me. It was clear he was trying to place me. I scrambled to grab several of the little pastries before he had his “ah-ha” moment, but I was too late.
“You’re Margot Higgins, right?”
I nodded. My name used to be Jane Doe. For reasons, I had it legally changed while I was still in college.
“You’re Asher Steadman’s girlfriend.” He grinned, apparently pleased with himself.
Only someone who wanted to be in the business would pay close enough attention to know that. Yes, I’d been photographed with Asher a few times, but it wasn’t like paparazzi hounded us. We weren’t actors or singers or models … so we weren’t all that exciting. The only reason the public cared even a little was because Asher was Hollywood royalty.
I gave the waiter a tight smile and popped a pastry in my mouth. Unlike many of the actors around me, I didn’t have a love-hate relationship with carbs. There was only love between us. I loved them. They loved my ass.
The waiter dragged his gaze down my body and back up again. “You are way hotter in real life.”
I swiped a couple more puff pastries and whirled away from him with a two-fingered salute. It was that or throw food at him, and that was just a waste of good catering.
After art college, I’d done something I thought I’d never do and asked my ex-foster dad, Nick, to help me get a job in a studio. He found me a position working as an art department runner. After a year of keeping everyone on set caffeinated, I got promoted to an assistant, which meant I got to use my art skills. Making my voice heard in the sea of chatter that was film wasn’t easy for me, but I was determined to be noticed. I had to be noticed so I could find the “in” I needed in Hollywood.
I’d worked on a few big movies, including one of Patel’s previous films
, but lowly assistants weren’t on people’s radars. However, art director Marsha Kowalski was my boss on an Indiana Jones-style flick, and she noticed me. I worked my ass off. I offered my talents as a scenic artist, I painted, I constructed, I kept people more organized on that movie than Marsha herself. Marsha hired me on her next movie as her assistant, which was several steps up the ladder in one promotion.
That movie was a Foster Steadman film.
My “in.”
From there I met Asher and my career moved at warp speed.
Now I was an art director. At only twenty-six years old. When Patel asked for me specifically for this musical, I couldn’t believe it. He asked for me. People were asking for me now.
Which brought me to the party at Patel’s swanky house in the hills.
Remembering Patel’s mention of a home library, I moved away from the crowd, avoiding eye contact so I didn’t get drawn into conversation. Instead, I skirted the edges of the sitting room and disappeared into the hallway. I found the room in question toward the back of the first floor.
The door was open, but there was no one else inside. It was much darker than the other rooms in the home because there was only one window and a blind had been drawn over it. A comfy sectional, a few armchairs, side tables, and a coffee table were situated stylishly throughout the large room. White-painted bookcases wrapped around every inch of wall space. I envied Patel this room.
I felt relieved to be alone, surrounded by books, the music a dull thud in the background. My lungs opened and I breathed freely as I stepped into the room. It smelled like furniture polish, which was a welcome change to the colognes and perfumes out at the party fighting for supremacy over one another.
I relaxed as I stopped at the first row and began to catalogue Patel’s collection in my head.
Keep This Promise Page 212
