by Rhonda Shaw
PROMISE ME ALWAYS
ISBN-13: 978-0-9962538-4-0
Copyright © 2018 by Rhonda Shaw
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Edited by Jenn Wood / www.facebook.com/editingproofingbeta
Cover Design and Interior Formatting by Tugboat Design / www.tugboatdesign.net
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Epilogue
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Diana Gardin for her support and belief in Promise Me Always, and for loving Danny and Gabrielle’s story as much as I do. Promise Me Always wouldn’t be what it is today without her invaluable support and guidance.
Prologue
~ Danny ~
Six Years Earlier
I walked along the deserted streets, riding the shadows to remain unseen, the white puffs of my breath against the black night the only sign of my presence. My mind raced, the constant whirling making me sick. But I had no answer. The expectations of me tonight were clear, but there was no way I could go through with it.
Refusal meant death, but conformity guaranteed a life sentence. If I ever wanted a chance at having a life—to be someone outside of this godforsaken place—I needed to walk away. But, my ticket to freedom wasn't there yet, and if I backed out now, I would have to look over my shoulder, more than I already did, until that day came—if they even let me live through the night.
No matter what I did, I was fucked. Everyone expected me to take this path, so why the hell not? Acceptance provided the family—the belonging—I never had, even if it wasn't the family I’d dreamed of.
But this wasn’t what I believed in. There was no trust, no security, no unconditional love in this family. Only constant fear, distrust, and death.
Always death.
At the end of the sidewalk, I paused. A trail of sweat rolled down my back and my heartbeat jackhammered in my ears. My fate waited for me in the alley and I had to decide.
It was now or never.
The choice I made in this moment would forever follow me. It would decide my success or failure. It would determine whether I escaped this hellhole of a life or remained imprisoned.
It would define me.
I took a deep breath and rolled my shoulders before pulling the hood of my black sweatshirt over my head. Even though my insides twisted and turned, I refused to let anyone see that. I’d remain calm and composed, like always. The heavy weight of my piece stuffed in the waistband at the small of my back provided a boost of confidence, but, decision made, I prayed I didn’t need it.
With all emotion wiped from my face, I continued forward, my muffled footsteps announcing my arrival. A small group, hovering around a prone body sprawled on the ground, turned at my approach. Terrell, the leader of this sorry ass gang, broke away and sauntered toward me.
“Hey, my man, D.” Terrell slapped my hand in greeting, along with a one-armed hug. “It’s about time your ass got here. We’re all freezing our balls off waitin’ on you.”
“Sorry, man. I got held up.”
“No problem, dawg. No problem.”
The circle opened, providing me an unobstructed view of the body they’d been surrounding. He shuddered from the beating he’d received, and a dark hand reached in to roll him over before pressing on his head, exposing the small black cobra tattooed on the side of his neck, the sign of the rival gang in the area.
“You know what you need to do.”
I swallowed hard. “Terrell—”
“No excuses, D. If you want to be a part of this family, then you know what you gotta do. How you gotta earn our trust.” He stood to his full height and narrowed his eyes. “And if you don’t, then you know what happens.”
I took a sharp breath through my nose and pulled out my gun, releasing the safety as the bystanders nearby stepped back. I aimed at his head, averting my gaze from the dark eyes staring at me, daring me to shoot.
“Fuck you,” the guy spat.
“Come on, man. What you waitin’ for?” Terrell said from my side. “He wouldn’t have waited to pull the trigger on you. He don’t deserve you thinkin’ about him, D.”
I closed my eyes, fighting to ignore everyone and everything around me, and strained to hear the voice over the noise invading my mind, the one to guide me to the right choice and get me the fuck out of this. But I was lost, so lost, and had no idea what to do. When a hand gripped mine, intending to squeeze the trigger, the answer became clear. Anger replaced any confusion that had been clouding my thoughts.
My heart leapt into my throat, and I spun in the opposite direction at the last second, as the gun went off, firing into the corner and causing our audience to scatter in cover.
I reeled on Terrell. “What the fuck?”
He held up his hands in a gesture of peace. “I was just givin’ you a little help, my man. It looked like you needed it.”
“I don’t need your fucking help.” I backed away as I reset the safety and shoved the pistol into my waistband. At my retreat, the rival gang member’s expression filled with shock and disbelief.
Terrell narrowed his beady eyes at me. “Where you goin’, D?”
“I’m out.” I shook my head and crossed my arms. “I’m not doing this.”
“I’m not doing this.” Terrell’s tone mocked before he dropped his sneer. “What? You think you got a fuckin’ choice?”
I held out my hands. “Do whatever you’ve got to do.”
Terrell stepped in front of me as the others flanked behind their leader in support. Noting my defiance, he snorted. “I don’t know whether to laugh or be impressed.”
“I’m not here for your fucking amusement.” My insides churned as I waited on his reaction, but I refused to throw away my dreams.
He chuckled, his breath showing on the air in bursts. “Well, well, well. I see how it’s gonna be now, D.”
“This is how it’s going to be.”
“And we’re just gonna forget everything I’ve done for you? Everything I’ve gotten for you, so you can follow this fuckin’ dream of yours?”
“I never asked you to—”
“No, you didn’t!” Terrell’s eyes flashed hot before he took a deep breath. “But I did it because that’s what family do. But you seem to want to forget that. You seem to want to forget we’re your family. The only one you have
, my brother.”
Silence passed as Terrell continued to size me up. Then he relaxed and smiled, a gold tooth gleaming in the one flickering streetlight struggling to stay lit. “So, I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do.” He waved his hand, signaling his men to stand down when the click of a gun hammer sounded behind him. He stood close, and I was thankful we were the same height, eye to eye. “I’m gonna be watching you. Very closely.” His voice dropped to a threatening whisper. “And when you finally have something you can’t live without, something you want more than fuckin’ life itself, I’m gonna be there and I’m gonna take it.”
The threat hung in the air between us before he backed away and led his family out of the alley, soon disappearing out of sight into the dark, seedy corners of the city. I let out the breath I’d been holding and dropped my head, very thankful to be still alive.
But Terrell’s final words were cemented into my brain, and I knew from this point forward, neither me nor anyone in my life would be safe.
Chapter 1
~ Danny ~
Present Day
The stark white room drove me fucking crazy. My eyes darted around, desperate to find a hint of color somewhere. The walls were white, the drapes over the bolted window also white—well, more of a musty yellow with age and smoke from cigarettes—and the vinyl floor gleamed white under the bright lights. The fluorescent light fixture on the ceiling buzzed and flickered, the effects of which, combined with everything else, gave me a pounding headache.
“Do you know why you’re here, Danny?” The counselor’s voice pulled me back to my miserable reality.
My eyes flicked around at the others in the room, staring at me, curious about my reasons for being here and desperate for juicy gossip. But each had signed an agreement to keep their damn mouths shut about everything discussed within these walls, and each one of them knew I wouldn’t hesitate to sue their ass if anything leaked I hadn’t disclosed to the media.
There were other programs I might have gone to that were more like a resort than a prison, such as this one, but I didn’t want the fluff. I needed fucking help, not a goddamn pampering vacation. I chose this center back in my hometown because of its notoriety for hard-fought results, which was most important if I had a chance in hell of turning my life around. It made it even harder when everyone only saw me as a celebrity and kissed my ass, rather than a person who needed support and deserved privacy. But if dealing with the unwanted attention led to getting clean, then I’d deal.
I scratched at my hair and met his gaze. “Uh…yeah.”
“What happened?”
I cleared my throat and struggled to take a deep breath, the reality of my situation weighing on me. “I OD’d. Almost died.”
“And now?”
“Well, yeah…I want to be clean.”
“Of course, that’s why we’re all here.” He smiled at me. “But why do you want to be clean?”
He asked me the same question every day since I’d first arrived, and I still wrestled with answering it.
“Because…” I trailed off. Today wasn’t any different.
I stared right into the counselor’s pale gray eyes and almost said what was on the tip of my tongue. But if I voiced it, he would lecture me again about how I couldn’t think that way. I can’t change for someone else; everything needed to be for myself.
I understood that, I did, and I wanted to change for myself, but if I were being one-hundred percent straight, I also wanted to be someone she would be proud of. Not this sorry ass drug addict who’d almost killed himself by taking too many Ativan before chasing with bottles of whiskey. She would hate that person, wouldn’t understand the pull, the need for the drugs to make it through the day—to even face the day—and she would have turned away from it all…away from me.
He understood what was going through my head and nodded. “Take more time, Danny. We’ll try again next time. Samantha? How about you?”
With the attention off me, I rubbed my hand over my now short hair and leaned against the back of the chair. I closed my eyes, not bothering to listen to anyone else’s sad, pathetic story. Mine was fucked up enough; I didn’t need the added misery.
Gabrielle.
Just thinking her name caused my chest to ache and my heart to thud. Six years, and I still wasn’t over her—far from it. I thought about her every day, never missing one since the horrible night at The Sanctuary. Countless times, I’d wanted to cave, determined to find her. But I’d stopped myself, knowing she likely hated me and would refuse to give me the time of day. Even though I didn’t blame her, not one bit, her rejection had the power to slay me. From anyone else, I could deal, but not her. Instead, I’d turned to drugs and alcohol, desperate to dull the constant pain deep in my bones, to chase away the hallowing loneliness inside of me. My life since that night had been nothing but a fucking mess.
To any outsider, looking back with remorse probably seemed fucking ridiculous since the stars had aligned for me as soon as I’d reached L.A. with my boys, Dollar and Big T, and had lucked out with a connection to an agent. After securing a contract, it seemed only months later I was a huge star, almost a household name. But I’d lost all that time to a drug-filled haze.
“Okay, everyone. Thanks for all the sharing. We’re done for today.” The torment was finally over as the counselor ended the session.
I hopped up and booked it out of there before anyone tried to stop me. I kept my gaze low to avoid eye contact, and almost made it back to my room without interference, until I turned a corner and smacked straight into one of the other participants. Gary, or something.
“Hey, DOA! I wanted to ask you—”
“Oh, hey, man.” I cut him off, sidestepping him. “Yeah, no, that’s cool, but maybe later, all right?” I shoved a thumb over my shoulder as I kept walking. “I’ve got…something to do.”
“Oh, yeah. Sure. No, that’s cool. I’ll catch you later.”
With my teeth clenched, I let out a breath through my nose and prayed for patience, and when I reached the door to my room, I slammed it behind me. This was the last place I wanted to be, but it was the only place I found peace. To sit in one of the common rooms meant just that; I would have to socialize with others in the program, the absolute last thing I felt like doing. It was always the same, incessant questions about my music, my personal life. Then they’d bring up the stupid fucking rumors—who I was sleeping with, how I’d ended up in rehab—about anything that wasn’t their damn business, and I wasn’t in the mood to ward it off.
So instead, I grabbed my journal with an embossed “D” on the cover from the white Formica desk, and sat on the bed with my back against the wall. I had to work through this fucking block, write ideas for new songs, and somehow get my mind off my problems. But as I sat there struggling to come up with something, even just one motherfucking word, I had nothing. After a half an hour, a blank page blared at me with only doodles in the margin.
“Fuck!”
I tossed the journal onto the floor and it landed with a smack, loose papers spilling out the side, each one of them with nothing but fucking scribbles. Words were out of reach, which worried me more than anything. The inability to produce a mean quip or a clever verse just wasn’t an option. I had to come up with something.
Being famous at almost twenty-five years old was a concept still hard for me to grasp. My songs climbed to the top of every hip-hop chart known to man, a surprise to me each and every time, and they earned me more money than I knew what to do with. Everywhere I went, people recognized me because of the interest my music garnered, both good and bad. I laughed when my songs showed up as examples of what was wrong with the people of my generation by the stupid fucking politicians and public interest groups. But I was humbled whenever they were declared a prime example of pure talent in the hip-hop world.
With the popularity came women, lots of them. I could have a different choice every night, if that’s what I wanted. Sometimes I took up an offer, needing
to find release outside of a bottle, but other times, I only wanted to go back to my room—alone—to wallow in my grief.
Every one of my dreams had come true, everything I’d worked so hard to achieve, but I struggled to enjoy any of it because I was fucking miserable. I longed for the one real thing ever to exist in my life, resulting in me walking around with a black hole in my chest for the past six years. My only means to surviving the time without her was to numb the pain wracking my body, and then even my escape of choice turned on me when I’d collapsed. Dollar found me, only hours from death, and called 911, but I almost wished they’d left me to end my misery.
The phone in my room shrilled, threatening to cause a relapse of the headache that had finally relented. I debated not answering, but then whoever it was would keep calling, and if I still didn’t answer, there’d be a knock on my door. A welfare check, as they liked to call it.
“Yeah?”
“You have a visitor, Mr. Anderson.”
“I don’t want to see anyone.”
“Tell him it’s me…Dollar,” I heard on the other end, and I sighed. He’d been trying to visit me, and I’d turned him away each time, not ready to face him and hear his lectures, but I’d put it off too long.
“All right. I’ll be down in a sec.”
Dollar was already there when I arrived, and he jumped up from one of the chairs.
“D, my man.” He pulled me into a one-armed hug.
“Hey, man. Good to see you.” It was, even if I had been avoiding him.
If there was anyone who had complete confidence in me, it was Dollar. Ever since day one, when he first heard me in a freestyle battle at The Sanctuary, a club from our old stomping grounds, he’d become dedicated to doing whatever he could to get me on the path to stardom. He’d hounded me to cut recording after recording, and to rework quips so they were cutting as well as lyrical. Because of him, I’d made it and would never forget all he’d done for me. Not only was he still one of my closest friends, he was my manager as well.