Page 64 of Holiday Star
Mom falters, choked with emotion before speaking again, but this time I sense her concern. “It scares me how much you’re risking right now. Don’t you see how dangerous this is? You could destroy everything. Your job. Your reputation.” A hitching sob comes through the phone, piercing me. I never could stand to hear her cry.
I send Caleb a pleading look full of desperation, wishing he could save me from this pain. He returns my stare with his own expression of agony, his dilated eyes panic-stricken. He rips his hands through his hair, tugging at the ends. The motion reveals where his scar should be, the one in his hairline from where I hit him. But it’s gone, fully healed.
In this moment of extreme stress, the sight makes me irrationally sad. I know it’s wrong, but I want to leave a permanent mark on him. The way he’s left a mark on my soul. I’m frightened I’ll fade, just like that scar.
“I have to go,” Caleb says. The rush of his words makes my chest tighten painfully. “Don’t worry. I’ll draw them away. The journalists. The paparazzi. They’ll follow me.”
I shake my head, whipping it so wildly from side to side that my hair flies out. “No, Caleb. No.”
Someone knocks on the front door. Voices rise from outside, and is that the sound of a…helicopter? Have they sent one of the news helicopters to hover above my house? Our neighbors are going to lose their minds over this.
With horror, I watch Caleb grab the quilt off the couch. He moves to the front door with his parents.
The phone drops from my ear as my mother’s voice continues to spill out of it.
Caleb can’t leave. Not when I need him the most. Less than twenty-four hours ago, we promised to love each other, and now everything is falling apart. If he walks out, when will he come back? How are we going to handle the press outside? How can we make this relationship work? My tears fall faster, a torrent raining down to splatter the tile floor at my feet.
“Caleb, wait!” I shout as he opens the door. The flash of cameras is blinding, whiting out my vision, so I miss the exact minute he exits. By the time my eyes clear, the door swings shut.
He’s gone.
It’s Christmas, and I’m alone.
36
Hand shaking, I bring the phone back to my ear. “Mom,” I interrupt, “I’ve got to go.” With a click of the button, I hang up.
In a haze, I run upstairs and slam the master bedroom door. My heart rending itself apart, I fling myself onto the bed, sobbing. I cry for hours, my body wracked by tears.
I must have fallen asleep, a month of late nights with Caleb finally catching up, because when I open my salt-crusted eyes, the sky outside is dark and my phone is ringing.
Groggily, I answer, “Hello?”
“Gwen.” Caleb’s voice sounds weird, lower than usual. I realize with a start that this is the first time I’ve ever spoken on the phone with him. All the moments we’ve shared have been in person.
I don’t understand how to communicate without being able to read his face, to sense his touch. It’s like someone cut off one of my hands and asked me to tie a shoelace. That’s how I feel talking to Caleb over the phone.
Mind whirring, I pace. “Caleb, where are you? Why’d you leave?”
“We’re staying at the Four Seasons downtown. I had to go. It was the only way to get them off your front lawn. I knew they’d come here with me.”
He doesn’t have to say who they are. It’s the press. The paparazzi that follow him everywhere. I peek out my window. Only a couple of cars and vans remain parked by our house now, a few stragglers hoping that Caleb will come back.
I can already tell from the sound of his voice that he won’t.
The silence that follows is thick with unanswered questions. “When am I going to see you?” I work hard to keep my words steady, not wanting to seem desperate for him, even though I am.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he rasps out.
Something dies in me then. That little plant, with its flowers just about to bloom, withers before my eyes. “Like never?”
A heavy sigh. I know his mannerisms so well I can picture him sitting in the hotel room with his body curled around the phone. I bet his hand is running through his hair, mussing it until it sticks up all over the place.
Caleb swallows so loud I hear it. “We need to separate.”
What?He’s speaking a language I can’t translate. I don’t understand. What about all our plans? Our promises? He said that he would never give up on me, on us, but now he’s going back on that. Numb disbelief spreads through my veins, flowing through each crack in my emotional armor, the armorhemade me disassemble.
This doesn’t make sense. I search for a reasonable explanation. “Is it you saying these things, Caleb? Or is it your mom? Or all the people who make money off you?”
