Tainted Forever

by Terri Anne Browning

  “Relax,” she told me in a voice devoid of all emotion. “I can see the panic trying to choke you. You’re off the hook, Jace. You won’t ever have to worry about it again, trust me.”

  I was fucking this up even worse now and all because I’d kept my sister from her. Now Kin was talking about marriage, and I didn’t know what the right answer was to fix what I’d broken between us. What I was still breaking. “Kin, I love you. I’ve loved you from the first moment I set eyes on you.”

  “Sometimes, love isn’t enough. I was crazy to think it was. You don’t even want to live with me.”

  “Why are we talking about marriage and living with each other?” I demanded, frustrated.

  “Because that’s the next step, you idiot,” she exploded. “We’ve been together for three years. Everyone around us is getting engaged or married. They are moving forward with their relationships, and you won’t even discuss moving in together.”

  “Because there isn’t any rush,” I told her with frustration. “We know we’re going to be together for the rest of our lives, Kin. My future revolves around you. Baby, you’re my forever. I’ve always known that. So why do we have to rush to whatever finish line everyone else is hell-bent on getting to?”

  “You think marriage is the finish line?” she choked out.

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No! Death is the finish line. Marriage is just the beginning of the rest of our lives together. It tells me and everyone else in the world that you’re committed to me and only me for the rest of our lives. Yet you’re sweating bullets right now just thinking about it.”

  “Fine, if you want to get married, then let’s get married,” I yelled in complete desperation.

  My sister gasped, but it was the flash of pain on Kin’s face that told me I’d fucked up yet again. “No thank you. I’d rather not spend the rest of my life with a man who can’t even tell me what’s going on in his life, let alone one who treats me like an afterthought.”

  “Baby, that’s not—”

  “You should go,” she told me, backing away. “This—us—it’s over.”

  “No!” I bellowed and stalked toward her, knowing if I could just hold her, we could figure all of this stuff out. “Kin, you’re not going to throw away the last three years like it’s nothing. We belong together.”

  “I used to think so, but I was wrong. Go, Jace. I don’t want you here.” She turned her back on me just as I grasped her arm. She jerked at my touch, trying to shrug off my hold. But I knew—I fucking knew—if I released her, I wasn’t going to get through to her.

  “Kin, just listen to me. Please.”

  Caleb’s huge hand grabbed my wrist and he squeezed, forcing me to release her. “She doesn’t want you here, man. You need to go. Give her time to process all of this. She’s hurting, and you need to give her some space.”

  “I’m not leaving without her,” I bit out, pushing past him so I could get to her before it was too late. “Kin, baby, hear me out.”

  “There’s nothing you have to say that I want to hear, Jace. You’ve made your choices, and now I’ve made mine. Go home.”

  “Not without you. We can figure this out. I’ll propose to you more romantically. You can cancel the lease on your apartment and move in with me. Whatever you want, just don’t do this.”

  “It’s too late.”

  Chapter 4

  Kin

  Tears filled Jace’s eyes, and my heart felt like it was going to explode from the agony I was in. In that moment, I wanted to give in, tell him I forgave him. But I kept my mouth shut, turned my back on him, and walked away.

  As much as I loved him, it was time I started respecting myself more. Staying with Jace, after his not putting me first yet again, was not respecting myself. I should have broken things off when I first thought he was cheating. Instead, I thought we could work through our problems, that our love would overcome any obstacle.

  Now, I knew it couldn’t.

  The panic I saw in his eyes when I brought up the subject of marriage told me plain as day where we both stood. We were miles apart and not side by side like I’d always thought.

  And then for him to throw it out there, as if it was putting him out but he would make the sacrifice and marry me, was like a slap to the face.

  “Kin!” he roared as I started up the stairs. “Baby, don’t leave me. I’ll fix this. I promise you, I will. Just… Don’t leave me.”

  I couldn’t speak, could barely see, for the tears that were choking me. In the span of twenty-four hours, my life had turned upside down. Now I felt lost, broken, and completely alone in the world.

  “Kin!”

  “Jace, we should go.” Kassa tried to reason with her brother. “Caleb is right. You should give her a few days, let her clear her head.”

  I pressed my fist to my chest as I opened the door to my bedroom. My head was completely clear. For the first time in a long time, I saw everything as if with new eyes. If I stayed with Jace, that meant putting myself second for the rest of my life because it was obvious Jace was never going to put me first.

  That hurt most of all. It was why we’d broken up the first time when he went to California. Back then, I didn’t want to stop him from taking the contract at First Bass. Even then, I’d loved him enough to want what was best for him, and I knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime offer. I was happy for him and the band. But all he could see was that I was too young to understand the difficulties of having a long-distance relationship. He broke up with me and left me to deal with the death of my mother all on my own.

  This whole thing with Eden… He couldn’t even confide in me something as important as finding his long-lost sister. I would have been happy for him, I would have helped him any way I could, and I never would have breathed a word about it to Kassa. Instead, he kept it all to himself, letting me think so many awful things—

  No, that was my own fault. I let him treat me like that. I let him lie, even when I thought he was cheating.

  I was pathetic. Wanting to salvage a relationship even though I thought he was fucking around behind my back. I despised other women who did that, and realizing just how far I’d sunk in the hope of saving our relationship made me physically ill.

  “Kin!” he roared my name again, and I stilled at the sound of his feet pounding up the stairs.

  “Jace, she doesn’t want you here,” Kassa yelled after him.

  “Kin, I love you.”

  “Leave her alone, man. I really don’t want to have to hurt you. But if you don’t get out now, I will.” Caleb, my gentle giant, who wouldn’t hurt a fly unless provoked, was all growly now, and I knew he wasn’t making an idle threat. My stepbrother could take a lot of shit being tossed at him, but if something were to hurt me or his twin, he could become a rage monster.

  At that moment, that monster was close to the surface, and I prayed Jace would listen to reason and just go.

  “Gray, please!” Kassa begged her fiancé. “Get him and let’s go.”

  I could almost feel the heat coming from Jace now, he was so close, but if he touched me, I knew I was going to shatter into a billion tiny pieces on the floor. There would be no putting me back together again, no matter how hard I tried. Yet I couldn’t move, was frozen in place right in front of my open bedroom door.

  “Kin, I’m begging you.” His gruff voice stirred my hair. “I’ll do anything, but please don’t break up with me.”

  He skimmed his hands down my arms, and I began to tremble. He pressed his forehead into the back of my head, and I suddenly couldn’t breathe for the pure agony that was pushing down on me. I wanted to shake him off, wanted to scream and rage at him for doing this to us, for not loving me enough. I felt like I was choking, the lump of emotion in my throat so colossally huge, it was killing me.

  Spots appeared around my vision and I knew I was going to pass out, that I was going to fall on my face at his feet, but there was nothing I could do to p
revent it.

  Then suddenly, I could breathe again. Caleb was wrapping me up in his arms, taking my full weight. I sucked in life-giving air and found the energy to lift my head to see what had happened to Jace.

  Gray had him in a headlock, wrestling him down the stairs. Kassa was openly crying, begging her brother to just let her take him home, but Jace was struggling with everything in him to fight his way free so he could get back to me.

  “Kin, you’re my everything. Don’t fucking do this.”

  Caleb pulled my face back against his chest, his huge hands rubbing soothingly up and down my back as my entire body shook with the force of my silent sobs.

  That was the first time Jace had ever told me I was his everything, yet I didn’t believe him. If I were his everything, none of this would have happened. We wouldn’t be going through any of this. I would have been back in California, blissfully waiting for him to come back to me, and not having my heart torn out of my chest while it was still weakly beating.

  --

  Hours passed. Hauntingly quiet hours where I cried silently in my room. Caleb came in to check on me every twenty minutes or so, and every time, he found me in the same place. Curled into a fetal position, tears pouring out of me like an endless waterfall. My eyes throbbed, and my throat felt blistered and raw from my silent screams of anguish.

  Jace was gone.

  I was glad.

  I wanted him to come back.

  I needed to be as far away from him as was humanly possible.

  I wanted him to hold me, to tell me he loved me, that we were going to be okay.

  I wanted to go back in time and stop myself from ever going to that stupid bar in Bristol with Caleb all those years ago and meeting Jace for the first time.

  I wanted to relive our first kiss over and over again.

  My head was all over the place, and I couldn’t figure out if I was glad he was gone or pissed he hadn’t fought harder for me. Looked like it wasn’t nearly as clear as I’d thought it was earlier.

  Logically, I knew no matter how strong and determined he might have been, Grayson Knight was just as big a beast as my stepbrother. Only Gray was a hundred times harder to fight because he simply didn’t give a fuck about anyone except Kassa. Caleb, even in full-on beast mode, cared about virtually everyone in the universe—with a few exceptions.

  Logic had no place in my mind right then, however, and I was furious with Jace for not having come back for me. For not making me listen. For not proving to me that I was his number one priority, the one person in the world he would give up everything for just to have me.

  It wasn’t even like I would let him give up everything. I just wanted him to prove to me that he was willing to make that kind of sacrifice, damn it.

  But he didn’t. He never would.

  Because he might love me, he might even need me…but not enough. He could live without me. He did it once; he would again. Maybe he would even miss me, but in the end, Jace would be able to pick up the pieces and move on with his life.

  And that realization was killing me.

  “…she’s really got me worried.” Caleb’s whispering finally got through to me, and I lifted lashes that felt like they were being weighed down with fifty-ton barbells to find my stepbrother standing at the foot of my bed, his cell phone pressed to his ear. “I don’t know what to do, Ang. I’ve never seen her fall apart like this. Not even when Abby died.”

  “Caleb,” I croaked out in a hoarse voice.

  He jerked in surprise and sat down on the edge of my bed, facing me. “Hey, how are you feeling?”

  “She feels like shit, Caleb,” I heard Angie admonish him.

  Hearing how upset my stepsister was had my lips twitching. “I’m okay,” I lied.

  He brushed my tear-soaked hair back from my face. “What can I do, Kin? How can I help you? Please tell me. I hate seeing you like this, and I don’t know the first thing about how to comfort you. Do you want me to kill Jace? I will happily do it if it would make you feel better.”

  I caught his hand, holding on to it tightly. “No,” I whispered. “It wouldn’t make me feel better at all.”

  “It would make me feel better,” Angie grumbled from the receiver.

  We both ignored her. Caleb produced my phone from his pocket. “I turned off the ringer. Jace hasn’t stopped calling all night. Kassa texted me saying he’s losing his shit and not to answer any of his calls. I think she’s just as pissed at him as you are.”

  “Well, he did hide their sister’s existence from her for almost a year,” I reminded him, my throat throbbing with each word that left me.

  “I don’t think that’s why she’s so mad at him. She couldn’t believe how Jace treated you. Honestly, neither can I. He kept all of that from you for all these months… That just doesn’t seem like him, Kin. Maybe there was a reason. Maybe—”

  I sat up in bed, glaring at my beloved stepbrother. “Stop defending him!”

  His mouth snapped shut, and he held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. I was just saying—”

  “Caleb, I love you, but I’m seconds away from beating the shit out of you.”

  His lips twisted, and I knew he was fighting a grin. As weak as I was, we both knew I couldn’t have balled up a fist to punch him, let alone beat the hell out of him. “If it makes you feel better, I’ll gladly let you use me as a punching bag, sweetheart.”

  “Nothing will make me feel better.” Fresh tears filled my eyes, and I couldn’t see him as they clouded my vision. “I hurt so bad, Caleb. It…It… It feels like I can’t breathe without him.”

  “I’m calling Lucy, and we will be out there on the first available flight,” Angie called out from the phone.

  “No!” I cried, wiping snot on the bottom of my shirt. “I don’t want you to come.”

  “Sugar bug—”

  I looked up at Caleb pleadingly. “Please. I feel like I’m being smothered right now. I just need to be alone. To figure out what I want to do next. If Ang comes out here, all she will do is plot Jace’s death, and I can’t fucking deal with that shit right now.”

  He lifted the phone back to his ear. “Angie, don’t do it. Stay where you are. I’ll take care of Kin. Just cool your shit and take a deep breath. This isn’t about you. It’s about what Kin needs right now.”

  “Fine, but you better not let that douchebag near her again until she’s ready,” Angie cautioned.

  I released the breath I was holding, hoping I wouldn’t have to face my stepsister’s temper anytime soon. But I felt defeated and trapped sitting there in the middle of my childhood bed.

  Jace would be back, so staying here wasn’t an option. Neither was going back to California. How was I going to sleep in my bed again, haunted by all the times Jace and I had slept in it together—made love there?

  I didn’t have anywhere I could go so I could figure out what to do with my life next. Now I was beginning to realize just how right Lucy’s mom had been to send her away to college when everything went down with Harris a few years back. At the time, I considered it running away from her problems, but now I understood the benefits of putting distance between yourself and the cause of your pain.

  Picking up my phone, I quickly deleted all of the messages from Jace without reading any of them. There were a few from Lucy, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at them yet. I didn’t want to rehash everything yet that happened earlier, not when I was still feeling so raw.

  I was starting to turn off my phone just as a new message came in. My heart throbbed painfully in my chest when I saw it was from Aunt Emmie.

  I’m here if you need me. Whatever. Whenever. Whomever. I’ve got your back, girl.

  My breath hitched as tears filled my eyes for a reason other than Jace St. Charles’s betrayal. My mom was gone, but it seemed she’d sent me a fairy godmother when I went to live with my father and stepmonster. She didn’t wear wings or have a magic wand. No, my fai
ry godmother was way cooler and a hundred times more powerful.

  I wiped the tears off my cheeks as I sent a reply.

  I want to disappear.

  Seconds later, a new message popped up, and I was finally able to take a deep enough breath.

  Done.

  Chapter 5

  Jace

  I was still a mess by the time Gray pulled the rental into the driveway at Alicia’s. As soon as they were out of the car, I was going to wrestle Gray to the ground and steal the keys so I could go back for Kin.

  We had to talk.

  She had to listen to me.

  We belonged together, and yes, this shit with Eden was my fault, but we could work through it. I wouldn’t keep anything from her ever again. I would swear on my life, on Kassa’s life, on a stack a bibles taller than the Empire State Building. Whatever the fuck she needed me to swear on, I would.

  If she would just take me back.

  I fucked up, but we would fix it as soon as she let me explain everything, damn it.

  Gray and Kassa didn’t immediately move when the car stopped. Instead, Gray sat there, refusing to unlock the doors. Not that it would have helped me any. The freaking child safety locks were engaged, so I couldn’t get out of the car until one of them let me out because I sure as hell couldn’t climb over the seats as big as I was.

  “Let me out,” I ordered. “Let me the fuck out. Now.”

  “Hold your horses, dickhead,” Gray snapped, at the end of his patience with me. I was fairly sure the only reason he hadn’t knocked my ass out was because of Kassa. And honestly, I would have preferred unconsciousness to suffering this debilitating agony coursing through me.

  From inside the house the three of us all grew up in, a light came on in the living room, and then the porch light flickered to life. It was early in the morning, dawn would be breaking soon, but Alicia was always up by six regardless of what day it was.