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CHAPTER 36
Kara popped four Altoids, gathered her courage and stepped into Tate’s hospital room. The past few days had been a nightmare that she’d gone through numb and zombie-like. Her nightmares had returned and this time she was with Marlie, in the snowy forest, reliving those last shattering moments of her sister’s life.
Now, she had to work through it. Find an inner strength. Even pretend if she had to. She plastered a smile onto her face and hoped it didn’t seem as fake as it felt, that it wasn’t a garish grin forced onto a haunted face.
You can do this.
Tate’s near-black hair was mussed, falling over his forehead, his beard shadow dark over his jaw. However, when he glanced her way, his blue eyes were sharp and clear. He smiled, crookedly, as if they shared a private joke.
If not a joke, she thought, then they had shared a twisted, painful lifetime heretofore. “Hey,” she said, and pulled the door shut behind her, leaving her demons outside. “Turnabout’s fair play?”
“Yeah, meeting in the hospital, not the best plan to keep a relationship going.”
“Is that what we have now, a ‘relationship’?”
“We’ve always had one. Maybe not what it is now, but, yeah, we’ve always been connected.”
She let that slide. “How do you feel?”
“Not like a million bucks, but not bad. They’re releasing me today.”
“I noticed there was no guard at your door,” she said, surprised that she felt the need to tease him. To flirt a bit.
“No one to keep my horde of fans at bay?”
She laughed, though the sound was bitter as she glanced out the window to the parking lot and grounds, where less than a week before a throng of Jonas’s fans had gathered. She saw her reflection in the glass, a ghostly image, but she refused to be haunted. Not anymore. She’d do whatever it took to find her way back to a life she was supposed to live, a life her sister had tried to preserve for her all those years ago. Her heart twisted when she thought of Marlie and tried to take solace that finally she was at peace.
She rapped on the wooden windowsill for good luck, then turned around to face this new man in her life. “About those fans,” she said, “I guess you’re just not popular.”
“Fine by me.” He quirked a dark eyebrow. “And how are you doing?”
She wanted to say she was okay, that she was doing great, but that would be a lie, and they both would know it. “Managing.” She walked closer to the bed. “Still camping out at your place. My house is still a center for the gruesomely curious, those who love the macabre. So I thought it would be best if Rhapsody and I could crash at your place until all the media hype slows down. If it’s okay with you.”
“It’s fine. Great. When I get out of here, you can be my nurse.”
“In your dreams. But you can be my shrink.”
“Oh. God. That’s a dark thought.”
“The worst,” she agreed but scared up a smile. They had been few and far between in the last couple of days. She’d been shattered on the mountain, losing both Jonas and especially Marlie, but she’d tried in the last couple of days to pull herself together, to ignore the press, to turn off the TV and her phone, to concentrate on the fact that now she knew the truth, as grisly and ugly as it was, and now she could move forward.
With Tate.
Without Tate.
Whatever it took, she would pull herself together.
Somehow.
“So will it?” he asked, sitting up a little straighter in the bed. “Will the hype slow down?”
“God, I hope so. Faiza has been all over my case, begging me to stay with her, at the house in the West Hills, but I think that would only be worse. She’s already hooked up with someone in Hollywood who wants to do another story, or a sequel to what happened twenty years ago or something. She’s all excited. Over the moon. Her boyfriend Roger found the guy, apparently went looking for him the very day you and I were dealing with Marlie and Walter. He hopped on a flight to LA and connected with a producer one of the guys in his band knew. Since then the producer has talked to Alex Rousseau, the attorney, and Mia Long.”
“So are you going to do it?”
“With Auntie Fai?”
“Yeah.”