Chapter Eighteen
When I climb into a cab at the airport and say, “Nate Crane’s house, please,” I almost expect the guy to laugh at me. Instead, he shakes his head, mutters something about tourists, and starts the drive to Hollywood Hills.
“Nate Crane lives right past those gates,” he announces in a bored tone.
The house in question is lit up like Granny’s last birthday cake, and the circle drive has so many high-end cars that it would make the nicest (er, only) dealer in New Hope weep.
“Where ya wanna go next? Eminem’s home isn’t far from here.”
“No. This is where I’ll get out, thanks.”
“You know they don’t just let you come party with ’em, right?”
I smile and hand him cash for my fare. He looks at me like I’ve lost my mind but shrugs as I climb out of the back.
When I walk up to the gate, there are two security guards in black suits. Big guys.
“Sorry, ma’am,” a dark-skinned man calls from in front of the gate. “Private party.”
“Keep walking,” his white comrade instructs.
“Yeah, um.” Shit. I didn’t really prepare to face the Men in Black to get to Nate. “I—”
“Jesus, Hanna, girl? Is that you?” The first guy slides his sunglasses down his nose and peers at me over the tops. “What are you wearing?” He nods to one of the other guys then grabs me by the upper arm as the gates slide open.
So I guess I’m going to get in after all, because next thing I know, he’s sitting me in a golf cart and driving me up to the house. Without a word, he leads me out, up the front stairs, and into the house.
“Nate lives here?” The massive marble staircase fills the entryway with all the pomp and circumstance of a grand museum. Crystal chandeliers hang overhead. Somehow, it doesn’t seem fitting of the secretly dorky rocker I know so little about.
The man frowns at me. “What’s wrong with you?” He shakes his head. “I can’t have you going back there dressed like this. Not with all those hos hanging around.”
It’s my turn to frown. I wasn’t exactly worried about my ensemble of a T-shirt and jeans when I left my house this morning. I was more worried about getting the hell out of Dodge. Anyway, I’m not here to compete with any “hos.” I just want a chance to talk to Nate.
“Um, do we know each other?” I ask the man as we head up the stairs.
He leads me into an impressive, large bedroom with an even more impressive walk-in closet. “Oh, you think you’re funny and you’re going to act like you don’t know me, huh? Well, play coy all you want, but those girls Crane has over tonight aren’t playing games.”
“What are—” I’m cut off by my own shriek as the man yanks my ponytail holder from my hair and my T-shirt off over my head.
I wrap my arms around myself, trying for what modesty I can.
He wriggles his eyebrows. “Well, at least you wore the good underwear.” Then he’s scanning the closet and I relax. This man isn’t interested in ogling me. In fact, if I had to guess… “Damn good thing you have a gay man around to dress you tonight, sweetheart. Because them bitches out back aren’t messing around.”
I gasp dramatically. “You’re telling me there are both bitches and hos here tonight?”
“You think you’re cute,” he says, moving his head side to side, “but they’re ’bout to steal your man.”
“He’s not my man.”
The man rolls his eyes and waves away my objection. “This!” He pulls a bright red dress from the rack and offers it to me.
“Whose clothes are these?”
“Well, they’re Janelle’s, of course. Now get changed and walk by that boy before he does something he regrets. I don’t know what you did to him, but he’s been in a bad way since he got back here Friday night. Drinking, partying. Hiding from something.” He raises an eyebrow and gives me an unimpressed once-over. “You know what you did.”
“Actually, I—”
“Change. Then meet Jamaal in the bathroom to freshen that makeup.”
He’s halfway out of the closet when I ask, “Who’s Jamaal?” It’s only one question of the approximately 1700 that are floating around in my mind right now, but since I’m supposed to see “Jamaal” next, I guess it takes priority.
The man stops, turns, and glares at me. “I thought you were clean, girl? You know that’s why Janelle liked you. None of the drugs and bullshit. Now get changed and meet me in the bathroom.”
“Jamaal!” I hold my breath. Could this flamboyant man be such a walking cliché that he speaks of himself in the third person?
The man stops and turns. “Yes, princess?”
I grin. I can’t help it. I like this guy. A lot. “I don’t remember you.”
He snorts. “Don’t be a bitch. Nobody forgets Jamaal.”
“No, I…” I shake my head and bite back my laughter. “I don’t remember much of anything from the last year. I had a head injury, and I have amnesia.”
His big brown eyes grow impossibly wider. “No shit?”
“No shit,” I say solemnly. “And the more I find out about what I’ve forgotten…” I swallow, struggling to verbalize the strange but undeniable impulse that brought me here. “The more I learn, the more I realize I need to spend time with Nate before shutting him out of my life.”
“Why would you shut him out? That’s crazy talk,” he says. I hold up my left hand, and Jamaal draws in a long breath, his nostrils flaring as he presses his hand to his chest. “Who gave you that pathetic excuse for a jewel?”
“Does the name Max Hallowell ring any bells?”
He shakes his head and makes a tsking sound. “You don’t remember Nathaniel? Truly?”
Nathaniel. I like that. Fits with the comic book T-shirts and Hulk tattoo. Nathaniel. “When I woke up in the hospital, I didn’t remember him at all. Now I only remember bits and pieces. I just want him to talk to me.”
He hums, noncommittal. “Change and meet me in the bathroom.” With a flourish, he shuts the doors behind him and leaves me alone in the brightly lit closet.
I like Jamaal enough that I decide to follow his directions rather than questioning him. I strip out of my clothes and pull the red dress overhead. It’s too small for me, but he chose a dress that stretches nicely, and after a bit of yanking and tugging, it covers my hips almost respectably. I spot a pair of matching red heels on the shoe rack and grin when I see that they’re my size. I might feel uncomfortable in this dress, but I love shoes. I’ve always loved shoes. Shoes always fit.
My phone buzzes in my purse and I pull it out to see a new text.
Nix: You need to call me. STAT.
I don’t want to talk to anyone from home right now. I can’t handle the sympathy I know they want to deliver.
When I exit the closet, I don’t have a chance to look for the bathroom before Jamaal is whistling at me—à la calling Fido, not à la catcall—and waving me into another room.
I gasp as I step into the glitzy bathroom. Glitz is the only word for it. Marble and glass, mirrors and crystal. It’s a large, shining space that’s too over the top to belong on anything but an episode of Cribs.
“If you’re going to stand there with your mouth hanging open, at least turn to me so I can touch you up while you gawk.”
I obey, and Jamaal’s large hands begin applying mascara, blush, and lip gloss in a rather expert way. When he’s done, I can only blink at myself in the mirror. In less than three minutes, he managed to transform me from Plain Jane to one of the LA-caliber women I saw milling at the airport.
“Wow.”
“You’re welcome. Now let’s hurry down to the pool and find that fool man of yours before he does something really stupid.”
“He’s not my man, Jamaal.”
He snorts in reply and leads me back out into the hallway, but instead of taking the stairs that brought us up here, he leads me to the back of the hall and opens a door to a small, narrow set of stairs.
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“Be careful in those heels.” When we hit the bottom, Jamaal points the way toward the back door. “There you go, kiddo. He’s out there making an ass of himself.”
I study the large French doors and the scantily clad women beyond. Some of them are dressed like I am now, in dresses and heels. Others are in bikinis and sarongs. Others still in bikinis and heels. Because bitches and hos, I guess.
They’re all painted and more beautiful than I will ever be without surgical enhancement. Knowing I’m going to step out there like I’m one of them makes my stomach cramp painfully.
“You’ve got something none of those women have,” Jamaal says from behind me, as if reading my thoughts.
“What’s that?”
“A mind of your own, kid. Why do you think he likes you so much?” He tilts up my chin and studies my face in the light. “You really don’t remember? That’s not just a bunch of bullshit?”
“I really don’t. Did I come here a lot?”
He shrugs. “A couple of times.”
My gaze drifts back toward the door and the music trickling in from outside. Someone screeches, and I hear a splash.
“What am I going to do if he won’t talk to me?”
Jamaal shrugs. “Janelle will call. We’ll get her to help. He can’t say no to her.”
Right. Janelle. The woman whose clothes I’m wearing. “And who’s Janelle?”
“Janelle Crane? How hard did you hit that head?”
He walks away as the name clicks into place in my mind. Janelle Crane. The actress. I struggle to keep my jaw hinged as I look down at my dress. I’m wearing Janelle Crane’s dress. Janelle Crane’s shoes. Holy. Shit.
“Martini?”
I jump at the voice. A woman is standing next to me with a tray of martini glasses filled with light pink liquid. “Um, no thanks.”
She smiles politely and heads out the door.
Rolling my shoulders back and lifting my chin, I follow her.
The back of the house is as gorgeous as the front. A large pool sits off to the right, surrounded by several tables and countless loungers. The space is overwhelmed with people, mostly women, and pounding music fills my ears. Women dance against each other, drink, and splash in the pool. And at least three look at me like I have two heads and should leave immediately.
I lift my chin and scan the scene for Nate. The only man in a crowd of women shouldn’t be that hard to find.
I spot him in the hot tub, using his mouth to take a shot glass from between a woman’s breasts. I stamp down the jealousy I feel at the sight and want to kick the shit out of myself.
My ego was battered and beaten by my memory of what Max did. Naturally, I thought I’d make myself feel better by visiting a celebrity who buries his face in the tits of whatever woman is handy. This was a stellar plan. Yet I can’t turn around. I keep moving, keep heading toward Nate and this I-don’t-know-what I’m after.
The click of my heels against the stone patio is muffled by the music and chatter, but I narrow in on the sound, concentrate on it as I cross to him.
He’s laughing about something, but when his gaze settles on me, his smile falls away. And after the way I treated him last time I saw him, who can blame him?
“Well, look who came to party,” he says, his words only slightly slurred.
He’s drunk. I can see it in his eyes. Hell, I can practically smell the booze rolling off everyone in that hot tub.
“Can we talk?” My words come out meek, and I wish I could take them back and replace them with a command. We need to talk. Something. Anything other than sounding and feeling weak and unwanted. I’m so sick of feeling unwanted.
“What do you think, ladies?” he asks the woman around him. “Is there room for one more?”
The women pout and crowd around Nate. “Aren’t we enough for you, Crane?” one asks. Another says, “Things were just getting interesting.” And another complains, “It’s already crowded in here. There’s hardly room for her.”
The jab at my size hurts worse than it would have fifty pounds ago. Because in my size tens, I’m bigger than the rest of them, the kind of women who scour racks for extra-small shorts. It hurts more than it would have before because this is as good as I get and I know it. In fact, this probably isn’t going to last.
I’m so stupid. I have a man at home who loves me. Who is more than I deserve. Who looks at me like I’m his world. Max screwed up. He hurt me. Betrayed me. But I can imagine a life with him, raising our kids in New Hope alongside our friends. So why am I here?
Nate’s gaze rakes over me, from my head to my toes, trailing electric fingers of need in its path. Why does my body react when he looks at me like this? “You want to talk?” he says, lifting heavy-lidded eyes back to mine. “Climb on in.” He turns to the women around him. “Sorry, ladies. I’m gonna need you to leave for a bit. You’re right. No room for her and all of you, and I like her more.”
The women whine in unison and fawn at Nate. He locks his eyes on mine for two beats before pressing a hard, open-mouthed kiss to the woman next to him. It’s wet, sloppy, and entirely for my benefit, and I won’t give him the satisfaction of looking away.
My stomach clenches, but I keep my face impassive as he releases her and the three women climb out of the hot tub, seemingly unconcerned with their bare chests.
He doesn’t even watch them go. HeeHe just he leans his head back, closes his eyes, and says, “You wanna talk, you’re gonna have to climb in.”
“I’m—” I shake my head, which is stupid since he can’t see me. “I’m not wearing a swimsuit.”
He lifts his head, and this time his gaze lands on my left hand. “I guess it can wait, then.”
“I came all the way here,” I say in a hard whisper. I don’t want to call too much attention to myself. “The least you can do is talk to me.”
“A lot of people visit me here.” He picks up a shot glass off the back of the tub and throws it back. “Too bad you didn’t bring a suit. We could have that talk you’re so set on.”
Fuck it. Even in underwear and a bra, I’ll be more modestly covered than most of the women here tonight. I kick off my shoes and peel the dress off over my head. I fold it neatly before setting it in a chair. The last thing I want to do is be responsible for ruining Janelle Crane’s dress.
When I turn back to the hot tub, his eyes are on me again, hot and greedy and…something else. There’s something more in those eyes this time. Sadness?
“Take the bra off too,” he orders as I step in.
“Dream on.” I sink into the water and have to swallow back a sigh as it bubbles around me and warms my skin. I’ve had such a long, shitty day, and I could really use a relaxing soak. Instead, I’ll talk to this jackass. Did I actually believe he was the person I needed when my heart was hurting?
He’s watching me carefully. “Last time we talked, you made it profoundly clear you didn’t want to see me again.”
“I changed my mind.”
“Yet I don’t remember inviting you here.”
“You sure know how to make a girl feel welcome. And is this seriously your house? It doesn’t seem like you at all.”
“Oh, so you know me now? Is that memory back?”
My cheeks burn with my blush. “Some of it.”
“Yeah?” He drops his gaze down to my breasts. “Anything good?”
“I remembered that I broke up with Max. I remembered that I never cheated on him. I remembered how much he hurt me.”
He sighs and leans his head back on the edge of the tub. “I’m not interested in being some prop for revenge.”
“This isn’t about revenge.”
He doesn’t look at me. “Sure it isn’t.”
“I called off the wedding.”
“I’ll believe that when his ring’s not on your finger. Why are you here, Hanna?”
“I’m here because nothing is as it seemed and…” And what? Why am I here? “You said you were in love with me.”
“Yeah, well, what was it you said? We all make mistakes?”
“Was the mistake being in love with me or telling me that you were?” I don’t know why it matters so much that I know, but right now it seems so important that I’d do almost anything to get an honest answer from him.
“What do you want from me?” He sounds almost bored.
I scan the party going on in full swing around us. The women, the booze, the superficial bullshit. “I just want to talk to you. Without all these people. Without all the secrets.”
He lifts a brow and grabs a phone from the ledge of the tub. He taps the screen then puts it down, and within seconds, Jamaal is coming out the back door with several other men in black suits.
“Party’s over,” Jamaal calls. “Thank you for coming. We hope you had a good time. Now it’s time to leave. You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.”
I blink in amazement as everyone does as he says, and minutes later, Nate and I are alone, the music is off, and the only sound is the whir of the hot tub’s jets and the hum of traffic in the distance.
“That better?” he asks softly. And maybe he’s not as drunk as I thought. And maybe he’s not bored with my presence. His eyes dip to my cleavage and back up, roaming over my face. Again, I get that feeling that he’s drinking me in. Memorizing me.
I swallow. The truth is that I want to memorize him too. The hard angles of his cheekbones and jaw, the dark brown of his bedroom eyes, the softness of his beautiful mouth.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he whispers.
“Why not? Maybe I should have let myself look at you the night you showed up in my bed. Maybe I should have made you talk to me then. Maybe if I knew what you know, I’d understand why I chose him instead of you.”
He lets out a breath and closes his eyes. I gather every bit of my courage and turn to him, straddling his lap and wrapping my arms behind his neck.
His eyes fly open. “What are you doing?”
“This isn’t about revenge.”
He brushes my jaw with the back of his knuckles.
I lean into his touch, the gentle reassurance of it. “It’s not about Max. It’s about us.”
Pain slices over his face and he drops his hand. “There is no us, Hanna.”
“I don’t remember making that choice. Just—”
His expression hardens. “There was no choice. Not about me. It was never a choice between me and Max. The only choice you had to make was whether to take Max back or not.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I never offered you what he did. The life, the marriage, the commitment. The happily-ever-fucking-after. I can’t. I won’t. It wasn’t a choice between him and me because I wasn’t offering you those things.”
I wilt and back away from him. If our relationship was purely physical, why do I feel this way? “You and me? This? It was just about sex?”
“Not even at first.”
“Then how—” I squeeze my eyes shut as the memory crashes over me and the understanding right along with it.
It was never a choice between two men.
“I’m sorry,” he breathes. “You have no idea how sorry.” Water sloshes as he stands and climbs out.
I follow numbly, not sure what else I’m supposed to do with myself.
He hands me a towel but doesn’t meet my eyes. “Come on. You can sleep in Janelle’s room.”
Into the house and back up the narrow stairs, he leads me to the room where Jamaal ushered me upon my arrival.
After clicking on a lamp, Nate disappears into the closet and returns with gray cotton pajamas. “These should fit,” he says. “You can stay as long as you want. You’re always welcome.”
I’m still reeling from the memory. “I feel…really stupid.”
“Don’t.” He tilts my chin until I’m looking at him. Then he drops his hand quickly, as if touching me costs him. “Please don’t.”