Rocking Kin (The Lucy & Harris Novella Series Book 3)

by Terri Anne Browning

I sucked in a deep breath and nodded my head. “Yes,” I whispered. “I forgive you, although I’m not sure you need my forgiveness.” I blew out a long sigh and pushed my hair back from my face. “Look, I understand why you left. Tainted Knights has what it takes to go far and I’m so damn proud of you and the others, Jace. That was never an issue. I just…”

  “You should have come before the band, Kin.” He dropped his head, as if ashamed. “I should’ve been there for you when your mom died. I know you would’ve been there for me if it had been Alicia.”

  Swallowing hard, I nodded. “Yeah. I would have been.”

  “I made a mistake. A huge one, at that.” He lifted his head, his eyes bright with determination. “And one I won’t ever repeat. I love you, Kin. I’ve loved you practically from the second I set eyes on you. I loved you even when I was walking away. I’ll love you for the rest of my life, baby.”

  Each word out of his mouth was like a direct hit to the chest. It hurt but it was a good kind of hurt. It eased all the lingering aches and filled my heart up with the love I’d never stopped feeling for him. “I didn’t stop loving you, Jace. I-I tried—hard—but I just couldn’t.”

  I felt tears sting my eyes and lowered my lashes so he wouldn’t see them. Great, more tears. Damn it, I hated crying. That’s all I seemed to do lately, though. I was turning into an emotional basket case.

  Warm, strong hands touched my arms. Jace had moved quickly again and was now crouched down in front of me. “I know it makes me seem like a bastard, but right now I don’t give a damn. I’m glad you didn’t stop loving me, Kin. I’ve had fucking nightmares about you stopping and it always made me wake up in a cold sweat.” He raised a hand and used his thumb and forefinger to tip my head up so our gazes locked. “I know I ruined things between us, baby. I shattered your trust in my feelings for you, but I won’t stop proving to you that—for me—you are everything. I won’t let you go again, Kin. I won’t walk away unless I know you’re going with me next time.”

  Without my permission, a tear spilled over onto my cheek. “Promise?” It came out a husky, trembling whisper but he heard me loud and clear.

  “Yes, Kin, I promise. I won’t go anywhere ever again unless you come with me.” His hold on my chin tightened when I tried to pull free, wanting to hide my feelings from him. I wanted to believe him, ached to believe him, but he couldn’t keep that promise. He couldn’t. His contract with First Bass would be up in a few months and then the one Tainted Knights signed with Emmie Armstrong would take effect. He would be running around everywhere with the band to get their name out there more, and I would still be right here.

  Raising my hand, I caught his hand and pulled it away just enough so I could lower my head to kiss his palm. “Don’t make me that promise, Jace. Make this one.” I sucked in a deep breath. “Promise me, that no matter where you go, you’ll come back. That’s all I want. For you to come back to me every time you go away. I’ll be waiting, right here, for you to always come back.”

  Blue eyes turned brighter and I caught my breath when I realized that he was fighting his own tears. “Fuck, Kin. You just destroyed me, baby.” He sucked in a harsh breath and stood. In the next second he was scooping me up in his arms and walking toward a closed door on the other side of the apartment. “That’s enough talking for one night, I think. Now…” He paused to open the door and then kicked it shut as he walked to his bed. “Now, I just want to hold you.” He sat me on the edge of the bed carefully, then reached for the comforter and pulled it back. “Just hold you, Kin. As much as I’m dying for you right now, I want to take things slow this time. Is that okay?”

  My heart contracted for the hundredth time that night. “Yeah,” I assured him with a trembling smile. “That’s more than okay, Jace.”

  Chapter 19

  Jace

  My phone was ringing, and it wouldn’t fucking stop. I’d already let it go to voicemail twice, but no sooner had the damn thing quieted, it had started making noise again. Groaning, I pressed a kiss to the back of Kin’s sweet-smelling head and blindly reached for my phone. “Yeah?” I grumbled, still half asleep.

  “Jace,” Natalie Cutter’s voice filled my ears.

  Something in her tone had me sitting straight up in bed, my heart already pounding. I heard concern and fear in her tone and it had me on red alert. “Nat, what’s wrong?”

  Harris’s stepmom let out a harsh sigh. “I just got a call from Emmie. She said something was going on with Harris. I can’t get him to answer his phone and Jenna’s keeps going straight to voicemail. I’m on my way over there now, but can you go up and check on him? I’m going to lose my mind if I don’t know he’s okay soon.”

  I glanced down at Kin, who was still sleeping peacefully. She was snuggled deep into one of my pillows, her beautiful face turned away from me with the smallest of smiles ghosting across her lips. Knowing I wouldn’t be able to fall back to sleep with her until I knew if my friend was okay, I climbed out of bed, careful not to wake Kin. “I’m on my way up there now,” I assured her. I pulled out my keys and found the extra that Harris had given me months before when he’d accidently locked himself out of his apartment and had needed to call a locksmith at three in the morning.

  “Thanks, Jace.” Natalie seemed relieved now.

  “No problem. I’ll call you back, okay?”

  “I appreciate it. I’ll be there within the next twenty minutes.”

  Hanging up, I put my phone in my pocket and stepped into the already waiting elevator. It took less than thirty seconds to go up the several floors that separated my apartment from the one Harris shared with Jenna Stevenson. Using my key, I opened the door and stepped into the dark apartment. Switching on lights as I went, I called out Harris’s name, already heading toward the bedroom I knew was his.

  “Harris? You okay, man? Your mom just called me. She’s worried about your ass.” I didn’t hear anything coming from his room and paused with my hand on the doorknob. For some reason dread tightened in my gut as I forced myself to slowly open the door.

  There was a shadowy outline of Harris’s big body on the bed and I reached for the light switch. “Yo, man…” Whatever I was going to say died on my tongue as I saw Harris.

  He was completely naked on his bed. He was turned on his side, but his body was so still I knew something was wrong. His chest didn’t move with the deep breaths that came with sleep and he was in a position that would have been uncomfortable for me, let alone a guy of Harris’s size.

  Without a second thought, I hurried to the bed. Touching a hand to his shoulder, I found his body ice cold. I shook him, trying to wake him up. “Harris,” I called loudly in his ear. “Hey, wake up. Your mom will be here soon.”

  He didn’t even flinch at the loudness of my voice. My heart pounding in my ears, I searched for a pulse. It took a few tries, but finally I found it. Slow and irregular. I felt a thump-thump-thump against my index and middle fingers in a pattern that scared the hell out of me.

  I shook his shoulder again. “Wake the fuck up,” I roared in his ear, scared out of my mind that I was going to watch him die.

  “What’s going on?”

  I didn’t even turn to look at Jenna as she rushed into the room. “Harris?” she muttered, then she was beside me. Screaming. “Harris. Harris, wake up. Wake up. Wake up.”

  Under my hold I felt him jerk and then start to shake. It took me a few seconds to realize he was convulsing. Holy fuck. Something white started to foam around his mouth.

  “Oh, my God,” Jenna cried as she helped me hold on to him. “He’s OD’ing.” She let go and reached for the landline phone beside the bed. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. What did you take?” she whispered as if to herself. “What the hell were you doing?”

  From the phone I heard the distinct voice of a female. “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

  Jenna’s voice shook as she spoke. “My roommate is overdosing.”

  “What did he take?” the operator asked, sounding
calm and cool. She probably took calls like this every day.

  “I don’t know,” she yelled into the receiver. “He’s having a seizure and there’s white stuff coming out of his mouth. He’s going to fucking die!”

  If I’d been scared before, it was nothing compared to what I felt right then. Fuck. No. No, I wouldn’t let him. I reached for the phone, jerking it out of Jenna’s hands. “What the hell do I do to save him?” I roared.

  Still calm and collected, the woman on the other end quickly walked me through what to do. I couldn’t honestly remember what happened over the next three minutes, as I fought Harris’s convulsing body to keep him alive while the EMTs got there. When two men appeared in the doorway with a stretcher and their medical gear, I let them take over.

  As I moved out of their way, shock started to set in and I began to shake. I felt cold and hot all at once as tears burned my eyes and my throat filled with a lump the size of a baseball. I saw one of the EMTs pull out a syringe and stab it into Harris’s still convulsing body. He went almost instantly slack.

  “What the fuck was that?” Jenna demanded, tears flowing freely down her face.

  “Something to pull him back to zero from the overdose, miss,” the EMT told her in a cool, professional tone. “We need to get him to the hospital. Now. Can one of you come with us?”

  “I’ll come,” Jenna told them before I could even open my mouth. I wanted to go too, but when I stepped forward to follow them, the second EMT stopped me. “Only room for one. You can meet us there.”

  Unable to talk through the lump still clogging my throat, I could only nod. Right. I’d follow. I needed to call Natalie back, too. Needed to tell Kin where I was going so she wouldn’t wake up and worry about me. I moved on autopilot as I rushed back down to my apartment.

  I didn’t understand how Harris could have OD’d. He wasn’t into drugs. He’d worked his ass off to get Jenna into a rehab and—

  Tessa!

  I paused halfway across my living room as realization hit me. Where the fuck was Tessa?

  Without even knowing what had happened, I knew instinctively that Tessa was behind what was going on with Harris. She had done this to him. He had nearly died. In. My. Fucking Arms.

  Because of her.

  Clenching my jaw, I pulled out my phone as I walked into my bedroom. Natalie picked up immediately. “I thought you would’ve called sooner,” she scolded with a small laugh. “How is he?”

  The tears threatened to spill then. Hearing his stepmom and the worry in her soft voice, it gutted me to have to tell her. “He’s on his way to the hospital, Nat. He… He OD’d.”

  There was a long pause on the other end. Then she exploded. “What the fuck are you talking about?” she raged. “No. No way. Not Harris. He’s a good boy. He wouldn’t do that.”

  I closed my eyes. “I know that, Nat. I do. It wasn’t his fault. Hell, I don’t know what happened, but he started OD’ing when I got up there. I took care of him until the paramedics could get there. Jenna went with him.”

  “Jenna…” She muttered her sister’s name, then cursed. “What hospital?”

  I told her which one the EMTs had told me, and she hung up on me as soon as she had what she needed. Clenching my hand around the phone, I lowered my hand and dropped down on the edge of the bed. I was still feeling the after effects of taking care of my best friend while he’d been so fucking close to death.

  “Jace?” Kin’s sleepy voice pulled me out of the hell that my mind had gotten trapped in and I looked down at her with tears still fresh in my eyes.

  Seeing them even in the dim lighting coming from the open bedroom door, she jerked upright. “What’s wrong?” She reached for me. “What happened?”

  A sob threatened to choke me if I didn’t release it and I buried my face in her hair as I pulled her against me hard. “Harris…” I managed around the sobs. I had never been so torn up in my life, but seeing someone almost die—not someone, my best fucking friend—had destroyed me. “He’s sick.”

  Soft fingers stroked through my hair and down my neck, making my shaking only increase. “Shh, shh,” she whispered, rocking with me. “It’s going to be okay,” she promised. “He’s okay, we just saw him.”

  I couldn’t explain it to her right then. I didn’t know what had happened to Harris, but I did know Tessa had to have been a part of it. I needed to tell Jenna and Natalie what I suspected.

  Needed to find that fucking bitch and make her pay for what she’d done to Harris.

  Kin

  Jace was still trembling when we got to the hospital.

  He hadn’t spoken much since he’d gotten back to the apartment, so I had no idea what was going on. The scene we walked in to at the ER surprised the hell out of me, though. When Jace had said Harris was sick, I’d assumed he meant he was running a fever and maybe had some kind of quick-onset virus or flu.

  Finding Natalie Cutter and her sister standing outside an exam room talking with a doctor in sweat-drenched scrubs had me pausing as I listened to what he had to tell them.

  Natalie stared up at the doctor. Her beautiful face was pale as death, but her eyes were wild as she clenched and unclenched her hands at her sides. Beside her, Jenna was pacing back and forth, her eyes going from the door to the exam room, to the doctor, to her older sister. She looked nervous but I had no idea if it was because of what was going on with Harris or something else entirely.

  “He was lucky to have someone there to keep him alive until the paramedics got to him, Mrs. Cutter,” the doctor was saying now. “From the blood work we put a rush on, he was drugged with a mixture of ecstasy and ketamine. There was enough in his system to have drugged three men his size. A little more and he would have died, without a doubt.”

  “I don’t understand how he got the drugs,” Natalie told him. “He isn’t like that. He’s a hard worker and doesn’t mess with drugs. He’s a good boy.”

  “I don’t doubt that, Mrs. Cutter. From his physical condition I can tell he isn’t a regular drug user.” His head inclined toward Jenna. “Perhaps you should ask this one about it, though. From how jittery she is at the moment, I can almost guarantee you she knows something about the drugs that nearly killed your stepson.”

  Wild eyes went even more wild if that were possible as Natalie turned on her sister. “What is he talking about, Jenna?” she seethed. “Do you know anything about this?”

  Jenna paused in her pacing and glanced back at the exam door before reluctantly meeting her sister’s eyes. “I wasn’t doing an internship in Phoenix, Nat. I was in a rehab there. I was getting clean.”

  Natalie took a menacing step toward her. “Did you do that to Harris?” She moved so quickly the doctor had no time to react. In the blink of an eye, Natalie pushed Jenna back against the wall beside the exam room door and got in Jenna’s face. “Did you?” she screamed.

  Tears flowed down Jenna’s pale face. “It wasn’t me, Nat. I would never do that to him. Never. It…it must have been Tess…” A sob cut her off.

  “Tessa? Your girlfriend?” Natalie put her hand to her sister’s throat and squeezed. “That bitch did this to my son?”

  “I think so,” Jenna whispered brokenly.

  The hand at her throat dropped and Natalie took a step back. She closed her eyes, whispered something under her breath and seemed to calm down a little. But when she opened her blue-gray eyes again there was pure hatred in the depths. Her hand lifted and in the next second the corridor echoed with the slap she’d just put across Jenna’s face.

  Jenna’s cheek welted instantly, her tears flowing silently as Natalie turned away from her. “Can I see him?” she practically pleaded with the doctor. “Please. I need to see my son.”

  The doctor turned his pitiless eyes from Jenna back to Natalie and they softened. “Of course, Mrs. Cutter. But only for a few minutes. The boy needs to rest.”

  “I-I understand,” she assured him, then finally caught sight of me and Jace standing a few feet away. �
�Jace,”—she moved forward and wrapped her arms around him tight—“thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for helping him.”

  I watched helplessly as Jace’s eyes filled with tears again, but he blinked them back. “I’m just glad he’s alive, Nat.”

  “Me, too,” she whispered. “Me, too.”

  Jace went with Natalie to check on Harris while a nurse appeared and then showed me and Jenna to the waiting room. Jenna moved to stand across the room, putting herself as far away from human contact as possible. I watched her for a few minutes, worried about her. Her cheek was still blood red from where her sister had slapped her and she was alternating between crying and cursing under her breath.

  Jenna had worked hard to get clean, so I hoped that this didn’t set her back.

  Knowing I couldn’t do anything for the older girl, I pulled out my phone. Someone needed to tell Lucy, and since no one else had mentioned her, I needed to call her. The phone rang and rang, and I was just about to hang up and try again when Lucy’s voice filled my ear.

  “Hey, Kin.” Her voice sounded odd. Not sleepy like I had expected, but choked as if she had been crying or was going to.

  Did she already know?

  “Lu, did someone tell you about Harris?”

  There was a long pause on her end before she blew out a harsh breath and released a humorless laugh. “In a way,” she assured me.

  “I’m sorry,” I rushed to tell her. “Look, can you get Marcus to drive you over here? I don’t think the doctors will let you in, but it’s worth a try.”

  Another pause. “Doctors?”

  “Of course, doctors. What did you expect in a hospital, Lucy?” Maybe she was half asleep after all if she was so slow about this shit.

  “What fucking hospital?” she cried.

  I blinked. “You said someone told you what was going on already, Lucy.”

  “Not that he was at a godsdamn hospital, Kin. Why is he at a fucking hospital?” There was a voice in the background and Lucy’s voice sounded like it was coming from a barrel as she spoke to them. “Harris is in the hospital, Aunt Emmie.”