Ripping Pages (24 page)

Six days went by and no change in Van. Doctors were constantly running tests to monitor his brain function. They said that there had been no change, and we were going to have to start talking about other options. I had been in London for almost a week with everyone. The news and media were everywhere reporting on Van’s condition. I was forced to go back to my hotel room for rest. So I sat up watching television since there was no way I could sleep. Every entertainment station was running specials about Van and his life and how he came to be lead singer of Ripping Pages. They talked about his childhood and showed interviews, one that had been taped the night he broke up with me. He smiled that heartbreaking smile as they asked him about his personal life. He looked straight at the camera and said, “I have a gorgeous girl. She’s my Sweetness, my world.” The woman interviewing him gushed and oohed and ahhed at that. He just smirked and smiled again—at me. I could feel him. He meant that. At least, he meant it then.

I instantly felt like an idiot for flying all the way to London. What if he woke up and wondered what the hell I was doing there? What if he told me to get the fuck out as he did before? What if he didn’t say anything at all? I mean, I hadn’t heard from him since I told him off. If he truly wanted me, wouldn’t he have come for me, or contacted me, somehow? If he meant what he said. After all that I had told him about the baby, as hateful as I was, and he was in the wrong, so why didn’t he come for me? Gosh, I was a fool. I came here for Sloan, and I came here to tell him I was sorry, but what if he didn’t want to hear what I had to say. What if he didn’t want to see my face at all?

I hadn’t spoken to James. He did finally answer my text, but was short.

He was angry, and I really couldn’t blame him, but he had to understand the reasoning behind me going to London. This wasn’t just some fling. I carried the man’s child for 2 months. I couldn’t forget that. We were connected in a way James and I never could be.

It had been a week and a day since Van slipped into a coma. I had several private conversations with him while he lay there unconscious. I prayed for him to wake up, and I whispered in his ear that I loved him over and over again. Still nothing.

Tatum had gone home a few days before. She had re-shoots for the catalog. I hugged her goodbye, and she left for home. I hadn’t been to see mom and Steve. They were too far from the hospital, and I didn’t want to be that far from Van.

They didn’t want to disturb the family, so they sent flowers and said they were praying for him.

Ten days after the shooting, everyone was at the hotel sleeping, and I was with Van in his hospital room. I was holding his hand and watching
Dumb and Dumber
on the TV. It brought that first night back in his apartment back. The memories came flooding in, and I couldn’t control the sobs that wracked me.
He wasn’t going to wake up, was he? God what would I do?

I laid my head on his chest and cried as I remembered every single detail of US—the time he caught me snooping. The time he was shit faced drunk in front of the café, our first kiss, the charm bracelet (which I had been wearing every day and never took off.) When he told me he loved me, the gala, the limo, the day I told him I was carrying our baby, our first thanksgiving, the way he always made me feel like the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. The way he kissed me. The way he smelled, like Zest soap and Man. The way he gobbled up a huge bowl of cereal. Just the way he was. Van. My tears flowed down to his face, and I leaned back to wipe the pool of saline off his cheek. I smiled as I remembered everything. I kissed his nose and then his forehead, which had become “our” thing.

Just as I was about to turn and walk away for the night, his eyes started to move underneath his eyelids. His fingers started twitching and moving slowly. I pressed the call button for the nurse, just as Van slowly opened his eyes. It took him a while to regain full sight as he took in his surroundings. The nurses came in. They took the tube out of his throat and made him take some sips of water and they started to do some tests. When it was all said and done, they left to get the doctor to come run some of his own tests, leaving Van and I alone. It took him a few minutes to compose himself. When the nurses had asked him the simple questions, he’d done well. He knew who he was. He knew what year it was. He didn’t remember anything about the shooting.

He slowly turned his head just a little, and looked at me.

He looked confused.

“Tinley? W—” He grabbed his glass of water, not breaking eye contact with me as he drank it slowly to quench his parched mouth. When he was done, he sat the cup down on the rolling tray, and started again.

“What are you doing here?” He didn’t ask it rudely, more surprised than anything.

I walked over to him and stood next to the bed.

“I’ve been here since last week. I came as soon as I heard. I came with Sloan and your parents.”

He nodded taking it all in. He never did stop staring at me. He appraised me from top to bottom, and then that ridiculously hot smirk of his that I’d missed more than I realized, made its way across those sexy lips, and his face turned smug. “Well, you look good, Sweetness. I’m glad you’re here.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. He motioned for me to come closer. “I want to tell you something, Sweetness.” I leaned in ready to hear it, and he placed a gentle kiss to my nose and my forehead. Leaving his lips at the top of my head he whispered, “I love you. I’m so sorry, baby. For everything. Please forgive me.”

Before I could say anything back to him, the doctor came in, and I jumped back feeling like I’d been caught with my hand in the cookie jar. Van chuckled, and listened as the doctor ran his own set of tests and gave him a run through of all the events that had occurred since the day of the shooting. He stared at the doctor in horror as the events unfolded before us in the room. I realized that I failed to call anyone to let them know that Van was awake.

I called Sloan who screamed with joy and said she’d let her parents know. I then called Jensen who sounded like a little kid excited about a new puppy. He told me he would get the band and crew together, and head over. I called my mother and Tatum, who were so relieved about the news and lastly, I called James. He finally picked up the phone.

“Tin? Everything ok?” He sounded more like the James from the night before I left for London. He wasn’t cold and distant.

“Hey. Yeah, everything is ok. Van is awake.”

Silence on the other end of the line. Finally, he broke it. “Well, that’s good news. Let me know if you need anything.” There was the cold and distant James.

I frowned at the phone. What did I expect? Him to jump for joy? I guess I was being an idiot, as usual. I told him goodbye, and instinctively said “I love you” as I hung up the phone. He didn’t say it back, and that hurt. I knew I was hurting him too, but I still loved him, regardless.

Everyone gathered around Van, and we talked, and everyone shared stories about the band’s beginning years as we laughed, and as they told us how much Van took up the bathroom on tour.

The nurses came in and told us we all needed to leave and let Van get some rest so that he could go home in a day or two.

We all said our goodbyes and I waited until they all left before walking over to him and giving him a kiss goodbye. Lips, nose, forehead. I rested my forehead against his, and he looked at me like nobody else had ever done before. “I need to talk to you, Tin. I need to explain.” I shushed him with my lips and gently pecked at them until he opened his mouth, inviting me inside. I lightly tangled my tongue with his reveling in the moment that was purely us. He moaned a small moan, and I immediately broke away from him. I shouldn’t be getting him all worked up the day he woke up from a coma. “Later,” I whispered as I pecked him on the cheek. “Get some rest, Van. Goodnight.” I walked out and took a quick look back to find him already asleep.

After leaving Van to sleep, I went back to my suite. It was early morning in London so it was the middle of the night in New York. I needed to call Sal, my boss, and let him know I would be home in a few days, and I would pick up some extra shifts to make up for leaving so abruptly. He was a very understanding boss, and I couldn’t be more grateful. I got out my tablet and decided it was time to check my emails and see if anything new was happening. I knew I had a few bills to pay. I scrolled through the junk mail and halfway down the list was a name I didn’t recognize with the words, “Please call me to discuss an opportunity to join our agency” in the subject line.

I opened the email, and literally, gasped out loud when I read who the email was from.

A talent agent. Not just any talent agency, but one of the biggest agencies in the city. I was flabbergasted. Me? They wanted me? I stared in awe at the screen reading the email over and over again until I couldn’t see straight, and the pure exhaustion of the past week finally won out.

It was the middle of the day when I woke up to a knocking on my door. Shit! I had slept about eight hours and it was afternoon already. I threw the covers off and hurriedly put on a bra and got to the door. I flung it open and my breath caught in my throat. There stood James in a three-piece designer suit holding an enormous bouquet of red roses and holding a teal blue box. A Tiffany box. He immediately dropped to one knee in front of me. He handed me the roses and looked up at me. With those hopeful brown eyes that knew every part of my soul, every piece of my history, looking up at me from bended knee, I felt that tug of war rope being pulled even tighter in each direction. James opened the blue box, and there it sat. My ring. The one he bought before any of this happened. Before he had to leave. Before I moved to New York. Before I met Van. Before. When we were just James and Tinley, college sweethearts without real grownup cares or real responsibilities. Tears welled up in my eyes, and I could see a watery vision of James. I quickly wiped them from my eyes.

“Tin. My beautiful sweet, Tinley. I’m so sorry that I waited to do this, but you left when I was planning this huge proposal to sweep you off your feet. And now, well I just couldn’t wait anymore. I couldn’t stand the thought of you never coming back to me. Of us never being US again. I want you, Tinley. I love you. You and I are real. We aren’t some fling. We aren’t some fantasy. We are real, and I want that dream we always talked about with our house in the suburbs and the 2.5 kids and the dog named Lucky. I want it all… with you. Marry me, Tinley. Let me make you happy, baby.”

I didn’t know what to say. He was going to give me everything we’d planned. Our dream of forever. My heart was ripping in two and I wasn’t sure what to do. He sat there vulnerable, and he looked so optimistic, and he expected me to speak, but I couldn’t. The words wouldn’t form on my tongue. They wouldn’t come out. He was giving me the forever that I’d envisioned since I fell in love with him, only now I saw a future with Van, too. I didn’t want to tell him no, but I loved them both in different ways. We had a special connection. He knew me like a best friend would know you.

Van and I, however, had passion and intense chemistry. He and I had a level of comfort and intimacy that I had never experienced with James. I loved him in a way that I wasn’t sure existed until he came into my life. I carried his child, which formed a bond that nothing could touch, and I knew he loved me with the same intensity. He wasn’t the guy I thought he was, he was much different, and he was mine… Once. He said he loved me, but he never said he wanted me back. He had been with Jade even after the blowup at the club. He never tried to contact me. Maybe I was so deluded that all the things I thought he really felt, the connection, was just one sided. He never tried to call me after all that I told him about the baby. Never heard not one word from him. He never emailed, texted, called, stopped by.

Nothing. I think I played it up in my head from the beginning. I mean, this guy was every woman’s dream, a famous rock star, and I fooled myself into thinking I could be his one and only. He’d only shown me that I was disposable, and the flavor of the month. How could I be so delusional?