Hell Bent (Rock Bottom #1) (10 page)

I slam my hand down on the table the second I walk back into the studio and growl, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Bennett’s head snaps up, meeting my eyes. “It’s a good song. It deserves to be heard.”

“That isn’t for you to decide, and I don’t know who the hell gave that to you, but it’s personal property.”

“Izzy.”

“Leave,” I tell everyone else without taking my eyes off of Bennett until the door closes behind me. I drop my gaze to the table in front of me and try to breathe through my anger. “How. Fucking. Dare. You.”

“Izzy,” he tries again.

“Don’t interrupt me, Bennett. I dealt with the asshole I met the day I came to talk to you while you were on tour. I dealt with the fact that you said you wouldn’t work with anyone but me, so I moved shit around to accommodate you and I work my ass off. I have done everything I can to make this work and you repay me by doing this?”

Why the hell is it that I leave for ten minutes to take a phone call regarding
his
career and come back to this? I haven’t looked inside that book in at least five years, but the second I heard the words when I opened the door, I knew what they were from. It doesn’t matter how good the song sounded—taking lyrics that my father wrote without my permission makes me furious. 

“I didn’t mean to upset you.” 

Stepping up beside me, Bennett grips my chin, forcing me to look at him when I don’t respond. Regret fills his eyes when he sees the tears spilling down my cheeks. I hate that he is seeing me cry, but I can’t stop myself. The words in that song tear me apart.

“You do so much for me that you don’t need to do; I’d never intentionally hurt you. You have to know that by now. I’m not the guy the tabloids think they know.”

I can’t think with him touching me. His fingers slide from my chin down to my neck and as hard as I fight it, my eyes close. I want to be mad at him, but I’m so tired of being angry. It’s exhausting. It isn’t even that I was pissed off that he was singing the song, it was hearing the words, and for a second I was a little girl again and I could hear my father. What killed me the most was when I walked down the hall and he wasn’t waiting for me.

Needing to forget about everything running through my mind, I do the one thing I know is so stupid that I shouldn’t. I reach up and pull him down to my lips, letting myself do what I know we shouldn’t, but have both thought about. He doesn’t give me time to change my mind before he grabs me by the hips and pulls me against him. I slide my arms around his neck when Bennett’s tongue slips between my lips. It feels so right that I hate myself when my mind catches up with me.

I shove back, putting distance between us. “That was bad. We can’t do this.”

“I don’t know,” he whispers, moving closer. “Seemed like we were doing pretty good at it.”

Stepping around him, I grab my bag and my father’s leather notebook. “We’re not doing this, Bennett.”

I ignore whatever he says when I walk past him and out the door. We’ve been working most of the night, so when I step outside, the sun is just starting to come up, but for some reason, directly above me it’s pouring. I tip my head back, letting the rain wash the tears from my face and can’t help but notice that the weather is exactly like my life lately. I’m nothing but a downpour on the people I’m with while the world around us is covered in sunshine. With that thought, the need to vomit—which I’ve dealt with more and more lately—hits me. I rush to the corner of the building and empty what little was in my stomach.

When I feel like I can finally move without throwing up, exhaustion takes over. I know damn well I should go home or just crawl into one of the apartments above the barn, but I can’t stay here. As it is, I know the second I’m not focusing on something else, I’m going to fall apart. That’s one of the major reasons I always say no when someone mentions recording one of my father’s songs. Hearing it again and again would hurt too much. 

I know I’ll have about half a million things or more to do at the office now that Bennett tweeted that photo. His phone has been going off constantly since he did it, so I can only imagine the mess waiting for me. I search through my purse as I climb into the cab of my truck and don’t stop until I find the new pill bottle that Meg gave me yesterday. I shake one out into my hand but know it won’t do what I need it to so I shake out another. The photo of my father and me that I keep tucked in the dash behind the steering wheel judges me as I swallow them down.

This feeling—the hollow empty feeling that showed up when I watched the video on my birthday—feels like it could swallow me whole any time. It makes me wish I could take all the lies I’ve ever been told and shove them back into it to make me whole again. I don’t care what it takes—I need to do something to forget, even if it’s just for a bit.

First stop: liquor store. 

Thank God for fake IDs.

Some people might think it’s bad when the clerk at a liquor store expects you and has the bottle you go in for already waiting. Some people would call it a bad habit, a forming addiction—I call it convenient. I guess that’s what a two-week, full-on bender will do to you. Two weeks of stumbling my way through everything I do, but I’m numb while I do it, and that’s what I was aiming for. I haven’t seen Bennett since I walked out on our studio session two weeks ago. I called Meg into work early that day and put her on a mission to find him a manager since he was dragging his feet and I went to work on finding a tour that he could open for. Thankfully, Shyanne Grace had a slot that needed to be filled on the last leg of her tour and willingly took him on knowing the story behind him. I didn’t care if he had to fill his time slot with covers because he doesn’t have enough of his own songs yet, but I couldn’t handle having him around me. 

Jason’s eyes widen when the words, "It’s not just about me anymore" leave my mouth, and he begins to cough, choking on the breath he was taking. I wipe at the tears forming and flop back on the bed, forgetting that I’m bruised up until the pain hits me.

“Fuck,” I groan again, clutching at my ribs. At least while I was listening to what the doctor had to say I heard her tell me that nothing was broken and the baby looked fine.

Holy shit, I’m going to have a baby
. 

“You look like your head is going to explode and you’re turning blue. You need to breathe.”

I can’t tell if I’m breathing or not, but no matter what I do I can’t get my body to do anything I want it to. I’m paralyzed while the word
baby
explodes through my brain, splattering it against the inside of my skull like a plane crash. 

“I can’t have a baby,” I finally force out. Jason smiles sadly back at me. I know he never thought he would want kids because of the way he grew up, but he turned out to be one of the best fathers I know.

“It’s a little late to think about that now, babe.”

“But what if I fail?” I whisper, biting my lip to keep it from wobbling.

“But what if you don’t?” 

The sob I’ve been trying to keep in escapes when I hear Abby’s voice from doorway. I can’t even bring myself to look at her because I feel like such a failure. Growing up, she always told me how proud she was of me, but I doubt she’s feeling that right now. Between this and how I’ve treated her lately, I’m surprised she’s even here. Hiding my face behind my hands, I let myself cry, completely blaming it on the fact that I’m pregnant. I can’t believe I didn’t figure it out sooner. I should have known something was wrong, but I was blaming it on the pills.

The bed dips, and along with her arms, Abby’s scent surrounds me. “I’m so sorry,” I cry into her shirt, clinging to her like I’m never going to see her again.

Gently, she lies back, taking me with her. Her fingers slip into my hair, lightly rubbing my head like she did when I was a little girl. 

“There’s no reason to be sorry, baby,” she lies quietly. “Nothing else matters other than the fact that you’re OK. You scared the shit out of me, kid; out of all of us.”

I nod against her chest. I don’t want to admit it out loud, hell, I don’t want to admit it to myself, but I scared the shit out of myself this time too. I’ve done stupid things, but I’ve never acted like this. I’ve always been the adult in the situation. This tailspin I’ve taken over the past few weeks is going to be one of the worst I’ve ever had to clean up.

“You know we’re going to have to talk at some point, right?” Abby asks a while later. Jason decided to let us have some time alone, and after bringing Zander in so he could be sure that I was fine, Jason took him home. Everyone else is still in the waiting room, but I can’t bring myself to face them yet.

“Why am I such a fuck up, Abby?”

“You think you’re a fuck up because you’ve made a few mistakes in your life? One that will give you something amazing?”

“I stole Tuesday’s car, and I crashed it. I put my life, the life of everyone around me, and evidently the life of my unborn child, on the line. What would have happened if I hadn’t made it, or I killed someone and went to jail? What the hell would’ve happened?”

“You’re right, you could have, but you didn’t.” She sighs, raising the head of the bed a bit so she can shift and look at me. “So here’s what is going to happen. We’re going to have Tuesday put a spin on this as soon as she can so the press doesn’t get out of hand with it. You’re going to slow down at work and not try to do everything by yourself. You’re going to replace Tuesday’s car with whatever she wants. You
will
come home—at least until everything is under control—and you’re going to attend meetings with Jason. Understood?”

“Yes, ma’am.” I don’t even have to think about my answer. Her terms could be much more severe, but I think she’s feeling sorry because she knows where everything is stemming from. 

“You know I have to ask, Izzy.”

I nod again, already knowing what she wants to know so she doesn’t have to ask at all. “Birthday. Fight. Alcohol. Fake ID.”

“You do know that I’ll be taking that away, right?”

“Yeah,” I whisper. “I’m never drinking again anyway.”

Abby laughs but doesn’t say what she is thinking about. Instead, she rests her head against the top of mine and sighs. 

“You were almost two the first time.”

“The first time what?”

“The first time you called me Mom.” I lean back and my eyes snap to hers. “It killed me to have to correct you because I wasn’t, but you didn’t know any better. You picked it up at daycare. I shouldn’t have had to correct you. Your mother should have been there.”

“But she wasn’t.” Everything starts to fall into place as Sophia’s words smack me in the face again. Pulling Abby’s face down, I press a kiss against her cheek. “But you were. You always were.”

“Always will be, too.”