Flower(49)

His eyes close briefly, and he almost looks pained, before opening them again to fix on something just over my shoulder. “A car will be here at seven.”

I want to scream at him. I want to pound my fists against his chest and tell him how much he hurt me, how much he’s still hurting me. But instead I choke down every bitter thought, and turn away, closing the door on Tate. Closing the door on us.





FOURTEEN

A STORM IS PRESSING DOWN on the town, a wall of dark gray in the distance. We’re almost to the airport when the snow begins swirling around the car that carries me away from Telluride. It’s Christmas day, and I’m heading back to LA alone. The car skids a little, drifting toward a snowbank before the driver corrects our course, but for some reason I’m not scared. I feel an odd sense of numbness. Like I’m drifting through a dream again—but a different sort of dream.

I board the same jet we had taken here, and the same flight attendant greets me. The green-and-blue orchid is in place in her hair, but today it looks droopy and somehow bereft.

“Coffee?” she asks when I sit down on one of the reclining chairs. I make a point not to sit where Tate and I sat on our way here. I don’t want to remember how differently I felt on that flight, how hopeful.

“Thank you,” I tell her gratefully.

Once we’re in the air, I stare out the window at a world of white as we fly through layers of endless clouds. There is no blue sky, no land far below. Just white.

“He seemed happy,” the flight attendant says midway through the trip. She is pouring me a fresh glass of water.

“Excuse me?” I say.

She touches her hand to the roof of the plane as we move through a stretch of turbulence, the cabin jerking from side to side before leveling out. Ordinarily, this would terrify me, but it’s like I’m blank inside.

“Tate,” she clarifies. “I haven’t seen him that happy in a long time.”

I let out a rush of air, and spin my mother’s ring around my finger.

When I realize that she isn’t going away, I ask, “Do you fly with him often?”

“I work most of his private flights. He likes to use the same crew.” She smiles. “His regular pilots were back in LA today, which is why you’ve got two new pilots—these guys are local, out of Denver.” She nods up to the cockpit, where the closed door blocks the pilots from view. “I stayed in Telluride. Figured I’d just wait, enjoy the snow for Christmas until you both were ready to head home. I don’t have much of a family anyway. My boyfriend and I split a couple months back.”

“Sorry,” I murmur. How many people have changed their plans, their lives, for Tate Collins? Everything in his world revolves around him. He decides what he wants, who he wants, and when. He’s so afraid of losing control that he ended up losing me.

She shrugs. “But Tate, he’s a tricky one. He’s been so different the last year. We used to fly him to Vegas every other weekend; him and a dozen friends, supermodels, and pop stars like him. He’d take impulsive trips down to Mexico or Miami. But in the last year, he’s hardly left LA. And then, the other day, he got on the plane with you, just you. I thought maybe you were the one.”

“The one?”

She smiles gently. “Well, he needs a dose of normal in his life.”

I should smile politely and go back to staring out the window. Wrap the numbness around myself like a shroud. Instead I turn to give her my full attention. “Do you know what happened to him a year ago—what made him change, leave the music world?”

The shrug is one-shouldered this time, as if the story annoys her. “Not sure. There were rumors of course, that he got a girl pregnant and he was trying to keep it secret; that he was involved with drugs. People talk. But none of it sounded like Tate. Something else made him quit music, something bigger than all that gossip.”

The plane begins to lurch as we enter more rough air and she grabs onto the back of a seat to keep from falling over. “Better buckle in.”

The jolting turbulence doesn’t bother me. I stare blindly out the window as we start to descend. LA reveals itself, silvery and blue. The ocean expands out to meet the sky and I feel a sudden sense of relief—I’m home.

The sun is high when we land at the same private airport. Tate’s town car is waiting on the tarmac, Hank standing beside the back door. Seeing him makes my throat swell, tears threatening to break free again. Someone else who’s given up his Christmas for Tate.

“Your chariot awaits, milady,” Hank says in a falsely cheerful tone as I slide into the back of the town car, and I wait while he loads my luggage into the trunk.

When he climbs in the driver’s seat, I can feel his eyes on me in the rearview mirror. I shrink back in my seat, praying he’s not going to mention Tate’s name, or try to tell me what a good guy he is at heart. As if reading my mind, he lets out a quiet sigh. “Let’s get you home, Charlotte.”

I roll down the window, wanting to feel the mild California air against my face. I lift my fingers through the window as we pull away from the tarmac, feeling the breeze. We pause at the gate, waiting for it to slide open.

But when it does, I hear the sudden rush of voices, the click, click, click I remember all too vividly. Men with cameras have gathered just outside the gate and now they are surrounding the car, clamoring next to the window, practically spilling inside. I don’t have time to block my face from view; it’s too late, they already have my picture.