by Anna Bloom
Biting her bottom lip, she nodded. “What about the bar? Your job?”
I pursed my mouth and shrugged. “I don’t know. But I know that whatever happens when I leave here, this did happen. Okay?”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that I can’t live without you, but I’ll always protect you.”
“You aren’t my big brother, Blue.”
Ahhh, there it was.
Blue.
I knew I wasn’t him yet, not properly. Jack Cross still sat in the driving seat and somehow I had to find my way back to the boy who had nothing but the clothes on his back and the love of one brave, feisty girl who would give up anything for him even if he didn’t deserve it.
I needed to free my ghosts so that I could finally live.
“Come on, let me get you home.”
“I haven’t finished my shift.” She adjusted her Blue’s bar T-shirt. My name blazed across her tits could give a guy a God complex.
“Yeah you have.”
She didn’t argue and just shook her head as I offered my hand and pulled her up from the floor. Our fingers wound together as we stepped for the door, but as I opened it up, I dropped them. Her gaze sought mine and I gave her a small nod. She nodded back, but the look in her eyes made me want to die.
If Lyra Lennox, the Collins kid, was known to have had an affair with her teacher she’d be ruined everywhere. There would be no orchestra in the world she’d be able to play.
Right now, she might hate the violin and say she didn’t want to play, but I knew that wasn’t true. I also knew I’d played a part in that.
She deserved so much more.
We sat in the car in silence, a better silence though than our previous trips together. When I pulled up in front of Hamilton, she turned, her backpack clutched on her lap.
“I’m worried what you’ll give up, Jack.”
“You can’t give up the things that were never really yours. All this, everything I have.” I motioned to the car, but further than that, to the campus, the place I’d made home for the last few years. “This is all just part of an elaborate game I got caught in.” I sighed and dropped my head back on the headrest. “Honestly, what would I have done if you hadn’t turned up? Lived a lie forever?”
She shrugged. “You seemed kind of happy when I got here. When you walked in with Greene’s coffee that morning, all tanned and glowing from your break, you looked so different to how I’d remembered you all those years. You’ve always been confident, always had that air about you, but that day.” She paused.
“That day?”
“You looked like a grown up. It hit me that I’d wasted four years still being in love with you. I was so angry with myself.”
I wanted to touch her so badly. On campus though, I couldn’t.
“I was tanned because I’d spent the week surfing, doing every single thing I could to keep myself busy while on the Collins’ annual vacation. I’d been reading on the beach, anything for some solitude.”
“I don’t want them to hurt you, Jack.”
“They won’t.”
My stomach clenched though. I shook it away. Nothing mattered apart from Lyra. We’d get out of this, somehow, together. And that started right now.
“I’ll catch you in the morning, okay?”
I met her gaze, my fingers gripping the steering wheel so I wouldn’t reach for her face.
“At practice?” Her voice wobbled.
I shrugged and then shot her a wide smile. “Hey, I might be gainfully unemployed by tomorrow and you’ll be stuck with Shaun forever.”
Her lips curved and not being able to kiss them sucker punched me.
“Night, Lyra.”
“Night, Jack.”
She slipped out into the darkness and I shifted out of park and drove back to the gates.
Right. This ended now.
“Ah, there you are. I thought you’d actually left.” Miriam stretched out on the sofa, a glass of wine in her hand as I walked out of the elevator straight into the penthouse.
“Good evening?”
She flickered a gaze up from the TV, frowning as she took in my face. “You look moody, as usual.”
“Thank you.” I shook my head and sunk down into my armchair. Damn I’d miss this chair. Leaning forward, I grabbed the bottle of red from the coffee table and a spare glass off of the tray. She must have expected me home. A flicker of guilt twinged in my stomach.
I hadn’t done anything that wrong yet. The emphasis hung on that though, and I didn’t like that. It wasn’t the man I’d ever wanted to be.
“What’s been wrong with you, Jack? You haven’t come to bed in weeks, sleeping out here. I mean, I know you’re an emotional fuckwit, but you’re literally sofa surfing in your own apartment.”
Ooh, this was unlike Miriam to be so direct.
Normally she was all about the word play and games.
“Miriam, do you even care?”
“Yes. You haven’t been anywhere with me since the gala. How are you supposed to look pretty on my arm if we don’t actually get seen together?”
She stretched, poking a bare leg out from under the blanket she had draped across her. Her toenails were a dark purple. I focused on them while I found the right words.
Putting my glass on the table, I dropped my head and rolled my neck. When I lifted back up, her dark gaze watched me closely.
“Miriam,” I sighed.
Her lips curved. “What’s up, Jack?” She made my name sound dirty.
I deserved it.
“Miriam, I need this to end now.” I leaned onto my knees. “It seemed fun at the time. We both got something we wanted out of this, but now... well now, I’m tired. I need you to let me go.”
She watched me from under dark lashes. “I don’t remember there being a get out clause.”
“Miriam! Come on. Aren’t you bored of the charade now?”
“You mean you don’t love me?”
She had me for a moment until a cat’s sly smile spread across her face.
“I helped you with your dad.” I grimaced at the thought of the Collins family. I really wouldn’t miss spending time with them.
“And then he helped you. What a welcoming back-scratching family we are.” Sitting up, she threw back the blanket. Underneath, she just wore a silk camisole and a pair of lace French knickers. She reached for the wine, slugging a healthy measure into her glass.
“I know. But I need out now. You and I, we don’t love one another, and honestly, this is making me miserable.”
“Ohhh, poor Jacky baby.”
I closed my eyes.
“Come on, Miriam.”
Her smile twisted. “You think you can play with the Collins family? You’re a nobody, Jack. I picked you up out of the gutter, and now what?”
“Now, nothing. You let me go. We have a tragic but supportive uncoupling and then this is all over.”
“And what about your bar? What will your little best friend Evan do when he loses everything because his loser chum can’t keep up a deal?”
“He’ll understand.” It hit me that I hadn’t actually spoken to Evan about this… but Evan always landed on his feet, he was practically feline.
Miriam threw her head back and chimed a laugh. “You really are ruthless aren’t you, Jack Cross? I always knew it, but throwing your own friend, under a bus… for what?”
She waited like she wanted me to fill in the blank.
When I didn’t, she sighed and reached for her phone down the side of the sofa. “For a girl, Jack?”
Call me crazy, but the first place my brain went was to that slutty Brittany girl. She’d sell a tale if it meant succeeding. I could almost smell it off her that day in the practice room. So when Miriam held her phone out in front of my face, her nails clacking on the back of the casing, it took me a minute to place the picture.
Lyra. And me. At Blue’s. About half an hour before.
I snatched it from
her hand. “Where the fuck did you get this?”
“Did you really think Daddy would give you a bar and we wouldn’t watch what you were doing?”
“Miriam…”
“Oh, don’t worry. I know exactly who little Lyla, sorry, I mean, Lyra, is. It wasn’t that hard after we met for me to do some digging around, to find out what you were running from.” She reached for her glass, leaving me staring at the picture of Lyra wrapped around my waist, her head tilted back. “And my, were you running. At first, I thought it was from what you did to your father. You nearly killed him. That had to be some anger you had stored up there.”
I dropped her phone onto the floor, Lyra still staring back at me.
“I didn’t do it,” I hissed. My eyes stung as I looked across at her. My blood ran cold.
“Oh, I know. I hired the very best to get to the bottom of everything. Turns out there are some people back home who’d rather never see you again, rather you weren’t near Lyra. What happens when they find out you are here with her and she is made to go home. You won’t be able to go back with her, will you? I mean, that’s a pretty big secret you’re keeping there, isn’t it, Jack, or should I say, Blue?”
I launched out of my seat, pushing her back on the sofa, grabbing her shoulders with my fingers and pulling her into my space. “You don’t get to call me that.”
“Jack, darling, don’t you see. Blue doesn’t exist anymore. You buried him and now there is no chance of bringing him back.”
My fingers squeezed her skin, my blood pulsing so fast in my veins I thought it might spill out of me.
“Go on, just like Daddy.” She laughed up at me.
I thrust her away and she fell back onto the cushions.
“It doesn’t matter what you say, Miriam. This is all over. I don’t care anymore. I have nothing left to lose.”
“Ah, so wrong. I think you have one thing to lose that you can’t even contemplate. Lyra.”
I stared at Miriam wild eyed.
“You fuck her, she leaves. You don’t fuck her, she leaves with a broken heart. You go back home, you get… well what would you get, Jack?”
I’d die.
If I went back, I’d die, and then I didn’t know what all this would have been for.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Lyra
“You’re sprightly this morning.” Eva eyed me over the top of her comforter, not looking like she planned to get up anytime soon.
“I’ve got practice, remember?”
“Uh-huh.” She smirked. “And who is practice with, because I don’t remember you making this much effort last week when you had that smelly middle-aged teaching aide.”
I rolled my eyes but had to turn away so she couldn’t see my blush.
“Or maybe it’s Alex… maybe you two are meeting for an early morning tête-à-tête in the middle of campus again.
I swung back around. “What?”
“Yesterday? You went to the ‘library’ to ‘study’ and when I happened to glance out of the window there you two were.”
“Oh, no, he was just asking what happened to me at the party.” Was that only yesterday? Hell, it felt like a month ago. Time had slowed here in Boston. Or maybe my brain could no longer function at normal capacities.
“You see, Lyra Lennox, so many people would believe you. And I totally would too, if he hadn’t already mentioned that he’d asked you out.”
What! He was walking around telling people?
“He said it was an icebreaker!”
Eva chuckled and pulled her blanket back up over head. “You’re so naive it’s frightening. Go away happy early bird and leave me to sleep.”
I grabbed my stuff and darted out of the door, my feet slipping in excitement on the way down the stairs.
I’d barely slept.
Couldn’t stop thinking, dreaming—big, dangerous, happy dreams.
They all had Jack in them.
Early by about twenty minutes, I swung by the cafe, where the bleary-eyed barista couldn’t deal with my level of happy.
Coffees and pastries in hand, I walked back toward the door of the steam filled cafe until my phone rang and brought me to a halt. My panic receptors instantly kicked into high alert.
No one would call this early for social niceties. With my heart banging, I put the cardboard cups down on the nearest table along with the bag of muffins and grabbed at my phone.
It rang off by the time I found it, but then restarted from an unknown number, confirming my well-founded fears.
“Luca?”
“Lyra, baby.”
Oh God. “Mom?”
“How’s college, baby girl?”
I clutched my phone tighter. “Are you drunk? It can only be half eight in the morning.”
“Party is just finishing, baby.”
“Where are you?”
“At Grammy’s.”
“You had a party at Grams house? She’s ill, Mom.”
“Noooooo, silly… Luca wouldn’t let me. I’ve just got home.”
I breathed out a deep sigh. Okay, maybe Luca could manage things after all.
“Soooo, Little Fancy Pants. How’s it going with all the posh kids?” Wow, was she actually trying to make conversation?
“They aren’t all posh.”
“Hey, Lyra. You got any cash for your momma?”
Ah, now I got it—no conversation—of course not.
“No, Mom. Sober up and get a job like all other adults.” I couldn’t bring myself to say grown-ups, that woman would never be one of those. “Is Grams awake, could I talk to her quick?”
“Sure.” A few rustles later and Mom’s voice cut in again. “Hey, wake up, you lazy old woman.”
“Hey!” I shouted, but no one was listening, apart from the barista.
“Hello?” Grams voice scratched like sandpaper.
“Grams, it’s me. Sorry, I didn’t mean for her to wake you.”
“Lyra? Oh Boo, I miss you.”
My eyes stung with such ferocity that blinking couldn’t help. “Me too, Grams.”
“How’s things? Better now?”
“Yes, I think so. I was so homesick.”
“Oh, Boo.” Grams sighed. “You don’t want to come back here.”
She broke into a wracking cough and I came out in a sympathy sweat. I waited for her to finish. “You sound bad.”
“Don’t you start. No fussing. It’s bad enough having that brother of yours flapping around like a chick’n about to lose its head.”
“I’m glad he’s looking after you.”
“Course he is. I’m not just your responsibility, he knows that.”
“Shall I come home, just for the weekend?”
“No, Lyra, your momma ain’t well, she’ll only upset you.”
Gram’s ‘not well’ meant ‘high and on a bender’.
“And what about you?”
“I’ll be fine. I’m happy. So happy my ‘Lil Miss is finding her way. You worried me for a while.”
“I missed you so much, Grams. It was so hard.”
“And now you can play?”
“Yeah, Grams.” I sighed. “Now I can play.”
A brief pause stretched between us until she coughed again. “I knew you would. I had a feeling in my gut you would find what you were looking for when you got there.”
“A bad case of wind was it?”
Grams chuckled and I relaxed a little.
“Lyra,” she whispered.
“Yes,” I whispered back, despite the fact I didn’t have any drunk and poisonous family members listening to my half of the conversation.
My mother really was a bitch, and fuck, I hated her.
“Mr. Ainsley from the bank called.”
“Okay?” I frowned in confusion. “And?”
“Well, you know he’s not really supposed to tell me anything now you’re eighteen, but he was just a bit worried.”
“What about? I haven’t even touched my bank account.” I th
ought of the stash of cash from Blue’s bar I had hidden under my bed. I needed to find a way to get that to Grams.
“Five thousand dollars was paid in the week before last.”
“What?”
“Mr. Ainsley wanted to make sure it wasn’t a mistake.”
No… what he meant was that he wanted to make sure the money was legit, the nosy old coot.
It clicked. Evan had asked for my bank details—after I’d told Blue that I’d got my job to help Grams.
Shit.
Had he put Collins money in my bank account? Twisted, unethical, racist money?
“Grams, I’ve got to go. Are you sure you don’t want me to come home?”
“Over my dead body, Little Miss Lyra.”
“Oh, thank you for always calling me that— I’m stuck with that nickname now.” I laughed.
Grams didn’t speak for a moment. “But, Lyra. How would anyone know your childhood nickname?”
Oh fuck. Shit, shit, and fuck.
She chuckled softly. “Fly, little Lyra Bird.” And then she hung up the phone.
My head whirled. The woman had the sharpness of a tack straight out of the box. She knew Blue was here. She’d already guessed hadn’t she when I said I could play the violin again?
Had he put money in my bank account?
And why the fuck was my mother drunk at nine in the morning, apart from the fact life was an endless party bus for her and she never planned to get off the ride?
I grabbed up the drinks again, now almost cold, and the bag of muffins.
Despite my unanswered questions, I ran to the practice room, knocking on the door and pushing through, only to exhale a huge cloud of disappointment when Mr. Parks looked up from the piano. He smiled wide, his wiry beard bristling. “You know, Lyra, bring me coffee and donuts and you’ll have all my colleagues jealous. They just get last night’s vodka breath and reluctance.”
“Oh, huh.” I giggled to hide the burn on my cheeks. “I just got up early is all. I had time on my hands.”
I passed over my purchases and then placed my violin case on the piano.