Rule Number Four (Rule Breakers Book 4)

by Nicky Shanks

  I snort. “Vic is interested in being a grandfather now? I was only gone for three months.”

  “Three months too long,” Colin coos and takes my hand in his. “I haven’t spoken to you in a few weeks. You had me worried you weren’t coming home.”

  “I told you I’d be back. I promised you…”

  He laughs and quickly kisses my lips. “I know, I know. I’m sorry I assume the worst when you’ve shown me that things are really changing this time. So, how was the trip?” He wastes no time in trying to catch me in a lie. “Did you do anything exciting?”

  I sigh and break free from his reach. “We did some horseback riding and she taught me how to make her famous spaghetti sauce, but other than that, not really. We talked a lot and I came to terms with a lot of questions in my life. I had questions and she had answers. That’s all.”

  He notes that I don’t want to talk about it anymore and my quick and bold answers will have to do for now. Colin’s never one to push too hard, especially with someone as flighty as me.

  Plus, I just gave birth to another son of his and left the baby on a firehouse doorstep.

  He’ll never forgive me for that.

  “I’d like to take a shower and get some sleep…is that okay?”

  “Of course it’s okay; I’m sure you’re tired. Tell you what—you take your shower and I’ll let you unwind. We can talk more in the morning.”

  His trust is so suffocating that even the guilt mixed in is running scared. His lips press against my cheek and he bounces from the room, whistling the same fairy tale song he sings when he’s extremely content and happy with things.

  My heart sinks into my stomach.

  It’s not too late to get that baby back. Maybe Colin won’t expect me to be a perfect mother this time.

  The entire night, I lie next to Colin and stare into the darkness. There’s something wrong with me to be giving up on all these children that are supposed to be a part of me. I’m supposed to protect them, not abandon them the first chance I get. Oliver didn’t have it much better than the baby I just left, but at least he knew what it was like to have some sort of a mother for a little while.

  That baby will never know me.

  It’s daylight and before I realize it, Colin’s stirring next to me and wrapping his arms around me…I’m still a little sore from giving birth in the back of Mac’s van, but I try not to show it to avoid raising any questions.

  Colin yawns and stretches himself against me, making sure I can feel the hardness he’s pressing into my backside. It makes me smile that after all this time and after all I’ve done that he still wants me like he does.

  “Good morning, V.” His hot breath tickles my ear. “I have to get Oliver ready so Vic can take him to the club. I’m dying for some of your famous buttermilk pancakes.” He pokes my side in a not-so-subtle hint. “The way they melt in your mouth is beyond orgasmic.”

  I want to kick and scream for him to stop treating me like his wife, but I love it too much to let it go.

  Deep down I only want one thing:

  I wanna chase that freedom.

  Clearing my throat, I push his hands playfully back toward him. “You get Oliver ready and I’ll make the pancakes. I want to take a quick shower first.”

  He kisses my forehead and pulls on sweatpants before leaving the room. He talks to Oliver in the distance, so I jump up and rummage through my things to find my stash of various utensils to get me through the day. I find what I’m looking for and rub the powder along my gum line and quickly put the small container back into my things before Colin comes back in. I didn’t bring much into the house with me in fear that he would find it, so I have to limit myself to make it last.

  I put the clear plastic bag into the false bottom of my designated bathroom drawer. As far as I know, he’s hasn’t found this spot yet. Not bothering to look at myself in the mirror—maybe because I’m scared of what’s looking back at me—I find a clean pair of jeans and t-shirt and change my clothes. Colin is still getting Oliver ready when I head downstairs to start the pancakes, but something in the air changes my induced mood.

  “When the hell did you come crawling back?” Vic’s smoky, hate-filled voice finds me. “I thought I told my son to get rid of you for good this time.”

  My eyes scan the area and I see him sitting on the leather sofa in the living room, tapping his fingers on the arm next to him and frowning. “I see he chose not to listen to me.”

  “Nice to see you too, Vic.” I shake my head and start to head to the kitchen.

  “Get back here,” he demands, standing up. He’s taller than Colin by a few inches, and that’s even more intimidating. “I want to talk to you about where the hell you’ve been.”

  “I was at my mother’s,” I tell him in a robotic voice. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

  He shoves his hands into the pockets of his expensive suit. “Who was the baby daddy, huh?”

  “What are you talking about—”

  His cold eyes burn into mine. “Don’t fucking play dumb with me, you piece of unworthy trash. You’re dumber than I thought if you think I didn’t have you followed. Colin should’ve done it but, like always, he has a soft spot for you and your bullshit. If his mother were alive, she would’ve gotten rid of you by now.”

  “I still don’t know what you’re talking about.” I start to stutter. “W-Why can’t you j-just leave us be?”

  “Because my son is blinded by you and it’s going to eat him alive, that’s why. You’re not worthy enough for him, and I’m going to prove it to you. I’ll pay you to stay away from him.”

  I scoff. “I’m not here for the money.”

  “Like hell you aren’t.” He laughs. “You’re here for whatever you can get your grimy little hands on. I’m not a stupid man.”

  “So that’s it? You’re offering me money to leave?”

  He holds up his index finger and presses it against his wicked grin. “That’s right…what’s the amount that will make you disappear?” He opens a black checkbook and waits for an answer. I silently admit to myself that I could take the money and run. Oliver and Colin are both better off without me; Colin is so consumed with making me into a better person that I don’t want him to lose Oliver in the crossfire.

  Something makes me back down.

  “Suit yourself.” He brings the checkbook back to his pocket. “But mark my words, I’m not letting this go. I didn’t want to be a grandfather the first time, but that was a Jackson baby you threw away like the trash you are. Lucky for you, the investigator that tailed you called me to take care of it.”

  I gasp and cover my mouth. “If you just left it there, it would’ve been taken care of! What did you do?”

  “Calm down, I found it a family so it wouldn’t suffer.”

  Colin comes into the room with little Oliver in tow, his big and bright green eyes looking at me like I’m a complete stranger.

  I have to try this time.

  I have to really, really try.

  I can’t get Vic’s black checkbook out of my mind.

  But I’m going to try to hold on a little longer and be the person I want to be.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Heather

  Sacrificing all of the parts of my life that I’ve done so much work on wasn’t a hard decision. I mean, not really, anyway. You just gotta know who and what you’re sacrificing it for, and if it’s worth the interruption in your soul to make room for something more.

  That’s what I did.

  Brandon wiggles his nose as we start taping up the first box, looking at each other to see what we should pack first. After a long night of serious conversation, I decided that moving away together didn’t seem so bad. After all, I won’t be alone.

  “Okay, so Nate has a few friends in L.A., so with their help I was able to narrow down our choices for lofts in the area. We’re going to be living in Newton Beach, which isn’t far from the city, so you can go to school, we can get jobs
and do anything else we want to do, and it’s all close by. Plus, Newton Beach is the cheapest place we can be without slumming it too badly.” He catches his breath and looks over at the entertainment center. “I’m not sure how much room we have compared to this place, so maybe we should downsize a little just to be on the safe side?”

  I stand up and move toward the coat closet next to the front door. “Okay, you start with the movies and video games and I’ll start with the coat closet. Sounds pretty efficient, yeah?”

  He nods. “Let’s do it. Thanks for helping, Heather.”

  I push away his gratitude so I can make room for my growing pleasure. “I don’t mind moving, honestly. There’s really nothing left for us here except maybe Julie and Oliver.” The first few coats I take out of the closet I throw into a pile off to the side to donate. “I tried calling her yesterday, but her phone keeps going straight to voicemail. I wanted them to know we were moving.”

  “Ah.” He waves me off and already has his box halfway full. “They’re probably just fucking in every room of that fancy new house he bought her. I’m sure everything is fine…he wouldn’t let anything happen to her after what we all just went through.”

  Not that I want to think about Oliver and Julie having sex, but that’s the picture that Brandon has painted inside of my mind and I’m sticking with it. I’m too tired to worry about other people anymore—except maybe for Brandon.

  He’s definitely my exception.

  “Hey, it doesn’t get all wintery in California like it does here, right? So, most of these heavy winter coats can be donated, and if we need them later on, we can figure something out. The less we move, the better off we’ll be, I think. I’m going to start a space in the garage for donation stuff to be more organized.” I flip my hair over my shoulder. “Unless you don’t want me to be in charge of packing and moving since it’s mostly your stuff.”

  He shrugs. “I don’t care, babe. If you want to spearhead this expedition, go for it.”

  The laugh that escapes my throat startles me. “You gotta get used to me bossing you around if you want to move across the country with me.”

  Brandon’s fingers find his forehead and he salutes me. “Noted.”

  For the next three hours, we joke and laugh about different things as we fill the cardboard moving boxes. As Brandon tapes the last one shut, we look around the living room and try to catch our breath. “We literally just emptied four rooms in three hours.” He laughs and kicks his feet up onto the coffee table. “I like this; it’s like we’re cleansing our lives and we’re at the beginning of an exciting new one.”

  I snicker and mix my legs with his. “We’re about to break into a new exciting life, remember? I can’t believe how much stuff you’ve accumulated over the years. Did you know you had like, three boxes of beer bottle caps?”

  His eyes widen. “What did you do with those?”

  “I put them in the trash pile in the garage.”

  Brandon leaps off of the sofa and throws things around in the garage. I wait for him to return with the three shoeboxes of bottle caps and they jingle as he sits them in front of me. As I prepare to turn up my nose at the apparent pile of junk he’s brought to me, he taps the top of the first box and frowns.

  “This is all I have left of my father.”

  I feel dizzy. “I thought you had—”

  He shakes his head. “This is all that’s left. He told me if I collected a thousand bottle caps before I turned nine, he would get me my first bike. I went around to everyone I knew, all the neighbors and even ran the streets looking for them. Nate even stood outside a liquor store with me one day, and we got over a hundred caps in one afternoon.”

  The faraway look on his face makes me sad. “I bet you miss Nate sometimes.”

  “Yeah, sometimes. He was the only real friend I had until I met Julie.” He blushes and turns his gaze toward mine. “And now you.”

  He sits back down next to me and stretches his legs back to their original spot. I curl myself into his side, and his warm palm finds the thickness of my thigh and presses firmly against me.

  “Let’s eat whatever we can find in the fridge for dinner to get rid of some stuff.” His voice is tired, but I’m already halfway asleep on his chest. “Then we can pack the rest of the house and not lose momentum.”

  I snuggle deeper against his heartbeat. “We don’t have to leave for another week.”

  “True.” He takes a deep breath in and holds it.

  I don’t know how long it took him to fall asleep as he held me on the sofa, but when my phone startles me awake, the house is dark and he’s tucked me further into him as he sleeps soundly in the same position I last saw him in. The jingle of my ringtone in the other room echoes through the house, and I’m not quick enough to find it in the purple room before it stops.

  Lucy.

  Why is she calling me?

  What could she possibly want at midnight?

  I dial her back and listen to it ring a few times. When she picks up, I hear her sobbing and frantically talking to someone, but I can’t make out who it is or what they’re saying.

  “Lucy?” I say loudly into the phone. “Are you okay?”

  She doesn’t hear me and keeps hurriedly speaking to someone on her end of the line. Before I know it, a loud bang fills my ear and I drop the phone onto the ground. I cry out in pain and Brandon races on his long legs into the room before he picks me up off the ground.

  “What happened?” he asks, pushing the hair from my face. “Did you hurt yourself?”

  I hold my ear and calm down. “I think that was a gunshot.” The information sinks into my brain like molasses, but when it hits the center, my eyes widen and I start to panic. “That was a gunshot! Brandon, that was Lucy calling me and I didn’t get to it in time…but when I called her right back, she was talking to someone and then…that sound…I think she got shot!”

  He holds my shaking body on the floor of the purple room. “Baby, I think you were dreaming.”

  “No! Look at my phone!” I pick up the phone from the floor and show him the proof that she called me and I called her right back. I dial her number and put it on speakerphone, but now—even on the third time I try—it goes straight to voicemail.

  “Dammit!” I slam it down on the carpet. “I know what I heard. What should we do?”

  “I don’t know.” He shakes his head. “It’s not like we can call the cops—we don’t even know where she is or if that was actually a gunshot.”

  “But she could be in trouble…what if she dies or something and I could’ve saved her?”

  He searches my eyes and figures out that I’m not going to give up. After he takes in a deep breath and sighs, he lets me loose from his grip. “I don’t know why you’re trying to be such a martyr lately, but okay, let’s call the cops.”

  He stands up and goes into the living room to find his phone. When I find my bearings and call Lucy a few more times to make sure she doesn’t answer, I find him speaking to someone on the phone in the living room in a hushed tone.

  “Yeah, my girlfriend got a phone call from her and when she tried to call her back, Lucy answered but apparently there was a gunshot…No, we don’t even know where Lucy is, that’s the problem…Sure. I understand…Uh, I’m not sure, but I’ll ask my girlfriend.”

  Brandon holds the phone from his ear and turns to me. “Do you know any of Lucy’s other friends?”

  I cross my arms over my chest. “Julie.”

  “Right.” He clears his throat and continues talking to the person on the phone. “Yeah, I got it. I already gave her number to the first person I talked to. Yeah, thanks again.” He hangs up the phone and looks over at me. “I gave them her number and they’re going to try and call her, but there’s nothing they can do without knowing where she is.”

  “I figured.” My sadness finds my cheeks and flushes them with heat. “Well, at least we tried. That’s more than the old me would’ve done.”

  “Is
that why you’re doing this? Are you trying so hard to be someone else that you think you have to make perfect choices every time?”

  I don’t know what to say.

  “I don’t think I have to be perfect—I think I just have to be a different person,” I answer him. “No one is perfect…that’s something I have to remind myself daily.”

  He nods. “Okay, then. I just want you to be yourself, Heather. I love the real you, not whatever version you think you have to be to keep me interested.”

  The phone rings in my hand and Lucy’s name flashes across the screen. Fear washes over me and Brandon takes it from my hand to answer it before the call ends.

  “Lucy?” he says into the phone. “This is Brandon, Heather’s boyfriend.” His eyes widen at whatever she says; her voice is high-pitched enough that I can hear her, but I can’t make the words out. “What? Are they okay? Where are they? What the fuck happened?…Okay, okay. We can meet you there—is she alive?”

  Brandon’s eyes narrow as he snarls, “I’m going to find him and fucking kill him…who got shot?” He glances at me and I want to claw his eyes out for making me wait. “…Okay, we’ll be there soon, don’t worry. We’ll meet you in the ER entrance.”

  He hangs up the phone and looks me directly in the eye.

  “Casey shot Oliver and tried to kidnap Julie.”

  I want to laugh. I really, really want to laugh. “That’s not funny.”

  “I know it’s not—I’m not joking. From what Lucy could coherently tell me…Casey tried to get Julie to come with him and he had a gun…Oliver tried to save her, and Casey shot him. They took Oliver, Julie, and Oliver’s mom to the hospital.”

  I choke. “Why was his mom there?”

  He shrugs. “I don’t know, babe. But our friends need us right now, so this would be the time to saddle up and be that better person you want to be.”

  A smile tugs at my lips. “I just hope they’re all okay.”

  I can’t wait to be the one they all need and depend on.