Lead Me Back

by Reiss, CD

  ALSO BY CD REISS

  Hollywood Romance

  Bombshell

  Bodyguard

  Only Ever You

  Shuttergirl

  Hardball

  Dark Romance

  His Dark Game

  Edge of Darkness

  The Drazen Family

  Submission

  Corruption

  Broken Souls

  Pretty Scars

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2020 by Flip City Media Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Montlake, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503905344

  ISBN-10: 1503905349

  Cover design by Hang Le

  For anyone who can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER 1

  KAYLA

  “Are you sure you want a new number?”

  The guy behind the counter looked away from his screen long enough to give me a weighty, dark-eyed stare. His sparse goatee sprang black coils, and his half smile clearly communicated that he understood things I didn’t.

  “Yes.”

  “There’s no call forwarding. You’ll have to tell all your friends and family you changed it. I’m just warning you, it can be a real pain in the ass.”

  What he called a pain in the ass, I called a relief. If I kept that number, I’d never ever be able to pick up an unknown contact and hear a friendly voice on the other side.

  “I’ll be living in 310. I’d like a 310 number, please.”

  Swiveling away from me, he speed-typed with two pointer fingers. My new, unboxed phone lay naked on the glass case in front of me, SIM card gutted, screen flashing greetings in a dozen languages as if it were casting a wide net into the world hoping for someone . . . anyone to claim it.

  “I have a West LA with the last four digits of your old number: 8813.” He shot me another serious glance. “Easier to remember.”

  “That sounds fine. Thank you.”

  He put the SIM card back in and did some more fancy finger work.

  “Once I hit ‘Enter,’” he said, his final tap hovering over the keyboard, “that’s it. No going back.”

  I reached across the counter and hit the “Enter” key.

  People talked about new beginnings as if you could start them with a single step anytime. Sure. Getting out of bed was a new beginning. Blinking hard once and deciding to do things differently could be a new beginning. But the big ones took effort. You had to wipe out old decisions and give up stale emotional investments. Stuff had to go. Physical objects. Furniture that wasn’t worth moving across the country. A rent-controlled apartment on Second Avenue. A guy who was super nice but sucked the life out of you. The last drops of a career that had been drained.

  Gone, gone, gone.

  “Hello?”

  “Talia,” I said, leaning against the side of the white van with the blue stripe. “It’s me.”

  “Kayla?”

  My sister must have recognized my voice, but she was a confirmer.

  “New number. You like it?”

  “Where are you calling from?”

  “Uh.” I craned my neck, looking for a street sign. “Santa Monica and Western.”

  “You’re across town.”

  “Is that far? You said Santa Monica.”

  “I meant the city, not the street. Head west on Santa Monica until you can smell the ocean and you need a sweater. Three blocks past Lincoln is Seventh. Can’t miss it.”

  “Cool.”

  “I’ll meet you after work. Six fifteen or so.”

  Just seven hours to kill. There was a Starbucks across the street. Nice to see some things were the same no matter where you were.

  I’d been to Los Angeles once on business. I’d been too busy to leave the hotel for more than one dinner. Apparently, I was born in Beverly Hills, but that didn’t count. The first four years of my life were a complete wash. My memories started in the far reaches of Queens with Talia and our heartbroken mother trying to look cheerful in our little house. Talia said a mask of happiness fused to Mom’s face. My older sister was a cynic. She’d always wanted to move to Los Angeles. I’d told her she’d never fit in. Once Mom died, Talia had packed up as if she couldn’t prove me wrong fast enough.

  The billboard situation was insane. They were everywhere. They were the subway advertisements of Los Angeles. Dentists and personal injury lawyers, movies and TV shows, energy drinks and radio stations.

  When I started the van, my phone rang again. Talia was the only one with my number, so I answered without looking.

  “Justin?” An old woman’s voice crackled on the other side.

  “I think you have—”

  “Who is this?”

  “This is Kayla, but—”

  “You must be the new girl. It’s Louise. Justin’s grandmother.”

  “No. I’m—”

  “I didn’t mean to forget you, but the old brain isn’t working the way it used to. It’s getting all full of little holes like that lacey swiss they have in Ralphs. Have you had it?”

  “No. I—”

  “Right. Well, you should try it. Benny—that’s short for Benito—he used to melt it on sourdough with caramelized onions, and oh goodness was it delicious. Justin used to beg for it at lunchtime, but I could never get it quite right. If you want the way into his heart—”

  In an effort to not be sick over the idea of a cheese and onion sandwich, I pulled out of the spot and almost smacked into a guy on a motorized scooter. Couldn’t blame him for flipping me off.

  “—melt lacey swiss on a nice sourdough from La Brea Bakery. My new boyfriend? Ned? I call him Ned the Bed because he’s so good in it.”

  “Bed?”

  She giggled. And I figured her for over seventy. The image of her shredding the sheets with Ned the Bed was distracting.

  “Got a dick like a battering ram, and that’s a fact.”

  I hit the brakes even though traffic was flowing. The car behind me jerked to a stop.

  “Damn.”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “I—” The sound of a police siren cut me off. It was immediately followed by a bullhorn.

  “White van with New York plates. Pull over to the right.”

  “Okay, ma’am,” I said as I put my blinker on. “I’m sorry, but you have the wrong number, and I have to go.”

  “Is this 310-555-8813?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Tell Justin to bring a doz
en red roses. For Ned’s birthday, but leave the card blank.”

  “Where?” I said, talking to the cop in the car behind me as if he could hear me and find me a place to pull over that wasn’t a red zone.

  “The house! Oh, you’re new. Right. I’ll text you the address.”

  I wrangled my way to the right and parked at the only available space. A fire hydrant.

  “Listen,” I said, opening the window. “You seem really nice, but this isn’t Justin’s number.”

  But she’d hung up. The phone lit up with the default chime, and an address came through.

  In the rearview, the cop got out of the car. The mirror showed only his waist, where he unclipped the strap on his holster.

  “Okay.” I tossed the phone onto the passenger seat just as the cop leaned into my window, one hand on his gun, the other on the driver’s-side door. He had ebony skin and big brown eyes that were windows into a soul that had no patience for my nonsense.

  “Hi, Officer.”

  “I see you have New York plates.” He snapped a flashlight from his belt and used it to light the back of the van.

  I was suddenly very conscious of the fact that he was looking at the artifacts of my life.

  “I just got here. To Los Angeles.”

  “Do you know that in the state of California it’s illegal to drive and use the phone without a hands-free device?”

  “Um, no, but I’m not surprised?”

  He snapped off the light and regarded me with a mix of suspicion and disdain.

  “License, registration, and insurance, please.”

  All told, with fees and other junk, a $162 ticket was shut away in the glove compartment, and I didn’t even have a job. I made my way west on Santa Monica. I was already halfway to my destination and had six hours to kill.

  My phone rang again. I wasn’t picking it up. No way. Not even at a red light. It could just go to the default voice mail, and I’d figure it out later.

  It was probably the old lady with the boyfriend. Lacey Cheese Louise + Ned the Bed 4E.

  If I didn’t get the flowers, would she not have a present for him? Would he mind? Or would he shrug it off the way I’d shrugged it off when Zack forgot my birthday?

  A little flower shop was just past the intersection, and there was a parking spot right in front.

  What the hell? I had time, and making Justin’s grandma happy would be a decent way to start a new life.

  The van had gotten me over the Rocky Mountains with a steady, complaint-filled effort. Getting up the hill to Louise’s house should have been a piece of cake. But the weight of my stuff had stressed the shocks and made the van ride so low the converter scraped against bumps. The engine knocked and rattled as if it had reached the tolerable limit of my ambitions.

  When I got to a wrought iron gate, I had to put the emergency brake on so I could hold the roses upright with one hand and punch the code she’d left with the other.

  Louise was fancy. She’d better shell out for the flowers.

  The keypad beeped, and the gates churned open as if I were being admitted to Oz, closing behind me with a clang.

  The hill got steeper from there. I passed three houses overlooking Los Angeles. Her address was at the end of the short drive. I parked next to a Bentley in front of her house and yanked the emergency brake.

  “Everything all right back there?” I said to my stuff. None of it answered. The huge bolt of fabric I’d brought was pushed up against the back doors. “Good.”

  I got out with the flowers and rang the bell. I could hear it gong seven times, loud enough to wake the dead.

  “One minute!” Her voice came from an upstairs window.

  I waited. And waited. Paced a little. I could hear a pool filter and the whoosh of the freeway along with the birds and the rustling of the breeze. When the front door opened, I was by the side gate, admiring the sliver of a view I could see from there, imagining how amazing it must be from the back.

  “Hello?” she said.

  I rushed to the front. Louise was in her midsixties with spiky bright-pink hair, high-waisted stonewashed jeans, and white sneakers. Her horn-rimmed reading glasses hung from a rhinestone chain and rested against her dolman sleeve floral-print blouse.

  “Hi,” I said. “I don’t know your grandson, but I didn’t want you to not have a present for Ned.”

  “Oh!” She reached for them and gave the bouquet a requisite sniff. “They’re perfect!”

  “Thank you, I . . . uh . . .”

  “Louise!” A man’s voice came from inside the house. Young. Ned was the Bed for all the usual reasons, apparently.

  “They were seventy-five dollars, so . . .”

  “Justin!” Louise called into the house. “Your girl’s here. Don’t you pay her?” She turned back to me. “Come in, please.” I stepped into a narrow alcove that went up two stories to a pyramid of skylights. A glittering chandelier hung in the center. The walls were decorated with generic gold-framed oil landscapes and still lifes of flowers. Louise put the vase on a table and regarded me as if I were a piece of art she was considering buying.

  I’d just spent three hours in a van with crappy air-conditioning, driving in from a hotel outside Vegas, and hadn’t been self-conscious until that moment.

  “Look at you,” she said. “Aren’t you adorable?”

  Either she was completely serious, or she was a great actor, because there was no sarcasm in her tone.

  “Here’s the receipt for the flowers,” I said, taking the yellow slip of paper from my back pocket.

  “Justin!” she yelled, emptying the bottom of her lungs.

  “Take a fucking pill, Louise!”

  Where I was from, you didn’t talk to your grandmother like that. But where I was from, Grandma didn’t tell strangers about Ned the Bed either.

  “Those shoes!” she exclaimed, pointing to my wedges. “I had a pair like that in 1985. Shredded my pinkie toe like a Cuisinart, but that didn’t stop me from dancing, I’ll promise you that.”

  “They’re really comfortable. But, anyway, I should get the money and get going.”

  As if she hadn’t heard me, Louise picked up the flowers and made an immediate left, out of sight. I followed her into the kitchen, where she’d put the vase on the island’s countertop and pulled the flowers out.

  “My husband red-rosed me to death until our ninth anniversary. I got cut bloody.” She laid them, dripping wet, across the marble, destroying the arrangement by checking each stem for safety. “He died young, but it wasn’t me. Swear it. Though by that point there was no saving the thing. Did you know thirteen percent of wives cheat on their husbands? Can you guess how many husbands cheat?”

  I unfolded the receipt and pushed it toward her, fearing my first day in Los Angeles was going to cost me more than $162 and a moving violation.

  “I really need to settle this and get going.”

  “Twenty percent! I was in that seven . . .”

  “Weeze”—a male voice came from behind me—“you gotta get that faucet fixed.”

  I spun around to look at him and, in the middle of his sentence, gasped so hard I sounded like a drowning victim.

  Standing right there in bare feet, white tattoo-exposing tank, white basketball shorts with an orange stripe down the side, with his blond hair so precisely bed-headed it had to be on purpose, and a gold chain that was the icing on the cake of a look every fashion and celebrity magazine called “douchecore” was Justin Beckett.

  From the band Sunset Boys. That Justin.

  From the cover of GQ. Twice before age twenty-two.

  I wasn’t a fan or anything. I was a New York fashion designer—

  Not anymore.

  —and club scene onlooker—

  Until the eyeballs turned on me.

  I considered myself too much of an adult to listen to his music, but I wasn’t dead. The Sunset Boys breakup that spring had drowned Twitter in sobs and DMZ in clicks. Justin Beckett, with his ghostly
pale-blue eyes, had been the front man who’d thrown it all away for a crazy night at the Roosevelt Hotel. There had been a party at the pool. He’d beaten a bandmate bloody, gotten caught with another bandmate’s wife and a bunch of drugs in a hotel bathroom. It was impossibly salacious. Like watching a car wreck where everyone was fine except the one guy who deserved to get hurt.

  The clean-cut, silky-smooth boy in the band wasn’t so silky smooth anymore. Maybe it was the rough night at the Roosevelt. Maybe it was just adulthood, but he’d transformed into a fully muscled, square-jawed man. His size and presence dazed me.

  “Weeze,” he said to his grandmother. “Who is this person?”

  Louise gathered the smooth stems into a bouquet and put on her glasses.

  “You’re such a big deal you don’t even know your own assistant?”

  He shot his gaze to me.

  “All right.” He snapped his fingers and pointed to the door. “Get the hell out.”

  “Wait,” I snapped. I didn’t want to stay, but I wanted my money.

  “I mean it. You got this far. Now get out.”

  “You don’t have to be so rude,” Louise said, inspecting a stem.

  He grabbed my upper arm and pulled me out.

  “Don’t touch me!”

  Ignoring me, he opened the door and pushed me outside, joining me in his bare feet and closing the door behind us.

  “How did you find me?” he demanded, letting me go.

  “I wasn’t looking for you!”

  “You one of the ones who parked on Laurel Crest?” He pointed to some street over thataway that I was supposed to know. “Because you’re violating an order of protection.”

  “No! You stupid jackass!” With my finger pointed and an insult hurled in a decisively unfannish tone, his face softened for a moment. He had a tiny pimple on his forehead. It was so real, so human on a guy so handsome and undeniably magnetic, I almost lost my resolve and smiled.

  But he was still the guy who’d gripped my arm so hard it hurt, and that guy could suck it.

  “You’re from what paper?” he asked.

  “I just got a new phone, and your grandmother dialed the wrong number. She insisted it was you. And I was like, here’s a nice lady who’s not going to have a present for her boyfriend, so I went to get the flowers, which cost seventy-five dollars after I already got a hundred-and-sixty-two-dollar ticket for talking to her in the first place.”