Tainted Forever

by Terri Anne Browning

“No, of course not. Jenna can’t stand Stella. But that doesn’t mean her mother won’t try to break them up through other avenues.”

  “Bitch better watch herself if she tries to hurt Angie. My stepsister can hold her own, but Caleb and I will destroy this Stella cunt if she tries anything.”

  --

  Dinner with Harris and Lucy took up most of the night. We lingered over dessert and drinks afterward, and I was glad to be there with them. I’d missed them both so much while I was hiding from the rest of the world, and it wasn’t until I was with them again that I understood just how much I really did enjoy hanging out with them.

  But it also made me remember all the times we’d hung out in the past. Jace always sat beside me, feeding me bites off his plate.

  Harris went back to work, and Lucy and Marcus dropped me off back at my new apartment. The lights were off except for a single lamp in the living room so I could see how to get to my room.

  I could hear my new roommate moving around in the room next door, but I didn’t have the energy to knock on her bedroom door to introduce myself. I was tired all the way to my bones, having spent hours on a plane and then hanging out with my best friend. On top of all that, the memories of Jace were shredding me.

  I face-planted on the bed, already made up with my sheets and comforter thanks to Angie, but I could have sworn I caught the scent of Jace on the pillowcase. Had my stepsister not washed the linens before putting them on the new bed?

  Gross.

  But as I breathed in the scent deeper, I realized it really was Jace’s scent. His body wash and cologne clung to the pillow itself. Tears instantly stung my eyes, and I pulled the pillow to my chest as a sob tried to break free from my throat.

  No.

  I couldn’t think about him, not now. Back at the cabin, I was getting better, able to function without crying or wanting to blow up the entire world with my anger. I put all my rage and pain into the many, many songs I wrote. It was cathartic but left me raw. Still, I thought I was ready to face the real world again.

  And yet, with the scent of him on my pillow reminding me of the last night we spent together, I was shattered all over again.

  Chapter 8

  Jace

  I was downtown at Emmie’s office before the sun even came up.

  Kin was back, and from what I overheard Santana telling my sister the night before, she was going to be in the studio working on a demo all morning.

  Realizing she was within touching distance after four of the worst months of my damn life, I ached to go to her apartment. But that wasn’t possible. I didn’t even know where she was staying.

  Angie had moved out of their old place, something I found out the hard way because I finally broke down the damn door when she refused to answer it, only to discover the apartment was completely empty.

  I knew Kin wasn’t staying with Lucy, because I’d gone over there after overhearing Santana and Kassa talking. As always, Lucy didn’t divulge any details about her friend’s whereabouts or well-being, other than to tell me she looked good. I still searched the entire house before leaving, needing to make sure Kin wasn’t there.

  Instead of going home, I stayed out, contemplating where Kin could possibly be. A hotel? A friend’s house? I called Jenna to see if maybe Kin was there, but other than to tell me she wasn’t, Jenna didn’t tell me much else.

  I drove to Emmie’s office building in the early hours of the morning, dozed in my car when I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, and waited.

  Pulling on a baseball cap and tucking it low, I walked into the building when the first guard arrived to take over for the night shift. The guy knew me, even though I couldn’t remember his name, and I told him I had a meeting with Emmie I didn’t want to be late for. Grinning, the guy let me through, but instead of getting on the elevator, I waited just out of sight.

  Fuck, I felt like a damn stalker, but Kin left me no choice.

  She’d blocked my number, making it impossible for me to call or text her. I sent email after email, pleading with her to just talk to me, but they got kicked back. I even snatched my sister’s phone once and tried to call Kin, but the call went unanswered. Kassa busted my balls when she realized I’d taken her phone, not that I cared.

  I didn’t care about anything these days but finding Kin.

  Unable to talk to her, not knowing where she was or how she was doing, I lost my mind quickly.

  Now she was back, and I was acting like some psycho, waiting to pounce on her the second I set eyes on her.

  Soon the building began to come alive. People were arriving to work, but no one paid me much attention as I waited. Emmie would be arriving soon, and she would probably verbally beat my ass—again—but I could withstand her bitching at me if it meant I got the chance to see Kin.

  Shane Stevenson walked past me with his son. When his eyes landed on me, they narrowed. “You look like some serial killer waiting there, man,” he told me with a shake of his head. “What are you doing?”

  “Waiting on Kin.”

  “Well, come wait with us in the studio. Emmie finds you down here looking all stalker-like, she’s gonna eat you for breakfast.”

  “I’m good here.”

  His blue-gray eyes darkened. “Wasn’t asking, Jace. Get your ass on the elevator.”

  Mason looked up at me with eyes identical to his father’s. “Better listen. When Daddy uses that voice with me, it means I’m about to get grounded.”

  I ruffled the kid’s hair as I stepped onto the elevator with him and his father. If given the choice between having to deal with Shane or Emmie, the rocker would be my pick every time, hands down. He was producing the demo for Kin, so that meant he would be seeing her soon anyway. Which meant I would get to see her soon. “What are you doing here, little dude? Don’t you have school or something?”

  “No school today. I came to work with Daddy, and Violet went with Mom.”

  Shane hit the button for the recording studio and leaned back against the wall. “When’s the last time you slept? You look like a walking corpse.”

  I shrugged. “I got a little last night.”

  “Let me rephrase, then. When was the last time you got a full night’s sleep?”

  I glared at the opposite wall, trying to remember what it even felt like to sleep for more than an hour or two at a time. I missed Kin so fucking much, but it was worse at night. “May,” I choked out.

  “Dude. You’re going to burn yourself out. Emmie is going to go off the rails if you keep this up. You won’t be any good to your band, and you’re going to end up killing yourself if you aren’t careful.”

  “I’ll sleep when I have Kin back,” I gritted out. “Can’t sleep without her.”

  Shane dropped his hand on my shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “I’m sorry, Jace. But you still need to take care of yourself.”

  “I don’t care about myself, man,” I told him honestly. “All I can think about is if she’s okay or not, and no one will freaking tell me.”

  The elevator stopped, and Mason ran off. Shane and I followed, heading straight for the studio. Shane produced all the demos for Emmie’s clients. It was just a hobby to him, but he could turn it into a new career if he wanted to during his downtime from Demon’s Wings.

  “Take a seat,” Shane instructed as he turned on the lights in the control room. “Could be a little while before Kin gets here. She’s not due until nine.”

  “Why are you here so early, then?” Shane wasn’t one to just wait around.

  “Got a few things I’m working on,” was all he said as he started turning everything on.

  Mason grabbed the small toy box his dad kept for him there out of the corner of the room. Upending the box, he scattered his toys all over the floor and dropped down to start lining up cars and dinosaurs. I watched him, wondering if my nephew would be like Mason when he got older. Eden sent me pictures every few weeks, but I hadn’t met the newest me
mber of my family yet. I doubted my older sister wanted me around her kid when I was barely functional on a human level the majority of the time.

  My phone vibrated, and I pulled it out of my pocket to see I had a text from Kassa, asking where I was.

  She kept track of me more and more lately, probably worried I was going to drive my car into a tree or off a bridge or something. I didn’t have a death wish, however. I just fucking wanted Kin back. But even though Kassa tried to keep track of me, we didn’t talk much. This thing with Eden had put up a wall between us.

  I didn’t bother sending her a reply. She would only guess what I was doing and try to stop me. Or warn Kin I was waiting on her, and then Kin wouldn’t show.

  Turning off the phone because I didn’t put it past my baby sister to use the GPS to try to find me, I pocketed the device. For the next two hours, I divided my attention between watching the clock on the wall tick away the minutes, Shane doing his thing with some song he was remixing for another one of Emmie’s clients, and Mason having a cars vs. dinosaurs war.

  It was pretty quiet on this floor, and it wasn’t just because both the control room and the recording booth were soundproof. There was rarely any traffic here because this was Shane’s domain. If a person didn’t have a reason to be there, or Shane didn’t want them there, then they knew better than to step into his territory.

  Shane Stevenson was pretty laid-back, if he liked you. If he didn’t, that was another story entirely. With as much muscle as he had on him, he could have given Gray a run for his money, even in his forties. He was always running, day or night, no matter the time of the year. There had been plenty of times he’d talked Kin and Lucy into running charity 5K events with him. Some of them were sponsored by his wife’s magazine, sometimes as a representative for his band, but always for one of Emmie’s charities.

  I’d only ever seen him pissed once in the years I’d known him, but that was enough to show me I never wanted to be on the receiving end of his temper.

  “Heads up,” Shane said with a twist of his lips as he picked up his phone. “Em says she just heard from Kin. She’s going to be here soon.”

  My heart began to pound, my hands growing damp with nervousness. I felt sick and weak-kneed, yet I couldn’t take sitting down for a second longer. Standing, I pulled off the baseball cap, ran my fingers through my hair, and replaced the cap. Only to take it off and toss it on the chair I’d just vacated.

  Shane watched me, caution on his face as he rolled his chair back to put himself between me and his son, as if he thought I might explode and cause his kid bodily harm. I didn’t blame him, because right then, I didn’t know what might happen with me. My skin suddenly felt too tight for my body, my breaths coming in pants as I paced to the door and back to my chair.

  “Have you seen her yet?” I asked him, not sure why I hadn’t already.

  Of the four Demons, though, it was more likely Jesse Thornton would see Kin regularly than Shane or his brother. Lucy and her dad were close, so that meant he was close to Kin too. They all treated her like family. From the first time Lucy brought Kin home from school, they took her in as one of their own. Every single one of them was a misfit, a mishmash of family more by choice than actual blood for the majority of them. Kin was no different, just another member of their family. Emmie was even her honorary aunt who treated her more like a daughter than Kin’s stepmother ever tried to.

  He shook his head, his blue-gray eyes following my every step to and from the door. “Can’t remember the last time I saw Kin, honestly. Maybe when we ran the half marathon back in April for the children’s home Emmie started up in Ohio? Yeah, I think that was the last time I saw her.”

  I scrubbed my hands over my face, wiping away the thin sheen of sweat that was beading on my forehead. I was starting to panic more with each passing minute. Why wasn’t she here yet? What was taking so fucking long?

  Twenty minutes passed, and she still wasn’t there. I continued to pace, Shane watching me the entire time. He didn’t yell at me and tell me to park my ass, or to calm the fuck down, or even to stop acting like a pussy and just chill out. I appreciated that, because I wasn’t sure I could have done any of those things.

  And then the door was opening, and the way my heart was beating my chest to death was no longer a problem. It completely stopped the second my eyes landed on her as she walked into the room, a stack of music sheets under one arm, her guitar case in her hand.

  Her long red hair was pulled back into a simple ponytail, her face completely free of any makeup. She wore jeans and an old OtherWorld T-shirt, one of her favorites. There were dark circles under her eyes, but other than that, she didn’t look much different from the last time I saw her.

  I drank in the sight of her, feasting my eyes on her like a starving man. Her blue eyes locked on mine and I couldn’t breathe, yet I found myself suddenly in front of her, pulling her roughly into my arms.

  I began to tremble, or maybe that was her. I couldn’t tell. I cupped the back of her head in one hand, anchoring her body to me with the other, and inhaled deeply for the first time in months. The scent of her shampoo filled my nose, and I nearly groaned as a sense of peace washed over me. One by one, every muscle in my body began to relax.

  This was where I was meant to be, with her in my arms, the feel of her against me. It was home. No matter where I was in the world, as long as she was in my arms, I was home.

  Her fingers fisted in my shirt for a flash of an instant before she was pushing me back, her blue eyes turning to ice. “What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded, setting her guitar case on the floor and throwing the music in my chair from earlier, making my cap fall to the ground. Putting her hands on her hips, she glared up at me.

  I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I had no words to explain why I was there, and for a second, I was concerned for my ability to form a cognitive thought, let alone speak in a full sentence. Swallowing hard, I cleared my throat and tried again, still eating up the sight of her.

  She looked beautiful. All long limbs, alabaster skin, and flashing blue eyes. I wanted to pull her back into my arms, hold her there until I could breathe without it hurting. But everything about her was screaming at me to stay the hell away. Rationally, I knew it was going to take more than an “I’m sorry” before I had her back. But my fucking heart didn’t understand why the one person who belonged solely to me wasn’t in my arms where she belonged.

  “Let’s take a coffee break, Mason,” Shane told his son as he got to his feet.

  “Mom won’t let me have coffee.”

  “How about a hot chocolate break instead?”

  “Heck yeah!” Jumping up, Mason took his father’s hand, and they left the room without looking back.

  Kin stood there, her nostrils flaring as she silently seethed. I deserved her anger, welcomed it. Because as long as she was pissed, that meant she cared, damn it.

  “Well?” she snapped after another minute passed with me still unable to figure out how to make my voice work.

  “Where were you?” It came out harsher than I realized, accusatory, and it was only then I realized how pissed I was at her.

  She left, didn’t give me a chance to explain everything better, to fix what I broke with us. I knew it was all my own fault, but Kin wasn’t one to just run away from a problem. Hell, she stayed with her father and stepmother even after all the hell that woman put her through, simply because of a promise Kin’s mother made her make when she was on her deathbed.

  “You don’t need to know,” she told me, her voice so cold I was surprised the room didn’t frost over. “We’re not together anymore, so where I am at any given time of the day isn’t any of your business.”

  I stabbed my fingers through my hair. “I’ve been worried, damn it. We’ve never spent more than a day without speaking in some shape or form, and you have made it impossible to so much as get you to answer a damn email.”

  “I know
how to take care of myself, Jace. It’s something I’ve had to do for a long time now. There was no need to worry, especially since you no longer have that right.”

  “Stop fucking saying that!” I exploded. “I have every right. I love you!”

  She flinched, stepping back from me. “Maybe once upon a time you did. Somewhere along the way, things changed.” She lowered her eyes, swallowing hard before whispering, “I’m still trying to figure out where.”

  “Kin, baby…” I crossed the distance between us. Cupping her chin, I tilted her head back, my eyes drinking in her every feature. With the exception of those dark circles telling me she hadn’t been sleeping well, there wasn’t a sign that any time had passed since the last time I saw her. “Nothing has ever changed about what I feel for you.”

  She jerked back, pain flashing in her eyes as if I’d physically hit her. “Then that is exactly why it all went wrong. Every day, I loved you more than the day before. Every goddamn day, I woke up beside you, I fell a little deeper for you.” Tears spilled over her lashes so quickly I didn’t have a warning. She angrily scrubbed them away as they trailed down her cheeks. “I loved you so much, Jace, that I loved you more than myself.”

  My heart cracked a little more with each tear that spilled, but hearing her say “loved” and not “love” rocked me to my soul.

  Chapter 9

  Kin

  I didn’t think it was possible for Jace to hurt me more than he already had, yet there I stood, my heart hemorrhaging from the direct blow he’d made to it. I felt like I was exsanguinating, as if I might actually die from the pain at the realization that Jace actually didn’t love me as much as I did him.

  I sucked in a breath, trying to make the pain stop, but there was no way to escape it.

  “Kin, that’s not what I meant. Baby, I… I… Fuck, why can’t I find the words to fix this?” he groaned, scrubbing a hand over his jaw before raking his fingers through his hair.

  “Let’s face it, Jace,” I told him, blinking back the tears that just kept coming. “What we once had is over. You keeping secrets from me showed me just how far off course we have really gotten.”