by Rymer, Adair
If I couldn't have all of Val, then I couldn't have any of her.
“Just set it up, Malcolm.”
Chapter 12
Valentine
Past
No.
He's pushing me away. I couldn't be sure, but I refused to believe anything else. I stopped in my snowy tracks, wiped the tears that were freezing to my face and turned back around.
Arsen's back was to me. His normally immaculate clothes were dirty and disheveled and his hair was an unwashed mess. He looked like hell that was slowly freezing to death. I had no idea how he survived out here as long as he did, but I knew he wouldn't last much longer if I didn't get him back home.
“Your dad is dead. The world doesn't owe you a damn thing, Arsen.” Wide eyed, he turned back around to me. I took a deep breath and swallowed my courage. “What would he say to you if he saw you like this?”
I didn't think it was possible, but for a minute there, Arsen was at a loss for words.
“Don't act like you knew him. You never even met him.” Arsen spat back as venomously as he could.
“You're right, I didn't know your father. But what I do know from talking to your mom, who misses you like crazy, is that he at least died fighting for something he believed in. And you're out here moping around and running from your problems like a coward!”
Anger flashed across his face as he stomped toward me, stopping just a few inches away. “You don't know shit, you rich, spoiled bitch!” He poked a finger into my puffy winter coat.
His words stung like a punch, but I refused to let on. I could see the pain behind his eyes. Arsen's advice to me about acting carried over into this too, I thought about this as another scene in a hard play. I knew sweet words and time wouldn't penetrate the armor he wrapped himself in. He needed straight talk and tough love.
I had to act strong for him, because he needed me to.
“I know that a real man is dead, that his wife is all alone and in pain. And that you're out here feeling sorry for yourself. Life is painful enough, Arsen. Don't make it worse for the people left behind that still care about you.”
Arsen lowered his head. Howling wind and distant cars filled the quiet air between us. The shaggy mess of his hair covered his eyes, but not the crystalline tears that rolled down his cheek.
After a long moment, I held out my hand. And much to my surprise, Arsen took it.
Present.
“Let me rephrase that.” The talk show host groped to fill the dead air caused by my silence. After flat out refusing to talk about my stepmother, the host transitioned into the canned questions.
I'd known all the questions ahead of time and my replies had been written and approved by the network weeks ago. I had done this same thing dozens of times before, I wasn't even nervous anymore. The scalding lights, the live studio audience and the countless viewers watching me at home, none of it bothered me anymore. I was here to advertise my latest film and all I could think about was Pamela recovering in the hospital.
And about what Arsen had said to me. I had changed, I'd become so much harder that it was difficult to remember compassion at times. I would've never cared about the consequences before.
Behind all that was Arsen in the Jacuzzi... I was a jumbled up mess of emotions and I was in front of millions of people.
“The last film in your hugely popular trilogy is due out next month. The world has fallen into chaos, all Trin's friends have abandoned her and inherent danger is all around. One of the most asked questions is, at this point, what keeps your character going?” The host asked me, desperately hoping that I'd answer this time.
“Well, Jim—” I started.
All the canned responses came to mind, but I couldn't get them out of my mouth. This was why I left Arsen earlier, to do this? I felt deflated and shallow. I couldn't do this, at least not the way they wanted. I let go of all the things I was supposed to say, and said what was really in my heart.
“I'm supposed to say it's that Trin feels empowered to topple the cruel government, and that's true to a degree. I think it's really love that keeps her going.” The waving, frantic arms of my production handler off stage drew my gaze. I disregarded her and continued. “She's a lot more complex a character than most people give her credit for.
I hope you're watching Arsen.
“Love?” The host's plastic grin melted a bit, as he was forced to improvise. “Uh, how do you mean?”
“I think Trin is trying to do right by her brother, he saved her life when they were kids and she desperately wants to return that favor now. But more than that, she loves him. She loves him more than anyone else, I think. It's a hard world they live in, and in the end, they're all they have. If she doesn't repair their relationship before it's too late, she may lose him forever.” I took a breath, swallowed and continued.
“I think it resonates so well because it doesn't necessarily have to be your brother, y'know? It can be your best friend, or the person you love most in life. I love that my character wants to change the whole world just so that they can be together again. Some people are just worth fighting for.”
“Just, wow. Valentine Dawson, everyone! Daughter of the legendary actor Hugh Dawson.” Jim began wrapping up. A prompt in the earbud I wore, gave a time stamp for the coming commercial break.
Just once I wanted to be referred to by only my name.
“Hone your archery skills, everyone because the final movie in the Burning Game series...” The host's words faded into the cheers from the crowd as we ended my segment. He thanked me awkwardly and I walked off stage back to the green room.
My handler gave me hell about going off script, but I didn't care, I fulfilled my contract. I had two more of these and I was done with this franchise. That couldn't happen fast enough, I was so tired of the young adult genre.
I wanted to do real dramatic roles, characters that were flawed and interesting. I didn't want to be pigeonholed as the plucky heroine. I was tired of playing everything so safe. I wanted...
I wanted Arsen.
I wanted to scream his name during that interview, tell the whole world the way I felt about him. I wanted to feel his arms around me and not have to think about who might be watching, or what it might do to my career.
I turned into the green room and nearly tripped over one of the craft service men who was getting up from the floor. There were little cuts of fruit, bits of salmon and pastries all over the room. It looked like a tornado touched down.
“Sorry, Ma'am, there was a little—” The older man began, but was cut off by the younger blond man.
“Oh shit, you're Valentine Dawson!” His eyes nervously twitched, glancing at the door like prey that wandered out of cover. Satisfied that whatever he was looking for wasn't going to come rip his face off, he smiled and let his gaze land heavily on my chest. “Can you sign something for me?”
I pinched my top button closed, and turned toward the older man. I'd have buttoned it shut, but, like most of the stuff I wore for television, it wasn't designed to be functional.
“Shut up, Blake.” The older man stuck a finger menacingly in the blond's face. He knew I could probably get both of them fired for bothering me, not that I would of course, but I had seen it happen before. “Again, I apologize, Ma'am.”
“What happened in here?” Honestly, from the way that blond man was looking at me, I didn't care all that much if he got some preemptive karma. It was more to make small talk as I walked over for the light jacket that I'd left in the room before doing the interview.
“It was, um, your brother, Ma’am. There was a slight misunderstanding, and...”
“Arsen?” The news stopped me in my tracks. I saw the blond cringe at the mention of his name and I could pretty much piece together what happened here. I remembered how quickly and easily Arsen had put that greasy reporter down when he'd first come back. “He was here?”
Arsen had come after me? Why? Pamela must have made him, there would be no other way that he
'd leave her side in her condition. That meant that Pamela was actually better than she looked, that was great news!
The older man didn't know where he might have gone, but said that Arsen hadn't left all that long ago. I stepped out of the room, far enough to be out of ogling sight and thought about it a second. This building was huge. If Arsen left, where would— Outside!
Arsen hated all this entertainment stuff, he'd probably jump at the first excuse to leave. I took off my heels and raced after him, I needed to catch him before he was gone. I wanted to apologize for leaving the hospital. My head spun thinking about Arsen. What did he want to tell me? Or had he come back because he was my bodyguard?
Either way, the need to see him felt urgent for some reason.
I hadn't realized before today how sanitized and hollow this industry made me feel. Being with Arsen, even when we hated each other, was the only thing that made me feel really alive. Feeling his tongue on my pussy in that Jacuzzi still sent shivers through my body. Every fiber in my body demanded more of that, more of him.
I pushed open the exterior studio door and saw Arsen right away. He was leaning on his black Mustang, ending a phone call, and looking cool as ever. We saw each other, both of us had something on our minds. Automatically, I glanced around for the paparazzi, fortunately I only saw disinterested, rushing New Yorkers.
I was always scanning for people that might rush up to me, it was a necessary force of habit. That's why it struck me as odd that the guy in the green hoodie was still here. I'd seen him as I walked into the studio hours earlier. It was weird that he hadn't really moved since then.
Arsen must have seen the confusion in my face because he came rushing up to me, but it wasn't me he was looking at. His deep, brown eyes flared with fear, then they hardened into determination. He wasn't scared for himself. The seriousness in his face made my stomach leap into my throat.
There was a crazy loud bang, like someone popped a paper bag right next to my ear. Someone screamed, “Gun!” Everything became dreamlike after that. I remember falling, there was another loud crash, and more screaming.
“Arsen,” His name was on my lips when darkness took me.
Chapter 13
Valentine
Past
The curtain lowered on us for the last time. It was the last show of senior year, the high school drama club was officially over.
The spotlights clicked off. They were always way too hot, I was covered in sweat every time the show was over. I was exhausted too, but I didn't mind that. I needed the distraction that acting gave me.
For a little while I could escape from my own life and the thoughts that haunted me.
I stepped forward and put a hand on the thick, velvet curtain that separated us from the departing audience. My heart felt as heavy as this wall of cloth. It had been two months since Arsen came home after his father died, but he's avoided me ever since. I'd also heard that he'd been getting in trouble with the police occasionally.
The roar of the audience was the only thing that kept me going. What did I have left now?
“Are you going to go meet your 'phantom of the opera'?” Marcy, one of the stage hands, asked.
“What?” I shook my head, having no idea what she was talking about.
“Yeah, that hot guy with black hair, that's come to, like, every play and rehearsal.” Marcy was a few years older than me, she wasn't from our school, but was part of some theater intern program. “Someone told me his name, it was weird and I forgot it. I'm pretty sure it began with an A.”
“Arsen?” He was here? And he came to all of my shows? I thought he was pissed at me for what I said to him at that abandoned building. I couldn't blame him if he was, the things I said to him were really mean. I guess it worked because he came home, but... then he started avoiding me.
I never meant to hurt him, and it eats me up inside that he thought I did.
But if he still came to my plays, maybe he wasn't as mad at me as I thought. The heaviness in my heart filled with the glimmer of hope. I needed to reach him before he disappeared again. I needed to apologize.
“Arsen. Yeah, that's it! So weird.” Marcy confirmed. “Valentin-a, you have to tell me if he's single.”
“He's not!” The crazy hopeful part of me lied to Marcy, as I rushed backstage to grab my phone. “And don't call me 'Valentin-a!'”
Present
“Ah!” I jolted awake, terrifying images of a green hooded man and glass shattering were still vividly hovering all around me.
“Take it easy, Val,” Arsen's soothing voice helps bring me back from the nightmare. “I got you, you're alright.”
If it weren't for the rush of EMTs that suddenly surrounded me, I would've believed him. Where was I? I glanced around the office room. There were rows of two-way radios on a desk with a series of monitors. This must be the building's security office.
Memories floated back to me like messages in bottles. I remembered a loud noise, a gun maybe. Was I shot?
No, that wasn't it. The only thing that hurt on me was my head. I had a terrible headache, but it certainly wasn't a gunshot. I'd never been shot before, but I imagined that it would feel a lot worse this.
The EMT's prodded and poked me, flashed lights in my eyes and checked my vitals. Through it all, I focused on only one thing, Arsen's tight grip on my hand. I had no idea what happened, but I would've freaked out of he wasn't there. Arsen made me feel safe.
After the EMT's deemed me fine medically, the police questioned me. They asked Arsen to wait outside. He was resistant and distrustful of them, but I squeezed his hand and told him I'd be ok. The truth was I wanted him there with me, but Arsen never got along well with any kind of authority. I didn't want him getting in trouble, especially for protecting me.
They asked me a barrage of questions and I told them the little that I knew. I was looking at Arsen the whole time, and didn't see much of anything else. Finally, they showed me an image of the man in the green hoodie that I’d seen earlier and asked if I knew him, or if he'd have any reason to want to harm me.
“Not that I'm aware of.” My skin began to tingle with anxiety over the question. Why would anyone come after me like that? I remembered him weirding me out by hanging around, but I couldn't recall anything after the loud noise. I was almost too afraid to ask, “What happened?”
Apparently the exterior security camera caught the whole thing, one of the cops had a security guy play it back for us. I watched the monitor with muted horror. The man in green leaned against the front entrance's glass wall and waited for me to turn my back to him. I gasped when I saw the man on the screen pull a gun and aimed it at the back of my head.
My God! How horrible!
They stopped the video and asked if I was alright. I couldn't answer. My internal organs felt like they were being crushed in a trash compacter. I had never been so close to death before. I broke my collarbone once in a car accident, but that was an accident, someone texting and driving. This was so much worse.
Someone tried, and almost succeeded in, assassinating me.
I couldn't stop shaking, I was terrified. The detective asked if I wanted the video turned off. The still frame of the gun pointed at the back of my head seemed to buzz on the monitor, etching its image into every nightmare I was bound to ever have.
“Do you know who he is,” I asked, hesitantly. “Was he some sort of deranged fan?”
“Unlikely, ma'am.” The detective replied. “The guy's a low level thug, he was probably hired by someone else. You don't need to see the rest if you don't want to.”
Everyone was patient with me as I steadied my breathing and eventually shook my head. No, I needed to see what happened next. I needed to know how I was still alive. I asked them to continue.
The detective nodded to the security guy and the video resumed. A large form flashed on screen and collided with the man who was a hair's breadth from taking my life. The gun went off and both men blurred off screen. I was shoved by a flee
ing passerby and knocked unconscious when my head hit the side of a car.
The man controlling the feed minimized the video and brought another one up on the main monitor. This new angle wasn't the street view we had just seen, it was the one from inside the building to record people who were entering. He fast-forwarded it to the muzzle flash of the gun going off. I was so thankful that there was no audio.
A second later two men crashed through the glass wall and into the main entrance. When they landed, the man who'd done the tackling looked back at me to make sure I was alright. I gasped again, it was Arsen. He was the one who saved my life!
“Arsen!” The shout was wrenched out of me, both from the shock of seeing him and from concern. I tried to think back just a few minutes earlier to when he was standing right next to me. Was he hurt? He went through a glass wall for me!
On the screen, Arsen turned back to the man in the green hoodie beneath him. Homicidal rage burned in Arsen's eyes, it terrified me. They stopped the video just after the first of Arsen's heavy blows connected against my attacker's face.
A moment later Arsen roughly shouldered the door open. I'd never seen him so hyper-alert and tense, he was ready for another fight. This wasn't the same man I'd fallen so hard for in high school. Arsen was now as hardened on the inside as he was on the outside. Gone was the varsity athlete, I was now looking at someone— something much more dangerous.
What happened to him these past six years?
I must've looked like a nervous wreck, because he took one look at me and growled at a room full of cops and security. “That's enough questions. If you're not charging her with anything, she's leaving right now.”
“We know who you are Constantine, you'd better watch yourself,” the detective replied, rising from his chair. “You're lucky we're not charging you with attempted murder.”
