MISTAKEN - The Complete First Season (8 page)

D
aniel
, my ex fiancé, stood before me, a man I thought had been dead for well over a year.

It felt like every ounce of air was sucked from my body and the feeling of a noose around my neck kept me from taking any more. If there had been a bit of food in my stomach, I was sure I would have vomited all over the man.

His smile lit up his entire face. "God, I can't believe it's you, Jenna." The man that looked exactly like Daniel took a step toward me.

I took a step back, more from instinct than anything. It was a hallucination. It had to be. My subconscious was making me feel guilty for what I had done with Brandon and my brain had invented this to punish me. Maybe moving on without Daniel hadn't been such a great idea.

His eyes scanned me from head to toe and returned to meet my gaze. "You changed your hair." His eyes crinkled and his lips turned up into a sweet smile.

I took in his smile—that dimple on his right cheek that I always loved so much. I took another step back. Words wouldn't come to me. It wasn't him. It couldn't be.

"Jenna, I wanted to tell you before. I did. Things were just so…" He took another step toward me.

"No." My voice was hoarse, only a whisper. I took another step backward. I had to keep the distance between us—there was no way I was letting this person, whoever he was, get any closer to me.

He took another step toward me and reached out for me. I flinched away from his touch.

"Jenna, we should sit down. I know this is a lot to take in." He made a motion with his hands toward a different part of the lobby.

My lips trembled, but my brain was beginning to make a connection with the rest of my body again. I shook my head. "No, no. This isn't real." My eyes turned to the desk where Brandon was still standing. His eyes were going between the two of us like he was watching a ping pong match. I wanted to ask him if he could see this man, too, but it was pretty clear by his reaction that he could.

The man who looked like Daniel turned back to look at Brandon and then returned his gaze to me. "That's Brandon. He helped me put this together."

I wanted to run. Every fiber of my being screamed at me to run—run as fast and as far as my legs could carry me. But I was frozen in place. I couldn't run—I couldn't even move. This was wrong. Everything about it was wrong.

"There's a lot to explain, Jenna. We should go sit down." He motioned again to one of the sitting areas in the lobby behind me.

My eyes returned to Brandon, who had turned away from me. I saw his hands clenching the granite counter top of the desk and his upper body bent toward the counter like he'd just been sucker punched in the gut.

"Jenna, let's sit." He had somehow come to stand in front of me and he put his hand on my shoulder.

The pressure of his hand seared into my skin through my jacket. He was so close that I could smell his cologne. It was the same—the same as it had always been. The memory of smelling his pillow after he'd died bored a hole into my thoughts. I used to smell his pillow every night before I went to sleep—it was the only thing I had that still smelled like him. My brain screamed at me that this wasn't real—that there was no way this could be real.

He put his other hand on my other shoulder and turned me toward the sitting area. He gave me a gentle shove to get my feet moving. I was like a zombie, locked in place and unable to make my body move on its own. I turned my head again to look at Brandon. I just wanted to make eye contact with him. I needed to make a connection with something I knew for sure was real. He wasn't at the counter. My eyes scanned the lobby for him, but he was gone. Daniel's hands were pushing me forward and my feet were moving despite my inability to make them move on my own.

"Sit." He stopped me in front of one of the plush red chairs in the seating area. He turned me back to face him. "Sit."

If terror hadn't been coursing through my veins, I would have been offended at being spoken to like a dog. In that moment, I wasn't able to register that I should have even been offended. I did as he commanded and I sat down.

He took a seat in an identical chair across from me and pulled it closer. His knees were almost touching mine.

I could see him, but it was like I was looking through him. I still couldn't process how this was even possible. My mouth hung open and I felt nothing but a quiet desperation to get my brain to function again. It was like something wasn't connecting right—like my head had been removed from the rest of my body.

"Jenna, I know this is shocking for you, but I can't tell you how happy I am to see you again."

Shocking for me. Yes—shocking was an understatement. I somehow made words come from my mouth. "You're dead. This isn't real." I thought if I said it enough times, the apparition that appeared to be Daniel would vanish into the air. It had to.

He reached out for my hand and somehow managed to take it into his, even though I'm sure I tried to pull it away. Both of his hands squeezed mine. "You can feel my hands, right? I'm completely real."

Words tumbled from my mouth without any real thought. "I'm hallucinating again. This isn't real. This is just me trying to cope. It isn't real." My desperation was palpable. Why was I hallucinating?

I felt him squeeze my hands again. "Jenna, listen to me. I know it's shocking, but I'm real. I didn't die."

My eyes snapped to his. "You did die. I saw your coffin go in the ground." Reality was the answer. Confront the hallucination and tell it you know it isn't real.

"I wasn't in the coffin, Jenna. I'm sitting here in front of you." He turned and scanned the lobby. "I should have introduced you to Brandon. He could help explain this better."

"Brandon," I repeated. Oh my God. Brandon.

W
hat had I done
? I had just spent the night with Brandon and my fiancé was now sitting in front of me, not dead at all. How was that even possible? At least when Daniel said Brandon's name, I snapped out of my haze a little.

"Jenna, I know this is really shocking. Can you just let me explain?" The pleading in his eyes almost brought tears to mine.

"How are you real? You died. I saw the pictures of the car after the accident. It wasn't survivable. That’s what the police said—it wasn’t survivable." I could feel my heart racing in my chest and beating like a drum in my ears. I was sure anyone passing by could hear it, too.

"You're right, it wasn't survivable. But I wasn't in the car." His gaze bore into mine like he wanted me to see what had happened that night.

My eyes drifted to a painting on the wall. I felt like I was engrossed in it, but I didn't even really see it. I couldn't look at him, either.

"Things were so hard—things were going so wrong. I tried to tell you. The election—I was so far behind in the polls. There was no way I was going to be elected. Your dad—I wasn't going to be able to fulfill the one year plan, let alone the five year plan." Daniel rolled his eyes. "He would have taken you away from me." He squeezed my hand with his again.

I snapped my gaze back to his and yanked my hand away. "What in the hell are you talking about?"

"You know exactly what I'm talking about. He would have ended us when I lost." I saw the tears in his eyes.

"There were nine months left before the election, Daniel. They hadn't even had the primary, yet." I shook my head. "You're telling me you faked your death so you wouldn't disappoint my father?" I shook my head. "You faked your death so that we wouldn't have to break up? Even though that's really the ultimate break up?"

"It sounds bad when you put it like that."

My eyes widened. "Faking your death isn't bad if I
don't
put it like that?"

He leaned back in his chair and let go of my hand. "You don't understand. We would have been done when I lost. He would have made sure of it."

I shook my head. "And we're not done now? You've been dead for over a year, Daniel."

"I couldn't lose you, Jenna. I was going to take you with me. That was the plan. It was supposed to be both of us that night."

I leaned in toward him and my voice lowered to a hushed whisper. "What are you talking about? You were going to fake my death, too?" I had to be dreaming this. Daniel wasn't this stupid. I knew he wasn't.

He took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. "You're oversimplifying it, Jenna. We could have run away together that night. I didn't want any more one year plans or five year plans. I just wanted to be with you."

I knew what he was saying about the one and five year plans. My father had been doing it to me since I was a kid. I always had to have a mid-range and long term plan of what I was going to do with my life, starting from about age seven. It had made for an interesting childhood, to say the least. "You could have just dropped out of the race. You didn't know what was going to happen in the primary, either. And poll numbers…"

He shook his head. "That political life is his thing—it was never mine. I just wanted to be with you. I was willing to do whatever he wanted me to do so that I could have his blessing. I loved you, Jenna. I still do."

How was this even happening? Just when I had accepted things—when I had moved on with my life, he decided to come back into it. Damned complications—and this? This was beyond being a complication.

He continued. "I've made a new life here. We can make a life here together. I built a house for you, Jenna. You have to come down and see it before you make a decision."

I shook my head and my hands clutched at the soft sides of the chair. "I'm not going anywhere with you, Daniel. I don't know what you hoped to accomplish by accosting me this way. I have a meeting this morning, and I need to get going."

"There's no meeting, Jenna. My friend Brandon owns Tomojii and he set this whole thing up."

I felt like he had punched me in the stomach. The extreme nausea took hold of me again and I would have puked if I had eaten anything. "What?" This had to be a joke. A sick, twisted, disgusting joke.

"There's no marketing deal with Tomojii. He paid off a guy at your company and got him to get you over here. I spent a lot of money to get you here, Jenna. It was the only way."

It wasn't the only way. He could have shown up on my doorstep any time before last night and I would have gone with him without hesitation.

The realization that Brandon had to have known who I was like a slap across my face. I hadn't seen it before that very moment. There was no way he didn't know who I was. He'd slept with me, knowing I belonged to Daniel, knowing that I would never be his. It had to be some kind of sick game to him.

I took a deep breath and tried to cover the feeling of betrayal that the two men had given me as a dark gift that morning. "So now what? You want me to stay here with you? You have
my
fake death planned?" I dug my fingernails into the sides of the chair.

He tilted his head and I sensed I had pushed a button I shouldn't have. "I've made a life for us here. I built you a house. You should see it before you say no." There was an edge to his voice that told me I needed to back off from the accusations.

I shook my head. "I don't want to see it, Daniel."

He continued without acknowledging me. "It's on the ocean, just like you always wanted. There's a glass wall in the living room that overlooks the ocean and I put a grand piano right in front of it."

"You aren't supposed to put pianos in front of windows." It just popped out of my mouth.

He swept his gaze across my face but didn't acknowledge me again. "You can play all day and look out over the waves. We can fill our house with music and children, just like you always wanted. It can be just like we always wanted, Jenna. Like both of us wanted."

He reached out for my hand, but I kept them both on the chair, holding onto the sides for dear life. He had some fantasy life all planned out for me, but hadn't consulted me about it at all. Not only hadn't he consulted me, he'd faked his death—his suicide—and had left me holding the bag. He'd left me with shame and guilt, terrified of allowing myself anything else in my life that I might lose. And he'd left me with the hallucinations and the constant worry that I was losing my grip on reality. I still wasn't a hundred percent sure that this wasn't a hallucination, though if it had been a hallucination, it would have been a much more intense one than I'd ever had before. No, I felt like I was losing my sanity every time I thought I saw him in a crowd. This had to be real; he was sitting right in front of me.

But his actions had been so selfish. He'd left me, whether it was to get out from under the thumb of my father or not. He'd left me and it had been his choice.

I shook my head at him and held my death grip on the chair. "I need time to think about this, Daniel. I just need time to process this. You've been dead for fifteen months."

He nodded. "I know. I should have done it differently, I know I should have. I just couldn't think of how to do this any differently. I wanted you here to see the house. At least come and see the house with me."

I shook my head again. "No."

He tilted his head down at me and it was impossible not to see the disappointment on his face. "This was supposed to be romantic, Jenna. I had it all planned out. I was going to sweep you off your feet." It almost seemed like he was getting angry with me. Angry that I hadn't responded in the way he had expected.

This felt like the least romantic thing, ever. "I don't think there was any way this could have been romantic. You've been dead and I've moved on."

"I know that isn't true. I know there hasn't been anyone else."

I nodded my head. Brandon had made sure that there was. I wondered what he had hoped to gain out of this situation. "I need time to think. Just please let me have time to process all of this. It's too much." I stood up from the plush chair.

He stood up, too. "I need you back in my life, Jenna. It's been too long already."

I backed around the chair to increase the distance between us again. There was no way I was letting him touch me. "I just need to think, okay?"

He nodded and didn't come toward me again. "Don't make me wait too long, Jenna. I love you. I can't be without you."

It seemed like he had a strange way of showing it.