He went blazing around a corner, the town coming up fast, words still running nonstop from that flapping mouth. “Words hurt, man. Cut as deep as a knife. Fuck that old saying about sticks and stones. We know the real dagger is the tongue. And here I thought you had my back. I bet you’ve been trying to get rid of me for years.”
“You never know.”
Okay, so Rhys Manning was a badass. There was no secret that the ladies loved the hell out of him, boy nothing but charm and charisma, but truth of the matter was he was a fucking beast on the bass. Out of this world talented.
Just like the rest of us.
Unfortunately, Rhys loved to cross every line that had been drawn.
“Don’t make me bury you in a shallow grave, man. You know that would hurt me more than it would hurt you,” he said, choking back tears.
Pure feigned affliction.
A chuckle rambled around in my chest.
“Do I need to call Melanie to come pick you up?” I raised a brow, waved my phone in the air in warning.
“What? God no. Save me. Mells Bells gets off on cracking the whip.”
Melanie was our band manager and my sister’s oldest friend. Had grown up across town, the girl as close as family. Was pretty sure we’d be a shitshow if it wasn’t for her making us toe the line.
“I’m on vacation, remember? Why would you go and threaten something as horrifyin’ as that?” he asked.
“You know you love her bossin’ you around.”
His head shook. “Nah. Not the way you think, man.”
“Sure.”
“I am nothing but the speaker of the truth.”
He barely slowed as the farms disappeared behind us and the buildings got closer together.
In the daylight, I glanced around at our small hometown of Dalton, South Carolina.
As hard as I tried to keep it down, dread rose.
A searing burn that slugged its warning through my veins.
Nothing but heavy, lethargic beats, heart this slow, hardened drum I could feel in my ears.
Attempting to ignore it, I took in my surroundings.
The place felt so far removed and so familiar at the same time.
Sunshine blazed from above, the sky an endless blue, and a cool breeze swished through the leaves of the trees that grew from the strategically placed planters along the sidewalks. Boughs of colorful flowers grew around them.
Stores lined the narrow streets that had been there for as long as I could remember, old brick buildings that looked like they’d been haphazardly glued together, every color and shape.
Beneath the rays of sunlight, in the brightness of the day, I could almost forget that I’d been chasing down a monster haunting the shadows last night.
Could almost pretend like I didn’t feel ghosts prowling for their prey.
My attention scanned, peering into the alleys and coves like the bastard would show his face in the light of day.
Lurking at the fringes of peace.
Fact that some monster was out there had me riding a razor-sharp edge. Butt that up against the thoughts of Violet that swirled and taunted and fought for acclaim?
Had no clue what I was supposed to do. Where I should stand. The lines of my loyalty that should be solid and underscored in black had become grayed.
Right and wrong no longer clear.
Rhys actually accelerated instead of slowed as he took a hard right, tires squealing as we went. I held onto the door handle, leaning with the turn.
Unease shivered beneath my skin when I glanced around.
I was right.
Town wasn’t going to be a whole lot safer than facing down my mother.
Every eye on the street shifted our direction as Rhys blazed like a demon down Main Street, speculation and judgement hot on our tail.
Let’s just say Rhys and I didn’t have the best reputations around here. The bad boys who’d slayed their daughters’ hearts and rained havoc on the quaint, quiet streets. Country boys who’d gone rogue, selling our souls for bigger and better things, that dotted line signed in our blood, success and fame and riches at the cost of condemnation.
Sounded about right.
Rhys rammed on the gas, whipping around an old truck that rambled down the road. Dude fucking laughed as he blew by.
I pitched him a glare. “You couldn’t possibly buy anything less flashy, could you?”
“Absolutely not,” he said, tossing me a grin as he gunned it around a corner.
Asshole was nothing but a bull on a rampage, tearing shit up and being as loud as possible while doing it.
“You compensating for something?” I let the razz out into the air.
He laughed maniacally. “Oh, dear brother. You only wish. Believe me, I don’t have a thing to make up for.”
He waggled his brows, dude still looking at me when he made a sharp right and skidded into the parking lot of the grocery store.
If the rest of this bullshit wasn’t my end, Rhys’ driving was bound to do me in.
He rumbled through the lot and pulled into an angled spot at the front. “Hell yes. She is everything I knew she’d be.”
He lovingly stroked the steering wheel.
“You’re a freak, you know that?” I asked as I unlatched my seat belt and cracked open the door. “And a terrible driver.”
“What’s the matter? Have your balls gone missin’? You need to borrow some of mine? Mine are big enough to go around.”
“Eww and no and what the fuck?” I leaned over the console and punched his shoulder.
“Oww.” He rubbed at the spot, throwing me an overexaggerated pout. “Uncalled for, man. Uncalled for. Why you gotta be so violent? I was barely going over the speed limit. It was under control. Calm your tits.”
I slipped out, my brow shooting toward the sky as he got out and looked at me from over the top of the car.
“Barely?”
Laughing, he sauntered toward the entrance. “Speed is relative. Fast to one person is another’s eternity.” He waved his hand for me to follow. “Let’s do this. I’m starvin’.”
Dude was always starving.
I followed him inside, and he grabbed a cart. Didn’t even have it in me to be surprised that he rode it around like he was twelve. He rolled halfway down the cereal aisle, only hopping off to chat with Mrs. Lancaster, a high-school friend’s mom, who couldn’t help but reach out and touch his tatted arms.
Okay. So, we might have come with reputations but that didn’t mean women weren’t still all too happy to reach out and brush up on that fame.
Drawn to danger.
Problem was that people didn’t get what that really meant. How dark and depraved our worlds got. The sordid, sick corruption that ran rampant.
The greed and the shame and the gluttony.
“Let’s go,” I told Rhys, not willing to stand around and watch that bullshit going down.
“What’s the rush?”
What was the rush?
“Don’t want to be here,” I told him, point-blank. “And you were the one who just told me you were starving.”
This town bled too many memories.
Made me crave and thirst and long.
Her face flashed through my mind.
Violets and dreams and the girl.
Seeing her made me contemplate things I couldn’t.
Made me think…maybe.
Maybe and what if.
And having thoughts like that would be my ruin.
Utter destruction.
I’d known coming here for Emily and Royce’s wedding was going to be an issue. Staying for so long. Unable to slink in to visit my parents and slink right back out without anyone noticing. Knew it was going to leave me riddled with so much regret and loss that it was going to be hard to stand.
What I hadn’t known was it would become dangerous in a way that I couldn’t have anticipated. Thoughts of who I might be dragging into this town were crushing.
Feeling like I was go
nna lose it, I strode the rest of the way down the aisle.
“Sheesh. Come on, man. Can’t you feel it? People miss us. They need the life breathed back into them,” he shouted at my back. “This town has been on standstill since we left.”
I shook my head. “Only thing we would do is suck it out of them,” I muttered under my breath.
I couldn’t afford it. Couldn’t afford wrecking one more life.
I itched, nerves crackling like the threat of a summer storm.
A surge of energy.
Electricity.
Fuck.
I rubbed at the back of my neck.
I was this close to going apeshit.
Awesome. Just what the town needed to witness. A meltdown, too. Needed to get out of there and go back to passing time, playin’ the fool, until the trial came to pass.
I moved for the butcher at the back, asked him for the largest, freshest chicken they had, and I had it in the cart by the time Rhys finally weaved his slow ass up to me.
It thudded on the metal like finality.
“Let’s go.”
I stormed up the side aisle that opened to the bakery to the far side. The smell of sugar and spices and dough wafted through the air.
Leon, who’d baked there for what had to be a million years, still held vigil behind the counter.
But it wasn’t the old man who used to sneak me cookies who stopped me in my tracks. What sent dread and need and guilt crashing through my body. So intense I nearly buckled in two.
It was the woman standing at the counter chatting with him. The girl wearing a messy braid that hung over one shoulder, a tank, and short jean shorts, a pair of high-top Chucks on her feet.
Soft and seductive.
A moonflower.
A black-haired angel swayed at her side.
Daisy.
The air punched from my lungs, so hard it left me on a rasping gasp.
Sight of her left me staggered.
Shattered.
A million cracked, splintered pieces on the floor.
My mind shouted to look the fuck away. To turn my back. To run and not return.
But I was edging forward, unable to stop, unable to think.
Only able to go for what I’d been running from for the last six years.
Knew the second Violet felt me, the way her spine went rigid and chills skated across her skin.
Goosebumps rippling.
I wanted to press my hands to it and chase the thrill. Let my tongue follow suit. Get lost in the sea of it.
Collide with destruction.
Since we were ruined, anyway, what more could it hurt than it already did?
That little angel at her side turned like she sensed me, too. Dark eyes the same color as Violet’s grew wide, her adorable face breaking out in a curious smile.
Guilt. Guilt. Guilt.
It stabbed and slayed. Cut me open. My guts nothing but a bleeding, mangled mess left like an offering at their feet.
“Hi. Whatcha doin’? You want a cookie? Do you smells that? Mr. Leon makes the yummiest, yummiest cookies in the whole wide world. Well, except for my papa. My papa’s are yummy, yum, yum to my tum, tum, tum, but he makes a different kind.”
She held one out to me.
Shit.
Someone needed to tell this kid not to talk to strangers.
I roughed a hand through my hair, anxious, but maybe not as anxious as Violet who finally forced herself to turn around and face me.
Fuck.
Didn’t matter how many times I looked at this girl. There wouldn’t be a time when she didn’t knock the breath from my lungs.
She looked like a little bit of magic.
A taste of serendipity.
“Mommy…look…it’s the man in your prettiest picture.”
Mommy.
My heart spluttered. Failed. Maybe as hard as I had failed them.
And to this kid, I was not a stranger.
She recognized me. Violet had kept a picture of me where she could find it. Would I have thought she wouldn’t have, though? Thought she would have purged all evidence of me away?
I knew her better than that, didn’t I?
Daisy clung to her hand, swinging around at Violet’s side, canting so far toward me that Violet had to hold her so she didn’t face-plant onto the floor.
“What’s your name?” she asked, her eyes narrowing with keen curiosity. “I asks before but Mommy told me she would tell me when I got big.”
She looked up at Violet. “I’m big now, right? I turned five and now I’m almost all the way to six.”
The last she directed at me, lifting her hand to show me the evidence with her fingers. Only it was the hand that was holding the cookie. It dropped to the floor and shattered into a million pieces.
Violet looked like she was going to do the same.
Fall apart.
Crumble right there.
I just wished I was strong enough to catch her. Hold all those pieces the way I was meant to do.
“Oops. Sorry,” the little thing said, her hand going to her mouth, her chubby fingers splaying over her lips to hide her embarrassment.
Violet’s throat trembled and those magnetic eyes filled with moisture. She glanced down at the child. “You’re right. You are big. This is Richard, Daisy.” Her voice trembled when she said it.
The little girl tugged her hand from Violet’s and shoved it toward me. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Richard.”
Hand shaking like a bitch, I took it. Felt the warmth. Grief crushed me by the throat. Felt like I was pinned to a wall and being choked out. “It’s nice to meet you, Daisy. You have a very pretty name.”
A smile split her face. “My papa named me, just like he did my mommy.” She leaned forward farther, dropping her voice like it was a secret when she said, “My mommy’s name is Violet. Like a pretty flower.”
Like I didn’t know.
Like I hadn’t whispered that name a thousand times.
Moaned it when she’d shown me what heaven really was like.
Shouted it when I’d wake in the middle of the night and realize she really was gone.
Tried to clear the roughness, but the words were raw, “Yeah, her name is very pretty. Just like the rest of her.”
Violet shook.
Anger and disbelief.
Could I fuck this up any worse? Stand there like a beggar, a prodigal, and ask her to forgive me?
But I didn’t even want that.
Knew I didn’t deserve her forgiveness.
Just standing there was breaking every rule I’d given myself.
Nothing but another vulgar betrayal.
But I wished to God she could at least understand.
“We should get going,” Violet grated through the emotion clogging her throat.
“Well, who do we have here?” Rhys’ voice broke through the disorder.
“Daisy!” Daisy bounced on her toes.
Tiny thing was way too friendly for her own good.
Violet sighed in exasperation. “Rhys.”
“Violeta.”
He grinned at her before he shifted his attention to the child.
“Daisy? As in Daisy Mae? Holy moly. And are you eatin’ my favorite cookies?”
She giggled. “I dropped it. You want it? I’ll get it for you, but it’s broken.”
He laughed. “You offerin’ me a cookie from the floor?”
She shrugged. “Hasn’t been five seconds yet. Wait, has it?”
She looked at me for the answer to that.
She was a little tornado. A lightning strike. A flare of the brightest sun.
My chest tightened, agony stretched tight, and my gaze shifted to Violet who pulled at Daisy’s hand in clear distress.
“We really need to get going. Remember Papa is waiting for things to make dinner?”
“Oh no…we better hurry. Nice to meets you!”
She grinned and waved, and Violet was hauling her toward the registers. Rhys
made a beeline behind them, chatting Daisy up the whole way. He got into the lane beside them and paid for our single purchase while I stood there itching.
Violet hefted her two reusable bags up and held out her hand for Daisy with the other. “Come on, sweetheart.”
“Need a little help with that?” Rhys asked, back at her side, but he shifted to widen his eyes at me when he said it, the asshole.
This was complete idiocy.
Stupidity on a level that was going to cost everything.
But I shot into motion, anyway, like some kind of knight in shining armor who really was the monster hiding underneath, my hand already on the straps before Violet could refuse.
She attempted to do it anyway. “I have it,” she growled. A fierce, ferocious kitten.
“Let me help you.”
“I don’t need your help.”
I tugged it out of her hold.
She held in a high-pitched scream.
“I’m just taking your bags for you. That’s all.”
She huffed, rambled under her breath, “If that were the only thing you’d taken from me, I’d be just fine.”
Still, she gave, and she stomped out the door with Daisy in tow while I followed a couple steps behind.
Basking in her rays like a pathetic fool.
She headed straight for where she was parked a few spots down from Rhys. She opened the back door of the truck and helped Daisy inside.
I opened the opposite door and reluctantly set the bags on the floor.
“Goodbye, Mr. Richard,” Daisy sang from her car seat. “I likes meeting you a lot.”
“Goodbye, Daisy.” My smile was rigid. “I liked meeting you a lot, too.”
I wanted to stall. To say something. Fucking explain or apologize or just round them up and carry them away where I could forever keep them safe.
Wishing it was my place and knowing it most definitely was not.
Didn’t matter.
I could already feel the fires striking all around me. Getting ready to blaze.
If I wasn’t careful, I’d burn this entire thing to ash.
And I was just selfish enough to think it might be worth it.
I closed the door and moved around the back of the truck and onto the sidewalk. Violet hopped into the front seat, rolling down the manual window that whined as she did. She blew her bangs out of her gorgeous face.
Falling into You Page 6
