Among the Echoes(71)
"Oh, so it’s temporary, huh? What happens if Wilkes gets arrested before Rodriguez kills him? Or if it takes years before he can track him down? What then? Are you just going to stay away from me for years?"
"No. This will all die down eventually. People will forget about me as time passes."
"Oh my God. You can’t be that stupid," I smart off, letting my true bitchiness fly.
In reality, I’m just pissed and terrified that, if he leaves now, he won’t come back. I’m secure in my relationship with Slate. I believe that he loves me, but what if we separate and he realizes how easy his life could be with another woman. Someone who isn’t broken, damaged, or ruined. Someone who wouldn’t possibly get him killed.
"Excuse me?" he responds with almost as much attitude as I threw at him.
"They aren’t going to forget you any more than they have Tyson, Foreman, or Ali."
"While I love your bitchy little compliment, I am hardly Ali."
"No, you’re worse. You’re mysterious and gorgeous, and you decided to walk away while you were at your absolute peak. Your fans aren’t going to just forget about you any more than I could. But apparently I’m the only one who feels that way in this relationship."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" He raises his voice, but Leo jumps in the middle, ironically becoming the rational one of the group.
"All right, everyone. Just calm down. We can figure this out. You two stop bickering. No one is forgetting anyone. I may have overreacted. Let’s just take a breath and talk this out. Erica’s right. You can’t see her face. I’m going to call in a buddy and see if he can flash a badge and see where they got that picture and, most importantly, if more exist. They may not be willing to tell me, but it can’t hurt to ask. Now you two cuddle, f*ck, make love, or whatever the hell you guys do in there. But just make up. Let me look into a couple of options and then we can figure it out—without name calling or being a bitch." He lifts a brow at me, but I only roll my eyes.
He walks out, leaving me with a very pissed-off version of my usually laid-back man.
"I need to go," he says flatly as I flop facedown on the bed.
"You’re not going," I tell the bed.
"Stop being stubborn. You know this is the right thing to do this time."
"I don’t give a shit if it’s the rightest thing to ever exist. You’re not going."
"Rightest thing to ever exist?" he says with a sigh while crawling up the bed to lie facedown next to me.
"There’s a reason I didn’t major in English."
He laughs and throws an arm over my back. "If anything ever happened to you, I…" He pauses before rolling me onto my side to face him. "I just need you safe somewhere. Do you think I can buy one of those underground bunkers from the 1970’s?" I laugh and throw a leg over his hips. "I’m serious, Erica. I can’t be the reason Wilkes finds you. Before, when we first left, all I could think about was spending time with you. But now that there’s the possibility of an out, all I can think about is spending a lifetime with you. It’s damn near crippling to think about losing that." He drops his head to my chest and sighs.
My heart squeezes as my attitude melts away. I scratch his back as we both lie in silence. My mind is racing, and if I know Slate at all, his is also.
"No one knows that picture is me, Slate. You know I am the first person to freak out if anything is even remotely threatening. But I’m more scared of losing you than I am anything else."
"You’re not going to lose me. Just let me head back to LA for a little while and draw the attention away from you. We can put a cap on it if you want. How about three months? If Wilkes is still breathing in three months, we can rethink things. I’ll come back or maybe we can head somewhere totally different. But we have to be smart about this. It’s so f*cking close to being over."
"I don’t want to go three months," I pout. "What if you find another girlfriend in three months? She would probably be prettier than I am and love to be fawned all over by the paparazzi," I say teasingly, but the proverbial light bulb of genius goes off above my head. "Oh my God. Slate, you need to get a girlfriend," I squeal then fly up off the bed and dash out of the room. "Leo!" I shout, running down the hall.
"In here, babe," he calls from the security room.
Frozen on the screen is the video from yesterday that clearly shows a man taking a picture with a cell phone of Slate kissing me. He’s standing just outside the door, but I don’t remember seeing him at all.