Page 25 of Don't Forget Me
Stephen jumped onto the couch, landing without causing any kind of indent in the cushion or pillows. He had no weight, no gravity.
Nick was definitely losing his mind.
“Oh, brother of mine, it is most definitely a good thing. I mean, look at you. Without human contact, you end up talking to ghosts.” His lips stretched into a grin.
“Not funny.”
“Totes funny.”
Nick sat on the arm of the couch. “Since when do you say totes?”
“Did I use it wrong? I was hanging with God the other day, and he was schooling me on the new lingo.”
“Really?”
“No.” Stephen barked out a laugh that cut off abruptly when another voice joined them.
“Are you okay?”
Nick snapped his eyes to Liz, both glad to hear another voice and annoyed she interrupted his time with Stephen.
When he looked back to the couch, his brother was gone. “Fine,” he grunted, pushing to his feet. “I need you to tell me more about the press surrounding my accident. Did they say why I had a car? Or how much alcohol was in my system? Did my agent give them anything?” If anyone knew something, it would be her.
At his rapid-fire questioning, Liz shrank back. “I… I don’t really know.”
“How do you not know? If Nick Jacobs gets into an accident, every tabloid in the world is digging into it.” He realized how arrogant that sounded, but it was the truth.
Red crept up her pale skin, flooding her cheeks with color. “The tabloids aren’t really my thing.” She turned and walked back toward the kitchen.
Nick followed her. “Tabloids are everyone’s thing. I thought you were a fan.”
“Oh.” She reached for a glass and filled it with water from the faucet. Her actions fascinated him. The women he knew would never drink from the tap. They’d have freaked out when they discovered their expensive clothes and products didn’t fill the closets in the coma house.
He had to stop calling it that.
Liz continued to gulp water like it was her job. When she finally set the cup on the marble countertop, she worried her lip between her teeth. “I am a fan. I mean… I watch all your movies. But I’ve never really cared about celebrities outside of their roles. It’s the characters I love, not the people behind them.”
Every actor and actress dreamed of being considered talented enough they could disappear into their roles so the public saw who they played and not them, but this was different. “There’s no way you don’t follow actors. Everyone does.”
She lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Sorry to disappoint. I can’t help you. Really, the accident… I wish had more for you. I really do.”
He didn’t believe she truly wanted to help. No one did. Strangers didn’t go the extra mile for each other, not in his world.
An unwanted anger burned through him, and he tore himself away from Liz, storming out to the back deck where the sun was suddenly too bright, the birds too loud.
He shoved one of the chairs out of the way, and it gave a satisfying thud as it slammed into the wood beneath it. Kicking a second one, it too fell. He needed something to rage at, something to destroy.
The anger wasn’t new to him. It had been his ever-present companion since the moment Stephen didn’t return with their boat.
If he was being honest with himself, he was born an angry kid, made worse by a bad situation and tragedy after tragedy. Maybe it would be better if he didn’t wake from the coma, if he let himself fade away as Stephen once had.
“I have enough fight in me for both of us.”
Liz didn’t know him. She didn’t know what he’d faced in his life or why he couldn’t muster up his own fight.
And yet… she’d fight for him, a stranger.
It made no sense.
