The Complete Tempest World Box Set

by Mankin, Michelle

  “Let me see her text again,” Dizzy demanded.

  Straightening my shirt, I dug in my jeans pocket and handed my cell to him.

  LACE: It’s over. We’re through. I think we’re clear on that. But I can’t let you go, let all of you go, without saying good-bye.

  A knock sounded at the door. All heads turned toward it, but I got there first and ripped the door open. Her name was on my lips, but it wasn’t her. It was Addy.

  “It’s time to go on.” She scanned the room, probably looking for blood on the floor. “The crowd’s getting restless.”

  “We’ll be there,” I said firmly.

  “Okay, good. I’ll go announce you.” Throwing her bar towel over her shoulder, Addy turned away.

  I shrugged out of my shirt and tossed it aside. “Let’s go,” I said, making eye contact with each of them.

  I got fuck you looks from them all, but they shed their shirts and followed me.

  All but one. King came at us from the opposite end of the hall. The dark look on his face made me instantly more tense.

  “Lace is here.”

  “Thank fuck,” I said, shifting to move around him.

  He put a hand on my shoulder. “She’s not alone,” he said, his tone as ominous as his expression.

  A sheen of icy trepidation shrink-wrapped my skin. “Who’s she with?”

  “Martin Skellin.”

  Lace wasn’t here to say good-bye. She was here to fuck me over.

  The story of Lace, War, and Bryan continues in Irresistible Refrain.

  IRRESISTIBLE REFRAIN

  REFRAIN: To keep from doing, feeling, or indulging in something; a recurring phrase or line, especially at the end of each stanza or division of a poem or song; a chorus; or the musical setting of a refrain.

  PROLOGUE

  Bryan

  Six years ago

  “Your old man’s an asshole.”

  “Tell me something I don’t already know,” I mumbled.

  With my chin on the arms I’d crossed on top of my upturned knees, I turned my head to look at War as he lowered himself to the curb beside me. He mirrored my frown, his expression sympathetic. I reached back and pulled the hood of my jacket onto my head while he zipped up his. Southside Seattle in the summertime was still chilly, especially late at night.

  “He shouldn’t put down your mom like that.” War stretched out his long legs. He and I had both recently grown several inches, just in time to start high school.

  I nodded, my hands clenched into fists. I hate the bastard.

  War looked over at me. “Better to have one that’s not even around, huh?”

  My eyes held his for a long moment, and the bravado he usually wore momentarily slipped away.

  Though I’d known War since the beginning of middle school, he was one of those guys who kept his emotions light and near the surface—until three months ago, when he told me the truth about his father. Or more accurately, when he confided that his mom refused to tell him who his old man was. The identity of his father was a secret that I now knew gnawed at him constantly. War’s outward in your face attitude was more of a defense mechanism, a shield he put up to keep most everyone else at arm’s length.

  “Yeah, fuck ’em.” I bumped my shoulder to his. “I don’t know why my mom lets that asshole in the door. It’s the same damn thing every time he shows up.”

  I dug my hands into the front pockets of my jeans. War was better off with just him and his mom. No fake father pretending he cared.

  “He comes back all nice and shit for a couple of weeks. Then he disappears again.”

  I glanced away, hated how my father always made me feel, as if I didn’t measure up somehow. The first couple of times he’d come back around, I worked my ass off trying to be the perfect son, so desperate for his approval, so badly wanting him to stay.

  Not anymore.

  When I glanced back at War, his chin was down, his brow furrowed in concentration as he peeled the label off a discarded soda bottle.

  This summer, our friendship had moved up to another level. Sure, we’d hung out a lot before. We both loved rock music—fast, heavy, and loud. We both dreamed of forming our own band one day, but there was more that kept us together now.

  I knew about his old man, and he knew about mine. That knowledge cemented our bond.

  And since neither of us had a brother, that’s what we became to each other. If we weren’t at each other’s houses, we were prowling the streets together, looking for trouble. We did all kinds of crazy shit. I covered for him with his mom, and he covered for me with mine. Neither of us really wanted to be at home.

  In the rare times that we weren’t together, War scoured his house, looking for clues to his dad’s identity. And I did my best to pretend to get along with mine, if only for my mom’s sake.

  Truthfully, I fucking hated my dad. He lounged around on the couch, drinking beer and doing nothing all day while my mom slaved away. She worked, cooked, cleaned, and went to school at night. Like doing all that would somehow change him. I promised myself I was never going to be that hung up over anyone.

  Irritation spiked in me, just thinking about it. I couldn’t stand to sit around and stew out here anymore. I needed an outlet. Our friend Kyle had a dirt bike he’d been letting me ride.

  I turned to War. “Kyle still having that party tonight?”

  “Yeah, you know Kyle. He’s always having a party.”

  “I changed my mind. I wanna go.”

  Kyle’s unofficial hobby was dealing dope. Mainly, he pedaled soft stuff like weed and pills. His way of bringing in new customers was to hand out free samples at his parties.

  But I didn’t really care about that. I just wanted a turn on the bike. I needed to feel the wind on my face, and put a little physical distance between my old man and me. Pretend that he didn’t exist for a while.

  “Fair enough.” War held out his hand as I stood.

  I clasped it and pulled him up. He didn’t question me about why I’d changed my mind, but I didn’t miss his knowing glance.

  “Cut through to Fifty-Second?” he asked.

  “I guess,” I said with a shrug. It would be faster but would take us through La Rasa Prima territory. That didn’t really bother War since the leader of the gang’s sister had a thing for him, like a lot of the older chicks did.

  We cut quickly across the adjacent vacant lot and slipped through a break in the chain-link fence on the other side. A couple of gangbangers turned to watch us dart across the busy street, but they left us alone. Thank God. A confrontation with guys like that never ended well.

  We kept our heads down and passed by several closed businesses, their windows boarded up and spray painted with graffiti, before we finally arrived at Kyle’s apartment complex. Broken glass crunched beneath my shoes as War and I walked up the front sidewalk to his unit. I didn’t know how Kyle was able to have, let alone afford an apartment, but I suspected it had something to do with who he dealt drugs for.

  Loud bass boomed from the music being played inside, and I set aside speculation. However Kyle came to have the apartment, it was as good a place to be as any.

  Kyle answered the door and slurred out a greeting to War. Glassy-eyed and swaying, he led us inside the apartment. I scraped the hood off my head, pushed my hair out of my eyes, and waved off an offer of a drag from his joint.

  “Wasn’t expecting you to bring your wingman,” he said to War, his red-rimmed eyes glancing in my direction.

  “Bryan’s cool.” War threw an arm around my shoulder.

  Warmth spread through my chilled limbs. War and I had had an unwritten understanding since our first meeting in middle school. He took care of me, and I had his back. No one was ever going to come between us. It was as simple as that.

  We stood in the living room for a while, War and Kyle smoking pot and me goofing around, until War wandered off upstairs with a woman who looked to be in her twenties. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen him h
ook up with someone that much older, but so far, there hadn’t been any fallout. There didn’t seem to be any consequences for War, no matter what or who he did.

  From day one, I’d decided that Warren Jinkins was the absolute shit. Worrying about the way I looked up to him was the reason my mom had enrolled me in a teen leadership class. When I told War the teacher’s slogan was to do what’s right and your peers will follow, War had laughed.

  “More like do what’s wrong,” he’d joked. “And you’ll always have enough people for a party.”

  I’d already taken a spin on the bike and was just getting bored when War came back downstairs, finger combing his brown hair with one hand and tucking in his T-shirt with the other.

  He steered me toward the door. “Let’s get out of here.”

  We ended up hitting our favorite convenience store on the Ave for snacks and then went to his place, a small foursquare house two streets over from my apartment. I pulled out the secondhand Epiphone I kept stored in his closet, and we worked on a couple of songs, me on guitar, and War on vocals. They weren’t original tunes, just covers. When we were done practicing, we crashed hard.

  • • •

  I blinked slowly when War shook me awake around dawn.

  “What?” I muttered, wiping drool off my cheek.

  “Get up.”

  I pushed up from the worn couch I usually slept on in his room. My eyes narrowed as I studied his face. He looked really upset about something. “What’s going on?”

  He waved a piece of paper in front of my face, and I pushed his hand back so I could actually read what it said. It appeared to be a brush-off letter addressed to his mom. Before I could finish reading it, he yanked it away.

  “She’d hidden it in her jewelry box, folded up under a false bottom. It’s from my dad, Peter fucking Frangella.” War’s earnest eyes met mine. “I looked him up. He’s some kind of big shot with his own law firm.”

  He was so worked up, his hands shaking as he bent over to pull his shoes out from under his bed.

  “And he’s married,” War mumbled. “With two kids.”

  Shit.

  With War determined to confront his dad immediately, we rode the train to Bellevue. It took forty-five minutes and two transfers. The squalor of Southside gave way to tree-lined streets, landscaped yards, and thriving businesses. Once we got inside his dad’s office building, War bullshitted his way past the security guard while I waited in the lobby, my stomach knotted up with anxiety for him.

  It didn’t take long.

  A flurry of F-bombs echoed off the walls as soon as War exited the elevator, his expression darker than I’d ever seen it. He slapped a hand against the glass entry door to fling it open, and I followed him out of the building. I glanced behind us, half afraid by the way he was acting that someone would come chasing after us. War pulled me into the building’s adjacent parking garage.

  “What happened?” I asked, a little out of breath.

  “First, he tried to pretend the letter wasn’t his.” War raked a hand through his hair. “When he realized I wasn’t buying that shit, he flat-out told me to get out. He even threatened to call security if I didn’t go.”

  Seeing War so upset, I got mad right along with him, furious that we both had such fucked-up fathers. That’s when I happened to notice the name on the assigned parking spot to our left. Frangella.

  I pointed it out. “That must be your dad’s car, right?”

  Scowling, War glanced at it and nodded.

  “Fucking asshole has a brand-new BMW. Still has the dealer tags on it. Doesn’t seem right.” I rubbed my chin. That shiny paint job seemed to be taunting me, as fake and false as both our old men were. I glanced at War, raising a brow in question. “You know, Kyle showed me how to hotwire and cut the alarm on one of these.”

  “Fuck yeah,” War said without hesitation, his lips curving into a wicked grin.

  Within minutes, I had the alarm disabled and the car started. War took shotgun. We both wore crazy-ass grins on our faces as I steered the BMW out of Eastside and took the entrance ramp onto the 405. We rolled down the windows. It was fucking awesome.

  I didn’t have much of a plan. I just remembered a field trip we’d taken several years ago, so I exited on Southeast Eighth Street with a vague idea of heading to Kelsey Creek Park and hanging out.

  But we never made it there.

  With the music up loud, I wasn’t paying enough attention to the road. I was fifteen, and I found out quickly that a car was a lot more difficult to negotiate than a dirt bike. Long story short, our fucking good time came to an abrupt end when we rammed into a train trestle at a good thirty-five-mile-an-hour clip.

  My face stinging, I wrinkled my nose at the unpleasant chemical odor that came from the deployed airbag I was buried in. After disentangling myself from the sticky material that didn’t seem to want to let me go, I glanced to the side. War’s face was bright red like someone had bitch-slapped him. I probably looked exactly the same.

  “I’m okay,” War said, his wide-open brown eyes meeting mine. “Just kinda woozy and sore.”

  That’s exactly how I felt. Without saying any more, we released our seat belts and unlatched our doors. As I got out, I noticed there weren’t even any skid marks on the road because I hadn’t reacted in time to apply the brakes.

  I looked at War over the roof of the car. “We’d better get out of here, dude.”

  “And fast,” he added unnecessarily, looking more than a little freaked out.

  We hit the ground running flat-out, our adrenaline high and breathing hard. But we weren’t fast enough. A couple of cops in a squad car passed by us, did a double-take, and swung a U-turn.

  Shit.

  “Let me take care of this, Bry,” War said under his breath.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked, my eyes huge and my heart pounding hard as the cops pulled up beside us.

  War gave me a serious-as-shit look. “I think it’s been established that I take care of my friends, right?”

  I nodded. He certainly had. War had pulled my ass out of the fire plenty of times. Most recently, by taking the blame when I’d spray painted some choice obscenities on a bathroom wall at school.

  It went without saying that I’d had a lot of anger issues since my old man came back.

  War spoke quickly as the cops climbed out of the squad car. “You know that’s just me. But more important is that my mom won’t give a shit if I get in trouble. Hell, she probably won’t even notice, but yours will. You’ve got a good thing going with your mom,” he said, and I nodded. “We both know that if she found out you did something like this, it would wreck all that. So, bro, let me handle this.”

  As we stood there together side by side on the rain-slickened pavement and watched the cops approach, my fritzed-out thoughts were all over the place. But above the static, what hit me hardest was what War hadn’t said, yet I understood, especially after the deal with his father today.

  I was the only real family Warren Jinkins had.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Bryan

  Present day

  I woke with my head pounding out a heavy bass throb and glanced at my watch. Four fucking a.m. Damn. I’d only been asleep for a couple of hours.

  The bottle of tequila had obviously been a big mistake, but not the worst one I’d ever made. I’d have to go back to my senior year in high school for that one.

  Before the memories could surface, I slammed a lid on them.

  My mouth tasted like sand. I needed a bottle of water and at least two extra-strength Tylenol.

  I rolled out of my bunk, cursing when my toes met the freezing-cold floor of the tour bus. A forceful winter storm wind rocked the forty-five-foot-long structure from side to side and howled beneath the undercarriage.

  Pulling on yesterday’s jeans, I grabbed a pack of cigarettes and my lighter before pushing the button to open the pocket door to the front lounge. A woman sat at the banquette with her back to m
e, a woman I’d recognize anywhere. She was my costliest mistake and the best of everything all wrapped up in one.

  Lace.

  I froze, wondering when she’d come on board. It must have been last night while I’d been preoccupied with the twins.

  Quickly running back over the previous evening’s events, I realized that War had been conspicuously absent from the meet and greet. He must have been with her. The familiar jealous burn seared the inside of my chest like battery acid.

  Hundreds of memories rushed to fill my mind.

  Walking with Lace. Talking to her. Sharing, connecting, wanting her. Having her . . . once. Hesitating a moment too long afterward and losing her. That wasn’t just any wall between us now; it was an unbreachable one.

  Her face was as captivatingly beautiful as I remembered, framed by honey-blond hair that was much longer than it had been the last time I’d seen her. She was thinner too. Too thin. Her cheekbones were more prominent, her complexion pale, and even her wide lips seemed drained of their usual apricot color.

  Her head turned slightly, and eyes the color of expensive whiskey met mine. “Bryan.”

  That breathy voice of hers shot right to my groin. Even with me being hung over and recently satiated, my dick came right to attention, clamoring after what it could never have. What I could never have.

  The woman War loved.

  “Lace.” I took my time taking her in. The long-sleeved black Tempest T-shirt War had worn onstage last night hung to mid-thigh on her.

  I knew damn well what was underneath that shirt. As I remembered the shape, the texture, and the taste of her, my hands shook so badly, I had to shove them into the back pockets of my jeans so she wouldn’t notice.

  Lace gave me a darting sidelong glance while bringing her long, shapely legs closer together, and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.