The crowd certainly seems to thinks so as they roar their approval. I smile at the teenage girls who ooh and aah, making sure to stop as often as I can for a few words, a handful of selfies and as many hugs as my dress and I can handle. I ignore most of the men, whose eyes are on the shadow between my breasts or the flashes of my hips and ass that the cutouts reveal, instead of on my face.
My mother told me at an early age that there are two kinds of women in the world, those who dress for men and those who dress for themselves. She’s always been the former while I’ve made it a point of pride to always be the latter. The dress, the shoes, the sex kitten image—they’re all for me. Yes, they put my body on display, but if everyone is looking at my breasts or what the slit of my dress reveals, then no one is actually looking at me. No one is paying attention to the fact that my skin is too pale and that, tonight especially, I’m batting my false lashes extra hard to hide the tears that keep popping up.
I sign autographs for a gaggle of college-aged girls—all of whom are sweet and complimentary and so excited to be here, and then turn to keep walking only to get stopped by Bryan Jenkins, the entertainment reporter I despise the most. I sidestepped him when I first took to the red carpet, but it looks like he abandoned his post to get this sound bite with me.
Not that I should be surprised. He’s just one more man determined to get what he wants from me whether I want to give it or not.
“Veronica, thank you so much for stopping. How are you this evening?” He shoves his microphone in my face.
“I’m doing very well, thank you. I’m so excited to be here tonight. The fans are wonderful as always.” I pause and wave to a couple of girls who are screaming my name. “Plus I’m so excited to finally see Belladonna in all its glory. I can’t wait to hear what people think of it.”
“People are going to love it!” he gushes.
“That’s very kind of you to say. I certainly hope they do.”
“What’s not to love?” he says with a sly grin. “You all dressed up with a side of crazy? It’s right in your wheelhouse, isn’t it?”
You bastard. You fucking coward, taking a swipe at me all in good fun because you think I can’t fire back. Well, fuck you, then. “Absolutely,” I tell him, all toothy smile and wide, Bambi eyes. “Being able to experiment a little is what I love best about acting.”
“I bet,” Bryan says and steps away, the camera panning back to the crowd.
I step forward then, leaning in so that I can stroke a hand up his arm to his shoulder before walking my fingers slowly, slowly, down his chest. I let my eyes go all blurry and lick my tongue along my bottom lip as I lean even closer. He’s all but gagging for it—which is exactly how I want him—as another network’s camera pans over to us and holds. “Darling,” I whisper when my mouth is only inches from his ear, “you’d do well to remember that crazy isn’t the only thing in my wheelhouse.”
“Fuck,” he breathes, so lost in the spell I’ve created that he forgets himself and reaches for me. I dance away before he can get his disgusting hands anywhere near me, leaving him standing there on national television with empty arms and a very obvious erection.
It’s the little things that make this job so worthwhile.
I’m grinning for real when I stop to talk to another group of girls and we have a grand time taking selfies together and chatting about all the beautiful dresses on display tonight. They’re at the end of the red carpet—the perfect way to finish my walk to the theater, and I blow them kisses as I turn around to give the crowd and photographers the money shot—me, standing alone in front of the doors to Grauman’s theater—banners of the Belladonna on either side of me.
I hold the pose long enough for all the cameras to flash and then I scan the crowd, waving back at all the fans that are waving at me. I’m about to turn around, about to head inside, when I scan past a pair of familiar, dark eyes.
I turn my head a little, scan back toward them. And find myself staring straight into Ian’s black magic eyes.
My whole body wigs out, flashing from hot to cold to hot again. My hands tremble, my knees lock and my breath catches in my throat. I nearly go down, probably would have if my pride hadn’t kicked in and turned my spine ramrod straight. No way am I falling in front of all these cameras. No way am I turning myself into a laughingstock for him.
Fuck that and fuck him. He nearly destroyed me once. I’ll be damned if he does it again.
I narrow my eyes at him slightly, then smile extra wide. Just before I bring my hand to my lips and blow him a kiss.
And there it is. The money shot that will be on every entertainment website in the country by tomorrow morning. A nice little memento for Ian to remember me by.
Chapter 33
It’s two o’clock in the morning and I’m sitting on Veronica’s porch, just drunk enough not to care that this is a very, very bad idea. She should be home any minute—if she’s coming home, that is. The online gossip site that had exclusive access to the Belladonna party said she left half an hour ago.
As I check again for any new updates, I try not to think about how pathetic it is that this is all the contact I currently have with her. Gossip updates from a popular website that I didn’t even know existed before tonight.
Fuck. How the mighty have fallen.
Maybe I should have gone—to the premiere and the party. But I didn’t want to speak to her in a room full of people, where she was on her guard and prepared for whatever might get thrown at her. I want to talk to her, to really talk to her, and to do that I need her to be alone. I need her to be willing to let me in.
And I don’t just mean to her house.
Originally, I’d planned on waiting for morning. I figured I’d call, see if she’d let me take her out to brunch or something. But after seeing her at the premiere, I changed my mind. Kind of hard not to after she blew me that kiss. Everyone else was charmed, but I recognized it for what it was. Fuck you and goodbye all rolled into one glamorous purse of her fuck-me red lips.
Yeah, she won’t be answering any phone calls or texts from me. That much is glaringly apparent.
I’m not okay with that, which is why I ended up sneaking over the fence into her neighborhood when the guard was distracted with another visitor. I’m not going to let her ignore me. I’m not going to let her just throw us away, no matter how much I deserve to suffer.
I told myself that I came back to L.A. just to make sure that she’s okay.
I told myself that that was all that mattered. That whatever was going to happen between us was going to happen and I couldn’t force it. Any more than I could go back to the time before everything went to hell.
But that was before I saw her, before I was close enough to look in her eyes and see the pain she’s trying so hard to hide. And well, fuck that. Just fuck that.
Yes, I lied to her. Yes, I originally had an agenda when I set up that Vanity Fair interview. But that agenda went by the wayside pretty damn quickly after meeting her and I am not going to let her throw away everything that we could have because I fucked up. She deserves more than that and maybe, just maybe, so do I.
I’m just taking out my phone to check and see if there’s another update when a car rolls slowly up the driveway. It doesn’t look like Veronica’s normal car, and for a moment I’m afraid she’s brought a man home with her. My heart drops to my knees and I stand up, fists clenched by my sides. No way is she doing this. No way am I going to let her go in that house with another man. She’s mine and the sooner she comes to understand that fact, the better off we’ll both be.
A month ago, I’d be freaking out at such thoughts, worried that I was turning into some kind of psychopathic stalker like my brother. But fuck that, too. Veronica is mine and there’s nothing even vaguely sociopathic about it.
The car stops at the top of the driveway and I realize it’s not some strange guy’s car after all. It’s the limo that dropped her off in front of the theater tonight. Thank God.
/> She gets out in the center of a pool of light and for long seconds I forget how to breathe. She’s so beautiful. So goddamn beautiful that sometimes it’s impossible to do anything but stare at her.
But as she turns around and begins the walk up the winding pathway to the front door, she looks more than beautiful. She looks ethereal. Fragile, even, now that she’s been stripped of the armor she wore so well while on the red carpet. Up close I can see that she’s lost weight she couldn’t afford to lose, and now that her makeup has worn off I can see the dark circles under her eyes.
It’s obvious she’s been in hell these last few weeks and the fact that I am at least partially responsible for that is a shame I will take with me to my grave.
I have to fix this. If I do, maybe I’ll finally manage to fix both of us, as well.
“Veronica.” I say her name as I start to step out of the shadows, doing my best not to startle her.
She jumps anyway, her clutch falling to the ground at her feet. She doesn’t scream and at first I think it’s because she recognizes my voice. But then I get my first look at her face and realize that isn’t the case at all. She didn’t know it was me waiting here for her. She just didn’t care enough to scream.
The realization chills me in a way nothing ever has before—and considering who I have for a brother, that’s saying something.
“Veronica, it’s me,” I tell her, bounding down the steps until I, too, am in the light. In those moments as I’m walking toward her, her face goes from resigned to devastated. Watching it—watching her—breaks something inside of me, something I didn’t even know could be broken.
“Baby, I’m sorry,” I say as I crouch to pick up her purse. “I’m so sorry.”
She refuses to take it when I hold it out to her, as if just my touch is poisonous. “You need to go.”
“I’m not going anywhere. We need to talk.”
“I think we’ve done all the talking we’re going to,” she says as she walks around me to the front door. “Go home, Ian.”
“You are my home.”
“Then go away. There’s nothing for you here.” She opens the front door, slips inside. Starts to close it in my face.
I stop it with a hand, push my way inside.
“Damn it, Ian.”
“Damn it, Veronica, I’m not going to let you shut me out.” I close the door behind me, then reach for the light switch I remember is next to the door.
She looks even more fragile in the soft light. But her voice is strong when she says, “I already have.”
“Well, tough shit. We’re going to work this out.”
“There’s nothing to work out. We fucked each other and then we fucked each other over. What else is there to say?”
“You’ve got that wrong and you know it. I’m the only one who fucked up. That’s why I’m here. I want to fix it.”
“Some things can’t be fixed.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You mean you don’t want to believe it. You want to ride in here on your white horse and fix us. Well, sorry, baby, but that just ain’t gonna happen.”
“Let me try.”
“No.” She walks down the hall and doesn’t stop until she gets to the bar. Unlike the last time we were standing here together, she has no trouble deciding what to drink tonight. She goes straight for the whiskey and she only pours one glass.
“I’m an ass,” I tell her as she downs the whiskey in one long swallow. “But you have to believe that I never meant to hurt you.”
“Bullshit.” She pours herself another glass.
“I swear. If I had known how things would work out—”
“Bullshit!” She screams it this time, and her glass goes flying across the room. It slams into the wall and shatters into a thousand little pieces.
“Veronica—”
“No!” she cuts me off. “You don’t get to say that to me. You don’t get to come in here and lie to my face again. You might have talked yourself into believing that you weren’t going to hurt me, but that’s just self-delusion. Because the truth is you didn’t give a shit about hurting me.”
“That’s not true. I backed out of the book. No one ever needs to know—”
“I know!” she screams at me. “Now I know. Now I know that the man who tormented me—who raped and abused me for three years—went on and raped and murdered countless other girls and women. Girls whose only crime was to look like me.
“You can tell yourself all you want that you didn’t plan on hurting me when you came here all those weeks ago, but it is a goddamn lie. Because you came here to talk to me about that man. You came here to bring up a past I’ve worked so goddamn hard to put behind me. And you came here to tell me about everything he did, to tell the world everything he did and everything I could have stopped if my parents had just cared more about me than they did about their goddamn careers.”
Her voice breaks and I want to go to her, but I am frozen in place. Horror-struck.
“But you don’t see it like that, do you? Of course you don’t. Because you are just like them. Just like her. You don’t care about me. You never cared about me. Nobody ever does.
“And now you’re here, forcing yourself into my house saying you want to fix things. But the truth is, you want to fix me so you don’t have to feel guilty about what you did. But I am not a broken vase whose pieces you can glue back together. I am not a puzzle whose pieces you just have to find the way to fit together. This is my life. This is me. This is all I have left, this tiny little piece of me, and now you’re here and you want it, too.”
She starts pulling at her dress, yanking at it until it finally rips right down the center. Most of it falls to the ground at her feet but small pieces stay in place over her hips, her breasts. They should help preserve her modesty, but somehow all they do is emphasize her sexuality in a totally disturbing way.
I shrug out of my jacket with some thought to covering her, but she backs away. Starts ripping at those last few pieces, too, pulling them—and the tape they’re attached with—off her body. Letting them flutter to the floor in a macabre version of confetti.
Then she holds her arms out to her sides like she’s some kind of offering. “So, fine. You want it so bad. Take it. Just fucking take what you want and then get the hell out. Because I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m through. I’m so fucking through.”
She’s completely naked now, her bones sticking out in stark relief against her skin. Her head is down, her hair covering most of her face. And though she doesn’t make a sound, her chest is rising and falling so quickly that I fear she’s going to hyperventilate again.
For the first time I understand—really understand—what she means when she says she can’t be fixed. And that when she says she’s through, she means with much more than us.
Because in that moment, she is more than broken. More than shattered.
She is destroyed, and I’m the one who dealt the final blow.
Chapter 34
I wait for Ian to grab me, to fuck me, to do whatever he’s going to do with me.
It doesn’t matter, whatever it is. I’m so numb I won’t feel it anyway. His is just one more betrayal in a long line that’s led me here.
A bodyguard who’d rather fuck me than keep me safe.
A father who sold me out for ticket sales.
A mother who plays with my sanity like it’s a toy.
And now Ian, the only lover who’s ever mattered turning me into collateral damage for a story he wants to tell.
Is it any wonder I’m so tired? Any wonder I just want to get this over with?
But long seconds pass and he doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. I’d be tempted to look at him, but I don’t want to see the contempt on his face. I just want to finish this, once and for all.
He doesn’t seem to feel the same way, though, because he just stands there, fists clenched by his sides as more and more time slips by. The silence is deafening, breaking over u
s like so many forgotten promises.
Finally, I can’t stand it anymore and I tilt my head up until our eyes meet. His are pitch black and tormented, his face a mask of regret and rage so deep it strikes at the very heart of me. I stumble a little under the force of it all even as I wonder what he has to be angry about.
It’s not until my name is a broken cry on his lips that I realize I’ve spoken aloud. And then he’s dropping to his knees at my feet, burying his face in my stomach. Wrapping his arms around my waist.
“I’m sorry,” he tells me. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry. Jesus, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to do this to you. I didn’t mean—” His voice breaks again. And then he’s shuddering, his whole body shaking as he wraps himself more and more tightly around me.
And still I don’t get it, still I don’t understand. Until I feel a wetness against my stomach, warm and silky, and only then do I realize that he is crying.
For me.
Ian Sharpe is crying for me when I don’t have the strength or even the will to cry for myself.
I don’t know how to feel about that. Don’t know what to think. But before I even realize I’m going to do it, I move my hands to his head. Tangle my fingers in the cool silk of his hair.
“Ssh, don’t cry, Ian,” I tell him softly. “Please don’t cry.”
His only response is more violent shudders, more tears against my skin.”I’m sorry,” he says again. “I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”
“Okay,” I tell him, because I don’t know what else to say.
“It’s not okay. I was so hell-bent on making sure I wasn’t a monster that I became one after all. I hurt the one person that I would never want to hurt and I did it why? Because I was afraid of turning out like my brother? Because I was afraid the same darkness lived in me and I wanted to prove it wasn’t true?” His voice is ripe with self-disgust. “I was so caught up in studying the darkness, in trying to understand it, that I dragged you down into it without even thinking about what I was doing to you. To us.”
“There is no us.” I don’t say it to hurt him, but he flinches all the same.