“No, I wouldn’t have.”
“But I thought coming here was what you needed.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “You’re an arrogant, selfish asshole.”
“How is that arrogant? Wanting to bring you into my life so we could be happy together?”
“I had a right to know!” Tears well in her eyes. “I deserved to know the psycho who tried to murder me in a public bathroom was nearby.”
“The cops didn’t know for sure that he was. People had reported sightings, but nothing was confirmed.”
“I. Deserved. To. Know.”
“Yes, you did.”
She folds her arms and stares across the room, refusing to look at me.
“I’m sorry, babe. I really am.”
I walk over to her, but she stops me short with a furious glare.
“Don’t think you can come over here and put those big, strong arms around me and make it all better.”
I put my hands on my hips and look down at the ground, exasperated. “I wasn’t trying to do that. I tried to make it better by apologizing. I was wrong, Elle. What else can I say?”
“I thought we were in this together.”
“We are.”
She shakes her head. “Do you know what I do when men try to tell me what’s best for my business? When they suggest how I should dress or act, and I hear that ‘listen here, honey, I know what’s best’ tone?”
“You know I’m not one of those guys.”
She ignores me and keeps going. “I fire them. I can’t surround myself with people who don’t respect me and see me as an equal.”
“Elle, I love you and resp—”
“Don’t!” She puts a hand in the air to stop me. “I’m so fucking angry right now, Justin.”
“You went through something traumatic less than two hours ago. I think we just need to step back and talk about this in a reasonable way.”
“I want you to leave.”
I gape at her for a second. “Leave?”
“Yes. I need to be alone.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose and force myself to take a deep breath. “Elle . . . I don’t want to leave you right now. Not after what just happened.”
“I want to be alone, Justin. I have a lot to think about.”
I rub a hand over my five o’clock shadow, disbelief coursing through me. “Tell me you aren’t thinking about leaving me over this.”
“I’ll think about whatever I want,” she snaps. “Now, please, get out.”
“Are you going to leave if I do?”
Her voice is filled with emotion as she looks at me. “Just go. Please.”
I hang my head and turn for the door.
Fuck. I never saw anything like this happening. My effort to protect Elle and help her find her confidence again has blown up in my face.
I’m not in the mood to talk to anyone in my family about this, so I check in to a motel. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any better . . . this happens.
I met Emily over the weekend. We spent a couple hours playing in the park. She was unsure of me at first, but by the end of our playdate, she was laughing and smiling. For now, I’m just giving her as much time as I can arrange with Mallory. It’s hard to fight my urge to shower Emily with toys and other gifts, but I have to for now. I don’t want to overwhelm her.
The plan was to start slowly and work our way up. Mallory is opening up to the idea of joint custody. Elle and I had found a house we liked a lot, and we’d even chosen a room for Emily.
I was planning to buy the house next week and surprise Elle with it. It’s a brick bungalow with a swing on the front porch, and she loved it the moment we walked inside.
But in a matter of hours, my dreams for our future seem to be slipping through my fingers. I stare up at the motel ceiling most of the night, hoping with everything in me that she’ll call in the morning and ask me to come back.
But when I look at my phone in the morning, I’m crushed. There’s a story circulating on social media about the attack yesterday, and there are photos of Elle leaving Lovely during the night in a dark SUV, a police escort leading the way.
I guess we were too good to be true after all. It hurts even worse than I thought it would. Mostly because it’s my own damn fault I lost her.
Elle
CHLOE IS SNORING SOFTLY next to me, a sheen of oil shining on her bronze skin as she sleeps on her stomach.
She’s taken to napping every afternoon on the deck of the beach house we’re staying in. It’s in the south of France and it belongs to a big-time movie producer who’s been trying to get me to work with him for a couple years.
She’s got a cute red bikini on, but I, on the other hand, am wearing a light dress, big sunglasses and a hat, and I’m still sitting in the shade of an umbrella. This fair-skinned redhead will never have the same golden glow Chloe does.
I enjoy the sounds of lapping waves and calling birds just as much as she does, though. This place is paradise. It’s private, and my security team can keep a distance.
I’ve been here for a little over a week, and Chloe and I have spent that whole time catching up over amazing food, walking on the beach and sitting in these lounge chairs.
After setting down the paperback I’m reading, I pick up my phone, hoping to see a text from Justin. I don’t, though. I only have several messages from my manager, Anthony. He’s booking an interview on a TV show, my first since the attack.
It’s not that I want to recount the details of that awful morning, but I’m feeling ready to talk about the ways it changed me. Chloe reminded me how important it’s always been to me that I use my platform to do good. If this interview reaches other survivors, maybe it will help them feel less alone.
Justin hasn’t texted me for three days now. He had been sending me messages about how much he loves me and misses me, and every time I read one, I got that tingly sensation only he makes me feel. I told him I needed some time to think about things, and he said he’d give me the space I needed.
I know it’s irrational that I want him to keep texting me anyway, but I do. I miss him terribly. I sleep with my arms around a pillow every night, because it reminds me of having Justin to snuggle up to. It’s so not the same, though. The pillow isn’t warm, it’s fluffy instead of muscled, and it definitely doesn’t kiss my neck every morning to wake me up.
Chloe and I have spent hours talking about why I left Lovely. She said she can see both my side and Justin’s, which I took as a challenge to convince her I’m right. I’m still working on that, though.
She keeps reminding me that love makes us do crazy things, like go to a tiny little town in Missouri to recover when you could be anywhere in the world. Justin shouldn’t have withheld the information about Gary Beasley, she agrees, but he did it because he wanted me to take that first step in finding my way out of the cave I was living in. It was a cave of fear and isolation, where I told myself that if I did nothing and went nowhere, I couldn’t be hurt again.
I scroll through photos of me and Justin on my phone. The one of us at the barn dance makes me sigh softly. He’s holding me and we’re kissing, his dark hair tousled from the cowboy hat I’d just taken off of him.
I’ve never had a more perfectly happy moment in my life. I would have thought a moment like that would be from winning a Grammy or breaking a sales record. My career is a one in a million dream come true, after all. But my perfectly happy moment came when an attorney from Lovely, Missouri showed me what it feels like to be loved for who I am, not for what I’ve accomplished.
I’m Eleanor in that photo, a woman like all the others at the barn dance. In my flannel and cowboy boots, I’m not a superstar. But Justin made me feel more amazing that night than ten thousand screaming fans could have.
I love him. He hurt me, but I still love him, and I’m not sure what to do with that.
Chloe lifts her head from her lounge chair and looks over at me.
“Oh, wow,” she says in
a groggy tone. “I was having the most amazing dream about that football player who was in your video a couple years ago . . . you remember?”
“BJ Carver. Of course I remember.”
She smiles. “Yeah, BJ. Damn, I’d love to get me some of that.”
“He’s a player.”
“I didn’t say I want to marry the guy, I just want to let him do bad things to me for a night. Maybe two.”
She turns over and sits up, sliding on her sunglasses. “Did you get the stuff from Anthony about the interview?”
“Yeah. I should probably go in the house and read it.”
“I’ll come with you,” she says, standing up. “I want to make lemonade, anyway.”
I stand, too, and she looks over at me as I’m folding up the towel I was laying on.
“Did you stare at that picture of you and Justin and think about texting him but not do it because you’re so stubborn?”
I roll my eyes and laugh. “No.”
“Liar.”
“I may have looked at the picture,” I admit. “But I’m not texting him. He should text me.”
“He did, Elle. You told him you need space.”
“I do.”
She hums skeptically. “Space to stare at pictures of him and get mad because he hasn’t texted?”
“You don’t just immediately fall out of love with someone, you know. It takes time.”
She rolls her eyes dramatically. “Your puppy-dog eyes just get puppy-doggier every time you look at that picture. Call the man. Text the man. FaceTime the man. Tell him you miss him.”
We keep having the same conversation, and it always ends in a stalemate. I open the sliding glass door and walk into the house and she follows me, apparently deciding to drop the subject.
I’m thinking about what she said as I read over the information from Anthony, though. What I want more than anything right now is to hear Justin’s voice. I love him, I miss him, and I can admit, to myself at least, that I overreacted and am being stubborn.
So why don’t I just call him? I think it’s because I’m at a crossroads with my career. This interview is going to mark my return. I told Anthony I’ll need studio space soon because I want to start working on the songs I’ve been writing.
I don’t just want to work on them, I have to. The songs I wrote in Lovely are bursting to get out of me. And once that album drops, it’ll be time to think about a tour.
How can I live a quiet life in Lovely with Justin while working my way back to where I was before the attack? I’ll have to do intense physical therapy and training to get back into shape. With my limp, I’ll have to work twice as hard to make sure I’m ready to perform on stage. And once my first interview comes out, I know I’ll have opportunities to speak and write about my story. Anthony told me he’s been approached by two publishers wanting me to write a book already.
I shouldn’t have to choose between Justin and my career, but I feel like I do. I want to be with him full-time and I want to make music and empower survivors full-time.
Until I figure things out, I can’t talk to him. It would hurt too much.
Justin has become my best friend—the person I can talk to about anything and I know he won’t judge me. Chloe fills that role, too, but there’s something about confiding in the man I’m in love with that is just irreplaceable.
This is one decision I can’t confide in him about, though. I have to decide what I want for my future completely by myself.
Justin
LIFE WITHOUT ELLE IS dreary. Even when the sun is shining, it doesn’t feel bright outside to me. Everywhere I go, an invisible dark cloud follows above me.
And I’m tired as hell. I stretch and yawn at my desk, feeling the effects of only sleeping two hours last night. My pathetic ass was up thinking about Elle and then stalking the Internet for any new photos of her.
It’s time for another cup of coffee. I walk out to the main office area and fill my mug. Reed’s standing near the coffee machine, and he gives me a once over followed by a cringe.
“You look like hell, man.”
I glare at him and take a sip of my coffee. It’s not like I needed him to point it out. I’m well aware of the dark circles under my eyes and my wrinkled dress shirt. The iron at the motel is a piece of shit and I haven’t been able to bring myself to go back to the guest house since Elle left. I didn’t shave this morning, either, so I probably look worse than I did yesterday.
“Anything I can do?” Reed asks.
I shake my head. There’s nothing anyone can do. In a pretty fucking awful twist of fate, this confirmed bachelor just got his heart broken by the only woman he’s ever loved. She made me want things I’ve never wanted before, and then she ditched me in the middle of the night without even saying goodbye.
“You don’t have any client meetings today, why don’t you go home?” Reed says.
“I don’t have a home,” I remind him.
“You could go hang out with Mom.”
“Pass. I’ve got work to do.”
I go back into my office and close the door. Everyone at the firm knows not to bother me. That’s the upside of getting dumped by a famous woman—not having to tell anyone. TMZ took care of that with photos that went viral. Elle is in the south of France now, probably getting hit on by douchebags in berets who drink wine.
I’m just the beer-drinking, cowboy-hat wearing man she doesn’t want anymore. It’s not in my nature to mope, but I’ve been doing a lot of it since she left. The only things keeping me going are my time with Emily and having to show up at work every day.
Emily called me Daddy for the first time yesterday and it choked me up a little. I wanted to tell Elle about it, but I’m giving her space. Apparently several thousand miles isn’t enough space—she also needs to not speak to me or even send me a damn text every now and then.
I go back to reading emails, stopping when my phone dings with a text. I swipe it from the desk, hoping it’s Elle.
My shoulders slump with disappointment when I see it’s from Ned, the real estate agent Elle and I were working with when we were house hunting. I left him a message this morning because I need a house more than ever. Living at the motel sucks.
His text says he’s available, so I call him.
“Justin,” he says, his tone merry. “How’s it going?”
“Good.”
“Really?” His tone is skeptical because, like everyone, he knows Elle left me.
“Yep, really.” I clear my throat. “Listen, I want to make an offer on that brick bungalow.”
“The one on Sycamore Street?”
“That’s the one.” I figure if I can’t live with Elle in the house she wanted, I can at least live there by myself. “Can I come by your office this afternoon to write up an offer?”
“Well . . . Two Twenty Five Sycamore is pending, so we can’t do that.”
“What the hell, Ned?” I sigh heavily. “Why didn’t you tell me someone else was interested?”
“It’s not my listing, so I didn’t know. I do have a new one, though, over on Moonview.”
“I don’t want to live on Moonview,” I say with a scowl. “I want the house on Sycamore.”
“We can watch it and see if the contract falls through.”
I rub a hand down my face. “Yeah, I guess. And we can keep looking in the meantime. Sorry I’m in such a bad mood. It’s not your fault.”
“Well, it’s not every day a fella gets dumped by a famous pop star. I’d say you’re entitled.”
He chuckles into the phone and I shake my head.
“I have to go, let’s talk more later,” I say.
“You got it.”
I flip off the phone when I set it back on my desk because a) I’m in a shitty mood and b) Ned is way too chipper.
My bad luck apparently continues. I waited too long to buy the house and now it’s gone. I’m a lot more disappointed than I probably ought to be.
I turn back to my email, writing
out perfunctory responses to each message. When lunch time rolls around, I don’t feel like leaving the office. I’ll inevitably run into people who will ask me about Elle, and I’m likely to bite someone’s head off if they do.
Yesterday I ran into Andre over lunch and we had a short, awkward conversation. I wasn’t expecting to see him, but he said Elle wanted him to stay here on a vacation of sorts. I’m sure it’s got something to do with the woman he’s seeing. Good for him. At least one of us is happy.
I want to look Elle up online and see if there are new photos of her posted. But then I realize that’s fucking ridiculous. We’ve turned into a couple of children over an argument we should have been able to settle. I pick up my phone and send her a message.
I miss you. We need to talk. I’m not giving up on us without a fight. You mean too much to me for that.
It’s evening in France. We could talk right now if she’d just call me.
But she doesn’t. I order delivery from Jimmy’s Italian Place and stare at my phone as I eat it, to no avail.
This must be my payback for all the times I told women I didn’t want anything serious. I want everything Elle will give me, but she’s not interested. We hardly even got started, and we’re already over.
I don’t bother telling myself I’ll meet another woman someday who makes me feel the way Elle did. There’s not a woman in Lovely—or anywhere else—who compares.
Elle
DESPITE THE NERVOUS FLUTTERING sensation in my stomach, I’ve never felt more ready for an interview. I decided if I’m going to do an interview that will be broadcast worldwide and draw millions of views, I’m going to do it all the way.
Convincing everyone else that’s what I want is proving to be a challenge, though. The makeup artist who works for the news channel the interview will be on is looking at me like I’ve lost my mind right now.
“But . . . why? I can minimize the scar so it’s hardly visible.” She gives me an earnest look.
“I don’t want that, though,” I tell her.
“But . . . why?”
“I just don’t.”
The producer for the show walks over. “Everything okay over here, ladies?”
Hidden Depth (Lockhart Brothers Book 4) Page 15
