Dear Rockstar (23 page)

The stepbeast had knocked her out too—that had been her punishment for making the 911 call.

“But Dale’s out now?”

“They kept them overnight and arraigned them, but by that time, Sara’s mom was awake and I had her file a restraining order and make a report with the police, so they let Dale go.”

“Thank God,” Aimee breathed a sigh of relief. “And your dad? They’re keeping him?”

“Until the trial,” John confirmed and I gave a thumbs up with the hand he wasn’t holding. “The prosecutor decided on assault and battery against Sara’s mother, but…”

John’s voice trailed off. I heard him whispering to Aimee, but I couldn’t tell what they were saying. I tried to wave, to get their attention, but my limbs felt so heavy.

“In Sara’s case, they’re looking at attempted murder, since he stabbed her,” John explained.

“He
stabbed
you?” Aimee gasped.

I just nodded. I couldn’t move the blankets to show her the wound, but I’d had a six inch splintered piece of wood buried in my side. He’d driven it into me, using his fist as a hammer, like a railroad spike.

“Oh Sara. Oh my God. Are you okay? Is she okay?” It was Matt.

“She’s gonna be just fine now, aren’t you, sweetheart?” John, patting my hand again.

I nodded. “Water?”

Someone put the straw to my lips and I sucked gratefully, even if it was painful.

“Listen, I’ll bring your homework from the academy,” Aimee said from the other side of me. She sniffed, like she’d been crying. “We’re not messing up again this year. We’re both going to graduate, you got it?”

I gave her a thumbs up, trying to smile.

“You just get better, okay?” Matt again. Jeez, it sounded like he was crying too. “Too many people spending time in this damned hospital lately.”

“Tired,” I said. The pain was getting better, the morphine the nurse had put into my I.V. line a few minutes ago finally beginning to work.

“Go to sleep, sweetheart.” I felt John’s lips brush the top of my head.

I tried to give him another thumbs up but I was gone again before I could even lift my hand.

     
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE     

I woke up screaming and Dale was there, wrapping his arms around me in the suffocating darkness and whispering in my ear. The words didn’t matter, it was his voice, soft and soothing, the feel of his hand on my forehead, stroking my hair.

“Is she okay?” John, stumbling sleepily down the hall, peeking into Dale’s room.

“Fine, Dad, just another bad dream,” he murmured, kissing my cheek, still bruised as a Canadian sunrise, fading to yellow, orange and the lightest of blues.

“G’nite, John,” I called as he closed the door.

“Goodnight, hon. Sweet dreams.”

As long as Dale had his arms around me, as long as he was touching me, I could sleep peacefully, but the moment he was gone, my body slipped into a panic.

“Will you sing to me?” I whispered, pulling his arm around me. “Sing me to sleep.”

Dale did, singing a song he wrote for me, the words meaning even more now that he’d broken down the door and come to my rescue like a knight in shining armor, and I closed my eyes, no longer afraid of the darkness or my dreams. He always made me feel like the luckiest girl in the world.

“There’s nothin’ more that I can do

There’s nothin’ more that I can say

With your wall of thorns you have barred my way

But I will always come for you

My task is set before me, girl

My mission clear and true

There’ll be black knights and dragons, girl

But I will always come for you…”

I floated in his arms, trying not to think about anything but the man who loved me. Usually it worked, and his voice would lull me back to sleep in his strong embrace, but sometimes I couldn’t turn off my mind and the wheel would turn and turn. I would replay it all in my head and then the tape would continue into every possible future, splitting this way and that, spliced again and again.

John and Dale and Aimee and even the prosecutor, who I’d met with twice, reassured me my stepfather wouldn’t ever have the opportunity to hurt me again. I gave them my Dear Rockstar journals, all of them detailed accounts of what had happened since I was fourteen years old, enough evidence, the prosecutor seemed to think, to put my stepfather away at least for life. New Jersey had the death penalty, and with attempted murder on the list of crimes he was being charged with, it was possible they would sentence him to death.

Not that anything would bring my mother back.

They hadn’t told me for three weeks, until I was out of the hospital and settled. John and Dale had moved all my stuff, my clothes and art supplies, into Dale’s room. I’d asked about my mother—she hadn’t come to see me, and when I’d asked, John mentioned something about a women’s shelter, but when I got home, Dale sat me down on his bed and had finally told me the truth.

I wanted to go see the apartment, even though it was still a crime scene and we weren’t supposed to. I still had a key and I told him I would go myself if he didn’t come with me, so Dale had walked me down the stairs. There was yellow crime tape over the door. Inside, everything was still the same. It smelled like stale cigarettes and beer and the heavy, coppery odor of blood.

The bathroom door still hung off its hinges. My door was open, but theirs was closed. I didn’t open it—she had used my stepfather’s nine millimeter Glock, the one he had held to my head the first time he raped me when I was just fifteen. I don’t know when she discovered it, but she knew, long before I told her. And she pretended not to know, pretended it wasn’t happening, even after that.

I stood in the middle of my room, looking around at the images of Tyler Vincent still papering my walls. It was all that was left, aside from the furniture. I sat on the bed, tears streaming down my face, looking at the blood-stained carpet in the hallway where I had nearly bled to death after my stepfather had stabbed me with the handiest weapon he could find, determined to silence me once and for all.

“I’m so sorry, Sara.” Dale came over to me, brushing my tears from my cheeks as I looked up at him. He had been there. He had heard everything. He knew what my stepfather had done to me—and I had told him everything once I could talk again, while he sat beside my hospital bed and held my hand, in short, hitching whispers.

I had trusted him with it all.

I even told him about getting pregnant last year, how I had dropped out of school to have the baby. And how, unlike Holly, who had given birth to hers only to have to give it up—I had carried mine for just six months before the stepbeast had beaten me within an inch of my life and my little girl had died inside of me. She’d been dead a week before he took me to the hospital. Long enough for the bruises to heal.

“What
is
the secret of this belt?” I mused, smiling as I tugged on it, pulling him close enough so I could put my arms around his waist, the studs digging into my bruised cheek, but I didn’t care. “Is it magical? Did you trade your soul for it? Does it give you your amazing voice?”

Dale stroked my hair and I heard the click in his throat as he swallowed. “You’ve told me so much truth in the past couple weeks. I guess it’s time I told you mine.”

I blinked up at him, bemused. “It really is magic?”

“No.” He smiled, sitting next to me on the bed, taking my hand in his. “It’s my father’s.”

“John’s?”

“No. Not my dad. My father. My biological father.” He met my eyes, waiting for me to connect the dots. It took me longer than it should have.

“Well if it’s not John’s…” I paused, my gaze distracted by a photograph on the wall, the one I had painted—Tyler and Chloe, father and daughter, the picture I had transformed into my symbolic wish fulfillment.

And I remembered how he had said her name that day he saw my painting, like he knew her, and of course, he had. His mother had been having an affair with Tyler for… years.

“Tyler?” I guessed.

“She told me the day she left. I suspected, after what I saw, but she admitted it was true.”

“And John doesn’t know,” I whispered, my heart breaking for him, for both of them. “Does Tyler know?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“And your sister?”

“Tyler’s. Chrissy knows. She chose to stay with my mother.”

“You’re both his?” I blinked at him, stunned by his revelation. “And John… he never knew? How could he not know?”

“How did your mother not know your father was…” His face hardened, eyes pained.

“But she did,” I whispered. “I even told her, eventually. And still she didn’t want to believe.”

“Sometimes the truth is too hard for any of us to face.”

I rested my cheek against his chest, running my fingertips over the studs on his belt. “So why do you wear it, if it was his?”

“To remind me…” His put his hand over mine at his waist. “Every day I put it on to remind me what not to be… what are you doing?”

I had opened the locket around my neck with my fingernail and was prying out the picture of Tyler, the one Dale had cut into a heart shape and put inside.

“I don’t need this anymore.” I looked at the image of the man I had admired, the one I had created in my mind, built up and put on an impossibly high pedestal. It put it down on the bed, closing the locket with only Dale’s picture left inside—he was all I needed, all I had ever needed.

“He belongs here. But I don’t.”

“No, you belong with me.” He put his arms around me, kissing the top of my head. “You’re mine. Now and forever.”

“I love you, Dale,” I whispered against his chest as he rocked me slowly back and forth.

One soft kiss on my forehead. “I know.”

“Will you sing to me?”

“There’s nothin’ more that I can do

There’s nothin’ more that I can say

With your wall of thorns you have barred my way

But I will always come for you

My task is set before me, girl

My mission clear and true

There’ll be black knights and dragons, girl

But I will always come for you…”

We were at the front of the stage, front row center, the best seats I’d ever had, to the best concert I’d ever been to in my life. Aimee and Matt were behind me in the crowd, Carrie and Wendy not far behind them.

The Black Diamonds were the very last performer in the MTV Battle of the Bands Finals—out of thousands, there were only ten left. MTV was filming it live in the Carrier Dome in Syracuse, and the place was packed far beyond its 33,000 person capacity. The winner would be announced after a final deliberation of celebrity judges and several celebrity performances.

It turned out I didn’t have to go to Maine to meet Tyler Vincent after all.

Dale moved across the stage toward me and suddenly his eyes met mine, and the jolt was electric. He squatted down, girls all around me reaching for his outstretched hand, just for a chance to touch him once. His fingertips brushed mine, and I knew he sang the words just for me, like he did every night, held close and safe in his arms.

“You watch from your tower

Want to trust I’ll come through

You can set any trials, girl

I will always come for you…”

“Sara, this is Tyler Vincent.” John introduced us and I had to smile and look dazzled for his sake, but thought I was a good enough actress to make it all seem real. I’d been hiding my feelings for years, thanks to the stepbeast, so Tyler Vincent simply thought I was just another fan asking for his autograph.