New Adult Romance Box Set

by Emme Rollins, Julia Kent, Anna Antonia, Helena Newbury, Aubrey Rose

  He shook his head. “She said that wouldn’t help.”

  Hate for this woman was bubbling up inside me like boiling tar. She’d taken this perfect, loving man and made him live in misery and barely repressed rage for four years, just so she could get rich. “She’s using you,” I said again. “Darrell, you have to see that. Maybe the first time—I don’t know—maybe that was okay, maybe you needed to take revenge. But this”—I indicated the missile—“this has nothing to do with your parents. It has nothing to do with the Middle East and terrorists. This is for wiping out another country!”

  He just stared at me, and for once, those beautiful eyes weren’t clear and honest. They were clouded by something. By her. “I can’t,” he told me. “I can’t just walk away. I thought maybe I could, but I can’t.”

  I was going out of my mind. I could see how tightly she’d ensnared him, and I didn’t know how to cut him free. “Why?”

  His eyes were brimming with tears. “I can’t forget about them.”

  I threw my arms around him. “You wouldn’t be forgetting about them! Darrell, you wouldn’t be—there are other ways, there are better ways of remembering them!”

  He wasn’t hugging me back. “You don’t understand. If I don’t do this—if I don’t work every hour I can—it’s like I don’t....” He sighed. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  And then I knew. The realization was like being on the downward plunge of a rollercoaster, my stomach dropping a million feet as I saw how I could save him. There was only one way to connect with him, one way to let him know he wasn’t alone in his pain.

  God, not that. Please not that.

  But I could see him turning inward, closing down. I only had this one chance to make him see.

  “I do understand,” I said very quietly. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  Chapter Thirty Five

  Natasha

  Six years earlier

  Mom gets me to recite her cell number for like the eightieth time and Dad makes me promise to get to bed by ten because it’s a school night tomorrow. I wait until I hear their car leave the drive, then give it another five minutes—just to be sure. Mom said they’d be back by midnight. It’s eight-thirty—I have half an hour before he gets here.

  I get out of the jeans and t-shirt I was wearing and into the dress I bought secretly and snuck home from the mall. Black, with a scoop neck and a short skirt. If Mom saw it she’d say it was a little too daring for fifteen and Dad would never let me leave the house. Not that I have any intention of leaving the house tonight.

  Craig’s coming over.

  I have to go to the bathroom to do my make-up. I don’t have a mirror in my room, because I’m camped out in the den downstairs while Dad lays a new floor in my real bedroom—a job he started a week ago and still hasn’t quite figured out how to finish. I love him, but sometimes I just wish he’d admit his shortcomings and hire a handyman.

  I’m quick, because I’ve been planning exactly what I’m going to do for days. Heck, I’ve been planning the whole night for days. I carefully paint dark lips and artfully smudged grey eye shadow. I wish my hair was black but apart from that, I figure I carry the goth look off pretty well. Craig’s going to love it.

  I run through to the lounge to start getting stuff ready. I’ve bought some long lengths of black silk from a fabric shop. Well, I’d wanted silk, but silk was seriously expensive. This stuff looks cheap and ragged-edged, but I’m hoping it’ll look better when I turn the lights out. I use tape to fix it to the walls, because thumbtacks would mark the wallpaper. Soon it hangs in long, graceful curves overhead, making the place look like some sort of Bedouin tent.

  I get out the candles and just go mental with them, putting them all around the edges of the room, on the table, on the windowsills.... By the time I get them all lit it’s just after nine, but the room looks amazing. Everything’s in flickering, romantic half-shadow, and when I check myself in the mirror it totally hides the couple of pimples I was worried about. Craig’s not going to be able to resist me. I think tonight might be the night we finally do it. I’m so excited I actually have to resist clapping my hands together. I’m ready! Then one of the candles goes out and the little coil of smoke sets the smoke alarm off, so I have to climb up on a chair and yank the battery. OK...now I’m ready.

  It’s been slow and gentle so far with him. We’ve been dating for three weeks, but it’s sooo hard to get time alone together, with both sets of parents watching us like hawks. Thank God for Dad’s company party tonight. I swear, it’s the only night they actually go out each year.

  I hear his knock at the door just as I remember the finishing touch—the bottle of vodka some guy at work gave Dad. I am grounded like forever if he finds out, but that bottle’s been sitting there half-empty for over a year. I figure that if we only have a little bit and top it up with water, he’ll never know.

  I answer the door and Craig’s standing there grinning, tight black t-shirt over his whipcord body. The guy barely eats—part of the whole goth thing, I guess—but he’s cute as hell and smart and funny. I can feel my heart racing, every moment of my life up to now fading away into insignificance. Tonight is the night!

  I throw some cushions down on the floor and we lie there in the candlelight, laughing and talking and occasionally kissing. I try some vodka and Jeez it burns. How do people drink this stuff? But I feel all warm and mellow inside, so I drink a little more. The talking dies away and there’s more kissing and more vodka and I’m seriously thinking that tonight it’s going to happen when I hear the sound I really don’t want to hear: car tires on gravel.

  I check the clock. Shit! It’s ten after midnight! I grab Craig and push him towards the back door, then run around blowing out all the candles. I realize I’m a little drunk—how much vodka did we drink, anyway? The adrenaline helps me focus. If they find out Craig’s been here without them knowing, grounded won’t begin to cover it. There’s no time to deal with the fabric so I just close the door. I lock the back door behind Craig and sprint for my temporary room in the downstairs den. I get there just as I hear Mom’s key in the front door. As I peel off my dress and hide it under the covers, they’re moving through the hall. I know Dad’s had one glass of wine too many, because Mom’s voice is patiently patronizing as she urges him along. There’ll be teasing at the breakfast table tomorrow.

  Please don’t go in the lounge!

  But they don’t. It sounds like they’re heading straight down the hall to the stairs. I pull on a nightshirt and slip quietly under the covers. When one of them—I think it’s Mom—cracks open the door and peeks in, I’m doing a pretty good impression of sleeping.

  I hear my door close, and then they’re moving up the stairs to bed. Whew.

  All I have to do now is wait for them to go to sleep, then creep back into the lounge, gather everything up and hide it away. I’ll refill Dad’s vodka bottle with water and no one will ever know. I got away with it! I lie there in the darkness, the memory of Craig’s lips on mine making me grin, counting the minutes until it’s safe to—

  ....

  As my eyes open, the room looks weird...wrong. Lighter than it should, like someone’s left the hall light on, except the glow isn’t white: it’s orange.

  I sit up and the room spins. I can’t breathe. I can barely see. I try to get up and stumble, and wind up on my hands and knees. It’s easier to see down there, for some reason, and now I can see the orange glow coming from under the door and hear the rushing, roaring noise that finally connects in my half-drunk brain to fire.

  I grab the metal doorknob and scream as I burn my hand. I cough and once I start, I can’t stop. Air. I have to get air.

  It takes whole minutes for my fumbling hands to free the window catch and then I swing it wide and I’m drinking in huge gulps of cool outside air. It rouses me enough that I manage to haul myself out of the window and drop to the grass outside. When I get to my feet and turn around, I see the flames roar
ing through the lounge window.

  I stagger to the neighbor’s house and hammer on the door until they wake up. It’s an old couple, and the wife hugs me while he rings the fire service. Then he tries, despite his wife’s protests, to smash his way in through the back door and get upstairs, but the flames are too fierce.

  I keep thinking I’ll hear them screaming, but there’s nothing at all, no movement from the upstairs window.

  * * * *

  A woman with blonde hair who smells of out-of-date perfume says she’s from something called child services and asks me to go with her. She puts me to bed on a couch in a small office with horrible green wallpaper, but I don’t sleep.

  I wait for there to be questions, but there are none. Eventually the child services lady sits me down and tells me what happened: my parents, after they got home from the party, went into the lounge and sat around drinking vodka—they know this, because there were two glasses. They’d lit some candles and they must have left one of them burning, and for some reason they took the battery out of the smoke alarm.

  That’s not what happened, I want to say, that’s not what happened at all. But she hugs me close as I start to cry and I can’t seem to find my voice.

  I don’t see Craig for a week. We never speak again.

  I’m introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Patterson, a nice foster couple. They’ve done this before, their previous foster child having just left for college, and their house seems nice. But it’s not my house, and they’re not my parents.

  Is there anything you like to do? Mrs. Patterson asks me. She has a round face like a moon.

  Dance, I tell her. I go to dance lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Saturdays. And when they find out how much dance lessons cost, I can see there’s some hesitation, but they have muttered conversations they think I can’t hear, saying things like it’s the one thing she has left. And I dance like I’ve never danced before, because maybe, if I dance and I dance and I dance, if I dance until my legs ache and my feet bleed, maybe I can punish myself enough.

  Chapter Thirty Six

  Natasha

  I stopped. There was more to tell: how I’d won a scholarship to Fenbrook, “She’s so committed! We’ve never seen a student with such focus!”; how I’d discovered cutting when I was nineteen, the dancing no longer seeming to work as well. But I seemed to run out of energy. After years of fearing I’d slip and slide down into those memories, I’d sunk down in them willingly, to save him, and now I was just...numb.

  He was staring into my eyes, his face wracked with pain.

  “Say something,” I said.

  He shook his head.

  “I understand!” I told him. “I know what it’s like to have it hanging over you, and it’s fucked me up too, just in a different way. Come with me, away from all this!”

  He looked at me for a long time. And then he finally said, in a voice dragged from his very soul, “I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t.”

  And it was over.

  We stared at each other for a moment, and then I turned around and walked to the elevator, knowing that I’d never see him again. Upstairs, I found the bag that I’d left out in the garden all night. My phone was soaked and ruined, but the cigarette case was just fine.

  I found an old pair of his jeans and pulled them on, threw my wet clothes in my bag and called a cab. It was a beautiful, sun-drenched morning and all I wanted to do was curl up somewhere and die.

  * * * *

  I had classes, but I didn’t go. I didn’t even call in sick. I had the cab stop at a drugstore and bought some fresh blades and dressings. I never normally bought the two things together, in case the salesperson got suspicious, but I was done hiding.

  I wasn’t crying. Maybe I was all cried out, but it felt more like I’d slipped off the tightrope I’d been walking for six years, the one the cutting and the bike and the dancing had helped me balance on. I’d fallen down into the cold, thick ocean of guilt and I was slowly drowning in it.

  In my bedroom, I sat with the shining blades arranged in a row down my leg.

  My hands were shaking as I cut, and I waited for the burn of punishment to calm them, but it didn’t.

  He hated me.

  The second cut was no better, the line ragged and messy.

  The best thing that had ever happened to me had been ripped away by the worst thing I’d ever done. In some tiny part of me, there was actually relief. I didn’t need to try to be normal anymore. I’d had it confirmed to me that I was broken beyond repair, that even someone who loved me as much as Darrell had would abandon me in disgust as soon as they knew the truth.

  The third cut hurt more, but not in the right way. It didn’t lift me out of the swamp of memories, and I was sinking fast. Hot tears splashed salty pain into the wound—I hadn’t even realized I’d started crying. I slapped a dressing over my thigh and climbed onto the bike, not even bothering to get changed. I cranked it up to maximum resistance and started pedaling, feeling the sweat burn into the cuts and my muscles ache like fire, but the tears kept coming, heavy and fast.

  Clarissa found me like that an hour later, my legs still pumping at the pedals, the flywheel making an unearthly howl as I pushed it and myself past endurance. She had to pull me off it, and I beat on her back with my fists as I sobbed.

  Chapter Thirty Seven

  Darrell

  I was kneeling next to the missile, making the final adjustments. I’d turned the music up ear-splittingly loud, but it wasn’t working anymore to drown out my memories.

  I understood it all, now. She was punishing herself every day because she looked in the mirror and saw a murderer. She’d been living with guilt for six years, when she should have been getting help. She’d never been able to grieve, because she didn’t think she deserved to.

  And I couldn’t help her.

  I knew she’d told me to make me understand, to let me know that she was going through something similar. We were both trapped by our memories. And that’s why, even though I longed to help her, I knew I couldn’t. I knew I could never let them go. I could never give up on their memory and move on—it would be like forgetting them. I couldn’t betray them like that. And if I couldn’t do it myself, how could I expect her to?

  She was better off without me.

  The doubts I’d had before had solidified into a cold understanding. I’d worried that what I was doing was wrong. Natasha had made me sure of it, hoping that once I realized that, I’d break away from it. She hadn’t realized just how strongly bound I was to my path—I knew now I was evil, but that didn’t mean I could stop doing it. It just meant I now hated myself as much as I hated the men who’d killed my parents. Well, fine. If that’s what it took to honor their memory, so be it.

  The elevator chimed. I was didn’t have to turn to see who it was. There was only one other person with a key to the house.

  “I brought you a care package,” Carol shouted over the music. Then, as she always did, she turned it off so that I’d have no choice but to speak to her. I sighed and turned around.

  She was holding a crate of Dr. Pepper and two boxes of Krispy Kremes. I knew that one box would be all frosted, one all lemon meringue. Exactly what I liked.

  “I wasn’t happy about the way we left things,” she told me sadly. “I wanted to check you were okay.”

  “Me, or the missile?” I was surprised by how much bitterness came through in my voice.

  She did a good job of sounding shocked. “Darrell! You know how much I care about you. I knew you were...conflicted.”

  I shook my head and turned back to the missile. “I’m not anymore.”

  She watched me for a second. “You broke up?” She was unable to stop just a hint of relief creeping into her voice.

  I nodded.

  She came closer, crouched down and put her arms around me. I knelt there rigidly, not relaxing into it but not pulling away, either. “Oh, darling. God, that’s awful. I know it’s tough. But I think in the long term, it’s for
the best.”

  I gave a kind of half nod. “I’d like to be alone, now,” I told her.

  “Of course.” She started to retreat, her heels clicking on the concrete.

  “One thing,” I said suddenly, without turning around.

  “Anything, what?”

  “Find me another project,” I told her. “And...find someone to dismantle the stage.”

  “Consider it done.”

  When she’d gone, I turned back to the missile. I’d done everything I could usefully do, now, and was just making busy work. I started cleaning the casing, getting rid of all the oily finger marks and buffing it until it shone. But in the reflections, I kept glimpsing Natasha, as if she was dancing on the stage behind me.

  I’d thought I could fix her. I’d thought I was dealing with some trauma from the past, like mine, and maybe I could have helped her with that. But she was facing her trauma again every day, every time she looked in the mirror. She thought she’d killed her parents, and she’d thought that every single day since she was fifteen. No wonder she cut herself. She’d claimed she’d been coping—and maybe she had—but I’d come in and ripped away her only way of dealing with things, making her feel ashamed of it. I’d wanted to know her secrets, and I’d cruelly torn her open to get them. And then she’d spilled her last, dark secret to try to help me, only to discover I was too far gone to save.

  And now what would happen to her? Would she meet someone else, someone normal, who’d be able to help her break free of her past? I tried to tell myself it was true, but I knew in my gut that it wasn’t. Ours had been a chance meeting, and she’d trusted me—probably against her instincts. Thanks to me, she wouldn’t trust again for a long time—maybe never. I loved her, and I’d managed to leave her far worse than I’d found her.

  What do you do when you realize you’re the bad guy?

  I pushed the thought out of my head. There was nothing I could do about it. She’d never accept me doing what I did, and there was no way I could quit. I was locked on this path.