Knowing that Kayla wouldn’t quit phoning me until I answered, I accepted the call.
“Finally!” she practically screamed, forcing me to pull the phone away from my ear. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you.”
“Sorry, I was driving.”
“Have you seen the article and pictures yet? The ones of you and Nolan? They’re all over the Internet.”
“I saw two photos of us,” I said, opening the car door. “But I haven’t read anything yet. Is it as bad as I think it is?” I winced. Of course it was, if the shrieker’s reaction had been any indication.
“Depends on what you consider bad. The article claims you’ve been spotted getting cozy with Tyler.”
I told her what had happened in the store.
“You’re kidding,” Kayla exclaimed, and once again I pulled the phone a safe distance from my ear. “Nolan’s caught cheating on his supposed girlfriend and you’re the guilty party? What about Tyler? Why didn’t she attack him for cheating on his girlfriend?” She practically spat the last word.
I opened the trunk of my car. The cold wind slapped my cheeks and nose as if it too was angry at me. “Welcome to the wonderful world of double standards. But I’m not so sure everyone will react the same way. The only one who will get everyone’s pity is Alyssa, and she’s not even dating him.” That was the most frustrating part of all of it. Meanwhile, Nolan and I would suffer the fallout.
It was no wonder the record label wanted to fuel the perception that Tyler and Alyssa were still an item. Anything to save the band and their upcoming album. Never mind that Nolan was a gifted singer, guitarist, and songwriter. Those should’ve been enough to stand on their own.
“So what are you going to do?” Kayla asked.
“About what?”
“About you and Nolan?”
“There is no me and Nolan.” I grabbed a couple of grocery bags from the car with one hand and, with the phone sandwiched between my ear and shoulder, closed the trunk.
“Right. That’s not what it looks like from the photos.”
“It was no big deal. We just kissed.” And had sex. Several times. Great sex. Several times. “He’s returning to L.A. next week anyway. So whatever we had between us will be over.” Being his heart and soul will be over.
“Are you sure about that?”
“Positive.”
Kayla believed everyone deserved a happily-ever-after. And maybe it was true. But Nolan and I wouldn’t be getting ours. Not together, at least.
Not if it put his music career in jeopardy.
Chapter 32
Nolan
After Hailey left to go shopping, I sat on the couch and began phoning around. I needed to find a space to rent for when the guys showed up next week. We couldn’t stay here. There wasn’t enough space and the walls were too thin. The last thing Hailey needed was for us to piss off her neighbors with our loud music.
Forty minutes later, and no closer to finding us a place to work in, I hit speed dial on my phone.
“Hey, what’s up?” Brandon asked.
I told him what I needed. “Any suggestions?”
“Sorry, can’t help you there. I mean other than…” His final words faded away, his unspoken suggestion all too clear.
“No! No way in hell I’m going back there. I’ve already told you that.”
“I know, but you have to admit it’s perfect.”
I shook my head. Visiting the cemetery had been hard enough. Returning to the house where it all happened would be a thousand times worse.
I just couldn’t do it.
“He’s dead, Nolan,” Brandon said after a long silence. “He can’t hurt you anymore.”
Tell me something I don’t already know. “That doesn’t matter.”
“You really want to be in the dark about what happened?” I could hear the frown in his voice, along with When did you become such a pussy?
Or maybe that was just the voice in my own head. “What’s the point of me remembering? It won’t bring back the dead.”
He sighed heavily, the sound reverberating through the phone. “You’re right. It won’t.”
Since I had him on the phone and he would find out soon enough, I filled him in on what had happened earlier. I also filled him in on what the label wanted me to do about the situation.
“What exactly is going on with you and Hailey?” His words were slow, questioning. He wasn’t asking me about what she and I were doing together. He was questioning my motives and where I thought this would all end up.
“You mean other than I still love her?”
“Shit, you had sex with her, didn’t you?”
“Maybe.” I cringed at his groan.
“You sure know how to complicate things.” Epic understatement of the year. “Have you told her how you feel about her?”
I squirmed on the couch. “Kind of.”
“I take that as a no. You need to tell her the truth, Nolan. With all the other lies circulating about you, you need to tell her the truth.”
“And then what? We have a long-distance relationship? It would never work.”
“Why not? You’ll never know if you don’t give it a chance.”
I swore aliens had abducted my best friend. Since when did the king of going-nowhere relationships dole out relationship advice? “It doesn’t matter, not with the label pushing for this fictitious romance between me and Alyssa. I can’t do that to Hailey. She deserves better than to be hidden away like some dirty secret. But that’s exactly what will happen.”
Brandon released a defeated sigh but didn’t say more on the topic. We ended the call and I went back to fiddling around with a new song I’d been working on.
But as much as I tried to block it from my mind, the image of my parents’ home sneaked into my thoughts. And with it came the promise of a new memory of that night.
Chapter 33
Nolan
FIVE YEARS AGO
I entered my house and flipped the light on. Instead of the usual warm glow, the light was cold and harsh. But that wasn’t what filled my body with icy dread.
Blood drops on the beige carpet formed a trail to the kitchen.
I strained to hear a sound, but my ears were met with nothing but silence. Darkness seeped from the room, and I walked toward it, my gaze glued to the bloody trail. A strong, unpleasant odor sat heavy in the air, and my stomach turned.
Ignoring the five alarms in my head telling me to get out of the house, I stepped into the kitchen and turned on the light. My hand recoiled at the sticky wetness on the light switch and I glanced down to see what it was.
And wished I hadn’t.
Smeared bloody handprints stained the walls.
Chapter 34
Nolan
I snapped out of the memory and rested my head on the back of the couch, body trembling. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on other things. Like Hailey. Naked.
It took several minutes for the trembling to finally subside. With a hard breath, I pushed myself off the couch and grabbed a beer from the fridge. I opened it and downed half of the cold beverage. Maybe this was the answer to surviving this town while I was here.
I returned to my room, grabbed my guitar from the case by my bed, and played the melody for the ballad I’d been working on. The music soaked into every part of my body, reminding me just how important it was to me. Like oxygen to fire.
But as much as I wanted it, I couldn’t have everything. I couldn’t have the music and Hailey and the oblivion from my memories. I had to choose.
The apartment door clicked open. I continued playing the guitar. When it became obvious that Hailey wasn’t going to check on me, I placed the guitar against the bed and went to find her.
Full grocery bags littered the floor in the hallway outside her bedroom door. It wasn’t like her to just dump her groceries there and go off to do something else.
I walked into the living room. Hailey was on the couch, laptop on her lap. She looked no
thing like the woman I’d made love to earlier in the shower. She didn’t even look like the woman who’d left to go shopping. She looked hollow. Broken.
I joined her on the couch. “What happened?”
“The pictures of us are all over the Internet.”
“Already?” Not that this surprised me.
“And it would seem people aren’t too impressed with me. I’m the bitch who’s trying to steal you from Alyssa.”
“No one thinks that.” My words were nothing more than a lie, but I couldn’t stop myself from saying them. To give her some small amount of hope, no matter how tiny it might have been.
“Really?” She turned the laptop so I could read the comments on the band’s unofficial fan site. “And it’s not just here. A girl at the store recognized me and made her opinion about me quite clear….Oh, and to top it off, I remembered something there that might have to do with what happened to me, but I can’t be sure.” Her words came out fast, tripping over themselves.
“What did you remember?”
She continued staring at the computer screen. “Nothing much, really. A man asked why the fuck the other person had brought me there. I was lying down and my eyes were closed. When I opened them, I couldn’t see anything.”
“Nothing at all?”
“It was dark and they were shining a flashlight in my face.”
“Did you recognize the voice?”
She shook her head and slouched forward. “I just want to remember. I’m tired of having this gap in my life and not knowing what happened.”
I placed the laptop on the coffee table and pulled her into my arms. “I know.” But I didn’t. Had it been in my power, I would have done anything to switch places with her. For Hailey to be the one who remembered what happened and for me to stay oblivious to my own private hell.
She rested her head against my shoulder and started crying. I held her tighter, as useless as that was. I had a feeling she wasn’t crying because she was mourning her missing memories. It was a combination of that and the hate oozing from the fan sites because of the lies. Beyond holding her, I didn’t know what to do. About anything.
My cellphone pinged. I ignored it, not wanting to let go of Hailey just yet.
Hailey’s phone pinged. As did mine, again. And if that wasn’t enough, they both started playing music to let us know we had calls.
Realizing something big was going down, I picked up my phone as she answered hers.
“What’s up?” I asked Brandon.
“Dude, have you seen the press conference with Alyssa Graham?”
I frowned, an expression reflected on Hailey’s face. “What press conference?”
He told me what site to find it on. Whoever Hailey was talking to must have told her the same thing. She was already pulling it up.
“I’m watching it now. I’ll call you right back.” I ended the call and we watched the video footage.
Alyssa was standing outside, the sun shining behind her, lighting up her blond hair and giving her an angelic appearance. Even though I couldn’t see the person, I knew her handler was within arm’s reach, ready to end the press conference if necessary. “Thank you, everyone, for coming. I’m going to issue a statement first on behalf of myself and Tyler Erickson, and then I’ll try to answer your questions.”
I glanced at Hailey. Her face was free of emotion. I had no idea if that was a bad thing or not.
“First, Tyler and I thank everyone for the support you have shown us over the past few months. As you may have recently heard, his mother and sister were victims of domestic abuse when he was a teen. It was that tragedy that brought us together. For a number of years I’ve been involved with the emergency women’s shelter in L.A., and through the generosity of people like Tyler, the shelter has been able to make a difference in the lives of those women who are survivors of abuse.
“Tyler has been donating to the shelter for several years, and that’s how we met. Because of what we have in common in our own lives, we’ve grown close during the past few months. He recently returned to his hometown to help out a friend.
“Members of the media tracked him down there and pried into his personal life. Tyler chose to go by a pseudonym because he didn’t want what happened to his family to overshadow the hard work he’s done to prove himself. He wanted his talent to speak for itself.
“I am aware the paparazzi stalked Tyler and photographed him with another woman while he was dealing with his grief. I can promise you that he and I are still together. The photo misrepresented the situation, which, as we all know, is typical of the paparazzi. Only a few weeks ago they were proclaiming I was pregnant with Tyler’s love child. But as you can clearly see, that is not the case.” She rubbed her hand over her flat stomach to emphasize her point. Several reporters chuckled. “Questions?”
“How can you be so sure there is nothing going on between them?” a reporter offscreen asked. “The photos that went viral suggest otherwise.”
“Because I trust Tyler when he says nothing is going on between them. And he’s never given me a reason not to trust him.”
“Aren’t you worried that Nolan Kincaid might end up harming you like his father did to Nolan’s mother and sister?” a female voice asked. “Research shows that children of abusers often go on to become abusers themselves.”
“Research also shows that some children from abusive homes become victims themselves when in a romantic relationship,” Alyssa said. “And other children are perfectly well adjusted despite the abuse. There has been no indication, other than some misguided reports, that Tyler is anything but the kind and generous man I know he is.”
There were a few more questions, but nothing Alyssa couldn’t smoothly handle. But despite what she had told the reporters, and subsequently the world, I had a feeling no one would completely buy her story about Hailey’s involvement. If anything, it made Alyssa come off as naive when it came to our “relationship.” Some people might’ve scoffed at her naivety. Some would frown at my involvement in the affair (given that I was the one supposedly cheating on her). But ultimately, Hailey would be the one paying the price.
The press conference ended, and Hailey and I sat quietly for a minute, all kinds of thoughts rushing through my mind. The most important one was what this meant for Hailey and me.
“I guess that’s it, then,” Hailey finally said. The skin on my body tightened at the real meaning behind her last three words—that’s it, then.
Chapter 35
Hailey
When I was a little girl, I used to stay up late, waiting for my father to come home from the hospital, where he worked as a surgeon. To me, he was this godlike man who saved lives. He was invincible.
Years later I realized that wasn’t true. He couldn’t save everyone. And with each patient who died under his care, he had to gracefully accept defeat. He moved on and didn’t let the loss paralyze him.
I hit Kayla’s number on speed dial as I walked down the steps to retrieve the rest of the stuff from the car.
She answered the phone before it rang a second time. “Did you watch it?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“And what?” The stale air in the stairwell closed in on me, making it hard to breathe. Much like what seeing the video had done to me. I picked up my pace.
“Is it true they’re an item?”
I sighed. “The record label is pressuring them to do this.” Although I had a tough time believing they needed to apply much pressure when it came to convincing Alyssa. How could she not want to be with him?
“I’m sorry, Hailey. I really am. I thought for sure you guys would make this work between you.”
I laughed, but even though I’d meant for it to be full of humor, it came out flat. “It never would have worked,” I said, repeating what I’d already told myself a million times. Although deep down I wasn’t sure if I truly believed it. If I really had wanted things to work between Nolan and myself, I could’ve made th
e effort.
I guessed that in the end I was afraid. Afraid to give us a chance and risk getting hurt. Afraid of him leaving me again, like he’d done before, like my ex-boyfriend had done to me.
I didn’t tell Kayla that, though. She’d never understand. I told her I’d talk to her later and ended the call.
Mom had sent me a text, asking if I knew the latest news about Nolan trending on the Internet. It’s not what it sounds like, I texted back. We’re just friends. The reporter got it all wrong.
That’s too bad, she replied almost immediately. I always thought you and Nolan were good together. You brought out the best in each other.
During our senior year of high school, I had suspected Mom secretly wished I had been dating Nolan. I never would’ve expected her to still feel the same way given his career and his reputation. But then, she was one of the few people who knew the real Nolan and had never put much stock in the tabloids. She knew him as the same great guy I knew him to be.
Nolan was in his room, strumming a melody he’d been working on for the past day or two. Needing to get out of here and go for a run, I rushed to change into my workout gear and sneaked out the apartment door. Nolan didn’t have an issue with me going to the store on my own, but I had a feeling he’d want to come running with me to make sure I was safe. Awesome if I wanted company. But this time I needed to run on my own. I needed to think about what to do with this whole Nolan situation.
The road wasn’t busy as I ran down the street. The occasional vehicle drove past. I hadn’t been for a hard run since the attack. My body felt a little stiff but otherwise cheered me on.
Once I arrived at the lake, I ran along the snowy path. The route wasn’t busy, thanks to the colder temperatures. Only the die-hard runners would be outside. Everyone else would be pounding away mile after mile on a treadmill. But since I spent my days working in a sports center, I preferred running outside as much as possible, cold or no cold.
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