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My phone buzzed.
A text.
Hope against hope, I grabbed my phone, praying it was Tatum sending me any sign of repentance.
Instead, it was Star.
Ugh, I so did not want to talk to anyone, but there was an alarmed tone to her text. She’d seen Tatum. She’d heard I’d left for LA. She wanted to know if I was okay, if Tatum and I were okay. He didn’t look okay, she’d texted. She’d never seen him like this before. Never seen him this undone.
I tapped on my phone, pondering how best to respond when another text came through. Then another.
She was panicking.
She wanted to video chat.
Fuck. I didn’t want to. I really didn’t. I looked awful, my room was a mess, and I was thoroughly demoralized, but I also couldn’t deny her request. She was more than a friend. She’d become like a sister to me, and whatever Tatum had done to me could not undo the bond between us.
ME: Sure
STAR: Thanx. Calling now
The phone rang and Star’s concerned face shimmered on the screen of my cellphone.
“Oh my God, I’m so scared, Clara,” she launched in without even a hello. Her golden hair and dark eyes were so familiar to me, it made my heart ache. While she and her brother shared similar features, they also looked so different. Where Tatum’s face was angular and stern, Star had a soft, heart-shaped face. It was as if Tatum had decided, in his infinite willfulness, that he would deal with the hardness of life and fill her life with everything that was gentle and sweet.
“He was dressed from head to toe in black. Not a suit, mind you. It was like…like a cross between the CIA and a ninja. He came in, carrying this huge gym bag. And his face—” She clenched her fist and pressed it to her mouth. “I’d never seen him in such a state. He’s not the type of man to get into idle fistfights. Today, he looked like…I can’t even describe it.”
“I know, I saw,” I told her.
She jerked in place. “You did?”
“Yes, when he broke up with me,” I explained simply.
“Don’t you believe him for one second, Clara,” she said fiercely, her voice trembling slightly. “My brother is crazy about you. I think that’s partly why he’s so unhinged.”
“I don’t know about that,” I stated, releasing a despondent sigh. “Either way, it doesn’t change anything between us. If he felt the need to break up with me, his reason must have seemed more important than what we had together. He chose that over me, over us. There’s no going back from it.”
“No,” she denied hotly.
My brows lifted. I’d never heard her speak like this before, but it gave me a glimpse of the same inner core of steel as her brother had. “There’s only one conceivable reason he would break up with you, and it’s to protect you. He’d only let you go if your life was on the line.”
I didn’t know what to think. Since he didn’t confide in me but lied and pushed me away, there was no way of knowing if she was right. Star might believe it, might desperately want to believe it, but that didn’t make it true.
Star’s voice dropped as if she were afraid to speak out loud. “When he went out, I snuck into his bedroom and checked inside the bag. What I found scared me, Clara.”
I sat up straight. “What did you find?”
“Guns. A huge bag full of guns. There were other things in there that made me think he wasn’t going back to his penthouse. Family photos, for one thing. Then there were a few pieces of family jewelry, like my grandmother’s cross, and…a lock of your hair. More proof that he loves you. He didn’t even bring a suit. I mean, why would he leave his apartment with a bag filled with an arsenal of guns and only the most meaningful things he owns? He left everything else behind, even his clothes. It doesn’t make sense. Yet it scares me.”
My gaze wandered away from her as I tried to process what she said. My fingers started tingling and my palms sweating. I rubbed them on the pants I was wearing. He left everything, except for his stash of guns and meaningful items, including my lock of hair? I recalled when he’d taken a pair of scissors, asked me if he could clip a strand, and carefully stowed it away in an old, antique locket that looked like it had been in his family for generations.
It had been tucked away in his nightstand, so he had to have consciously remembered it in the middle of packing only the essentials, under pressure if the guns were anything to go by.
I felt my heart beating harshly against my ribs. I feared the worst, the absolute worst. A numbness spread over me. He was going to die. All signs pointed to this scenario.
“I’m scared, Clara. Really scared,” she whispered, her eyes darting from left to right in paranoia.
My brain had shut down momentarily, but her words snapped me out of my coma. I had to take care of her. She was a seventeen-year-old girl and sheltered beyond belief. She was to Tatum what Adrian was to me, and I would do everything in my power to help keep her safe because if Tatum was in the kind of trouble I thought he was in, she was also at risk. I’d do it for my love of her, but also for my love and respect of her brother.
