I felt as though someone had just shoved me into a frozen lake. I couldn’t catch my breath and felt like I was drowning, and my chest hurt so badly that I was pretty sure my heart had just decided to quite beating.
Logan studied me for a minute, completely unreadable.
“I’ll be back.”
He brushed past me, disappearing down one of the many long, dark hallways that led into the bowels of the house. After a measure of time I couldn’t begin to guess, I heard the roar of a sports car speed over the stones of the driveway.
He was gone.
Maybe I should take a page out of his book.
***
Madison
Rawn gently rubbed my calves, trying to relax the muscles that had suddenly decided to bunch up and tear at all my joints with undefinable pain. I’d taken a muscle relaxer, but it had yet to kick in.
“We should call your doctor.”
“He’ll only tell you to do what you’re doing,” I said, turning into the pillow to hide the tears that refused to obey my command to stay in my eyes. “I shouldn’t have taken that drive.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
“Thanks.”
He shrugged. “It’s the truth…” He worked my calf a few minutes more then switched to the other. “You’re flying home on the jet with me tomorrow. I’ll have someone drive your car back to Portland.”
I’ll felt like I should argue, but the way I felt right at that moment…I was pretty content to face a slightly frightening two-hour flight over sitting in that car for fourteen more hours and face another night of this pain.
There was a knock on the door.
“It’s a little late.”
“I ordered some hot tea from room service. You’re always talking about how healing chamomile is, I thought it couldn’t hurt.”
“That’s thoughtful, but the muscle relaxer is starting to kick in. I don’t think I’ll be awake long enough to drink it.”
“Well, try to hold on until I come back.”
I smiled as I watched him slip out the bedroom door to the sitting room beyond. A minute later, Logan’s distinct voice drifted in to me. At first, I thought it might be a side effect of the wine and the muscle relaxer—that I was hearing things. But then I distinctly heard him say my name.
I rolled off the bed and grabbed the complimentary bathrobe to cover the shorts and t-shirt I was wearing, stumbling a little unsteadily toward the door.
“What’s going on?”
Rawn was immediately at my side. “You shouldn’t be out of bed.”
“Why’s Logan here?” I said slowly, trying desperately not to slur my words.
“He was concerned he was causing problems between us.”
I tried to shake my head, but it kind of bobbed and weaved instead.
“You should go back to bed.” Rawn took my arm and turned me toward the bedroom. “You’re going to fall down.”
“Is she okay?” Logan asked.
“She took some medication,” Rawn started to explain, but I chose that moment to move away from him and nearly landed flat on my face because of it. “Madison—”
“I’m fine,” I said, holding up my hands so he could see how fine I was. I turned back into the sitting room and was going to sit on the couch beside Logan, but when my feet refused to land on the floor where I wanted them to, I fell into a chair that was closer to the bedroom.
Rawn stared at me a minute. Logan looked from him to me and back to him. Rawn finally shrugged and came to sit on the couch.
“Where’s Annie?”
Logan rubbed his palms on the legs of his jeans. “The house.” He glanced at me. “We kind of had words before I left.”
I wanted to say I wasn’t surprised and I hoped he had set her straight on everything, including his secrets, but I was afraid it wouldn’t come out clearly.
“You said you wanted to talk to me?” Rawn started.
Logan nodded. “I thought it was time I came clean with everything that’s been going on. I don’t want my stuff to come between the two of you, not when Madison’s been such a good friend.”
Rawn reached over and touched my hand, but he didn’t say anything.
“She’s been keeping a secret for me,” Logan began, wiping his hands on his jeans again, like a rebellious kid sitting in the principal’s office. “Annie told me about Madison’s sister, about her MS. And then I had that seizure and it kind of freaked me out. I thought Madison would be the one person who would understand why.”
He looked at me—and I must have been a sight with the muscle relaxer pulling my facial features all out of whack and leaving me feeling as though I’d had much too much to drink. I lifted my hand to brush a piece of hair out of my face, but it wouldn’t obey my command and ended up flopping back onto the chair’s arm. Such an example I was.
“I asked for her at the hospital because I needed someone to know the truth since I knew it would impact the way the doctors treated me. But I didn’t want to just tell some random nurse who might leak it to the press. And then I started to feel the effects of the drug—I’ve had oxy before, I know what it feels like—and realized what must have happened. That’s when I knew I had to get out of there before the doctors could do their tests and find it in my blood stream, along with all the other medications I take.”
“Medications?” There was a certain level of surprise, but also skepticism in Rawn’s voice. “Aren’t you—”
“A recovering addict?” Logan chuckled. “Can you believe there was once a time when it seemed preferable to be seen that way than to let the world know the truth?”
“And the truth? What’s that?”
Logan looked at me, and I managed an encouraging nod that didn’t go too awry.
“I have what’s called Wilson’s disease. It’s a condition where too much cooper builds up in the bloodstream, and it can cause a whole array of neurological and mental symptoms.”
“Oh, wow,” Rawn said softly.
“It turns out that I was adopted. My biological mother tracked me down some years ago while I was a student at Princeton just so that she could tell me about my family history of Wilson’s. It killed her grandmother and her mother, and she was pretty sure it had affected several cousins and aunts, as well. She said she didn’t put the information in the adoption paperwork because she didn’t want me to end up in an orphanage, unwanted by prospective adoptive parents. By then I was at the age where the symptoms often begin to show up, and she thought I should know.”
Logan leaned forward, not looking at anything except maybe the creases on his knuckles. “I had this huge falling out with my adoptive mother over the fact that she never bothered to tell me she wasn’t my biological parent. And then I came to Hollywood after consulting several doctors and learning that this disease is almost always debilitating later in life. I thought I could work as an actor for a few years, make a good amount of money, and then retire in obscurity.” He chuckled again. “I was pretty naïve.”
“The rehab stories?”
Logan glanced at Rawn before focusing on his hands again. “I was on the set of that space movie one day and I tripped over my own feet. And not in a comical, I-wasn’t-paying-attention sort of way. I literally tripped over myself. Then, the next day, one side of my body simply wouldn’t respond. I called my agent—who already knew about my potential diagnosis—and he got me admitted to a private hospital where my doctor was able to treat the symptoms and start me on the medications that reduce the cooper in the blood. But it took a while to get all the dosages right and to deal with the side effects. So, when the press began to wonder where I was and why the movie production had been delayed, my agent said we could tell them it was either a drug addiction or a mental illness. I figured drugs were the most benign of the two.”
Rawn studied Logan with a new appreciation in his eyes.
“I told Madison that day at the hospital in order to get her help in dealing with the doctors, but I made her pro
mise not to tell anyone. That’s why she’s been acting so—”
“Jealous?” I asked.
He half smiled, but Rawn didn’t seem to find it amusing. “You need to go lie down, my love,” he said, coming over to me. “Let the grownups finish talking in private.”
“No.”
But he didn’t give me much choice, lifting me out of the chair and carrying me into the bedroom. I couldn’t have fought him if I had wanted, but—to be honest—it was kind of nice. I felt like Sleeping Beauty.
And sleep was exactly what I did for the next few hours.
***
Annie
I packed my things, carefully placing the red ball gown back in its box along with everything else that came with it, setting it aside with a scrawled note that simply said, Thanks. I was ready to go quicker than I was ready to make this trip. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do next, but when I saw Madison’s car—a sweet Lexus RC—I almost cried with relief. I dug my keys out of my bag, tossed the bag into the back seat, and took off.
Madison had kindly gassed up fairly recently, so I had nearly a full tank of fuel. A quick touch of a few buttons had the GPS glowing with block by block directions, and I was all set. I turned on the radio, nearly laughing when I heard the hard rock strains of some band I’m sure Madison didn’t even know the name of, scanning to find something a little more my style. Maroon 5 filled the car, moaning about animals, and I sat back, glad to get the hell out of Dodge.
It was my own fault. I never should have lied to him. I should have told him the truth, admitted that I’d been in love with him since I saw him in that stupid zombie movie. I should have told him that meeting him had been my deepest wish and getting to know him had become something so much better than I ever could have imagined. He was exactly the man I had thought he would be, but better. He was the man I had always known I would meet someday.
I just shouldn’t have begun things with a lie.
But, again, according to Madison, he was holding things back, too.
Why wouldn’t he tell me what his secret was? Why wouldn’t he explain what Madison knew but I didn’t? And why was he so willing to go over and smooth things over between Rawn and Madison, but he didn’t want to be truthful with me?
The answer seemed perfectly obvious. I just didn’t want to admit it to myself.
Madison clearly meant more to him than I did.
There it was. The one thing I had feared since the moment he asked for Madison instead of me. Hell, from the moment he showed up at our apartment to check on Madison after her kidnapping ordeal.
He was in love with Madison, and I was a poor substitute.
I wanted to be angry with Madison. I wanted to hate her. But she was my best friend, the closest thing I had to a sister. I couldn’t blame her for Logan’s failings. I could be angry and hurt, but I couldn’t blame her, but I knew nothing would be the same between us.
I drove for a long time, trying not to think too much. That was hard, especially since I was tired…my lack of sleep the night before added to the wine I’d had at dinner were making it hard for me to keep my eyes open. I pulled into a Starbuck’s drive-thru and got a chai tea latte, hoping the heat and the sweetness would keep me awake.
When I began to see signs for San Jose, I considered pulling into a hotel for the night. But, once again, my lack of available funds made the decision a difficult one. I had a credit card that had enough credit on it to pay for the hotel, but then I would have to rearrange all my bills next month and likely the month after to get the card paid off again. It wasn’t an easy decision.
While I was still debating, I felt the back of the car stutter. And then it slid to one side. Another stutter and I lost control of the wheel.
I was going to crash. I could see it unfolding in my mind even before it happened, the car hitting the concrete barrier on the side of the road and flipping, rolling several times before it would come to a stop in the median.
I was about to die and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
“Logan…”
***
Madison
I vaguely heard Rawn’s cellphone ring, the chimes of his chosen ringtone sinking into my dreams, making them a little more fevered than they had been before. It stopped after a moment, and I settled back into sleep. But then it rang again, the same insistent chimes eating away at my peaceful sleep.
I rolled over and found him curled up beside me, contentedly sleeping through the annoying sound. I grumbled a little as I reached over him to retrieve the phone, pleased to see that all my nerves and muscles seemed to be working a little better today.
“Hello?” I mumbled into the phone after I accepted the call.
“I’m looking for a Mr. Rawn Jackman.”
“He’s sleeping. Can I take a message?”
There was some hesitation on the other end of the line. Then the voice said, “Would you happen to know if Mr. Jackman owns a 2015 Lexus RC?”
I sat up, a few of my muscles—especially around my joints—screaming in protest. “He’s co-owner of the car. Why? Has it been stolen?”
“No, ma’am. It’s been involved in an accident.”
“An accident? That’s not possible. I left the car in my friend’s driveway.” And then it hit me.
Annie.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but if I could talk to Mr. Jackman…”
I slapped Rawn’s shoulder hard enough to leave a red handprint on his skin. “Something’s happened to Annie.”
He sat up and took the phone from me. He grunted a greeting and stared at me, as he listened to the voice on the other end of the line. And then his eyes fell, and I knew the worst had happened. I quickly climbed out of bed and began pulling on clothes, shoving others back in my overnight bag.
“There’s been an accident,” he began to say. But I didn’t need to know. I just needed to get to her.
Chapter 9
Madison
We rushed into the hospital’s emergency room—a scene that was becoming much too familiar to me these days—and Rawn approached the nurse’s station, telling the woman sitting there who we had come to see.
“She’s been moved up to the surgical floor. Fourth floor.”
Rawn glanced at me, then his eyes slid to Logan’s face.
Logan had returned to his house last night and found Annie gone. He didn’t call her; he didn’t call me or Rawn. He didn’t think it was his place to send out the alarm because of everything I had said. And that had allowed Annie to be on the highway in the middle of the night where she was run off the road by some maniac.
“A drunk driver, they think,” Rawn had said, after speaking to the California Highway Patrol officer in charge of the investigation.
But it didn’t take a wild stretch of the imagination to realize that it wasn’t as impersonal as that.
The three of us rushed to the elevator, our adrenaline still pumping after the furious rush to the airport that morning to get here as quickly as possible. Logan had asked if we should call her parents, but I was torn. It might be more logical to call my parents. Annie was closer to them than her own.
But I made the call anyway.
They said to let them know if it was life threatening.
Another nurse’s desk, another bored nurse who couldn’t care less about the drama that was suddenly dumped in our laps first thing this morning. She told us to wait; the doctor would come out and tell us what was going on.
I paced, my arms wrapped tight around my chest.
“Should I call Mellissa and Conrad? Maybe they should be here if things…” I bit my lip, as much for the pain that ripped through my chest as to take my mind off the small sound Logan made.
Rawn shook his head. “We’ll wait a minute. See what the doctor has to say.”
I nodded and continued to pace, moving around the tacky green and blue chairs and the cheap end tables, the tiny nugget of fear that I had been able to control for hours suddenly swelling and gro
wing in my belly.
All the what-ifs began to play in my head.
What if I hadn’t had that meltdown at dinner? What if I hadn’t caused Annie and Logan to fight? What if I hadn’t left my car at Logan’s house? What if I hadn’t driven to LA at all, if I had flown down with Rawn?
And then the other what-ifs…
What if she was paralyzed, or so badly hurt that she had to stay in the hospital for months? What if she couldn’t finish school? Would she lose her scholarships? Would she lose her place in grad school? Would this change her entire future?
And then the biggest what if—
What if Annie was dead, and they just didn’t want to tell us?
I couldn’t deal with the unknown.
That’s how it had been with Allison, all the waiting in hospitals, not sure if she was still alive or not. Every time they came out and told us that she had survived another attack, that her pneumonia was finally responding to the antibiotics, that she would come home again, it was a little hope that made that final moment, the moment they told us that she would not survive the night, that much harder to accept.
I didn’t want to go through that again.
And I didn’t want the people I loved to go through it either.
I paced because I didn’t know how else to contain the fear. I couldn’t stop the wheels turning in my head, the thoughts chasing one another like a hunting dog flushing out rabbits. An inhuman cry came from a room on my left. I turned and watched as a family was escorted out, the woman being consoled by the people around her, all of them so pale that they might have been extras in a horror film. I knew. I knew that walk. I knew they had just lost someone very close to them. But then the woman who had screamed, the woman being consoled by people who could only be her grown children, saw me watching, and she nodded.
She nodded.
She had just lost someone close to her, and she had enough wherewithal to nod at me.
Then, I turned and found both Logan and Rawn watching me, concern etched across their faces. And that’s when I realized I wasn’t giving anyone the benefit of the doubt, not even myself.
As individuals, we were strong. Rawn had survived his mother’s alcoholism. Logan had survived the reality of his disease. Annie had survived me, her heartless parents, and life in general.
The TROUBLE with BILLIONAIRES: Book 3 Page 14
