Trusting Gibson (Last Score Book 2) (25 page)

Several minutes later, he was more composed and we sat talking. I told him about my night out and the news headline.

George waved it away with his hand like what I’d told him was nothing. “Gibson you have to ignore that stuff. I guess it’s an occupational hazard for you to have sneaky people pull stunts to have their ten minutes of fame. In your line of work I imagine you attract attention without even trying.”

Just like that, he believed me.

“Yeah, but it’s Chloe I’m worried about. She had a hard time trusting anyone because of what happened to her, and there are many that would say there’s no smoke without fire, especially with my reputation.”

“Not my Chloe. That girl has always seen the good in people. When everyone else saw negatives, I could guarantee that she’d find the positive somewhere. Jeez, I remember when we went on vacation and were driving through an agricultural area, the smell of manure was almost knocking us out, but Chloe commented that it reminded her of flower beds because it was important to help make the plants grow.”

I snickered at that because he was right, when everyone else had chosen to focus on the one thing about me, she had found another.

George then spent the morning telling me what Chloe was like as a kid and the warm feeling I had inside made me feel near to her. As he was talking, the look Chloe gave me all those years ago came to mind, and my heart was bursting with love for her again. I had been losing sight of how we went forward and George’s stories were just what I needed to lift me and give me the motivation to keep going.

Several hours later Cathy came home and when she slipped off her jacket she pulled a large manila envelope out of her bag. Placing it on the table, her hand tapped it and she smiled. “Chloe.” She then walked over to George and placed another in front of him, sat down beside him and took his hand.

Just hearing her name and knowing that I was going to see her, even in picture form, set my heart racing. With shaky fingers I tore at the envelope, pulling out the photographs. There were five in all and the first one I saw was perfect. Chloe was sitting cross legged with a set of earphones on, her eyes closed and she had a beautiful smile on her face. She looked perfect. More importantly, she looked at peace.

The second she was lying on her belly asleep, her hand placed on the bed level with her shoulder and a few strands of hair over her forehead. In reaction to seeing it, I held it to my heart because I missed her lying next to me.

The third photograph made me smile and I’m afraid my dick stirred and went hard, because she was looking up and the picture had been taken from a vantage point above her. Those eyes reminded me of us during foreplay, all innocent but with the potential to be corrupted.

The fourth picture she was sitting on a chair side on with her hands on her lap. She was staring ahead and Dr. Owen was staring back. This one must have been taken during a therapy session. I wasn’t sure what it told me, apart from he was working with her at least.

When I got to the last picture, it took my breath away and my heart almost stopped. It was a close up of my beautiful girl and her huge, inky blue eyes were staring straight at me. Tears choked me and I swallowed continually as I fought them back.

Tracing my finger along her jaw line and then across her full lips, I lifted it and pressed mine to hers, closing my eyes.
I have to get her back
. Retiring to my room for most of the day, I lay staring at the pictures. I wasn’t sure whether I felt better or worse for having them, but I consoled myself that on the outside Chloe appeared to be well and didn’t look distressed.

When I emerged from my room, Cathy had made some kind of chicken pasta dish, it tasted bland—but everything seemed tasteless without Chloe.

Cathy began talking about Chloe and told me that she had been given a laptop to communicate the day before and she had suddenly started to write a story about an ordinary girl who fell in love with a rock star. The story wasn’t the same as ours and the circumstances were different, but according to Cathy it was a beautiful romantic story full of emotional angst and amazing dialogues.

Dr. Owen was excited when she began to write because he said that she was channeling positive thoughts, emotions and feelings. In his estimation this was remarkable progress.  When I climbed into bed that night, my heart felt a little more settled. Hearing all the positive things and having the pictures made me feel that Chloe was on her way back to me.

CHAPTER 22 - TESTING TIMES

Gibson

Chloe continued to write and the staff realized it was a book, not a story. Chapter after chapter, she poured feelings and thoughts onto pages that were both brilliant and inspiring. And because she was doing this, I felt I should pen a few things of my own. So I began by writing her a love song.

Looking out the window,

Staring at the cleansing rain

Darlin’ I never felt so low

My tattered heart’s in so much pain

Every beat is like a shard of glass

Ripping wildly at my soul

I placed you in a different class

And I need you here to make me whole.

Waiting for a sign to know

You remember that you’re mine…

Used to writing lyrics that scratched below the surface, I was surprised at how difficult it was for me to put what I was feeling in my heart and the thoughts in my head, on paper. If I was having a block like this, Chloe being able to verbalize what she went through was unfathomable.

Six weeks and one day after Chloe was found, I was sitting cross legged on the floor strumming my guitar and experimenting with a new piece of music, when my cell rang. Slapping my hand against the oak wooden floorboard, I reached across my guitar and checked the caller ID and saw it was the clinic. They never rang me, so when I saw it the feeling of panic made my heart speed up and imaginary fingers closed around it, giving it a squeeze.

Working a swallow as I nervously swiped the screen to answer, my head filled with dread at how the conversation was going to go.

“Mr. Barclay?”

The sound of my name said in an official way always made me feel like I was in trouble. No one called me that. “Yes?”

“Hello, this is Patricia from Chloe’s team. Please can you come over to the clinic? Dr. Owen would like to speak with you.”

Cathy was there already and George was watching TV, I could hear the volume on the television in the family room.  I was already slipping my shoes on and shrugging my jacket on over my shoulders. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” Johnny was in the kitchen making a pastrami sandwich. “Leave that— I need to get to the clinic.”

Striding down the hall heading for the front door, I pulled it open as Johnny called in past the lounge room door and filled George in about what was happening. Johnny then came running after me, pulling his jacket on and clutching the sandwich in his right hand. I felt bad leaving George behind, but if he’d come with us, I knew it would only have torn him up more to be there and be refused access to her again.

We had done amazingly well in keeping my whereabouts private, but it took forever to get over to the facility because of all the doubling back to check we were alone. By the time we got there my hands were sweaty and I’d stroked them through my hair so much that Johnny commented for me to sort it out before we left the car.

Dr. Owen was dwarfed by his high backed swivel chair, in his office. Waving and motioning me to take a seat, he continued to dictate about Chloe into a voice recorder on his laptop. Nodding at Johnny, he stopped abruptly and commented about patient confidentiality and asked him to wait outside in the reception area.

“Sit down, Gibson. I have something to show you.”

Tapping his computer keyboard for a few seconds, his head moved slightly as his eyes scanned his screen. When he found what he was looking for, he clicked on it then turned the laptop around to me. A circular icon on the screen indicated that a video was loading. It seemed slow to process and I found myself becoming frustrated that what he needed to share with me wasn’t instantly available.

Suddenly Chloe was on the screen. My heart thudded. The impact of seeing her moving image in front of me had the maximum effect. For over six weeks I’d been coming and going from this building and suddenly there she was on the screen, looking so beautiful it made my heart ache. Her level of vulnerability was almost too much to handle. It shredded me and I reached out, stroking my finger down the screen at her image and swallowed back my tears.

“Keep watching please, Gibson.”

He would have had to gouge my eyes out with a spoon to stop me. Transfixed on my girl, I waited with bated breath to see whatever he wanted to share with me. I didn’t really care what it was, if it was only this— then I already felt informed.

Dr. Owen realized he had muted the sound to dictate and spun the laptop back to him again to rectify this. My heart sank instantly when I lost sight of her. Tapping another button, he turned the screen again and I watched from the beginning with sound.

“Baptized” by Daughtry was just finishing and Chloe was sitting in front of the laptop they had given her. She was motionless, just staring at the screen. The track ended and “Waiting for Superman” began to play. Chloe reached up and began typing rapidly on her keyboard, and at first I thought that the song had inspired her to write a scene for her book. After several minutes, she stopped and I realized the track had finished. The video screen went blank and reset to the beginning of the recording.

“That’s good, right? That she’s using a song to write, the song is stimulating her—inspiring her, yes? She’s inspired by it to write something? What does this mean?”

Dr. Owen licked his bottom lip and pushed his spectacles up his nose with his middle finger, then pushed himself back in his seat. “Well, of course. Yes. But that’s not it, Gibson. I wanted you to see how she was responding, but I’m now going to share the screen she was writing on.”

What did she write? Was it about Kace? Was it about what happened?
  Adrenaline rushed through me, fearful of what he may have done and what she’d disclosed. When Chloe was found, there wasn’t a mark on her. Tests were negative for force and there were no bodily fluids found that indicated that Kace had forced himself on her.

This time the doctor leaned over and clicked escape on the laptop and switched screens. All I could see was a whole document with one word, “Gibson.” Chloe had entered my name over and over. Three whole pages of my name. Proof with all that had happened to her, she had, still remembered me in all of this. Another negative thought entered my head.
How does she remember me?

I stared confused at the doctor and when he smiled, I was so fucking relieved that I could have kissed that ugly little man. Heaving out a long sigh, I then cleared the lump that had been in my throat since I watched Chloe on the screen so intently, “So what does this mean?”

“It means I want to prepare you for seeing Chloe.”

Hearing those words set off a chain reaction of excited thoughts about what I was going to say to her. My adrenaline pumped even harder in my veins at the thought of finally holding her in my arms again, feeling her hair, smelling her skin and having her warm body close to mine. Then came the worry.
How do I get from what I saw on the screen to achieving that?

“Not yet, of course…but soon. If she does this again or makes another reference to you, I’ll re-introduce you to her.” Reading my disappointment, he stood and stepped around his desk, placing his hand heavily on my shoulder. “I know this is frustrating for you, but we have to go at Chloe’s pace. We’ve come a long way in such a short time, and in my view she’s weeks away from talking, much faster than I could have hoped for at the start of this.”

Usually that assessment would have made my heart soar, but now that I’d seen Chloe on screen and knew she was thinking about me, it was torturous. I’d seen her for myself and before that’s all that I’d wanted, but now…I needed to hold her— regardless of what Chloe needed.
I
needed to hold
her
.

Opening the door, my eyes met Johnny’s, who studied me with a worried look in his eyes like he was holding his breath. It dawned on me that Chloe’s position had taken its toll on all of us, in one way or another.

Jerry and Johnny were close friends and he was trying to support the both of us. Jerry had handed in his resignation, and although I hadn’t accepted it, I was having difficulty getting past the way he’d fucked up twice in one day.

“Take me the fuck home. No, take me to a bar. I need to get drunk.” Johnny didn’t answer me, just threw an arm over my shoulder in support and walked quietly back to the car beside me. When he started the car, “Fix You” by Coldplay was on the radio.

Once we were settled, Johnny took out his phone. “Len, get the boys together, we’re coming over.”

“I said take me to a bar.”

“Nope, tell me what happened?”

After a quick run through of what had happened in the doctor’s office, Johnny let out a long slow whistle. “Damn, Gib. That’s tough, but I think it won’t be long before you get another call. What if it’s today? You want to be drunk and make her wait? Or do you want to be ready to go get your girl and sort out this fucking mess in her head?”

Johnny was always looking out for me, and this time was no different. This time I listened to his voice of reason. “Take me to Len’s.”

Within ten minutes of arriving, Simon and Mick turned up. I can’t explain what having all the guys rallying like that did for me, but I felt like I was home. Instead of talking about Chloe, Simon and Mick started talking about a party they had gone to a couple of days ago and the wild ride they both had with some plus size model with ‘tits the size of watermelons.’