I blow out a breath as I stare out the window, the heat making the glass fog.
Her house is much smaller than the one Julia resides in. This house is what I guess some people would call cozy. My rental house since I moved out is at least three times as big as this, and Jules . . . hell, her house, my old house, is a mansion compared to this one. It compares in a lot of ways to Cole’s small, quaint home. But he’s always liked tight quarters. Me, on the other hand, needed breathing room from the woman I was married to.
“How long have you known?” I finally ask.
He doesn’t answer right away, and I’m about to think he isn’t going to open his mouth when a sigh slides past his lips. “Nine years.”
“You’ve known . . .” My voice cracks and I have to pause to pull air in through my mouth. “How could you keep that from me? If this were you, and you were sitting where I am, I would have told you, Cole.” I drop my arm, then I turn my head to look at him. He’s gazing forward, staring out at the darkness we’re cloaked in. There aren’t any street lights on—it’s pitch black.
He sighs. “You don’t get to say that without knowing the whole story. I’d hope if you were in my shoes, you’d have made the same call I did.”
That’s bullshit. I can say without any doubt, I wouldn’t have.
His head rolls, his eyes landing on mine. Regret lives inside his stare, but so does a sense of righteousness. I’ve never known him not to do the right thing, even when he didn’t want to. He’s always had higher morals than the rest of us. It was no secret that Cole and Elise didn’t get along. They were constantly fighting, but this one particular day Elise forgot her journal in the cafeteria. Cole could have been a dick and trashed it. Instead, he brought it to whatever class she was in, making himself late for his own.
“If you would tell me, or she would, then maybe I’d start to understand, but right now this feels like the ultimate fuck you. This feels . . . hell, worse than betrayal, man. I don’t even have a word for what this feels like. There’s a gaping hole in my chest and I don’t know how to begin to fill it or fix it or if that’s even possible.” I breathe, pulling in a slow breath, attempting to calm my nerves. “I don’t know how we move on from here,” I admit.
“We can’t until you know everything.” His chest rises as his arm stretches across the steering wheel. “I don’t know if she can tell you everything. Or even if she will tell you. Fuck, brother, I don’t know if you should know everything. It ain’t good.”
I laugh, because what else am I going to do? I’m at her mercy.
“I saw that video of her being beaten and tortured. I already know it isn’t good.”
“That wasn’t even half of it, Jamie. That wasn’t even a quarter of the fucked-up shit that makes up this whole goddamn mess.”
I just shake my head. It’s blatant he isn’t going to enlighten me. I’m about to get out when there is a rap of knuckles against the window next to me, followed by the back door on the passenger side opening.
“We doing this or what?” Seth asks, sliding in the back seat and slamming the door, Trey doing the same on the opposite, getting inside the vehicle behind Cole. “She owes you an explanation.”
“She doesn’t owe him a damn thing,” Cole refutes.
“Like hell she doesn’t,” I bark. How does he not think I deserve answers? If nothing else, the least he could do is tell me why she kept my son a secret. Because I don’t care what anyone says, and yeah, I was in the wrong about everything, but I should have known about him from the moment she walked in.
Everything else can go out the window. I should not have been kept in the dark. Hell, Cole should have told me the moment he found out.
“I’m going in. It’s the only way I’m going to find out since someone in this vehicle won’t tell me a damn thing.”
“You know,” Seth interjects, “that’s real shitty, bro. We’re supposed to have each other’s backs. We’re not supposed to keep shit from each other.”
Cole whips around in his seat, his angry eyes blazing toward Seth. “Don’t you ever say I don’t have his back or either of yours. I get he’s pissed. I get he doesn’t understand and he’s hurt. I even get that you are too, but fuck you for accusing me of that shit. Fuck. You,” he reiterates.
“I’m done with this,” I say, getting out, leaving them to argue or fight or whatever. I’m going to get answers. She better be ready to give them, because I’m not leaving until she does.
14
— Jenna —
Eighteen years ago
Tomorrow I’m supposed to start my senior year of high school. This was supposed to be exciting, the mark of our countdown. Only nine months then I’d graduate and leave this small town with the love of my life. Instead, that’s nowhere in sight.
Since I’ve been back, all I’ve been called is a liar, a piece of shit, worthless trash.
And now Jamie is gone. He not only left, but he took Julia with him. He chose her over me, over everything that we’ve built in the last nine years. I thought our love and friendship was unbreakable. It wasn’t. Whatever she told him, made him believe, it worked. She severed what I thought was impenetrable.
Talk about being sliced open and ripped apart all at the same time. No amount of torture that Josh ever dealt out hurt this bad. My heart is in pieces. My head is messed up. And I still haven’t told anyone that I’m pregnant. God, I hope I’m still pregnant.
“Hey! Wait up,” Cole says, grabbing me by the elbow and stopping me from escaping.
“I’m not doing this with you too, Cole.” I’m so sick of the verbal confrontations with Jamie’s friends, his bandmates. They all act like I betrayed them by betraying their brother.
“You let him leave,” he says, his tone accusing.
“Let him?” I laugh. “I begged him not to go. And then I begged him not to take her with him. No, Cole, I didn’t let him do shit. He stopped trusting me, and now he’s eating up whatever bullshit she’s feeding him.” Tears sting my eyes, threatening to spill. I tip my head up, my eyes latching onto the stars scattered across the clear night sky, trying to ward them off.
I’m so sick of crying.
No more, I silently chant before letting my head face forward, my sad eyes landing on his skeptical green ones.
“I admit, it’s a hard pill to swallow when you clam up about this supposed guy that took you. You refuse to go to the cops.” He goes silent, shoving his hands into his pockets, then his eyes drop to the ground.
What does he want me to say? I’m not going to sway from my conviction. I’m not going to admit something that isn’t true.
“I didn’t lie to him, Cole. I didn’t lie to my parents or to anyone else. I didn’t choose to leave him,” I say as adamantly as the day I was brought back.
“We’ve never been friends,” he says to me. “Hell, I can’t even recall a time that we’ve pretended to be friendly.”
“That’s because I thought we had enough respect, or love for Jamie, that we didn’t need to pretend anything.”
“You think I want what’s yours.” His eyebrow arches, daring me to tell him he’s wrong. “You think I’m in love with my best friend, and you know what, sometimes I think I am too.” I nod, agreeing with him. I’ve always thought that, but this is the first time Cole’s verbalized any sort of intimate feeling for Jamie. “But the thing is, I just want him to be happy no matter who he’s with.”
“He was happy with me,” I bite out as I step forward, jabbing my finger into his chest.
“I know.” His brows furrow and his gaze drops to where my finger still touches him. “He’s not any happier with her if it makes any difference.”
“Then why isn’t he with me?”
“It’s more complicated. He—”
“Hates you,” Trey says from behind me, interrupting Cole. I whip around facing him, his dark brown eyes snapping over my shoulder. “Seth’s ready. Let’s do this. Let’s get out of here.”
“I’ll
be there when I’m there,” Cole replies.
“I want to talk to Elise. Leave us.” Trey’s hate-filled eyes never leave Cole’s as they silently war between them. I’m about to say to hell with both of them when Cole mumbles a goodbye, leaving me standing alone with Trey in my parents’ backyard.
Cole has lived next door to me since we moved here. Maybe that’s another reason he and I don’t get along. From day one, I tried to become his friend, but he didn’t want a friend that was a girl.
Trey’s gaze finally falls to me and something in them makes me take a step back, not liking the look penetrating me at this very moment.
Present
Walking away from Jamie in a similar way that he did with me didn’t make me feel good. In fact, it made me feel like shit.
I knew this day would eventually come. Everything catches up with us at some point, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t taken by surprise. I hadn’t expected him to show up at Cole’s house, even though I’ve known that was a possibility all along. They’re friends, bandmates, business partners, so the joke’s on me. I shouldn’t have been blindsided. I shouldn’t have been there, taking the chance it would happen.
Maybe a part of me—a small part—wanted it to happen. I’ve always yearned for him to know Danny, to love Danny like I do. But it was a risk I couldn’t take. Not with my son’s life.
“When were you planning on telling me Jamie was back in the picture?”
“He’s not in the picture, Mal,” I answer on autopilot. Cutting my eyes to my partner and best friend, Malachi Hayes, from where I sit next to him in the passenger side of his SUV, I cock my head. “How’d you find out?”
There’s only a handful of people that would have told him, and I doubt it was either of the boys. I’m betting on Cole. Josh had been at the bar, and then conveniently disappeared as soon as Brandon called out his dad on stage.
“You know who.” His dark, almost black eyes glance at me for a split second, just long enough to let me feel and see he’s pissed off that it wasn’t me.
We make quite a pair, Malachi and me. His rich, Native American heritage contrasts next to my plain, fairest of fair skin, though his long jet-black hair matches mine in length. Where he towers over my five-foot-five-inch height with his nearly six-foot-four-inch frame, that didn’t used to be the case. He’s a little over a year younger than me, and like Cole, he didn’t care for me when we were in high school. I know now that had everything to do with the lies my so-called best friend was filling his head with.
“Cole has a big mouth,” I snarl.
“You should have told me this morning. I knew something was wrong the minute you walked into the safe house.”
Our task force has a house in Santa Monica, nestled among vacation rentals along the beach where women, children, and sometimes even men recover after being rescued from human trafficking rings. Being a victim myself, I know how hard it is to come back home, back to a reality that is no longer the same. I know what it’s like to have to rehabilitate yourself alone, and that is something I never want another person to experience if I have anything to do with it.
I’m not a therapist, and I don’t pretend to be. That’s why we have Jessica—Josh’s wife. She is full-time and completely dedicated to the foundation she started fifteen years ago. You see, whereas I was the last person Josh ever kidnapped, Jess was the first. After he let me go, he found her, rescued her. Apparently, there was something about me that reminded him of her, and that was one of the reasons I was able to get under his skin without even knowing it.
Other than our similar hair color and fair skin, we’re nothing alike. She has blue eyes and I have brown ones. She’s soft, sweet, delicate even. You’d think being a certified psychologist that has been through the things she has, she would have hardened her emotions. She hasn’t. In fact, she’s big on displaying and talking about feelings. I, on the other hand, am not so much for that. I’m more like Josh than I am his wife.
“I should have, but then I would have had to acknowledge it myself.” Malachi pulls his SUV in the driveway next to Josh’s matching black Tahoe. We all have matching vehicles. “And I wasn’t ready,” I admit.
He stops, shoving the gear shift forward, but doesn’t make a move to shut off the engine.
“Are you prepared for what Jamie knowing could bring?”
I breathe, blowing air out of my mouth.
“No.” I shake my head. “But we knew it would eventually catch up to us, and regardless if I’m ready or not, my son and Brandon’s safety come first.”
Mal reaches his right hand out, holding it up, finger splayed apart and waiting for me to take it, which I do, sliding my left hand to his, our fingers interlocking.
“You know I’d give my life to protect my godson. That goes for his brother too.”
My lips spread, giving him a weak smile. “I know, and you have no idea what that means to me. Thank you, Mal,” I say, squeezing him.
There is no one besides Danny that I trust more than Malachi Hayes. I trust him with my life, my son’s life, and the boy that I love just like he was my own. I know if the worst of the worst happens, I can count on my partner to protect what I hold dearest to my heart.
15
— Jamie —
I hesitate, my fist raised in the air to knock on her door. What am I supposed to say? I don’t know where to start. Cole is right. I am pissed, but I’m equally hurt. I’m devastated, shocked, torn the fuck up.
I drop my arm, not able to bring myself to announce my presence just yet, my head mimicking the motion.
I know I have no right to demand answers, even if that’s exactly what I want to barge in there and do. I’ve racked my brain for the last two hours, trying to imagine reasons significant enough that she wouldn’t have told me about him—our son. If she wanted to hurt me the same way I did her, then she’s succeeded. But then I keep coming back to that type of behavior isn’t like her. Not the girl I once knew, loved, still love.
Pondering all this while standing on the small porch is short lived. My head snaps up when the front door swings open, finding Danny standing before me. I swallow, unable to breathe or form a coherent thought as seconds pass by, both of us locked in a mirrored stare.
He’s my son.
He’s mine and Jenna’s kid, just like it was supposed to be. What wasn’t supposed to be was me not knowing he existed.
“Will you get your mom?” I finally ask, finding my voice again.
“She isn’t home,” he deadpans, crossing his arms and scrutinizing me from where he stands. The porch light suddenly feels like a bright beam of heat pointed directly at me.
“It’s after midnight,” I say, worry etched in my tone. Being on tour for months at a time, that was the one thing I’d never bend on with Julia. She always had to be home with our son. Apparently, the same can’t be said about Jenna, and that doesn’t sit well on my chest.
“She has a job.” He arches a jet-black eyebrow, challenging me on his reasoning.
“And you’re a kid,” I counter. This is bullshit. She should be here.
“No,” he argues. “I’m seventeen. Far from a kid.” His brows wrinkle, irritated, his cheeks flushing with heat.
“You’re still underage. You still shouldn’t be home alone.”
“He’s not alone,” Brandon’s overly cheery but forced voice follows, then he appears next to his brother in the doorway.
It’s the first time I’ve seen them standing so close that I’m able to compare the two. They match in height, but where Brandon is lean, Danny is thicker, bulkier, stronger maybe, and with a look on his face that makes me question if I’d want to go toe to toe with him in a fight. Where Brandon comes off light, sometimes funny even, Danny comes off with a hint of danger behind eyes that are a dead ringer for my own.
“Even better,” I say, stepping inside without asking because I’ll be damned if I leave either of them in this house alone and unsupervised. Brandon steps aside, lett
ing me pass, but Danny remains rooted to the ground, his eyes watching me as I enter, a silent warning meeting my gaze.
I’ll give him this, he’s intimidating as fuck. That’s not to say I’m afraid of him, because I’m not, but I could see how someone else might be. He’s got that ‘don’t fuck with me’ vibe rolling off him in waves.
What kind of kid did she raise?
I’ve always taught Brandon not to go looking for a fight, but should one stop in front of you and you can’t get out of it with words, then fight like your life depends on it. In the world we live in today, you can’t take chances. Violent acts happen every day, and to good people that weren’t asking for it. You have to always be on guard, pay attention to your surroundings.
“By all means,” Danny flays out his arm, “come right on in.”
“Danny,” Cole draws out from behind me. “Knock it off with the attitude.”
Entering from the front door, you step right into the living room. There is no foyer like in the home I once shared with Julia. I wonder if it’s a coincidence Jenna lives this close. Did she move out here like we’d planned and the boys just ran into each other one day? My gut instinct tells me I’m way off, but then I’m clueless about everything.
“I’m not the one that Mom’s going to be pissed at.” Danny’s hard eyes bore into Cole’s. I can vividly see there’s familiarity in the way they speak to each other—and I hate it. I hate knowing my best friend has known for years that I have another son but didn’t say one word. I hate that he knows my kid on a personal level and I don’t. It shouldn’t have been this way.
“Not like it’ll be the first or the last time,” Cole replies. I’m left wondering if he’s referring to when we were teenagers or a more present time. For some reason, now that my mind has calmed slightly, I do believe him when he swore he’s never slept with her. Even if she’s a completely different person than she was when she was mine, she still isn’t Cole Master’s type—and he isn’t hers.
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