Annoying Pinspiration Quote #25
"It's better to know and be disappointed than never know and always wonder."
"I know who you are," I said, blocking her access into the house. Forget the fact that Jade towered over me by at least six inches, and was sporting a look that could have come straight from the catwalk. With her black halter-neck maxi dress swirling around her tapered ankles, and long tanned limbs that seemed to go on forever, Jade was almost too beautiful to look at directly.
I might have been in the jeans and tank I'd slept in, and my hair definitely didn't tumble around me in sculpted waves – it was doing more of a birds nest style. But our polar opposite looks didn't intimidate me. I faced her head on and said, "You are not welcome here."
Jade's butterfly shaped lips were pressed together in confusion. "I'm sorry, are you the maid? I'd like to speak to Rupert personally, thank you."
"I'm not the maid!" I squawked. "I'm Mia. And no, you may not speak with Rupert personally. Actually, you can sod right off, love." I even said it in Rupert's accent, just so she'd realise I was closer with him than she'd assumed.
"Oh. Oh! Are you... are you with Rupert?" Her gorgeous face twisted in confusion.
"Seriously? Do you want to be any more insulting?"
"I didn't mean to be."
"Well, you are." Telling off a gorgeous movie star was actually pretty fun. Leaning on the doorframe, I pontificated. "You're implying that I'm not good enough looks-wise to be with someone like Rupert."
"You're not exactly his type," she said softly.
"Yeah, well, the last woman who was his type left him without a single word of explanation the week she married him." I shrugged, feeling vastly superior. "Guess he decided he needs a new type, because the beautiful-and-heartless thing didn't really work out for him."
Giant glossy tears arose in Jade's magnificent emerald eyes. "I'm not heartless."
"Then just leave. If he sees you, it's only going to hurt him more and he's been through enough." I would fight the Amazonian if I had to. At that stage, I was almost looking forward to it.
But Jade didn't want to jelly-wrestle apparently. "I'm sorry. I'm not here to break you guys up. I just... He called me the other day, or called my dad, but I was there, and he said some things, said he'd be coming here, and I just felt he deserved an explanation."
"And you couldn't pick up a phone?"
"I did, but he's not answering."
That much would have been true. Rupert's phone had been off since we'd stepped on the first plane in Melbourne. "Whatever you have to say, it's too little, too late. After everything you've done to him, you obviously don't give a damn about his feelings, and I'm not really inclined to let you see him just so you can assuage you own guilt with empty apologies."
Her tears fell now, and unlike me when I started crying, her face stayed angelic and unpuffy. "That's not it at all. I'll feel guilty until the day I die for what I did to him. I just wanted to see him, to check on him, because..."
"Because what?"
She met my fierce gaze with haunted eyes. "Because... I still..."
She couldn't finish the sentence, but it was there, clear as day. In her face was the same longing, the same attachment I saw in my own reflection when I'd been obsessing over Cody. She loved him, but there was so much fear in the way, it hung off her like a bulky Halloween costume.
"I'm not seeing Rupert," I said, letting go of the pretence.
"Really?"
"I was," I clarified for my own ego's sake, "but now we're just here as friends. And he really needs a friend right now, because you hurt him about as bad as one person can hurt another."
"I know. I know. I just... Oh god, I'm so messed up..." She burst into real sobs then, her slight shoulders hitching up and down within the waterfall of her mahogany hair. "I'm so sorry I hurt him. He's the most wonderful man I've ever known, and I just wanted to make sure he was okay."
"He's not."
"And that's because of me."
"Yup." I sighed, knowing that this wasn't going away on its own. Clearly, they were both equally messed up, and it was time to start verbalising their issues like freaking adults. I pushed the door open. "Come in."
In great surprise, she peered at me through her tears. "What? You're letting me in? Why?"
"Because I'm not heartless either. Tell me your side of the story, and why you're here, and I'll decide if Rupert should see you." I smiled thinly. "Think of me as the gate keeper."
"Okay, sure."
Cautiously, she followed me into the house. "Wow. It looks just the same." She perched on the corner of a chaise lounge, looking like a shoot for Vogue without even trying. "We were so happy here."
"Not happy enough, it seems." I plonked opposite her, not attempting to replicate her poise.
"No amount of happiness in the world could have been enough."
Her grief was evident, but it wasn't enough. "What the hell, Jade?" I asked straight out. "You seem like you care for Rupert, it was your idea to get married here, and then you just bailed on him. Make me understand why."
"You'll judge me."
"I'm judging you anyway," I said drily. "Talk."
She reached for her hair, twisting the thick coil in her hands. "I grew up poor, Mia. The kind of poor where I had to go through the trash cans at the end of the school day just to find food. And even then, I couldn't eat what I found – I had to take it home to feed my brothers. I grew up hungry, vulnerable. I loved my brothers and I would have done anything for them...
"I was sixteen and I was looking for options to earn money. I had a job but it didn't pay enough. I was trying to find the courage to ring up the local brothels and see if I could work there." Her voice was husky with humiliation. "There was an ad for a catalogue casting next to the brothel advertisements, and it was just around the corner from where I was working. I took a chance and went to the address, but before I could even get in the door, a lady came up and introduced herself; her name was Carmen and she was a talent manager. She said I could be beautiful if someone helped me to be, but I'd never land a catalogue shoot until I was cleaned up."
Looking at Jade, I imagined that she was always beautiful, and that anyone claiming to help wold have only been polishing a diamond. "So, she helped you?"
"Carmen was amazing. She bought me clothes, gave me makeup, paid for my head shots." Jade smiled wearily. "Do you know how wonderful it was to have someone on my side after years of being the strong one? All she asked from me was to do exactly as she said. 'You be a good girl, Jade, and I'll take care of the rest.'"
The woman sounded like a predator to me, but I remained silent.
"I landed a few catalogue shoots, then Victoria's Secret picked me up out of nowhere. Next thing I knew, I was being sent off to casting calls, and I landed the role in the Wilde Times movie. Carmen was the one who decided I should date Nate Norden, but we didn't have a spark, so we faked it." She shivered slightly. "When Nate asked me to come clean to the press so he could date his wife, Carmen lost her mind. She shoved me up against a wall, screaming that I was going to ruin both of us."
Called it. "This Carmen sounds lovely."
"I was terrified. My parents were in and out of these expensive rehab clinics, my youngest brother needed extra tutoring to finish high school and I found out my other brother would need care for the rest of his life. I couldn't mess up. I did everything Carmen told me from then on, let her take care of all the finances and my projects. I dated the guys she told me to be seen with, played the part, and my career kept growing. But nobody actually cared how I was doing – I was just the pretty girl who could act.
"Then, I met Rupert." There was a lightness inside her eyes as she said, "He was the first man to accept me, support me. He didn't care that I was Jade Devereux, or about how much money I was earning, and he wasn't intimidated by Carmen. He loved me for me. I'd never experienced that before."
"So why did you leave then? You were the one who pushed for the wedding to happen so quick."
She nodded, ashamed. "Please remember, I'd been under Carmen's control since I was sixteen. She had a huge hold over me. When she found out Rupert and I were engaged, she called me, hysterical, screaming that I would wreck everything and that she was on her way over to stop me. I figured if we were already married, she would just have to accept it."
"But she didn't."
"No. She practically dragged me out of bed, trapped me in another room. 'Stupid girl,' she said. 'You're going to ruin us both!'"
Jade was weeping again, with a fragile beauty I couldn't help but admire. "So you left?" I asked. "Just because she scared you?"
"No! I yelled back, told her that I had plenty of money and that all I cared about was Rupert – I didn't give a damn if I never worked again. She got really quiet, really scary, told me, 'You will care.'
"Turned out that Carmen had an online gambling habit. She'd spent every dollar she'd earned from being my manager, and had been steadily draining my accounts too. I was broke."
"Oh, god! Did you call the police? Why didn't you tell Rupert?"
"I freaked out. Carmen told me that if I reported her, my reputation would never recover, and she implied that Rupert wouldn't want a broke wife. I didn't believe it, but then she started in on my family. 'Your parents have been doing so well, Jade – you don't want to let them down, do you? And your brother's nursing fees are due – who's going to pay that?'"
"Rupert," I said, as if it was obvious.
She shook her head, sorrowful. "I said that. She threatened to tell him I had always known I was broke, that I'd used him for a quickie wedding to get out of my financial woes."
"He wouldn't have believed her."
"I was scared, I panicked. I didn't want him to think I'd used him, and I thought he'd be better off without me and my predicament."
"Lord. You don't understand that man at all." I leaned back, crossing my legs on the couch. "Rupert would walk over fire for the people he loves. You could have fought through the situation as a couple, and instead you left him a broken human being, believing that you never cared."
"It's because I care too much that I screw everything up!" She curled forward over her knees, hair falling everywhere. "I've been trying to protect my family, protect Rupert, and all I do is cause more harm! I'm tired. I'm barely living. But I don't care about me anymore. I just need to see Rupert, apologise, make it right so he can move on and live his life."
"See, that's kinda the problem," I said, seeing the situation with the clarity only an outsider could perceive. "You need to care about you first. If you don't love who you are, it makes it really hard to accept it when other people love us."
"I'm the child of addicts. I grew up living in a car and eating garbage," said Jade softly. "I'm not worthy of love."
"Argh! Yes, you are!" I moved to the chaise beside her and grabbed her hands. "Listen, you need to work through some stuff, and I'm not the right person to help with that - you need a professional. But for now, you need to understand that you are most definitely worthy of being loved, regardless of your past or your bad choices. But for the sweet love of everything that clucks, tell me that you've fired your manager?"
"Yes. Carmen is gone."
"Thank god. You've got issues, Jade, but so do I – so does Rupert. We're all human, and we're all toting around baggage. Don't let shit that doesn't matter get in the way of the stuff that does."
She leaned into me, and I patted her back and comforted her as best I could, wondering how I'd come to be in a multi-million dollar mansion on the Hawaiian beachfront consoling one of the world's most beautiful movie stars while her former rock star husband lay sleeping off a hangover somewhere nearby. Life is a bit nuts, really.
"Tell me, truthfully." I pulled back to look into her expressive eyes. "Do you still love him?"
"Yes. With all that I am. I'm only half a person without him."
"Good enough." Standing, I walked away.
She rushed to follow. "What do you mean?"
"Jade, I'm not a therapist, but even I can see you guys need to talk this thing out. Wait here. I'm going to wake him and give him the heads-up."
"Will he... Will he forgive me?" Her uncertainty was palpable.
"I don't know," I said honestly. "But you'll never know if you don't at least ask him to."
"Thank you, Mia." Her eyes were a blend of optimism and fear – two emotions I was constantly finding myself vacillating between. Maybe that's how everyone feels deep down. As if life could be either disaster or bliss. And the truth was it could be either.
But she loved him, and I knew that he loved her. Maybe it would be enough. "I'll be back," I said, leaving her on the balcony and heading down the stairs to the bungalow. Crap. I now had to wake Rupert up and drag him into what I could only assume would be one hell of a hangover without anything to feed him or numb him pain, only to tell him the woman he was so desperately trying to forget was upstairs waiting for his forgiveness.
But there wasn't a choice; he needed to face her, and ultimately it would be his decision whether or not Jade's actions could be forgiven. Bracing myself, I entered the bungalow and headed for his room.
"Rupert?" The curtains were drawn and the room smelled of vomit and alcohol. Scrunching up my nose, I peered through the gloom at the bed. It was rumpled but empty. "Dammit. Rupert? Where are you?"
I thought for a second that he must have awoken and gone for a walk, or perhaps he was sleeping on the couch. Then I saw the high-top sneaker attached to a leg sticking out from beside the bed. "Rupert, what are you doing down there?"
Moving to the wall, I could see his crumpled body on the floor, arms flung over his head. "Rupert, wake up." I leaned over him, tilting my head away from the stench. And it was only because of the angle of my face that I caught sight of the spilled pills under the bed, scattered from a now-empty bottle.
The sleeping medication. God, not again! With clenched fingers, I shook him hard, panic rising in an unstoppable bubble. "Rupert! Rupert, wake up!" Nothing.
I wasn't going to screw around this time; bending forward, I checked for his breathing and couldn't find it. Crouching, I bit his ear, hard enough to leave marks, praying for him to spring up just as he did the first time.
But he lay there lifeless, his blonde strands fanned around him like a halo, a fallen angel dying alone. In an excruciating blow, the memory of finding my mum overlaid the current scene; both people I loved, both dying.
When I'd found my mum, I'd screamed helplessly. Not this time. I screamed, but it wasn't the cry of a helpless little girl. It was the war cry of a woman about to fight to save the man who had brought her back to life. "Jade! Call an ambulance, right now!"
And without waiting another second, I started CPR, compressing my palms against Rupert's chest, hoping to god with every pump that I could keep that big stupid heart of his going, and that the fact that it was broken wouldn't lead to his actual death.
Okay - how do you feel about Jade now? Can Mia save Rupert? How upset would you be if he didn't make it, on a scale of one to I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN AUTHOR...?
Please vote - I know sometimes when a chapter is upsetting there's a tendency to 'punish' the author by not voting, but remember that I write to make you feel. If you felt, please vote :)
I'm hoping to finish this book over this week, and I'll keep rolling out the chapters here once every couple of days until we're done. Happy feels... ;)