He spoke to me like I was a child. I nodded. My dad went out to talk to George, and I confessed to Parker that I was afraid to use my toothbrush. I stood slowly, with Parker’s help, and I rinsed my mouth with some water.
We walked into the bedroom together. Parker held onto me, steadying me. George and my dad had started cleaning up, stacking piles Parker’s clothes and another pile of mine.
I thought with embarrassment that I didn’t want my dad or George touching my panties, but I supposed it wasn’t anything the two of them had never seen before.
For sure my father had seen women’s underwear. It was disgusting to think about, but he was married to a former porn star, after all. Although I seriously doubted the woman ever wore panties.
Maybe George hadn’t touched women’s panties before. Who knew?
He was attractive for an older man. Gray salted his dark hair. He had shrewd green eyes. He was tall and solid, but not bulky. He always looked professional. I’d never picture him as the head of my dad’s security team, but he was. He looked more like a businessman than a security guard. But he was a lot more than that to my dad. He was a trusted friend, an ally, and someone who had been around for many, many years.
I wondered if George had a family. A wife or kids or grandkids. It wasn’t really my business, but I was starting to look at the people who were in my circle of protection as much more than my dad’s employees.
I was supposed to be engaged to one of them, I reminded myself.
“Are you going to call the cops?” I asked my dad.
He shook his head. “This has to be Randy. We’re not involving police.”
It shouldn’t have surprised me. I had no idea what sorts of illicit activities they were involved in, and I really didn’t want to know. So I got back to my search.
I couldn’t identify what was missing right away, but I had a feeling that something was gone. Parker announced that nothing of his was missing. He left for a few minutes while I repacked my suitcase, leaving out clothes for the next day. I pulled a sweatshirt against my nose, breathing in the scent of my familiar detergent and dryer sheets that I brought with me even on the road. It still smelled like me. Whoever had been through my things hadn’t left their scent behind, at least.
But that didn’t make me feel any better. I wanted to burn all of it. Whoever had done this…
Their hands had been on my things.
My dad and George were relatively silent as I worked, occasionally muttering back and forth between each other.
As I put my make-up back into its bag, a sick thought pierced through the fog that had clouded my brain.
It couldn’t be. Could it?
The thought twisted in my gut. I wanted to get Parker’s opinion before I said anything to my dad. I wanted to be patient, to bide my time, to see if I was being crazy.
But the moment the thought entered my mind, I had to get it out. I had to expel it the same way I’d just expelled everything that had been in my stomach.
Because if I didn’t get it out, the thought would fester inside of me and twist and push and hurt. So if I put it out there, it would be off of my plate and onto someone else’s. The need to give this to someone else, to control the thought before it ate away at me, was too overwhelming to wait for Parker. I didn’t even know where he had gone.
“Where’s your wife?” I blurted out, interrupting something my dad was saying to George.
My dad paused and looked in my direction. He spoke slowly, thoughtfully. “In our room.”
“Where was she during the show?” I asked.
He gave me a strange look, and then he glanced over at George before looking back at me. “She’s been here all night,” he said. His mask was firmly in place. He didn’t react at all even as he had to have realized that she was involved. “She said she had a migraine…” His sentence trailed off. I watched him as he started piecing together the strange events.
I sat on the bed, my entire body trembling.
What if Jadyn Snow was in on the whole thing?
What if my intuition about her was right?
I hadn’t trusted her from the beginning. Plus she was one of the few people who could easily access my room.
The puzzle pieces were falling slowly into place.
The only question I couldn’t answer was why Jadyn would want to hurt me. I didn’t know what she wanted with my things or why she would tear apart my room or what the hell she had been looking for.
“CC, I know you don’t like her, but we don’t have all the facts yet. You can’t go around accusing people without evidence.”
“Without evidence? She was here all night, Dad. That’s pretty damning evidence.”
I saw my dad shoot George a look. I wasn’t sure what it had meant, so I turned my attention back to my luggage.
I rummaged through my suitcase. Even though I’d just packed it, I was still certain something was missing. I just couldn’t put my finger on what the hell it was.
And then it hit me.
My journal.
The place where I wrote snippets of thoughts. My safe haven. The place I confessed things that I was afraid to say aloud. The one thing that I had with me that was more personal than any of my other belongings.
It was gone.
And so were all of the innermost thoughts I had written in it.
My therapy. My release. My relaxation.
All gone.
four
My dad was tearing apart the room looking for my journal when Parker walked back in about a half an hour after he’d left. I was leaning against the headboard, my knees drawn up to my chest, staring into thin air as a dark depression started to hit me. George was tapping away on his phone.
“I brought you a present,” Parker said, his eyes gleaming and a smile on his face. He held two bags in his hands. One was a brown paper bag, and the other was a white plastic bag.
He held out the white bag to me. The word Walgreens advertised the store in bright red letters.
I took it from him. It was heavy.
I peered inside, and then my eyes darted back to his. His were twinkling at me, and I couldn’t help the grin that spread across my face even in the midst of this dire situation.
Somehow Parker instinctively knew how to make everything better.
I pulled out a purple toothbrush, a brand new tube of Crest, and an assortment of make-up. It looked like he wasn’t sure what to get, so he just bought one of everything. He had also bought me lotion, facial cleanser, shampoo, and conditioner.
I stood up and threw my arms around his neck. “Thank you,” I whispered, kissing his cheek.
“Go use that new toothbrush, babe,” he said, and I giggled.
I followed his orders, and when I exited the bathroom, the room was back in order. My dad and George had left. Parker had locked both the deadbolt and the swing lock on the door. I glanced around. If I didn’t just walk into the mess an hour earlier, I would never have known what had happened.
Parker smiled at me and pointed over to the table by the window. He’d lit a candle and set out a bowl of soup and a Sierra Mist.
“I would’ve gotten you a Coke, but my mom always told me that Sierra Mist settles an upset stomach.”
I almost cried. I remembered not all that long ago when I’d ceased to feel anything at all.
And now I had these emotions darting at me from every direction, whirling through me and mixing me up.
Fear, love, hate, peace, thanks, regret, loneliness, sadness, happiness, gratitude, pain.
They had once sat on a bookshelf of emotions gathering dust. I had refused to access them. I shut them off and shut them out.
And now I felt all of them at once.
But most especially, I felt the love and peace that Parker brought to my chaotic life.
I sat at the table and forced down some of the broth from the chicken soup he’d brought me. “Did you finish checking through your things?” he asked.
I nodded. “My journal is missing.”