Chapter 13
Olivia
Past
The curtain lowered on us for the last time. It was the last show of my senior year. The high school drama club was officially over.
The spotlights clicked off. They were always way too hot. I was covered in sweat every time the show was over. I was exhausted, too, but I didn't mind that. I needed the distraction that acting gave me.
For a little while I could escape from my own life and the thoughts that haunted me.
I stepped forward and put a hand on the thick, velvet curtain that separated us from the departing audience. My heart felt as heavy as this wall of cloth. It had been two months since Bastien came home after his father died, but he has avoided me ever since.
I'd also heard that he'd been getting in trouble with the police an awful lot lately.
The roar of the audience was the only thing that kept me going. With that now over, what did I have left?
“Are you going to go meet your 'phantom of the opera'?” Marcy, one of the stage hands, asked.
“What?” I shook my head, having no idea what she was talking about.
I never knew why Marcy was a stage hand. Despite the dark clothes they made her wear, her hair and makeup were always better than the actors.
“Yeah, that hot guy with black hair, that's come to, like, every play and rehearsal.” Marcy was a few years older than me, she wasn't from our school, but was part of some theater intern program. “Someone told me his name. It was weird so I forgot it. I'm pretty sure it began with an A or a B.”
I took a moment to consider who she might be talking about, then it hit me like a drop curtain.
“Bastien?”
He was here? And he came to all of my shows? I thought he was pissed at me for what I said to him at that abandoned building. I couldn't blame him if he was. The things I said to him were really mean. I guess it worked though because he came home, but... then he started avoiding me.
I never meant to hurt him, and it eats me up inside that he thought I did.
But if he still came to my plays, maybe he wasn't as mad at me as I thought. The heaviness in my heart filled with the glimmer of hope. I needed to reach him before he disappeared again.
I needed to apologize.
“Bastien. Yeah, that's it! So weird.” Marcy confirmed. “Livy, you have to tell me if he's single.”
“He's not!” The crazy hopeful part of me lied to Marcy, as I rushed backstage to grab my phone. “And don't call me Livy!'”
Present
“Ah!” I jolted awake, terrifying images of a green hooded man and glass shattering were still vividly hovering all around me. My ears rang like I’d just got out of a concert.
“Take it easy,” Bastien's soothing voice helped bring me back from the nightmare. “I got you, you're alright.”
If it weren't for the rush of EMTs that suddenly surrounded me, I would've believed him. Where was I?
I glanced around the office room. There were rows of two-way radios on a desk with a series of monitors. It was a security office. Past the EMTs I recognized a few things that made me realize I was still in the network building of the talk show.
Memories floated back to me like messages in bottles. I remembered a loud noise, a gun maybe. Did I get shot?
No, that wasn't it.
The only thing that hurt was my head. I had a horrible headache, but it certainly wasn't a gunshot. I'd never been shot before, but I imagined that it would feel a lot worse than this.
The EMTs prodded and poked me, flashed lights in my eyes and checked my vitals. Through it all, I focused on only one thing: Bastien's tight grip on my hand. I had no idea what happened, but I would've freaked out if he wasn't here with me.
Bastien made me feel safe.
After the EMTs deemed me fine medically, the police questioned me. They asked Bastien to wait outside. He was resistant and distrustful of them, but I squeezed his hand and told him I'd be ok. The truth was I wanted him with me, but Bastien never got along well with any kind of authority. I didn't want him getting in trouble, especially for protecting me.
They asked me a barrage of questions and I told them the little I knew. Finally, they showed me an image of the man in the green hoodie that I’d seen earlier and asked if I knew him, or if he had any reason to want to harm me.
“Not that I'm aware of.” My skin began to tingle with anxiety over the question.
Why would anyone come after me like that?
I remembered him weirding me out by hanging around, but I couldn't recall anything after the loud noise. I was almost too afraid to ask, “What happened?”
Apparently the exterior security camera caught the whole thing. In an effort to jog my memory, one of the cops had a security guy play the event back for us. I watched the monitor with muted horror.
The man in green leaned against the front entrance's glass wall and waited for me to turn my back to him. I gasped when I saw the man on the screen pull a gun and aim it at the back of my head.
My God! How horrible!
They stopped the video and asked if I was alright. I couldn't answer. My organs felt like they were being crushed. I had never been so close to death before! I broke my collarbone once in a car accident, but that was an accident; someone texting and driving. This was so much worse.
I couldn't stop shaking. Someone tried, and almost succeeded in, assassinating me!
The detective asked if I wanted the video turned off. The still frame of the gun pointed at the back of my head seemed to buzz on the monitor, etching its image into every nightmare I was bound to ever have.
“Do you know who he is,” I asked, hesitantly. “Was he some sort of deranged fan?”
“Unlikely, ma'am.” The detective replied. “The guy's a low level thug. He was probably hired by someone else. You don't need to see the rest if you don't want to.”
Everyone was patient with me as I steadied my breathing and eventually shook my head. No, I needed to see what happened next. I asked them to continue.
I needed to know how I was still alive.
The detective nodded to the security guard and the video resumed. A large form flashed across the screen and collided with the man who was a hair's breadth from taking my life. The gun went off and both men blurred off out of frame.
I was shoved by a fleeing passerby and knocked unconscious when my head hit the side of a car.
The man controlling the feed minimized the video and brought another one up on the main monitor. This new angle wasn't the street view we had just seen, it was the one from inside the building to record people who were entering. He fast-forwarded it to the muzzle flash of the gun going off.
I was so thankful that there was no audio.
A second later two men crashed through the glass wall and into the main entrance. When they landed, the man who'd done the tackling looked back at me to make sure I was alright.
I gasped again, it was Bastien.
He was the one who saved my life!
“Bastien!” The shout was wrenched out of me, both from the shock of seeing him and from concern. I tried to think back just a few minutes earlier to when he was standing right next to me. He went through a glass wall for me!
Was he hurt?
On the screen, Bastien turned back to the man in the green hoodie beneath him. Homicidal rage burned in Bastien's eyes. It terrified me. They stopped the video just after the first of Bastien's heavy blows connected against my attacker's face.
A moment later, hearing me calling for him, Bastien roughly shouldered the door open. I'd never seen him so hyper-alert and tense. He was ready for another fight. This wasn't the same man I'd fallen so hard for in high school.
Bastien was now as hardened on the inside as he was on the outside. Gone was the cocky varsity athlete. I was now looking at someone— something much more dangerous.
What happened to him these past six years?
“That's enough questions.” I must've looked like a nervous wreck, because he took one look at me and growled at a room full of cops and security. “If you're not charging her or me with anything, we’re leaving right now.”
“We know who you are Kontos, you'd better watch yourself,” the detective replied, rising from his chair. “You nearly crippled that man. You're lucky we're not charging you with attempted murder.”
“You'd better find out who hired this asshole before I do, or it won't be attempted murder.” Bastien disregarded their threats and brushed past them to help me to my feet.
Bastien nearly crippled the man who tried to kill me? I didn't know how to feel about any of it; it was all so heavy... I couldn't stand it!
Bastien must have seen my hesitancy, because his stone-cold demeanor softened into only concern when he looked at me. I swallowed and exhaled, I didn't realize that I'd even been holding my breath.
“Can you walk?” Bastien asked softly. Maybe the boy I loved was still in there somewhere. I let him pull me up, then I hugged him.
His embrace was comforting and warm, but part of me was still afraid. If Bastien lost it, was he capable of killing someone?
“Please take me home.” I forced the dark thoughts away, at least for now, and concentrated on what he'd actually done.
He'd saved me.
Later
“You take me to all the nicest places, Bastien.” The bed squeaked when I sat on it.
I didn't feel safe in NYC, and I asked him to find us a place to stay for the night that was outside the city.
This place was...different than what I was accustomed to. I'd been spoiled with my luxurious apartment and five-star hotel rooms, so I was a little surprised at the motel we pulled into. But I was too broke to complain.
I had no idea when I was going to be able to pay him back, but he didn’t seem bothered by any of that.
The motel wasn't that bad, all things considered. It had a decent bedroom, and a half kitchen-living room combo that came with a fold out bed. That's probably where Bastien would sleep tonight.
What if more attackers came after me?
I shook the hard thought from my head. No one knew we were here, and Bastien said he'd stay the night with me. Still, the thought of sleeping alone made me a little nervous.
“You gotta love New Jersey.” Bastien flashed me a quick smirk, then nodded to something over my shoulder. “Not many places still have a coin-operated, vibrating bed.”
My face puckered with disapproval as I turned to check. When I didn’t see anything coin-operated, I knew that Bastien was just joking.
I laughed at my own gullibility.
God, after everything that had happened, it felt so good to just laugh.
The whole ride to the motel had been more lighthearted than I would've thought. Bastien saw how freaked out I was. Every time I started getting stuck on questions that had no answers, he eased my fears with sarcasm and humor. It felt like the good days, forever ago, when we both stopped pretending to be people we weren’t and just trusted each other.
Those days when we went on hikes and joked around were the best days of my life.
I had all this fortune and fame now and none of it compared to chilly, late night drives to the beach with him.
From my bed, I watched him load a case of water into the small fridge. It was still impossible to believe that I wouldn't be alive at this very moment if he wasn't with me.
That was so crazy to me.
Bastien had some anger issues, but he really was amazing.
When Bastien was finished with the waters he pulled out the sofa bed, then came into check on me one last time. The bedside lamp was on, so when he walked in, he shut off the overhead light. Despite knowing it was coming, the click and sudden darkness startled me.
I put a hand over my face in embarrassment.
Bastien set a bottle of water down on the night table for me, then dropped to the floor in a pushup position to check under the bed. Afterward, he got up and looked in the closet.
“The room's clear, no monsters. I promise.”
“Thanks,” I chuckled, feeling safer with him right next to me. I didn't want him to go. The world was so crazy these days. I needed him just as bad as I did when we were kids, even more now!
It looked like he wanted to tell me something, or that something was on his mind. I was going to ask him about it, but my expression must have given me away.
“Don't worry. You're gonna be alright.” That conflicted look on his face disappeared.
Hearing him say that made me feel better.
As long as Bastien was around, I would be alright.
“It's late, you should get some sleep,” he said.
He was right, the alarm clock glowed that it was four in the morning. I wasn't even remotely tired. Bastien looked me over one last time, then turned to leave the room.
I caught his hand.
“Stay,” I said.