Page 66 of All That Glitters

Ours, because I was there. I’m guilty by association.

I didn’t do anything to stop Parker when he pointed the gun at me. Maybe I should have let him kill me.

Marcus brings me to my room on the opposite side of the house and sets me down in the middle of the bathroom. I can’t feel my feet, my fingers. Every part of me is made of chilled iron, and I manage to keep standing long enough for him to flip on the shower and let the water start to heat.

He moves back to me, his eyes trailing over my face and down my torso, but I’m not there. I’m numb, barely moving, barely helping as he slides the straps of my shirt down and starts to tug it over my head. A million miles away, part of me still stuck at the cemetery.

My tank top follows, and his fingers are light, utterly gentle as he shoves my pants down to my ankles. He gets my clothes off and takes them away so I don’t have to look at the blood anymore. I don’t care what he does with them, just as long as I never see them again.

Once I’m naked, he nudges me underneath the shower spray.

There is nothing sexual about the situation.

I stare at my feet and the water around my painted toes. Blood colors every swirl, draining away as though nothing ever happened. As though Marcus didn’t shoot a man right in front of me.

My producer is dead.

I’m too focused on not puking, not panicking, to consider what it means for me and the movie role I’d taken.

What it means for the entire industry.

Parker Heath is no small man in this town. He’s well known with a reputation and dozens of projects to his name. How is Marcus going to cover up the murder? Not even a normal death.

The entire experience in the office felt like it lasted a lifetime but also ended in the blink of an eye. Parker, a thorn in my side and a complete creep, is dead. Just like that. A snap of the fingers, or the pull of a trigger, and he’s out of my life for good.

A permanent departure.

And who is Stanic Maxim? What kind of hold does he have?

What did Marcus mean when he said he made a deal with Stanic to take over Hollywood operations?

The harder I try, the more I realize I’m not capable of putting the pieces together right now. The ragged edges all grind together in my head until I ache behind the eyes and everywhere in between. It feels like there are entire sections of my psyche turned off as Marcus washes me. He runs the bar of soap over my arms and lifts them up like I’m pliant, a child who needs an adult to take care of her.

Let’s face it: the impression is accurate.

Neither one of us says anything, either. I don’t stop him, and he doesn’t try to talk to me, not yet.

He said he’ll tell me everything. How much do I not know about him? About his life? Everything that led us to this point, the plane crash, and beyond.

My eyes close, and the water is hot enough to lull me into something more comfortable than shock.

He takes care of me the way I desperately need him to, without me having to ask. After a time, he flips off the water and gently bundles me in an oversized towel.

“There you go.” It’s the first time he’s spoken to me the entire time. A second towel follows the first, and while I grip the edges of the larger one, he scrubs the top of my head with the other. “As good as new. You’re gonna be fine.”

I let him guide me out of the bathroom and into the bedroom, trailing a line of water on the marble. The carpet absorbs the drips, but I see a line of footprints once he maneuvers me onto the edge of the bed.

“Let’s get you dressed. It seems like you’ve still got a chill, so we’ve got to find your pajamas.”

He’s chatting away like this is any normal day and things haven’t changed between us, trying to keep me from breaking with his tone and his presence alone.

No matter how hard I force myself to say something back to him, my lips refuse to move, and my back molars grit together, jaw clenched against the chatter and the cold. Marcus fumbles around in my walk-in closet until he returns with a pair of fuzzy pajama bottoms and a clean shirt, something he brought back himself on a trip to England. It’s got a picture of the UK flag, and the material is so worn, there are holes near the seams of the arms.

One of my favorite shirts I’d put on too many times to count and hadn’t been able to make myself throw out.

Did he know when he chose it?

“I need you to understand how much I loved your parents,” he continues in his conversational tone. He brushes his calluses over my ankle before he draws the bottoms up my legs and settles them around my hips. “Before I say anything else. Your mother was an amazing woman, and your father was my friend. I’d do anything for them.”

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