by C. R. Jane
The darkness behind my eyes brightens as I squeeze my lids together just to feel him pressed tightly to my aching breasts. A mimicked pant escapes in a burst when he withdraws just enough to drag in air. We’re consumed and possessed. The world narrows to two bodies longing for more than this night will bring. Tanner is greedy, but he gives as much as he takes. I like kissing him, a lot. Too much for it to continue, so I press against his shoulders. Then I groan and curse as a knock sounds on the door. He breaks away, dazed. A second passes as we stare at one another before someone pounds on the door again.
“You’re on in five,” says one of the crew, and Tanner takes a step away. His hands are clenched into tight fists, and his breathing is coming out labored.
“I have to go,” he says roughly, and I want to cry. It’s only the unspoken things that sifts between us that tells me everything will be alright.
Jensen
As we perform, I stare at the woman who has tormented my dreams and every waking moment for the past five years. I can’t believe she’s actually standing in front of me. Living, breathing, alive. Jesse and Tanner fought for this stop for months while this tour was being planned, hoping that if we came, somehow she would appear. But I hadn’t wanted it despite the fact that every day without her felt like torture. She had broken my heart into a thousand pieces. Taken my love and thrown it away like it was nothing. My feelings for her were torturous in their intensity. They weren’t love, because the feelings weren’t light or happy. They were dark and weighed heavily on my heart. She was a poisonous addiction that I hadn’t been able to kick. I wouldn’t give in this time.
13
Ariana
If I have been one thing in life, it’s someone’s responsibility. I started off as an obligation to parents who never wanted children. An abortion wasn’t an option by the time my mother confirmed her pregnancy, a detail she was never above mentioning. Then, the boys had taken care of me when I moved to Bellmont, protecting me and sheltering me from my dark world. Gentry, in his sick way, had taken responsibility for me over the last few years. But it all ended tonight. The last thing I’ll ever be to anyone again is a duty, a mission, a task for completion. I can’t move on with Jesse and Tanner...and hopefully Jensen, with Gentry looming in the background. It has to end. I’m not sure how it’s going to happen, but I’ll do anything to make sure it does.
I sneak backstage before the show finishes, and I leave a note for the guys with their assistant Emily saying that I have to take care of something and that I’ll meet Jesse back at his house as soon as it’s done. Scared but resolute, I walk to my car and drive for the last time to the hell hole that I’ve been kept prisoner in.
The house is quiet and dark when I walk in. Every part of me aches to be back with them but I know that in order to start over I have to somehow find a way to fix the biggest mistake I’ve ever made. Gentry will be home in the morning, and I’ll have my bags packed.
“Forget something?” comes Gentry’s cool voice from within the dark cave of the living room. I squint and can see him sitting in his lazy boy rocker, a bottle of something dangling from his hand.
“Gentry,” I say, in a quiet, resigned way as I walk towards him. Icy-cold fear sinks into my veins as I stand there staring at him for one stunned second. He looks terrible, nothing like he looked before he left just the day before. His blond hair is stringy, his light eyes wide and crazed. He’s unshaved and it looks like he slept in his clothes. Worse, he radiates a dark cruelty, the cold fury he possesses unable to be ignored. Staring at him I can’t help but think how repulsive I think he is, like a clay version of a human being. If I cut him open, insects and maggots would probably spill out instead of blood.
He doesn’t just appear malicious; he seems unstable in a way he hasn’t before, as if he’s lost whatever was holding him in check before. I force my lungs to suck in air and my brain to start working. It finally hits me that I’m probably in a lot of danger since he’s home a whole day early. I look wildly behind me, somehow hoping that anyone will be right outside of the still open front door. Gentry stands up suddenly and I gasp as he stalks towards me. He reaches out and grabs my arms.
“Aren’t you happy to see me?” he growls at me, his eyes narrowing menacingly. “Cause it’s not looking that way...wife. I saw you leave the house yesterday and I know you haven’t been home since then. Who have you been fucking? I can smell it all over you. You swore you’d love, honor, and obey me. I’m here to make sure you keep that promise.”
“You’re home early,” I whisper lamely, my eyes darting around the room for something, anything, I can use to defend myself if it comes down to it. I straighten my back and glare at Gentry, wondering how I had managed to put up with this sad, pathetic man for five years. “I’m leaving, and if you do anything, I have people that know where I am, and they will come for me. Even you won’t be able to escape jail after that,” I say, even though it’s a lie.
“No, I don’t think you’re going anywhere,” says Gentry with an evil smile. Gentry lifts up his shirt, forcing me to look down against my will. My stomach lurches when I see the glint of a blade and the grim smile of promise on his face.
“Remember saying ‘till death do us part’? One way or the other, you’re keeping those vows, Ariana, and it doesn’t make a difference to me which one. I have no problem killing you and leaving you for your lover to find. So, go ahead and scream; maybe you two can die together.”
I look around the house, feeling trapped in one of those horrible news stories. I could already see the headlines: ex-husband stabs wife in a jealous rage. Hadn’t we been heading this direction for years?
“How did you know I had left the house?” I ask quietly, my eyes on the gun he’s now holding in his hand.
“I know you, Ariana. I know everything about you because you’re mine. You started acting strange the second my bitch of a mother mentioned that concert. I knew you would go and try to see them play. It’s pathetically hilarious how I was able to put up cameras to watch you without you knowing.”
I look at him shocked, but he continues before I can say anything.
“You think I didn’t do my homework on you when we met, that I didn’t hear all the stories of how you were once the band slut and then they had left you?” He laughs cruelly. “I knew you would go to that concert, but I didn’t know that you would fuck a stranger while you were there.”
I realize with a sense of relief that he doesn’t know that I’ve been with the band. He thinks I just hooked up with a random person at the concert. I need to keep him thinking that as long as possible, so he doesn’t do anything to go after them.
Suddenly he lunges at me. Vodka. Scent was the strongest sense tied to memory and I believed it in this moment as memories flashed of all the times I’d smelled that smell. And it was then that I felt fear, true, bone-chilling fear. This man abused me for years and now he wants me dead. The memories instantly weaken me, and he easily overpowers me. The next thing I know, I am flat on my back on the floor. Gentry climbs over me, one hand on my mouth and the other clamping my wrists together. His weight presses me into the wood. His hand on my mouth. My stomach clenches, readying to purge its contents as a memory tries to break through again. I twist my head, back and forth, trying to bite.
The hand over my mouth moves away, but before I can do anything, that hand moves to my throat, squeezing hard enough to crush. I start panicking, my thoughts aren’t clear. My wrists are trapped tightly, and my air is being choked off. I can’t think about anyone or anything. I knew each second was bringing me closer to unconsciousness and I was helpless to stop it.
And then, an image flashes across my mind of a starry sky. Jesse, I think. My brain kick-starts, surging one last burst of energy through my body. I twist my hands in Gentry’s grasp at the same time as I bring my knee up between his legs again. He grunts and shifts his weight, freeing my legs which I use to start thrashing, shifting him further off of me. I gasp when his hand fina
lly leaves my throat. He’s still over me though, breathing on me.
I lift my head hard enough to hit his. My head instantly registers the ache at the crack of our skulls, but he lets go of my hands which I use to deliver repeated hits to his face. Tears burn paths down my face, but I push harder, hit harder, until I’m able to push his weight off of me completely. I roll away to my feet but my ankle collapses, so I drag myself against the wall and slump back against it as he pulls himself to his knees in front of me. I’m shaking now, my entire body feels the effects of exhaustion. I grip the railing in my hands and lift my leg to hit him, but he intercepts, grabbing my ankle and wrenching it. I scream, a silent, choked sob. Fire rips through my body, burning a path up and down my leg. The tears come harder and my throat aches to release the cry that chokes my breath. I was at his mercy, with my ankle in his hand. And he knew it. He wrenches it harder and my body is overcome with shakes. I hear the flick of a knife. No, no no. It wasn’t until that moment that I realize my own mortality. I lunge, reaching for the knife in his hand, eventually knocking it from his grasp. I hear it skid across the wood planks of the floor and I dive for it. My ankle is completely useless. I pull myself up to lean once again against the wall, the knife in hand, trying to catch my breath.
He lunges for me again, sending us both into the wall, shattering the dry wall. I lose the knife upon impact. Gentry recovers more quickly than I do, wrapping a hand around my loose hair and pulling me tightly to him. I yank my head, finally feeling my body come to life again. I try to free my hair from his grasp.
“You’re mine,” he says hoarsely. He’s distracted for a moment as he talks and I grab the lamp on the table next to us and slam it against his head, sending him sprawling to the ground. I take the chord and stretch it across his throat. He starts to panic and thrash against me, but I hold on. Right before he looks like he’s going to pass out, I let up and he sucks in a huge breath, the mottled blue of his face slowly fading. There are angry red welts on his throat from the cord. He stares at me with an animalistic obsession burning out of his eyes. He lays on the ground keeping his eyes on me warily since I’m still holding the lamp in my hands.
Gentry was a perpetual victim, scurrying to fill the emptiness of his soul, and sucking the life out of those around him for his fuel. I itched to find the knife and stab him again and again, for all he’d done to me, but I know in that instant, it wouldn’t really make a difference. I would be the only one who would be punished. I couldn’t kill him. Hopefully me finally being able to stand up to him would prevent him from following me into my new future.
“You’re my wife and you’ll always be my wife,” he croaks out, shattering that last thought. I clench my fist at those hideous words.
I suddenly swing the lamp at his head. He’s unable to move in time since he’s still recovering from almost choking to death. The base of the lamp shatters on his head and he goes unconscious, blood drizzling from a large gash in his forehead. He’s still breathing, but he will be out for a while. Long enough for me to leave without interference.
“Not anymore,” I whisper to his still body. And then I limp out of the room.
14
The drive to Jesse’s house seems to take forever. I left my car and called an Uber since I didn’t want Gentry to be able to accuse me of taking anything that wasn’t mine. He was still breathing when I left, so I’m almost positive that he will live. And then he’ll come for me. But I won’t think about that now.
Jesse
I’ve been sitting and waiting in the house all night in hopes that she would return. She had promised she would in the note, but the memory was still fresh in my mind of another time that she promised she would meet us and never did. I finally can’t stay still anymore, and I start pacing. If she doesn’t come by dawn I am going to go try to find her. Surely someone in this town will know where she lives. It’s amazing thinking about it, how Ariana has in two days destroyed me with anger, held me while I wept like a baby, and built me back up with the promise of her love. She thinks that I need to pick up all of her pieces, but all I can think about is putting her back together with my soul wrapped around hers.
I’m a second away from getting in my car to go find her when the door behind me opens. I turn, just as the sun breaks in through the window behind me as it rises. Ariana limps in, a tremulous smile on her face. She’s still here, all of her, and she’s somehow more. Taller somehow. The colors around her glow brighter and hell, I love her. I have never loved anything so much in my life as I love Ariana in the moment she steps out of the shadows and into the sun.
Ariana
The afternoon sun falls across my face much earlier than I would like from the window we forgot to pull the curtain over. Jesse turns me to face him, hands on my shoulders. His gold hair is messy, like he’d been tugging on it or sleeping under a pillow. My fingers itch to slide through the glossy locks and pull his rugged face and full lips down to mine. I’ve had his body all morning and I still want more. His eyes roam my face, and he must have the same thought, because we both move into each other, our lips meeting, the relief of touching him gliding through me in a ripple of longing.
“Hi,” I manage through kisses.
“I missed you,” he breathes. “Even when I’m sleeping, I miss you.”
I sigh. Having Jesse this close again is like having dessert over and over. Decadent and sweet. I press a kiss to his chest.
“You’re sweet when you wake up,” I tell him with a giggle at his sappiness.
“Don’t get used to it,” Jesse says against my ear. “This is just the honeymoon period. Tomorrow I’ll kick your ass out of bed for some coffee.”
I laugh. I had forgotten how much I laughed around Jesse. The laughter reminds me how much my throat and my ankle still hurt from what Gentry did to me last night. It’s time to tell Jesse everything.
“We need to have our talk now,” I tell Jesse, watching as he nods, and his eyes change to the color of a churning surf in turquoise waters at the seriousness in my voice.
I feel something turn over in my chest when our eyes connect. I’d said before that he looked at me like he wanted to reach inside of me, open me up. But he already has. He’s seen the darkness and he’s stayed. He’s found me.
As I open my mouth to start telling my story, we hear the front door open, and footsteps sounding down the hall. Our door bursts open right as I’m pulling the covers up over my body. Tanner and Jensen storm in. They stop short when they see us, a mix of hate, envy, and longing present in their faces that is difficult to interpret.
Jesse moves his body in front of me, blocking their view. His protectiveness sends a burst of love through my heart. I melt into the back of him, peeking over his shoulder at the two men who hold the rest of my heart in their hands. Any happiness I’ve been feeling freezes at Jensen’s next words.
“Did she tell you she was married before you fucked her?”
(To Be Continued)
Author’s Note
I’ve been in love with rockstar romances since I first knew they existed. I think I’ve read every book that Goodreads has ever suggested on the subject. That being said, this book just gutted me to write. I love these characters. I love their pasts, their presents, and their futures, and I have so much planned for them in this trilogy.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. There C.R. goes again with her cliffhangers, but #sorrynotsorry. This one was so needed! I know you have questions like what happened to Ariana that prevented her from going to L.A., where did the scars come from on Tanner’s back, what is Jensen’s past? Are there going to be more scenes with Tanner and Jensen? Fear not, I considered this book “Jesse’s” book and each guy will get their own book that is focused on them. All will be revealed my darling readers...and hopefully soon since Book 2 should be on preorder as you read this.
Thank you as always for embarking on this journey with me. Please leave a review on Amazon to give me further motivation to keep the story goin
g. As I’ve said before, I read all of my reviews and I’m grateful for anyone that takes the time to tell me what they think of Ariana’s story.
P.S. Read on after this page to get the first chapters of two of my other series!
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Here’s a preview of the first book of my series, Lamented Pasts. Available here on Amazon and KU. Book 2 coming soon...
Lamented Pasts
Loneliness. That’s all Juliet Caris has ever known. Cursed to pass through time, changing centuries without warning, Juliet has lost everything. A piece of her heart has been lost to the men she has left behind at every stop she has made, and finding herself once again alone, she believes she has no parts of herself left to give. Can a handsome stranger bring her back to life and help her get back what she has lost? Or will Juliet disappear again, this time for good?
Join Juliet in a journey across the centuries, in a love story that defies time. What if you could live forever? Could you love forever?
Prologue
Boston, U.S.A. 2018
The stone is worn and almost impossible to read, a reminder of the hundreds of years that separate me from its inhabitant. I’ve searched for it for a year in this lifetime. Just like the others, I had to see the proof that he was gone. I had to make sure that somehow a miracle hadn’t happened, and I would stumble upon him somehow in this life. I had to make sure that I wouldn’t turn and see him flashing me that heart-stopping grin as he pushed his wayward, russet-colored hair out of his face. He was always laughing about something, usually about some crazy idea I had told him about.