by L. T. Kelly
“It’s okay, angel. You’re safe.”
“I am safe with you, aren’t I?”
Evan swallowed hard and placed a kiss on her forehead. “Of course, you are.”
Al had taken the keys from Evan before he’d gotten Katie out of the car. “I locked the car. Before we get up there, I need to tell you something.” His lips pressed into a thin line.
“What is it?”
“I hired some security. I didn’t want you to be surprised when we got to your door. Don’t be mad at me, lad. I was trying to do what’s best.”
Evan nodded and peered down at Katie’s face. She slept serenely like the angel she was. He’d do whatever it took to keep her safe. As far as he was concerned, the security wasn’t for him; it was for her. As much as she’d kick up a fuss over it, he’d also have to hire some people to look after her back in London, too. He’d never allow anything like this to happen to her again. “That’s fine, thanks. You did the right thing.”
Al offered him a smile and walked in front, past the burly looking men to get the door unlocked. Evan stepped inside the apartment behind Al, who headed straight for the kitchen. Evan took a seat on the couch, still cradling Katie in his arms. He looked down at her face as her eyes flickered open. Another wave of relief that she was safe washed over him.
Al came in and offered them both a glass of Scotch before taking a place opposite them. Katie woke up a little more. She chewed on her bottom lip as she scooted off Evan’s lap and sat beside him, taking a sip of whiskey.
“I found something out today.” She sighed and glanced around the room. “This is something that’s so hard for me to have to tell you, babe. But your dad didn’t take those drugs of his own freewill. Your mother killed him.”
Evan couldn’t help his sharp intake of breath. He tried to extinguish the fog in his brain.
“But the toxicology report said—” Al piped up, his voice pitched high.
“Screw the toxicology report. She damn near admitted it right in front of me, and Toby gloated over what he knew.”
“Well, how the bloody hell did she pull it off. Unless…” Al slapped his palm to his head.
“What?” Katie and Evan asked in unison.
“Your mother’s father.” Al looked directly at Evan. “Ricky told me that Lynn’s father was a man of the law. It was all sneaky beaky, hush-hush and no one really knows what his job actually was. Lynn’s family disowned her when she married your father. They didn’t like her being a model anyway, but when she married a rock star, they about wanted to die. Damn them,” he huffed. “He must have had something to do with it. You’ve no idea how many times I begged the police to look into it. I knew Ricky wasn’t into drugs.”
Silence stifled the air of the room. Katie broke it. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to find out what happened,” Evan said, putting grit into his voice.
* * * *
One cop looked to another as Evan approached the hospital room door.
“This one isn’t allowed visitors, sir.”
Evan held up his palms. “I want to visit my mom before she goes to jail for a long time. Besides, are you going to cover her hospital bill? Because, unless I get in there and see what I’m paying for, I won’t be either.”
They looked at each other again. One of them finally got the message. “Okay, you have ten minutes.”
“I don’t wanna get you guys in any trouble, but I have a feeling you’ll be thanking me after my little visit.”
The other cop stood straighter. “I’ll have to escort you.”
Evan realized what he’d said had made it sound as if he intended to kill her. He’d like to, but he wanted her to suffer. The only way that would happen was if she went to jail for the rest of her life.
“That’s cool with me. Shall we?” He nodded to the room where his mother lay. The officer stepped inside first and held the door open for him to enter, too.
“She’s sleeping. You’ll have to come back.”
“Like hell I will. I’ve wasted enough of my time on trying to sort out this woman. Today, that ends.” He wasn’t sure if the determination buried inside him had crossed his features or if what he’d said made the officer back off. He didn’t stop Evan as he charged forward and shook her until she woke.
Part of him enjoyed the shocked look on her face when she laid eyes on him.
“Evan, I—”
“I talk first. Listen carefully. I know what you did to my dad.”
Her mouth clamped shut, and she looked away.
“Tell me what happened, make a full confession and I’ll pay for a lawyer. That way, you may just about manage to get life with a chance of parole. Otherwise, you’re on your own, and you can guess the rest.”
She still couldn’t look him in the eye. She gazed at the ceiling, undoubtedly running through the options in her head.
“I don’t want parole,” she whispered.
“Just tell me,” he bellowed, making his mother flinch and the cop take a step forward.
“I’ve been in prison for a very long time, Evan. What I did to your father was the biggest mistake of my life. The alcohol and drugs have been the only things to numb the pain of what I did.”
He watched the rise and fall of her throat, knowing she’d swallowed hard. Tears dampened her cheeks and pooled in ugly blobs on the pillow.
“I’m tired of running from what I did to him. The truth is I was jealous. My family disowned me when I married your father. God, Evan, I loved him so much. I couldn’t have cared less if I ever clapped eyes on any of them again.”
Evan flinched. How dare she tell me she loved the man she killed, the man she’s spent my whole life telling me to forget?
“Your father still had his family and the band. I had nothing.”
“Are you saying he didn’t take care of you? That’s why you murdered him?” His voice was filled with incredulity.
She shook her head, setting more tears free from her eyes.
“No, he did. He always cared and made sure I was good. It wasn’t until I had you that things got bad.”
“Oh, geez, thanks.” Evan spun away from the bed and faced the wall, running a hand through his blond hair.
“I didn’t mean it like that.” She choked on her words.
He turned to face her again. “How did you mean it then? What? I screwed up your life because you weren’t carefree to skip around after him anymore? You chose to have me. It’s not my damn fault,” he yelled at her.
His words didn’t ring true though, because to him it was entirely his fault. He’d carried around the weight of it his whole life. His father hadn’t cared enough not to take a shitload of drugs and sleep with whores. At least, that could be taken off his conscience now. But his dear old mother hadn’t cared enough about him not to take his dad away then drink herself into oblivion.
“It wasn’t your fault. Hell, it wasn’t his either. I know now that I had post-partum depression. I loved you. I hardly let even your father touch you—or me for that matter. I’d sit there all day, holding you, working myself up, thinking that if he wasn’t getting love from me then who was he getting it from? As time moved on, I distanced myself from you, hoping it would make the feelings subside. I figured I loved you too much.” She sighed and caught her breath, the tears still streaming down her cheeks. She turned her face, so now she looked directly into Evan’s eyes.
He couldn’t recall the last time he’d spoken to her in a sober state. He wanted to hate her so much. He fought the tug of sorrow he felt while looking into his mother’s sad eyes and dragged himself back to that fact she’d killed his dad.
“Well, that didn’t happen. Your pitiful story is breaking my goddamn heart, so let’s cut to the chase. What did you do to him?”
“He left me, told me he was done with my shit. I refused to leave the house, so he scooped you up and left. He had no family here and no place to go. I followed him. He checked into a hotel. I was so scar
ed he’d take you from me forever. You were all I had left then.”
“Is that when you did it? Is that when you murdered my dad?”
She shook her head, hiccoughing. “No, I planned it all. I got hold of some prescription drugs, morphine and some heroin from a street dealer. Two days later, I called him up and headed to the hotel under the pretense of wanting to visit you.”
“You sick bitch,” Evan hissed, trying desperately to keep his anger toward his mother under wraps. “You killed my dad when I was in the room?”
Her hiccoughing morphed into sobs.
“Go on cry. You deserve to cry,” Evan huffed and turned to leave. “Have you heard enough?” he asked the wide-eyed cop as he got to the door.
He nodded. “But don’t you want to know the rest? Man, how did this woman get away with doing all that?”
Evan stormed out of the room, the cop following him.
“Look, buddy I get that it must be hard for you to hear, but without hearing the rest, do you really think you’ll get closure?”
Evan stopped, putting his hands on his hips and considering the officer’s words without turning to look at him. Did the guy want it for his own ends, or maybe, just out of pure curiosity about how the story would end? Either way, Evan would probably always wonder what had happened next if he didn’t go in and hear it all now.
He turned to face the policeman. “Okay, on the condition that you take all this down. I don’t want to relay any of this ever again. Do you understand?” He spoke through gritted teeth, making himself crystal clear.
“I hear you, buddy.”
They made their way into the room where Lynn’s crying had quieted, but her tears still freely flowed. He snatched the chair stashed neatly in the corner of the room and set it so it rested opposite the bed. It looked more like an interrogation room than a hospital room. Of course, that’s exactly what it was.
“Go on. I’ll let you finish this fucked-up story.” He spoke just loud enough for her to hear, and he struggled to let numbness overcome him. When it came to his mother, he didn’t want to feel anything anymore. She’d done too much over the course of his life. He couldn’t take much more of her bullshit.
She sniffed. “What do you want to know?”
“Start with what happened when you got to the hotel room.”
“I brought a six pack of beer. Your dad loved a drink. I’d pried off the caps, and laced it with morphine and placed them back on just so.”
Evan crossed his arms over his chest and squeezed his eyes shut. If her voice hadn’t been so sad, he’d have figured her for a brag.
“I changed my mind about five times, especially when he offered me one and I refused. Funny, I hardly touched a drop back then.” She barked a sarcastic laugh. Evan balled his fists. He’d never struck a woman, and he wasn’t about to start with his mother, murderer or not.
“I almost admitted what I’d done. As he opened his fifth beer, he told me he was sad our marriage had ended, that there wasn’t and had never been anyone else.” She drew in a long breath and released it slowly. “But he continued that there would be no going back for us, that I’d have to leave the house. He promised to support me, but he was adamant that he intended on keeping you. He sealed his own fate.”
“Sealed his own fate? You really are crazy. You went there with beer bottles filled with drugs. You sealed his fate, not him. Cut the crap, and tell me how he wound up with the whores and how you ended up getting away with it?”
Despite her predicament, Lynn huffed anyway. “I waited for him to pass out and shot him up with heroin. Okay. That’s what I did. Then I crapped my panties. I crapped them when I looked in the crib at you sleeping. What if I got caught?”
She barked that laughter again. It sliced through him like a knife.
“You’d be the son of Ricky Rae and Lynn Waters and in the fucking system. I couldn’t let it happen.”
Evan clamped his mouth shut and took in air through his nose. He held his anger back so much that he’d have to punch something once he got out of here.
“Anyway, my dad was a fed. I called him. He fixed it. Paid some drugged-up whores to appear as witnesses and say Ricky had shot up the heroin himself and died after fucking them. It obviously made the fit, because it worked.”
Gone were her tears. She’d dried up and became the opposite of the weeping mother she’d been when he’d first walked in.
“You did your part. You’ll get your lawyer.” He slammed the chair back and stepped toward the door.
“Evan.”
He hesitated but turned around anyway.
“I do love you. I did it all for you.”
“Fuck you, Mom. You did it all for yourself.” Without further hesitation, he ripped open the door and walked out of there, back to his life, back to his self-made family. His mother was as dead to him as his father was.
Chapter Twenty-One
The crowd cried out for their encore in a sold-out London O2 arena.
“You’re seriously making me do this shit?” Alex raised a brow at Evan.
“Don’t be a douche bag, Alex. We agreed to this together. Get your pants off.” Evan sniggered as he threw a pair of pink panties at his friend. “Yeah, and get them on. It might make you feel sexy, bro.”
“Fuck you.” Alex hissed, pulling them up his legs. “The shit I do for this band.”
Evan clapped him on the back. “There are chicks out there who get off on this kind of stuff.”
Alex and Evan pulled their guitars back over their heads and stepped back onto the stage. The crowd erupted into a deafening round of applause and wolf whistles.
“You like our outfits?” Alex spoke into the mic, his voice laced with amusement. The audience screamed with appreciation when he tugged at the side of the panties and allowed them to snap back into place.
Evan stepped up to the mic. “Hey, London, we loved you, but this one’s for Katie!” He pressed his fingers to his lips and waved his hand out, sending them into a further screaming frenzy.
He sang from the heart, excited about the promising future Katie and he had together. When the final chord rang out, the last note sung, the band made their way to the front of the stage and took a deep bow.
“You ready, guys?” Evan asked his band mates, looking into their faces. “One, two, three.”
Spires turned in unison to reveal the letters emblazoned across their butts. Jamie had an M, Evan an E, Tom an L and the heart shape was saved for Alex’s ass.
They exchanged glances, all sniggering, knowing that Mel was somewhere in the audience. She’d love it. Katie had explained that she’d felt bad for discussing Mel’s bedwetting indiscretion. Although, they’d all promised they wouldn’t tell, she wanted to give her best friend a great leaving present. Eventually, the guys agreed. The crowd would never get it, but the band had been happy to help the woman who had gotten Evan through the roughest patch of his life.
Satisfied they’d given the crowd all they could, they high-fived each other and waved goodbye as they stepped off the stage and out of the limelight. For a few days, at least.
Evan scooped up his clothes and headed for his dressing room. This was the last of their seven-day British tour. Each venue had been a sellout. There were times he had to pinch himself at how lucky Spires had been.
Al had been like a dad to him. He’d been thoroughly supportive, and Evan knew it would have been difficult to survive without him. But Katie had pulled out all the stops, appearing in the courtroom the day his mother had been tried for first-degree murder.
He’d stuck to the deal and paid for a lawyer of Lynn’s choice. She’d chosen the cheapest, much to his surprise. He’d been desperate to ask her why. Only his pride stopped him from writing the letter or taking her up on the visitation orders she sent on a monthly basis.
Lynn had finally been brought to justice. She’d been sentenced to life with no chance of parole. As he thought about his mother and what he’d been through, his jaw sti
ffened. He pushed it to the back of his mind and willed it to slacken off. Enough.
He finished dressing and headed out to the VIP area.
A blond with an enormous rack threw herself at him as soon as he entered the room.
“You got something you want me to sign? Because I’m kind of busy looking for someone.”
The blond pouted as he peeled her off him. “Katie, huh?”
“You guessed right,” he said, taking the album from her outstretched hand and signing it before handing it back.
Mel’s unmistakable cackle alerted him to her presence from across the room. Hell, even he would miss that girl. His eyes connected with Katie’s immediately. She looked radiant, her cheeks pink, most likely from the heat of the crowd. Her eyes twinkled with amusement, and her beautiful lips were curled into an exquisite smile.
“Hey, angel,” he said when he’d managed to get through the crowd to pull her into his arms.
“You were amazing out there.”
“It was all for you. Are you all packed up and ready to leave?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure you’re ready?”
“Well, babe, I ain’t unpacking now, and Jessica is excited about starting her new school.” She smiled up at him.
Warmth flooded him when he thought about their unwavering commitment to each other. He knew she was giving up a lot to be with him, and it made him love her all the more. Things not working out wasn’t an option. The year they’d spent in a long-distance relationship had been hell for him.
“Hey, Mel, did you enjoy the show?” he asked, his voice filled with amusement.
Mel grinned. She and Alex were obviously rekindling something because they were draped all over each other.
“It was great. I’m not quite sure what I did to deserve such an honor,” she replied.
The band members exchanged bemused glances, though the color had drained from Katie’s face.
“It’s because we all miss you, Mel. Katie is really going to miss you,” he rushed to say, trying to cover up the snigger coming from Jamie’s mouth.
“Aw, thanks, guys. It was really sweet.”
