Artificial Love (The Goodbye Trilogy #2) (16 page)

Chapter Thirty-One

Johnny

I peered down at the cup of coffee in my hand. When did that get there? Ethan? Why did he care so much? The guy had been all buddy-buddy with Emily to the point of pissing me off and then this? Was he just a kiss ass? I didn’t deserve any attention.

I didn't want any coffee.

Blowing out a harsh breath, I had to tell someone before the police got there. Ethan was there and I supposed it had to be him. Fear had my balls in a vice grip, hard and ready to squeeze. So it should. This was the real world - not the rock world.

I turned to Ethan and looked him straight, dead into his eyes. He flinched, thinking I was going to give him shit. I softened my look.

"Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride,” I ticked off on my fingers, wrapped around the coffee cup. “Those deadly sins are all in me and you know what’s so fucked? Fear isn’t one of them, Ethan. I guess I'm a God fearing man now," I choked on a hollow laugh. My head, turned down, felt ten times its size.

"Makes sense since I'm a sellout and miserable. I rewind the time in my head, hoping for a different reality and that is... really fucking painful," I said drawing out the last words on choking sobs; quickly dashing the tears from my face. It was
all
over. I resigned myself to accept that it was up to Ethan and Dex to keep LSP going. It was up to someone else, that person, uncomfortably unknown to me, to keep Emily going. It was up to me to keep me going. No one else would fix that I almost killed a man and I was going to prison for a very long time.

“Those damn surveillance tapes. I mean, I’m fucking glad they have
him
but I… I am so, so screwed.” I pushed my hands through my hair and exhaled heavily again.

Ethan shifted to look directly at me.

“They have nothing on you. Emily made a statement. The police agree with her statement. You were acting as her defense and she believes, no – she is one hundred percent positive that if you hadn’t been there, she would’ve died.”

I sucked in air like there wasn’t any left in the world.

“She did that?” I asked, my finger trembled as it went to my eye to catch another fucking tear.

Ethan nodded. “Now she wants you to know that she is fine. She also wants you to leave.”

“Say that again,” I groaned out, whipping my head up to search his face.

“Emily wants you to go home. She needs you to leave.” Ethan’s words were measured, forceful, and completely ripped me up into tiny little pieces.

I couldn’t even pretend to hold back my tears. I put my head in my hands and stood. I walked to the waiting room wall and punched it three times.

“Why?” I managed to choke out.

Ethan’s eyes were sad. There wasn’t any other emotion. He knew how much I’d fallen for her. He knew. He watched us and he defended me, I was sure, up until her final blow that she wanted me gone.

“Johnny, she doesn’t look…she isn’t like the Emily from before that night. She isn’t the same. I mean, to me, I still see her and I don’t care what she looks like but I don’t know. I think I get why she doesn’t want you to see her. He really fucked her up,” Ethan finished with a large exhale and a baffled expression.

“You think I don’t know what she probably looks like? I watched him drag her face through the God damn window. I watch her bleed everywhere. I saw her eye. I knew right then it had to be gone. Yes, it’s horrible that it happened but I didn’t fall in love with her face. I fell in love with her – you know, like on the inside. Why doesn’t she feel the same?” I was literally sobbing.

“She’s so in love with you, Johnny. Poor girl is stubborn as shit. She wants to hide out and let you have your rocker career without the burden of the poor, disfigured girl,” Ethan replied flatly.

I stood there, my mouth agape and my hands on my hips. I noticed Ethan wave to someone behind me. I whirled around to see Jules and Brennan leaving the hospital. I still couldn’t believe she let Jules up to see her and not me.

“Not. Fucking. Again,” I said with another three punches to the wall. My head rested above the holes and I felt Ethan’s stare on my back. He’d just told me the worst news I’d ever heard and for once, I didn’t want to hate him. My hate was all taken up on me. I nodded into the wall and pushed myself back with my hands.

Without another look or word, I shoved my bloodied hands into my jeans and walked out of the waiting room for the last time.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Emily

I woke up from a light nap to people screaming at one another. I heard my mother’s voice as well as two female voices.

“She doesn’t want to see you, young man,” my mother firmly said.

“I don’t give a fucking shit what she wants. She broke my God damn heart so she can tell me to my face.”

Oh God. I panicked. He got on to the floor. He was heading my way and I was having a heart attack. The heart monitor started going crazy. I lunged myself out of my bed, ripping the IV from my arm. I only got to placing one foot on the floor when I heard the large door shut closed with a heavy boom. I didn’t have to look.

I could feel him. The electricity in the room increased in wattage and the lights looked brighter, the painting on the wall looked more vivid. I could smell him. He hadn’t bathed in a while because his sweat was the most prominent smell. I remember one morning I woke him up by sticking my nose into his arm pits. They always smelled so damn good. My uterus melted at his smell and when I told him so, he made me write it down on a piece of paper and sign it. He said that one day; he would need it for some reason. I remember telling him I would never grow sick of it.

Today, however, his wonderful, beautiful smells made me want to break down and cry.

I couldn’t do that. I also couldn’t look up at him because then he would see the right side of my face and right now, he could only see my uninjured side. I pretended that I was a snail and slowly molded my body into a slippery motion of withdrawing myself back into my body, into my bed. I managed to fluidly move my heels and knees back under the covers and slip down into the warming security it created before I laid on my right side, obstructing him from seeing the wreckage.

“Emily,” he whispered. “My God, Emily. My baby. I’m so damn sorry I wasn’t out there when you left.”

I heard the tears. I had to focus on my other senses because not looking at him was self-preservation. If I watched his observation of me, like I had with every single person that had visited me, and saw the exact same expression everyone else had on their faces – I would only ever dream of that look. My memories of Johnny Lennox would be tainted.

I was always the one that never went up to caskets at funerals. The body that laid there was not the last picture I wanted in my head of that person. I made the mistake once and went with my mother to the casket to see her mother. To this day, when I think of her, I toggle between her laughing with a fishing hat on and a waxed version of what a person that may have been her used to look like. I can’t ever take that image back so I choose to go with my memories of life. Living life, smiling, and being free to explore the world was all the things I associated with Johnny. When he looked at me like death had taken my body, not only would his memories of me be tainted but vice versa.

“I told everyone that I didn’t want to see you,” I stated. I grabbed the call button on the side of my bed and pressed it. Twice. My head hurt and all I could think about was going to sleep – escaping this awful dream.

“Why?” he croaked out the word as he started to push forward to the bed. I held up my left hand to stop him. It was then he noticed I held the wire in my hand and was pushing the button again.

“Emily, my God – you really don’t want me around you this much?” he asked, pointing to the wire. “Baby, I don’t care what you look like. I don’t care what you think about us. I fucking need you in my life. Em, I love you. I love you more in this hospital room today than I have ever loved anyone. I want to hold you and tell you everything will be okay. I want us and I don’t know what you think you saw the other night but it was nothing. I can say that because I know what everything is. I know what real finally feels like and Jesus, if you’d just give me a chance to take care of you and love you, you’ll see it – feel it, too. Please don’t give up on us because you’re hurting. Please,” Johnny cried; his face a battered up mess. He was shaking and he looked so desperate.

I felt like I was going to throw up.

“This is karma knocking at our door, Johnny. I can’t do it anymore.”

I pushed the button again.

“Well, poor fucking you, Emily,” he mocked me. “Karma or not – I will not stop loving you because you push me away. I’m tired of not fighting back. I will fight for you.”

I didn’t realize I had whipped my head up to stare incredulously at him until I felt the tension of his body go stalk still and that same pained look that every God damn person had on their face when they first saw me, was right there. No need for cameras. I took the best photograph of that look with my brain and no matter how fast it slipped into some cover up – he would always be wearing that expression in my mind.

He gasped at my face and more tears fell down his.

I shook my head and winced at the pull of the bandages. I pushed the button again.

“I need you to leave. I need for you to go back on tour and forget about me. I know we had something pretty special but nothing that could undo the reality that you belong on a stage, playing to millions of beautiful people and I…well, maybe I belong at home, cooking and cleaning, being the person I have always known I was.”

Johnny started to shake his head furiously. “No, you don’t have to be that nice girl. You don’t have to be…”

Cutting him off, I said with a small, wistful smile, “Wherever I might be, I know I will be so proud to watch you succeed. You and your band are amazing. For a short time, you showed me what doing what I want is like and I won’t ever forget it. God, I’m so thankful that you stopped him from killing me. He
was
going to kill me, you know.”

A few moments went by and I forgot to press the button as I realized my fate.

“I also fucking hate the fact that you didn’t let him finish what he started,” I whispered. “I have proof now that I was only supposed to be who I was. It was silly of me to think that I could change my hair and clothes and well…I’d turn into someone like Julia.”

His sobs were deep and raw. I felt the vibration of his pain from my bed because I couldn’t look at his various emotions anymore.

“So that’s it? You think that because you are hurt that I don’t want you anymore? Do you think that I’m that vain and artificial?” He tried to act dubious but all I heard was hurt.

“Yes.”

“Yes? You think that little of me?”

“I didn’t say that, Johnny. I said you are vain and artificial because you can’t be anything different if your career is being on stage.”

“Fuck that. That’s total bullshit. If I got hurt the same way, I would still take the stage and people would still listen to us play. They would jam with me no matter what I looked like.”

I shook my head. “No, Johnny. People would stare at your face and they would applaud you for your balls to keep moving on. You would get their sympathy vote for a while but I promise you that no one would be waiting backstage to party with you. Unless one of the guys paid someone, you would be lucky to get lucky with a face like this,” I said, pointing my shaking finger at my eye patch and bandages.

Long moments passed and I wondered what the hell was taking the nurse so long. I pushed the button again.

“Will you leave now? Please?” I begged, keeping my eyes closed real tight so no tears leaked out of them.

“What are you going to do now? Where will you go?” His questions were interrupted by sob hiccups. I spared a glance at him to see his whole face was wet with tears and a leaky nose. I’d never seen a man cry like that in all of my life. Had he ever cried this hard for Jules?

“I need several more surgeries so I’m going to a therapy place for outpatient care for a few months and then my parents are renting me a small studio in Boston. I would like to take classes over the internet. Maybe finally get that degree I wanted.”

His whole body perked up. “Wow, really? That’s amazing, baby,” he winced at his term of endearment. He didn’t really want to call me that anyway. I would never be anyone’s baby.

I thought about never having that actual baby and I started to bawl. Would any man ever want my disgusting body enough to make babies with it? I once thought I would have them with Michael. Wrong. I hoped one day, Johnny and I would make a beautiful blonde baby. Wrong.

Immediately, my cries turned into high pitched wails and the nurses came in with more sedatives. I knew that outbursts like these would happen often.  When I realized every little thing Michael had taken away from me, the pain was too tough to stomach. Vocalizing the loss in thick sobs made it passable. My disgusting face made only more horrendous by the ugly sounds simply reminded me what alone felt like. I would always be alone.

“You have to leave. You have to leave. Get out, Johnny. Get the fuck out of my life!” I screamed over my wails. The nurses finally got my message and I laid back in complete exhaustion.

In a frenzy of doctors and nurses, Johnny got pushed back to the hall where he stood, staring at me. People were talking and shushing me into a lull. After my whimpers calmed down, I felt my eye become droopy. Good, they had pushed more morphine through my IV.

He kissed his fingers and pressed them up against his heart.

“Goodbye, Johnny,” I said as I started to go under.

“I love you, Emily. I do. I fucking love you. Everything about you is beautiful,” I heard him say.

I was quite sure everyone on the floor heard him.