21 (The List Series)

by Rhonda James

  I never expected to come back, not after the cops had hauled my ass to jail. If it hadn’t been for the item I’d left hidden in my old room, this would be the last place I’d choose to visit. In the ten years since Mom had died, I’d spent a total of three years inside this house. This house wasn’t where I called home; that had been the house I’d shared with Mom in Charleston. I’d grown up there. It was the house where I’d broken my arm when I fell out of the tree in the backyard. It was where I’d smoked my first cigarette behind the garage. Rolled my first blunt. Drank my first beer, followed by many more. It had also been where I’d first gotten my dick wet. Stephanie Carlisle was the girl. She was sixteen to my fourteen. Fourteen years old and thought I ruled the fucking world. Hell, in some respects I had, at least in my own mind. Middle school had been the place where it all started. Where I’d been introduced to drugs and alcohol. Where I scored my first ounce of weed then promptly decided to cut out the middleman and start dealing myself. Before long, if anyone in school wanted to get high, they came to me. I never discriminated. I sold to students, teachers, stay-at-home moms, and prominent businessmen alike.

  It wasn’t as if my father had been around to set me straight. Nope. He’d taken off when I was three, and after the divorce was final, he moved to Mount Pleasant and married Sarah. A year later, they had Dad’s Golden Boy, Michael. Early on, I spent every other weekend with Dad and his new family, but once I turned thirteen, I told Mom I didn’t want to go back. Dad and Michael were easy to get along with, but Sarah was a raging bitch who hated me, and she made a point of reminding me of that fact every time I set foot inside her house.

  By the time I was fifteen, I’d been sent to juvie twice, and each time I was released, I picked up right where I’d left off. Then, on the day of my sixteenth birthday, during my third and final stint in juvie, Mom had baked me a cake and wanted to come wish me a happy birthday in person. She’d been on her way to visit but was killed in a head-on collision with a semi.

  Thankfully, I’d been allowed to attend her funeral, but I’ll never forget the look on people’s faces. It was as if they’d blamed me for her death. I might not have been the one behind the wheel, but if I’d stayed out of trouble, she wouldn’t have been driving that stretch of road in the first place. Mom had been the only person in my life who mattered, and after she died, any ability I had to give a shit had been buried right along with her.

  My life took a real shit after that. My sentence was finally up and, since I’d been underage at the time of her death, Dad had taken me home to live with them. Sarah had made it clear to Dad and myself that she wasn’t comfortable having a delinquent living under her roof. Dad had mumbled something to the effect that I’d just lost my mom so she should try having a little compassion, but by that time, I’d come to realize compassion wasn’t something Sarah possessed. At least where I was concerned. In an effort to keep the peace, Dad had set me up in the guesthouse, which was far removed from the main house but situated next to the pool. I’d only been living there a year before I got kicked out of school for selling dime bags. After that, Dad warned me I wouldn’t be welcome if I couldn’t stay out of trouble, so I packed a bag and took off in the middle of the night. I returned three years later, but that was only because Michael had asked me to come back before he left for college.

  I can honestly say I never gave a shit that Dad and I had never been close. To make up for it, I’d surrounded myself with plenty of people I knew would always be there for me if and when I ever needed them. God knew he probably wouldn’t have lowered himself to bail my sorry ass out of jail.

  One good thing to come out of my time in juvenile detention had been meeting my best friend, Jared Hawkins, or ‘Hawk’ as I’d labeled him in juvie. We’d both been sent there on the same charges and were the same age. He’d been the one I called when I had no other place to go, and he picked me up and drove me to his hometown, where his family welcomed me with open arms. While there, he introduced me to his friends J.T. and Gunner. The three of them had been trying to start a band but were looking for someone to sing and play rhythm guitar. As luck would have it, when I was ten, Mom had dated a musician named Blade. He and Mom had known each other growing up and dated off and on when they were teenagers. He was really nice, not around all that often, but when he was in town, he went out of his way to spend time with Mom and never failed to include me. One night, he caught me messing around with his guitar, and rather than get pissed at me for touching his shit, he sat down next to me and taught me how to play. He made me practice every damn day, and I loved every minute of it. Then, one day, he and Mom got into this big fight and she told him it was over between them. Back then, I’d been too young to understand about relationships and how that situation had affected either of them. All I’d known was how it affected me. Blade had become my friend. I heard him tell her good-bye, but before he left, he came to my room and handed me his guitar and told me that music was in my soul and made me promise to never let it die. He also promised to keep in touch, and over the years, he never failed to make good on that promise.

  The four of us practiced day and night in Hawk’s garage until we found our groove. Over the next year, we played every high school and college party we could find, and eventually we built up a following. One night after a show, we loaded up his clunker van and hit the road. We spent a few years traveling, playing dive bars, staying in cheap motels when we could afford it, but most nights we slept in the van. We earned shit for money, but the people we met and the lessons learned along the way had been invaluable.

  Not long after returning to Mount Pleasant, I met up with some old friends for a few drinks. A few hours later, some guys entered the bar. I’d recognized two of them, and it was clear they recognized me because they made their way to where I’d been sitting; heated words were exchanged. One thing led to another and a brawl broke out. After a lengthy fight with a guy so strung out on crack he didn’t know the meaning of the phrase ‘stay down,’ I tried walking away, but then he pulled a knife on me, so I followed suit and pulled one of my own. The result landed me in the hospital for three days, while he earned a toe tag and a space in the refrigerated vault at the county morgue. Twenty-four hours after being released from the hospital, the cops showed up at Dad’s and arrested me.

  When Dad heard the charges against me, he called up his best friend and renowned defense attorney, Gavin Prescott. Gavin scanned the police report before interviewing me, then pleaded my case before the judge. He argued that the dead man, Travis Walker, had been a felon with previous assault charges. He stated that I’d acted in self-defense and was lucky to be alive. The manslaughter charge was dropped, but the cocaine found in my possession and my long history of drug charges bought me a hefty fine and two years at a medium security prison located two hours north of Mount Pleasant.

  During my time inside, they made all inmates participate in a ninety-day drug rehabilitation program. I’d been forced to sit through enough of those before to know how they operated, but somehow this one got to me. Got inside my head, ya know? Every inmate had a job assignment and somehow, I lucked out and landed kitchen duty. While the conditions weren’t always the best, it sure as fuck beat working laundry or scrubbing toilets. Nearly two years of my life were spent slaving inside a blazing-hot kitchen prepping meals and cleaning up after everyone’s mess. When I wasn’t in the kitchen, I worked out or took classes to finish my GED.

  On the day of my release, I walked outside and found Hawk waiting in the parking lot with his ass resting against the door of his ’66 cherry-red Camaro. When the gate closed behind me, he gave me a one-armed thump on the back and raised his fist to meet mine. We pounded it out, and I cast one last glance over my shoulder then declared that would be the last time I’d spend a day behind bars. I was done. It was time to start taking life seriously. The band started back up, and we’d been making it work ever since. Eight months had passed since my release, and I still had no intentions of ever returning
to the hell otherwise known as prison, but in no way did that mean I’d turned into a fucking saint.

  A quick survey of the house verified Dad and Sarah weren’t home, which made what I came to do a little easier. I suppose if they were, I could just tell them what I drove here for, but that would only result in stirring up old shit, because he would surely start lecturing me about how I was wasting my life by chasing the rock ‘n’ roll dream. Fuck that. To him, it might seem like a waste of time, but to me… The dream of making it big was the only hope I’d allowed myself to have. I didn’t care how long it took or what it cost, I was not giving up. Wouldn’t even consider it. Not until I was six feet under.

  I swung open the back gate and headed straight for the pool house, where I used to keep a spare key hidden. I felt around the underside of the filtration unit until I located the small black box still in place, but when I reached the door, I realized a key wasn’t going to do the trick. At some point after I’d last been here, they’d invested in a keyless entry system and, surprise surprise, never told me the fucking code.

  I knew better than to start punching in random numbers, so after mentally running through every combination I could think of, I had an idea of what it might be, but I needed verification. I pulled out my phone and called the only person in my family I was still on speaking terms with. Thankfully, he picked up on the third ring.

  CHAPTER 3

  SIN

  “Fuckin’ A, brother! Thought you up and died or something. How the hell are you?” Michael yelled into the phone. From the sound of the music in the background, I assumed he was at a party, which would be par for the course with my kid brother. It seemed he spent a great deal of time either drunk, stoned, or both. How he managed to keep passing his classes was beyond me, but all I’d ever achieved was a fucking prison GED, so what the fuck would I know about it?

  “Sorry ‘bout that, man. Guess I’ve been a little preoccupied with the band and shit. It’s good to hear your voice. You okay? Staying out of trouble?”

  Despite my knowledge of his drug use, I never failed to ride him about keeping his nose clean. I’d spent the last year educating him about the hells of prison and what it was like to have someone monitoring your every move, twenty-four seven, three hundred sixty-five days a year. That kind of shit is not for the faint at heart, and my baby brother had led too pampered a life to survive inside a prison cell. Hell, he’d probably go psycho and be one of those poor bastards who hung himself with a bed sheet or some stupid shit like that.

  “Can’t complain, my brotha’. Captain of the football team. Dean’s list. I’m surrounded by bitches who can’t keep their hands off my dick. But hey, look who I’m talking to, fucking King of Pussy. You still bangin’ and bailin’ every night?”

  I thought about giving him an honest answer and telling him most of the girls I met these days weren’t worthy of riding my dick, but it was clear he wasn’t looking for honesty. For some strange reason, I always got the impression he was proud of all the shitty things I’d done over the years. The shittiest part was how that made me feel. Michael was the only person who looked at me that way, outside of my own mother, and she was dead.

  The lie came easily. “You fucking know it.”

  “Hell yeah! That’s the badass brother I strive to emulate. So tell me, where are you these days? Think you’ll ever make it back to Florida? I could really use some more of that blow you gave me before you were locked up. Remember that shit? That shit was fucking righteous, dude.”

  “I’ll actually be heading that way tomorrow, but I’m not sure about the blow, man. I don’t really talk to that guy these days.”

  While that statement might have been true, I left off the reason why we were no longer on speaking terms. Besides the fact I’d stopped doing blow after my last sentencing, that wasn’t the only reason I’d severed all ties with Silas Walker. That friendship ended the moment I killed his kid brother.

  “No sense coming to see me if you can’t deliver. Just saying.” He tried playing it off as a joke, but part of me knew that was how it was between us. We got along fine and had dropped the ‘half’ from our brother status a long time ago, but despite all that, there was still an underlying tension that sparked between us every time we were around one another.

  “My band landed a gig playing a bar in Panama City, so we’ll be camping out there for the summer. Which brings me to the reason for my call. I sorta need your help.”

  Someone at the party must have turned up the volume, because the next thing I knew, loud rap was blasting through the speaker on my phone.

  “With?” Michael asked as if he hadn’t noticed the change in volume.

  Here goes nothing.

  “When’s your mom’s birthday?”

  His voice quickly turned suspicious. “August eighth, why?”

  “Oh, I was just racking my brain and for the life of me couldn’t remember it.” I punched in the combination, and the system beeped twice. Fuck, that was loud, wasn’t it? Shit!

  “What was that noise? Where the fuck are you? You’re in the guesthouse? Goddammit, Dylan, you know they don’t want you there.”

  Even though I knew no one was home, I tried being quiet so as not to attract the attention of any nosey-ass neighbors. “Calm the fuck down. I’m only here for something I left behind. They won’t even know I’ve been here.”

  “Wrong. When they had that new system installed, they also installed motion sensor security cameras inside the house,” he warned.

  “Fuck!” I cursed and pulled the hoodie low over my face. Keeping my head down, I moved down the hall, making sure to stick to the darkened shadows as much as possible.

  “Look, whatever you need, just get it and get the fuck out of there. They’re in Africa on some safari right now, so I highly doubt Dad will be checking the monitor feed. Without looking directly at the camera, tell me if the little red light is on in the upper right-hand corner.”

  I looked up and didn’t see a red light. My muscles immediately relaxed. “No, it’s still green.”

  A whistle echoed through the phone. “You’re in luck. They forgot to turn it on before they left. Seriously though, you probably shouldn’t be there too long. You never know who may be watching the house,” he warned.

  “Got it. What about the neighbors next door?”

  “You’re in luck. They joined them on the safari,” he advised.

  “Thanks, man. I really appreciate your help.”

  “Yeah, you can return the favor next time you see me,” he hinted.

  “Maybe.” I laughed it off, but I had no intention of helping him out with that request. Silas Walker was the only dealer I knew who could score that particular blend, and he was the last person I wanted to run into. There was too much bad blood between us, and I didn’t mean that in the metaphorical sense. The last time we saw each other, we’d both been lucky to walk away alive. If it hadn’t been for Hawk, I’d probably be six feet under right now. While I was locked up, our drummer, Gunner, found himself hooked on blow, and after what I’d just been through, I had no desire to be around that shit. Hawk and J.T. felt the same way. We tried convincing Gunner that he needed help, but he wanted no part of it, so we decided if he wasn’t willing to cut out the hard drugs, then he no longer had a place in the band. Last I heard, he’d gotten pretty tight with Silas, and at the rate he was snorting, he was probably in debt up to his eyeballs and would end up dead soon.

  What a fucking waste.

  I entered my old room and quickly scanned the darkened space. Right away, it was obvious Sarah had gotten rid of all the shit I’d left behind. Twenty bucks says it ended up in the trash bin before I’d ever made it to the end of the street. I swear that bitch hated me with a passion. That was okay. The feeling was mutual. As I passed the window, I looked out and saw a light in the house next door. Was that on ten minutes ago?

  I decided to shift the conversation away from drugs. “You still dating that chick that lived next door?
What was her name again?” I pretended like I couldn’t remember, but honestly, you don’t forget someone with a mouth like hers.

  Full, perfectly shaped lips that pursed automatically whenever I came within ten feet of her. Last time I saw those lips had been right in this house. In the very hallway I’d just come down. I’d been pretty wasted that night but alert enough to remember almost kissing her, and I would have if she hadn’t prattled on about telling Michael. Anyway, it wasn’t as if I’d been interested. It’s just that I was enough of an asshole to see if I could get away with it. I won’t lie, though, there’d been occasions when I’d had my dick in some random chick’s mouth and closed my eyes and imagined that it was little V’s luscious lips caressing my throbbing cock instead of the slut between my legs. The best part of those fantasies would have to be the moment right before my release. Imaginary V’s eyes would lock with mine, and her tongue would swirl the head of my swollen cock as I pumped into her eager mouth. Better still, her sultry gaze would never leave mine as she licked her lips after swallowing my load.

  Oh yeah, I could definitely envision the tip of my cock meeting the back of her delicate throat. I remembered the look in her eyes that night four years ago. She’d wanted me to kiss her. I could have had her that night. I was almost certain of it. But it was probably best if I kept that shit to myself. Wouldn’t want to make baby brother jealous.

  “Tori?” Michael hesitated. “Why?”

  “No reason. Just thought I saw her,” I answered casually. “What’s up with that? Ever get her to spread her legs?”

  “Yeah, I fucked her,” he bragged unabashedly.