“Stop it!” I shouted, watching King fall to his knees. “Stop hurting him! It’s not right. You can’t take out on him who his family is.”
I thought of Dizzy and me, and all the guys in the band, really. King didn’t say anything, but I noticed he had his head turned now and was looking at me over his shoulder.
“We can’t choose our family,” I cried out. “Only our amigos. Our friends.”
“Naive little girl.” Smyth’s partner made a clucking sound under his breath. “Let’s leave ’em be.”
He removed my cuffs, and I rubbed my wrists, staring at King as his cuffs were removed too.
“Good evening to you both,” Smyth said sarcastically as he and his partner walked away.
Shielding my eyes, I watched Smyth fold himself into the driver’s seat. His partner rounded the hood and climbed into the passenger seat. Their doors closed and then the flashing lights went off as the patrol car pulled away from the curb.
Trembling, I hurried over to King. “Are you okay?” I asked, crouching down beside him and placing my hand on his shoulder.
“Sí. Got more padding than he counted on. Pussy cop. He hit like a girl.” Disgusted, King spat on the concrete, and I noticed dark blood in it. “Help me up.”
Working together, we got him to his feet and weaved like drunkards the remaining distance to my house. By the time we reached the driveway, I was out of breath, and froze when I realized Uncle Bruce’s car was parked in it. The engine was running and the lights were on. Both went off as the driver’s door creaked open, and my uncle climbed out.
“That’s my uncle,” I said quickly.
“Should I take off?” King asked.
“Lace Lowell,” Uncle Bruce boomed. “What the fuck happened to you?” He stomped toward us, his eyes blazing as he took both of us in. “You get into a fight?”
“The cops mistook me for someone else.” King made the explanation before I could tell him it wouldn’t matter. “But they were rough with both of us.”
“You don’t look so good, son.” My uncle shook his head. Obviously, what condition I was in didn’t factor.
“No, sir,” King said. “Not feeling too well either.”
“Why don’t you come inside? You can call your parents, and we can sort this all out.”
“Okay,” King said, then glanced at me.
“Go ahead and wait for me by the house, son.” My uncle pointed. “I want to have a private word with my niece.”
King gave me an inquiring look, and I shook my head. I didn’t want him getting into trouble with my uncle. Turning away, he shuffled toward the house.
Uncle Bruce glared at me. “You’re just like your mother,” he said, his “private word” with me starting at the same place all his lectures did.
“I’m not,” I said, hotly denying it like I usually did.
“Your SAT is tomorrow, right?”
“Yes. What—”
“Just look at you. Sabotaging your future, hanging out with the wrong crowd.”
“King’s not the wrong crowd.” I lifted my chin. “He’s my friend.”
“He in your band?” my uncle asked.
“Yes.”
“You doing drugs with him?” His eyes narrowed.
“No. Never.”
Uncle Bruce asked that question a lot, but never believed my answer. I didn’t really know why he bothered to ask. Long ago, he’d formed an opinion about me based on my genetics, just like that cop had with King.
My uncle was never going to change his mind about me, and I was done trying to correct him.
Lace
“You look terrible.” Chad frowned at me the following morning when he arrived to give me a ride to take the test with him. He took one look at me and opened his arms. “Need a hug?”
“Yeah.” Nodding, I walked straight to him, and his strong arms closed around me. I laid my cheek on his solid chest, engulfed by his warmth. But I wasn’t soothed, nor was I turned on by him. Though his response to me was undeniable, he straight-up acknowledged it rather than dismiss it.
“Don’t read anything into it, Lowell. You are beautiful and I care about you a lot, but I get a boner when the wind blows a certain way.” His arms tightened around me. “I got your text when I woke up this morning. I know you’re hurting. Just let me hold you.”
“It was terrible,” I whispered, the pain still raw.
“I’ll bet it was.” He stroked my hair with his large hand. “War just cut you off. No further word? No text or call this morning to walk it back?”
“No.” And I didn’t expect there to be. This was War. The band’s song “My Way or the Highway” was his modus operandi. His name was his battle cry.
“You should have called me last night. I would’ve come right over.”
“You needed your rest.” I straightened, putting an inch of space between us, then two. I noted Chad was wearing a polo. He was so not rock ’n’ roll, just an all-around nice guy.
Why couldn’t I fall for one of those?
I glanced up at him. “King’s parents didn’t pick him up until after three, and afterward, my uncle laid into me for my choices some more. Then Diz came home, and he got blasted too.”
“Your uncle’s a sorry bastard,” Chad said, his hazel eyes warm with empathy and his expression sad.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “I made allowances before because he took us in when we had nowhere else to go. But he’s never going to change. He’s just a stranger to me from now on. I’m through trying to win him over.”
“Understandable.” Chad’s gaze searched mine. “Did you get any sleep last night?”
“Nope.” I grimaced. “But I drank two cups of coffee this morning.”
“So you’re tired and wired.”
“Yes.”
“Okay. We can work with that.” He gave me his nice-guy smile.
It made me feel better, but it didn’t cure what ailed me.
My life was in the crapper. I was sad, mad, hurt, and worried as hell about the test, but I had a friend. One I could count on. A good friend was more reliable than hope.
“We’d better get going.” Chad stepped back and gestured to the old rusted-out pickup he’d parked in the driveway. He’d purchased it with his own money, saving for it since he was little. “Your chariot awaits.”
Nodding, I followed him and he opened the passenger door. It creaked in protest. He joked about it needing to be oiled, like he always did. Then he closed my door and rounded the hood.
Inside the cab, he set the radio dial on a country-rock station. On any other day, I’d have teased him about his taste in music, which was so different from mine. But today I stayed within the boundaries of my own thoughts. I stared out the window, trying to remember math formulas.
Too soon, the drive was over, and we arrived at the middle school.
Once inside the building, we separated. Chad squeezed my hand before he went to check in, since he was taking the SAT too. We entered the cafeteria shoulder to shoulder, and he gave me an encouraging smile. Then he took a seat at his designated table, and I found my seat at another table.
“Good luck.” I mouthed the words across the distance separating us.
When the proctor told us to begin, I tore open my booklet, using the pointed end of my number-two pencil. Then the real torture began. The words on the examination and the bubbles on the Scantron answer form blurred before my weary eyes. The math section was impossible, and the reading and writing section was only slightly better.
I developed a terrible headache during the last forty-five minutes, and my bladder ached, about to burst from all the coffee I’d consumed.
When time was called, I trudged to the front along with everyone else and turned in my materials. Then I rushed out of the cafeteria, found a restroom, and took care of business. When I returned to the foyer, Chad was leaning against a trophy case, waiting for me. He took one look at my face and knew how the test had gone for me.
�
�Didn’t go well, huh?” he asked.
“I didn’t even finish the math section.”
“Oh, Lace.” His expression turned sad for the second time that morning.
“I know. I’m screwed.”
Even friendship couldn’t make this fail better, and then it got worse. Outside, it was raining. A steady mist just heavy enough to be annoying, and it blocked out the sun.
“Lace,” a familiar voice called as I struggled to get the hood on my slicker up.
“Bryan.” My eyes widened as I watched him approach. “What do you want?” I frowned, though of course he looked delicious in a black leather jacket, black tee, and jeans, with the mist glistening like magical dust in his brown hair.
“How’d the test go?” His brows drew together as Chad moved beside me, placing his hand on my shoulder.
I reached for and squeezed my current friend’s fingers before refocusing on my former childhood one.
“Terrible,” I said bitterly. “It went terrible. But you didn’t come here for that. You came because War told you to. Right?”
“War didn’t have anything to do with it. I’m here for you,” he said, glancing at Chad before refocusing on me. “Can you and I go somewhere to talk? Just the two of us.”
My heart wanted to leap out of my chest and cling to his. How many times had I dreamed of him saying something like this? But dreams were more of a shot in the dark for me than hope, and I didn’t trust Bryan’s motives anymore, knowing full well his current friendship with War superseded our past one.
“If you need to say something,” I said, lifting my chin, blinking as a fat droplet smacked me on my nose, “just go ahead and say it right here.”
“All right.” Bryan’s eyes narrowed, as gray like the impenetrable clouds above us, and as green as the wet grass on the lawn. “In the dressing room. The question you asked me. I didn’t tell you the truth. I have wondered about it.”
His gaze dipped to my mouth, and my lips tingled. I suddenly felt every dewy drop of rain.
“I’ve wondered about it a lot,” he said softly. “I wondered about it so much last night that I couldn’t sleep. But I’ve got no right to wonder. I think you know that.”
“Um . . .” My mind blanked, and my legs trembled as the solid ground seemed to shift beneath me.
“Should I go and leave you two alone?” Chad asked.
“That would be great,” Bryan said, but he didn’t take his eyes off me. His gaze unwavering, he asked me again, “Now will you go somewhere so we can talk?”
Nodding, I whispered, “Yes.”
Lace
It felt weird, forbidden almost, sitting across from Bryan inside a diner I’d never been in before, just the two of us. The waitress brought us coffee and took our order. When she left, we went completely silent, avoiding direct eye contact. Apparently, it felt a little awkward to Bryan too.
While I folded and refolded an empty sugar packet, Bryan stretched his sculpted, tatted arms over the back of the vinyl seat on his side of the booth and turned his head to stare out the window. I stared at him.
“I hope you know I tried to talk some sense into him last night,” he said softly to the window before turning his head to look at me.
“War, you mean,” I said, thunderstruck by the unguardedness within his eyes.
Lowering his arms, Bryan nodded, and glossy layers of his hair drifted down to shadow his serious brow.
“I didn’t expect you to intervene for me.” I shook myself out of the alternate reality I’d stalled in since he’d admitted to thinking about kissing me.
“You’re both my friends. I had to.” Shifting in his seat, he looked uncomfortable.
“War is your friend. I’m not sure what I am to you anymore.” Tired, I gave him my feelings unfiltered when I probably should have continued suppressing them.
Bryan winced. “Have I botched it up between us that badly?”
“I don’t know.” I tried to put myself in his shoes, but I didn’t have a similar frame of reference. I only had two best friends that I’d ever felt free to be totally unguarded with—my brother, and at one time, the handsome guy sitting across the table from me. “Why don’t you tell me how you think things are between us?”
“I’m not sure.” Bryan’s gaze sharpened. “But I know you’re the only person I ever felt like I could really talk to.”
“But what about War?” I asked.
“War talks. He doesn’t listen.”
“And all those other girls—”
“We don’t do a lot of talking,” he said quickly. “Not about anything that matters.”
“I can see where talking might be a problem.” Just sitting across from him, I found it difficult to concentrate. I leaned back in my seat, frowning.
Bryan was never with any girl very long, never the same one twice, except off and on again with Missy Rivera. I didn’t know what it was about her that was different, but I knew she’d been with War and Bryan.
I didn’t like her.
“So many times,” he said, “I was tempted to pick up the phone and talk to you like I used to.”
“You have my number.” Confused, I squinted at him.
“Let me rephrase that.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t call you. It wouldn’t have been right. Not when you were with him. Not when most of the stuff I wanted to talk about involves him, you, and the group.”
“Oh.” My eyes rounded. “I guess I never thought of it that way.”
“But now . . .” He let that hang, giving me a meaningful look.
“With War and me broken up, it’s different.”
Bryan nodded. He was unguarded, now that the wall that had stood between us was gone. Looking into his warm familiar eyes without it there, I suddenly didn’t feel so alone or quite so sad.
“Well then.” I leaned forward, put my elbows on the table, and propped my chin in my hands. “We have a lot to catch up on. So, start talking.”
“About what?” he asked.
“Everything I missed that you wished you’d shared. Everything you thought about asking me but didn’t.”
“That’s a lot of stuff, and pretty open-ended.” His lips curved upward.
“Start with the band, and we’ll move on from there.” I tilted my head. “How would you rate our . . . the band’s performance last night?”
“I thought we nailed it.”
“I thought so too. But it was a hard-core set. Don’t you think there needs to be a ballad or two thrown in for balance?”
“You might be on to something.”
I knew I was, but decided to leave it there. With the idea planted in his mind, it could germinate and grow. With War, I had to hit him repeatedly with my ideas to get them through.
“So, you and War?” I raised a brow. “Does he piss you off as often as he does me?”
“Oh yeah.” Bryan’s eyes dancing to a familiar shared tune, he leaned forward. With only a handful of inches separating us, I could see the individual pixels of light gray and dark green within his thickly lashed, dream-inducing eyes.
“But he’s still your closest friend.” I pulled in a labored breath. The rapid exposure to the high-altitude pine-scented air made me dizzy.
“We’ve been through a lot together. He’s basically a good guy, but that little voice inside your head that should stop you from saying shit you shouldn’t? He doesn’t have it. You and I talked about this a while ago.” His eyes flickered with shadows I somehow knew weren’t caused by our conversation about War’s character, but involved circumstances between the two of them that I wasn’t privy to. “In Southside, you have to be tough or you lose the things you care about.”
“Strength not weakness. Alliances over enemies,” I said, knowing how it worked and wishing Bryan was an ally, wanting to be one for him.
I might not currently be one of his closest friends, but maybe with time, I could regain that position. Sometimes who had your back was the only thing that stood between success
and failure, or life and death. And even then, like with King’s brother, sometimes it wasn’t enough.
“It’s the escalation with War that worries me.” Bryan’s expression sobered. “Problems for him are battles to be won at all cost, even when it involves someone who really matters to him.”
Does he mean I matter to War?
Bryan exhaled heavily. A little shiver ran up my spine as his warm minty breath lifted tendrils of my hair. This was probably the closest I’d ever get to sharing a kiss with him. As I imagined his lips on mine, his tongue in my mouth, and his breath mingling with mine, my stomach fluttered.
“What happened after I left last night?” I asked. “With the record label reps?” I didn’t really want to know if War had slept with someone else, or for that matter, if Bryan had.
He studied me for a beat before answering. “They said we have potential but are too inexperienced. They left business cards. Told us to call them back when we’re headlining.”
“I’ll bet that pissed War off.” My brows lifted as I imagined it.
“He was already mad. But yeah, it was like gas to a flame.”
“He didn’t make a good impression with the reps. With his temper.”
“No. Not hardly. And he got completely shit-faced right in front of them too.”
“I’m sorry. It sounds like you had an upsetting night.” Without stopping to think about it, I reached for Bryan.
The instant my fingers touched his arm, I felt a spark. Heat singed my skin, but I also felt something deeper. With him, there was that foundation of shared experiences that settled me. Sure, he was all grown up and sexy as hell, but I also knew him, knew with him I was always safe.
Immediately craving more of that heat—I was, after all, an addictive personality more like my mother than I cared to admit—I swept my thumb across his skin in a wider arc. More of what I craved blazed through me like wildfire.
Bryan wasn’t unaffected either. His eyes darkened, and his nostrils flared.
“I don’t believe my evening was nearly as upsetting as yours,” he said low, his gaze dropping to his arm.
SOUTHSIDE HIGH: Rockstar Enemies to Lovers Romance (Tempest World Book 1) Page 14