by Megan Crane
Wake up, Tommy, he told himself harshly. Bitterly. You’re always alone.
He couldn’t even begin to unravel the levels of insanity involved. He couldn’t allow himself to think about what she’d said, but at the same time, he couldn’t think of anything else. How could he have spent so much time with her and seen no sign of it until now? She had to throw time travel at him before he noticed the fact she was a stark, raving psycho? Where was the yellow light, for God’s sake?
Time travel. Of all fucking things. The twenty-first century. She’d even mentioned the millennium. Of course she had. Time travel. All the while looking at him with her huge brown eyes, wounded that he somehow couldn’t swallow the nonsense coming out of her mouth.
How the hell had he failed to see this before?
Tommy heard himself take a ragged breath, and decided that it had to stop. Enough. The person he’d thought he was falling in love with didn’t exist. He’d been played. It wasn’t the first time and it probably wouldn’t be the last, not with his luck. It was one of the prices of fame. Yet another cost no one warned you about, but it happened to everyone. It was unavoidable, really. So what if his heart had shattered? He shouldn’t have let his heart get involved in the first place.
He knew better. And he’d pegged her from the get-go. How had he let her worm her way under his skin? He knew better. He hated himself for his weakness. His loneliness. Because that’s what it was. He’d been so desperate to be listened to. Heard. What a fucking chump.
But no more. He was done.
Once he made up his mind, he moved fast. His long strides ate up the distance, and soon enough he was back at Duncan’s office building. After all this time, he knew his scumbag of a manager too well. No way, on the night his band made a new number one, did Duncan Paradis stay out celebrating with Eugenia. Hell, no. That was what lesser moguls might do, but Duncan had much sturdier ambitions.
He didn’t look surprised to see Tommy standing in his doorway.
‘What the fuck do you want?’ he grunted, barely sparing Tommy a glance before returning his attention to his desk. ‘Missed me?’
‘Jenna Jenkins,’ Tommy said in a clipped voice. It hurt to say her name. He planned never to say it again after this conversation. ‘Fire her.’
‘A few hours ago you were up Nick’s ass about this girl, jumping to her defence like some demented white knight, and now you want to fire her?’ But Duncan seemed amused. He shifted in his chair and smirked. ‘Trouble in paradise?’
‘There’s no conspiracy,’ Tommy said, folding his arms across his chest. ‘No one’s whispering anything behind your back. You never needed her in the first place.’
‘She was either going to report on you, or do you,’ Duncan replied, meeting Tommy’s gaze with a bland one of his own. He shrugged. ‘I didn’t care which.’
‘I appreciate you pimping for me,’ Tommy said drily. ‘I’m a lucky guy. You picked me a fiancée, too.’
‘I’d wipe your ass if I had to,’ Duncan said, leaning back in his chair. ‘But I’d take it out of your royalties, believe me.’
Tommy hated him. But he also knew him. Duncan could not surprise him, or shock him. Not any more. Duncan was a known quantity. After tonight, he decided that was comforting.
‘Someone’s trying to kill me,’ Tommy said, watching his manager’s face just in case. Duncan’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t otherwise change expression. ‘All these accidents lately. I think Jenna might be involved.’
‘She’s gone,’ Duncan said immediately. He tapped his fingers against the desk. ‘The car thing happened right around the time she came on board. You think she’s going to escalate?’
Tommy saw the last page in that notebook. TOMMY DIES. The date. He blew out a breath, and ignored the stab of pain in the region of his chest. His heart was ashes anyway. It was a phantom pain.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘She might.’
‘Any proof? Something we can hand the cops?’
‘Nothing like that.’ Because he couldn’t bring himself to touch that notebook again, he’d left it behind. He felt dirty even knowing it existed.
‘I understand the urge to kill you,’ Duncan said, his shark’s smile on full display. ‘I share it. But I can’t allow it. There’s too much money involved, and I don’t accept your resignation from the band anyway. There’s way more cash to make out of your sorry ass.’
Tommy rolled his eyes. There was no point responding in any more detail.
‘I’ll hire a couple bodyguards in case she goes to DEFCON 1,’ Duncan said. ‘Is that what you want? Is that enough?’
‘Make sure I don’t see her,’ Tommy said. He looked away. ‘That’s what I want.’
‘Done,’ Duncan replied.
‘You know, you didn’t need a spy.’ Tommy was surprised to hear how bitter his voice was. ‘You could have asked me what you wanted to know. I hate you enough to tell you the truth.’
‘Where’s the fun in that?’ Duncan asked, his voice hard. ‘And don’t worry, asshole. I hate you too.’
Tommy let out a short laugh, and then headed for the elevators. He didn’t bother saying goodbye. He felt hollowed out.
And even so, that exchange with Duncan had been the most honest and real of the night.
25
Jenna woke up in a sudden, inexplicable panic, her mouth dry as Death Valley and her eyes gritty and swollen. It took her long, stupid moments to realize that the phone was ringing.
The most immediate source of panic identified, she launched herself up and across the floor – knowing even as she lurched towards the shrieking phone that it was not going to be Tommy.
It hurt even to think his name – she felt a sob roll through her chest and she ruthlessly clamped down on it. No more sobbing. She was sobbed out.
And she knew he wouldn’t be the one calling her. There was no coming back from time travel.
But her heart still pounded like she was running a marathon.
Jenna snatched up the receiver and muttered something into it, hoping it approximated a greeting.
‘Oh, Jen.’ It was Ken Dollimore, which was not in itself surprising. But the fact that he sounded almost … nurturing?
That anomaly woke Jenna up like a triple espresso. She rubbed at her abused eyes with her free hand. God, she missed espresso.
‘Ken?’ She wanted to ask if he’d been body-snatched or had suffered a head injury of some kind, but restrained herself.
‘I warned you,’ he said in that same, almost-sweet voice, the one that surely belonged to someone else. Because Ken was many things – including, yesterday, unexpectedly confiding – but caring in a vaguely paternal way? Never.
And yet, he made a distinct clucking sort of noise over the phone, like some kind of mother hen.
‘I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,’ Jenna told him truthfully.
‘I just hung up with Duncan Paradis,’ Ken said, making a strange sort of wheezing noise that Jenna knew meant he was propping his feet up on the desk she’d so diligently cleared the day before. ‘The long and short of it is, your services are no longer required.’
Jenna let out a sigh. ‘I figured,’ she said. Then she caught on to the strange tone. ‘Why are you being so … careful with me?’
She felt certain, somehow, that whatever Tommy had reported to Duncan or even to Ken, time travel had not come into it. It was, happily, entirely too crazy for casual conversation. She had that to hold on to.
‘I feel for you,’ Ken said in that same careful tone, ‘I do. And don’t worry, I don’t believe whatever bullshit they’re saying about mental-health issues. It’s so transparent. These famous types will say anything to avoid having to deal with real-life issues like real-life people—’
‘Mental-health issues,’ Jenna repeated dully. It was only to be expected, of course. It was acceptable code for she started talking about coming back in time. Yet it still stung.
‘Look,’ Ken said matter-of-factly,
a veritable font of advice all of a sudden. ‘You have to be practical about these things. It was never going to work out. He’s who he is, and you and me, we’re normal people. This is how it goes. You have to figure out a way to be happy about the time you had. Like it was a gift.’
‘A gift,’ Jenna repeated. She realized she sounded moronic. Part of that was the cotton-mouthed, woolly-headed thing she had going on, thanks to a long night of heartbreak, but another part was her inability to process the fact that her supercharged, elfin boss was consoling her.
And, moreover, that he thought he was one of the normal ones.
‘I want you to take a week off and rest,’ Ken continued. ‘And I’m not being nice here, Jen, believe me – I’ve had secretaries who got dumped before, and I can’t cope with the weeping and the phone calls and the downer of it all.’
‘You,’ Jenna said drily, ‘are truly an amazing man.’
‘Sleep, eat chocolate, watch videos of Romancing the Stone and Streets of Fire – whatever you have to do,’ Ken said magnanimously. ‘I’ll see you next Wednesday. Okay?’
‘Um, sure.’ Jenna replaced the receiver in a daze. Only Ken Dollimore could give a vacation on one hand, and be so profoundly shallow on the other. Complete with a Michael Paré reference. She supposed it didn’t much matter – in the end, she had a week to herself.
A week to save Tommy, who would die in five days.
It would be harder now, but it wasn’t as if she could stop trying to save him simply because he thought she was a psycho. Spoken like a true stalker, she told herself sourly.
Jenna sucked in a ragged breath, then let it out in a rush. Breathe, she ordered herself sternly. In. Out. In. Out. She felt a little dizzy, and certainly not calm. Maybe she just wasn’t going to feel calm until this was over.
She could not let him die.
She could not.
Jenna scraped her hair back into a knot at the nape of her neck, and told herself, sternly, that she didn’t have time to indulge her broken heart, her hurt feelings, or her desire to curl up in the foetal position for several months.
It was time to follow Nick.
Tommy thought that if filming of the stupid video didn’t stop soon, he might spontaneously burst into flames. Or pieces.
He stood on his mark and pouted at the camera, as directed. He lip-synced the lyrics on cue, which sounded more and more inane to him every time he did another take – and he’d written them in the first place. He was irritated well above and beyond the level he normally was at this stage in the proceedings.
It wasn’t that the filming had gotten any more strenuous, or even any more stupid than usual. It was that Jenna wasn’t there to amuse him, and he hated himself for how much he missed her.
It was a ridiculous way to feel. He’d been making videos for years now, and had done so happily enough without her presence. Why should her absence now seem so unbearable?
Surely, he raged at himself while he was supposed to be transmitting sultriness towards the camera, his feelings for a woman should disappear in a puff of smoke when she exposed herself as a lunatic psychopath. Surely he should not feel this bad. As if several of the goddamned steel cages were perched on top of him, crushing him. Robbing him of breath.
Damn her. And damn him for once again playing the gullible fool, the one he’d thought he’d banished years before, right around the time he’d realized what it meant to sign his whole life away.
‘Uh … Tommy?’ The director sounded apprehensive. Tommy blinked, and wondered how many times the man had called his name. ‘Lovely expressions, really lovely. Totally raw and hot. But I’m wondering if we can do it one more time with a little more sex and a little less mayhem?’
‘You look like a bloody serial killer, mate,’ Sebastian chimed in from his chair behind the cameras. There was a burst of laughter from the rest of the band. Ha ha, Tommy thought sourly. If only you knew.
‘Of course,’ he said out loud, in as even a tone as he could manage. He even smiled, because he was a goddamned professional.
The music swelled around him, and he resumed his place. He waited for the verse to start over again.
He couldn’t get that creepy book of hers out of his head, no matter how hard he tried to focus on something – anything – else. All the tiny writing and the notations – like an encyclopedia of a psychotic breakdown. Careful flow charts of how and when ‘accidents’ had befallen him – or would befall him. How had she done it? How had she managed to arrange all of it so well? She’d had no reason to suppose he would ever see her as more than a secretary and a spy for Duncan.
He tried to shift and think sexy thoughts as he mouthed the words to the song, and the shitty thing was how hard it wasn’t. He had only to think of Jenna, laid out in front of him, her soft skin with a sheen of sweat and her hair tousled all around her – and something roared through him, hot and loud. Mine, he thought, against all reason and sense. When he didn’t even want her any more.
When he refused to want her any more.
‘Cut!’ the director yelled again. He rubbed at his temples and then smiled – in a noticeably strained way – at Tommy. ‘Why don’t we take a break? Regroup, think happy thoughts, that kind of thing?’
Another burst of laughter from the peanut gallery, as punctuation.
Tommy didn’t trust himself to respond. He walked across the set towards make-up, and sat there while they fussed around him, moving the same strands of his hair this way and that and powdering his skin.
‘Who pissed on you today?’ Nick asked, coming up from behind Tommy to lean against the counter. He looked like he wanted to find whoever the pisser was, and congratulate him. He smirked when Tommy glared at him. ‘I’m sorry I asked. But you look like you could spit nails.’
Tommy watched his oldest friend walk off, and hated himself even more for the way he’d turned against him. Thank God no one knew. He would carry the shame of it to his grave. Nick and he might not have been as close as they’d once been, but how the hell did you throw decades of friendship down the toilet so easily? How could he have suspected Nick? In that moment, Tommy loathed himself.
What the hell had he become?
It came to him then, out of nowhere. He hadn’t been to Buffalo since he’d left it behind in Nick’s rear-view mirror. They’d driven his piece-of-shit Chevy as far as it would go down the New York State Thruway, and left it in a smoking heap by the side of the road when it broke down. They’d hitch-hiked the rest of the way into New York City. And Tommy had always viewed that journey as a kind of rebirth. Fuck Buffalo. Fuck the generations of his relatives who lacked the imagination to leave the trailer park, much less the city. He’d vowed he’d never return.
But he wasn’t the same guy any longer. And it occurred to him that maybe Buffalo was exactly what he needed. If he saw where he came from, maybe he’d get a grip on where he’d ended up. Maybe he’d figure out how to move forward.
Maybe he’d even get over her.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’
Jenna did not mistake Nick’s quiet tone for calm. She could see the look on his face, as he towered over her in the dark, swanky bar, and what she saw there made her squirm on her barstool.
‘Oh,’ she said, stalling. She smiled brightly. ‘Hi!’
Nick glared at her. He did not say hello and he did not change that grim expression even one iota.
‘Why are you following me?’ he asked instead. Not nicely. His hovering had already attracted attention. The other patrons in the bar were looking over, especially the three coltish-looking eighteen-year-old girls Nick had abandoned in order to speak to Jenna.
‘Following you?’ Jenna repeated, and tried to look confused. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘I mean, you’ve been following me all night,’ Nick said, his voice getting lower and tenser with each word. ‘Every time I look up, there you are. Does this have anything to do with whatever’s going on with Tommy?’
Tommy. Jenna could not allow herself to think about him. She thrust the sharp surge of pain away, and ordered herself not to burst into tears. Somehow.
‘I don’t know what’s going on with him,’ she said in a steely tone, forcing herself to be tough. This was not entirely untrue. It had been almost two days since Tommy had stormed out of her apartment. He could have any number of things going on with him by now.
‘So this is for my benefit?’ Nick smirked at her. ‘No thanks. I don’t go for dumpy secretaries.’ The look he swept over her, raking her from head to toe, was beyond insulting. Jenna was fairly certain it would leave scars behind in its wake.
‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ she snapped, her temper getting the better of her. Who was he to look at another person that way? And she was not dumpy, she simply wasn’t an eighteen-year-old skank. She made a face. ‘Why are you and he even friends?’
Nick shook his head at her, like she was pathetic beyond comprehension.
‘He’s not my friend,’ he spat out. He didn’t say, you stupid little bitch, but it was strongly implied. ‘We’re family. You couldn’t understand.’
Because Jenna could see how much he meant that, she didn’t understand how he could want to hurt someone he cared for so much.
‘Maybe not,’ she murmured, stalling again while she puzzled over it.
‘What did you do to him?’ Nick demanded, still with that horribly insulting glare. ‘I’ve never seen him this bad. He was even talking about going back to Buffalo, of all places. Is that because of you?’
‘I …’ Jenna didn’t know how to answer that. ‘Buffalo?’
‘The pit of hell,’ Nick said darkly. His lips tightened. ‘I think he might be about to do something colossally stupid.’
‘I don’t get it,’ Jenna said then, the words bursting out of her. ‘Why do you care? And if you do really care, why are you trying to hurt him?’
Nick stared at her in shock, and fell back a step.
‘What are you talking about?’ he demanded. He looked pale around the eyes. ‘What the fuck do you mean by that?’
