The Rocker That Needs Me
Terri Anne Browning
COPYRIGHT
The Rocker That Needs Me
The Rocker… Series
Written By Terri Anne Browning
All Rights Reserved © 2013 Anna Henson
This is a work of fiction. Any characters, names, places or incidents are used solely as a fictitious nature based on the authors imagination. Any resemblance to or mention of persons, place, organizations, or other incidents are completely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any other means without permission from the Publisher. Piracy is not a victimless crime. No individual/group has resale rights, sharing rights, or any other kind of rights to sell or give away this book. This is the author’s livelihood. Please respect her rights.
Other Books By this Author
Reese: A Safe Haven Novella
Reckless With Their Hearts (Duet book with Anna Howard)
The Rocker… Series
The Rocker That Holds Me (Emmie)
The Rocker That Savors Me (Jesse)
Table of 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
Epilogue
Acknowledgement I want to thank my husband for putting up with me while I right this series. He is stuck with all the house cleaning and laundry while I sort through these rocker’s lives. Without him I would not have any sanity left to create Demon’s Wings for you guys. Special thanks to my BETA readers for giving some insight as the story progressed. I seriously would be lost without them! And lastly to my mom, who finally read one of my books and actually liked it!
Prologue
It was hot as Hell. Muttering a curse under my breath, I tore off my shirt and tossed it on the lawnmower. July was a bitch. Mowing the entire trailer park in the middle of the day wasn’t the smartest idea, but it hadn’t been my idea. The old cunt that acted as a landlord for the place had wanted it done, and it wasn’t my job to question her. She paid me decently for mowing the grass and taking care of the maintenance around the place. I had spent the last three hours mowing and sweating a few gallons along the way. My shirt was soaked, and I seriously needed a shower. After putting the push mower back in the supply shed, I headed home, which was only a few trailers away from the shed sitting in the middle of the rundown trailer park.
Bone tired, I opened the door to my trailer and walked in…
The television was on and Emmie was sitting on my couch. Normally that wouldn’t have been a problem for me. When my mom and stepdad weren’t home, Emmie came over and watched TV with Shane for a few hours to escape from the nightmare that she called a mother. Today, Shane wasn’t home. He was out with some chick that he had met at one of our gigs a few towns over last Friday night.
My mom was at work, like always. She worked hard and was rarely home, so there was only one person that could have let Emmie in…
My heart turned cold, and I had to fight not to throw up as I looked down at the sweet little girl sitting on the sofa. Her hair was a mess, just like it always was. She was wearing shorts that were too big for her, probably a pair that one of us had bought her at a yard sale since her mom didn’t care if she had clothes or not. There was a Band-Aid on her shin and a few bruises on her legs and arms.
She looked up at me and smiled when she saw me watching her. “Hey!” she greeted, taking a sip of a juice box.
“Emmie, why are you here?” I asked. “Who let you in?”
Her smile dimmed a little. “Mr. Rusty let me in. I was playing and he asked if I wanted to come in out of the heat.”
We were one of the few families in the trailer park that had an air conditioner. How nice of Rusty to invite Emmie inside to cool off. I clenched my hands into fists, attempting to stay calm in front of the innocent little girl that I loved so much. I didn’t want to scare her, but she had no idea that I had just saved her from unimaginable nightmares.
“Where’s Rusty now?”
“He had to use the bathroom,” she informed me, watching me closely.
I crouched down in front of her and took her hands in my much larger ones. “Listen to me, Emmie. I want to ask you something, and it’s important that you tell me the truth. Okay, sweetheart?”
She nodded her auburn head, and I tightened my hands around hers. “Did…” I swallowed the bile rising in my throat and started again. “Did Rusty touch you?”
Her eyes widened. “I…” She turned pink in the face and bit her lip. “Drake…”
“Did he, Em?” I whispered.
“I…I don’t…” She swallowed hard. “He said not to tell.”
“Where?” I demanded. “Where did he touch you, Emmie?”
“Just my leg.” She had tears in her eyes, and I realized that my hold on her hands was too tight. I eased up on my grip but didn’t release her. “He sat with me and rubbed my leg while I watched TV. I didn’t like it and told him to stop.”
“Did he?”
She nodded. “Yes. Of course he did. Then he went to the bathroom. I think he’s taking a shower or something cause he’s been in there a while.”
Rage like nothing I’d ever felt before boiled through me. I was starting to shake with it and saw the fear in Emmie’s eyes. I tried to contain it, but I was quickly losing control. “Rusty is a bad man, Emmie. Remember how Jesse, Nik, and I talked to you about bad men?” She nodded her head, tears spilling from her big green eyes. Nine years old and I could already tell that she was going to be one beautiful woman when she grew up.
The guys and I had warned Emmie of a lot of things over the years: not to touch the needles that her mom used for her drug habit and never let one of her mom’s men be alone with her. The usual talks that you had with a little kid who lives in a home filled with everyday monsters that kids like Emmie had to deal with.
I had been lucky to never have a parent that abused me or did the things that Emmie’s mom did. My mom was great, but she worked two jobs to keep up with bills. My dad was a decent enough guy when he came around, so I hadn’t been prepared when my mom had married Rusty Nelson when I was ten and Shane was eight. He had seemed like a good guy too, until the night he had climbed into bed with me. My mom had been working the night shift at the gas station down the road, and Shane had been at a sleepover with his pal from school…
That night had been the beginning of my nightmares. I had been prepared to tell my mom and had threatened to do just that, but Rusty was a manipulative bastard. He could make threats just as good as I could. He had assured me that no one would believe me. Who was going to believe a ten year old boy over an adult like him? Then he had threatened me with the one thing that was sure to keep my mouth shut.
Shane.
If I told, then Shane would be next. There was no way I wanted my baby brother, the boy that was my best friend, to experience what I had just gone through. So I kept the abuse to myself. And it continued for nearly a year.
When I turned eleven, I shot up in height by nearly a foot, and puberty hit fast. I didn’t look like a
little kid anymore. I was turning into a man, and Rusty hadn’t liked that, so I was forgotten. I had been scared that the pervert was going to start abusing Shane, so I kept my eyes open for signs that it was going on. There were none and I started to relax…
From down the hall I heard the toilet flush, and I stood, putting the length of the living room between me and Emmie in case I hurt her by accident. There was no way Rusty was walking away from this. He had messed with the wrong kid this time!
“Drake?” Emmie whispered my name, and I gave her a grim smile.
“It’s going to be okay, Em.” I picked up the phone that was beside the rocker my mom loved to sit in. I punched in a number I knew by heart and waited for someone to pick up on the other end.
“Yeah?” It was Mr. Thornton. The guy sounded drunk and he probably was.
“Mr. Thornton, is Jesse home?” I knew he was. He needed to be at work for the evening shift at the plant soon.
“Jesse!” The old man bellowed, and I heard Jesse stomping through the trailer.
He muttered something I couldn’t hear to his dad and then put the phone to his ear. “Dude, I’m busy,” Jesse said without even asking who it was. “What do you want?”
I glanced over at Emmie. “I need you to come over. Now.”
“Dray, I have to be at work in like twenty minutes.”
“Emmie needs you.”
That stopped him. Of the four of us Jesse was probably the most protective of Emmie. The guy was like a mother bear with her cub. “Is she okay?” he demanded.
“That’s questionable.” Physically, she was fine. If that douche bag had done nothing more than touch her leg, then she might not have any mental trauma from it. But what I was worried about was her being in the way when I lost control. “Just come over. Run,” I told him when I heard the bathroom door open. The phone went dead, and I placed it back in its cradle.
“How about another juice box, Emmie?” Rusty asked as he came down the narrow hallway. “Or a popsicle? That’s just what you need on a hot summer day…” He noticed me standing by my mom’s chair. “I didn’t hear you come in,” he muttered.
“I bet.” I gave him a once over. He didn’t look like a pedophile. He looked like what my mom still thought he was: a decent human being. I guess he was good looking. Rusty had just a hint of a beer gut. His hair was short and free of gray. He was average in height and his southern accent was something that my mom said she liked about him. To me, he was the monster from my nightmares.
The front door opened and Jesse came in looking wild. His gaze went straight to Emmie. “Em? Are you okay?” He rushed over and lifted her into his arms.
“Jesse!” She clung to his neck and buried her face in his chest. “Drake is scaring me.”
“What the fuck, man?” Jesse exploded. “She doesn’t look any worse than normal…” then he saw my face.
My gaze was still on Rusty, and I knew that my hatred—the pure venomous rage—was burning in my eyes. I was still shaking and it was getting worse by the second. Jesse glanced from me to a very nervous looking Rusty. “Take Emmie outside, Jesse,” I told him, not once taking my eyes off my stepfather.
“Dray…”
“Now!” I shouted, and Emmie whimpered in his arms. I hated that I was scaring her, but there was nothing I could do about it right now. Later, I promised myself. Later, I would make it up to her.
Jesse murmured something soothingly to Emmie as he turned and left the trailer. With the loud bang from the slamming door, I snapped. There was no way I could hold onto my control now…
I destroyed the living room. The floor lamp that sat beside the old rocker was sticking out of the broken window. The couch I had loved so much was flipped over and would probably never be used again. I thought I heard the dial tone of the phone and figured it was off the hook since the table beside what had once been my mom’s favorite chair was in pieces. The place was completely trashed by the time the cops showed up and pulled me off of the unconscious, bleeding man beneath me. It took two of them to put the handcuffs on me while they fought to push my face down into the carpet. One of the cops said something about an ambulance, and I screamed at him to let the fucker die. That only made the cop holding me down dig his knee deeper into my spine.
Shane burst into the trailer, followed by Nik. Neither said a word as they took in the scene. Outside I heard the sirens of the ambulance as I struggled against the cuffs. I wanted to finish what I had started before the paramedics got the chance to save the bastard.
“Drake!” My mom screamed as she followed the EMTs into the trailer. She had just come home from work and stepped into a war zone.
“Drake, what have you done?” She cried when she saw her husband lying motionless on her living room floor and me, her oldest son, in handcuffs. “Why did you do this?”
I clenched my jaw and refused to meet her eyes. “Because that piece of shit deserved it.”
“Mom!” Shane grabbed our mother. “Mom, there’s something you need to know.”
Something in my little brother’s voice made me glance over at him. He held onto Mom’s hands and spoke softly to her, but I still heard. “Rusty molested me when I was nine,” he explained, and I lost it.
All of it for nothing! The years of keeping the secret that haunted me night and day to protect him. I had turned to drinking myself to death just to sleep at night. And it was all for nothing! Rusty had still done to Shane what he had done to me.
I bucked the cops off me and somehow got to my feet despite the cuffs. Before I could reach Rusty, a third cop tackled me.
“No!” I screamed. “I’m going to kill him!”
Rusty Nelson was going to die for touching my little brother…
Chapter 1
Drake
I woke with the taste of stale Jack Daniels on my tongue, my head pounding and fighting the urge to vomit.
Yeah, my typical morning!
Nothing special about that or the nightmares that still lingered in my mind. They were what made me run for the bathroom. I barely made it before I started retching and emptied my dinner from the night before into the toilet.
I was brushing my teeth when Emmie waddled into my connecting bathroom and glared at me. Apparently she was still mad at me, and I still had no clue why. Damn pregnancy hormones!
“Grab a shower. You’re helping Jesse move Layla and her sisters into the guest house today.”
I groaned. “Emmie, my head is about to split open.”
“How is that different from any other day?” she called over her shoulder as she left the bathroom. “Hurry up. Jesse is leaving soon.”
Muttering a curse, I stepped into the shower. Thirty minutes later, I was riding shotgun in a rental with Jesse. He knew my head was killing me, and he didn’t talk much because of it. I rested my head against the back of the seat and prayed that the day would pass quickly. All I wanted was some Jack and a bed.
The apartment duplex Jesse pulled up in front of wasn’t the most seedy place I had ever seen, but it wasn’t the nicest either. We weren’t exactly in gang territory, but it was obvious that this wasn’t the safest of neighborhoods. I was kind of glad that Layla was moving into the guest house after seeing this place. I liked her and wanted her somewhere safer.
The sun was bright and I regretted not wearing my sunglasses as I climbed the stairs to the second floor behind Jesse. He knocked and the door opened.
“Jesse, hey,” Layla’s raspy voice greeted the drummer.
I stood there in the glaring sun and watched them devour each other with their eyes. Yeah, there wasn’t anything going on there! “Sometime today, Jesse. Stop eye fucking the chick and let’s get this show started, man.” Layla’s cheeks flushed, and she stepped back to let us into the apartment. “I wasn’t expecting you guys to help me.”
I dropped down on a couch that reminded me of the one my mom had loved so much when I was a kid. This one was probably as old as I was.
“Neither were
we,” I muttered.
“What Drake means is that he is here under duress. This is his punishment for pissing Emmie off last night,” Jesse informed her.
“I still don’t understand what I did,” I grumbled. “One minute she’s all smiles and the next she’s screaming at me.” I shook my head and my long hair fell in my face. “I hate pregnancy hormones. Cannot wait for that demon child to get out of her!” I wanted my sweet little Emmie back.
Okay, she wasn’t sweet, but she was ours, and I wouldn’t trade her for anyone else. But lately she wasn’t the same girl that the guys and I had practically raised. She had been taken over by the spawn growing in her belly.
Layla laughed and it was a sweet sound. “That isn’t going to help,” she assured me. “After the baby is born, she’s going to be worse. Take my word for it, sweetie. Postpartum is worse than the mood swings she’s having now.”
“Ah, hell,” Jesse muttered at the same time I did.
“Hey, Layla, did you already pack the bathroom? I need…” My head snapped around at the sound of that voice, and I was sure that my heart stopped in my chest when I met the whiskey colored eyes of an angel. Her long, midnight black hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Her brown-amber eyes were huge in her beautiful face. She had plump lips that were almost bee stung and a nose that was tipped at the end. The angel was tall, her waist long and slender, but she had curves that made my body ache to hold her against me.
This angel was young; I would say no more than twenty-one…Layla introduced the angel. “Lana, this is Jesse and that’s Drake. Guys, this is my seventeen year old sister, Lana.”
Seventeen. Seventeen. SEVENTEEN!
Seven-fucking-teen!
The number bounced around in my already throbbing head, and I thought I was going to go mad from it. No! Not seventeen. She had to be older. I couldn’t be attracted in a seventeen year old girl.
“It’s nice to meet you, Lana,” Jesse said as he stared at the angel.
I was fascinated by the pretty pink that flooded her cheeks. “Yeah, you too,” she murmured and glanced at her sister. “Layla, can you help me with something in the bathroom?”
The Rocker That Needs Me (The Rocker...) Page 1