738 Days: A Novel (12 page)

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Chase says shortly, holding an arm across one of the doors and gesturing for me to exit first.

But clearly, though, I do. Or someone does. Chase has practically shut down in response to something. He was positively chatty in the car, by comparison.

He passes me by and leads the way to our rooms. They’re in the far corner of the floor, tucked at the end of a hall. His room is to the left of mine, according to the numbers.

I fumble in my fleece pockets for the key cards. Now that we’re here, I’m not exactly sure what’s going to happen. I mean, we talked about pictures tomorrow, and that’s fine, but what about the rest of the time?

How exactly is being in proximity to him supposed to help? Suddenly my plan seems sort of stupid and not well thought out.

I tug my bag higher up on my shoulder, jab the key card into the lock, and manage to shove the door open, bracing it with my foot.

“Is this going to be okay?” Chase asks, tipping his head toward the room.

“Oh. Yeah, I’m sure it is,” I say, confused. At first glance, it appears to be a normal, slightly upgraded hotel room. Basically like the ones my family used to stay in when we used to go on summer car trips to Gettysburg or wherever, only a little nicer. But that’s true of the entire building.

The two beds are draped in pristine white comforters with room service menus propped against a multitude of pillows. The bathroom is dark and to the right, so I can’t really see it, but I’m assuming it has all the required facilities.

The door to Chase’s room is immediately to my left, on the other side of the closet.

The closet. Two sliding panels, both mirrored. Inside, there’s a safe on one half of the floor, limiting the space. The carpeting looks even newer, cleaner, which is saying something, considering it looks great in the rest of the room.

In short, it’s a perfect little hidey-hole. And I hate myself for noticing that.

“Good. I’ll be right here later, if you need something.” Chase gestures toward his room door in the hall. “But I need to go. I have to take care of something right now,” he says, avoiding my gaze.

Uh-oh. I knew I shouldn’t have agreed to this adjoining-room thing. He can’t wait to get away. But all I say is, “Okay.”

We stand there in silence for a long moment.

“Do you want me to check it?” he asks eventually.

“What?” I ask.

He hesitates, faint color rising in his face. “The room. Do you want me to check it to make sure it’s, uh, secure?”

It’s only then that I realize he’s been waiting for me to go inside. And now he wants to know if I need him to look under the beds for monsters and rapists?

Oh God, how humiliating. Even if that would have made me feel better—maybe—there’s no way I can say yes now. “No, it’s … I’m fine. Just … yeah.” Clinging tighter to my bag, I cross the threshold into the room and turn to face him.

There, I’m in. Now what?

“Okay.” He pauses. “If you’re hungry, you should order room service, whatever you want. Charge it to the room.”

“Um, thanks.”

He nods and turns away without another word, striding off down the hall, the way we came.

I stand there for a second, staring into the space he used to occupy, fighting the urge to laugh at the ridiculousness and myself.

I was worried about being attracted to him, while his primary concern, evidently, was figuring out how far away he could get from me and how quickly.

A small snort of laughter escapes before I stop it. Well, this certainly makes things easier.

A teeny-tiny part of me is mourning the loss, though. Because even just
thinking
about him that way was a step forward, albeit one I wasn’t expecting.

I step back from the door, letting it shut. As soon as the latch clicks into place, I throw the deadbolt and the U-shaped security-lock thing.

I look around the room, noticing for the first time the strong, impersonal smell of newish carpeting and cleaning supplies. It reminds me of the hospital a little, which sends a shiver through me.

Even though the room isn’t that big, it feels empty and exposed somehow. I remember suddenly an article I read online a few months ago about a guy who installed secret cameras in hotel room heater / air-conditioning units to creep on the guests.

Key cards aren’t that secure, you know.
The evil voice pops up in the back of my head.
Someone might still be able to get in with an old one. And the security latches aren’t that hard to beat.

With an effort, I push those thoughts away and go about turning on all the lights I can find and pulling the drapes tightly closed.

I have a small moment of indecision when trying to decide which bed, the one closer to the door or the window. Where is the greatest threat?

After deciding that anyone leaning a five-story ladder against the outside of a hotel is bound to be noticed, I settle on the bed farthest from the door.

I perch carefully on the edge of the bed with my bag on my lap, the fluffy white comforter rising up to surround me, and try to ignore the unfamiliar silence and the rapid beat of my heart, which is only getting faster.

8

Chase

GO WITH IT.

Find me later. Room 222.

The note is crumpled from where I stuffed it in my pocket, but Elise’s message, in her smooth, curling cursive, is still legible.

It doesn’t take but a few minutes to find her room on the second floor. The bar latch is flipped, keeping the door from locking. She’s expecting me to show up here, as ordered, and that just pisses me off further.

I shove open the door to find her pacing at the foot of the double bed in the much smaller, non-luxury room, her phone pressed to her ear. Her laptop and tablet are both set up on the desk and glowing—she’s working.

On what, though? That’s the question. I have a bad feeling about this.

“What the hell, Elise?” I demand as the door bangs shut behind me.

She holds up her finger in the classic “wait” sign and gives me a patronizing wink.

“No, no, I totally agree,” she says into the phone. “I think you should wait until tomorrow. There’ll be more to work with then.”

Why does that fill my stomach with dread?

“Uh-huh, uh-huh. Yep, exciting, I know! Tomorrow.” She hangs up, puts the phone down on the desk, and turns to face me with a seductive smile. “Sweetie.” She looks as sleek and pulled together as she did this morning, which feels like eons ago. Her skirt is one of those that hugs her curves and yet looks smooth and untouchable.

Usually, that only makes me want to touch her, to rumple her, even more. Right now, though, I’m too angry.

She makes a production of sitting on the edge of the bed and patting a spot next to her, each individual motion calculated for maximum allure.

I don’t move. “What are you doing?” I ask darkly.

She makes an innocent face, her hand resting on her chest and playing with the buttons on her blouse, until one of them pops free “accidentally.” “Who, me?”

I’m beyond allowing myself to be distracted. “The rooms?” I press. “Whatever you told that girl at the front desk?”

Her hand drops to her lap with a definitive slap, and she gives me an exasperated look, all hint of temptress vanishing. “Okay, before you get all
rah-led up
,” she mocks my accent, “just listen for a minute.”

I glare at her.

“No, seriously, I want you to think about this.” She sits forward. “We knew that photos of you and Amanda would attract some attention.”

I nod grudgingly.

“So, after you told me you got her to come here, all I could think was, imagine what kind of response we’d get if people thought you two were … together?” She smooths a nonexistent wrinkle out of the comforter.

“Together?” I stare at her, my brain refusing to compute what she’s just said. Then I get it. The adjoining rooms. The way the front desk girl watched Amanda and me, her cheeks flushed with excitement, like she was in on a secret. “As in,
together
? You’re fucking kidding me.”

Elise stands up, following me as I take a step back and locking her hand on the front of my shirt. “No, think about it. It’s so meta! Your poster saved her in that room and now, you save her in real life.” She smiles up at me.

“What happened in that room was real life for Amanda,” I point out. Very real. Too real.

“Right. Of course.” Elise taps her finger lightly against my chest. “But you know I’m right. The media will eat it up, and all those teen girls who watched
Starlight
will remember why they fell in love with you in the first place.”

More like, why they fell in love with my image or the character of a guardian angel. Not exactly the same thing, but for Elise’s intents and purposes, it’s one and the same.

“Elise,” I say, my jaw tight. “You saw what happened at the store. Amanda … she’s messed up.” I feel vaguely guilty telling Elise this, as though everything that Amanda told me in the car is somehow protected by confessional status or something. But it’s true, and Amanda would be the first to admit it.

“And yet she managed to make it here,” Elise says wryly, her mouth quirked in amusement.

“You think she’s faking?” I ask in disbelief. Maybe Elise was too far away when Amanda panicked at the store, but my seat was front and center. You can’t fake that kind of terror. And there were plenty of us who tried for a living.

“No,” Elise says, sliding up against me, back in temptation mode. “I just think this face is awfully persuasive.” She cups my chin, running her thumb over my lower lip. “It doesn’t have to be a big deal, Chase,” she says softly, her breath touching my mouth. “She doesn’t have to know. The rumors will take care of most of it. You just stand a little closer to her, maybe put your arm around her shoulders—”

I pull out of Elise’s grasp. “She doesn’t like being touched.” I could still feel Amanda flinching away from me.

Elise waves her hand dismissively. “By creepy old guys against her will, yeah. But that’s not you.”

I rub my forehead. “Jesus, Elise, no.” Pretending to be in a relationship for attention is bad enough, but to do that to Amanda after everything she’s been through? That feels wrong. It takes away her choice. Maybe she doesn’t want to be “romantically linked” with me or anyone else. I imagine that kind of thing might be an issue for her in real life, let alone adding a layer of fake.

Elise’s expression shifts, hardening around the edges. “I thought we were in this together. I thought you had my back.”

“I do,” I snap. “But this is not what we agreed on. You’re taking it too far and—”

“Even if it’s working?” she asks.

“What?”

She stalks to the desk and snatches up her phone.

“Look,” she says, unlocking the main screen and handing the phone over to me.

“I don’t know what I’m—”

“The call log, Chase.” She sounds impatient and bored, which is a bad combination when it comes to Elise.

I click to her recent calls and find a very familiar number at the top. George, her boss, my former publicist, has called twice in the last two hours.

“Some of the photos from today already hit gossip sites,” she says, folding her arms across her chest. “It’s generating buzz, negative for now because they got a shot of Amanda freaking out.”

I wince.

“But that’ll change,” she says. “If we move on to phase two, which I already told George about.”

Of course she had. I hand her the phone.

Elise takes it with a frustrated noise. “You know why George called? Because Rick called him, wanting to know if he was involved. They were curious.”

Rick, my agent? It’s been months since either of them asked
anything
about me. I’d ceased to exist for them.

“It’s working, Chase,” Elise says fiercely. “You just have to trust me. Don’t quit now, don’t turn it all into nothing, not when we’re so close. Please?” She gives me a pleading gaze that might be just as calculated as her seductress routine earlier but feels far more real.

I sigh. She has a point. If we quit now, there was no purpose behind any of it, including any pain I might have caused Amanda just by showing up in her life. And, honestly, on a practical level, there’s not
that
much difference between what Amanda and I have already discussed and Elise’s new plan. We would just be deliberately cultivating the media’s instinct to blow everything up into a bigger story than it actually is. Without Amanda’s knowledge.

I can feel my resistance and initial outrage waning, and it makes me hate myself more than I already do.

“No one’s going to get hurt,” Elise says quickly, sensing my capitulation. “Not even Amanda. As soon as the rumors start, we’ll issue denials to the press, and we’ll even include her, if she wants.”

Denials will only fuel the fire of speculation, which is exactly what Elise is counting on. And I’m not quite sure how “we” are going to do this when I “fired” my publicist, but … whatever.

“All right,” I say.

A slow smile spreads across Elise’s face. “Admit it—I’m a genius,” she says, as she sways toward me.

“An evil genius,” I say. But there’s no fire behind the words, and she knows it.

She tosses her phone on the bed and hooks her fingers into the collar of my shirt. “Evil genius. I like that. Want to visit my lair?” She raises herself up on her tiptoes and presses her warm mouth against mine. Her tongue is very persuasive, and the taste of her lipstick, familiar from our past encounters, has me hard in an instant.

She tugs at my coat, pushing it off my shoulders, then steps back, pulling me with her to the bed.

But I can’t shake the nagging feeling that’s eating at me, making it hard to lose myself in the moment. It takes me a second to isolate the source: Amanda is upstairs by herself.

Why that should bother me, I’m not entirely certain. She said she’d be okay. But something tells me she says that a lot, while maybe not being sure that it’s true. It’s obvious she doesn’t want to be a burden to her family or anyone else, including me.