Page 29 of Lethal Lover

I flop onto my side and jam the pillow under my head, and the squeaking mattress bounces a little. Trixie takes my spoon and begins eating what’s left of my ice cream. She can have it. I’m not really hungry, anyway. My heart is broken. I really like Liam. In fact, I think I’m really in love with him. He’s sweet and kind and funny, and he cares about me. I can tell. It’s not every day you find a supportive partner like him. He comes to every show.

“We have some time before we have to leave. Let’s watch another show.” Trixie doesn’t even wait for me to respond in the affirmative. She reaches for the remote on the end table and turns the TV on again.

We’ve already watched three rom-coms today, and if I have to watch another sappy love story where they get a happily ever after, I’m going to scream. I’ve been pretty steady, not crying too much over this, but my heart does feel broken. I’ve ignored several calls from Liam today. He left a message apologizing for hurting Warren and offering to pay his medical bills. That’s sweet, but I’m not sure Warren would allow him to do it.

Still, I haven’t seen Warren doing anything to make things better. He hasn’t called me to find out if I am feeling better or even sent a text to ask if I’m okay. He’s just steamed that I letTrixie come over. She wasn’t exactly my biggest fan from the beginning—he was—and with the stress of the show, and the random, scary events going on, on top of the sale of the theater, Warren is acting more and more like my big brother.

I squirm around on the bed until I can see the TV screen. Trixie flicks through the channels between bites of ice cream. She stops momentarily on a news network while she shoves the rest of the pint into her mouth. The newscaster is talking about the accident that took Nina’s life. When Trixie moves to change the channel, I lay my hand on her thigh and shake my head.

“Leave it,” I tell her, and she does.

The report goes on, showing pictures of the massive truck that slammed into the car she was riding in. I saw a few pictures on the news previously, but none this graphic. I’m shocked she didn’t die instantly. There isn’t much left of the car after the dump truck crushed the tiny sedan against a light pole, nearly slicing it in half.

And when the news lady says they have a suspect for what is now being considered a potential homicide investigation, I sit straight up and find myself feeling dizzy. My head swims and my eyes feel blurry. Maybe I sat up too fast, or maybe I’m overwhelmed, but I swear it’s Liam’s picture on the screen under the headline,Suspect in Custody.

“What the fuck?” I mumble, and Trixie’s hand rises to point the remote at the TV. I can’t stop her. She clicks it off, and I snatch the remote from her grasp to turn it back on, but she holds my wrist.

“Don’t, Elena. You saw it. That’s enough. You don’t want to hear that. It will break your heart.”

“Liam could never,” I whimper, wrestling the remote away from her, but by the time I turn the news back on, the report is over. They’ve moved on to something else. “What the actual fuck is going on, Trixie?” I feel my guts churning. Liam? To blame for that accident? But how? He was with me.

“I don’t know, Lena. But I told you Warren knows his shit about this city. He grew up on the streets, you know? If he says Liam is a crime boss, he is.” She sets the ice cream container to the side and tosses the remote across the room into the armchair after shutting the TV off.

"It can’t be true. This is some mistake. I spent so much time with him. I know him.” Is Liam my stalker, then? Is he the one sending those notes? But why would he come to all my shows and give me the highest praise if he were the one wanting me gone? It doesn’t make sense.

“I gotta pee. Please, don’t turn that TV back on. You don’t want to put yourself through that. Just call the police and report it, and cut off all ties with him. You can come stay at my place for a while. Fuck, even Warren will let you stay with him.”

The thought of that creeps me out entirely. I can’t stay with him. I don’t want Liam to hurt him, but I don’t like him at all, not even as a friend anymore. I wrestle with those thoughts as Trixie walks away, and then my phone starts to ring.

I avoid it for a second, thinking it must be Liam calling me again, but when I untangle the blankets and find it to make it stop ringing, I see it’s my mom calling. I answer right away with a flood of relief just to hear her voice.

“Hey, baby, how are you doing? How was the show last night?”

I hesitate to say much of anything to her because if I tell her the full truth, what I fear, what I’ve just seen on the news, she’ll drive all the way here and drag me home. She’s my mom, and I know she wants what’s best for me, but she worries a lot too.

“Hey, Mom.” I lace my tone with as much “chill” as I can muster, given how emotional I’ve been. It probably makes me sound halfway normal, though she’s my mom. She knows me pretty well.

“How’s that thing going? The one you mentioned… Did you tell someone?”

Mentioning the frightening letters to her was a mistake. She’s probably been obsessing about this for weeks now, stewing and wondering when she can ask me about it. She probably thinks I’ve been hiding it from her, and I have. I don’t want her to be angry with me when I tell her under no circumstances am I leaving New York. I can’t be intimidated by these things, or these people. Not even a crime boss.

My dream is to make it big on Broadway and somehow find a way to the silver screen. Lots of actresses have done it, though they all fought hard on their own. Someone seems to be pulling strings or manipulating my way toward the top—at least it seems that way. It feels like maybe Liam is trying to control things, but they’re getting out of control. I just don’t understand why he’d send the threatening letters too. Unless that is his way of trying to make me fear someone else so I’ll cling to him. But it’s not working.

“I… uh, I told Mr. Flemming and Mr. Monroe. They are looking into it.” I don’t know if the news of Mr. Flemming’s death and the resale of the theater have gotten to Ohio yet, but it’s not a lie. I did tell them, and that is what they said to me when I did.

“You should just come home, baby. Just take a short break until they figure out who’s doing this and you’re safe.” I can hear how she bites her lip when she’s talking to me, and it hurts my heart to disappoint her.

“Mom, I’m not coming home. I have a lead in this week’s show, and it goes for two weeks, and I have the lead after that too. There’s no time.” I glance up at Trixie as she walks back into the room and plops across the foot of the bed, propping herself on an elbow to stare at me. “Can I call you later? I have a friend over.”

“A friend? Please tell me you’re not having a man sleep over with you. What if he’s the stalker?” The drama in her tone makes me roll my eyes.

“Her name is Trixie, Mom.” I shake my head, and Trixie snickers.

“Hey, Mom!” she calls, and I hear Mom huff out a sigh.

“Alright, well don’t make me have to call you back. You call me when your friend leaves.”

I hang up with only good intentions, and the relief I felt when hearing my mom’s voice dissipates. As much comfort as it brings me to think of home and the safety of relative obscurity, New York is my home now and this is my job. The very first time I mentioned a stalker to anyone, they assured me this was part of this lifestyle, so I’m determined to just keep plowing through.

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