Lost Perfect Kiss: A Crown Creek Novel

by Theresa Leigh

  “Right,” he said, nodding. “You’d come over with your parents to those barbecues my parents always had, right? And you have a sister too, don’t you?”

  My lips were still parted, the “yes” still on my tongue. I stared at him and swallowed it back down before I could blurt out what I thought he was going to say. My stomach twisted and I felt nauseous. And once again an anger I had no business feeling took hold of me, making my heart start racing. I settled my hand on his arm and gently untangled myself from his embrace.

  “I remember you too!” Kristyn piped up. She appeared at our side and I realized that while it had felt like a lifetime standing there wrapped in Gabe’s arms, in reality it had only been a few seconds at best. She was holding Gabe’s crutches for him, but she was looking at me. “Your sister was in my class!” she burst out. “We were lab partners! Oh my god, how is Abby doing? I hear she’s like traveling the world now, right?” She shook her head like we all were the best of friends. “I thought your name sounded familiar!” She screwed up her nose. “But you said Everly, right? Why do I remember it being Beverly?”

  For nausea, first determine if the patient has consumed anything poisonous that would require a trip to the emergency department.

  I pulled back from Gabe, taking the crutches from Kristyn and shoving them at him in one smooth motion. “It’s Everly,” I told Kristyn, already a million miles away from this conversation. “Common mistake.” I looked at Gabe. “Ready to go? I’ll grab your coat.”

  His tongue flicked out to wet his lips. He was looking at me as if something had him completely confused.

  But Kristyn was still stuck on her trip down memory lane. “Funny,” she mused. “I must have gone over to Abriella’s house a million times, but I never remember seeing you.” She looked up from her chart at me with a big smile on her face. “Did you hide in your room a lot?”

  I pressed my lips together. Abriella had a zillion friends, all of them blonde and perfect like Kristyn. Petite, pretty girls who understood social rules on a level I never could. When I was younger I used to hang out on the landing and watch them through the banister, trying to decode the mysteries of their popularity, but one afternoon Abby caught me spying on her and threatened to tell mom I was being weird again. So I never spied again.

  I also never managed to learn the rules either. “I don’t know,” I said, shoving Gabe’s coat at him. “Maybe.”

  Kristyn turned her mouth down in an exaggerated frown. “Weird. It’s like... you weren’t even there.” She looked at me for a moment while I held my breath. It felt like my feet were nailed to the floor.

  Then she smiled and shook her head. “Well, tell Abby I said hello, okay? Next time she’s in town I want to hear all about her adventures.”

  “Sure,” I said. I didn’t look at her. I didn’t look at Gabe. I kept my eyes in front of me the whole ride home, so I didn’t notice how many people just plain didn’t notice me at all.

  Chapter Seven

  Gabe

  First the voices were muffled, like I was hearing them underwater. I swam upward as they got louder and more distinct. “Wake him up? Is he okay? Ha, he’s drooling, you see that?”

  Slowly I opened my eyes. The sunroom swam back into focus. As did four faces peering over my bed.

  My sister Claire was hovering over my left elbow with that bossy-baby-sister expression on her face. Next to her stood my youngest brother Finn, looking like he was about to crack up laughing at any moment. Which I guess was better than his usual quick-to-take-offense scowl. At the foot of the bed loomed Finn’s twin, the older by five minutes Beau. His worried expression was nearly masked by all the freaking hair he’d recently started to let grow on his face.

  And then there was my older brother Jonah near my right hand. Although given how he’d been acting lately, I was surprised to see him there rather than up my ass like he usually was. “What do you all want?” I croaked at my siblings.

  “Jesus, there you are,” Claire complained. “You’ve been asleep for four straight hours. I was worried one of us was going to have to wake you up.”

  “We drew straws,” Finn added. “None of us wanted to be the one to get punched in the face.”

  “I don’t have the range of motion to punch anyone in the face,” I sighed as I rolled over. I was stiff and sore all over. “Fuck.”

  Jonah looked worried. “You okay?”

  I winced as I pushed myself higher in the bed. “PT was a bitch,” I explained through gritted teeth. I was sore in places I didn’t know it was possible to be sore. A far cry from how I’d felt at the actual appointment.

  I remembered how good I’d felt walking for the first time. How high and triumphant. In a fit of celebration, I’d hugged Everly and for a second she seemed into it, but then something made her shut down. I rubbed my good hand down my face. “Fuck,” I said again.

  “You need water?” Beau asked.

  “You his nurse?” Finn teased.

  “Fuck off,” he sighed, pulling a glass of water out of nowhere and handing it to Jonah who handed it to me.

  “Thanks man.” I took a drink and winced again.

  Both Beau and Jonah saw it. “You take anything?” my older brother asked.

  I thought for moment. “Not since this morning.”

  “I still think you’re making this much harder than it needs to be,” Jonah said, unable to keep the pompous-know-it-all out of his voice for too long. “Taking something for the pain in your body is much different than...”

  “Taking something for the pain in my mind?” I finished.

  My three brothers looked at each other in turn. Claire stared at a point in the middle distance. There was the telltale sound of shuffling feet.

  This was exasperating. I shook my head. “No, it’s got the same effect on my fucked-up brain. I don’t want to need anything.”

  “It’s not the same!” Jonah protested, but Beau shot him a look and Beau was probably the only person in the world besides his fiancée Ruby who could get Jonah to shut the fuck up for once.

  I handed him the glass and let my head fall back on the pillow. “You’ve any idea how hard I had to work to get sober?” I said through gritted teeth. I glanced at my elder brother. “No, you don’t.”

  Jonah winced, and I could feel the guilt rolling off of him in waves. Maybe he was still trying to make up for the fact that he hadn’t been around, that we’d gone nearly two years without speaking, without clearing the air after the breakup both of our band and my relationship with Noelle. He’d spent the last two years hell bent on proving he could make it without us, only to realize recently that he wanted us again. Wanted to be brothers once more.

  That’s why, as near as I could tell, he spent so much time hovering around here, up my ass so far I needed a crowbar to get him loose.

  I’d told him we were cool half a million times at this point. But it was clear he didn’t believe me. And hell, I probably didn’t help things with the way I acted. The rage I’d felt towards him still came back every so often. The need to needle him about Bennett was still there. Even though I fought it, sometimes I lost.

  “I get it,” Jonah said.

  “No, you’ve no idea.”

  “I know what Bennett did,” Jonah said, his voice fierce. He glanced over at Beau. “We all do.”

  I tried to shake my head, but it hurt too much. “It wasn’t my choice,” I said again. “I don’t care how many times they told me in rehab that it was my responsibility, it wasn’t.”

  “You trusted him,” Beau said, nodding. My younger brother always had a knack for getting right to the point you still struggled to make. It was like he knew your thoughts before you were done thinking them. We always called him creepy for it, but I was grateful for it now as I struggled through the haze of pain. “He was our manager, we were kids, we were raised to trust adults. No one had ever betrayed us like that before.”

  “Fuck,” I breathed. It still felt humiliating to think back
on how it all had happened. The first time Bennett—our manager and the man who’d shepherded our career from county fairs to giant stadiums—offered me a pill to “take the edge off” I hadn’t thought twice. Fame was a fickle bitch and Bennett said he was only looking out for me when he handed me the white pills and the glass of water.

  Whether it was his aim to get me addicted and therefore beholden to him or whether that was just a happy side effect to his carelessness, I’ll never know. “I still think about it. Every fucking day I catch myself wanting to use again.”

  I heard Finn growl softly. Beau and Jonah looked at each other, but my sister just looked down. I wondered what Claire was thinking. She’d always been desperately jealous of our fame. Fame she’d been shut out of for being a girl. Bennett had wanted a boy band. No room for a girl, no matter how talented a singer she was.

  If she was listening right now, really fucking listening, maybe she’d start realizing the fame wasn’t worth the cost?

  “When I got sober, they were always talking about how I chose to take this path, but I never did,” I went on. My legs were throbbing in time with my heartbeat. “Now, here I am being asked to take pills again because they say I have no choice! That I’m not going to be able to do it on my own.” I looked at each of my siblings so they would know I was dead serious. “I am. I’ll take the risk.”

  Beau and Jonah glanced at each other. “Sometimes I feel like Bennett fucked you over worse than Noelle did,” Jonah said.

  At the mention of my ex, both visibly winced. “She gave an interview,” Claire said through clenched teeth. “Fucking bitch didn’t even mention you at all.”

  “Why would she?” I sighed. “She got what she needed from me. A springboard to fame.”

  “Well her new song sucks and she does the fucking robot in her music video. All ‘teehee look at me I’m adorably awkward.’“ Claire rolled her eyes viciously. She folded her arms over her chest. “I wish like hell I could run into her sometime,” she said loyally. “She’s gonna catch these hands.” She waved her slim, piano-playing hands with their perfectly pink manicure around like a karate master.

  Even though I felt like shit and even though it hurt like hell it still made me smile to see my baby sister playing badass. Made me smile enough that it took me a second to register what she’d just said. Noelle had a new single out.

  I have to watch that.

  I can’t watch that.

  I licked my lips and tried to grin wider. “For her own safety I hope she never crosses paths with you.”

  “Oh my posse is on the case, G-man,” she said with a decisive nod. “Willa, Sadie, Ruby, and I are ready to lay down the little-sister-law.”

  “Wait, Ruby’s in this posse?” Jonah interjected, looking worried.

  Claire rolled her eyes. “I won’t let your future wife get dinged up. But you have to know she’s a good scrapper.”

  “I am well aware,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck and looking way too delighted by the idea. Just looking at him you could tell he was picturing his fiancée in some kind of ninja catsuit kicking ass.

  I groaned.

  “You okay?” Beau asked.

  “No,” I complained. “Jonah’s making me nauseous.”

  Finn burst out laughing as Jonah smiled sheepishly and I felt something like gratitude in my chest that all five of us were talking again, that we were in the same room. Even if the room was my mom’s cramped little sunroom where my bed took up most of the space.

  “But hey,” Beau broke in, interrupting Finn giving Jonah epic shit about Ruby’s bad taste in men, “You said you’re overdue for your ibuprofen, right?”

  “I’ll go get it,” Claire volunteered, glaring at Jonah. “Whatever your train of thought is about my best friend right now, please, for my sake, make it derail.” She stalked from the room while Finn hooted.

  But as much as I loved it when Jonah was brought down a peg, I wasn’t feeling up to joining in. “Fucking hate this,” I said to no one in particular. “Wish I could get up and get my own damn ibuprofen.” Then I brightened when I remembered something. “But then again,” I said, looking up at my brothers. “I walked today, did I tell you?”

  Beau clapped his hand together. “Shit, really?”

  “That’s incredible!” Jonah added, pumping his fist. Finn raised his above his head in a fuck-yeah salute.

  I grinned. “Ten steps and then I basically fell on Everly,” I said, neglecting to mention how good she had felt in my arms. The curve of her spine at her lower back urging me to slide my hand further down. The way her eyes had shone when I told her I remembered her, with a kind of open, hopeful expression that was both pants-tightening and heart-breaking at the same time. I blinked. “But still, I fucking walked and I’ll be able to do more soon.

  “No wonder you’re hurting.” Claire had returned with my pills. I hadn’t realized she’d been listening but then again, this was Claire we were talking about. She always had her nose in other people’s business. “That’s a lot for your first therapy appointment.”

  “I’m fine,” I said as I swallowed them dry. It must have been the millionth time I said those two words, but no one believed me.

  “You could try something that wasn’t an opioid,” Beau piped up. He’d been scrolling through my tablet. “Non-addictive stuff. Tor-a-dol,” he sounded out. “Or semi-opioids like Tra-ma-dol or Tap-en-ta-dol.” He grimaced. “I have no idea if I’m saying them right but you could at least try to make this process easier on you.”

  “Non-opioid, like the ibuprofen I just took?” I stuck out my tongue. “I took my meds, doc. I’m a good little pill-head.”

  “It’s not the same,” Beau said. He looked genuinely pained to see me in pain. I’d been completely out of it during the first stages of my recovery, but I somehow knew he’d been at my side the most.

  I gritted my teeth and shook my head. “Sorry man,” I said. I wanted so badly to agree with Beau. He’d always been the caretaker. Of all of my siblings he was the most in tune with how we were feeling. I trusted him, I always trusted him. But not about this. “I can’t do it. I really, really can’t.”

  “Stay strong,” Finn said. He glanced at his twin as if he too saw this as a betrayal of Beau’s status as the one who knew about these things. “I know what he went through, man, and I don’t want you to fuck up your recovery in any way.” Finn leaned back against the wall. “Still wanna kick his ass, you know,” he said, letting his head fall back.

  “Who? Bennett?”

  “You never let me take him out the way I wanted to,” my hotheaded little brother grunted.

  Claire was nodding her head. “I agree with Finn,” she said, because of course she did. The two of them should have been the twins. They were more alike than any of the rest of us. “How about we just go break Bennett’s ankles too? Would that make you feel better? Tit for tat. He gets you hooked on pills, we get him hooked up to an IV.” It was hard to remember her in pink dresses with bows in her hair when her eyes had that bloodthirsty gleam in them. She glanced at Jonah. “I’m sure Ruby would be up for joining us.”

  I looked at my siblings, ready even now to go kick some ass for me. I tried to smile, but it hurt too much. “No,” I said, the words of recovery still ringing through my head. “Thanks guys, but...” I sighed. “This is on me.”

  Chapter Eight

  Everly

  I needed to leave right now if I was going to make it across town in time for class. I grabbed my heavy bag and headed towards the back door off the kitchen, intending to sneak around the side of the house so the sound of the front door opening wouldn’t wake my parents.

  But the second I stepped into the kitchen, I heard the telltale thump of my mother’s feet on the floor upstairs.

  Which meant I had woken her up.

  Fuck. She was going to want to talk to me. Which meant I was going to be late.

  “Hey,” I exhaled as she blinked and yawned her way down the stairs, performi
ng the part of “aggrieved parent woken too soon” perfectly. My mother missed her calling when she opened a bakery rather than moving to Hollywood to star in old-fashioned, overly emotive silent films.

  “I heard you were home,” she sighed pointedly. “I didn’t want to miss seeing you. You’re like a ghost in this house.”

  I sank back onto my heels. The issue here was that my class schedule, and now my new job next door, had me out of the house most of the day. In a normal family this would mean we could relax together in the evening, unwinding as we shared stories of our day. But that would never happen for two reasons. Number one was that my parents were in bed by seven. And number two was that there was no guilt-free relaxing in the Foster home.

  But both of these reasons were facts of my life that were never going to change, so I just shrugged. “Yeah, sorry,” I said, and bent to retie my shoes.

  She yawned and stretched again as she headed to the coffee maker. “You headed back out?” she asked, as casually as can be.

  I paused, steadying my hands, then resumed tying the laces. “Yeah,” I said, breezy and easy, giving her the benefit of the doubt. “Class is at 3:45.”

  “You have class today?” my mom interrupted.

  Her back was still to me. She reached up into the cupboard to retrieve her mug, then tapped her foot, waiting for the coffee maker to heat up. She couldn’t see me staring at her in disbelief. “Yeah, Mom. I’ve had class on Thursday afternoons all semester.”

  When she finally did turn around, her expression was halfway between bored and irritated. “You didn’t tell me,” she said, shaking her head. She blew on her coffee and then took a sip.