BRIAN (The Callahans Book 1) (51 page)

The wet highway hissed beneath the bus tires, condensation spitting up against the window I leaned my head against. It was cold on the bus — so much so that other passengers had come prepared, cocooned in blankets and sweaters and hats. I should’ve been shivering, should’ve cringed away from the window, but I didn’t feel anything but anger. Betrayal. Heartbreak.

How had I been so stupid as to trust Devon Ray, a man I apparently understood very little about? He’d used me. Even worse, he’d used Nana, exploited her.

The discovery that he’d cooked up a script detailing Nana’s life — and her tragic demise — and inserted himself into it as some kind of romantic savior for me was only compounded by the debacle of an interview I’d had on national television. It had made all the covers of the tabloids, video stills of my face crumpled with fury, superimposed on an image of my parents — if they were really my parents — looking like their hearts were breaking.

None of the headlines were kind.

I’d had to wear a baseball cap and sunglasses just to try to escape Los Angeles without being recognized — a trick I’d learned from Devon.

I couldn’t stay here any longer. Not after that interview, and certainly not after that script. I’d been an idiot for thinking that someone like Devon, who could literally have anything or anyone he wanted, was genuinely interested in me. He’d only wanted to use me, to turn me into a laughingstock, to see how much he could get away with until I figured it out.

Trina had helped me stuff a few changes of clothes into a backpack, then showed me a secret tunnel to the multi-car garage, located across the broad driveway.

“When we were together, the paparazzi loved to camp out to try to get long-range shots of me at the pool,” she remarked as we slid into one of the many cars stabled there. “I hated tan lines, you know, so that was a mess. They weren’t allowed to come onto the grounds, but they’d do anything to try and get photos of us together here. We used the tunnel many a time to make a quick getaway. Sometimes, Devon would get Chaz to drive another car, so as we left, the paparazzi would have to make a choice on who to follow.”

I was glad that Trina was fondly remembering the tumult of two famous people dating each other, but it wasn’t a helpful anecdote to me. I just wanted to get out of here, to escape to anywhere. I didn’t care where I ended up as long as it was as far away from Devon as I could get.

She’d wheeled us out of the driveway, the tires spinning and smoking, scattering photographers before she floored us in the direction of the city.

“I wish you wouldn’t run away,” she said on the way to the bus station.

“I’m not running away,” I said, feeling sheepish. I’d requested a ride from my boyfriend’s ex, to a bus station, for that sole purpose. “It’s self-preservation, Trina. I obviously didn’t know what I was getting myself into.”

“Here’s a free bit of advice you didn’t ask for,” she said, keeping her eyes on the road. “Devon’s not a bad person. But he is a huge idiot for thinking this movie is a good idea.”

“Thanks,” I said weakly.

“The thing is, June, that none of us was really prepared for this.” Trina risked a glance at me. “I don’t know how much you know about Devon’s background, but no one taught him how to deal with being famous. His parents weren’t famous. He didn’t know anyone in the business before Chaz, and he clings to Chaz like a life preserver.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I felt even shittier that I wasn’t as familiar with Devon’s past as I should be. I hadn’t even known he’d been dating Trina Henry until he’d mentioned it himself. I needed to do my research so I could be as prepared for Devon as Kelly Kane had been for me, during my interview. This lack of knowledge was killing me.

“What I’m trying to tell you is that you seem like a good person, and Devon seems happy with you, too,” Trina sighed. “Hell, I don’t know what I’m saying. I wish Devon and I had ended things on better terms. It was ugly. But I care about him. That might be weird, but we were together for more than a hot minute. And I care about your situation. You shouldn’t allow anyone to take advantage of you. I just … I wish there was something else I could do for you. Something better than spiriting you away to a bus station.”

“This is more than enough, really,” I assured her. “You’ve been very kind, and you didn’t have to be. I just need some time apart to think things over.”

That sounded like something I should say, but I truthfully didn’t understand anything I was doing. I was still reeling from what felt like a melee of bullshit — Nana dying, moving in with Devon, the attacks from the tabloids, the interview, the script, and, on top of it all, Trina Henry trying her best to help me through everything. It was like a warped universe, one that I couldn’t escape no matter what lengths I went to.

“Here we are.” Trina pulled into the bus station, and I reached for my backpack in the backseat. She took the moment to hug me awkwardly.

“Thanks, um, for everything,” I said, patting her shoulder. “I don’t think I would’ve been able to get out of there without your help.”

“Will you let me know if you need anything else?” she asked, her blue eyes bright and anxious. It blew my mind that her face could make any emotion look beautiful. No wonder Devon wanted her on his movie. My life was so full of sadness that it would be painful for an audience to gaze on someone else being sad for two hours.

“I’ll … do that,” I said, fully intending to never speak to her or Devon again. I just wanted out, away, to be gone. But she held me by my arm just long enough to fish around inside of my purse, find my phone, and punch her number in.

“I’m serious,” she said. “Anything.” I pulled my hat down over my face as I nodded and left her car, intent on my escape.

Dallas was my destination. I didn’t care that it wasn’t home anymore — that it’d never be home without Nana. But as the wheels of the bus carried me closer and closer to the city, through the night, over hills and down mountains, I realized that there wasn’t anywhere else I could go.

I was a person without a home. Devon’s compound certainly wasn’t it. I just wasn’t sure where to find it, yet.

I rented a room in the same hotel where Devon and I had met. That much felt right — though it equally felt like punishment. Life had punished me enough for whatever failings or stupidities I might’ve had, but I was all too willing to continue to punish myself. I shouldn’t have trusted Devon. I shouldn’t have left everything I had in Dallas to be with him in Malibu. It had been an idiotic decision, a poor choice made by someone with stars in her eyes. It hadn’t been a choice that Nana would’ve thought was a good one. I knew that much. Nana had raised me to be pragmatic, to think things through. But the moment Devon had crashed into our lives, all of that had gone out the window.

I didn’t know how long I’d be in Dallas. I didn’t know what I was even going to do here. I left my backpack and all its contents on one of the two beds of my slightly threadbare room, and rented a car. I was flush with cash because of what remained of Nana’s savings and a life insurance payout. Devon hadn’t let me pay for a single thing, starting with the trip to Hawaii, extending to Nana’s funeral arrangements, and ending with staying in his Malibu palace.

I drove aimlessly, like I used to do when I lived here, trying to find answers in the streets and thoroughfares I knew like the lines on my own hands. I’d grown up driving these roads, grown to know them even better when I’d taken the best routes during my pizza delivery days. I wondered if the pizza place would take me back into the fold if I asked for my old position back. Maybe it was time to move on from that — just like it was probably past time to be rid of Devon Ray.

Even though I knew my way around the city, the arteries of roads felt different, as if just a few weeks’ absence was enough to be spat out of the folds of Dallas and left by myself again. I found myself caught in wretched traffic in areas I thought I knew better than to venture at this time of day. It was as if I’d forgotten everything I knew about this place. What was worse was the weather — the rain that had persisted during my bus trip across the country had hunched down and settled in Dallas. The roads were wet and treacherous, and I skidded several times thanks to my unfamiliar car.

I found myself in front of Nana’s old house without understanding what had brought me here. Her wheelchair ramp was still there, and the sidewalk I’d bemoaned so many times had been completely repaired. Even in the damp and encroaching fog, I could see the entire exterior shone with a new coat of bright white paint. It looked like it should’ve looked — lived in and cherished. I’d let too many things go when I was there with Nana, always thinking I was too busy to arrange for the upkeep of the place, that money was too tight. I should’ve taken more pride into the house’s appearance. People who passed by it should’ve known how much love those four walls contained.

I held my breath as the front door opened, not sure why I was hoping Nana would step out. Nana would never step out of that house again. She’d been bound to a wheelchair for more years than I cared to think about, and besides, she wasn’t coming back. Her ashes were washed away by the waves in Hawaii long ago. There wasn’t a single part of her that remained — no grave I could visit, no keepsakes I could touch, just a bottle of perfume I’d kept when Devon and I had cleaned this place out.

I should’ve been here. I never should have sold Nana’s house and moved in with Devon.

I watched a middle-aged man step out onto the porch and blink out into the rain. He held the door open wider and a young boy came out, perhaps to marvel at the weather. No, there was something else. A puppy, brand new, tumbled out to the porch, skittering across the concrete until it spun out onto the wheelchair ramp. I couldn’t hear what the man was saying, but the boy’s face lit up and he scampered out into the rain after the dog, both of them getting soaked, beads of moisture forming in their hair and fur, respectively.

A new family lived here, now. A family with a dog. And the family was honoring this house, taking care of it, showing the surrounding neighborhood just how much they cared for it.

They were doing a better job than I ever could’ve. I needed to move on. I had to find some other place to be.

The other place ended up being the storage facility Devon had been paying for as a reliquary for all the things I hadn’t been ready to part with during our whirlwind settling of Nana’s estate. I unlocked the door to the unit and was immediately hit by a faint but noticeable whiff of Nana’s perfume. It had permeated the surfaces of the furniture stacked in here, in the belongings I hadn’t been able to donate or trash.

I pulled an armchair away from a stack of books and sat in it, burying my nose in the upholstery. Devon had hired a moving company to shove the belongings into this unit, and I hadn’t been back since. I saw old things that had been present in Nana’s house as if I were seeing them for the first time — her wheelchair I hadn’t been able to pass on to someone else, my old texts from college, the Blu-Ray movies Devon had bought us when he’d been busy trying to win me over.

I wondered if that sweet scene was going to be in his movie. The hero tries to buy the heroine’s love. The sad part was that it worked, softening her dubious heart enough for him to wiggle his way in. There should probably be a scene, though, in the movie’s sad ending that showed the heroine crouched in her storage unit, weeping over an old smelly chair, realizing that none of these belongings mattered.

None of them was Nana. None of them would bring her back to me. None of them would make me feel loved. None of them would make me trust Devon ever again.

I dried my tears and tried to make a logical assessment of the things the storage unit contained. Did I really need to hang on to the chair I was sitting in? And wouldn’t Nana’s wheelchair become a better tribute to her memory by being donated to an assisted living facility, or a clinic somewhere in Dallas?

Steeling myself for the onslaught of memories and fresh tears, I dragged a couple of boxes over to the chair. Surely I could shed all of these possessions and be free for sadness and memories, free to stop taking handouts from Devon Ray and stop needing him altogether.

If only my heart would listen to my head.

In spite of Devon’s betrayal, in spite of everything, there was still love in my heart for him. It was the most irritating thing in the world. I wished I could hate him for the script, for the interview with Kelly Kane, for Chaz’s manipulations. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t hate him because I was still in love with him.

I tore through the boxes, eager to distract myself from my stupidity. Had I even packed these up? Nothing was familiar. There was a box of dishes that I had no idea what I’d been planning to do with. Another box contained baby clothes of mine that Nana had apparently saved. This was all trash, absolute junk. There was no reason I needed to maintain this storage unit. Part of me just wanted to drag everything outside the unit and put a sign on it telling people it was all free and just to do whatever with it. Take it home. Love it forever. Break it apart with an ax and use it for firewood. I didn’t care.

But another box contained a folder I’d never seen before, nestled among some of the framed photos that Nana had so proudly displayed around the house. There was my graduation portrait that she’d insisted on buying from the price-gouging photographer who’d snapped shots during the ceremony. I opened the folder and my world shifted on its axis.