Page 63 of Dead Rockstar

“I told you before,” he said. “You’re in danger. I did what I did to try and save you, as fucked up as it sounds.”

“Tell that to Phillip’s shot-up arm.”

He looked at me in surprise. “He’s...wounded?”

“That tends to happen when you get shot,” I said nastily. “And speaking of, did you happen to check in on your henchman?”

“He's not my henchman,” he said. “But yeah. The two of you fucked him up pretty good, but I guess he probably deserved it.” He sighed and ran a hand through his light hair. “I’m sorry about all this, Stormy. It’s been handled badly.”

“All this,” I repeated, the words tasting sour on my tongue. “I don't even know what 'all this' is. I thought for a while that Phillip did, and he was just protecting me, but now I don't think even he knows. So why don't you enlighten me, Lee? Tell me why you keep following us around, and why you care so much about my well-being but don't give a fuck if Phillip lives or dies? Why won't you just leave us alone?”

“I can't,” he said. “I wish I could, but I can't.”

“Are you going to tell me why?”

“I'm not supposed to,” he said.

“Let me guess,” I said, holding a hand to my pounding head. “Mommy Dearest told you not to.”

He looked at me in surprise. “What are you-”

“I’m not stupid. I figured it out,” I said. “I can see the resemblance. You have the same whiff of self-loathing.”

He winced.

“My head hurts,” I said, closing my eyes, wanting him far away from me. “Can you leave?”

“I’ll go. I just hope that…that one day I can explain. And that you’ll remember that I tried my best to keep you out of this.”

“I'd prefer not to remember you at all,” I said. “Now fuck you very much, bye.”

“I'm sorry, Stormy,” he said in a low voice, his expression stricken. He came toward the bed and held out something to me - my cell phone. Then he turned on his heel and walked out the door, without a look back, shutting it behind him with a gentle but firm click.

I lay there for a long time, staring at Judge Judy and drinking the orange-tinted dregs of ice from the bottom of my long-gone cup of juice, moping. There was something about Lee that did not make sense. He didn't seem to have a vengeful, manipulative bone in his body. Everything he'd done seemed to be thrust upon him, and his bitterness at having to carry it all out was pretty clear. And he had feelings for me, too – what kind of feelings I didn't know. It could be anything from a crush to pity, but whatever it was, it wasn't hate. He didn't want to hurt me. I could feel it – his intention – coming off him in waves, and he did nothing to try and hide it from me. He didn't want to involve me at all, but he seemed to have to. I wondered why.

Was it his mother, Lydia? I wondered if she’d orchestrated my kidnapping that day, entertaining Philip and me in her living room as a ruse, a distraction to keep us occupied until Lee and Shank could get there? But that didn’t seem right, either. Oh, she was shifty and creepy and definitely a few cards short of a full deck, but I didn’t detect outright malice in her. And her warning to Phillip, when she’d poked her feathery head out of her front door, had felt genuine. I’d felt her, then, the same way I felt Lee – her intentions had been good. What was it about these intentions – it was as though we could feel them, bouncing around in the air, threads that just needed to be picked up and followed.

Lydia had been fascinated by Phillip. I’d felt her sparked interest, her longing to examine him, pepper him with questions, take him under her wing. She felt protective toward him too. Whoever she was, she didn’t want to cause either of us harm. And as angry as I was at him, I knew now that neither did Lee.

But I knew one thing: as soon as we were released from this festering shithole of a hospital, Phillip and I were high-tailing it back to Jekyll, even if I had to hog-tie him and throw him in the back of my truck in a burlap bag. We were leaving.

Judge Joe Brown was on now and I drifted off to sleep, still tasting oranges on my tongue, grateful that, for once, there was nobody lurking in the doorway to disturb me.

I awoke some time later, the sky pitch dark outside the heavy-curtained window, with the sense that somebody was in my room.

I reached for the “Call” button on the side of my bed, having had my fill of unwelcome visitors; I didn’t care who the hell it was this time, I would go down fighting. But as the figure emerged from the darkness, my heart leapt. It was Phillip.

His face was ghostly pale in the darkness, his black hair a shroud around his head. His arm was bandaged up in a sling, stark white against the black of his shirt. He put a finger to his lips. “Are you alright?” he asked.

I nodded.

“I've got to go, Stormy,” he said, taking my hand. His skin was a little cold. “If you don't feel up to leaving yet, I'll come back for you. But I have to get out of here, now.”

“What's wrong?”

“I'll explain later,” he said. “No time.”

“I'll go with you.” I sat up. The pain in my head was minimal, for which I was thankful. The scratchy hospital gown caught on the bedside table as I sat up, and I cursed. I rubbed a hand over my head, which was throbbing less than it had been. “Would you hand me my clothes? They're over there.”

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