by Morgan Rae
“No!” I look up at him. I want to touch him. I want to grab him face and kiss him. I want to wipe away the hurt, but I know that will only make this worse, so I keep my arms locked at my sides. “I was afraid you would hate me.”
“Tomlin.” For the first time, his voice is forceful. He cups my face and the warmth of his touch does me in. I choke on a sob and feel the first tear spill from my face. “I don’t hate you,” he says. He swipes his thumb underneath my eye and brushes away my tear. “Get that out of your head. I could never hate you.”
I sigh against his chest. There’s that scent, that all-Damien smell, like bergamot and sandalwood. “Nan,” I whisper.
He pulls back just enough to knit his eyebrows at me. “What?”
“My name…it’s Nancy. Nan.”
He looks gut punched. “Thank you,” he says suddenly.
“For what?”
“For reminding me why men like me should never fall in love.” He sweeps his arms open wide. To anyone else, he sounds confident, but I can detect the bitterness underlying his words. “I’m a fantasy peddled to hype record sales. Rock stars get one-hit-wonders and a blaze of glory. We don’t get happily-ever-afters. I let myself believe, for a moment, that I could have something more than that.” He takes a step away from me, though his eyes remain on me. “I should’ve known it was too good to be true.”
“What are you saying?” I ask.
“I don’t hate you,” he says. “But I can’t forgive what you’ve done. I’m leaving. We’re over.”
With every step away he takes, I feel my heart pounding harder in my chest. “Maybe we can work it out,” I say reflexively, like a hiccup. I’m panicking.
He lifts his arms and drops them in a useless gesture. “Why? Tomlin is dead. You’re nothing but a stranger to me.”
His words punch the air from my body My mouth closes when I realize I have no response. He’s absolutely right, he’s done nothing but spill his heart to me while, meanwhile, I’ve hoarded myself off from him.
Damien lingers as though he’s waiting for me to say something, but when he’s met with silence, the hurt filters back in through his expression. His gaze hardens again. “I hope your story was worth it,” he says. “I truly do.”
He turns his back to me and walks away. I want to beg him to turn around or come back, but my throat is dry and my vocal chords have stopped responding. My body goes as still as a corpse and my skin feels cold as I clutch my arms. All I can hear are my ragged breaths and my heart beat pounding in my ears.
I’m alone. Again.
And it’s all my fault.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: DAMIEN
I shove my clothes back in my bag. I tell the production assistant to inform Randall and Lacy that we’re leaving. They want me to sign sheets of paper stating my decision to leave the island and abandon my place on their show is entirely my own. I draw out my signature without reading through the words.
I can still smell Tomlin on my white button up.
No, not Tomlin. Nan.
I ditch the shirt, change it for another one, and lug my bag out of the hut. I can feel her stare as I walk down the beach.
Don’t look back, I tell myself as I force my eyes straight ahead. If you see tears in her eyes, you’ll change your mind.
I make the trek down the dock and board the motorboat. By now, the sun is low in the sky and orange flecks flicker across the ocean.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Randall asks once the four of us are all stuffed into the fiberglass body of the small motorboat.
“No.”
“Uncle Damien, look!” Little Maggie holds up the edges of her dress to show me the plethora of seashells she has tucked away in the folds.
“They’re beautiful, Maggie,” I tell her and try to sound enthused.
The captain unhooks the rope from the mooring line and pushes us off. Just like that, we’ve detached from the island and we’re bobbing on open water. The motor cranks up with a low growl and the ocean churns and bubbles underneath us. Lacy takes care of Maggie and Randall asks the captain to tell him his worst horror stories about keeping a boat afloat in choppy water. I perch my elbows on the side of the ship and let the crisp, salty breeze nip at my skin and flutter my shirt. Slowly, Nan becomes a dot on the beach, and then the beach becomes a ribbon of pink and yellow, and then the island disappears all together, swallowed up by the inevitable, expanding sea.
It takes less than an hour to get us back to the mainland. The cold temperature has numbed my skin, but I still refuse to put on a jacket. As soon as the boat docks, we’re greeted once more by a patch of cameramen.
Only these aren’t part of the television show, these are Jack’s vultures. Paparazzi at its finest.
“What happened?” one of them asks.
“Are the rumors true? Did you kill Laura Skye?”
“Do you think she ever loved you?”
The questions pound at me like a second pulse and I feel them pulling my thoughts in every different direction. The thread of my sanity is quickly unraveling.
“Hey. Make some room,” Randall says gruffly as he pushes a reporter out of the way. “Damien isn’t answering any questions right now. You want answers, watch the damn show.”
“I’m going to be sick,” I tell Randall.
“Welcome back to reality, buddy.” Randall clasps my shoulder briefly.
I don’t have time to respond to him. I push through the small crowd, find a wall to brace myself on, and crouch down. Nausea floods me before I can stop it and I get sick. My stomach churning with discomfort, I let my head hang for a moment and try to catch my breath.
Randall, as always, covers my ass. I can hear him making up some excuse about how choppy the water was out there. I know this isn’t seasickness, though.
I’m broken. I feel as though my ribs have been split open and my heart scooped straight out of my chest. Tomlin is gone. I should be used to being a puppet, strung up for everyone else’s amusement, but I came close this time to something real.
I ache all over. I feel as though someone I love has died. It was far easier to be an empty shell of a man before I knew her warmth. As I brace myself on the wall, I spot the engagement band wrapped around my finger. I know I should take it off, but, somehow, I can’t quite bring myself to. Not now.
I feel Randall’s hand on my shoulder. “Here.” Randall pulls out a napkin and hands it over.
I shudder and push myself up to my feet. “Thank you,” I say as I wipe my mouth.
“I’m a father,” he says. “It’s my duty to be prepared.” His eyes soften and he drops his voice so only I can hear it. “Are you okay?”
I pat Randall’s chest and steel myself off. “The show must go on.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: NANCY
The view from the thirty-fourth floor is dizzying. If I stand with my toes against the wall length glass windows, I can see the black strip of asphalt below lined with Californian palm trees. I can only look down onto the tiny dots of people and cars for a couple minutes before I get vertigo and have to sit down in my office chair and reorient.
My name is on the door now. NANCY HARPER in nice, block letters, outlined in gold leaf. Jack moved across the hall. He’s a sore loser, but that’s no surprise to anyone. I want to gloat about it, but it’s hard to feel haughty when you can’t feel anything at all.
I answer emails most of the day. Accept submissions from our writers, make calls to reach out to the high-level celebrity list, and talk to our company lawyer at least once or twice a day. It’s a change of pace from spending all day in the front seat of my car with my finger poised and ready on my camera’s shutter, but it keeps me busy. There isn’t any downtime now. I’m constantly on the move, constantly putting out fires. The management side of the office is, so I’m told, more streamlined than it’s been in years.
I don’t mind the hard work, heck, I crave it. The worst part of my day is going home and falling
down in my small bed, in my apartment that smells like burnt rubber, and counting the cracks in the ceiling.
I taped a picture to my bedroom ceiling to keep my mind from wandering. I keep the same picture on my desk next to my phone. It’s a picture I took on Destination: Desire. In the photo, the beach spreads out in a peach pink band, twin seagulls are stuck midflight, and the ocean stretching out into the distance. The deep blue of the ocean reminds me of his eyes and when I fall asleep, I remember his arms around me, the warmth of his body, and the soft press of his lips against my neck.
A knock on the door tears my gaze off the framed photo. Jack stands in my doorway with a carton in hand, holding two coffees. “Coffee break?”
I nod once and say, “Sure. Thank you.”
He sets the cup in front of me and flops down on the boxy chair across from my desk. Jack sits as though his spine is made of jelly and rests all of his weight on his arms.
“Dr. Sigmore called, again.” He slurps from the lips of his cup loudly. “He wants to know if you’re available for an interview on the twenty-fifth. They want to call it Undercover Lover.”
“Pencil me in for never,” I tell him. I pluck the green stick from the lip of my coffee and toss it in the trash. My flat shoe bobs up and down on my toes. Hints of Tomlin Murray stayed with me, I’ve ditched the sweatpants and work in a fitted black dress.
“Come on,” a sly grin cuts across Jack’s mouth. “This is your moment to shine. Capitalize on it. You’re the woman America loves to hate right now. You’re everyone’s favorite villain, that’s entertainment gold. But you know as soon as the next nip-slip comes out, everyone’s going to forget about your breaking story about those quacks on Destination: Desire.”
“Jack.” The sternness in my tone, for once, stops him short. “As far as I’m concerned, it can’t be over soon enough. It’s been nothing but a media circus nightmare since I released that article.”
I published my article a couple weeks after getting kicked off the show, right on time for the season finale to air. I titled it “Boy Behind the Camera.” The article in which I confessed how I lied to get on television, how we manipulated people into thinking we were in love. More than that, I added how I discovered Damien Blaze to be a complex and challenging person behind those pretty blue eyes and how I fell for a man I could never have. I got plenty of feedback from my article; reporters called it self-involved trash, gossip sites treated it like it was gold and spread it like wild fire, and plenty of Damien’s groupies sent hate mail about how I wasn’t good enough for him.
At one point or another, I agreed with all of them. Then I decided to let it go. Every time I thought about my time spent on that reality show, I remembered the hurt in Damien’s eyes on our last day there and my throat swelled until I could barely breath.
“Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” Jack scoffs as he goes back to slurping his coffee.
My desk phone chirps, granting me a moment of reprise from Jack’s grating presence. In full business mode now, I lift the phone to my ear and answer it. “Nancy Harper, producer. How may I help you?”
“Is Tomlin Murray there?”
My heart hammers in my chest. It’s been month since anyone’s called me that. “Um…this is she,” I say, trying to sound confident. “Who is this?”
“My name is Grace McCoy, I’m one of the assistant producers on Destination: Desire. Since the season finale culminated in Shayla and Darius’s wedding, we are trying to bring everyone back together for a reunion on the twenty-third. We think it will bring our audience a sense of closure and…”
My heart is pounding in my ears and I can barely make out what Grace is saying anymore. I only have one thought on my mind, Damien.
“Will Damien be there?” I interrupt.
My abrupt tone catches Grace McCoy off guard. “Um…yes. He’s contracted to attend the reunion episode.”
“Then yes,” I say quickly. “I’ll attend.”
“Great,” Grace says. “We love to hear that. I’ll email you the details shortly.”
“Thank you, Grace.”
When I hang up, Jack is staring at me with his eyebrows lifted.
“I’m going away for a couple days,” I tell him. “I’ll need you to man the office in my absence. Do you think you can do that?”
“You’re not really going back to hell island, are you?”
“I have to,” I tell him. “Twenty ignored calls, twice as many ignored texts, this may be the only chance I have to see him.”
“And do what?” Jack says. “Confess your love? Apologize? Maybe you should stop beating that dead horse and move on.” He splays out his knees in his slumped position, cocky. “Plenty of viable stallions in the stables.”
I roll my eyes. “Keep your pony hitched, Raleigh.”
“I’m just saying,” Jack says as he pulls himself to his feet, “maybe the man is avoiding you because he straight up doesn’t want anything to do with you. You really want to run headfirst into that?”
Jack leaves with his coffee cup in tow, his question lingering in the air. I turn my gaze back on the framed photo of the beach on my desk and rub my thumb over it. The answer is yes. My downfall has always been that I stop at nothing to get what I want. And I’d do anything to get just a moment alone with Damien again, just to tell him how I truly feel.
I take in a deep breath and start refreshing my email every other second until I hear back from Grace McCoy.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: DAMIEN
They talk about me like I can’t hear them.
“Poor boy, got his heart broke on national television.”
“What a waste.”
“Don’t feel too sorry for him. Did you hear he killed his ex-girlfriend and got away with it?”
Whispers hover around me like smoke, clinging to my clothes and skin. I pluck my pen out of my shirt pocket, its tip already extended, and I start to jab lyrics into the soft flesh of my café napkin. Slowly, the noise of my song makes everything else go quiet. I write: Your heart is as deep as the ocean/I’m caught up in the riptide.
I’m pressing my pen in too hard and the napkin rips under the tip. At the same time, the clink of coffee cups on saucers draws my attention away. My manager, Martin, shakily balances a cup in each hand as he sets one in front of me.
“The cashier is a crook,” Martin announces as he sits down. “Who charges five dollars for a cup of coffee?”
He sniffles and starts hacking. The seasons are changing, leaves on the trees turning burnt red and pumpkin orange, and Martin always suffers through change. I hand him my napkin with half-jotted lyrics and he blows his nose in it.
“Thank you. These allergies are going to be the death of me,” Martin complains. His eyes flicker up to me. “Christ, at least take the hoodie off. I feel like I’m talking to an arms dealer.”
Reluctantly, I peel back the dark hood of my sweatshirt. Martin squints at me disapprovingly as I take a swallow from my coffee. The air is crisp on the outdoor patio of the café and the cup warms my fingers.
“We’re going to have to talk about your new image,” Martin says. “I’m not sure this mountain man thing will read well on stage.”
“The beard is non-negotiable,” I say as I run my fingers over the coarse hair that’s grown over my chin. I keep it respectable, but even I know I’ve let it grown a little wild across my jaw.
The harder it is for people to recognize me, the better.
Martin casts me a dubious stare but then lets it go with, “We’ll get to that later. First, let’s talk about your upcoming show.” Martin’s eyes catch mine sharply. “It’s your solo debut and we’ve booked out the venue. That’s nearly 3,000 seats.”
I scoff. “Three thousand people don’t think I’m a murderer? It’s a miracle.”
Martin’s skin blotches when he pales. “Damien, this is exactly the thing I need to talk to you about. This is a big concert, it will
launch your solo career. Famous or infamous, you’re still an attention magnet. Now I need to know, are you up for this? Because if you’re not, if you’re going to pull some stunt, I need to know.”
“Relax,” I say. “I’m not going to go Ozzy Osbourne and bite a bat head off mid-act. I haven’t completely lost it.”
Martin doesn’t look convinced. “Randall says he hasn’t been able to get in touch with you for weeks.”
I shrug. “I’ve been recording, you know that.”
“Without any breaks? What, have you been sleeping at the studio, too?”
I don’t answer, I just swallow down another sip of coffee. If he knew the answer to that, he might take my show away from me completely.
Martin’s lips press in a line and he finally blurts out, “You’re not doing drugs, are you? Heroin? Meth?”
“No,” I say. At least I can be truthful about that. “Completely sober. I promise.”
“Then what is it?” When I don’t respond, he sighs. “It’s not that girl, is it?”
“She has a name,” I jump to her defense. It’s an instinctual, kneejerk reaction to defend the woman I love and, despite everything Nancy Harper and her team of sharks have put me through, I haven’t been able to purge her from my system yet.
“Which name?” Martin balks. “Tomlin or Nancy? Face it, Damien, she’s a full-fitted war tank of chaos and she steam rolled you and left you for road kill. No one could’ve seen that one coming.”
“It was your idea,” I counter darkly.
Martin shakes his head and waves his hand to brush off the thought. “It was a bad idea. Never listen to my ideas.”
“Damien Blaze! Smile for the cameras!” I make the mistake of turning my head and spot a heard of paparazzi reporters lingering around the edge of the café, snapping pictures of Martin and me. My fingers twitch as I fight the urge to pull the hoodie back up and retreat into my shell.
My eyes scan the faces behind the camera, looking for her. Familiar disappointment settles in the back of my throat like stale coffee.
