by H. M. Ward
Rose frowns and wags a finger at me. “I meant to say step-sister. Yeah. That makes more sense, especially considering you don’t like crawfish. Who doesn't like crawfish?” She shakes her head like it’s weird.
“Good night, Rose! I need to find Mitchell before he leaves. The guy has my keys.”
“Oh, he’s already gone, honey.”
I stop and look back at her. “And my keys?”
She shrugs. “He didn’t give them to me.”
“Crap.” Annoyed, I rush outside into the early morning air. The sun isn’t quite rising yet, so the sky is still that dark blue.
The cop that told me not to park at the entrance earlier is still there. He smiles and walks over to me, stepping lightly as if he were dancing. “Good evening, DOCTOR Jennings.”
I stare at him for a second and then blurt out. “You towed my car, didn’t you?”
He smacks his lips and makes a popping sound, before leaning in close to me. “I sure did. The Suffolk County police force is not your personal valet, Doc. I couldn’t leave my station, and you were in a red zone.”
“So I know whether or not to kick Mitchell's ass—did he come out here?”
He shoots me a wide grin, no teeth showing. The cop tucks his arms under his elbows and nods once. “I might remember someone trying to find the keys, but they weren’t in the ignition. Damnedest thing happened after that, a tow truck just happened to show up.”
I groan and stare at him. “Why do you hate me?”
“Why do doctors act like they’re better than everyone else?”
“I didn’t do that.”
“You tossed me your keys like I was a servant. Word to the wise—if you’re not careful, you’ll turn into your old man.”
I cringe. “Fine, you’re right. I was an ass before. Let me make it up to you. There’s a Dunkin’ Donuts down the street.”
He laughs. “Wiseass.”
“Maybe. Okay, I’m headed home, right after I call a cab. And, I’m sorry about before. I didn’t mean to come off like that. It’s been a really weird night.” As I finish the sentence, a limo pulls up behind me. The headlights shoot two narrow beams of light through the dark parking lot.
A tinted window slides down, and Trystan peers out at me. “Need a ride, Doc?”
The cop tenses, as if he were trying not to go totally fangirl in front of Trystan Scott.
I’m too tired to say no, and I don’t want to call a cab to pick me up. Last time I rode home at this hour, the guy talked about pickles the whole time. I think he was trying to make innuendos, or maybe he'd actually pickled his thingy. Either way, I’d rather not live through another weird late-night cab ride.
“Yeah, that’d be great.” I head over to the limo, open the door, and poke my head inside.
“Do you have water or food or something?”
Trystan nods and hands me a brown paper bag. “The driver grabbed me breakfast, but I’m too queasy to eat it. Egg and cheese on a roll with a side of bacon.” I don’t mean to, but I smile. It's a meal he frequently ate in high school.
“Thanks. One second.” I accept the bag and cup of coffee Trystan hands me, then walk it over to the cop. “Will you accept an apology breakfast? I hope you like bacon.”
The man’s face lights up as he peers into the bag. “Who doesn’t?” He pulls out a crispy piece of greasy goodness and shoves it into his mouth as I head back to the car. “Dr. Jennings,” he calls. I glance back at him. “Thanks.”
When I slip into the car next to Trystan, I’m too tired to realize this should be awkward. I slump back in the seat and put my arm over my face. “I didn’t turn into my father today. Wooh-eee.” I twirl a finger in the air.
Trystan snorts. “Is that something you worry about?”
“Not until recently. When people start saying, ‘you’re like your father’ and that’s the last thing you want to hear, there’s no way to ignore it, you know?”
His voice is soft. “I do.”
I drop my arm and sigh in my seat, staring at this man, wondering about which ways he’s changed and which ways he’s the same. I know one answer to that question. The Trystan I knew wouldn’t touch liquor—not even if his life depended on it. Alcohol was the antithesis of what he wanted from his life—he thought he might as well be chugging down poison. So, how did he get to this point?
The intercom buzzes and the driver asks where we’re going. Before I can reply, Trystan says, “Home.”
Chapter 12
Trystan
What the hell am I doing? I touch my hand to my forehead, thinking I’ll push my hair out of my face and wince. Stitches. I can’t seem to remember they’re there and my hand always goes to my face in front of Mari. If I don’t cover my eyes, I swear she can look right through me. There’s still that spark in the air around her, even doped up I can sense it. It has my skin prickling and my nerves on edge.
She blinks those beautiful brown eyes at me and stutters. “Wait, what? We can’t go back to your place. Trystan.” She scolds me, and that tone is everything I remember. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she still cared about me, but after what I did to her—well, I’m certain she hates me. Mari was never one to leave a half-dead animal on the side of the road. She’s a healer at heart and wants to ease the pain in the people around her. Maybe I took advantage of that while in the hospital.
“Don’t Trystan me. Not right now.” I slump back into the seat and try to ignore the pounding in my head and the dull screaming coming from my leg. Maybe I shouldn’t have ripped out the IV before they gave me another round of pain meds. “I can’t take you home, they’ll follow us.”
Looking between my fingers, I see her face scrunch up. There are little wrinkles around her nose when she does it. I’ve kissed that nose and held those hands. I wish I could feel her touch now and fall asleep in her lap. My time with Mari was the happiest time of my life. Since then, everything’s gone to shit. Career or not, money doesn’t matter if you have food in your belly and a roof over your head. Cash is a double-edged sword—it provides power, but it steals friendships. Half the people around me are only there hoping to make it big.
Fuck. I can’t do this. Why’d I pick her up? I groan and pinch the bridge of my nose.
Her voice is soft, as if she thinks I’m close to breaking. “Don’t do that. As it is, you have the start of a nasty black eye.” I don’t move. I remain slouched back against the Italian leather of the limo, my chin tipped up toward the roof, eyes closed. I can’t look at her. Not now, not tonight. As the fog from the pain meds clears, that feeling comes creeping back. It claws at my neck and steals my air. My heart races like I'm running from a mob of fans and it won’t slow down.
Her voice breaks through my thoughts. Her hand touches my forearm, and those small fingers delicately brush against my skin. Each hair feels her presence and stands on end, shooting an inhuman charge up my arm and into my heart. I jerk away without meaning to, without wanting to. I drop my hand and look at her. Those dark curls are wild, forcefully tamed into a sloppy ponytail, small ringlets escaping to hang by her temples.
She’s the same, but she’s changed too. Instead of soft round cheeks, her face has become angular and more defined. I remember her skin being freckled, but now I see only a spattering of light freckles across the bridge of her nose as if she'd been in the sun yesterday. Her neck is thinner and seems more alluring than I recall. My gaze drifts too far south and for half a beat I’m ogling her breasts, wondering what they’d feel like under those scrubs. They’re bigger, rounder. I’m not too sure why since she’s thinner than when we were together. I hope she didn’t get a boob job because she didn’t need one. Mari was already perfect. I lift my gaze to meet hers and realize I’m in deep shit.
I clear my throat and break our locked gaze. I don’t want her reading me so easily. She’ll figure out what I did and then all that pain will have been for nothing. “When we get back to my place, we can separate. The press won’t see you leave.
You can go home without having them in tow. I’m sorry about this.” That last part comes rushing out, and I immediately wish I hadn’t said it.
Mari snaps, “Sorry about what exactly? Nearly killing yourself? Potentially killing someone else? Or just being incredibly stupid?” She works her jaw as if she has so much more to say, but bites it back.
I stare at nothing and wish I felt nothing, but I don’t. My heart is dying inside my chest. I’ve lost too many good people. I can’t… I press my eyes together tightly and swallow the scream that’s building inside of me. I reach for the crystal tumbler at the bar and the decanter filled with amber liquid.
Mari laughs and swats my hands. “Are you insane?”
“You don’t understand.” I glare at the dark carpet, trying not to yell at her.
“Then tell me. Talk to someone, but don’t get drunk again. God, Trystan, what the hell happened to you? It’s like you’ve lost yourself or something.”
Nope, my heart is alive and still beating in my chest because her words put a knife through it. I didn’t think I could hurt more than I already did. I was wrong.
Mari is sitting across from me on the long bench and scoots to the edge. She takes my hand in hers and rubs her thumb on the back of my wrist. She tips her head to the side until I meet her gaze. “What happened tonight?”
I sit there like that, wishing things weren’t the way they are, but I can’t change it no matter how much I want to—my first instinct is to lie, but I can’t, not to Mari. My lip trembles, I feel it quiver as I try to grin and make up a bullshit story.
She sees it coming and squeezes my hand. “Trystan, don’t lie to me. I feel it. I know something horrible happened. Telling me can’t make it worse.”
Our gazes lock and I can’t look away. I can’t lie to her or blow off her concern. I can’t charm my way around her question either. She knows what I’m feeling. My emotions are hemorrhaging, and the physical connection between us only amplifies my pain. I rip my eyes from hers and pull my hand back. I can still feel her touch on the back of my hand.
“I can’t. Not yet.”
Mari is quiet. I can feel the words she wants to say drift through the air, but she doesn’t say any of them. Eventually, her lips close. She makes a decision and moves into the seat next to me. “Come here.” Her arms are open, waiting for me to fall into them. All I have to do is move toward her, or show that I want her here, but I’m frozen. I’ve missed her touch so much, craved it, dreamt about it, and lusted for her caresses long after I left her.
Now that she’s here offering comfort, I can’t accept. The turmoil within won’t shut up. Part of me knows it’s a fucking hug. Take it, moron! The other part knows it means more than that—to her and me. Say no! Don’t put her through this again. It’s beyond cruel to do this to her twice.
Swallowing hard I shake my head once and move away from her. Fuck, it looks like I punched her in the stomach. Her certainty fades as she shrinks back and presses her hands to the seat, backing herself into the corner of the limo. I’m an asshole, I know I am, and she shouldn’t be here.
I look over at her, but I don’t ask her to elaborate. I can feel it. The air is thick with remorse, regret, and pain.
She sighs and rubs her eyes. The look on her face makes me think she’s going to drop an anvil on my head. “Promise me I won’t lose you, too, no matter what’s happening.”
Lose me? She doesn’t have me. She doesn’t want me. Why would she even say that? Pity? Either way, she has my attention. I sit up a little. “Are you ok? Did something happen to Katie?” Our mutual love for Katie and Seth is the only bond we have in common anymore.
Mari shakes her head and swallows hard. She glances out the window, composing herself before looking back at me. “It’s not Katie.”
My jaw tightens as my stomach churns. I know what happened before she says it, but I can’t hear this now. Not tonight. I double over to keep the contents of my stomach down and to hide the panic on my face. My pulse hammers in my ears, getting faster and faster. My body breaks out in a cold sweat, and I’m shaking. I try to hold still, but I can’t. My chest feels too tight to breathe.
Suddenly Mari’s hand is on my back, and her voice is warm in my ear. “I haven’t heard for certain yet, but Seth was on the phone with Katie when something went wrong. I thought you should hear it from me before someone else told you. He might be alive, Trystan…”
Her voice sounds far away like she’s at the other end of a subway tunnel. The buzzing in my head grows louder and drowns out her voice. I can’t do this. I can’t.
Before I know what’s happening, she’s shoving a glass in my hand and telling me to drink. I tip back the crystal cup and feel the liquor burn down my throat. I cough once as I realize what she did and glance over at her, shocked.
Mari shrugs. “Sometimes a drunk needs a drink. And sometimes his ex needs one, too.” She takes the glass from me, puts it to her lips, tips her head back, and swallows the rest. When she finishes, she puts down the glass and claws at her face. “I’ve been waiting to hear from Katie. I wanted to go with her to Seth’s mom’s house, but then I got the call for you. I thought you were dead, Trystan! I got there, and they said you were gone.” She looks everywhere except at me, trying to smile, but her eyes are too glossy, and her voice is too strained to be believable.
I lift my hand to reach for hers and hesitate. I can’t touch her. It’ll put me back in a place I can’t be. I close my eyes for a moment and say the only words that will come. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Mari.”
The distance between us feels like a chasm. I can’t stand it anymore. I’d jump out of the car to avoid it, and the pain that follows in its wake. I don’t think before I speak. My heart gets ahead of my brain. “Stay with me until we find out. Being alone right now probably isn’t good for either of us.”
That’s when I realize it—she’s not alone. She has her Dad, Katie, and a slew of friends I don’t know.
I feel her big brown eyes on the side of my face. I can hear her voice, timid and hurt, asking me over and over again—why did you leave me? Why did you hurt me? Why did you break my heart?
The same three things repeat over and over again, but then her voice cuts through the unspoken questions. “I can stay for a little while.”
Chapter 13
Trystan
Chills race up my spine as the elevator doors open, revealing the foyer of my penthouse. Mari remains behind me, standing in the spot my shadow would be if it were daylight. She twists her hands together nervously, not rushing into the room the way most of my fake friends do. Her gaze remains glued to the floor and her lips part like she wants to say something, but she doesn't speak. I swallow hard and step forward into my empty apartment high above Manhattan.
I don't come here very much anymore.
What once felt like a fantasy, now feels like a prison. The ornate furniture, million-dollar paintings, and reclaimed hardwood floor once excited me, but now they remind me there's no way out of this life. I don't complain—how could I? I'd seem like a total ingrate if I bitched about being rich.
I never wanted fame, though. People who knew me back when I was a kid remember a false version of me. They saw me as a showman, a charismatic speaker—that guy isn't me. He was an act, a mask devised to hide the pain surging through my heart on a daily basis.
Even though my mother left before I was two, my father always blamed me for her leaving. He'd get home from the factory at night back when I was in high school, pick up a bottle of booze, and get wasted. Nights were the hardest.
Mari was with me when life with my dad was the worst. It still shames me to think of what she had to do, of the situations I forced her into. But that was a lifetime ago—why are these feelings popping up now and mingling with the present? The anguish and remorse I felt then are still buried deep in my chest, trying to claw their way out.
I walk past an antique Paul Revere credenza, tossing my keys into the silver Tiffany bowl sit
ting on top as I pass. The old saying, 'once poor, always poor,' isn't true. There was a time I didn't have money for clothes, yet now I could build a bonfire out of cash in Rockefeller Center without feeling its loss.
Mari keeps her chin tucked as she walks into the room, hesitant to look around. She wrings her hands in front of her and swallows hard. I wish she weren't so nervous, that she could trust me like she used to, but that will never happen again. Not after what I did to her. Things are as they should be, and she has her own life now. She's not another casualty of Trystan Scott.
It's bad enough that Seth might be gone. The only reason he was in the Marines in the first place was because of me—it was my idea to enlist and get the fuck out of town. I thought it was my only chance to escape my dad, the only way out of the hell that was my life. But then my emotions got the better of me, and I wrote that song for her—for the woman standing next to me. After that, everything changed.
Fame has a price that no one understands until they're famous. My life isn't mine anymore. My life belongs to my fans. I traded one trapped existence for another. Each day I coax myself to go a little bit longer, a little bit further. I'm at the peak of my career and the middle of a contract, so there's no way I can walk away. It doesn't matter how much I want to fade into the background and disappear. That's not my life.
"Would you like a drink?" Startled, Mari looks up at me with those big brown eyes, and I wish I could hold her in my arms and tell her everything will be okay. Instead, I'm acting like a fucking hostess.
She offers a fake smile, as if it's painful for her to force up the corners of her mouth. "Water please," she says, finally managing to speak.
