You Had Me at Halo (25 page)

“You’re disgusting,” Holly said in a low voice as all the pain she had been feeling gathered itself into one long, sharp point inside her. Last time she’d felt like this, the only way to get rid of it had been by cutting herself. Since then she’d worked so hard to make sure she never reached that place again, but now it had happened.

Todd, who had his arms spread out along the back of the booth, jolted into a sitting position and the contented expression fell away to be replaced by one of surprise. “What did you just say to her?” he said in a dangerous voice.

“The same thing I’m saying to you.” Holly clutched at the table and tried to contain the sharp heat of her anger. “You’re both disgusting.”

Over by the pool table, she could see Gemma raising a panicked eyebrow and nodding towards the door, while Simon was bristling with expectation. There was no way Holly was going anywhere. She was mad beyond belief.

Somewhere in the back of her mind was Dr. Hill’s voice explaining to her how important it was that she dealt with her issues, but she blocked it out.

Right now there was only one thing she wanted to deal with, and that was her cheating, lying scumbag of a boyfriend.

Todd now got to his feet. “You’ve got to be joking me, man. First the funeral and now this, anyone would think you’re trying to pick a fight with me.”

“Anyone would think you deserved it,” Holly retorted as she stood up as well. Two could play at this game and she was glad to see Vince was a good two inches taller than Todd, not to mention a good deal broader. “Holly’s been dead two weeks and you’re already hooking up with someone else? You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“Hey,” Rochelle squealed in outrage as she looked up from fixing her hair.

“Come on, Vince, let’s just get out of here.” Amy scowled. “Who gives a shit about Holly Evans?”

“Yeah, Murphy, why don’t you listen to your girlfriend for once?” Todd drawled.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Holly said through gritted teeth.

“And Holly wasn’t
my
girlfriend,” Todd retorted.

“What!”

What?

Holly felt the world stop, and for a minute she thought Dr. Alan Hill was doing his party trick again, but slowly the surrounding buzz of conversation started to ring in her ear and she realized the world hadn’t really stopped at all. It just felt like it had.

“That’s right.” Todd sneered as he folded his arms in front of his chest. “Not that it’s any of your business but I was about to break up with her the night she killed herself.”

“She
did not
kill herself,” she screamed as his words slowly sunk into her mind. He was going to dump her the night they were supposed to get engaged? Unbelievable. And to think she’d been planning to wear her adorable bra and panties for him. Well, even if she wasn’t dead,
or a boy
, there was no way in a million years he was ever going to see them now. That was for sure. And what about her ring?

“What would you know about it?” Todd demanded, his navy eyes looking cruel and hard.

“I know she didn’t kill herself,” Holly said firmly. “How can you even say that when you were going to get engaged to her?”

“You
have
been sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong.” Todd raised a surprised eyebrow before shrugging. “Not that it matters. I was only going to do it to get in good with the boss, but Holly didn’t fancy the idea of announcing the engagement at the ball. Talk about a lucky break, since two weeks ago I had lunch with a client who happened to go to high school with her. Apparently she tried to slit her wrists when she was there. I found out just in time what a nut case she was. Talk about a close shave.”

Holly could feel her cheeks going red with rage. Was this really the same Todd speaking to her? How could he believe those things he was saying?

“It’s all worked out for the best, because I was getting sick of just seeing Todd on the side anyway.” Rochelle purred as she put a territorial hand on Todd’s arm.

Holly started to shake.

“Why would you give a shit about this, Vince?” Amy tugged at Holly’s shirt. “If you ask me, they deserve each other.”

“That’s so not true, you stupid bitch,” Rochelle howled.

“Oh excellent.” Simon Trimmer obviously thought it was time to make his presence felt. “I’ve been looking for an excuse to kick this guy’s butt all night. So can I fight him now?”

“There isn’t going to be a fight,” Holly said in a calm voice. In the background she could hear Gemma letting out a sigh of relief,
but it was a bit premature, thought Holly
as she bunched her right hand into a tight fist and took a swing at Todd’s picture perfect face.

The result was instant and spectacular and as Todd dropped back down onto the seat in pain, Holly turned to Simon Trimmer and shot him a defiant glare.

“What the—?” His eyes bulged.

“Like I said, there isn’t going to be a fight. Todd got what he deserved. Now if you want to make something of it, then that’s up to you. But I warn you, I’m not in a good mood.”

Simon held up his hands and backed away. “It’s got nothing to do with me.”

“Well, I’m glad we understand each other then,” Holly said as she grabbed her jacket and headed for the door. She’d finally realized that while she was Holly Evans on the inside, she was Vince Murphy on the outside. And Vince Murphy could pack quite a punch.

As she left she could hear Todd screaming out at her. “You crazy asshole. You’ll pay for this, Murphy. You’re already on thin ice because you didn’t deliver those laptops to Peterson’s this afternoon. Somehow I don’t think you’re going to be working at Baker Colwell for too much longer. I’ll make sure of it.”

Holly ignored him as she headed out into the night. As she stalked down the road she could see Dr. Alan Hill standing by the bus stop trying to catch her attention, but Holly just kept walking.

Her head hurt, her knuckles stung and she was about to lose all of her memories. There wasn’t anything the good doctor could say that would make her feel any better. So he might as well say nothing at all.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

By the time she got back to Vince’s house she was shaking. Life—or in her case death—as she knew it was over. Holly couldn’t believe it. What had she done?

She’d never punched anyone in her life, but the way she had been feeling toward Todd had just been impossible to get out in any other way.

She’d ruined everything.

Was it really only a couple of hours ago that Dr. Hill had been telling her how much progress she’d been making and how she had a good chance of the manual purge actually working. She’d gone and blown it in one foul swoop by showing that her issues were as unresolved as ever.

Holly wasn’t quite sure which point had triggered her to hit Todd. Was it that he had been cheating on her? Or that he thought that she’d killed herself?

And worse, she’d inadvertently dragged Vince into it by making him look like the bad guy.

To the outside world, Vince was just a normal computer geek, but the reality was that he was a really nice guy who worked hard, kept out of trouble and still found the time to help self-absorbed dead girls sort out their issues. And now she’d just ensured that he might lose his job as well.

Nice going, Holly Evans.

In a way it wasn’t so bad that she was going to lose her memory. The more she thought about it, the less she liked a lot of what her life had been like. Well, Todd was certainly a let down of epic proportions.

To think that his ambition and determination had been one of the things she’d loved most about him, but if Amy was right and Todd was with Rochelle because he thought it would be good for his career, then it didn’t really say much about him at all, did it?

Then there was work itself. Up until now Holly hadn’t even questioned the rather heavy handed corporate environment she’d been part of, but stepping back and dying certainly had a way of giving a girl some perspective.

On top of that it seemed she had misjudged most everyone round her. Well, her stepmother and Vince Murphy for a start.

If anyone was the loser around here, it was her—Holly Evans. Stupid idiot who couldn’t even die right.

She had been such a fool.

Once inside the safety of Vince’s room, she took his boots off as the full horror of what had happened played out around her like a multi-color plasma screen in her head.

As she had left The Pool Palace she was aware of Gemma’s look of horror, Amy’s fury and Rochelle’s annoyance that some of Todd’s blood had squirted onto her skin tight jeans.

She shrugged the black leather jacket off and threw it onto the nearby chair. However she missed and the jacket landed with a thump on the floor.

Man
, she thought as she wriggled off the bed to pick it up. It seemed she couldn’t do anything right these days. She was just about to lie back down when she caught sight of the bottle of tablets she’d found in his satchel.

She’d almost forgotten about them. She retrieved them from the ground and turned them around in her hand.

So what were beta-blockers?

She supposed she could go look it up on the Internet but she wasn’t quite sure she would be able to work his state of the art laptop.

“Wake up, Vince, I want to talk to you,” she said out loud, but there was nothing.

She got up and headed over to the desk in the corner. It was of no consequence that tomorrow she would have forgotten all of this. Tonight she not only wanted to take her mind off her own problems but she wanted to know what was wrong with Vince Murphy.

There was nothing else in there apart from some neatly organized stationery and an alarm clock so she turned her attention to the closet and decided it warranted further investigation.

She stood on a chair and peered in. There was a pile of plain white T-shirts and next to them was a pile of black T-shirts. Vince had the fashion sense of Simon Cowell. Holly pushed them aside and thrust her hand towards the back.
Bingo.

Her fingers clutched around a large cardboard folder, which she dragged out and raced back to the bed to study.

At first not a lot of it made sense. It was obviously medical information in the form of graphs. There were piles of them and Holly frowned as she turned over page after page. It looked serious.

Vince. What’s wrong with you?

She kept paging through until she finally came across a photocopy from a textbook, which meant that she might be vaguely able to understand it.

Long QT Syndrome.

What on earth was that? Holly scanned the text (helpfully highlighted with a pink marker), which explained that it was some sort of wonky heart rhythm thing. She flicked back through the other files. The strange graphs seemed to date back to at least five years. So Vince Murphy had
known about this Long QT thing since he was seventeen.

Then she turned back to the article. It could cause fainting, prevent you from playing sports,
and in some instances Long QT Syndrome could cause sudden death.

The purple lights.

Holly’s throat tightened as a sickening sensation lodged in her stomach. She shut her eyes but all she could see was the small bright lights that had been dancing around Vince’s head like fireflies on the day of her funeral. What if Dr. Hill hadn’t made a mistake after all? What if instead of fainting, Vince had been dying. Or nearly dying, and for whatever reason he had lived through it? Perhaps the shock of her landing in his body had jump-started his heart back into life?

If Vince had nearly died, then why didn’t he say something? Anything?

Why did he let her rant on and on about her problems as if he didn’t have a care in the world?

He must have been so surprised when he’d come around from his near death experience to find that she was in his body, but did he complain? Well, okay, so perhaps he wasn’t exactly a saint in the complaining department, but overall he had been pretty amazing.

“Vince. Did you really walk around for the last five years knowing you might die at any time? How did you manage to keep this big, terrible thing that was happening to you, a secret from everyone?”

Again there was no answer but Holly didn’t really mind as she stared at the ceiling in the darkened room. From outside the window she could hear the distant wail of an ambulance but she ignored it.

Holly felt a chill go through her body and she shivered. “You know, Vince,” she said in a hoarse voice. “You’re not the only one who has a secret.”

She lifted up her arms and stared at the smooth skin of his wrist. “You’re so much braver than me. You wear your secrets on the inside, but I was too chicken to do that. If you could see my real arm, you would know what I mean. There are still faint scars from where I cut myself.”