I’m Gonna Get You Back

Chapter Thirteen #2

I ransacked my mind again for something, anything, but came up empty. “Help me remember. I’m sure I haven’t completely forgotten you. What’s your name?”

His lips turned down. “I guess you rejected me for a reason. My memorability has never been my best trait.”

“Did we … go out on a date?” I asked, even though I couldn’t recall going on any while in Boston. “Did you ask me out? You know I don’t leave the house much. But if you asked me out, and I didn’t reciprocate, that’s because I probably didn’t realize what you were doing.”

He laughed, as if the idea was outrageous. “That’s how little of an impression I left on you, wow. Figures. It’s too bad, because we would have been great together. None of this would have happened. With me, you would have been a star.”

That was when it hit me.

Those words.

I’d been told that once, by someone. An editor I met, when my book was out on submission.

I’d had calls with a number of houses, it wasn’t a common occurrence, but my pages had been strong.

I’d been so shocked and thrilled about that kind of reception.

It was rare for debuting authors to pick and choose from a group of editors and houses.

There had been one editor, at Clear River Press, who had promised me that with him, I’d be a star.

“Peter,” I whispered. “Peter Loomis?”

His expression transformed. He laughed, and then his features twisted, giving way to despair. It reminded me of the letters he’d sent me. Of how confusing they were. How clever and smart, and so incredibly volatile in their praise. “So, I might be a little memorable after all.”

“Why?” I swallowed. “Why are you doing this? Because I rejected you?”

“Why?” He repeated. “Because you’re being forgotten, Frankie Rossi.

Because my job is developing talent once I find it, bringing it to its best potential, giving it shape, turning it to greatness.

And you were withering. Shrinking. Decaying.

Your talent has been fighting for its last breath, haven’t you noticed? ”

My jaw clamped down. His words hurt me, way more than I expected.

They were the confirmation of all my insecurities, of everything I could see with my own eyes, and was still coming to terms with.

I couldn’t rationalize or ignore them. I felt them hit and leave a mark that I knew I’d carry after this day, if we came out of this.

We had to come out of this. I glanced back at Turner.

He was still on his knees. He wasn’t unconscious, but he was definitely in and out of it.

“Don’t worry,” Peter said, dragging my eyes to him just as he advanced in my direction a little more. “I’m not going to kill him. Or you. I know it’d be poetic, in a way. A conclusion everyone would expect. But I have something your twists lack, Frankie, which is unpredictability.”

“Is that what you want, Peter?” I asked, chest heaving. “To critique me? Why do any of this, then? Why play games with me? All you had to do was send a fucking email.”

His smile was hollow. “To plant the ideas on everyone else’s heads, of course.

The public is watching, Frankie. And I’ve been leaving easter eggs.

It’s one of the keys. Foreboding. The pieces won’t make sense until they come together, and that’s where I finally step into the scene.

Which,”—he did a little curtsy—“brings us here.”

He was talking rapidly now, maniacally so. And he still had a gun in his hand. I tried to tone down my voice, talk softly. “So, you’re doing what? Development-editing my life?”

“Bingo,” he confirmed, tapping the side of his head with the muzzle.

“All the comments are on the margins, Frankie. All you have to do is bring them in. And after you see the ending I have in mind? You’ll love what I did, it’s perfect.

What did you call it at the launch of Black Honey?

Right, it’s ‘the bow you tie around years of work.’ I was there too, by the way.

You looked so sad, it made me want to follow that editor of yours home and turn her into a plot device.

She was never good enough for you. I could have helped you smooth out all the wrinkles she let you keep in that book, or any of the others, but alas.

You have been going through it, so I understand.

Some of it was bound to seep into your work. ”

Oxygen was not making it into my lungs after that speech. This was a lot worse than I ever expected. This was horrible. A nightmare.

“You’re thinking about how long I’ve been following you, huh?” He asked.

I nodded my head. I couldn’t speak.

“Since Wolves at Night was ripped out my hands, obviously,” he spat.

“At first, it was purely selfish. I needed to understand why you didn’t want me.

But I slowly realized you might have been steered wrong.

This industry is wild. Savage. More than most people think.

I would know, I’ve been let down more than once.

So, I decided to still help you. I take good care of my authors, and you are so young, so special.

You’ve been the only one I’ve done this for, you know?

And I think you know. I think you knew, reading those letters. ”

Sickening. I was sick to my stomach. I felt …

violated. In a way I’d never experienced.

By him, and by myself. I couldn’t believe I’d come to cherish those letters.

To appreciate him. What kind of monster was I?

“None of this is for me,” I struggled to say.

“It’s all for you. Don’t imply that I ever agreed to this. ”

Peter seemed genuinely hurt. The hand with the gun went up in the air again, and even though it wasn’t aimed at me, I flinched.

“You did!” Peter exclaimed. “You can’t ask me to stop now.

You won’t make me regret this, Frankie Rossi.

You’ll listen. I have the answer to all your problems. The one way to boost your career, just like you wanted, and you’ll let me do that. ”

Turner had come wide awake with that outburst, and unlike Peter, I was tracking his movements out of the corner of my eye. “How?” I asked, entertaining this twisted spiel he was absorbed in just so he’d keep his focus on me. “How are you going to save something I can’t even save myself?”

Peter laughed. “By placing the focus back on you.”

Suddenly, he was right in front of me, in my face.

He stunk of … something I couldn’t identify.

Body odor, smoke, and something more. Something ailing.

Rotten. I was terrified, scared out of my mind, I wanted to scream and cry at him to stop, but I couldn’t.

I had to hold my ground, let him talk and—

“You,” Peter whispered loudly. “Are going to kill me.”

I turned to stone.

Turner let out a low, broken sound.

Peter’s smile was wide and desperate and only on me.

He looked hopeful in a way hope should never look.

A droplet of sweat trickled down his forehead.

“Author of the gory sensation you can’t stop reading becomes the protagonist of her own book.

” He made a wave with his hand. “Imagine the headlines, huh? And it’s all there.

The thriller author is stalked. The stalker follows her to a convention, haunts her, she’s ignored by the world, the Inn, the police, she’s isolated by a storm, but oh, she persists.

Until the author is cornered by the flames one night.

There’s fire everywhere, even in the snow.

The stalker has crossed the line. He comes into the light.

Lured by the possibility of meeting his mark.

But she’s smart, she slipped into what she knows best. Her world of fiction, weaved into her reality.

She has the tools to fight. To win. The villain dies, but not without effort or scars she’ll carry all her life.

Will she ever overcome this, and write again? ”

A sob left me. I couldn’t hold it in anymore. “You’re …”

“A genius,” he finished. “The snow was a nice touch I didn’t expect. But I still would have pulled it off. Even with him, which I turned into another nice touch. Women saving men is trending right now.”

“You’re sick,” I spat in his face. “This is my life. Not a novel you can construct.”

Something blunt poked at my chest. It was the gun.

Oxygen sawed out of my lungs. My ears rang.

“You’re going to kill me, Eden. You are. If you don’t, I’ll never stop. I’ll always be there, haunting you. You think they’ll charge me with life for this? Setting fire to a shed, then a few cars. Sending you a note? Taking a few photos of you? Please.”

He removed the gun from my chest and shoved it in my hand. My body was stock-still, not functioning, so he clasped my fingers around it.

Peter stepped back, looking at me dead in the eye.

That was when he let all that madness shine, come pouring out of him.

“I’ve made you question your own sanity, Frankie.

I haven’t just stalked you, I have gotten inside your head.

Your mind. Your life. When I was parked down your street, keeping watch while you opened my letters, I was there.

When you cried in your desk, day after day, I saw the tears wash down your face.

Because I was there. When you stood in that bookstore and crumbled under the weight of all those empty spots?

Also there. I’m a sick man, yes. You’re right.

You rejected me, and I decided to get so deep inside of you that you could never be without me because we’d be one.

And for a while, we were. We have been. Now, I’m giving you a way to be rid of me. ”

My heart pounded in my temples, fear permeating every single ounce of me.

I was nauseated, repulsed, I felt alienated, like he’d taken such a big part of what made me, that I no longer knew what I had left of myself.

Anger advanced at the devastating realization, eating away at inch after inch.

I’d been at my worst, at my lowest, and he’d still taken from me, sinking me further.

And now he was taking the beauty of this weekend away too.

He was claiming it as his, he was claiming me, and I was furious.

Furious at the world, and him, because I was so devastated, so exhausted, so overcome, that I didn’t know how to fight.

I didn’t know how to come out of this unscarred.

“Pull the trigger,” he huffed out, looking down. I did too, and found my arm was outstretched in front of me, gun pointing at him. “I deserve the bullet. We both know that.”

The firearm quivered in my grasp.

My gaze shot back to his face.

I didn’t know if he deserved the bullet. I didn’t want the power to decide, but God, I hated him. I hated him for putting me in this situation, making me so angry, so helpless, so violated. He was baiting me, and I was buying it, I knew I was. But I hadn’t deserved this. I didn’t deserve this.

“Do it, Frankie,” Peter said, getting in my head. Burying himself deeper still. “Don’t you hate me? I know you do.”

I nodded my head, all of me rocked by a violent jolt. “I hate you. I do. But I won’t—”

He walked into the gun. My eyes widened, anger receding, ice-cold panic returning at the sight of his arms arching towards my hands.

“I’ll help you, Frankie Rossi.” His clammy fingers closed around mine, prodding, clumsily searching for the trigger. My mouth parted, blood rushing to my feet, then up to my head. I turned dizzy, numb. I couldn’t think or move. “I’ll help you just like alw—”

Something charged us.

Or rather, something charged him. Peter.

I was shoved aside, and then glass shattered.

A scream rang in the silent early morning, the cracking of the fire the only companion to the muffled thud that followed.

The gun that had been in my hand clattered against the floor, and I realized I’d dropped down with it. I’d gone down on my knees. Ripping the fabric of my leggings and the skin underneath. Breathing ravaged. Broken. All of me crushed and torn into a hundred million parts.

Someone sunk to his knees before me. “Frankie,” Turner called. “Frankie, baby. Look at me.”

Turner’s eyes were suddenly there. They were blown up and they moved hysterically, but it had nothing to do with the anguish I’d been staring into seconds ago. There was kindness behind them. Worry. Love. Strength. They were home.

“Where is he?” I asked him with a strange cry. “Oh my God, Turner, where is he?”

Turner shook his head, flinching with pain at the motion. “Gone.”

Dead. Alive. I … didn’t know what was best. I felt hollow, and I didn’t know what I needed to fill that strange void. “He wanted me to kill him,” I whispered with a sob. “I—”

“I wouldn’t let you do it,” Turner told me, answering something I hadn’t known I asked. “I couldn’t let you carry that kind of weight. I would never let you do that. Not while I breathed.”

“So you’ll carry it instead?”

“Yes.” He pressed his forehead against mine, hands still bound on his back.

The touch of his skin against mine felt like absolution.

As if with him, there was a sliver of hope.

“This is going to be a bitch to process, baby. For you. For me. For the both of us. But we’re going to.

We’re going to survive it. There’s happiness for us. ”

“How?”

“We’ll find a way. Just like we found our way back to each other. I’ll be your light when yours flickers. Just like you’ll always been mine. And whenever it seems like it’s too tough and you’re slipping away? I’m gonna get you back to my side. Every chance. Until the end of time.”