by Tina Reber
Ryan cursed, loud and clear. “I can’t deal with this now. Call Trish. Get her on it.”
“Will do. I’ll call you later.”
Marie gave me an odd look when I turned left instead of right. “Where are we going?”
“I need to take care of this bank thing while we’re over here. I got another call about late fees for my father’s safe-deposit box.”
Twenty minutes later I paid the fees to a box for which I didn’t have a key.
“A hundred and eighty bucks to drill a lock out? Pete would do that for free,” Marie said as we walked out of the bank.
I unlocked the car doors. “Guess I know what I’m doing today.”
I set my purse and the copy of the bank bill down on the kitchen table when we returned to the apartment.
“The woman at the bank didn’t even say what kind of key to look for,” Marie said, going through the junk drawer in the kitchen.
I put the rest of our groceries away. “It wouldn’t be in there.”
I pulled out the top drawer of the desk in the third bedroom.
“Here, go through all these files and I’ll look through these. Open envelopes, everything.”
She started paging through the stacks of documents my dad had rubber-banded together.
“Tar, these are old gas and electric bills from six years ago. I’m pretty sure you don’t need to keep these.”
I took a quick scan and then placed the garbage can between us. “Toss anything that isn’t financial. I don’t need to keep old bills. What is in those new boxes over there? Is that your stuff?”
Marie tapped the bottom box with her foot. “Nope. That’s all Ryan Christensen fan mail.”
“Are you serious?” The stack was as tall as me and spanned the entire wall. I opened the top box, finding letters and packages addressed to both of us at Mitchell’s Pub. “Oh holy hell.”
“Yep. I didn’t know where else to put them. Hey, here’s a key. Looks like it belongs to an old Chevy.”
“Make a pile.” I grabbed the first letter on top, slicing it open with my finger. I scanned through the regular fangirl fawning—how he’s so wonderful, sexy, marvelous. I tossed it into the garbage bag. I noticed another one addressed to me care of Mitchell’s Pub. The address was handwritten in chicken scratch. I got as far as “you don’t deserve him you whore” when I threw it in the bag. My hand slightly trembled.
“Do you remember the night of the Reparation premiere, how Ryan was sort of freaking out?” I turned to look at her sitting on the floor.
“Uh huh.”
“He was worried that someone in the crowd might try to hurt us, shoot us, stick him with a needle while he was signing autographs.”
Marie gaped at me. “Seriously?”
I nodded.
I opened a manila bubble envelope that had what looked like underwear in it. “Eeeewwwwee.” Just looking at it made me want to disinfect my house.
Marie’s face scrunched. “Oh my God. Is that some girl’s underwear?”
I felt like throwing up. This was like eight boxes of Angelica the psycho-stalker all over again. “People on this planet are seriously screwed up.”
I tossed the fan panty envelope right into the trash bag. Some fangirl’s skanky panties were now going to pollute a landfill somewhere. “You know what’s even scarier?” I kicked the stack of boxes stuffed with fan mail. “When you start to actually add them all up.”
I rifled through the pile, grabbing a few that were addressed to me. The first letter was a weird mix of congratulations and warnings not to mess it up. Unbelievable. The next one wasn’t so benign. My hands started to shake. Not again. Not freaking again.
Marie noticed me stagger back into the boxes. “What’s that?”
It was hard to speak. “Um, it says someone is going to kill me if I don’t end it with Ryan.”
“Let me see that.” She grabbed it out of my hand. “Where’s the freaking envelope?”
I handed it over.
“No return address but it’s postmarked from Ohio. You need to tell Ryan about this. This shit isn’t funny. I know you don’t want another Kyle incident but chicks out there are crazy.”
She was right.
There was nothing stopping another person like Angelica from coming after me, and if the stacks of mail behind me were anything like the letter I held in my hand, there were a lot more psychos out there wishing for my demise.
Chapter 12
Skeletons
“Taryn, that guy sitting at the bar over there says he’s from . . . Oh Jesus cripes . . .”
I instantly looked over at Marie, who was murderously glaring at the front door of the pub. From her reaction I fully expected to see Gary sauntering in. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Instant tightness gripped my chest and throat, causing my heart to thump and sending my natural fight-or-flight response into high gear. I couldn’t form a rational thought while the adrenaline was coursing into my blood. Why in hell would he ever think to show up here?
I felt slightly lightheaded and dizzy as I watched him approach the bar, his head dipped low with humbled hesitance. Running into an ex is one of the most awkward things in life to endure, but this run-in was not accidental.
Unfortunately, sometimes the skeletal remains of past relationships don’t stay buried forever.
Sometimes the dead inexplicably rise and manage to crawl their mangy asses out of the dark hole that you put them in. I felt sick to my stomach, seeing my past had come back to haunt me. I thought I had buried Thomas deeper than that.
Part of me wanted to shout at him to stop and get the hell out of my bar, but as I took in his overall appearance and extremely forlorn look, a moment of compassion held my words back.
“Like we don’t have enough crap to deal with around here,” Marie said out loud. It had been a week since she stopped accepting Mike’s calls and she was bitchy. “Either you tell him to leave or I will.”
I quickly noticed that Thomas was wearing the black button-down shirt that I had gotten him for Christmas several years ago underneath his well-worn motorcycle jacket, and casually untucked from his blue jeans. Did he wear it on purpose?
My fingers had opened those buttons before. My hands had sought out the hard chest beneath it.
Damn him.
As if I needed to be tortured some more, my eyes quickly skimmed over the bulge near his zipper. How I once used to crave that . . . him, voraciously. How he scorched his place in my soul, assuring that any man I dated would be measured against him.
I also noticed that the laces of his work boots were pulled apart and exposed; how silly that I used to find that so goddamned attractive, all those years I pined for him. I hated that something so simple as his looks was still able to pull an unwilling emotion of excitement out of me.
Thomas’s shaggy blond hair was tussled into casual disarray, giving him that delicious “I just crawled out of bed where I was naked and sinning” look. But instead of appearing cocky and ready for my icy greeting, his eyes were sorrowful, red. Pained?
He dropped his keys, his old black motorcycle helmet with the “Anarchy” sticker stuck on the back of it, and a pack of Marlboro Lites down on the bar.
“You can’t smoke in here so you might want to try another bar,” I grumbled at him as he climbed up on the seat in front of me.
His tongue was busy poking at his back molars while he gauged my reaction.
“It’s nice to see you too, Taryn,” Thomas said in a low, gravelly voice, reaching into his pocket. He was almost apologetic and definitely not in the mood for a fight. His eyes quickly toggled between me and Marie. “Can I have a beer or should I expect to be tossed out to the curb?”
The low, red circles that rimmed his green eyes were definitely out of place on his face. Over the years, I had seen Thomas at his best and at his worst, and he was definitely in a new state of low.
Something serious must have happened for him to gather up the ne
rve to come into my pub.
“I thought you quit smoking.”
Thomas leaned his elbows on the bar and used his index finger to point to the first cluster of beer taps.
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “You want a Sam Adams.” I pointed to the sign behind me that blatantly spelled out that “Management reserves the right to refuse service.”
“And here I thought coming here might actually make me feel better. So much for that idea,” he muttered.
If he was looking for some sympathy he came to the wrong place. I crossed my arms over my chest defiantly. “Wow. You’re capable of identifying your feelings now? That’s new.”
My comeback made him wince. I had definitely hit a nerve. He wiped a hand over his dirty blond goatee, the very same one I used to nibble on. “Well played. I guess I deserved that.” He nodded.
I hated being such a hardened bitch to him. It warred against all those other feelings of first love that still lingered behind. I glanced over at Marie, wondering if she was going to step in and let him have it as well. Oddly she kept her distance, but I still heard her faint laugh after I dropped that last zinger on him.
I tried to lessen my severity. “Thomas, why are you here?”
I noticed that his right hand, the one still donning that stupid silver pinky ring with the tribal design on it, trembled when he finger-combed his hair back. The memory of that ring made me recall an intimate moment when I thought all my dreams had finally come true. Thomas had just made love to me. We were in his first shitty apartment, which was above a souvenir shop near the boardwalk; his roommate was out at some club so we had the apartment to ourselves. He was holding me in his arms when he slipped that silver ring off his hand and put it on my finger. A “symbol,” he had said.
Those haunting green eyes that used to make me do stupid things just to get them to look in my direction gazed up at me. “So is that a yes or a no on the beer?”
I quickly pulled myself together. “Do you think it’s a smart move, drinking while riding? I thought you got rid of the Harley.”
Thomas shook his head. Those bad-boy lips curved up a little, but not much. “Why don’t you throw in a free shot of Jack? Maybe I’ll do you a favor and wrap it around a tree when I leave.”
“Promise?”
As if he were looking for backup to fight my heartlessness, he glanced around the pub, only finding unfamiliar faces surrounding him. He let out a huff. “I see your hate for me still runs deep. You done throwing knives, because I’m just about all bled out today, sweetheart.”
What the hell did he expect? He was my first love and the man who single-handedly shattered my heart into a trillion pieces. The scars that he made would stick with me until the day I die. I tried to be cold, indifferent. “You don’t get to call me sweetheart anymore now. What do you want?”
Thomas appeared ready to say something but resigned under some invisible weight that was weighing heavy on those shoulders. “Since compassion seems to be off the menu . . . one beer. Please.”
Something was terribly wrong.
All those years of being madly in love with him crumbled my will as if it were made of tissue paper. I grabbed a mug and poured his favorite.
He slipped his fingers around the handle and took a long gulp. In two swallows, he had most of the glass emptied. “Thank you.”
I crossed my arms, waiting.
“Look, I know I’m the last person you want to see, but honestly . . . I didn’t know where else to go.”
His hands wiped down his face to reveal very watery eyes and a grim expression set on his mouth.
Some of my iciness melted away and new concern clutched my heart.
“I came here to tell you that, ah, Mel . . .”
He couldn’t finish. Tears I’d never seen him shed began to pool and it was hard for him to look at me.
“Melanie um . . .” His lips quivered and he sputtered, “died this morning.”
Utter shock clapped hard on my chest, pressing down in a painful blast, as the memories of my old high school friend and her cheerful smile and bouncy red hair flowed over me.
Melanie was the third member of Marie’s and my closely knit gang and the only one of us who managed to fully escape the boundaries of Seaport. She had joined the air force after graduation and had traveled to more countries than any of us could have ever imagined. She had settled in Germany for a few years and with time and distance it was hard to keep in touch. But it was because of our friendship that began back in seventh grade that I started my secret crush on her gorgeous older brother.
“What happened?” It was hard to form the words around the burn in my throat.
Thomas was overcome with emotion. Seeing him so distraught like this was hard to take. He was always so overprotective of his little sister, threatening all the boys who came sniffing around after her with certain death if they hurt her. Mel had a magical aura around her that was so infectious you couldn’t help but want to be in her constant company. This magic certainly did a number on a few boys and their precious egos. Back in those days, Thomas had his work cut out for him.
“She um . . .” He struggled to speak. “She got cancer. It spread all over into her lungs and shit. She asked me to um, get word to ya when she was saying goodbye to people.”
Thomas quickly sprang from his seat as the first tear escaped his faltering hold, dripping down over the curve of his cheek. He hurried for the men’s room.
Marie grabbed my arm as I tried to rush past her. “What the hell is going on?”
“He just told me Melanie died this morning.”
Marie’s angered face fell and she gasped, releasing the grip she had on my forearm. “Oh God, no.”
Wasting no time, I hurried after Thomas, snagging his leather jacket, redirecting him into the empty kitchen. I needed him to tell me what happened.
Before I knew it, Thomas pulled me into his arms, wrapping them around me tightly in a hold of desperate need. His fingers knotted into my shirt. I knew it was killing him to show this much weakness, breaking that impenetrable façade he wore for all the world to see. Sometimes I think that this was the true reason he broke up with me so many times. I was the only girl who could break past that façade and it scared him to death.
As much as it repulsed me to allow my first love this close to me after how deeply he had devastated me, the need to comfort him wiped my hatred away.
I breathed in his familiar scent of leather and spice and skin, causing thousands of memories to surge into my consciousness. There were times I would have killed to have his love, to have him show me the tenderness and raw emotion that I knew he was capable of. But he always held back—always kept me at a safe distance. But now, at this moment, all of his guards were down and he was sobbing uncontrollably in my arms.
“It’ll be okay,” I said, even though my silly words were nothing more than a reflexive attempt to console him. Things would never be okay for him, his family, or for any of us who loved Melanie. Death is final.
“I thought she was getting better,” he whispered in a higher-pitched tone of pain. “Oh, Mel . . .” His fingers clawed into my shirt.
I let him release his pain for a few minutes before whispering, “Tell me what happened.”
Thomas rested his forehead on my collarbone and sniffed. One of his arms released me so he could wipe his eyes, but the other remained firmly locked around my waist. I tried to put some space between us, but as quickly as I tried, he pulled me back to his chest.
“She gasped for fucking air for twelve hours. I’ll never get that sound out of my head. Oh God. Why?”
His entire body trembled. “I’m so sorry I hurt you, Taryn. God, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
His lips were awfully close to my neck. I could feel his breath on my skin. “No. It’s not okay. And now it’s too late. It’s all too late. I should have never done what I did to you.”
In that moment, I found forgiveness. Life is too s
hort to hold such a monumental grudge.
“What the hell?” Tammy exclaimed when she came through the kitchen door, giving me the evil eye over the top of her sunglasses as she assessed our embrace. “Am I interrupting something?”
I quickly put some space between Thomas and me, not wanting her to get the wrong idea.
“Tammy, you remember Thomas,” I started.
“Uh huh,” she said with a reproachful tone.
“Woman, where did you put the Aspinall catering slip?” Pete stopped short, not believing what he was seeing. “Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me?” he growled, stepping up to us.
I put my hand on Pete’s chest to stop him and Thomas from squaring off. Pete had size but Thomas had years of practice; besides, Thomas was emotional. I knew Thomas would much rather pound the shit out of something than cry about it.
“Easy, Pete. Stop.”
“What is he doing here, Taryn? You finally have a good thing with Ryan and you need to fuck it up? For this piece of shit?”
“Fuck you, Herman,” Thomas bristled and growled, wiping the remains of his tears away. “Don’t start shit you can’t back up.”
“No. Fuck you, Sager. You’ve got some fucking brass balls coming here. Don’t you think you’ve caused enough damage?”
“Stop it! Both of you.” I turned to Pete. “He came here to tell us that Mel . . .” Her name caught with a hitch in my throat. “Melanie passed away this morning, all right?”
Pete’s angered death glare at Thomas instantly fell as he took in my words. “Mel?”
I nodded, trying to hold it together. It’d been a long time since I’d seen her but the tragic news of her passing cut fresh and deep. Marie slipped in and put an arm around me, noticeably pulling me away from Thomas. I’d thank her later for that.
Thomas covered his eyes with both hands and let out a sigh.
“Oh God.” Pete hunched over as if he’d been punched in the gut. His unrequited feelings for Mel had messed him up for years. Tammy tried to touch him but he flinched. “What happened?”
