Meet Cute (Love, Camera, Action #5) - Elise Faber Page 0,59

awake, and he apparently asked someone to put something online for him and—”

She broke off.

My pulse was a rapid tattoo in my veins, my lungs might as well have been pulling in carbon dioxide instead of air, but I managed to push out, “What?”

“He’s saying he’s Tal’s father.”

I nearly dropped the phone myself, realized obliquely that it had been the thunk I’d heard a few moments before. “You cannot be serious,” I whispered.

“I know,” she whispered back. “I’m meeting the police there. We’ll get the nurse to take the video down, but”—a curse—“there are millions of views already. This story isn’t going away, and it’s not going to look good.”

“He came at us with a knife,” I pointed out.

“If he is Tal’s dad.”

My eyes slid closed and I said, “And the fact that he was shot and nearly killed by his son’s girlfriend isn’t a great look.”

Mag’s voice was brittle, sad laced into every syllable. “The optics aren’t good, no.”

I inhaled, exhaled, and carefully placed my hand on Tal’s back. “Will the man consent to a DNA test?”

Tal stiffened.

I moved my palm in gentle circles.

“He’s already provided a sample.”

Tal moved so fast that I could hardly blink before the cell was out of my hand and pressed to his ear. “This is bullshit, Maggie. My father is dead of an overdose, in a gutter somewhere.”

Whatever she said in response had his face falling.

I took the phone from his hand, put it on speaker.

“Maggie?” I said.

“I think Tal should give a sample, too” she said softly. “Not just because of this man, but for himself, because he’s going to always wonder if he doesn’t.”

I thought she was right.

But I could also see Talbot’s face, see the broken quality of his expression, and I knew that he wasn’t going to be receptive to anything that was logical and sound at that moment. He’d had a giant shock. He was hurt. He was . . . wondering.

“We’ll call you back,” I murmured.

“Tammy?”

“Yeah, Mags?”

“Take care of him.”

“That’s never in doubt,” I said and hung up. The resultant silence was very . . . well, it sounded stupid to say, but it was very quiet and heavy, a smothering thundercloud surrounding me, pressing on my lungs. “Tal,” I began, when I could take the oppressive pressure no longer.

He burst to his feet in another of those quick, abrupt movements.

Then he was striding away from me.

“Tal!” I called.

He didn’t stop, just walked down the hall and out the back door, not looking back, not saying a word, not even when I followed after him and called his name again. Not even as he disappeared into the dark of the property, well away from the lights of the house, becoming little more than a shadow that faded away to nothing after a few more moments.

“Fuck,” I whispered.

I returned to the bedroom, threw on a pair of sweats and a hoodie, then grabbed my phone, shoved my feet into shoes, and followed him, skirting the pool, hurrying down the steps, moving in the direction I’d last seen that shadow disappearing.

The moon was high overhead, illuminating my path, but I didn’t see Tal anywhere, not even when I used the flashlight on my cell to search the nearby area.

“Fuck,” I whispered again—

And then I heard it.

A strange pounding sound.

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

I followed it, saw another shadow emerge, this time one that I recognized. It was Tex, my cookie assistant. Moving toward him, I stopped just to his side.

“You got him?” he asked.

“Yeah, thanks,” I said. “Can you make sure we have some privacy?”

“Done.” He stepped back, blended into the shadows.

And I followed the thunk, thunk, thunk to the man who’d stolen my heart in a matter of days—no, the man to whom I’d freely offered up my heart, and who’d offered his in return.

He’d stopped near one of the large oak trees on the property, its wide expanse of branches providing Tal with more shadows, more coverage from the moonlight above. It didn’t take a genius to process what he was doing—punching the trunk. Over and over again, until I knew that his knuckles must be a bloody freaking mess.

I made my way over to him, staying well out of the way of his backswing as he threw his punches.

Stopping once I’d circled around to face him, the trunk between us, I waited, biting back my winces as the thunking continued, as my eyes slowly adjusted to the dark. He was like a demon possessed, the blows fast and