“No, not ‘whatever.’ It said that an insider told them I force you to drug up before public appearances. What the hell, Ryan?”

“They printed that?”

“Yes. There are only a select few that know you take medicine for anxiety. Your parents don’t even know. This is not public knowledge.” I glanced over at Marie, knowing she knew about Ryan’s medical condition.

Ryan cursed, loud and clear. “I can’t deal with this now. Call Trish. Get her on it.”

“Will do. I’ll call you later.” Marie gave me an odd look when I turned left instead of right. “Where are we going?”

“I need to take care of this bank thing while we’re over here. I got another call about late fees for my father’s safe-deposit box.”

Twenty minutes later I paid the fees to a box for which I didn’t have a key.

“A hundred and eighty bucks to drill a lock out? Pete would do that for free,” Marie said as we walked out of the bank.

I unlocked the car doors. “Guess I know what I’m doing today.”

I set my purse and the copy of the bank bill down on the kitchen table when we returned to the apartment.

“The woman at the bank didn’t even say what kind of key to look for,” Marie said, going through the junk drawer in the kitchen.

I put the rest of our groceries away. “It wouldn’t be in there.”

I pulled out the top drawer of the desk in the third bedroom.

“Here, go through all these files and I’ll look

through

these.

Open

envelopes,

everything.”

She started paging through the stacks of documents my dad had rubber-banded together.

“Tar, these are old gas and electric bills from six years ago. I’m pretty sure you don’t need to keep these.”

I took a quick scan and then placed the garbage can between us. “Toss anything that isn’t financial. I don’t need to keep old bills.

What is in those new boxes over there? Is that your stuff?”

Marie tapped the bottom box with her foot. “Nope. That’s all Ryan Christensen fan mail.”

“Are you serious?” The stack was as tall as me and spanned the entire wall. I opened the top box, finding letters and packages addressed to both of us at Mitchell’s Pub.

“Oh holy hell.”

“Yep. I didn’t know where else to put them. Hey, here’s a key. Looks like it belongs to an old Chevy.”

“Make a pile.” I grabbed the first letter on top, slicing it open with my finger. I scanned through the regular fangirl fawning—how he’s so wonderful, sexy, marvelous. I tossed it into the garbage bag. I noticed another one addressed to me care of Mitchell’s Pub. The address was handwritten in chicken scratch.

I got as far as “you don’t deserve him you whore” when I threw it in the bag. My hand slightly trembled.

“Do you remember the night of the Reparation premiere, how Ryan was sort of freaking out?” I turned to look at her sitting on the floor.

“Uh huh.”

“He was worried that someone in the crowd might try to hurt us, shoot us, stick him with a needle while he was signing autographs.”

Marie gaped at me. “Seriously?” I nodded.

I opened a manila bubble envelope that had what looked like underwear in it.

“Eeeewwwwee.” Just looking at it made me want to disinfect my house.

Marie’s face scrunched. “Oh my God. Is that some girl’s underwear?” I felt like throwing up. This was like eight boxes of Angelica the psycho-stalker all over again. “People on this planet are seriously screwed up.”

I tossed the fan panty envelope right into the trash bag. Some fangirl’s skanky panties were now going to pollute a landfill somewhere. “You know what’s even scarier?” I kicked the stack of boxes stuffed with fan mail. “When you start to actually add them all up.”

I rifled through the pile, grabbing a few that were addressed to me. The first letter was a weird mix of congratulations and warnings not to mess it up. Unbelievable.

The next one wasn’t so benign. My hands started to shake. Not again. Not freaking again.

Marie noticed me stagger back into the boxes. “What’s that?”

It was hard to speak. “Um, it says someone is going to kill me if I don’t end it with Ryan.”

“Let me see that.” She grabbed it out of my hand. “Where’s the freaking envelope?” I handed it over.

“No return address but it’s postmarked from Ohio. You need to tell Ryan about this.

This shit isn’t funny. I know you don’t want another Kyle incident but chicks out there are crazy.”

She was right.

There was nothing stopping another person like Angelica from coming after me, and if the stacks of mail behind me were anything like the letter I held in my hand, there were a lot more psychos out there wishing for my demise.

Chapter 12

Skeletons

“Taryn, that guy sitting at the bar over there says he’s from . . . Oh Jesus cripes . . .” I instantly looked over at Marie, who was murderously glaring at the front door of the pub. From her reaction I fully expected to see Gary sauntering in. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Instant tightness gripped my chest and throat, causing my heart to thump and sending my natural fight-or-flight response into high gear. I couldn’t form a rational thought while the adrenaline was coursing into my blood. Why in hell would he ever think to show up here?

I felt slightly lightheaded and dizzy as I watched him approach the bar, his head dipped low with humbled hesitance. Running into an ex is one of the most awkward things in life to endure, but this run-in was not accidental.

Unfortunately, sometimes the skeletal remains of past relationships don’t stay buried forever. Sometimes the dead inexplicably rise and manage to crawl their mangy asses out of the dark hole that you put them in. I felt sick to my stomach, seeing my past had come back to haunt me. I thought I had buried Thomas deeper than that.

Part of me wanted to shout at him to stop and get the hell out of my bar, but as I took in his overall appearance and extremely forlorn look, a moment of compassion held my words back.

“Like we don’t have enough crap to deal with around here,” Marie said out loud. It had been a week since she stopped accepting Mike’s calls and she was bitchy. “Either you tell him to leave or I will.” I quickly noticed that Thomas was wearing the black button-down shirt that I had gotten him for Christmas several years ago underneath his well-worn motorcycle jacket, and casually untucked from his blue jeans.