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  She let go of the blanket and slapped him hard across the face.

  29

  NOT FANGIRLING

  Eric raised a hand to his cheek, more from the shock than the pain of the blow. It wasn’t the reaction he’d expected. He’d waited patiently from the moment he entered the room for the full impact of the truth to register. He knew what would come next—or he thought he did at any rate. The unintelligible fangirl scream. Just like when he’d followed her and she’d tweeted in response: “OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!”

  But the expression on her face didn’t look like fangirling. If anything, she looked like she was going to throw up. Eric tried his best to school his features into an expression of concern, but he couldn’t quite manage it. The corners of his mouth seemed to have a mind of their own.

  He couldn’t help it. How could he not smile? He was finally here, meeting Tessa. Seeing Tessa. And damn if it wasn’t a sight worth waiting for. He couldn’t see her body, shrouded beneath the oversize police blanket, but her face was more than enough: heart shaped, with almond eyes that only seemed to grow larger the longer he stared.

  She looked like she’d been through hell, of course. She’d pulled her long, brown hair away from her face in a messy ponytail. Her makeup was hopelessly smudged, with dark rings around both eyes from rubbing away her mascara. But none of that mattered. None of it could hide what he saw in front of him.

  Beautiful. More beautiful than he’d ever dared to hope.

  But now her eyes narrowed dangerously, and her whole body quivered like a cat about to spring. He cradled his stinging cheek, all trace of humor wiped away. “Tessa, what the hell?”

  She sank back down into her chair and buried her face in her hands. “I want the real Taylor. Where’s the real Taylor?” Her shoulders ceased trembling and began to shake in earnest. “There was supposed to be a real Taylor!”

  “I’m here!” he said. “Listen to me. I’m right here!”

  Eric put a tentative arm around her. He tried to pull her toward him, but Tessa turned in her chair and pushed violently against his chest. “Don’t touch me!”

  “Sorry!” He let go and held up his hands. “I’m sorry. Are you OK? Should I get someone?”

  She looked back at him at last, with eyes so full of disappointment, it made him want to crawl inside a deep, dark hole. “There’s no real Taylor, is there?” she whispered.

  “Tessa,” he said softly. “I should have told you sooner. I just… I wanted to tell you face-to-face. That’s all. That’s why I’m here. I staged this whole fake contest just to come here and meet you.” He scooted out of his chair and squatted down beside her, forcing her to maintain eye contact when she tried to look away. “Tessa, it’s me. Do you hear me? I’m real. You’re real. This connection that we have is real. When you’re the only person on earth who can make me smile anymore, that’s real. That’s the only thing that’s real. It’s everything else in my life that’s fake as hell.”

  She didn’t answer. Tears spilled silently down her cheeks. She swiped at her eyes, but she only managed to smear her mascara even more. Eric reached into his pocket—he’d have given his life to hand her a tissue—but he came up empty.

  “Tessa,” he tried again, desperate to get through to her. He took her hands in his. “Tessa, listen to me. You know me. Even before we started talking, you saw me better than other people. You could sense that something was wrong. I’m not sure exactly how. Maybe because we were going through some of the same things. Or maybe you’re just really intuitive. But you really saw me. And you listened to me. You’re the only one who listens to a single thing I say anymore. The only one, Tessa. And I listened to you too. I know you too. I know how scared you must have been tonight.”

  She snatched her hands away. “You have no idea.”

  “Tessa—”

  “You have no idea how I felt tonight! You have no idea what I just went through!”

  “OK.” He backpedaled, retreating to his chair. “No, that’s true. I don’t. I can only imagine—”

  “Did you think I would be excited now?” She let out a harsh breath. “Did you think I would scream and cry and fangirl all over you, and it would all be OK?”

  Eric looked down sharply. “I don’t know. I guess I hoped… I don’t know what I hoped. I guess I did think that. A little bit. And obviously I was wrong. And I’m sorry.”

  She leaned forward once again and rested her head on her arms. Eric longed to reach out and comfort her, but he didn’t dare touch her again. Instead, he looked across the room toward the horizontal mirror built into the opposite wall. A two-way mirror, no doubt. He’d seen enough cop shows to know that much. Were those police detectives watching right now from the other side? Did they find this show entertaining?

  He met eyes with his own reflection: Eric Thorn, in the flesh—just a little worse for wear. He could see a dark bruise forming on his forehead, where he’d been struck earlier, rolling around on the ground with Tessa’s stalker. And now he had a new red splotch across his cheek, from where Tessa herself had just slapped him.

  Slapped him. After all that. Really?

  He took a breath and squared his shoulders. “I’m sorry you’re disappointed, Tessa. I really am. But I don’t think I deserved to be slapped.”

  She looked up in surprise at the firmness of his tone. “Sorry,” she whispered.

  “Thank you.”

  She tried fruitlessly to wipe her eyes again. “Look, I shouldn’t have slapped you. I’m sure you’re not a bad person,” she said with a loud sniff. “I love your music. You know that. It’s just that today was pretty much the worst day of my life, and I’m not…I’m just not in the right frame of mind for a meet-and-greet—”

  “This isn’t a meet-and-greet!”

  “I just thought there was going to be someone here at the end of all this who actually wanted to be with me.”

  “I do!” Eric threw back his head and looked up at the ceiling in helpless disbelief.

  Tessa avoided his eyes. She addressed her words to the tabletop, her forehead resting against her hand. “No, but like, I thought someone was going to come in here and be my boyfriend now. Someone normal. I didn’t even care what he looked like. Just someone…just someone nice who could love me and talk to me and be with me. That’s all I wanted. But instead everyone left. Everyone just bailed on me again. Even Dr. Regan—”

  Eric turned back toward her. “What? What do you mean, she bailed on you?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m sorry I slapped you, OK?” Tessa pushed back her chair from the table. “I really just want to go home now.”

  Eric’s shoulders slumped. There was no use trying to argue with her further. He’d had his answer from the moment her heavy palm made contact with his cheek.

  “OK,” he said dully, rising from his chair. “Let’s go. I’ll drive you home.”

  “No.”

  “My Ferrari’s right out front.”

  “The police will take me.”

  “I’ll take you,” he insisted. He shrugged off his jacket and draped it around her. “Wear this. It’s cold outside.”

  She shook her head, but she clutched the jacket tightly around her shoulders. They met eyes for a long moment, his own heartache reflected back in the misery he saw on her face.

  So this is it, he thought. The night he’d been anticipating for so long now. Of all the times he’d played it out in his head, he’d never imagined it quite like this. Total rejection. Complete and utter disappointment. He’d been living in some kind of dream world apparently. Some fantasy land, where Tessa would fall into his arms, be his girl for one magical night, and then go back to talking him to sleep over Twitter every night afterward.

  But that was his fantasy, not hers. She didn’t want Eric Thorn. Not in real life. Not for anything outside of music videos and fanfics.

  He couldn’t say he blamed her. She wanted something normal. How many times had he wanted the same thing? A normal job. Normal
friends. Normal house. Normal bills to pay. A normal girl to take out on normal dates. Someday, a normal wife. Maybe a few normal kids to drive around in their normal minivan. He could have had all of that if he hadn’t been so dead set on fame. Maybe he could have had Tessa.

  “I’ll just drop you off,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I won’t even get out of the car. I’ll let you go, OK? You can say good-bye, and walk away, and unfollow me, and go about your life. Forget I ever existed. That’s fine, if that’s what you really want. But, Tessa, please—”

  He paused and swallowed hard against the lump inside his throat.

  “Please, just this once. Just let me be the guy that takes you home.”

  30

  A COLD NIGHT IN HELL

  Eric hunkered down behind the steering wheel of his parked car and wrapped his arms around himself for warmth. How cold was it tonight, anyway? It must have dipped below freezing outside, judging by the way he could see his own breath.

  A violent shiver overtook him, and he looked longingly at the Ferrari’s red push-button ignition. Maybe he should idle the engine for a few minutes. His fingers twitched, but he resisted the temptation. Not yet. He only had a quarter tank of gas left, and he needed to make it last all night.

  Eric glanced at his phone to check the time. Just past eleven thirty now. He assumed he’d still be sitting here at midnight, counting down the New Year all alone. An hour had passed since that silent car ride back to Tessa’s house. She hadn’t uttered a single word until he pulled into her driveway, but he’d stopped her with a question before she got out.

  “What time is your mom coming home?”

  She had her face turned away from him, but he saw her shoulders draw upward at the sound of his voice. “What do you care about my mom?”

  “You shouldn’t be alone in there,” he said. “Not tonight.”

  She’d cracked the car door open. “Thanks for the ride.”

  “I’m not leaving,” he’d called after her.

  “If you think I’m inviting you into my house—”

  “I’ll just sit out here in the driveway,” he’d interrupted, striving to keep the desperation out of his voice. “Just in case. I’ll keep an eye on things until your mom comes back.”

  “Well, that should be around nine tomorrow morning.”

  “Then I guess I’m sleeping in my car tonight.”

  She’d exited without another word.

  Now he trembled against the cold and swore under his breath. Damn, it was frigid. He’d thought it was bad outside the concert venue earlier, but the temperature must have dropped another twenty degrees in the hours since. He expelled a steaming breath, fiddling with his phone to distract himself from the impending hypothermia, and his thumb landed on its usual destination.

  Twitter.

  The police had frozen his second account—they needed it for evidence—but they’d left his @EricThorn account untouched. Eric stared down at his profile. He’d told Tessa in the police station that she should unfollow him, and he couldn’t help but wonder if she’d done it. Had she blocked him too? Deactivated her account? He couldn’t bring himself to check.

  Instead, for some unfathomable reason, Eric clicked to compose a new tweet.

  He didn’t know what he hoped to achieve. Tessa wouldn’t be on Twitter tonight. Not after what had happened. Eric didn’t bother aiming his message @ her, or at anyone in particular. Fourteen million followers would see it, minus one. He entered the words anyway, driven by a force he couldn’t explain. There was a pain in his chest—the last ember of a fire that hadn’t quite died. He had to give it one more try before the flame went out for good.

  He hit Tweet, and his notifications lit up with the inevitable blizzard of replies. In the past, he would have viewed those messages with contempt, but now he couldn’t summon up more than a numb indifference.

  Who was he to judge, anyway? He wasn’t so different from all those fangirls after all. In the end, he wanted the same thing they all did. A like. A reply. Maybe a follow back. Some sign of acknowledgment from an account that probably couldn’t hear him. Some tiny gesture that told him the words he craved: “I see you… I notice you… I know that you exist… I love you back… I love you too…” Anything to know that his message had been heard by its recipient and not shouted into an empty void.

  Eric rested his forehead against the steering wheel, staring at his useless phone, but a sharp knock on the window interrupted him. He looked up, startled, and his body temperature spiked a few degrees at what he saw: Tessa, with her hands cupped round her face, peering at him through the glass. She hadn’t left him for dead out there after all. He cracked the passenger door back open.

  “Do you have frostbite yet?” she asked.

  Eric couldn’t help but grin at the sight of her. She’d changed from before. Taken a shower, twisted her hair into a thick braid, and scrubbed her face free of makeup. She’d decked herself out in a pair of mismatched pajamas covered by a ratty flannel robe. And on her feet, of course, she wore a pair of hot-pink bunny slippers.

  “Nice slippers,” he said with a nod toward her feet. “Those are even hotter in person.”

  She glowered at him as she climbed into the passenger seat and tucked her feet beneath her, out of sight. “Here,” she said, shoving a thick down comforter in his direction.

  He took it greedily and wrapped it around his shoulders. It was big enough to go around him twice, but he held out the excess in her direction—a silent offer to share. For a moment, he thought she would refuse. Her eyes darted to his face and back away. Then she shimmied an inch closer and wrapped her side of the blanket around her arms.

  Eric cleared his throat. Did she see the tweet just now? He couldn’t quite summon the nerve to ask. He had a million different things he wanted to say to her, but he didn’t dare speak. He knew that one wrong word could send her scurrying into the house for good.

  Tessa broke the silence, and Eric choked at her chosen topic of conversation. “I’m not going to sleep with you.”

  “Now that’s an understatement,” he said with a dry laugh. “Trust me, I wasn’t expecting you to.”

  She looked down at her lap. “I just wanted to make that completely clear.”

  “Message received.” He knew he should leave it at that, but he couldn’t quite manage to bite his tongue. “To be fair, Tessa, I did just spend the past five months texting with a girl who wouldn’t even send me a selfie.”

  “So what?” Her head snapped up, and her eyes flashed with defiance. “That means I’m obligated to sleep with you?”

  “No! I’m just saying, if I wanted to get laid, I can think of easier ways.”

  Tessa pressed her lips together. Her gaze lingered, and Eric turned his head to give her a better view. Even in the darkened car, he could see the way new color stained her cheeks when he looked her full in the face. Was she thawing toward him? Just a little? He rocked his body toward her and knocked his shoulder lightly against hers. “Hey, look at you, outside your house again. Twice in one day!”

  She slid down farther in her seat, pulling her shoulder out of range. “It’s not like I feel safe in there anymore,” she said. “Not after he was in my house.”

  Eric scratched his nose, unsure how to respond. “Do you want me to take you somewhere else?”

  “No.” She shrugged. “Nowhere else to go, really.” She sounded matter-of-fact, but Eric couldn’t quite read the expression on her face.

  He paused, waiting for her to say more.

  She let out a noisy breath. “Shouldn’t I be better now?” Her mouth scrunched sideways, and her voice tightened with frustration as she spoke. “I mean, logically, I was afraid to leave my house because I could feel him out here. Somewhere. Somehow. I could sense that he was still watching me. Now that he’s locked up, I should feel safe. That seems only fair, right?”

  Eric raised an eyebrow. He had a feeling it didn’t work that way. A phobia was an irrational
fear. It didn’t respond to logic. It had no sense of fairness. And he could tell from her expression that Tessa knew it too. He longed to reach out and squeeze her hand, but he didn’t want to spook her. He ventured a hesitant smile instead. “So I guess that means you can come to my show tomorrow in Santa Fe?”

  “If you think that’s happening, then you’re the one with mental problems.”

  She met his eyes, striving for a withering glare, but she couldn’t quite manage it. He broke into a grin, and he saw her cheeks flood with color once again. She turned away, but not fast enough to hide the involuntary smile that popped onto her own face in response.

  “So that was really you?” she asked. She kept her eyes averted, plucking stray feathers through the comforter’s outer shell. “All that time? That was actually you texting? Not some publicist or something?”

  “Nope. All me.”

  “I’m just trying to process it.”

  “Take your time.”

  She stole another look, and he forced his face into serious lines. No more cocky grin. Her forehead crinkled as she studied him. “Tell me the truth,” she said. “How many other fans did you have this going on with?”

  “None. Tessa, I’m telling you, it wasn’t like that. It was only you.”

  She shook her head. “It doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “Why would you even talk to me in the first place?”

  Eric thought back to that morning when he first became aware of her account. He’d been a total mess that day, driven by unchecked anger and the thinly veiled anxiety that lay beneath. He hadn’t yet learned how to control it. Only her calming influence had taught him how to cope.

  He shrugged, suddenly self-conscious. He turned away from her and looked straight out through the windshield. “Talking to you helped me. You helped me through a lot of things.”

  “But why?” she asked, incredulous. “You’re Eric Thorn. Why would you need help from someone like me?”

  “You already know all this, Tessa. It’s nothing we haven’t talked about before.”