Separation (4 page)

“Don't be fucking stupid. Stay in the hotel, come home, I don't care. I just need to know one thing,” Jameson started as the elevator doors slid open, revealing their floor.

“And what is that, sir?” Sanders asked. Jameson got out onto the floor, then turned back to stare at Sanders. It was strange, to have been in someone's life for so long, but to not know them as well as someone who had only been there for a couple months. Jameson didn't like the feeling.

“Are we okay?” he asked in a straight forward voice. Sanders blinked a couple times, the question clearly making him even more uncomfortable.

“I'm not sure. You ..., you disappointed me, sir,” he answered. Jameson nodded.

“I know. I should have listened to you.”

“But you didn't. I have only ever tried to steer you right.”

“I know. And I'm
very
sorry.”

Sanders looked completely shocked, and Jameson felt it would be best to catch the man off guard while he had the chance. He grabbed Sanders by the arm and yanked him forward, into a hug. It was awkward for a moment, then Sanders relaxed. Leaned into him. Until Tatum, Jameson had been the only person to ever really hug Sanders. For two very un-affectionate men, sometimes it was very natural between them. Jameson was the closest thing Sanders had to a father.

Sometimes, Jameson lost sight of that.

“I appreciate that, sir,” Sanders mumbled against his chest. Jameson laughed.

“Good. Now. Do you think
she'll
accept my apology?” he asked. Sanders pulled away, made a production of straightening out his suit.

“Honestly? No. She doesn't want anything to do with you,” Sanders replied.

“We'll see about that; she doesn't have much of an option, not while she's stuck in here,” Jameson laughed. Sanders shook his head.

“She's getting released tomorrow.”

“
What?
”

“Tomorrow. She's been declared mentally stable and her throat doesn't hurt anymore. They have no reason to keep her anymore. She wants to go home,” Sanders explained.

Home? But I haven't cleaned up the library yet ...

“But I thought I -,”

“If you are going to apologize, I suggest you do it tonight,” Sanders interrupted, and then he reached out and hit a button, causing the elevator doors to slide shut.

Jameson was left at a loss. Of course, he'd known this day would come, but he'd thought he would have just a little bit more time.

Jameson Kane
always
had more time.

As he walked to her room, he prepped himself with the realization that she probably knew he was coming, was maybe even waiting. Sanders didn't pull any punches for Jameson, but there was no doubt he would have prepared Tatum. Jameson had thought his little midnight visits were a secret, but now he doubted it. She had probably known the whole time.

“May I come in?” he asked, once he got to the doorway.

Tate was laying flat on her bed, but he could tell she was awake. She took a deep breath, let it out as a sigh. He held very still, waiting for her voice. It felt like it had been a lot longer than a week since he had last heard it.

Probably because I never really listened.

“You never asked permission any of the other times, so what's stopping you now?”

Jameson strode in to the room and went to his chair, which was pulled up to the left side of her bed. He took off his jacket and draped it over the back, before sitting down. She still hadn't turned to look at him. He cleared his throat.

“Do you want to do this now?” Jameson asked. She nodded her head.

“Like a band aid, just rip it off,” she replied.

“
I'm sorry
.”

Tate looked shocked. She glanced at him, and then her hand fumbled around on the mattress, looking for the bed controller. She found it and pushed a button until she was sitting almost upright. She had some color back in her face, though she was still much paler than she had been a month ago. It made her dark eyes and hair stand out. He couldn't stop staring at her.

Have I ever just looked at her?

“For what?” she asked. He wasn't quite sure how to answer her, wasn't sure if there were enough words, even. If there would be enough time, enough space, enough air, to express just how sorry he was to her.

“For ..., everything,” he finally answered. She managed a laugh.

“Sounds like a cop out. You don't have to apologize just to make me feel better. I'm okay, I don't -,” she started, but his anger at himself boiled over and spilled onto her.

“I'm sorry I hurt you,” Jameson snapped. “I'm sorry I was too stupid and pigheaded to just call you. I'm sorry I didn't stop you from leaving. I am
really
sorry I tried to give you that money, and I am
very
sorry I didn't go after you that night, but most of all,
I'm sorry I didn't kill Dunn
.”

“Thank you. That means a lot,” she told him, but her voice was flat. He narrowed his eyes.

“You don't believe me.”

He said it as a statement, not a question. Tate shrugged.

“I don't know. I'm trying not to think about it,” she replied.

“I never stop thinking about it. Thinking that maybe I -,”

“Why are you here, Jameson? You kicked me out. You brought her home to embarrass me – mission accomplished, by the way. I quite literally almost died from embarrassment,” she chuckled. His heart skipped a beat.

Dead? Never. You can't leave me.

“
Not funny,
” Jameson growled. “I was so upset with you. I thought you had gone back on your word. I saw those pictures of you, with that guy, and I just got so angry.
So stupid
. Jesus, what a fucking night. I even impressed myself with how much of a bastard I was.”

He groaned and leaned forward, putting his face in his hands. He wasn't the kind of man who could be easily intimidated, but suddenly the thought of meeting her gaze made him feel nervous. Sick. Made him feel
ashamed
.

Because I'm not worthy of her.

“Is this a game?” Tate whispered. Jameson shook his head.

“No, baby girl. No games,” he whispered back.

“What are we, if we don't have games?”

“
Something else.
”

“I hate you,” she sobbed, and Jameson lifted his head. She was back to staring at the ceiling, but now tears were streaming down her face. He frowned.

“I want you to know that I -,”

“
I fucking hate you!
What about that statement don't you get!?” she was suddenly screaming at him. He sat back, a little stunned.

“I
am
getting it, loud and clear. I just think -,”

“No!
No!
You don't get to think! I almost fucking died, Jameson! And I'm not blaming that on you, but you sure didn't fucking help! So I don't give a flying
FUCK
about what you think! I just want you to get out,” she sobbed, pressing her hands to her eyes. He stood up, but he had no intention of leaving. He moved closer to her bed, leaned over her.

“You and I have unfinished business, baby girl,” he told her softly.

She swung her arm in a wide arc. For someone who had “
almost died
”, she certainly had a lot of strength. She walloped him right in the ear. She let out a shriek and continued swinging her arms. Jameson didn't move away, just ducked his head and struggled to hold onto her arms. Her whole body thrashed around on the bed, and it took him a few moments to pin her wrists to the mattress.

“You and I
are
finished business,
Kane,
” Tate hissed, refusing to meet his eyes.

He remembered the night they had fought in his kitchen. When she had broken all the dishes and he'd held the scissors to her throat. The look in her eye that night was something he had never wanted to see again; had
hoped
to never see again.

Now, the look was back, only worse. Much, much worse.

I should've been the one in that pool.

“You and I will
never
be finished, Tate. Haven't you figured that out yet?”

“
Get out.
”

“No. Not until you tell me what I can do, what you want me to do, to fix this,” he replied, squeezing her wrists. She had to tell him, he had to know. Jameson Kane could fix anything, solve any problem – she just had to tell him how.
He had to make this right somehow.
She started to laugh and it turned into sobs.

“You wanna know what I want? What I
really
want? I want you to leave me alone. I want you to go away. I want to have never met you.
I wish
I had never met you. I wish that I hadn't catered that stupid party, and I wish I had never gone to your apartment that night. I want you to
not exist
anymore. I want you to just
go away,
” Tate cried, trying to pull her wrists free.

Not exist? But I made her. She's mine. You can't exist if I don't, stupid girl.

“Alright, alright,” Jameson said in a soft voice, pulling away when she seemed on the verge of hyperventilating. He had never seen her so upset. “If that's what you really want, I'll go.”

She continued sobbing while he grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, trying to stop the flood gates that had opened. It hurt his heart to see her that way. Hurt his pitch black soul. He realized she was saying something, so he walked back up to the bed while he slipped back into his coat.

“
Just go, just go, just go, just go,
” Tate was whispering, over and over again. Jameson sighed and brushed the hair away from her face, before leaning down and kissing her on the forehead. She didn't move, didn't say anything. Just cried. He turned away and forced himself not to look back. If he looked back, he would be lost forever, and if he was lost, he certainly wouldn't be able to find her again.

And Tatum most definitely needed finding.

“See you around, baby girl,” he called out as he strode towards the door.

“No, you won't,” she said after him.

History really does repeat itself.

He couldn't resist a laugh. He was, after all, Satan.

“
I will if I want to.
”

“
What are you doing?
”

Tate glanced over her shoulder, trying to find who owned the voice that was hissing at her. Her best friend, Angier, stepped out of the shadows, joining her at the edge of the balcony. She sighed and went back to looking out over the city.

“I was trying to escape,” she replied. He glared down at her.

“I meant, what the fuck is this? I thought you said you weren't going to do this anymore.”

“
You
said I wasn't going to do it anymore. I never said anything.”

Tate took a long drag on her cigarette and blew the smoke up at him. Ang was much taller than her, almost by a foot, and the smoke mostly dissipated before it reached him. He glared some more and waved his hand around.

“Of all the things I've ever seen you do, this is by far the most disgusting,” he told her. Tate laughed.

“Wow. Considering all the things you've seen me do, that's quite a statement,” she snickered. He finally smiled at her.

“Exactly.”

*

Ever since her midnight swim/Xanax-whiskey-cocktail, Tate's relationship with Ang had been strained. She was more grateful than she would ever be able to express, and she was so horrifically embarrassed by the whole episode, she could barely look him in the eye. Ang had seen her at her worst, at her absolute lowest – so low, she hadn't seen a way up again. So bad, she couldn't even remember it.

However, Ang
could
remember it. In vivid, technicolor, high-definition recall. After Tate had gotten out of the hospital, she had stayed with him for a couple a nights, and it was hard to say who had worse nightmares, her or him. She had scarred him a little, and she would never be able to forgive herself for that.

Even knowing all that, though, knowing everything Ang had done for her, and everything she had done
to
him, didn't stop her from being annoyed with him. It compounded her guilt, but it was the truth. She couldn't deny it. Tate had never been good at lying to herself.

Ang mothered. He hovered. He watched her with a wariness in his eyes, like he was expecting her to leap off a ledge at any moment. She lived with him for a week, but when she caught him hiding the knives, she moved back out. She wasn't suicidal, and he claimed that he knew she wasn't suicidal – but his actions said otherwise. She moved back in to her old apartment, squeezing in with her sister, Ellie, and her old roommate, Rusty.

The fighting started not long afterwards. They would argue over everything. Over nothing. Ang would show up unannounced, and Tate would walk into her bedroom to find him rifling through her stuff. They'd be out at dinner, and he would try to set her up with random guys. She'd be laying in bed, and he would show up at one in the morning to drag her to a party.

Not cool.

Ang just couldn't understand that she wasn't the same old Tatum. Part of that girl had stayed in that pool. Stayed in that house in Weston. She didn't want to go to parties, and she didn't want to hook up with random guys, but most of all, she didn't want her best friend staring at her like she was a nut job.

She moved out of her apartment, stopped answering her phone for a while. Then Ang seemed to return the favor – Tate was hardly ever able to get a hold of him, and even when she could, he was rushing her off the phone, or giving her all sorts of reasons for why he couldn't hang out with her. The stress would have been enough to drive her to drink, but she hadn't touched alcohol since that night in October.

So she took up smoking.

Jameson would kill me for doing something like this.

Her hospital stay hadn't been very enjoyable, either. Ang had been two steps away from having a nervous breakdown. Her sister wasn't any better – a pregnant woman in the process of leaving her abusive soon-to-be-ex-husband; Ellie had enough problems without having to deal with her estranged-sister's alleged suicide attempt.

Sanders had visited every single day, but he was always quiet and taciturn. Tate's little episode had really upset him. And then the day when she had found out that
he
had been visiting her. A night nurse, going off duty in the wee hours of the morning, had let it slip.

“You're very lucky to have such a handsome man visiting you all the time.”

“Sanders? Yeah, I know.”

“Well, yes, he's good looking, too, but I meant the other one.”

“Ang?”

“No, the one who comes at night.”

“At night!?”

“Yes. The man with those blue eyes. I swear, it's like he's looking straight through me.”

Pretty accurate description. Tate had almost had a panic attack. She hadn't seen Jameson, or heard from him, at all – he had asked her to leave, she had gone. She figured that had been the end of it. He didn't care about her. In fact, it was now painfully obvious that he had
never
cared about her.

You're such a stupid girl – only you would fall for the devil. Only you would be stupid enough to think he'd fall for you, as well.

Tate hadn't wanted to talk to him. The whole situation made her feel ill. Made her feel like passing out. Jameson. Petrushka. A pool.
Everything
. She had never been entirely normal, but Jameson had driven her straight to the center of crazy-town and dropped her ass off. How could a human being do that? Punish someone, just for liking him? Talking dirty to her in bed was one thing; hurting her soul was quite another. As slutty and masochistic as she was, even Tate had her limits.

She knew she had to claw her way back to some semblance of normal, so she gathered as much courage as she could – which wasn't much – and waited up for him on her last night in the hospital. It hadn't gone well. She hadn't been able to handle the strange, sad look in his eyes. He wasn't allowed to be sad, not when he was part of the problem. Tate may have driven herself straight into that pool, but Jameson had driven Petrushka between them.
He did not get to be sad.
She pretty much just broke down in the middle of it all and screamed at him to leave her alone. To get out of her life. To stop existing.

And for the first time ever, Jameson had respected her wishes.
 

“
I will if I want to.
”
 

It was the same old story, all these years later. Only much, much darker. The first time Jameson had said those words to her, she had secretly been delighted at the idea that he would want to see her again. This time around, not so much. It was a whole bevy of emotions, tangled together. He was bad. He was wrong. He was the devil.
She never wanted to see him again
.

And yet it was a month before Tate stopped hovering over her phone, hoping for his call.

It was so fucked up. Jameson had done something that was so horrible, she still couldn't even wrap her brain around it. Still didn't really understand it, understand
why
. And Tate knew,
she knew
, if he could do it once, he could do it again. Most likely
would
do it again.
Had probably
enjoyed
doing it.
Had probably laughed all the way back to his bedroom about it, right along side his gorgeous, fabulous, Ukranian-Danish, supermodel, sex slave, homewrecker-slut-whore-mother-fucker-cunt-shit-fuck.
Fuck
.

What is wrong with me!?

One good thing did come out of her hospital stay, though. Tate was propped up in her bed one day, trying to gather the courage to rip out her IV so she could make an escape, when a nurse walked into her room. The lady fussed around her, put extra medical tape around the needle and smacked it down hard before standing back by the door.

“You have a very special visitor today,” she had said.

“Who is it?”

“Only my favorite athlete! If you don't mind, I would love an autograph before he leaves. Think you could help me with that?” the nurse had babbled.

Tate had stared at her in shock, her mouth hanging open. The nurse finally just walked away, and two seconds later, Nick Castille walked into the room. The first baseman for the Boston Red Sox. The guy she had slept with in her bar, after having only known him for two hours. Sure, they had become friends before her overdose, gone to dinner a bunch, the movies once or twice, but really, nothing more than that.

Nick had gone looking for Tate at her apartment, and Ellie had told him she was in the hospital, though not why. Tate didn't want him to have anymore delusions about her being a nice, normal girl, so she had laid it all on him. Told him about Jameson, how they had “met”, how they had gotten reacquainted. Told Nick about the night she had spent with him, how she had been upset about Petrushka, how she had used him. Told him about the party – though she did leave out the parts with Dunn and Jameson paying her off. Told Nick about the crazy drive in to town, the Xanax, and the pool. She had wanted to scare him off.

It didn't work. Tate may have been a succubus, but Nick truly was a nice, normal guy. He didn't abandon his friends, and he considered Tatum to be a pretty good friend.

What is wrong with him?

When Tate finally realized she would have to move because she couldn't stand living somewhere Ang had complete access to, Nick offered for her to live with him. She made it very clear that she was in no way interested in a relationship; romantic, sexual, or otherwise. Nick assured her that his intentions were noble and good, and that it was just a place for her to stay, as long as she liked.

He wasn't home much during the weekdays. It was the off season and he spent most of his time at a cabin on Lake Ontario. But during the weekends he always came down to Boston, first thing in the morning on Saturdays. Tatum couldn't cook at all, but he taught her how to make French toast and omelets. Nick was a good old country boy, from Iowa. His momma had raised him right. He took Tate out to dinners, stayed in and watched movies with her, and most importantly, he never, ever, once asked her how she was doing. He never looked at her like she was crazy.

An invaluable gift to Tate, at that point in her life.

*

“
You're doing it again.
”

“Huh?” Tate snapped to attention. Ang was leaning close to her, looking into her face.

“That thing, where you stare off into space. Are you thinking about
him
again?” he demanded. She frowned.

“No.”

“Tate. We talked about this,” Ang said, his voice full of warning.

“Ang. Stop. You're not my dad,” she warned him right back.

“But he's the one who -,”

She reached over and singed his hand with her cigarette. Ang hissed and yanked his arm back, jumping out of her reach. She laughed and flicked the cigarette over the ledge before wiping her hands down the front of her skirt.

“I wasn't thinking about him. Let's have a good night, just this once,” she pleaded, before grabbing his hand and leading him inside.

“I can't stand all these yuppies,” Ang whispered under his breath as they made their way through a crush of people. Tate elbowed him.

“They're not yuppies,” she mumbled back.

“They all have more money than I'll ever have. In my opinion, that makes them yuppies.”

“
Snob.
”

“Why did you tell me to come to this thing?” he complained, pulling at the tie he was wearing. She stepped in front of him and batted his hands away.

“I haven't seen you in a couple weeks, I thought it would be nice to hang out,” she replied, adjusting the Windsor knot for him.

“What, so you can show off all your
new friends?
” Ang said, his tone snide. Tate glared at him and yanked the knot up high. He made a choking sound.

“
Shut up
.”

Nick had invited her to a party, some shindig that was being thrown for the whole team, in a fancy hotel suite. She hadn't really wanted to go, but even Nick was beginning to worry about her spending so much time at home. Tate had originally asked Sanders to go with her, but he didn't like parties. Or people. Or places. So she had figured what the hell, why not try to mend fences with Ang?

It wasn't going too hot.

“I gotta go soon anyway,” he told her as they made their way to a table full of food. She looked up at him.

“Where? I told you this thing would be going for a while,” Tate reminded him, a little surprised. Ang shrugged.

“I know, but I had other plans. Sorry, kitty cat,” he replied, rubbing his hand up and down her back.

She frowned, but didn't argue. The same thing had happened the last couple times they had made an effort to hang out. Ang always had “other plans”; something he else
had
to do. It was frustrating. Hard to mend a friendship when one person was depressed, and the other was checked out all the time.