I need to keep it together. I don't want to beg and plead, but I'm already dangerously close to doing that.

Seconds drag by as I watch Keri Ann's face deliver those words to me. Words that strike me where my deepest fears and insecurities lie.

I'm winded. My lungs, my mind, my tongue won't cooperate. My entire body has betrayed me. If my mind was fully functional right now, and not in catatonic shock, if it was able to bark out an order for me to walk, walk to her and wrap my arms around her small frame, or even to walk out, I'm not sure my legs would get the message.

The only thing I can feel is a clawing, dark nothingness moving like sludge through my veins-taking over. It's seeping dead emptiness through every inch of me, shutting me down in increments, until I can't even see in front of me.

Finally, a synapse must make a last ditch attempt to fire and rescue me because I find myself turning away. Able to move.

I don't even remember getting back to Devon's, which is a miracle in and of itself because it's so f.u.c.king dark here.

Because of the sea turtles.

I enter the house and sag against the wall. The memories of Keri Ann hit me like an avalanche. All the feelings that have been quiet and dead for the last twenty minutes switch back on at full volume.

I put my hand out on the same wall that I had her pressed up against right before I'd carried her upstairs seven months ago. A swift kick in the libido comes along with the memory I seriously don't need right now. d.a.m.n, this is bad.

I remember looking in her eyes and seeing the emotion there, feeling it in return so strong the reality was, she was holding me up as much as I was her.

I know she's lying.

Please let her be lying.

I swallow over a throat that feels like it will never close.

The thing about pain, whether physical or emotional, is there's no running away. You can't escape it and you can't hide from it. Not by ignoring it, not by drugging it, not by doing a swan dive into a bottle. Sooner or later you'll have to take a breath, let the pain rush in and get to the other side like your life depends on it. Because it does.

I know this, I've been through versions of pain many times. And yet, it doesn't stop me from trying all three remedies in quick succession.

I grit my teeth and will my mind to shut down as I push off the wall and stalk into the kitchen, heading for the cabinet that houses the liquor. I can compartmentalize well, but this time it's like trying to shove the Michelin man into a tiny ring box.

Sloshing several fingers of Blue Label into a gla.s.s, d.a.m.n Devon's getting fancy in his old age, I head straight for the stairs. In my room, I grab an Ambien and knock it back with the scotch. Dumb, I know, but I would like to be in complete oblivion just for a little while. And I haven't slept well for weeks.

I stare at the bed in Devon's guest room.

Visions of the last time I slept here with Keri Ann, naked, and spread out beneath me, and so G.o.dd.a.m.n sweet and beautiful, clang down in rapid fire one after the other, and I back out.

Making it back downstairs, I top up my drink and head to the couch.

I want to make the selfish choice and just go all out to get her back. It's a physical struggle to not turn around and go back and grab her and kiss her and love her and keep talking until she understands. Like I can force her to hear me or force her to love me.

What was I thinking? I've made so many mistakes, but it seems I just keep making them. Why did I tell her how I felt? Of course she wouldn't believe me. Just hearing her reaction made me realize how dumb it was. And she was right. Part of me did think I could use that to my advantage.

My arrogance.

She'd called me on my arrogance once, and I'd denied it and claimed confidence instead. But she was right. It was my arrogant streak that believed telling her I loved her would buy me some time.

Without working too hard, I'd gotten what I wanted from women all my adult life. I traded on my looks and my celebrity and got laid when I felt like it. Even with Audrey, if I was honest. That was the normal course of events. But of course, there's nothing normal about Keri Ann Butler.

I've been convincing myself I did the right thing, handled Audrey the right way by throwing the world off the trail and staying away from here until the dust settled after Erath.

Why didn't I tell Keri Ann five months ago what was going on, back when I almost came back? I know the truth of it. I was a coward. I'd already seen her disappointment in me, and I didn't want to own up to what I'd done to Audrey and ... I didn't want to hear that Keri Ann didn't want me.

As I stare up at the white ceiling and wait for the sleeping pill to work its magic, I think about how I got to this moment. I knew after I left here five months ago I was dragging my feet. The longer I stayed away, the harder it was to come back because at the very heart of it, I knew this would happen. Why wouldn't it? The exact reason most women run toward me is the exact reason Keri Ann always stepped away.

I take one more deep sip of Scotch, feeling the heat unfurl in my throat and spread through my chest, warming the cold, deep ache of emptiness and soothing the serrated aftermath of Keri Ann's ma.s.sacre of my heart. Then I close my eyes.

I'm running down the hallways at boarding school. We're not supposed to run, but it's dark, and I don't know where any of the other kids are. It must be after lights out, and I have no idea why I'm running. My breath is wheezing in and out of my chest, my legs burning as I round the corner by the school kitchens. But ... I just turned this corner, how did I get back to the beginning? Who am I running from?

Then I hear him breathing right behind me. "William."

I lurch up into a sitting position and snap my eyes open only to be blinded by whiteness all around me. "s.h.i.t," I mumble, squeezing my eyes closed to blue negatives dancing on my lids. My brain unpeels from the inside of my skull and settles with a deep thud.

Ow.

"Jack, Jesus. Jumpy much?" Devon's voice is over to my left.

I carefully slit one eye open and look to my left. It is Devon, and I'm at his place. Butler Cove. s.h.i.t. I close my eyes again and acknowledge the hollow ache in my chest. I can't tell if my head or my chest hurts more. "What time is it?" I croak.

"After six in the evening. You've been asleep all day, and by the looks of it, could sleep another twelve. I was just making sure you weren't actually in a coma. Everything all right?" He hands me a gla.s.s of ice water. "Here."

"Thanks." I close my eyes and take a sip, the iciness splashing in my empty insides. "Why did you call me William?"

"What?"

"I thought ... never mind. I must have been dreaming." I haven't had that dream for years. "Where've you been?"

Devon takes a seat opposite me, a beer bottle dangling from his hand.

"Savannah. It's all a go for Roberts. We got all the permits for the Riverfront and as long as SCAD still wants in, we should begin set design by next week and hopefully begin shooting by September."

I wince and pinch the bridge of my nose. My whole push to set the movie in Savannah seems so f.u.c.king stupid now. "Great," I muster.

Devon tips his beer back, taking a long sip. "Again, is everything all right?"

"No." I let out a long breath and lie back down, flinging my arm over my forehead. "No. Nothing is all right. I f.u.c.ked up. I went to see Keri Ann last night, and I f.u.c.ked up."

"How so?"

"I may have told her I was in love with her."

"You're a sick s.a.d.i.s.tic b.a.s.t.a.r.d, you know that?"

"To her or to myself?" I manage.

Devon lowers his beer. "I was going to say to her, actually, but this is an interesting turn of events for someone who didn't seem to give a s.h.i.t about her before."

I look over to where he's sitting, wearing ripped jeans and a black t-shirt, the tips of his hair bleached yellow.

His brow is furrowed as he looks at me. "You sure had me fooled. First I thought it was the real deal, then you disappeared off to England and we all got to see how you spent your time there. So forgive me if I'm not following."

"It's complicated."

"It always is. You want to give it a shot?"

I eye Devon, one of my best friends in the plastic, ego-filled circus I live my life in. He deserves to know what was and is going on with me. And frankly, I need the help. I am tired of the isolation. Exhausted actually.

Sorting through the happenings of the last five months since Audrey showed me the depths of her emotional depravity, I decide to start at the beginning. Devon wants my story, and I need to give voice to it, if only to diminish whatever is devouring my insides.

Five Months Ago ...

A skinny, red-faced and hyperventilating guy, who doesn't look old enough to work, has just given me the keys to the Hertz rental I ordered delivered to the General Aviation Terminal on Hilton Head Island. He obviously had no idea he was going to be delivering a car to a celebrity when he woke up this morning. Now he keeps saying "I can't believe it! I can't believe it!" over and over again while I try to get around him to the car. I've already given him a personalized autograph "to give to his girlfriend." It would be amusing if I were in a better mood.

I don't remember being this nervous about anything for a long time. Not since those first couple of screen tests where it's down to you and that other guy who's been all over Variety and you're wondering how you're gonna pay your rent that's two weeks late. Where everything, your whole future, is riding on the outcome of how you play the next few hours.

"Do you have a map of the area?" I ask him patiently. I'd flung my bag into the back seat of the rental with my good hand and tugged my cap down, sliding my shades back on. I pull my wallet out of the pocket of my worn jeans and balance it on my bandaged right hand to remove a twenty. "Here. Thanks. Do you have a map?" I repeat.

The guy, still blocking the driver's side door, takes the money and looks at my hand. "Wow, like, thanks. Dude ... what did you do to your hand?"

"I punched a wall. Map?"

"Oh, yeah. Sorry. There's a complimentary map on the pa.s.senger seat. Why'dya punch a wall?"

"It was better than punching a person."

The guy nods emphatically like he "like, totally, gets it."

"Thanks for delivering the car."

My hand was f.u.c.ked from punching the wall so I went over to Nick's. Being a tattoo artist, I knew he had bandages and antiseptic. Thank G.o.d he also persuaded me to get it x-rayed. He knew a guy who played for the Lakers who had his own doc on call, so I got it taken care of fast and more importantly, privately. Hairline fracture to the third metacarpal. Great. So I'm in a cast.

The kid still doesn't move, so I reach out for the door with my left hand and open it, slowly nudging him backward until I can safely get in. He steps away finally, and I nod and close the door.

I take a deep breath and start the car.

This is the kind of fear that sits heavy on your chest-a fundamental, incessant anxiety like you're stuck in a dark alley-it's life or death, and your feet have forgotten how to run. You've glimpsed your salvation like a glittering empire in the distance, but you can't f.u.c.king remember how to get there. Every moment you spend pondering, is a moment your goal drifts further away, the road becoming more and more complicated and hazardous until it's gone.

My phone buzzes again. It hasn't stopped with messages in the twenty minutes it took to get from the plane to the car. I grab it and scroll down, starting at the bottom.

Duane/Peak Ent: CALL ME RIGHT THIS MINUTE OR WE'RE PULLING OUT OF ROBERTS Devon: Dude, seriously. I expected you a week ago. I need to talk to you about scheduling filming too.

Devon: you realize there's a high school sweetheart trying to help her get over you, right?

I hate that one.

Sheila PR: Why do you keep doing this to me? You don't pay me enough for this. Peak is breathing down my neck about damage control. I need a statement!!!!!!!

Duane/Peak Ent: Ok look. This is serious. Just call me back we can work this out - if it's really over, we just need to schedule some photo ops, outings, we can cover. JUST CALL ME.

I stop reading and pull out onto the road following signs for the mainland. "Cover" my a.s.s. Duane, from Peak Entertainment is looking to persuade, threaten, and cajole me back in line. Everyone is getting hysterical, but there's a reason why I don't call them back. Yet. Either Duane or my publicist, Sheila. They want me to put out a statement saying Audrey and I are fine, but I don't want Keri Ann to see it. Not until I speak to her and tell her what's going on.

But how can I find the courage to explain that even though I'd told her Audrey and I were over, I believed I had gotten her pregnant. With one hundred percent certainty.

The morning the news broke about Audrey cheating on me.

The day the pictures came out.

I knew about the cheating before Audrey knew that I knew, of course. She came to find me in my home gym where I was pounding up a ten percent incline with bricks in my back pack because I was just that p.i.s.sed off. I'd thought we had a deal. I'd pa.s.sed up a lot of women to stick to it, to respect Audrey privately and publicly and to not make her look a fool. For the most part, I'd managed to keep my d.i.c.k in my pants, even though Audrey and my occasional s.e.xual relationship had mostly fizzled out around the second installment of Erath. That was a long time with only sporadic s.e.x.

Audrey was all hysterical and sorry and kissing me and undressing me. And call me a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, but my ego needed, no demanded, I show her what she was missing.

I was pumped up, sweating, and p.i.s.sed off, in the middle of a work out, and I just did it. I f.u.c.ked her. And I didn't use any protection, something I had never done. I'd taken some kind of perverse pleasure from that fact. I was like a stupid animal staking his claim. For nothing. Wounded pride. That was it. And I was so disgusted with myself afterwards. I still am.

How did I explain that to a girl like Keri Ann. It would never even occur to her to use someone for her own gain. In any way. And I had used a woman in the worst and basest way possible. And then moved on to Keri Ann, and like the animal I was, decided to rid her of her virginity before abandoning her.

As I turn off the airport road, I let myself think about Savannah, what seems like a lifetime ago, in a secluded corner of that dark club. I'd been sitting, numbing myself with a bottle of Bushmills, while I figured out what I would say to Keri Ann, how I would explain. And there she was. I couldn't believe my lying eyes. It was wishful thinking, surely. I mean, the way she was dressed-those legs coming out from the tight, short black dress, long, tanned, toned and ending in the s.e.xiest shoes I had ever seen. Probably just because they were on her. Keri Ann didn't dress like that, or even wear makeup. I seriously thought I was in a drunken stupor.

She'd looked so different. But G.o.d, she'd looked breathtaking. And I acted like an animal. Again. It was a primal response, pure and simple. I was on top of the guy before I could even process that I wanted to rip his throat out for touching her. Kissing her.

He kissed her.

I never wanted him to breathe again.

I knew, I knew, that it was because of me she was doing this. I had turned that amazing, pure, unaffected and untouched girl into the haunting siren who was bewitching every guy in the room and unknowingly asking to be touched. I could see it on their faces.

Now as I drive toward Butler Cove, I don't know what to say, how to say it, or if she'll care. I mean, it's been two months since I last saw her. Since I stood in the back office in that club in Savannah, half drunk, and let her walk out of the door, and out of my life. Again.

Her eyes. f.u.c.k, her eyes-the look in them just about kills me every time I let it creep into my mind. Watery, with the unshed tears she was failing to hold back. Blue. Blue like rough denim, and they always said exactly what she was thinking. And right then it was disappointment. In me.

That thought shudders through me, and I pull over. I need to check my directions anyway. I lay my forehead on the steering wheel for a second and take a deep breath, then reach for the map. It's attached to a magazine. Hilton Head Monthly. I pull the stapled map off and fling the magazine back to the pa.s.senger seat where it lands face down.

Holy s.h.i.t!

I grab the magazine again and stare at the back cover. Then I check the map again and drive not to Butler Cove, but to a gallery.

The elegant, female curator at the Picture This Gallery reminds me of my eleventh grade Lit teacher and she is madly trying to place me. Southern politeness, perhaps, precludes her from asking. I guess. I don't really care. I can tell she's taking in my rumpled attire and trying to work out if I can afford anything. Not in a mean way. Just in an efficient way. Or maybe she's wondering if I'm trouble, what with my bandaged hand and perma-scowl.

What I am interested in is what I am staring at, transfixed. In the center of the room, ... and perhaps there are other things around it, but I don't see them, ... is a wave. Seriously. A wave. If I deconstruct it, if I take what I see down to its elements, I don't see it. And if I step around to one side, I don't see it. But right now, where I'm standing, I have the perfect view. A swell, no, a forming barrel of a wave, made up of a huge piece of ashy driftwood, carved back to its pale beige core in parts, and rising up to spill its breakwater in a cacophony of beach. Beach stones and sticks and broken sh.e.l.ls and a single piece of red sea gla.s.s that glares so bright it's like a wound.

I'm unable to tear my eyes away.

"Spectacular, isn't it?" The curator's voice jars me back to my surroundings.

Clearing my throat, I manage to nod. "Yeah. Is it for sale?"

"Unfortunately, no. The artist just dropped it off this morning, a few hours ago in fact. Her exhibition doesn't technically open for another two weeks. And frankly even if it was for sale, I wouldn't be able to let you have it until her show is over. It is the star piece, I'm sure you'll agree."

Keri Ann was here, in this room, mere hours ago. I breathe in, as if I can still smell her. Which, of course, I can't. I step closer to inspect the piece of red sea gla.s.s. "So once the exhibition starts, it will be for sale?" It seems odd that the curator won't take a presale on an item. She is a business owner after all.