“Sorry.” I blushed. Clearly they knew I’d been thinking of Connor.
“Look, Maddie. I’m happy for you, I guess.” Cam didn’t look happy.
“You sound it.”
“Well, maybe it isn’t the best time for you to be running around with some guy. I mean, you have a lot of shit to straighten out up here. Maybe you don’t need a distraction like that. And your track record with men…”
“Point taken.” I wanted him to stop. I felt happier than I had in years, just thinking about Connor and the sweet honesty that seemed to live between us. Now that I had definitely dismissed the idea of selling a photo of him, I was eager to see his face again. Cam wasn’t going to ruin it for me. “Maybe you should meet him while you’re here.”
“No, I…” Cam started to disagree, but didn’t get a chance to finish.
“I’d love to meet Connor Charles! Do you think he’d sign a book for me?” Jess was practically bouncing.
Cam turned to watch her and his expression crumbled from protective and wary to completely adoring. He smiled and put an arm around her. “Will you ask him, Maddie?”
I nodded and went outside to call.
Chapter 15
“Maddie.” Connor’s voice was rough. He didn’t sound happy.
“Hi!” I, on the other hand, sounded gushy and ridiculous. I cleared my throat to get my voice back to a more restrained level. “Hi. Are you okay?”
“Well, there’s a lot going on.”
He sounded like it. “I’m sure, I’m so sorry. Maybe this isn’t a good time to ask this…but my brother is in town for only another day. And his wife is here, and it turns out she is a huge fan of yours. When I mentioned you, she got really excited.” I paused, but he didn’t say anything. “I wondered if you might have time to meet them.”
“She wants a picture?”
“Or an autograph maybe?” I ventured, my hopes sinking. He sounded really busy.
“That’s flattering. Will you give her my apologies?”
“I…” What? What was going on? He sounded angry and tense. Maybe the writing wasn’t going well suddenly. “Connor, what’s wrong?”
“I’m busy, Maddie. I’m supposed to be working up here, not entertaining the locals. I need to get back to it.”
“Oh, sure…” Confusion rushed through me, but I was also starting to resent his tone. “I guess I’ll leave you alone, then.” It was an immature thing to say, maybe.
But his response was even worse. “I wish you would.”
“I…okay. Bye.”
“Goodbye, Maddie.” He hung up, and I was left standing at the side of the parking lot, feeling like I’d just been run over by his stupid big white car. What the hell had changed? What had I done? Maybe he was completely unbalanced. Maybe the rumors about him had some basis in fact.
I swallowed down all the disappointment and anger I felt at being so suddenly rejected. It’d been twenty-four hours since I’d left Connor’s house, his bed. If everything could change so completely for him in that amount of time, then I should be glad to cut it off now. I didn’t need another rollercoaster ride. I forced myself to take that hurt and confusion and wall it off, for now at least. I needed to do what I could to help Cam.
I turned and looked at my brother and Jess through the window. They were leaning close, heads together. Darkness filled me and I felt like I might drown in it. I couldn’t help them. I couldn’t help anyone. If only Jack would let go of that damned account, I could take care of my dad and let Cam focus on Jess. If that money was invested right, there would be enough for his care facility to be paid from the interest. There might not be enough left for me to help myself, but having Cam back in my life might balance that out.
I put my chin up and went back into the diner. I wasn’t excited about telling my brother about another failed relationship, or about the lack of progress in my financial situation so I covered.
“I’m so sorry, Connor is on deadline and he just doesn’t have time to meet us today.”
Jess’s face fell, and I felt like I’d just told a kid there would be no Christmas this year. “Okay,” she said. “I understand.”
Cam’s face darkened.
I shouldn’t have opened my mouth, but I couldn’t stop the words that fell out next. “He said that if you left your book, he’d sign it when he has time and I can send it to you.”
Her smile returned. “Oh, okay! That’d be great! My book is in the car.”
What the hell had I just done? Now I’d have to go ask Connor for another favor, when he clearly didn’t want anything to do with me. Though, if I were honest with myself, I wanted a little more explanation from him about that, too. It was one thing to have a one-night stand, but what we shared hadn’t seemed that way at all. And my heart had definitely believed that this was something more.
“There’s something else, too,” I said, watching Cam’s face carefully.
He lifted an eyebrow.
“My lawyer thinks that the account I’ve been hoping would be released to me might be soon. So I should be able to help with Dad’s care. I’ll let you know as soon as I know.” The words just kept rushing out and I felt powerless to stop them. It wasn’t a lie, exactly. Why did I feel it was necessary to give them false hope? Jack would hang onto that stupid money with every last ounce of energy he had. Money was the only thing Jack cared about, after all.
Jess looked away, but Cam’s shoulders straightened slightly and his face cleared a bit. “That’s good,” he said.
I was pleased to have relieved him of a tiny bit of his burden, even if there was little else I could do. And even just believing that I might be able to help soon seemed to have lightened his load. Maybe the lie wasn’t a bad thing.
“I think I’d like to rest for a bit,” Jess told Cam as we stood to leave the diner.
He nodded. “I might take a quick walk around while you do that,” he said. “But I’ll get you settled first.” They both faced me.
“We’ll say goodbye before we leave, okay?” Jess smiled, but her eyes were flat. I wondered again what was wrong with her and if there wasn’t something that could be done. This tiny person with the huge personality had been an important part of my life, and I knew she was everything to my brother. How could she be so sick? Anger bubbled inside me at the futility of it. Why was life so often unfair?
“You better,” I told her.
“See you later, sis.” Cam put an arm around Jess and they turned to leave.
We said goodbye at the door and I waved to Miranda again as I headed for the library across the street. She smiled and mouthed “later” as I headed outside.
It was time to get my plan into action. It was abundantly clear that no one in the world was going to swoop in and rescue me. I needed to get myself in order, attend to my own needs. I needed to head over to the library and do what I could to rebuild my life. I was going to build myself a website. But first, I was going to do some online investigating to find out exactly how famous Connor really was. I’d been shocked to hear that Jess recognized him by name alone. Was I the only person in the world who had never heard of Connor Charles before?
* * *
I nodded to Christine, the withered librarian as I sat down at the one terminal in the small library. I wondered if I was the only one who ever used it.
Glancing over my shoulder to make sure she wasn’t watching, I typed Connor’s name into Google. Several pages of results came up. All the retail listings for his books, conferences he’d spoken at, and interviews in magazines and papers. And images. Lots of images.
I scanned the headlines of some of the articles. They weren’t all from the most reputable of sources, but they were definitely intriguing in a stomach-turning kind of way.
Connor Charles – Woman Beater?
“He’s a Tortured Artist” – Ex-Girlfriend of Author Connor Charles Speaks Up
Dark and Twisted: An Inside Look at the Mind of Connor Charles, Horror Writer
; Writer Charles Accused of Kidnapping, Potential Murder
I felt sick. But not all the headlines were as awful as these. Some mentioned Connor’s foundation for foster kids, others talked about his donation of money to school libraries. Another mentioned his investment in a charter school in Chicago. There were not as many articles about Connor’s good deeds as there were those that speculated about his evil nature, but I was happy to see some weight on the other side of the scales.
I read. For at least an hour, I read all about the accusations that had followed Connor from relationship to relationship. There were photos of him with a tall thin blond woman, a bruise on her face as his arm circled her waist in a possessive way. There were pictures of him with his arm over the shoulder of another woman, a fierce look on his face as he glared at the photographer. This was a different woman, but the picture had red circles superimposed to highlight the bruises up and down her thin arms.
There was good, and bad, and lots of in between. Connor had been to many events, had lots of pictures taken of him. The photos were the most intriguing thing to me, of course. Seeing him in a life completely outside my own, outside my knowledge and understanding of him, was fascinating. He often looked unhappy, troubled. But always painfully handsome.
I went back to my name search and clicked the image link. A full page of Connor’s face came up. But there was one photo that caught my attention completely. Connor, in front of a fire, his face in shadow. My photo. How the hell had this gotten online? And what would Connor think if he found it?
I followed the photo to its source, and read a horrible tabloid article full of half-truths about the investigation going on up here. It had quotes attributed to “concerned neighbors” saying things about how suspicious they were, how Connor behaved in a manner that made him untrustworthy. My blood chilled and I sat back, staring at the screen. How had my photo become associated with this? A dark shadow filtered into my gut and settled there. Had Connor already seen this? Was this why he was so angry?
Something close to fear pricked at the back of my mind. But I realized it was fear of losing what small happiness I’d had with Connor, not fear of him. Though I’d known him only a short time, I didn’t believe these articles had any basis in fact. I wasn’t afraid of Connor, but I was afraid of what seeing that photograph online would do to him. I had a sinking feeling that this photograph was the reason for his sudden change on the phone.
I ran my hands through my hair, a new feeling of desperation washing through me. How had this happened? I’d refused to sell this picture. I was at the bottom of a pit of financial desperation, this picture had been a lifeline, and I’d chosen not to take it because I cared about Connor. I’d sworn that I’d find some other way. I’d struggled and cried over this decision, feeling like I’d made some kind of personal stride in the end, achieved a new level of integrity. And here it was anyway.
I had to think back to when I’d first looked at the picture. I’d pulled up the photos on this terminal during my break. I leaned back in the chair, thinking. I’d been working on this photo when Jack had come in; he had definitely seen this picture. Was it possible he had he sold it without my permission? I wondered if he would have any idea how to log on and retrieve it from the terminal – Jack was the type to pay other people so he didn’t have to learn how to do things himself. And I always cleared the memory when I used a public machine.
My blood chilled. I always cleared the cache…except that day, I didn’t think I did. Jack had surprised me, and I’d yanked the memory card out of the machine and left. I tried to remember if I’d gone through my usual effort of clearing the photo cache in the editing program, but I knew with a certainty that I hadn’t. I opened the program and clicked to list recent files. Several images were listed by the auto-assigned filename the camera gives them. My camera. I clicked one, and the image of Connor came up.
Shit. Jack had stolen my picture from this machine, and it was my fault. I wondered how much he had gotten for the picture. I wondered how I’d ever married someone who was capable of this. I moaned out loud, deleting the photo cache and shutting down the terminal. This was bad. And I needed to go to Connor and try to fix it. I couldn’t let him believe that I would do this to him, that I would knowingly betray him.
I left the library and drove straight to Connor’s house.
* * *
“Maddie, I don’t have time for this right now....” Connor appeared above me on the balcony, no doubt beckoned out by the noise of my SUV spewing gravel as I raced up the driveway. “I was pretty clear on the phone.”
“No!” I was practically falling out of the car in my haste to get to him, to explain myself and make this right. “I just…Connor, you have to let me explain.”
“There’s nothing to say.” He turned and the fiery head disappeared out of view.
“There is!” There was. There was plenty to say. Like how I didn’t believe any of what they were saying about him. That I wanted to stand by him through this, through all of it. That I didn’t betray him—that I wouldn’t do that. He could choose not to be with me, but he wasn’t going to make that choice based on the belief that I sold him out when I’d decidedly done no such thing.
I scrambled to his door, knocking ferociously. “Connor! I have to talk to you!”
He let me knock for a full five minutes. My arm was tired and my knuckles were banged raw. I cursed the fact that no one had doorbells up here. An actual cabin would be too small to need one, but this behemoth of a house could use something more effective than my bony fist. Just as my knock was losing intensity, Connor pulled the door open, his face angry and exasperated in the shadow beyond the door.
“Maddie, please just go away.”
“I can’t. Not until you let me talk to you.”
He kept me standing at the door, an eyebrow arched in a face that looked exhausted, etched by tiny lines. “What do you want to talk about?” His voice was soft, tired. “You want to tell me about how you worked to get close enough to get a good shot? About how you used me to further your career, your own financial interests? You want to talk to me about why I can’t trust a goddamned person in this world? Or about how your little picture just added fuel to the fire in this fucking police investigation? Is that what you want to talk about, Maddie? Because I don’t want to talk about any of it.”
He might as well have slapped me. He’d already made up his mind about all of it—told himself the story of how that picture got online, and left it at that. “That’s not what happened.” My voice was stronger than I felt. I wanted to melt, to disappear in the face of his disappointment in me, his belief that I could betray him so completely.
“You have two minutes.” He made no move to invite me in.
“I took the picture without thinking about it. I had no plans at all,” I began. “But Jack…”
“Somehow I knew he’d be involved. You two seem to spend a good deal of time together for people who are supposedly trying to lead separate lives.”
My head snapped up. “That’s not true.” Was it? Jack did seem to be around a lot lately. Did we have some kind of codependence that I’d never even recognized?
“Either way. Go on.”
“Jack walked into the library when I was reviewing my shots, and he saw that picture. He said he had a friend in Los Angeles who would pay a lot of money for it.” I watched Connor’s face as I spoke. It was like a mask of stone. No expression flitted through the icy blue eyes. His lack of response made me nervous, and my words were flying out in a jumble. “He wanted me to sell it. And when the stuff with my brother and Jess happened—that’s my brother’s wife, she’s really sick, and so there are going to be bills, and I can’t help them—well…there’s my dad’s care to worry about too, and the house…”
“You were desperate. You saw an opportunity and you took it. I don’t blame you.” He seemed to think about that last part for a minute. “No, I take it back. I do. You had other options, Maddie.” Connor took a
step back and began to shut the door. He looked as if the sadness of a thousand lives weighed heavy in his heart.
“No!” I wedged my foot forward, blocking the door.
Connor looked surprised for a brief second, almost amused. And then he tilted his head to the side and sighed. “We’re done here Maddie. We’re just…this is done.”
“No, we’re not. That’s just it. I had every reason to sell that picture. But I didn’t. I didn’t do it, because I didn’t want to be that person. I didn’t want to be under Jack’s thumb, and I didn’t want to be the girl who would throw someone I care about under the bus to save myself.”
Another raised eyebrow, but the door remained open.
“I didn’t do it, Connor.” My voice was almost a whisper now. “But I didn’t remove the photo from the cache, either. I was using the public terminal at the library. Someone else found the photo. Someone else sold it.”
“Jack.”
I nodded. “Probably.”
Connor was silent for a moment. He didn’t get enraged, he didn’t slam the door. But he didn’t reach out to hug and forgive me either. “Okay. Well, thanks for letting me know.” He took another step back and then said firmly, “Bye.”
I moved my foot out of the way, watching in shock as the door swung shut. I found myself staring at the heavy redwood door in disbelief. That was it? Did he believe me or not? What was I supposed to do now? I couldn’t just go back to the trailer and go on with my life. My heart pounded in my chest, and every beat was a painful ache. Knowing that Connor had just pushed me out of his life made me realize how completely invested in him I’d become in a very short time.
Still standing there, I imagined him on the other side of the door, in that big house all alone. I pictured him believing that I’d betrayed him, that he really was on his own against the world. His sister was gone, and now he’d lost me too. He had no one, and the knowledge made my chest heavy and brought tears to my eyes. He had me. He just didn’t want me now.
I shuffled back to my car, my body numb and my mind a spinning wheel, casting in all directions for an answer to an unsolvable problem.
Love Rebuilt Page 17
