Seductive Wicked Royal (Blood and Diamonds Book 3)

by L. A. Sable

  “Bullshit.” I squint between them, feeling dizzy. I’ve always been able to tell them apart. Am I really that messed up or are they messing with me? “Whatever, I don’t care.”

  “Of course you care,” one of them corrects me. “We wouldn’t be in this situation, otherwise. If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t be trying so hard to escape your feelings.”

  “Who are you, my therapist?” I flop onto the bed, forcing Lukas or Kai or whoever to roll out of the way so I don’t land on top of him. The fact that they seem intent on meeting whatever I throw at them with endless patience just infuriates me more. “Spare me the psychoanalysis.”

  “You should probably try going back to sleep.”

  I blink up at the twin lying next to me on the bed. “Are you sure you’re Lukas?”

  The smile he casts me is bleak. “Does it matter?”

  “I can always tell you apart. That’s my thing, even from the very beginning. You guys only managed to fool me once, before I knew there were two of you.”

  “You aren’t yourself.” Whichever one is sitting at the desk turns away with a shrug. “This says things should be better after about 48 hours. Ask us who we are, then.”

  “I won’t be speaking to you in 48 hours.”

  “There’s that anger again.”

  “What will it take for you guys to give me something? I know you have my pills in here somewhere.”

  “Is this bargaining?” One of them asks, voice mild.

  “You’re thinking of the stages of grief, not withdrawal. Close, man, but no cigar.”

  For one delirious moment, I wonder if I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole and into Wonderland, now I’m stuck with Tweedledee and Tweedle-dumbass. “I will never forgive you for doing this.”

  “If you remember it all.” The twin I’m 90% sure is Kai turns the computer, so the screen faces me. “According to this article I found, memory loss isn’t uncommon during opiate withdrawal.”

  “You have to be addicted to something to withdraw from it,” I snap, even as a sick feeling roils over my stomach. How badly I feel right now is a clear indication that something isn’t right.

  Lukas scoffs. “Says the girl who can barely keep her head up right now.”

  I hate how calm they are while every cell in my body screams in pain. It would be easier if I could sleep this all away, but something electric moves under my skin making me feel inexplicably wired. My mind is bouncing off the walls, even if my exhausted body doesn’t seem to want to cooperate. But I need them to feel as edgy as I do, if just to make something about this seem normal.

  I roll onto my back, knowing that this position highlights the flatness of my stomach and the curve of my breasts. And I arch my back a little to exaggerate it that much more. “This is most girls’ fantasy, you know.”

  Neither of them respond, likely because they’re waiting to see where I go with this. I feel an itch under my skin that is craving to be scratched, like my flesh is a too tight coat that belongs to someone else. I’m craving something to take my mind away from how badly I feel because without a drug to numb my senses, it terrifies me to think about what might rise to the surface.

  “The whole twin thing,” I say airily, with an idle wave of my hand. “I think it’s a whole category of romance novels on the internet, Google it and you’ll see. Girls eat that shit up. You guys understand what I’m trying to say, right?”

  Kai types something onto the computer, but doesn’t bother to turn around to look at me. “You got a point?”

  “I just mean that we could be missing a prime opportunity here for me to check something off my bucket list.” I rolled over to cuddle against Lukas, who doesn’t shift away but holds his body so preternaturally still that he could be asleep. My hand moves over his leg through the rough fabric of his uniform pants and then squeezes his thigh. “What do you say?”

  “I say that you’re not yourself right now.” Lukas gently grabs my hand and pushes it away, but then doesn’t let go. He squeezes my fingers hard enough that my gaze rises to meet his. “I know you’re hurting, but this isn’t the time or the place to do this. Why don’t you try to go back to sleep?”

  I rip my hand away from his with a snarl. “You guys have been running after me for the better part of a year. Are you really trying to tell me that you’re not interested?”

  “Not like this.”

  Without quite understanding the urge that drives me, I shift over so that I’m laying across Lukas’s chest and staring down into his drawn face. The frown that twists his lips reminds me of a very dour sort of forest cat. I kiss him, feeling a flare of hurt when he doesn’t kiss me back.

  “I hate you both,” I tell them, hating myself more for saying it even as I spit the words out. I know that I don’t mean it, but I can’t stop trying to hurt them in the same way that I’m hurting. “I never want to see either of you again.”

  As I turn my back on them, curling my body into a ball of tension, one of their voices floats over me. It’s impossible to know which one of them it is.

  “See how you feel tomorrow.”

  It’s brighter when I finally when I finally wake up again. One of the sheets that was tacked up over the window has been taken down, letting in overcast afternoon light that isn’t enough to completely illuminate the large space. The bed next to me is still warm, but the twins are nowhere to be seen.

  Instead, Jayden sits in the armchair next to the unlit fireplace, staring into it like there’s some secret there waiting to be uncovered.

  “Did you draw the short end of the stick this time?” I ask, voice caustic as I push into a sitting position. It’s no way to greet someone who I know only wants to help me, but I can’t seem to help myself. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it to sound that way.”

  “You should get up slowly so you don’t fall,” he says, but doesn’t get up from the chair. It’s as if he knows that I don’t want the help.

  “Where are Lukas and Kai?”

  “In class. They had to show up for at least one so nobody would come looking for them.” Jayden watches as I make my way painfully to my feet and head for the bathroom. “I’d ask you how you’re feeling, but the answer is pretty obvious just from looking at you.”

  When I return from the bathroom, he watches me with the unsurprised eyes of someone who has seen it all and is no longer moved by any of it. There’s sympathy in his gaze, but also a wariness and mistrust that would break my heart if it weren’t already in pieces.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks finally.

  I fall onto the bed with a heavy sigh, nausea making the ceiling spin slowly as I stare up at it until I get so sick that I have to close my eyes. “Do we really have to do this right now?”

  “I just want I know why you couldn’t trust me. I thought we had something.”

  “We do have something.” I turn my head away so that he can’t see my face and whatever emotions might be found there. “It’s just complicated.”

  “But not too complicated for Asher.”

  When I turned to Asher for help, I didn’t think about what it would mean to the other guys. I’d been too desperate to think it through. “Asher doesn’t worry about the consequences of his actions, and he’s done too many things worthy of being judged to turn his back now. I knew he’d help me without asking questions and that he would keep it all a secret.”

  “And that sounds like a healthy dynamic to you?”

  I rolled over on the bed to glare across the room at him. “I wouldn’t know a healthy dynamic if it kicked me in the face, okay. I just knew that Asher would help.”

  “What about me? You didn’t think I would help?” His voice is very careful as he says the words, but there’s a hint of some darker emotion underneath it. “You think you’re the first person I’ve known who started something that they couldn’t finish? I grew up in Hollywood. A child star who doesn’t end up broke or addicted to something is a rare thing. Why didn’t you come to me?”

&nb
sp; I don’t have an answer. “I’m sorry.”

  With a sigh, he pushes up from the chair and crosses toward the bed on long strides. “Roll over onto your back.”

  I don’t say no, even though part of me wants to. Breathing hurts, touch hurts, every part of my body aches like it’s been crushed under a steamroller. Even the feel of the comforter is rough against my skin as I roll over onto my stomach, like sandpaper rubbing over my flesh. “Just be careful.”

  He carefully maneuvers onto the bed, movements so light that I barely feel the mattress move under his weight. “Right after the show ended, I was sort of at loose ends. Spencer Howard and I were hanging out a lot. You know who he is, right?”

  “Yeah, he played your best friend on Zack Impossible, the only one who knew about your double-life as a secret agent.” I also know from the tabloids that Spencer had died from a heroin overdose a few years ago. He never really worked on anything significant after the show ended and the working theory was that his inability to transition back to the real world was just too much to deal with. It’s a sad but not unfamiliar story. “I think I got his autograph once during one of those mall tours they made you guys do all the time. He seemed nice.”

  “He was a cool guy.” Jayden shifts his position on the bed so he’s kneeling over me, the outside of his thigh just barely touching my hip. “He got high with me for the first time off some shit I got from my agent, that fucking scumbag.”

  “Wow.” I let out a surprise and gratified groan as his hands sink into the tense muscles of my shoulders, a place that I didn’t realize was so sore until he touched it. “How old were you?”

  “I was thirteen, and he was fourteen. Man, I looked up to that kid. He was a way better actor than me, even now I don’t know how I beat him out for the lead in Zach Impossible.”

  Spencer had been good-looking, like the vast majority of actors. But Jayden has it, that indefinably quality that makes him someone people feel compelled to watch. It isn’t just about his looks, even though he’s gorgeous. The moment that Jayden walked into the room, Spencer Howard never stood a chance. But I doubt telling him that would make him feel better about what happened to his former castmate.

  “Was it just the one time?”

  “Maybe a few more after that. I figured out pretty quick that life wasn’t for me. It just seemed to get worse and worse for Spencer, especially when the calls from his agent stopped coming and it got so hard for him to get work.” The gentle pressure of his hands is in stark contrast to the bleak tone of his voice. “I think about that shit sometimes, wondering what would have happened if I never showed up at his house to party that night. Then I think about how we both started out at the same place, but ended up so differently. I would have never thought we’d diverge like that.”

  For some strange reason, the more of this awful shit he tells me, the more I feel my body relaxing into the bed. It’s as if focusing on someone else’s tragedy helps to keep my own at bay. And instead of bringing more pain, his gently massaging hands unwind the taut muscles that previously felt like they were moments from tearing apart. “It isn’t your fault.”

  “It’s his fault, and it’s mine. There’s more than enough pain to go around.” Jayden presses hard into a particularly stubborn knot between my shoulder blades. Pain flares and subsides like the endless cycle of life itself. “You have to be done with this. You know that, right?”

  I force myself to breathe as his hands press down into my lower back, nearing the injury that started all of this. “I know.”

  “If your back is the problem, we can talk to the doctors. And if they won’t help, then we’ll find different doctors. But you cannot keep doing this.”

  “I heard you.” I can’t stop the disgruntled note from entering my voice, even though I know he’s right. “It isn’t even about my back anymore. The pain is there, but I can usually deal with it. It’s…I don’t know.”

  “Drugs are like a bandaid that you can slap over your life, as long as you’re up then you don’t have to think about whatever it is that’s bringing you down. But you can’t stay up forever.”

  I don’t need him to tell me that. “Are you mad at Asher?”

  “I might try to kill him the next time I see him,” Jayden says drily and I don’t have to see his face to know what expression he’s wearing. “He’s my best friend, and he thought he was doing the right thing, as stupid as it is. But he’ll stay away until we get this figured out, if he knows what’s good for him. Are you mad at him?”

  I shrug against his hands, surprised at how much less painful it is to move. “He did what I asked him to do.”

  “Go to sleep,” Jayden says as he shifts backwards on the bed and lays down next to me. My body sort of melts into his as he spoons me from behind and brushes the sweaty hanks of hair back from my forehead. I force myself not to think about how terrible I must look. “When you wake up, you’ll be that much closer to the other side of this.”

  I don’t bother to tell him that’s the part that scares me the most. If things up to this point are any indication then all that’s waiting for me on the other side of this is more pain.

  Chapter 12

  I’ve been sober for four days by the morning of my mother’s funeral and I’ve never wanted something to make the world go away more than in this moment.

  The funeral is small and only for family and close friends, mostly because that’s how I’d asked Carter to plan it. Aside from the handful of Trish’s friends who drove out from the city and a few distant family members of ours, the funeral is a tiny affair. I can see the confusion on their faces. No one thought Trish would be buried by her the husband who is thirty-some years older than her.

  I try not to think about what it means that there are so few people here, considering that’s what I wanted.

  Trish’s mother, Grandma Patty, who lives in upstate New York and who I haven’t seen since my kindergarten graduation makes a show of wailing over the casket until she has to be escorted away by one of my uncles.

  I watch it all with the sort of detached air of someone who doesn’t have any emotional energy left to care. It isn’t as if I dislike Trish’s family, but she never seemed interested in spending time with them and I’ve been inexplicably following her lead.

  “I bet it was one of those undocumented criminals on the road,” Grandma Patty wails as she’s pulled away. “And they drove off so they wouldn’t be deported.”

  Oh, that’s why.

  Maybe the proceedings would feel real if I didn’t know that the casket that Grandma Patty won’t stop clawing at is actually empty. Carter had insisted on an autopsy, even offering to pay for it out of pocket when he was told that the coroner’s office is delayed by almost six weeks.

  And that’s just another thing for me to dread, confirmation that Trish’s death was something that I could have prevented. If I hadn’t let Charlie talk me into having that party, if I had stopped Trish from going out when I knew she had a few drinks.

  If. If. If.

  “Are you alright?” Carter asks me at one point, tone as formal as always despite the concerned note in his voice.

  “Fine,” I respond because there isn’t a better or more accurate answer to that question. When someone asks how you’re doing, even at a time like this, they don’t actually want you to tell the truth. “I might skip the reception.”

  “I decided not to have one,” he admits, surprising me. “Anyone who ever met Trish would know that she wouldn’t want her death to become some huge spectacle. She’d want us to try to get back to our lives as much as we can.”

  He probably isn’t wrong, but I can’t stop the itchy feeling under my skin as I think about that empty casket being lowered into the ground and then everyone just going home. “You’re probably right.”

  “And I have a flight to Milan tonight for a meeting that I can’t miss.”

  There isn’t any point, I realize, in getting mad at people for being who they are especially whe
n you knew precisely what you were getting yourself into with them. “Have a good trip.”

  If he notices the droll tone in my voice, Carter chooses to ignore it. He looks behind me at the small crowd of people still gathered around the gravesite. “I haven’t seen Asher. Did he tell you if he was coming?”

  I don’t point out that if he can’t keep track of his own grandson, then he shouldn’t expect anyone else to do it, and that I haven’t spoken to Asher since the last time he gave me drugs. “I’m not sure.”

  Whatever he would have said next is interrupted by two men in suits who approach from the direction of the road. They stand out, not just because their suits are dark blue instead of the traditional black for a funeral but also because they look like something out of a mail-order catalog for G-men.

  “Are you Carter and Lily Bellamy,” one asks, expression impossible to read.

  “It’s Lily Murphy,” I corrected him. “Only my mother changed her name.”

  “Apologies. We’re detectives with the New Haven Major Crimes unit. We’re very sorry to interrupt like this, but we have some time-sensitive items to discuss with you about our investigation.” The second detective hands us both cards with their names printed in black on a white background above an emblem for the New Haven police department. “Would it be possible for you to come down to the station to discuss things with us this afternoon?”

  “Detectives Mabley and Cicero.” Carter glances at the cards before tucking them away. “Unfortunately, a meeting won’t be possible today. I’m flying out as soon as we’re done here and I won’t be back for at least two weeks.”

  The detectives look uneasily around them, we’ve already attracted the attention of Grandma Patty who has paused her wailing for long enough to look on with interest. “Again, this is time-sensitive. I do hope you understand, Mr. Bellamy.”

  Carter looks exasperated but gestures away from the casket and to a deserted part of the graveyard. “You came all this way to see me and interrupted a funeral, let’s just talk about it now.”