I See...Love (A Different Road Book 1) (9 page)

I take the magazine and hold it to my chest with one hand, while I bend down and desperately try to pick up the runaway vegetables. Maybe no one really knows it’s me. I look like a hot mess right now and it’s only my ass on the cover. Shit! What’s on page thirteen? I quickly set the magazine down on the cement and turn to page thirteen. My eyes fill with tears as I see our business social media site picture of me standing with a big old smile on my face next to my catering van. Yep, they all know it’s me.

I quickly shove the last of the vegetables in my bags and walk/run back toward the van.

“Are you going to pay for those?” the farmer yells, behind me.

In my rush to disappear, I shoved the unpaid heirloom tomatoes in my bag with the rest of the vegetables. More tears run down my face as I realize I can now never show my face at the farmer’s market again. It’s my favorite place in the whole wide world, too. But the way everyone was staring and whispering about me, I don’t fucking care that I just committed a crime. I start sprinting to my van and I cry the entire drive home. It’s a miracle I didn’t cause an accident because I could barely see through all of my tears. Oh, God, do they arrest people for stealing tomatoes? How expensive are these? Is it considered grand larceny? Oh shit! I’m going to go to jail!

I stab at the garage door opener on the visor half a block away from my house and look in my rear view mirror. Three cars have been tailing me since I left the farmer’s market.

I quickly pull into the garage and violently stab the garage door opener again to close the door. Before it closes all the way, a man is out of his car, bending under the closing garage door snapping photos. His foot triggers the door to open upward again instead of continuing to close. Oh, my God! Is that the paparazzi?

Before my foot hits the entryway to the house, his camera is grabbed from him and he’s being yanked away backwards by the strap around his neck. I don’t hang around to see more. I quickly enter my house and lock the door behind me. I sink against the door until my ass hits the tiled floor.

Nina is by my side in two seconds flat. Her hand is on my back pushing me forward and out of the way. She unlocks the door, then opens it and pushes the garage door button on the wall making it close. She quickly locks the door again, and then her ass is on the ground next to me.

“Oh my God, Nina, you will not believe what just happened at the farmer’s market!” I yell, as tears stream down my face.

“I know. I tried to tell you before you left this morning,” she says. Like that’s any help to me now.

“Nina, you have to go to all of the stores that sell this magazine in a one hundred mile radius and buy every last copy!” I scream while crying.

“As soon as you left, I got in my car and tried to do just that,” she replies, taking my hand.

“TRIED!” I shout.

“Every store that I got to was already sold out of them,” she continues.

Then a loud banging on the front door startles me. Oh my God, they’re relentless. Nina gets up, but I quickly grab onto her arm and pull her back down.

“No! Please don’t go!” I beg.

“It’s alright. I’ll take care of it,” she replies in a soothing voice.

She opens the door to what sounds like a full-blown news conference on my front porch. People are shouting and you can hear photos being snapped. What are they going to do with a photo of Nina standing in our doorway? With this much publicity, you would think I just invented fat-free, calorie-free, healthy, good for you chocolate, which is actually a fantastic idea.

“We have no comment at this time,” Nina says calmly, then closes the door.

She comes back over and sits down next to me. She puts her hand on the side of my head and leans it on her shoulder. I close my eyes and listen to the feeding frenzy outside on my front lawn. Nina pushes my ear into her shoulder and places her other hand over my other ear, so I can’t hear them. I can still hear them though, and I silently rethink the whole becoming a nun thing. I’ll never be able to show my face in public again. Maybe they can ship me off to a foreign country in some remote mountain. Wait, that’s monks, right?

As I think of all the things I’m going to have to give up to become a nun, the noises outside seem to disappear. I pull Nina’s hand off of my ear and lift my head. Just when I think I’m in the clear, there’s another knock on the front door.

“That’s it!” Nina says, smacking her hands on the tiled floor, and then she gets up again.

“No! They’ll eventually just lose interest and go away,” I tell her.

She stomps to the front door and opens it. I bring my knees to my chest and bury my face in my kneecaps. Instead of ranting and yelling to reporters and trashy tabloid jerks, she has a quiet conversation, and then several additional sets of footsteps can be heard coming into the house. Things are set on the family room floor, and then Nina has another quiet conversation.

“I’ve taken care of everything. Is she going to be alright?” a quiet voice whispers.

Oh my God, it’s River. River Mason is in my house!

“I’m not sure, but I’m not going anywhere. I’ll keep an eye on her,” Nina tells him.

“Here’s my card with my personal number on it,” he says. “Call me if you need anything. And I do mean anything,” he continues.

“Thank you,” she says.

“That goes for me too. If you need anything, just...” Josh starts to say to Nina.

“I don’t need anything…or, should I say,
nothing
from you,” she says. Yep, she heard Josh tell River that exact word at the party last night.

The door is closed and it’s dead silent. Nina walks back over and sits down next to me again. I raise my tear stained face to look at her. She glances toward the family room, so I look there too. Stacked in big piles are hundreds of the tabloid magazines with my ass splashed on the cover. River said he took care of everything. I guess he really did.

Nina pats my kneecap, and then sets River’s business card on my knee.

“I think this is for you,” she says, then gets up and goes into the kitchen.

The curtains are whispering their morning serenade as my eyes pop open. I’m drenched in sweat and breathing heavy from the looping nightmare that plays in my dreams. I reach over to my nightstand and push the button on the clock that tells me the time.

“The current time is three forty-seven A.M.,” the robotic sounding female voice tells me.

Like every morning, I wish just once I could sleep until five. That’s all I ask for. I don’t need six or seven. Five would be fantastic.

Although, then I would have that much more time reliving my nightmare in my dreams. The sounds that play are so real. The crumpling of steel, the shattering of glass, the terrified screams coming from my mother, every detail plays over and over. The sights and sounds are so vivid that it feels like it’s happening right now. I sat in the back seat behind my father with a clear view to the passenger seat where my mother sat. My sister, Kate, sat next to me behind my mother. I usually sat behind my mother because her seat sat more forward, allowing my long legs more room. Even at ten, I was already taller than everyone in my class. But this day, I chose to sit behind my dad. I secretly thank God, if there is one, for that decision.

I’ll never forget the screams that came from my mother when she realized what was about to happen. Being blinded from the accident is ironic. Because what I wish I could never see again, is the one thing I see as clear as the day it happened. That accident took my sight, but it left me with things I wish I could forget.

In that split second after she started to scream, she turned her head to look back at us. I still remember the terror in her eyes and the way her hair flew through the air. Her left arm started to come to us, but her seat belt locked and kept her confined in her seat. As she screamed, ‘no,’ the out of control car hit ours head on. It hit our car with such force that the front end of the other car came halfway into ours. As I screamed, ‘no,’ the insides of our car and the front end of the other car crumpled inward and hit my mother and father straight on.

Her screaming words stopped as if someone hit the mute button, but the terror in her open eyes stayed glued to mine long after she stopped breathing. She was killed instantly. I know she didn’t suffer and that was a great comfort. I couldn’t see my father, but I heard the gurgling that came from the seat in front of me. I don’t think my father had the same luxury of dying instantly. Did it serve him right?

As the car crumpled, something came flying in the back seat and hit me in the head. I remember tearing my eyes from my mother’s and quickly looking at my sister. With relief, I saw only a small cut on her face. I looked back at my mother’s open, dead eyes, one last time and I tried with all I had to reach forward and close them, but I couldn’t move. Then I passed out. When I came to in the hospital a few days later, I woke to the terrifying fact that I was now permanently and one hundred percent blind.

I was blind to the world, but left with the horrified last sight of my mother’s cold, dead eyes. I was the last thing she ever saw.

Grief fills my heart and soul. I get out of bed and turn on the shower as hot as it will go before I lose it. I step in and let the hot water wash away what no one is allowed to see. My weakness pours unwanted and uncontrollably out of my eyes.

I get out of the shower and get ready for my day. I like to head into the office on Sunday when no one is there. I have things I need to prepare before Sebastien comes into the office Monday like he promised. It’s time to get things moving forward to try and buy him out. Surely, money talks and everyone has a price. I need to be rid of Sebastien, now.

I walk back into my bedroom and hear the distinct crack of Josh’s knee as he stands from a chair in the corner.

“What is it?” I ask.

His sigh tells it all. Something has happened.

“Is it Kate?” I ask, concerned.

“No, it’s nothing like that. Someone from the party last night sold a photo to the tabloids,” he says.

I growl and ball my hands into fists. I know exactly what photo it will be, too, without even having to ask for confirmation.

“How bad is it?” I ask.

“For you?” he returns.

“No, for Joss. I could fucking care less what they say about me, damn it. You have to know a little about how she’ll take it from being with Nina,” I reply.

“If I had to guess, I don’t think she’ll handle it well,” he says.

“Fuck,” I spit out.

“You’re going to have to call…” Josh starts.

“NO!” I roar back at him.

Just when I finally make plans to be rid of the pain in my ass, otherwise known as Sebastien, I need him to fix yet another problem.

FUCK!

This isn’t a problem for me. I don’t fucking care what the tabloids or news reporters have to say about me. This is about Joss. Why is she under my skin? Why do I care what happens to her?  There are only three people in the world that I’ll go to the ends of the earth for, Kate, Stephen, and Josh. Everyone else can go fuck themselves. But now…Joss. Why?

“Call him,” I say giving in.

Josh takes my phone from the nightstand and pushes the button to speed dial Sebastien, then puts the phone in my outstretched hand.

I put it to my ear and listen to it ring. I don’t fucking care that it’s not even five o’clock in the morning on a Sunday. He had better answer his goddamned fucking phone!

“I see you have a problem you need me to fix,” he answers.

Fucking asshole.

The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end as rage fills my insides. His voice alone sends me over the edge. But to have to call on him to do something for me, makes me livid.

“Can you fix it, or not?” I ask.

“Tsk, tsk, you shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds you,” he replies.

Tsk, tsk. Who the fuck says tsk tsk?

“Listen here motherfucker, you don’t feed me, and you never have. You’re a fucking leech, and you know it. When you’re out of here in two years, you’ll miss the compensation you get when you’re no longer the executor of my father’s will. You’ll actually have to go back to being the snake lawyer that you are,” I remind him.

“I’ll handle it,” he says, then hangs up.

You’re fucking right you’ll handle it.

I pull the phone away from my ear and squeeze it so hard I hear the glass crack.

Within the hour, there’s a knock on my front door. Sebastien walks in with four other men carrying the garbage tabloids.

“It’s handled. It’s like it never happened. Although, I couldn’t control what was already happening in the farmer’s market. I got word that your little girl toy just left in a tizzy. I have men on the way to the farmer’s market to handle it.”

“Load these in the car. Josh, take me to Joss’s house,” I order.

It takes only a few minutes for the magazines to be loaded and we’re on our way to Joss’s. I’m not even sure why I feel it necessary to give them to her.

“There’s her van,” Josh says. “She’s got rats on her tail,” he continues.

Fucking paparazzi.

“Shit!” Josh yells.

“What? What’s going on?” I ask.