Unwritten Page 21

  When he finished speaking, he motioned for his family to join him. Josh, his mom, Lily, and Herman gathered around him to more applause.

  A woman pointed from the third row. “Hey, aren’t you the guy who’s dating Katherine Hayes?”

  Josh recoiled. A murmur rippled through the crowd.

  “I thought you looked familiar,” someone else said. “Tom Randall’s son. Josh, right?”

  Panic crept up Josh’s sleeves and gripped his chest. He took a step back, trying to make himself less conspicuous. Lily grabbed his hand and gave it a squeeze.

  His dad smiled. “That’s right. Any other questions for me before dinner begins?”

  “Is it true she’s addicted to pain pills?” someone asked.

  “Why did you take her back after she cheated on you with Ted Wilhelm?”

  “I heard a rumor about a sex tape.”

  A sex tape? Josh couldn’t breathe. His stomach felt like he’d swallowed lead.

  Tom Randall cleared his throat. “I should have clarified, are there any questions about my campaign?”

  “Isn’t it hypocritical of you to run for mayor on the coattails of your crackdown on drugs here in Umbridge while your son is dating a drug addict?”

  The room erupted in a series of shouted questions.

  Josh’s horror burned into rage. He surged toward the podium, but Lily grabbed his elbow. “What the hell is the matter with these people?”

  She shook her head. “Don’t take the bait. Dad can handle this.”

  “I don’t get it,” a woman said. “Why would a nice young man like your son be involved with a tramp like Katherine Hayes?”

  Josh’s vision went hazy. He shoved blindly at the bodies separating him from the microphone. His dad turned on him with eyes as cold and hard as flint. Josh pushed past him to reach the podium.

  The room fell silent.

  His heart hammered, and his hands shook as he faced the crowd. “Yes, I’m dating Katherine Hayes, and I won’t stand back and listen to you talk about her like this. She’s a wonderful person who’s done nothing to deserve your judgment. On the contrary, she’s worked damn hard to set a positive example for her fans.”

  A middle-aged woman in the front row leaned forward. “You call posing nude and doing drugs setting a positive example?”

  “Don’t believe everything you read in the tabloids. And you know what else? None of this has anything to do with my dad, his campaign, or his ability to serve this town as mayor.”

  “Why don’t you let us decide that for ourselves?”

  He drew a deep breath. “Kate’s a human being, just like the rest of us. She’s not perfect. She’s also not a drug addict or any of the other things you’ve called her tonight. In fact, I think she’s pretty damn exceptional. So let’s quit spreading rumors and focus on what’s important—my dad and his campaign, okay?”

  Everyone in the room was staring at him. He felt his dad’s eyes burning holes in his back. Then, someone in the back started to clap. A few more people joined in, just enough to cover the awkward silence.

  His dad leaned over the microphone to invite everyone to dinner at the VFW hall.

  Josh turned to see Lily staring at him, jaw slack, eyes wide. He pushed past her and walked straight out the back door. He stood in the cold darkness with snowflakes dusting his cheeks. Anger burned in his chest on Kate’s behalf. He couldn’t explain the sudden need to defend her honor. Except that he could. There was a very simple explanation.

  He was in love with her.

  He was tired of denying it, tired of hiding their relationship. On some level, he would probably always love Noelia, but Kate was something different, something special. She didn’t replace Noelia; nothing could. But it turned out he didn’t need a replacement.

  He just needed Kate.

  * * *

  Kate met her mother for lunch on Sunday, since she was off from filming and Josh was in Massachusetts for a campaign event with his dad. They ate at a little café on Broadway that was one of her mother’s favorites. Doreen talked endlessly about the Rockettes’ show she’d been to the night before with Fred while Kate daydreamed about the way Josh had kissed her on Friday…

  “You would have made a great Rockette,” Doreen commented as she polished off her sandwich. Now that she’d completed her radiation treatments, the color had returned to her cheeks. She looked healthier than she had since she’d first turned up on Kate’s doorstep back in September.

  Kate knew her long-term prognosis was still questionable, but for now, her mom was on the mend, and the knowledge was an incredible relief. “I’m barely tall enough, and anyway, I’m a singer before I’m a dancer.”

  This was true, but she’d auditioned anyway—twice—back when she was still struggling to make a name for herself. She’d never made the cut.

  “You’ve always been a beautiful dancer,” Doreen said.

  Something warm swelled in Kate’s chest. That was the most sincere compliment she could ever remember receiving from her mother. Lately, it felt like a scab had formed over the wounds Doreen had inflicted, as if maybe with time, the pain would fade. “Thanks, Mom.”

  “Fred and I are going to the movies later. We’re going to see War Days. Isn’t that the same actor you had your little fling with in LA in October? He is so hot!” Doreen’s eyes sparkled.

  Kate’s stomach soured. “Ted Wilhelm, yes, but we were never together.”

  “Well, if you haven’t slept with him, you should,” Doreen said with a wink. “He is delicious.”

  Kate shook her head. “I have zero interest in Ted Wilhelm.”

  “Because you’re too busy swooning over Josh, who is also delicious, I must say.”

  Kate looked down at her plate with a casual shrug.

  “Hey, did I show you the flowers Helen and Krista sent me?”

  “No.” Kate sipped her cappuccino. She was so tired, and so caffeinated, that her left eye had started twitching. If she didn’t get some sleep tonight, she might actually lose her mind.

  “Aren’t they beautiful?” Doreen passed her phone across the table.

  Kate looked at the brightly colored bouquet. “They’re gorgeous.”

  She tabbed through photos on Doreen’s phone, looking at all the flowers people—including Kate—had sent her when she completed her radiation treatments. She swiped the screen again, but she’d reached the end of the flower photos. She started to hand the phone back to her mother before she realized what she was looking at.

  Her prescription pill bottles. Her purse.

  The photo that had been sold to the tabloids on Friday.

  A funny feeling slid down her neck, as if someone had just dropped an ice cube down the back of her blouse. She stared at the photo on her mother’s phone as the icy feeling reached her stomach and congealed there.

  Oh no. No no no…

  She raised her eyes to see Doreen smiling at her, talking animatedly, but her words couldn’t reach through the numbness in Kate’s ears.

  “What the fuck, Mom?” she hissed, her voice little more than a whisper as she shoved the phone across the table.

  Doreen looked down at the phone and grimaced. “Shit.”

  “You?” Kate could feel herself trembling with fury. “It was you?”

  “Well, I—it’s just a photo, Kate.”

  Kate had the sensation that she’d been sucked into a whirlpool. The room was spinning around her, and it was hard to draw breath. Her mother had sold her out to the tabloids.

  My mother did this to me.

  “And the other photos? The ones from high school?” The ones that had been turned into nudes…oh God.

  “Well, I didn’t know what they were going to do with them!” Doreen’s eyes went wide.

  “You sold me out.” Tears pushed at the back of her eyes, and she blinked them back angrily.

  “Okay, I was angry when I sold those pictures of you from high school,” Doreen said. “I’d just found out you were al
l rich and famous, and I wanted my fair share.”

  “I’ve given you more than your fair share,” Kate said through gritted teeth. The ice inside her had melted, and her temper flared so hot, she felt like her scalp was burning.

  “Well, honestly, all I did was take a picture of all the pill bottles in your purse. You should keep them somewhere more private if you’re addicted to that kind of stuff.”

  And the top blew right off her head. “I am not addicted to pain pills!”

  “Come on, Kate. Look at you. You’re all pale and jittery. How many bottles are in your purse right now? I was just trying to help you face reality.”

  “You’re right. You have helped me face reality.” She gulped air, fists clenched around the edge of the table. “I don’t know why I was crazy enough to let you back into my life when you never even acknowledged or apologized for all the ways you hurt me twelve years ago.”

  “Not this again.” Doreen rolled her eyes dramatically. “How was I supposed to react when you slept with my boyfriend and then cried rape?”

  Kate lurched from the table so suddenly that it tipped to the side, sending their plates and glasses plummeting to the floor in a resounding crash that was almost drowned out by the pounding of blood in her ears. “That’s it. We’re done. Goodbye, Mom.”

  21

  Josh stepped into his office on Monday after teaching his Cervantes class, mentally chastising himself for not bringing something for lunch. Now he’d have to grab a quick sandwich from the campus cafeteria before his next class, which was never his first choice.

  His phone dinged an incoming text message. It was from Lily.

  You might want to check on Kate. She’d attached a link to a celebrity gossip blog.

  He clicked on it and found himself reading an article about an argument Kate had had with her mother in the Midtown Café yesterday. An embedded video began to play, grainy and unstable like a cell phone video. In it, Kate’s voice shook, her cheeks stained a deep pink. Josh had never seen her so angry. Her voice was too low to make out what she was saying, but Doreen’s response came through loud and clear, “How was I supposed to react when you slept with my boyfriend and then cried rape?”

  Kate recoiled as if she’d been slapped. The next second, she was on her feet and the table between them had gone flying. There was a crash of breaking china, and the person recording seemed to drop their cell phone.

  Josh put his phone down as something hard and tight fisted in his stomach. In his experience, women rarely “cried rape.” The Kate he knew would never make a claim like that to gain attention for herself. On the contrary, she went to all lengths to keep her pain private, even from him. He remembered the haunted look in her eyes when she’d told him about playing a rape victim in this movie. The way she’d reacted as if he meant to choke her while he was doing acupressure to relieve her migraine. The terror in her eyes had haunted him ever since.

  Oh, Kate, what did that man do to you?

  A second news article—this one sent by Gabe—contained an interview with Doreen from this morning in which she defended herself after yesterday’s argument, describing how Kate had tried to hurt her by sleeping with Doreen’s boyfriend and then running off to Hollywood, where she’d continued to sleep her way to the top.

  The comments section was a total trash fire, with people calling Kate every unsavory name in the book. And Josh saw red. He pounded a fist into his desk chair so hard that it screeched backward over the floor and slammed into the wall. It was a good thing he didn’t know where Doreen lived, because…

  But Doreen didn’t deserve his attention right now. He blew out a long, slow breath as pain choked his throat. Oh God, Kate.

  He canceled his one o’clock class and headed for the movie set. She’d given him a badge that allowed full access, and he would wait for her at her trailer.

  He had to see her, and it couldn’t wait.

  As it happened, she crossed the lot ahead of him, wrapped in a heavy black coat over ripped fishnet stockings, entering her trailer not thirty seconds before he knocked.

  Her brows knitted in confusion as she opened the door. “This is a surprise. Aren’t you supposed to be teaching?”

  “I am…good God, Kate.” He stopped short at the sight of her.

  She was so pale, her skin had taken on a grayish tint. Purple stains pooled beneath her eyes in painful contrast to her pallid complexion. Dark bruises ringed her neck as if someone had tried to choke the life out of her. Her black dress was torn, ripped up the side to reveal more bruises on her left thigh. A trickle of blood oozed down her right arm.

  His mouth fell open.

  She smirked as she closed the door behind him. “You should see your face. This is a movie set, remember? I’m a corpse today.”

  “What?”

  “We’re shooting the scene where they find Janet’s body. I’ve been lying in a dumpster all morning.” She shivered as she reached up to finger the bruises on her neck.

  “That’s disturbingly realistic.” It was especially disturbing given the subject matter he’d come to discuss.

  She flexed her hands like claws and gave him her best zombie face, then laughed. “It’s makeup. So what’s up?” She turned away to retrieve an insulated cup from Olive’s on the coffee table behind her. Her hands were blue from cold, or maybe that was makeup too.

  “Have you seen the headlines today?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve been here since five.” She paused with the cup halfway to her mouth as his words hit home.

  He held up his phone so that she could see the article Lily had sent him. The cup slipped through her fingers and landed with a splash on the floor between them. Hot coffee sprayed everywhere, splattering his pants and Kate’s bare legs.

  His stomach plummeted. Her reaction confirmed his worst fear.

  Oh, Kate.

  “We need to talk,” he said.

  She crossed her arms over her chest and backed away. “Of course. There’s no need to explain. Thank you for everything, really. You’ve been a great friend.”

  What? Did she think he was running away? He placed his hands on her shoulders, felt her shaking. She looked at him with eyes as flat and lifeless as marbles. Coupled with the makeup, it was an eerie sight, one that made his blood run cold.

  “No, Kate, I want to talk about the things your mother said…about what happened when you were a teenager.”

  She lifted her chin. “Did it surprise you to hear those things about me?”

  He saw the challenge in her eyes, heard the pain behind her words. “Yes, it did, and I don’t believe a word of it. For months now, I’ve been trying to figure out who hurt you, but I don’t have to wonder anymore, do I?”

  She stilled beneath his fingers. Even her breathing seemed to stop.

  A lump grew in his throat, his voice reduced to a whisper. “Kate, did he rape you?”

  A shudder racked her body. She pulled loose from his grasp and walked to the window, her back to him.

  He accepted her silence as the answer she couldn’t speak. He went to her, took her hands, and drew her against him as tears burned his eyes. “Dammit, I’m so sorry.”

  Her fingers were like icicles in his, her eyes still alarmingly empty.

  “Talk to me.” He squeezed her hands gently.

  “There’s nothing to say.” Her voice cracked, and his heart broke.

  He wrapped his arms around her. “You’re right. You don’t have to say a word. Goddammit, I am so, so sorry.” A tear rolled down his face.

  She reached out and wiped it from his cheek before looking away.

  “Tell me he went to jail.”

  She shook her head, just a fraction of an inch. If he hadn’t been watching her so closely, he might have missed it.

  His chest burned. He wanted to kill the bastard who had hurt her. And Doreen? Naturally the asshole claimed it was consensual, and Kate’s own mother hadn’t believed her. The double betrayal would have been devastatin
g. His arms tightened around her.

  Her stony facade was starting to crumble. Her bottom lip shook, and she bit down on it so hard, a crimson droplet of blood bloomed against her pale skin. She dabbed it with her tongue, then fell to her knees, her stomach heaving.

  Josh dropped down beside her. He rubbed her back, felt the tremors racking her body.

  She jerked away from his touch and lurched to her feet, her hands out in front of her as if warding off danger. “It’s fine…I’m fine.”

  “It’s not, and you’re not.”

  “Really, I’m…” Her voice drifted off as if she couldn’t force the lie past her lips a second time.

  He took a mental step back. “Look, when you’re ready to talk, I’ll be here to listen, okay? Nothing you tell me could ever change the way I feel about you.”

  She shook her head, her eyes wide pools of pain. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I know enough.”

  “What if I told you it happened like she said? I hated her so much that I slept with the man she loved just to hurt her?” She lifted her chin, challenging him.

  “I wouldn’t care. But that’s not what happened, is it?”

  She looked away. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters to me. I understand if it’s too painful to talk about, but just know that I’m here for you. Anything, Kate, anything at all.”

  If it was possible, her face had gone even paler. Combined with the bruises painted onto her skin, she looked like an aberration from a horror movie. “Look, I’m due back on set in a few minutes, and I really need to freshen up first. I’ll catch up later, okay?”

  “You can’t go back out there right now. Let me take you home.”

  She drew herself up tall, arms folded over her chest. “I have to work. I need to work.”