Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.
Had those words just come out of her mouth?
Her world was spinning on its axis.
Panic buzzed along every nerve, sizzling along her ribs, her spine, her neck…
“Oh, honey,” Chad said. “I’m sorry. Here I am going on and on… I thought… Yes, absolutely. I’ve gotten all but the last three covered. I’ll tell them you’re out. It won’t be a problem. Should I find a specialist for you there in LA? A neurologist?”
Maybe a psychiatrist.
Or a mental facility.
“Not…quite yet. Give me another few days. If it’s not better then, I’ll…”—check myself into an asylum—“go see someone. The ER doctor said concussions can take time.” She paused, trying to gather her thoughts, her emotions. “On the…um…offers, can I get back to you? I need to sort some things out in my head.”
A long, tense silence stretched taut over the line. “Get back to me? What in the hell is wrong?” He sounded genuinely worried. “Giselle, do you want me to fly out there? I can catch a plane and be there in a few hours.”
She laughed and opened her eyes to the blurry image of the ticket to Vegas in her hand. “Thanks, but there’s no need. I’ve got this. I just need a little bit of quiet to square up my brain.”
She disconnected and sat there several long moments, staring at nothing. Then she pulled her legs beneath her, wrapped her arms around herself, and curled into a small package the way she had when she’d wanted to disappear as a kid.
There, she rested her head against her hand and cried silently. She didn’t care who was watching. Didn’t care if anyone recognized her. Didn’t care how messed up she looked. Didn’t even care how broken she really was. She only cared that at that moment, this was what she needed.
After half an hour of cleansing her soul with tears, Giselle dried her eyes on a bar napkin, picked up her phone, took a deep breath, and dialed Chad again.
Troy tightened the straps on his harness. The wind whipped at his hair, and at this height, after dark, with the fog rolling in off the ocean, there was nothing warm about this fucking city. Which was fine. It matched both his mood and the temperature of his heart.
He tightened his gloves. Opened and closed his hands. Took the clear glasses Ben, a crew member, handed him and slid them on. “Did you steal these from some kid’s chemistry locker?”
“Right along with his collection of Penthouse rags, meth, and bubblegum,” Tommy said.
Troy would have laughed if he’d been capable. He would have laughed and kept the banter going to reduce the anxiety of waiting to climb along the side of a building a thousand feet above the city, but his heart wasn’t in it. His heart wasn’t in anything but forgetting.
He looked down at himself, checking everything on his body—black tee and pants, both clinging like skin, black shoes. The makeup artist had gelled his hair back with what felt like cement and secured it at his nape with an elastic tie.
For a split second, Troy’s mind slipped from his grip, and he pictured Giselle. Pain—knifing, how-will-I-ever-get-through-this agony—ripped him open. He squeezed his eyes shut and exhaled hard.
Go numb. He had to just let it eat at him until he went numb.
But that would take so long. So fucking long.
He opened his eyes to the night, the fog, and glanced over his shoulder at the crew. Wes was explaining different aspects of the stunt to the new guy they’d brought on board, Cameron, a successful actor following in Jax’s shoes and jumping the fame-and-fortune ship, seeking a better overall quality of life in stunts.
And Troy thought of Giselle again, hating himself for not being able to convince her to do the same.
“Could really use some tunes right now,” Troy yelled to the room at large. “Anyone got something to get my buzz going?”
Tommy dragged his phone from his back pocket and plugged it into some speakers nearby. While the camera and sound crew messed with technicalities and a chopper hovered outside, Troy walked to the open space in the side of the building where they’d removed a giant pane of glass from one of the skyscraper’s top floors. He gripped a steel beam and gazed out over the city, his focus drawn to the airport and the constant, steady landing and takeoff of aircraft.
It made him realize just how quickly, how easily, Giselle had swept into his life, turned it upside down, and swept out again.
“Hey.” Wes’s voice drew Troy’s attention and spiked alarm.
Without thought, he turned, gripped Wes’s arm hard, and shoved him back and away from the opening. When they were both a safe distance, he said, “Dude, what the fuck? You don’t have a harness on.”
Wes’s brow pulled in confusion. His gaze darted toward the window, then back. And when Troy’s gaze followed, he realized Wes hadn’t been as close to the opening as Troy had first thought.
“Do you know of some secret plot among the crew to pick me up and carry me close enough to the ledge to shove me to my death?” Wes asked easily. “’Cause I wasn’t close enough to fall, even if I tripped over my own stupid feet, and yours, and Cam’s, and Susie’s, and John’s, and—”