I snorted out a laugh, which Wyatt and Noah soon followed.
“Love you too, Sammy.” I blew him a kiss.
He rolled his eyes. “Of course you do, you’ve met me.” His tone may have been full of nonchalance, but I knew what lay behind his eyes. He was returning the gesture. But Sam didn’t do touchy feely. His Dad really did a number on him.
A ringing jerked me out of my thoughts of asshole fathers. I glanced down at my phone and stood when I saw who it was, leaving the boys with a meaningful look.
“Hey, Mom,” I said as I wandered into my kitchen, perching on a barstool.
I loved our kitchen. We’d had it totally redone when we’d moved in. Both Noah and I loved to cook, hence the huge industry stove and oven and expanse of white countertop spanning the room. There was a white island covered with marble, which always had fresh flowers on it. Today it was lilies. Everything about our kitchen was white, apart from the pictures perched on the walls, their frames shades of pastel blues and turquoise. Photos of us playing, rehearsing. Photos of us crowed around a hospital bed with Mom cradling a baby Rocko. Steve and Ava smiling at us. Memories.
Only the good ones saw the light. The other ones, the ugly, painful ones were hidden in the depths of my tortured mind.
“Hey, dollface.”
“Before you ask, I’m fine,” I told her, guessing that her call was to gage my state of mind, as had the other four I’d received today. I had only barely managed to stop her and Zane from driving up for the funeral. I did not want them anywhere near the circus, not like it was now.
I almost heard her disbelieving frown on the phone. “Not according to TMZ. According to them, you’re beside yourself and are refusing to eat or sleep.”
I rolled my eyes, swiveling on the stool so I faced the floor-to-ceiling glass that overlooked the valley and various trees. From this spot, it looked like my house was in the middle of nowhere, secluded. It was as secluded as you could get in Hollywood, nestled up a hill and disguised by huge trees. My driveway was long and winding, but I still had neighbors at the bottom of it.
“Well, if they reported it, it must be true.”
“Good, because someone else said you’re carrying his lovechild and I’m knitting booties as we speak,” she deadpanned.
“Come on, Mom… you don’t knit.”
She sucked in a gasp, and I could just imagine her holding her hand up to her chest dramatically. “I do so. I’m an excellent knittress,” she argued. “I’m getting all my grandmotherly duties underway. I baked cookies not one hour ago.”
I raised a brow. “You baked cookies,” I repeated, my voice saturated in skepticism.
There was a pause. “Okay, I didn’t exactly bake said cookies. Zane baked them.”
“Zane baked them?” I repeated in disbelief. The image of Zane, my big, bad, tattoo-covered, biker, leather-wearing, all-around-badass father donning an apron and baking cookies was enough for me to let out a snort of laughter. A real one.
“The word bake may be a slight stretch,” Mom corrected. “He made some cookie dough mixture, threatening some very serious punishments if I told anyone about making said mixture, obviously telling you doesn’t count.” She paused. “Plus, I would like to see what punishment he has in mind—”
“Mom. Remember you’re talking to your daughter right now,” I reminded her. “I don’t want to have to find one of those memory eraser things like they have in Men in Black.”
“Whatever. Anyway, he had to answer a call outside, because I’m known to eavesdrop on conversations that are meant to be for ‘club members only.’” I could also imagine her air quoting that to go with her sarcastic phrasing. “Which means it’s his fault really, and he had no reason to be mad at me when he came back in.”
“What was his fault?”
Mom sighed dramatically. “I’m pregnant. Obviously, that’s his fault too, but leaving a pregnant woman alone with an entire bowl of cookie dough? What did he come down in the last hot-guy shower?” she asked me seriously. “Of course I was going to eat the entire bowl. I’ve got cravings.”
I didn’t add in that she would have most likely eaten the entire bowl if she hadn’t been pregnant; this conversation was far too entertaining.
“Then he started, like, freaking out about the fact I ate it all, like I endangered our unborn child by eating some raw cookie dough. Seriously, you would have thought I’d just drank an entire bottle of tequila the way he carried on.” She paused. “I miss tequila,” she declared wistfully.
“Mom, you’ve actually met Zane, right?”
“Well, I’ve been married to the man for four years and have a terrorsome toddler with him, so we’re aquatinted,” she said dryly.
“Then you know he’s protective. Beyond protective. They need to invent a word for just how much he worries about you. With good reason.” I remembered the dramas of years ago, of Mom getting kidnapped by my insane father, of him nearly killing her. Then even further back when Zane lost his first girlfriend. When she was murdered. Yeah, he kind of had good reasons to be protective. Life had punched him in the gut so many times, I bet he was walking around bracing himself for the next blow.
“And you’re pregnant,” I added. “This is also another reason for him to be a little more high-strung than normal.”
“High-strung?” she repeated. “Yeah, you can call making me call the fricking doctor’s office in order to make sure the raw eggs in the cookie dough wouldn’t give our kid an extra head or something high-strung. Like I don’t know. This isn’t my first rodeo. You should have seen what I ate with you, look at you now, hardly any brain damage.”
I smiled again, but this was a sad smile. “Mom, the last time you were pregnant, he almost lost you. We almost lost you. Give him a break, for me, okay?” I requested softly.
I could almost feel the change in her mood from across the phone. “Yeah, doll, for you,” she replied.
Mom was pregnant with baby number two. My little brother was almost three and I loved him more than anything on this planet. I didn’t know it was possible to love such a tiny human so much. Watching his little chubby face light up when Zane threw him in the air was pretty much the most beautiful thing I ever witnessed. Watching Zane with him was the most wonderful thing I’d ever witnessed. He loved his son with a ferocity and gentleness that was breathtaking. But he also loved Mom with that same fierceness. So although he’d been happy when she announced baby number two was coming, I knew his mind went back to that dark place it was in the day Rocko was born.
“What?” I heard Mom snap, the sadness gone from her voice. “Stop eavesdropping. I’m not allowed to listen to club business, you’re not allowed to listen to Lexie business.”
I could hear her perfectly, but I knew she wasn’t talking to me.
“Clue in, babe. Lexie business is my business,” a deep voice replied in the background.
Mom didn’t respond to this, just sighed, pretending she was some exasperated wife. I knew different. I knew she was most likely glowing with happiness.
“You’re on speaker,” she declared. “Zane and Rocko have just come in from the garage. I swear Rocko’s going to be affected by bike fumes with the amount of time he spends out there. It’s your fault if he starts huffing glue when he’s older,” she said to Zane.
I rolled my eyes. As if Zane would do anything that would put a hair on Rocko’s beautiful dark head at risk.
“Hey, Peanut,” I called, my voice soft.
“Exie!” I heard his excited little baby voice. “My Exie.”
I smiled big this time. A real one. My little brother was the only man who would hold all my heart. That cured my broken soul.
“Lex, you okay?” Zane asked, concern evident in his tone.
“Yes, Zane. I’m okay.”
“You need to come home,” he declared. “Those fuckin’ vultures aren’t leavin’ you alone. I don’t like it.”
“Zane
!” Mom scolded. “Language.”
“Babe, he’s a boy. He’s gonna swear.”
“He’s three, Zane. A three-year-old does not swear,” she argued.
“Fuck,” Rocko’s baby voice chimed in.
I burst out laughing at this and at the sound that came from Mom.
“Okay. Let’s go and take you away from your foul-mouthed father and cleanse that brain with some Wiggles. They never swear,” Mom said. “Bye, baby. I’ll text you tonight again. Call me whenever you need me. I’ll get on the road the moment you ask.”
“I’m fine, Mom. You stay there and make sure my little brother keeps learning all the four letter words,” I teased. “Love you.”
“Love you,” she replied.
“Ove oo!” Rocko called.
“Love you, Peanut, to the moon.”
There was a rustling as I heard Mom leave.
“I’m serious, Lex. You need to come home. Or I’m comin’ up. Don’t like you dealin’ with this shit. And I do not fuckin’ like the amount of fuckin’ dregs of society that swarm you ever since this shit broke,” Zane growled.
“It’ll die down,” I tried to reassure him.
“Not fuckin’ likely. It was already out of control before that asshole bit it.”
“Yes because Drew died in order to make my life more difficult,” I replied dryly.
Zane didn’t like Drew. No, that was an understatement. Zane despised him. He’d happened to meet him when he and Mom had surprised me a couple of months ago. I seriously thought he might actually shoot Drew when he first met him.
“No, you’re better off without him,” he continued.
“You do realize he’s dead, Zane, and saying stuff like that isn’t exactly kind?”
“Don’t care. You’re coming home or I’m comin’ down and gettin’ a prospect on you from now on,” he declared.
My heart dropped at either of these options. I hadn’t been home, not since Rocko was born. Mom and Zane had come up here for one Christmas, then the rest I’d been touring. I would never step foot in Amber again, not until I could breathe easy knowing I might run into… him. Until I thought seeing him might not kill me. In other words, never. And Zane coming here, getting someone from the club to follow me around? I’d feel suffocated. I’d be reminded of… him.
“That’s unnecessary. I’ve got the boys. I’ve got Clyde. And if it gets out of control, which I’m sure it won’t, I can call Duke,” I lied. I so wasn’t going to call Duke. He worked security for us now and then, only when we thought things might get crazy at concerts and signings. He worked for Keltan, Gwen’s friend. Keltan opened a security business in L.A. a few years ago and had a reputation of employing the best of the best. Their offices were full of muscly and drool-worthy men who could kill a man seventy-two different ways using just their pinky fingers. Okay, I made that up, but that’s how I imagined it.
There was a pause. Zane knew Keltan and had met Duke on multiple occasions, considering he came to as many of our concerts as he could. He and Mom. Duke, unlike Drew, he liked. Maybe because Duke was a different breed, a true badass, not just a perfumed actor who played one on TV and didn’t know how to cock a gun in real life.
“You call Duke the minute it gets worse, or stays the same for that matter,” he commanded.
I sagged, happy I’d won this one. I would have loved to see Zane, but not under these circumstances, and I knew he didn’t like to be away from Mom and Rocko, especially with Mom pregnant. He’d do it for me in a heartbeat.
“Cross my heart,” I promised.
“Seriously, Lexie. Your safety is the most important thing to me. Don’t play around with it.”
I was smiling good-naturedly at his words, letting the warmth of having someone like him caring about me and Mom so much when the smile froze on my face. I’d been regarding the shrubs outside my windows when my eyes touched something that should not have been there.
“Yep, promise. I’m safe and sound,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “Got to go now, Zane. Kiss Mom and Rocko for me.”
“Lexie—”
I knew he heard it in my voice, but I hung up quickly, my eyes on the window.
On the shadow of a person lurking in the bushes, watching me.
He downed the shot he had just poured for himself. He savored the burn and the slight cloudiness that came moments after the liquid slid down his throat, though it would never actually do more than that. It would never do enough. He’d need a thousand bottles to actually make a difference. The problem with drowning your sorrows was that it was damn near impossible to drown the ocean. That’s what his sorrows were. Oceans. He went for trying to forget them instead. Albeit temporarily. He had a long way to go and he’d already finished half the bottle.
Two things took the edge off the pulsing pain that had been constant for almost four years. Booze and fighting. He’d only just had a fight a week ago, so alcohol it was.
He sighed and poured another.
“Lexie Williams, lead singer of Unquiet Mind and the rock world’s darling leaving the funeral of her boyfriend, actor Andrew Bruntley. She was flanked by her band members who’ve rarely left her side. It’s said the star is taking his death hard…”
Killian’s entire body stiffened at the sound of the television that up until now had been background noise. His body moved from the slumped position along the bar to sit up and twist around. Preferably to smash that fuckin’ TV into smithereens. Or shoot it. Anything to shut it up. To stop hearing about her with anyone. He was going to hell because he was fuckin’ glad the fucker who touched his girl was dead. He’d barely been able to contain himself when the first images broke of them leavin’ some club, his hands on her. His girl. Now, he was dead. The respite would be short, he guessed. Lexie, his freckles, had turned into something more beautiful than she’d already been. She was a woman now. Some other Hollywood fuck would have his manicured hands on her in no time. Those thoughts tortured him.
He squeezed his glass tighter. It was surprising it didn’t shatter.
Not only was he glad the fucker was dead, he was fuckin’ jealous, jealous that she was mourning over him. Then he hurt knowing she hurt. That she had to lose another person in her life. She didn’t need that shit. More loss.
Fuck.
The TV needed to be turned off. Or more accurately, shot full of bullets so he didn’t have to hear any more of this shit.
He had been planning on doing that, until his blurry eyes focused on the images on the screen.
Lexie, surrounded by cameras, by a huge crowd of them. Swarming her. Sam, Wyatt, and Noah were flanking her, their faces grim and tight with fury as they navigated the crowd.
“Sam Kennedy was unable to control his temper as they pushed through the cameras,” the voice on the TV continued.
“Get the fuck out of the way, assholes, before I put a fist through that fucking camera,” Sam growled at the men who were crowding Lexie. Surrounding her.
She looked small, tiny, amidst the crowd of men. Dark glasses covered most of her face and her head was down, her beautiful golden hair piled on top of her head, wayward curls escaping.
She was beautiful, as always.
But Killian couldn’t focus on that. He was focusing on the fact that Sam, Wyatt, and Noah were struggling to get through the crowd of them. They weren’t small, those boys. He guessed they were men now; they looked it. All of them had gained muscle, a shit ton of it. All were covered in tattoos. Noah, the biggest of them all, was pushing them away with ferocity. But still, it wasn’t enough. Those camera-toting bastards outnumbered them, desperate for the story. For a photo.
It had been bad since Lexie became famous. Really famous. Killian avoided watching her on TV, looking at photos of her, any of it really. But it was hard to avoid someone who had taken over the world. Unquiet Mind dominated news, it seemed. Sam and Wyatt did enough stupid shit to constantly be in the news. But the paps were fa
scinated with Lexie, with the beautiful, down-to-earth rock star who didn’t party, didn’t do drugs, and whose throaty voice would make any man in a hundred-mile radius hard as a rock.
So no, he couldn’t watch that shit. But when he couldn’t avoid it, he barely stopped himself from driving out to L.A. and shooting every single paparazzo. They were obsessed with Lexie. Followed her everywhere. To lunch, out shopping, the fuckin’ grocery store.
This was somethin’ different. This shit was insane. This could get Lexie hurt. He wouldn’t stand for that. She’d been hurt enough.
He should know; he was the one who hurt her. Who’d destroyed her. The reason why in all those pictures, in every concert she played, she was beautiful, beyond beautiful, but she was broken.
He’d done that. He broke her.
The pictures on the screen were now moving to various images of Lexie, some with the dead fuck, some stills of her in concert.
“Bro, you used to tap that, right?”
Killian’s head snapped up to the prospect whose eyes were glued to the TV screen. The very dumb fuckin’ prospect. Killian hadn’t liked him since he started prospecting a couple of months ago, but he still had another six months or so before he could vote no on his patch.
Killian stared at him, his fists clenched. “Say again?”
Anyone else, anyone with a fuckin’ brain cell would read Killian’s tone and register the danger lurking beneath it.
Anyone but this dumb fuck.
He nodded toward the TV. “Lexie. Bull’s old lady’s daughter.”
“Bull’s daughter,” Killian corrected through gritted teeth.
“Yeah, whatever.” The prospect threw up his hand in a ‘it doesn’t matter’ gesture. “Just between us, what was she like in the sack? She looks like a fuckin’ wild little piece. All innocent on the outside, but I bet that snatch—”
The prospect’s words were cutoff when Killian launched across the room to throw him against the wall, his gun out of his jeans in a split second and pointed at the prospect’s temple.
“You want to die today?” Killian asked, his voice flat.