Drowning to Breathe (35 page)

His attention darted to the opposite wall, contemplating what to say, before he turned back to me. “I’d seen Shea’s mom…Chloe Lynn...around a few times when we’d partied. I had no idea who she was. Not until one night Donny was all coked up.”

Austin’s lip curled in disgust. “He always acted like such a badass. Wanted everyone to think he was. That night, he started bragging about all the shit Martin had him doing for him. All the drug runs he headed, the beat downs when someone got out of line.”

I struggled to find some control as Austin’s eyes pinched closed. “He was laughing when he started talking about how years before he’d been sent to
fuck up
Delaney Rhoads. Said something about ‘taking care of it.’ Then he’d mocked Chloe Lynn for being the mother of a washed-up country singer.”

I wheezed in a breath, my head spinning with hatred. My hands curled tighter in Austin’s shirt. My legs were trembling as everything inside me began to break apart.

“He what?” The words scraped with the affliction, horror, and shock, as I barely caught a glimpse of the carnage.

What did he do?

What did he do?

Mark.

Shea.

I’d claimed to know exactly what Martin Jennings was capable of.

Turns out what I knew didn’t come close.

“Did Chloe Lynn know what’d gone down…what he’d done?”

His entire face winced with the regretful nod. He looked at me, sorrow pulling at the edges of his mouth. “Mark…you
knew
him, Baz. Better than all of us. As fucked up as he was, he was a good guy. What Donny said got to him. Ate at him. The night he OD’d…I told you before he was acting all sketchy and paranoid. That was the truth. But what I didn’t tell you was he was stumbling around the bus, saying something about going to the cops about Delaney Rhoads. Said he couldn’t keep quiet about an innocent girl being hurt…and it was a secret he wouldn’t keep.”

Austin choked over a sob. “I know Martin was responsible for Mark, Baz. I
know
it. Donny disappeared, without a trace, and the next thing I know, Mark’s dead.”

Outright fear bled from his pores, my baby brother shaking in my enraged hands.

“I was so fucking scared, Baz. So fucking scared. You immediately forced me into rehab, and I wanted it. I wanted to break out of that life. Run from it. I thought maybe…maybe I was finally going to be free of everything horrible I continually let ruin my life. I’d let Mark down. But for once, I wasn’t going to let you down. I’d promised myself to get clean and everything would be better. Martin would be forgotten and we’d move on with our lives.”

Agitated, his tongue darted out to wet his lips. “But then he came onto the tour bus. Digging. Asking questions about what I knew about Delaney Rhoads. I’d told him
nothing
. His response was to slide three pills my way. He knew I couldn’t resist. Knew I was weak.”

He knows our weaknesses
. Shea’s assertion crashed down around me. Anger pumped furiously, feeding the hostility.

“Next thing I knew, I woke up in the hospital. I took it as a warning to keep my mouth shut, and that’s what I’ve been doing all this time.”

“Do you know what Mark was talking about in his journal?” I demanded, my nose pressed up to his like maybe if I got close enough, I could fall inside and find out what he’d been keeping a secret for far too long. “About a girl who was a loose end.”

I shook him. “One he was willing to die for.”

His brows drew deep in question, obviously unaware. It became clear when he came to the same conclusion. His eyes rounded like black, blank buttons of fear.

Like I’d been burned, my hands jerked free, and Austin dropped to his knees on the floor.

Shea.

Head slumping forward, Austin’s words slurred together. “Don’t hate me, Baz. Please, don’t hate me. I was scared. So scared. Please don’t hate me. You’re the only person I’ve got. When I found out Shea was Delaney, I wanted to tell you…I did…but I couldn’t risk it…couldn’t risk you losing it again. I can’t lose you, too.”

A harsh sound tore up my throat, raged with the flash of fury.

“I could never hate you.”

Never.

All I’d given had always been for my family. Standing up for them. Defending them.

I shoved out the door and down the hall to the sound of Austin calling after me. But I couldn’t stop from moving. My feet pounded down the stairs.

A red haze colored my narrowed sight. Blinding hate.

What did he do?

He hurt her.

And Mark. My baby brother.

Dizziness spiraled across my vision, and I gripped my head, trying to stay upright.

Jesus help me.

What was this?

Mark was a threat, so he took him out?

Austin a threat?

Shea…a threat?

I reeled with the magnitude.

I’d always believed him dangerous.

But this?

Stunning rage seethed beneath my skin. Every piece of me felt like it was gonna crack, fall to the ground in jagged pieces, as I stumbled out the door and to my truck. I turned the ignition and the engine roared. Slammed it into gear and peeled from the driveway and onto the street.

I blinked and blinked, squeezing my eyes closed then opening them wide. Tryin’ to see through her storm.

Dark, dark, dark.

Promise me.

Her words filtered through me like wisps of smoke, and I pressed the heel of my hand into my eye, my mouth dropping open on a silent cry as I tried to focus through the streaks of blinding light.

How could I just turn away with what I knew and with what still needed to be learned? Sit back and hold tight?

That wasn’t me.

And Shea…

Shea had always
seen
me. Recognized who I was beneath all the hard and scarred.

And this was
me
.

Guess she’d known it all along.

Promised I would do whatever it took, give up everything to set it right.

And I would.

On pure instinct, I sped down the narrow roads out of the Hills. When I hit the congested West Hollywood streets, I accelerated, weaving through traffic and jumping lanes. Everything around me was a blur except for the focus of my destination.

Tires squealed as I took a sharp right turn into the pretentious Beverly Hills neighborhood. My truck careened to a stop in the drive in front of his house.

Inhale. Exhale. I struggled for composure. For some measure of reason in this fucked-up situation.

Seemed I always found myself in these positions.

Trouble.

It followed me wherever I went.

But this time the fight was ending on my side.

I stepped from the truck, pulled out my phone, and set the recorder before I slipped it back in my pocket. If the fucker was here, I was going to capture every word.

Inhale. Exhale.

Promise me.

Fuck.
I can’t, Shea. I can’t let this go.

Inhale. Exhale.

I slipped over the low wrought iron fence and dropped into the courtyard.

Shaking.

Fucking shaking.

Water lapped at the fountain and birds rustled through the trees.

Peaceful.

The calm before the storm.

But the storm was there, gathering force, igniting the madness that propelled me forward.

My hand went for the ornate latch of the double doors. I was surprised when one side gave.

Through pursed lips, I pushed out a stifled breath. Every muscle in my body was rigid with restraint, my movements guarded and subdued as I slipped unseen into the quiet of the massive house.

The peace, the quiet, the calm was at odds with the rapid-fire sensations gutting my insides. Hate and vengeance and revenge.

White walls and floors everywhere, the ceilings high and color the starkest white.

I’d heard it said it was cold in hell.

I inched through the foyer, shoulder up against the wall, as I rounded the corner and eased along the edge of the formal living room, drawn deeper into the house. I emerged at a tall, wide entryway. Pillars flanked it like some kind of Greek god’s castle, precisely like the bastard thought he ruled.

It opened to a large space that boasted the kitchen and another sitting area that looked out over the lawn and pool.

But none of that held my attention.

Jennings. Casually sitting sideways at the high granite bar, rocked back in a stool with his ankle hooked over his knee.
Smug bastard.
His fingers drummed on the counter like the asshole was bored, not a fucking care in his warped, perverted world. In his other hand, a tumbler rolled with amber liquid.

Eyeing me, he took a sip before his head cocked to the side, snide and spite taking over his filthy expression. “I wondered when you’d come. Always have to be the hero, don’t you?”

The walls closed in.

Motherfucker.

He knew I’d show.

Just like Shea.

He might as well have laid out the welcome mat.

My fists curled, trying for once in my fucking life to maintain control.

Fix this.

That was a promise I could keep, and it killed me, the thought of being without Shea. Of letting her down. Because I loved her so goddamned much. So much it eclipsed all reason. So much that I’d let it all go, give it up to keep them safe. How many times had I promised it? Just didn’t know being struck with the reality of losing them, staring it down through the wicked eyes of depravity, would be so excruciating. A rending crack right down the middle that broke me in two.

“This ends now.”

He scoffed, raked his teeth over his bottom lip.

“And how’s that,
Mr. Stone
?”

“You’re going to tell me what you did to them. What you did to Shea. To Mark. To my brother.”

When I said their names, a fragment of the composure I was barely clinging to flew out the window. Exposing what was inside.

Vulnerable.

Martin caught it and smiled a venomous smile. “I always do what has to be done.”

“Not good enough,” I grated. All I needed was a little evidence. Something condemning, so I could send this asshole straight back to hell where he belonged. Where he could rot. Even if I was rotting right alongside him.

He took another slow swill of his drink.

“What do you want to hear,
Mr. Stone?
You want to hear your best friend wasn’t a strung-out addict? That he had some other reason to succumb to the drug running hot through his veins, slowly snuffing the life out of him until he lay there wasted? A heap of decaying garbage face down on the floor? Because we both know that’s exactly what he was. Just like your brother.”

Fiery dots of hate glimmered across my vision and I felt an earthquake shaking beneath my feet.

I fought to maintain my footing on the rippling ground.

He grinned. Goading. Prodding like a branding iron. “But there are some things people just shouldn’t know.”

He skirted around the details, luring me into his fucked-up cage-match, forced me into a ring made up of chain links and barbed wire and razor blades where nobody came out alive.

“What did you do?”

He ignored my question with a slow, repeating shake of his head as if he were getting lost in contemplation. “Some would call it brave. Others would call it stupid. Just like Delaney…sticking her nose in places it didn’t belong. Trying to use it against me.”

He grinned. “Yeah. I guess I’d call it stupid, too.”

That malicious grin widened when he saw the shudder roll through me, another reaction I had no chance to contain.

With the glass in his hand, he pointed at me like we were the best of friends sharing an inside joke, tipping it my direction as he chuckled through suggestive laughter. “But that Delaney Rhoads. Mmm. She’s quite the fuck, isn’t she? Can see why you’re hung up on that one.
Those legs.
Of course, she cried like a bitch the first time I took her. Tore her open like a brand new present, just like her
momma
had offered me.”

Fury.

Like a strike of lightning to a dry, withered tree.

A force of nature. An act of God.

Unbridled and unchecked.

I didn’t even realize I was moving until the moment my body connected with his.

I flew into him like the crack of thunder. The stool crashed to the floor and we tumbled over the top of it.

Jennings and I were a tangle of limbs and aggression and the foulest kind of hate.

I scrambled to get on top of him. I went straight for the throat, squeezing at his lifeline, because God knew I wanted nothing more than to squeeze the life out of him.

Like he’d done Mark.

My teeth ground.

His depraved eyes darkened, something vile and wicked, sucking me down into the depths of his barren soul.

I squeezed harder, my breaths grunted through the rage dripping from my words. “What did you do to Mark? To my brother?
To Shea
?”

I was desperate.

Fingers dug into the back of my hands as he struggled below me.

He gritted out the words. “Do you know who I am? What I’m going to do to you?”

Not if I ended this first.

“Who’s Lester and what was Mark gonna stop?”

That question evoked the first flare of fear in him. A blanched whiteness flashed across his face that had nothin’ to do with the air I was repressing from his lungs.

Finally, I found his weakness.

“Tell me…who the fuck is Lester and how’s he involved with Shea and Mark?”

Just one fucking word, that’s all I needed.

A fist suddenly hooked me at the temple. The hit took me hard enough to stun me, to catch me off guard, and it gave the bastard time to shove me off and stumble to his feet.

But in a second flat I was on mine. With all my weight, I lunged forward.

We collided.

A rain of glass shattered around us as we busted through the sliding door and crashed out onto the patio. Stone dug into flesh, muscles burned with exertion. I barely registered my skin stinging with sharp lances of pain.

It only served as fuel to the fire.

I hit him over and over. One brutal blow after another. “Tell me what you did. Admit it, you piece of shit. Admit it. Tell me! What did you do to Shea? Who’s Lester? Did you kill Mark? Did you hurt Shea?”