Chapter 34

34

" I watch you all day and night. No matter how hard you fight. You thought you could get rid of me. I'll ruin you, just wait and see." I finish reading, and for a few long seconds, I can't do anything other than take in the basic block script letter by letter.

"Not exactly Dickens, but at least the chap rhymes." Loomis sighs. "I think this calls for some champagne, don't you?"

I turn my head and narrow my eyes at him. "Champagne?"

"Never let him win, luv. He can send you cut-rate poetry, but he's not going to steal your fire or your spirit again. Fuck him."

Hard to argue with that. "Fuck him. Champagne it is."

"It's in the wine fridge," Stone tells him. Take any glasses you want, but the good ones are on the glass shelves in my bar."

Loomis excuses himself to tend to the champagne, and I take a step back, no longer wanting to see it. This isn't why I got into music or acting. I'm a bit over the psychos.

Vander is typing away on his laptop thing. I'm not even sure if that's what it is. It's weird-looking, but he seems to know what he's doing.

"I think I need a minute," I declare .

Stone's head snaps in my direction, and I place a kiss on his cheek, letting him know that I'm okay, but sometimes a girl just needs a minute.

"Do you want company?" Wren asks, and I shrug.

"Sure. But we're not talking about Joe Stalker. That's my rule."

In the great room, a loud pop sounds, and out of the corner of my eye, I catch Loomis pouring three large flutes.

"Hey." Stone grabs my hand and pulls me back to him, not caring in the slightest about our audience as his hand meets my waist and his forehead meets mine. "We'll figure this out, okay? We have cameras and doormen who stopped him, and he never got near our apartment."

"I know. I'm fine. Sort of. I think I just need to process this a bit."

His lips press to mine, and he gives me a kiss before he takes my hand and twirls me away as if he's spinning me on a dance floor.

"Grab the bottle," I tell Loomis as both Wren and I snag our glasses and head for my old bedroom. I don't want to take them into Stone's. That feels too intimate, and right now, I want to lie down.

The three of us plop down on my old bed, glasses in hand. I take a sip but before I can swallow, the door bursts open, and Vander is standing there.

"The poems aren't online," he announces.

"What?" I sit up a little straighter.

"You had said that many of the letters were leaked or used as evidence and were public information, but they're not. The threatening letters he sent you are. Those became evidence, but love letters sent to celebrities of a non-threatening nature are not considered criminal, and they weren't part of the case against Terrance Howard."

"Um. Okay. I'm not sure I'm understanding. "

Vander steps into the room, grabs my glass from my hand, and gulps down all of my champagne. Before I can get a protest out, he refills it and hands it back to me. "Whoever wrote you these new letters knew that the fucker wrote you poems and that not all of the letters were threats. You said so yourself. That's how they started out and then became threatening later."

"Like this one is," Wren states. "But this one is still a poem."

"Yes. This one is threatening as was the last one, and technically, if needed, you could make an argument that the first one was as well, but I looked at the available letters online. None of them are like the ones we received last time or today. The ones online were more desperate as well as angry and violent, and they were not rhyming or poetic in any way."

"So whoever wrote these saw the first notes?" Loomis surmises.

"Seems that way," Vander concludes.

I stare up at him, my mind whirling, and my voice a soft, shaky whisper. "Not that many people saw the early letters."

"I'm going to go through all the video footage I can now, as well as any we have of you coming or going from the building and anything public. If this guy is watching you as he claims to be, we might get lucky and find the asshole. But this was a fuck up, Tinsley. A huge one. The pool of people who knew of these letters written in that format is limited. If you could think of each person and write them down, I can dig into them one by one. We'll find them. I promise."

He gives my shoulder a reassuring squeeze and leaves, shutting the door behind him.

I'm too flabbergasted to speak as I think through all the people who were around me at the time and who saw or knew of the letters. "I need to think. This is all too much. And Stone doesn't have freaking paper here." I learned that the hard way.

"I'll write them down on my phone," Loomis offers, polishing off his glass of champagne and setting the empty down on the side table so he can pull out his phone.

"I'm sorry." Wren holds up her hand. "I won't lie and say he hasn't been at the top of my list, so I'm going to ask the hard question. The one we've all sort of had in the back of our minds but haven't asked yet."

I know what Wren's about to ask. And that alone makes my chest hurt and my body shake, because yes, I've thought of it too, and I hate myself for that.

"Could it be Forest?" she continues.

"He's in LA," I answer, only my voice isn't selling it. "No chance he can hand-deliver them."

"Okay," Loomis picks up. "And I'm not saying it's him, but couldn't he hire someone to do that bit for him?"

I gulp down my freshly refilled glass, set the empty on the bedside Loomis's, and flop back onto the bed. "Yes," I answer reluctantly. "It could be him. He was mad about the hickey he saw on my neck and how he thought I was lying to him about you"—I point at Loomis—"and hasn't been shy about how unhappy he is that we're no longer together. Last night Stone and I looked like a very happy couple in all those pictures, and I'm positive he saw them. He also knew about all the letters. All of them. He could easily pay someone to hand-deliver them to throw us off his trail."

My eyes close. I don't want to think it's Forest. He was there for me night and day when all of this was happening the first time. I loved him. He was my childhood sweetheart, and some of my best memories are memories that include him.

"There were other people too. Not just him. How do I accuse him? How do I write his name down? He's Stone's brother."

"You don't think Stone has thought of this?" Loomis says. "My bet is he has."

My cell phone rings in my pocket, and I slip it out, laughing mirthlessly. "Are his ears burning? Maybe I'll just ask him and see how he responds."

"We'll give you a few minutes." Loomis climbs off the bed and takes Wren with him.

My finger slides across the screen to answer. "Hey, Forest."

"Hey," he responds. "Where did I catch you?" He sounds agitated. Off.

"At Stone's."

"Oh. Is he with you?" His voice is sharp, and he's speaking fast. Almost like he has a point he wants to reach and can't stand the back and forth.

"No. He's in the other room. How are you?"

"I saw the pictures from last night, Tinsley. Can we not pretend I didn't? How do you think I am after seeing that?"

"You sound upset."

He laughs mirthlessly. "Yes, I'm fucking upset. He's my brother. You're living with him, looking happy and cozy on his arm, and wearing his motherfucking ring on your goddamn finger. How am I supposed to respond to that?"

"I got another letter today," I say instead of addressing any of that.

"You did? Shit, Tins, I'm sorry. What did it say?" His voice instantly goes from infuriated to alarmed.

" I watch you all day and night. No matter how hard you fight. You thought you could get rid of me. I'll ruin you, just wait and see ."

He's silent for a minute, and I hear him scream, "Fuck!" and what sounds like something shattering in the background.

"What was that?"

"I threw a glass. Jesus Christ. What the fuck does that mean that he'll ruin you and that he's watching you day and night?!"

"I don't know," I cry, getting upset. Tears begin to leak from my eyes, coasting down my temples and into my hair. I don't know if it's from the letter or his reaction to it. "Exactly what it sounds like, I assume. He's watching me and he wants to ruin me."

He blows out a torrent of air into the phone. "I'm sorry, baby. I didn't mean to get so upset and make you upset. How can they not find this asshole?" Another breath. "I hate you there. I hate you being in Boston when I'm in LA. I hate that you're with Stone and not with me. I hate that some psycho is stalking you and making threats. I can't stand this, Tinsley. Any of it. It's driving me crazy."

I can't ask him. I can't ask if it's him. I don't think he'd react this way if it were. Right? He wouldn't. This doesn't seem like an act, but?—

The door bursts open. "We've got him." Loomis comes racing over to me and grabs my hand. "Vander's got him. Get off the phone. We need you."

"You've got him?" Forest barks.

I stare into Loomis's gray eyes as I say, "I'll call you back, Forest."

"Fine. Go. But please call me back."

He disconnects the call, and I follow after Loomis. "Tell me it's not Forest."

Loomis gives my hand a squeeze. "It's not Forest."

I hiccup out a sob and my face falls against Loomis's shoulder as I start to shake.

"Hey, no, none of that."

"I hate that I thought it was him."

"My darling, just because he's not outwardly stalking you with red paper and poetry doesn't mean he's not disrupting your life in a very toxic way."

I nod against him. "I know." I sniff and wipe my face. I blow out a calming breath and settle myself down. "I need to do something about that."

"Yes. You and Stone both because this concerns both of you. It's okay to care about him, but the way he cares about you isn't right. Your heart is big, and you never want to hurt anyone, and I love you for that, but his reach over you needs to come to an end."

"I agree. I need to be the thorns and not the petals. Sometimes we don't see how bad a situation is because we're on the inside and not on the outside of it. I've taken the passive route of distancing myself, hoping he'd naturally get over it, but I can't be passive anymore where he's concerned. Thinking it was him who was sending the letters really drove that home."

Loomis kisses my forehead.

"Who was it?" I press. "Tell me."

"Apollo. Your former manager. The one you said was a bit of a creep—you weren't wrong in that—and actually texted you right when you got the first letter. Because he had been watching you the entire time.

There is no denying the video. The man who walks into the building at two in the morning to deliver the letter is wearing a hood, sunglasses, a face covering over his nose and mouth, and leather gloves. There should be no recognizing him. But he holds up his hands to the doorman who challenges him after taking the envelope, and when he does, his hoodie slips up his arms ever so slightly revealing a hint of yellow ink.

A sun.

Apollo Sun—he always loved his name, and I never knew if it was his real name or not—has a bright yellow sun on the inside of his wrist. But that's not how Vander knew it was him. Apollo had been true to his word and followed me. Vander was able to catch his face on more than one occasion. Especially outside of the warehouse, which is how he knew where the cameras were and how to evade them. He studied their angle and location. He kept his distance, and stayed far out of my sightline, but it's him, and Vander had met him once years ago after one of my concerts, so he recognized him.

The FBI came after everyone left, and Stone and I showed them the video footage from the building, which we had once again been given access to by the building manager. I told the FBI I recognized the tattoo and that he had reason to hate me because I fired him, and when I did that, he tried to blast my name, which didn't sit well with some of his other clients. People I'm friends with within the industry. They left him as well, and after that, his career took a sharp decline.

The FBI left, promising they'd find him and bring him in for questioning and that was that. They'll get him, and hopefully, this will be over.

Stone and I curl up on the sofa to watch football together, and when halftime of the four o'clock games hits, I turn to him and say, "We need to tell Forest that we're together."

He blinks at me and shifts so I'm completely on top of him, his arms banded around my back. "When would you like to do that?"

"I don't know. He's in LA, and we're here, it's not right, and I can't do this with him anymore. How do you feel about that?"

"I feel sad about it because it'll hurt him and likely ruin my relationship with him completely." He brushes some hair from my face so he can see me better. "But it's what needs to be done because I love you and I want you. Not just for now or the next couple of months, but for always. If that means I move out to LA, then?—"

"I've been thinking about moving back here," I interject.

His eyes sparkle. "You have?"

"Boston is my home. I have Wren and the other girls and my parents. My dad made his music career work from here, so why can't I? Whenever I have a film, I'll have to travel for that, but that would be the case anyway whether I was living in LA or not. "

"What about Loomis?"

"You'll have to get used to sharing me with him. He's my other half, and you're just the guy I'm sleeping with."

He bites my shoulder and I yelp. "Are you ever not a brat?"

"Nope. Never. For real, though, I'll go visit him a lot, and he'll visit me, and we'll talk on the phone way too much. It's what we do, and I'll miss the hell out of him. But he's not a reason to stay in LA, and you're a reason to be here."

His lips brush over mine. "You have no idea how happy that makes me."

I drop my head to his chest, listening to his heartbeat. "What about the engagement?"

His fingers twirl in my hair. "For now, we'll keep it going because undoing it isn't easy with us staying together."

"We'll keep it going, but eventually. We'll have to figure out how to end that. I don't like having something fake between us."

"Me either. I agree, we'll figure it out."

Only I don't know how to end a fake engagement when what's between us is real.