Hidden Scars

by Amanda K. Byrne

  Epilogue

  Sara jerked to a halt next to Taylor, raising a hand to shield her eyes from the glaring July sun. The thick, sticky humidity made her feel like she was breathing syrup, and the tendrils that had escaped her topknot stuck to her neck.

  Milwaukee in the middle of summer was disgusting.

  “Is this it?” They stood in front of a café. A handful of tiny, two-person tables shaded by red umbrellas spread across the front of the building, and to her surprise, most of them were full. Why anyone would sit outside when there was lovely air conditioning inside was beyond her.

  “I think so.” He stared at the front door for a long, long moment, his thumb absently brushing the backs of her fingers. When he didn’t move, Sara took a step forward and tugged him after her.

  Cool air washed over them, and she stifled a whimper. She could do heat. She’d grown up in Arizona. Humidity turned her into a total wimp.

  She scanned the dim interior, searching for someone who looked like Taylor. The picture she’d seen showed Matt had brown eyes and gorgeous auburn hair she was immediately jealous of.

  “He’s not here.” At Taylor’s quiet statement, she looked up at his face. The disappointment on it hurt to see, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to make it better.

  The bells over the door jangled, and someone brushed past them. She spotted an empty table toward the back. “C’mon. Let’s grab a drink and wait a few minutes. Maybe he’s just running late.”

  One side of Taylor’s mouth kicked up, the sad grin not meeting his eyes. “Maybe.”

  They claimed the table, and Taylor went to the counter to place their order. Her phone buzzed in her purse, and she pulled it out, reading a text from Krista. She’d moved to Portland recently, after her brother landed himself in rehab for the third time. Now she wanted to know the best place to park if she was going to Powell’s.

  Skip the one downtown. I like Hawthorne better.

  You’re just trying to get me lost, aren’t you?

  Grinning, she typed in her response and dropped her phone in her purse as Taylor wandered back to the table. “Do you want to text him?”

  Taylor shook his head. “I’ll give him another fifteen minutes or so. If he’s not here by then, I’ll try calling him.”

  He pulled his chair around and sat, draping an arm across the back of her chair. He’d taken a risk, coming out here without telling his brother first, and it looked like it was slapping him in the face. But he wanted his little brother at their wedding, and Matt had shot down all his apologies in the past. Coming to him on his own turf was the closest Taylor would get to forcing Matt to deal with him.

  Their drinks arrived — an iced mocha for her, iced coffee for him — along with the biggest piece of strawberry shortcake she’d ever seen. “What the hell is that?”

  Taylor picked up a fork and speared a berry, offering it to her. “Resistance is futile.”

  She stuck her tongue out at him and ate the strawberry, keeping her eyes on his. There was hurt hiding in their depths, along with resignation. Despite the lingering threat of Tony and his anger of Taylor’s refusal to play ball, the last few months had been happy. He’d moved in and they’d painted the rest of the house. Her new job was going well, and she’d heard Larry had been replaced. The wedding plans were coming along, even with the short notice. There’d been hiking and surprise books and sex. Tons of sex.

  But this wasn’t a hurt she could soothe. She wanted to march out into the humid Milwaukee afternoon and find Matt herself, kick his ass into the café so he would at least listen to his older brother.

  Leaning forward, she kissed him, the bitter taste of coffee lingering on his lips. “I’m sorry, hon,” she murmured.

  “Not your fault.” He handed her the fork and the two of them dug into the cake.

  By the time the plate was clean except for a few crumbs and streaks of whipped cream, Taylor didn’t look quite so unhappy. He placed a hand at her lower back and guided her out of the café. The gesture made her smile, reminding her of their early days of dancing around their attraction.

  She pulled her sunglasses off her head and slipped them on. “Where to next?” When Taylor didn’t answer, she glanced up to see him staring off at a point in front of them. She followed his gaze down the sidewalk, landing on a guy about his height with dark red hair and broad shoulders. He held hands with a dark-haired woman who came up to his shoulder.

  “Matt,” he whispered.

  They moved forward, and as Matt and his girlfriend — Courtney, that was her name — drew closer, Sara noticed his limp. It was slight, something the average person likely wouldn’t notice at first, but it was a constant reminder of what he’d been through because of Taylor’s teenage mistakes.

  The four of them stopped with about a foot of space between them, Taylor tense at her side. Please let this go well.

  “Taylor.” Matt’s voice was rough and low, almost lost to the noise of the street around them.

  “Matt. You look good.” Taylor dropped her hand and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “My fiancée, Sara. Sara, Matt.”

  “Nice to meet you. This is Courtney.” Courtney flashed a wide, welcoming smile, then turned to her boyfriend and murmured something in his ear. After a quick kiss, she pointed at Sara and jerked her head to the side.

  “Hey, Sara, how ‘bout we leave the two of them to their manly make up fistfight?” Courtney asked.

  “Works for me.” She followed Courtney down the street, waiting until they were out of earshot of the brothers. “I’m glad you came.”

  “Withholding sex works wonders.” She glanced at Sara. “He’s got a lot of anger to let go.”

  Sara stole a peek over her shoulder. Taylor and Matt still stood in the middle of the sidewalk, and Matt’s mouth was a grim slash. “He’s here. As long as he listens, that’s all Taylor cares about.”

  They rounded a corner, and Courtney nudged her toward a storefront. “I can’t promise anything, but I’m working on getting Matt to attend the wedding. His mom said it’s in September?”

  “Early September, in Cannon Beach.” Her phone buzzed in her purse, and she pulled it out.

  Grabbing a beer with Matt. Gimme two hours?

  She blinked back sudden tears, and she showed the phone to Courtney, who grinned. It was a start. A small step of progress.

  She knew all about small steps. And how they became leaps.

  She shot off a response and tucked her phone away. “Do you mind doing some shopping with me? I still need to get wedding favors.”

  Courtney opened the shop door. “Only if you tell me how you and Taylor got together.”

  “We got trapped by a snowstorm on a business trip.” She groaned in relief at the rush of cold air. “I don’t know how you handle this humidity. I’m surprised I haven’t melted.”

  “You get used to it after a while. A snowstorm, huh?”

  Sara grinned. “Best snowstorm ever.”

  Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed Sara and Taylor’s story.

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  Keep reading for a sneak peek at Broken Down, the next book in the Hidden Scars series, out April 2016.

  Sneak peek at Broken Down

  Shane tossed his bag into the back of the extend cab and shut the door. All that was left to do was double check the straps holding his bike in place and he’d be gone.

  Gone couldn’t come soon enough.

  At three in the morning, the
paparazzi had mostly left. A few dogged ones were still hanging around down the street. But by now, most of them had realized he wasn’t pulling the all nighters anymore, so they disappeared around midnight and filtered back around dawn.

  Max tugged on the tarp covering the Honda, securing it to the straps. “You sure about this, man?”

  He shrugged. “No. Can’t think of a better option, though, so might as well go for it.” Boosting himself up into the truck bed, he and Max went over the hooks, jerking on them. The straps held, and the bike didn’t move. This was as good as he was going to get. “You ready?”

  Max’s lip curled in his familiar smirk, and he vaulted over the side of the truck, landing lightly on his feet. “Let’s do this shit.”

  Shane shook his head and got out of the bed, digging for his car keys. The Thieves’ manager liked causing trouble. Any kind of trouble, but creating distractions was his favorite. He’d never outgrown the adolescent love of pranks, and he was on a one-man mission to top himself, every time. What the hell did he have planned for this round of Thieves versus the paps?

  On second thought, Shane didn’t want to know. It involved his pride and joy, the Caddy he’d restored with his brother. If there was going to be carnage, he’d be better off not knowing.

  The heavy-duty pick up was new, purchased by Max several weeks ago and snuck in when Shane was out playing rock prince for the media. He’d hated every necessary minute of it. The weeks between the arrival of the truck and his imminent departure snuck under his skin and dragged sharp, tiny nails over his nerves. He couldn’t write, couldn’t play, couldn’t do jack shit and spent long hours on his bike and even longer hours running along the beach, doing his best to ignore the world. Being cooped up in his house, trapped by the fucking flashbulbs and shouted questions, was driving him out of his mind.

  If Krista turned him away, he didn’t know what the fuck he’d do. Find some cabin near the coast and turn hermit, probably.

  “I’ll text you once I’m there.” The keys jingled in his hand, twitching with eagerness to get on the road.

  Max sobered. “You think she’ll say yes? Need me to find you a place?”

  Shane shook his head. “She’ll say yes.” She would, at least for one night. Relying on her inherent kindness was a dick move on his part, but he knew, even after she’d kicked him out, she’d give him her couch for a night.

  It was part of what’d drawn him to her.

  The stifling late August air closed in around him, and he sucked in a breath, blew it out, repeating the ritual he used to shed the antsy shudders before he performed. He pulled a second key chain from his pocket and tossed the keys to Max, who snatched them out of the air with a grin. “Come on.”

  Max strolled over to the vintage Cadillac convertible and lovingly stroked his hand over the glossy, dark red finish. “Baby, you and I are going to have a fucking fantastic ride together,” he crooned.

  “Cut it out,” Shane said, irritated.

  “Hey, just letting her get to know me a little. We’re going to be spending a lot of quality time together, you know?” Shane growled, and Max laughed, opening the door. “Relax. She’ll sit in the garage while you’re gone. Poor thing.”

  Shane watched his friend and manager climb behind the wheel of his baby. It was one of the few reminders he had left of what his brother had been like before the drugs became his one and only hobby. Hours spent in the garage, swapping out parts, welding the chassis, sweating and bleeding and grunting their way through the restoration. They’d written some of their best songs during that period, too.

  He got in the truck, waiting for the familiar rumble of his Caddy starting up. He felt like a nervous father, watching Max ease the car into gear and down the long, winding driveway to the street. Max was right, though. His car was recognizable. With the top up, the few dickwads still hanging around would follow the car, wanting to know where he was going at three fuckin’ o’clock in the morning. It’d give him the chance to slip out the other side of the neighborhood and backtrack to the freeway.

  He lowered the window and held his breath, listening. Out here, near Silver Lake, it was as quiet as it got for Los Angeles. No sounds of out place. No whistles or screeches of metal. Thank Christ. He relaxed a bit, certain that whatever Max had planned, it wasn’t going to damage the car.

  He craned his neck and stared up at the sky. No stars. None. Too smoggy. Maybe he’d be able to see them in Portland. From the map he’d studied earlier, her house was in an outer suburb, farther away from the light pollution of the city.

  A band squeezed his chest at the thought of her, all blue eyes and blond hair, long legs and soft skin. He wondered if she still had purple streaks in her hair, or if she’d changed the color.

  His phone buzzed, pulling him away from thoughts of Krista, and he thumbed off the lock. “Still in one piece?”

  “You worry too much about the damn car, Shane. I counted five cars as I drove past, and I’ve got four of them behind me. Not sure where the fifth went.” A horn blasted into his ear, and he winced, pulling the phone away. “Get your ass on the road. Your window’s closing.”

  Shane hung up without saying goodbye, turned the key, and rolled down the driveway, going right where Max had gone left.

  He glanced in the rearview as he drove down the street. The lone, battered car stayed where it was, not unusual in the eclectic neighborhood. Still, he took random turns, dragging out the drive to the freeway by another half hour before he merged into the early morning traffic.

  Fifteen hours before he saw her again.

  She clenched her hands in her lap, staring across the room. He could see it coming, and he fumbled for the words that would tell her everything he'd been trying to say for the past few months. How he wanted her. Needed her. Needed her, for so much more than what they had. If he could get it out, he could change the future. Their future.

  Then she turned those gorgeous eyes on him and uttered the words he’d been dreading. “I can’t do this anymore.”

  He smacked his palm on the steering wheel and forced himself to concentrate. If he thought too much about Krista, he’d talk himself out of it, and he needed her.

  It had never been just fucking for him. Their sex had been plentiful and varied, and most nights that’s all they’d done, but the times they’d sat on her couch watching White Collar, that she’d made him a late dinner after a failed studio session, or wrapped around him as he navigated the winding roads up Topanga Canyon on the back of the motorcycle, those meant as much to him as having her naked and spread out before him like some kind of hedonistic feast.

  More, really. She’d become his bright light on the horizon. His hope that it would get better.

  He made good time on the way up to the Bay Area, then lost it as construction slowed progress to a crawl. By the time he reached the California-Oregon border, he’d downed one too many cups of coffee in an effort to stay awake, and he had to pull off the freeway. He paid cash for a cheap motel room that stank of cigarettes and mold and fell face first on the bed, sleeping for a solid five hours before jolting awake.

  He bypassed the shower after giving the towels a dubious sniff, then grabbed a burger at the run-down diner attached to the motel before hitting the road again.

  Nerves tightened his hands on the wheel the closer he got to Krista’s. She’d kicked him out for a reason, and he’d understood it. He’d have given her whatever she’d asked for. But he was tired of holding it together for everyone else, tired of being the strong one, and she was the only one he knew who’d hold him up.

  No sex. Not this time. He’d respect her wishes, though he was prepared to beg to be allowed to stay on her couch for a while. Hell, he’d take a few days.

  The porch light was off, the street deserted as he eased into her driveway. A light was on in one of the windows, glowing faintly behind the curtains. Was she still awake? One of the reasons they’d worked was because her night owl tendencies matched his own.

/>   He shut off the engine and sat there, hoping like hell she wouldn’t cut him off at the knees before he had a chance to say anything.

  * * *

  She waited.

  The unfamiliar growl of an engine had shut off moments ago, and curiosity was starting to get the better of her. Whoever it was had stopped in her driveway. There was only one person who’d come by this late, and she hadn’t seen or heard from him in months. He didn’t even know how to find her.

  I can’t do this anymore.

  And Shane being Shane, he’d left, exactly like she’d asked him to, without protest or platitudes. Just a final kiss before he’d walked out the front door. It’d been for the best — she was ready for more, and knew he’d never give it to her. It wasn’t what they were about. She was his distraction, and for a while, it’d worked for her.

  Pushing back from her desk, she stood and padded down the hall to the front entry, peering through the long, narrow window next to the door. A monster of a truck sat in her driveway, a tarp covering something in the bed. She couldn’t make out any of the driver’s features.

  A shiver of fear skated down her spine. Her best friend Sara and her fiancé had been attacked several months ago, the act brutal enough it’d landed Taylor in the hospital with a gunshot wound. The guy’d been caught, sure, and so far no one else connected to Taylor’s old gang life had made the trek across the country to disrupt their lives, but still…

  Better safe than sorry.

  She stepped back after making sure the deadbolt was in place and went in search of her phone. When she’d rented the house two months ago, the amount of space, both inside the house and around it, had appealed to her after living so long squished in between people.

  For the first time, she thought all that space wasn’t such a good thing.

  A knock on the door had her straightening her shoulders. She was being ridiculous. The neighborhood was safe as houses. She snagged her phone off the kitchen table and walked to the door, squinting through the peephole.

  Even in the dark, she recognized Shane’s face. She flipped the locks and opened the door. “You drove an awfully long way for a booty call that isn’t going to happen.”