Broken Fairytales Series Box Set (Broken Fairytales, Buried Castles, Shattered Crowns)

by Monica Alexander

  “You were so good,” I gushed, because I truly loved watching him play, but it was so different from when he played at the beach. He’d stuck to mostly upbeat classic rock songs that would please the crowd of people who were our parents’ age, but he was good at it. I didn’t think there was anything he could play that wouldn’t sound amazing.

  “Thanks,” he said, taking the last two beers out of the bucket and handing one to me.

  I’d slowed down on the drinking as he’d been playing, since I’d started to feel buzzed and didn’t want to go over the edge. I took a long drink and appraised him.

  “So what’s with the accent and the hat?” I asked, taking another sip of my beer.

  He looked back at the cowboy hat he’d left on the stool and laughed. “So the first time Phil asked me to play, I was sort of nervous. It had been months since I’d played for a crowd, and for some reason, when I introduced myself I used this really affected southern accent. I have no idea where it came from, but the crowd seemed to like it, so Phil asked me to keep doing it. I added the hat a few months later. I consider it to be my on-stage alter-ego.”

  He shot me a crooked smile, and I bit my lip.

  “You like it don’t you?” he asked teasingly, baiting me.

  “Consider it your version of my leather skirt,” I said, and he laughed out loud.

  “So have you thought about what you’re going to try to stump me with?” he asked, grinning at me in challenge.

  I smiled widely. “Sure did.”

  “What is it?” he asked, leaning forward slightly, his dark hair falling sexily over his forehead.

  I laughed out loud as I reached over to run my fingers through his locks. “I’m not telling you. You’ll just have to wait.”

  He leaned back and took another drink of his beer. “Okay then.”

  Before I knew it, fifteen minutes were up and Zack had to return to playing. He started playing the requests people had been dropping into his silver beach pail while we’d been talking. Then he started in on his game of ‘Stump the Singer’. The first three people called out songs that he knew, and he gladly played them, smiling each time he realized he knew the song they’d selected.

  When he finished Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, he said to the audience, “Do ya’ll see this pretty blonde up here in the front?”

  Every eye in the place focused on me, and I wanted to hide under the table.

  “Is she the one you were smooching before?” either Mike or Larry called out, and I felt my face get hot.

  “Yeah, she’s the one,” Zack said, grinning at me. I hid my face in my hands. “She told me she has a song she thinks she can stump me with. Do ya’ll think she can?”

  Mixed cheers went up throughout the audience.

  Zack just laughed. “I don’t know. She knows her music. This might be the first time in six months anyone’s stumped me. Shall we see what she’s got for me?”

  The audience cheered loudly. They wanted to hear my song.

  “Alright, Em. Lay it on me.”

  My face was flaming red, but I couldn’t help smiling at Zack who was grinning widely at me. God, I liked him so much – much more than I probably should. But he made it so hard for me to not get sucked in to every part of him.

  I took a deep breath, paused, and then said, with just a hint of cockiness in my voice, “Great Filling Station Hold Up, by Jimmy Buffett.”

  Zack looked perplexed for a few moments, and I thought I had him. Then his face broke into a big smile. “One of my dad’s favorites,” he said. “But that was a good one, princess. I’ve actually never played it live before. I hope I don’t screw it up.”

  I laughed. “Do I get to make you sing another song if you mess it up?” I called out.

  Zack just winked at me as he launched into the song, never missing a beat and hitting each word. It was a tough song, so I had to give him credit. When he finished, he stood up and took a bow, so I walked up to the stage and stuck a twenty in his tip jar.

  “Money?” he called after me as soon as I turned away. “That’s all I get?”

  I looked over my shoulder at him. “You weren’t that good,” I said, suddenly aware of the sexual reference that could be taken from my words as soon as the audience started jeering.

  “Ouch,” Zack said, playing up the hurt as he looked at me and bit his lip just enough to make me wish he’d hurry up and finish playing.

  “Kiss him,” a woman in the audience, who sounded pretty drunk, suddenly yelled.

  “Kiss him,” someone else said, and soon the entire audience was chanting at me.

  On stage, Zack pouted playfully until I threw my hands up and said, “Oh, alright!”

  Pulling all of my courage, I jumped up on the small platform, wrapped my arms around Zack’s neck and kissed him as the audience cheered us on.

  When I finally pulled away, he whispered to me, “Please tell me that was just a preview to what we’ll be doing later.”

  I smirked at him. “Only if you promise to keep that hat on the whole time,” I said, before sauntering off the stage, knowing I had never in my life been as forward as I was being with Zack. He had a way of bringing it out of me, and seeing the look on his face when I surprised him, I just loved it.

  “Yes ma’am!” he called after me, and I knew he was grinning.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Hey,” I said, sitting down at the kitchen table with my bowl of cereal.

  “’Sup,” Chase mumbled, seeming hungover as he leaned on his hand and slowly dragged spoonfuls of Trix to his mouth.

  I looked at the clock on the wall. It was almost eleven. I’d been late getting home from my night out with Zack, and I wondered if Chase hadn’t gotten home much earlier than me. I knew he’d been up when I got back to the house. His light had been on, and he’d been on the phone, but I’d only heard bits and pieces of his conversation through the bathroom wall when I’d been brushing my teeth.

  “Late night?” I asked him.

  He looked up at me with just his eyes, as if he couldn’t be bothered with the effort to do more than that. “Molly. Ecstasy. Fight with Amy. Remind me to kill her, will you?”

  “Amy?”

  “No, Molly,” he muttered, stuffing in another mouthful of cereal.

  “You took ecstasy?” I asked in disbelief.

  “No. Molly did.”

  “What happened?” I asked, trying to piece together the night with the little bit of information my brother was offering.

  “That girl is fucking crazy,” he said. “We go to this club, and she decides to partake in some recreational party favors. No big deal. She offers me some, but I tell her no, because first of all, I did that shit in high school and it’s not all that great. Second, I realize we’re not in walking distance from home, so one of us has to stay sober if we don’t want to drive off a fucking bridge on our way back here. Being the apparently sane one, I decide to be that person.”

  “That’s good,” I said, earning a look from Chase.

  I thought it was good. I was glad my brother had the foresight to be the responsible one. I didn’t want him or Molly to end up at the bottom of the ocean.

  “So Molly gets pissed at me and takes off with the guy she got the pills from, and I spend the next two hours trying to track her ass down. When I find her, she’s completely out of it, and the guy who she trusted enough to follow is laying on top of her.”

  My eyes got wide and my heart started pounding as I suddenly had visions of Molly being violated against her will.

  Chase shook his head. “She was fine. He wasn’t in his right mind and couldn’t actually figure out how to unbutton his pants, which was a good thing. But it also didn’t deter me from kicking the shit out of him before I dragged Molly out of the club, where she promptly passed out in the car.”

  “So, how did the fight with Amy happen?” I asked, not quite sure where his story was headed.

  “Oh, that’sthe good part,” he said sarcastically. “So,
she’s blowing up my phone, because it’s two in the morning, and I told her I’d call her at one. She’s freaking out that something happened to me. So I call her back on the ride home, and halfway there, while I’m still talking to Amy, Molly wakes up and starts pawing me.”

  “Pawing you?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

  “Yes,” he said derisively. “Apparently someone told her a story about how I liked to draw tiger stripes on myself when I was a kid, and she decided that was the moment to bring it up and actually paw me – which she found hilarious.”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, stuffing my face with another mouthful of cereal. “It was a cute story.”

  “Yeah, Amy loved hearing about it last night,” he said sarcastically. “Especially after she overheard Molly crying and telling me she loved me and kissing my face as I tried to drive and pacify my girlfriend who thought I was cheating on her while I was on the phone with her.”

  “Molly’s in love with you?”

  He shook his head. “She was high on X. It heightens your senses and makes you think you love anything that isn’t nailed down.”

  “Okay, now I get it,” I said, finally connecting the dots. “So Amy was pissed.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, so I was on the phone with her until five this morning, which is when she finally decided I wasn’t lying and she could trust me, and then I got woken up at nine by Mom asking if I could give Randy a bath and mow the grass, because the guy who was supposed to do it is sick today and can’t come until next week, and that won’t work because Mom and Dad are having some friends down for the weekend, so can I please mow the grass since the mower is too hard for her to work, and if the grass doesn’t get mowed it will look unsightly. It was fucking awesome. For future reference, I don’t do well on less than eight hours of sleep a night.”

  “I can see that,” I said, rubbing his shoulder.

  He shrugged me off in annoyance.

  “Okay, whatever,” I said, glaring at his unnecessary hostility. “Go pass out on the beach for the rest of the day. It’s not like you have anything else to do.”

  “I still have to wash the dog and mow the grass!” he said, as if I was dense.

  “And kill Molly,” I reminded him, letting go of the fact that I assumed he’d already done what Mom had asked.

  “That too,” he grumbled. “Mom went shopping with some friend of hers, and she’s going to expect everything to be done by the time she gets home.”

  He was being a little dramatic. The yard wasn’t that big. He would just have to mow the front and part of the side yards. It couldn’t take more than an hour, but I was empathetic. He’d had a rough night.

  “So we’ll divide and conquer,” I suggested, and Chase raised his eyes to me. “I’ll wash Randy, you mow, and then we’ll crash on the beach – or I’ll help you kill Molly if you still want to do that.”

  “Seriously?” he questioned, sounding perplexed that I’d offered.

  “Of course. I don’t have any other plans. I can help you out.”

  “Thank you,” he said gratefully, and I could see the relief on his face before he scrunched it up and sighed.

  Man, he was cranky.

  “So what’s new with you? I heard you come home around four. Out with Zack again?”

  I nodded, unable to keep the grin from creeping onto my face. “Yeah, I was.”

  “Man, that’s like three nights in a row. I thought you guys were keeping things casual.”

  “We are,” I insisted, but it didn’t sound very convincing.

  It wasn’t my fault Zack kept wanting to hang out. I had every intention of keeping things casual, but he wasn’t making it very easy when he kept calling me. Not that I was objecting.

  “Be careful,” Chase said, catching me off-guard. “He’s not like the guys you normally date. He’s not Ben.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “I thought you hated Ben?”

  “I wasn’t his biggest fan, true, but I know he was good to you. He cared about you.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “And you’re saying Zack doesn’t care about me?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Chase said. “I just know a little bit about Zack’s past, and I think you need to be careful. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  As much as I appreciated Chase’s concern, it irritated me that he didn’t trust Zack – or me for that matter.

  “How do you know about his past?” I asked, suddenly wary of my brother’s knowledge. Did he know more than I did?

  “I asked Molly.”

  “You did?”

  He nodded. “I also asked her about Jared. I want to be sure my sisters are hanging out with good guys. She filled me in on a few, let’s say, unsavory things, about Zack’s past.”

  I sighed. He was being sweet, and he wasn’t completely out of line.

  “I know about his past, Chase,” I said calmly. “I also know he’s a different person now, so I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

  “I know. Molly said the same thing, but I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

  He got up and carried his empty bowl to the sink.

  I turned to face him. “I don’t want to get hurt either,” I said emphatically. “Trust me, I’ve got my guard up.”

  “Good,” he said, and I couldn’t help smiling. My brother really did care about me.

  “Chase?” I called after him as he was leaving the room.

  “Yeah?” He popped his head back into the kitchen.

  “Thanks for looking out for me,” I said, smiling at him.

  He returned my smile. “Anytime.”

  ***

  For the next three weeks, I saw Zack as much as I could. It was like we couldn’t get enough of each other, and regardless of what either of us said, there was something between us that was much more than just a casual relationship. I was slowly falling for him, as much as I hated to admit it, because I truly didn’t want to get caught in something so serious after getting out of a five year relationship. But I couldn’t help it. I loved how he let his guard down around me, especially when we were alone. I loved how sweet he was to me. I got to know the Zack that no one else did, and that guy was pretty amazing.

  I noticed that for the most part, he was pretty reserved in public, aside from his gigs at Phil’s when he had to be the life of the party, which I knew was an act. The real Zack wasn’t a big fan of crowds. He preferred to just play his guitar or talk to his cousins when we were out at parties. Mostly though, he just liked to hold my hand or wrap his arms around me and steal kisses until he could convince me to leave with him. Once we were alone, he was a different person.

  But those were the good days, and a lot of our time together was dictated by how his mother was feeling. On good days, when he was okay leaving her with her sisters, we’d go out and be social, but on bad days he didn’t feel like he could leave. Those were the days I hated the most because I knew they meant his mom was feeling especially bad. The hard thing was, as our time at the beach ebbed forward, his mom’s health seemed to get progressively worse.

  Between juggling work and his increased commitments at home, our time together was often limited or squeezed in late at night. He would be by her side as much as he could when she was awake, attending to her every need or just talking to her. On those days, it wouldn’t be until after she’d fallen asleep that Zack would come over to my house, usually with his head hung low in defeat, frustrated that he couldn’t stop the force that was killing her.

  The good thing was, he no longer stayed away for days on end like he had when we’d first started seeing each other, but it was almost worse, because instead of seeing him after his mom was feeling better and he was in a good mood, I got to experience every emotion he was feeling as the ups and downs of her health played out on a daily basis. He didn’t hide from me, and as much as I appreciated that, it hurt worse that I couldn’t do anything to take away the anguish he was feeling.

  He absorbed a lot of her pain, s
o much so that it was almost harder on him at times. She’d made her peace with what was going to happen, but he hadn’t, and there were nights when it almost ate him alive. It was nights like that when we’d end up at his secluded beach by the rocks. We’d sit at the mouth of the cave, holding hands, his head on my shoulder, and look out at the ocean. Sometimes he would want to talk, other times he preferred the silence, and other times he just wanted to bury himself in things that would take his mind off his mom. It was almost as if it got too tough for him to be sad, so he just shut down that emotion and forced himself to be happy, or at least blissfully unaware.

  A few weeks after we started seeing each other Zack asked me if I wanted to meet his mother. He said it in such a way that made me think he’d thought I would say no. He said that a lot of people were afraid of her cancer. He confessed that he’d had a girlfriend when he’d been at Duke who’d been unable to deal with the whole situation. He had broken up with her a few months after his mother was diagnosed the first time. She apparently would burst into tears whenever Zack talked about his mom, and she also started to get weird about going over to his apartment after his mother had visited one weekend for fear that the disease might be contagious. From that point on, he knew they would never make it as a couple.

  I told him I’d love to meet his mother and assured him I wasn’t afraid of her cancer. It made me sad, but I wasn’t afraid of it. So, since his mom had been having a good day, I went over to their house after dinner one night.

  Molly was lounging on their porch swing, smoking a cigarette when I walked up. I knew from Chase that they were meeting up later to go to a party. He’d apparently forgiven her for her lapse in judgment while high on X.

  “Alright, Emily?” she asked, in that strange way that British people say hello.

  “Hey Molly. How are you?” I asked her as I knocked on the front door.

  She shrugged. “Can’t complain. You here for board game night? We just finished dinner, so they’re setting everything up.”