Chapter 46
Bursting from the business center, I race toward the stairwell, fling open the door, and take the steps three at a time. On floor ten, I sprint down the long hall to my room, and panting, I fumble with the key, drop it, and snatch it back up.
I get inside my room and grab my phone. I dial Brynn’s personal cell.
“Hello?” she answers, obviously not recognizing the number.
“What is going on?” I yell. “You can’t go with Grayson!”
“You can’t call me on this number! What are you doing?”
“Brynn! How long have you known that you’re replacing me on Grayson’s tour?”
“A few days. I told you Grayson and my dad have been in a lot of meetings. That’s what they were discussing.”
“This is what he wants! He knows I won’t let you go with him.”
“Don’t you think I get that?”
“Are you going alone or is your father going with you?”
“Alone. Remember that teen education initiative he announced at your sixteenth birthday party? I’m set to ‘replace’ you at the events you would typically attend because you’re still under the weather with ‘Lyme disease.’”
I grab my duffel. “I’m coming home. There is no way you’re going in my place.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Did you tell your father that you didn’t want to go?”
“No, and I don’t plan on it. I’ll be okay. What can Grayson do to me?”
My childhood strobes through my head in these flashes of horror. Noah Riley does too. Flight or fight. It’s time I fight.
“Also, and I debated if I should tell you this, but Dad told me that Grayson has begun dating a widow who has a young daughter. I don’t know anything about them, but it’s very timely given this whole presidential thing.”
“I’m coming home.”
“I told you, as long as the focus is on me, I truly don’t believe he knows where you’re at.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m coming home.” I click off, not giving her a chance to argue.
Someone knocks on my door, and I spin around. “Open up, Eve. It’s West.”
I can’t move. I’m frozen.
“I know you’re in there.” He knocks on the door again.
Still, I don’t move.
“Laura Kader.”
Slowly, I cross the carpet to the door, swivel the handle down, and open it. West stands there with an expression full of confusion and loss. He steps into my room, and I back away.
“When you said the names Grayson and Laura Kader, I purposefully did not research either one or the connection between the two. I wanted to respect whatever you had to tell me. Or maybe I didn’t want to know. Either way, Ms. Kelly met me at the airport.” He places an envelope onto the bed.
I give it an uneasy glance. “What’s that?”
“A press release that’s scheduled to go out tomorrow courtesy of your father, to be shredded if and only if you return home.”
I don’t breathe. Grayson knows where I am. He’s probably known all along. What a fool I am. I should have paid attention to my gut and ran.
West barely gets the next words out. “You’re…you’re only sixteen. And a runaway.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, weighed down with my deception and betrayal.
He shakes his head, looking so bewildered it nearly undoes me.
I reach for him, my hands shaking. “Please don’t—”
“Please don’t what? Be nice to you? Be understanding?” His voice cracks. “Fall for you? Take you home to meet my family? Tell you I love you? Why didn’t you just tell me? We could have figured this out.”
“I’m sorry. I—”
“Rape,” he says.
Tears blur my vision, and I search his features imploringly. “What?”
“Your father has accused me of statutory rape.”
“Oh my God.” Horror twists my guts. “He can’t do that. Can he?”
“It doesn’t matter. Just the accusation itself is enough to ruin me. But that’s not all.” He picks the envelope back up and takes out several pieces of paper that he hands to me. “Read the press release.”
In a detached haze, I read the words: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
I skip over the paragraphs flipping to the back where there are several photos of me, sure, but also of West partying with alcohol and girls.
The pictures do not paint him in a good light.
There’s even a recent one of me dancing with Anne taken the night Toby grabbed me and I freaked. I look wasted.
I go back to the first photo of me taken when I was six years old.
The girl stares back at me through sad, blue eyes.
Her long, blond hair is parted down the middle and brushed straight to hang behind her shoulders and down her back.
She wears a knee-length yellow dress with white ankle socks.
Her face holds a stoic expression as if she’s never seen happiness in her life.
I glance at the other pictures of me at various ages, void and hazed in a brainwashed gloss.
“Go on, read it,” he hoarsely whispers.
I flip back to the first page reading the headline: A Lifetime of Mental Illness.
The words blur as I read my life story: Grayson Kader hides the true story of his daughter. But through prayer and support, his arms are open for her safe return and rehabilitation. The paragraphs continue, twisting every detail of my life.
That I locked myself in my room, refused to eat, to bathe. That I was deceitful and had brought bodily harm on myself. That I had scarred my back with a belt.
Fury gathers in me as I read a direct quote from Grayson, “I’m ashamed to have lied to everyone about Laura’s Lyme disease and whereabouts when in reality she’s run from home and has recently hooked up with West Wolf, lead singer of Bus Stop.
I fear for her life with the sex, drugs, and alcohol.
Despite the tragedy of her mother’s past, Laura was raised in a loving, Christian home. My arms are open for her safe return.”
A harsh laugh scrapes across my throat. Grayson has effectively covered all his bases.
Dragging Brynn on the electoral tour, bringing charges against West for rape, explaining away my injuries and disappearance.
Poor Grayson will come out looking like gold with a dead wife, mentally fragile daughter, and this widow he’s dating with a daughter of her own.
He’s left me no choice but to go back, and he knows it.
My hands fist around the pages, and I hurl them across the room. “Lies!”
“Of course they’re lies.”
I level him with an icy stare. “This is what I wanted to tell you last night. But you didn’t want to hear them.
Your exact words were, ‘Something tells me it might change our course, and I’m not as ready for that as I thought.
’ Well, guess what, you were right. Here it all is, whether you’re ready for it or not. ”
Tears cloud West’s eyes.
My voice hardens. “What’s wrong? You don’t want to be falling for a mentally unstable girl?” I’m saying things I don’t mean, but they still come. “You don’t get it, do you?”
West just looks at me.
Blood rushes to my extremities, making me both hot and cold at the same time. “You and me? What was I thinking?” I walk over to where I threw the pages and pick them up. “I want to know who I pissed off in this universe.”
He wets his lips. “What are you talking about?”
“This.” I shake the pages at him. “My whole sad, pathetic life.” I narrow in on him. “Who?” My voice rises an octave. “Who did I piss off to have dealt me this life? What did I ever do to anybody to deserve the hell that happens to me? WHO?” I shout.
West takes a step toward me. “Eve—”
I throw the pages at him. “Shut up. Just shut the hell up.”
His eyes widen.
“Oh, now I’m scaring you? Well, GOOD!” I scream. “I’m glad someone else is scared for a change. God! I wish Grayson had just given me to Noah because that’s the life I was supposed to have, right?”
West swallows. “What are you talking about?”
“It doesn’t matter because I have no proof of ANYTHING! And you!” I jab my finger in his direction. “I would’ve already moved on if it weren’t for you.”
Pain flashes across his face. “What?”
I point toward the door. “Get out,” I blurt, aching with my words.
Gone are his tears to be replaced with a flash of anger that clenches through his jaw.
“Fine!” He wrenches the door open and then turns back.
“All I ever wanted was your trust and honesty.” His words seep into my anger, stinging.
“All you’ve done is lie to me. Yeah, I might have stopped you telling me last night, but you know as well as I do you should’ve come clean way before then. ”
I take a step toward him and stop when he shakes his head. He’s right. I’ve done nothing but lie to him. I’m a coward.
He slams out the door, and I stand alone in my hotel room, panting for air, so consumed by pain I can barely think.
The pain flashes to anger, and my teeth clench. I’ve got to get out of here. I wrench my door open, and West whirls on me right as the elevator dings.
It all happens in a sort of slow-motion fog. West and I both turn. Grayson steps out, followed by two men, one I recognize from that hotel back in Chicago. Beneath my feet, the floor shifts. From down the hall, Grayson pins me with an eerily calm stare, and his lips curl up into a satisfied smirk.
He moves toward me with his security trailing behind, and the closer they get, the more locked my muscles become.
I take a step back and come up against the wall.
Grayson stops feet from me, his cool hazel gaze never leaving mine, and I stare into the wicked face of the man who’s haunted my whole life.
He takes in my blue hair and my clothes. He’s disgusted by my punk look, but he hides it well behind his gentle expression.
“Laura,” he breathes in relief.
A trembling breath stutters from my lungs. “Wh-what do you want?”
“All I’ve ever wanted is you, my sweet daughter. I love you.”
A shiver crawls down my neck, and I make myself stay still.
West shifts closer to me, and Grayson rolls him a slow, threatening look before turning back to me. “You know the right thing to do. You need to come back home. You’re not on a good path right now. Let’s get you home and get you straightened out.”
He glances at his two guys, silently telling me he’ll make me go if I don’t willingly.
“If I do, you’ll leave Brynn alone, that press release gets shredded, and you’ll drop the rape charges against West?” Terror lodges in me, knowing the direction my whole life is about to take.
West steps forward. “Wait—”
“Of course,” Grayson answers my question.
“Can I have just a few seconds with West?”
Grayson hardens. He hates the request, but he won’t deny it with West standing right here.
He nods, and I turn to West. My soul splits open as I take in his confused and lost expression. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“Eve…” he reaches for my hand. “Don’t do this. You don’t have to go with him. Screw the rape charges.”
Grayson moves in, as do his two men. “Yes, she does, and if you come anywhere near her, I’ll file a restraining order. I am a very powerful man, Mr. Wolf. Don’t cross me.”
West grips my hand, and it takes everything in me to disengage our fingers. Statutory rape, restraining order. West is only nineteen, and Grayson will make his life a living hell.
I turn away.
“Eve,” West’s voice breaks.
I ignore him, letting Grayson lead me down the hall. Back to the hell I know all too well.