He was trying to distract her. He was desperate to distract her. Because he could feel disaster lurking outside his windows like those freaky dolls Alexa had hung from his gutters. It was looking through the glass, scary as shit.
“Do you think Cilla might have brought it over?” He glanced up to gauge how amenable Alexa would be to diversion. But she wasn’t looking at him. Instead, she was shaking out some tablets into the cup of her palm. Then she crossed to his twin with a tall glass of water in her other hand.
“C’mon, Brody,” he heard her coax as Bing reached for a bottle on a higher shelf.
Alexa’s sharp voice stilled his movement. “Good Lord. No hair of the dog.”
His fingers tightened on the whisky. “This is for me.”
Years in the compound had not only made him a numbers guy, it had honed his senses. Sharpened his intuition. He put the cap between his teeth, pulled it free of the bottle with a pop. The first swallow was a burn that held no pleasure, just a promise that if the bad shit was going to happen soon, it might go down easier this way. “You should probably have some, Lex.”
“What? I don’t think so.”
He shrugged. It wouldn’t help her anyway, he supposed. If the truth came out, no amount of alcohol could stop the look he was certain he’d see on her face. Her expression would change, she would change, he knew it, and no matter how wasted he got himself, there’d be no hiding from it.
At the table, Brody groaned.
Bing looked over, hope kindling. “You ready for bed, Bro? If you want I can throw you in the shower first.”
His brother’s head lifted and he squinted against the light. “Your pants. Too short.” The slurring was beginning to clear up.
Bing plucked at the sweats with the hotel logo. “XL doesn’t mean extra long.” He switched his gaze to Alexa. “Why don’t you help persuade him it’s time to lie down, doll.”
“Need to tell you a story.”
Bing swallowed his groan. Brody was rousing again and his bleary gaze moved from Alexa to Bing. “She should know.”
“You don’t need to tell Lex anything, Bro. Drunken ramblings are a buzz-kill, and Lex and I have had a fine old time tonight until your sorry ass showed up.”
“Bing,” Alexa chided him in a soft voice. “But he’s right, Brody, you should get into bed.”
“We liked gettin’ into beds.” His head went down on his arms. “Bed all the time. And all th’ girlz. Pretty girlz.”
“Okay, that’s it.” Bing crossed to his brother and hauled him up by an elbow. “Time to stop this little trip down memory lane.”
Brody stumbled, knocking over his chair. “Need to talk.”
“You need to sleep it off.” He hustled his brother to the door, almost made it to the hall before Brody’s fingers gripped the kitchen door jamb and halted their movement.
“Lex,” he said, turning his head over his shoulder. “You need to know. We killed a girl. Me ‘n’ Bing. We killed her.”
She was still where he’d left her after Bing got Brody onto the bed in the guest room. He’d thrown a blanket over him and then started back to the executioner’s chair. Two steps into that journey and he’d gone back to snatch one of the bridal baby dolls from the closet where he’d stashed them. A toss, and it had landed on the pillow beside his brother’s head. Asshole deserved to lose his shit when he finally woke up. His brother had ruined his night.
His future maybe too—no. That had been screwed royally years ago.
The weight of Alexa’s gaze felt like an anchor dragging him under, but he managed to move anyway, crossing to the whisky bottle without looking at her.
Maker’s Mark wasn’t going to help, he’d known it wouldn’t, but it gave him something to do while he returned to the past. He was one-hundred percent certain Alexa wouldn’t let him get away without digging it all up.
One swig of booze and then it was time to unload. “Being a Velvet Lemon kid had its ‘perks’,” he said, adding a pair of ironic air quotes.
“Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll, I suppose.” Her breath hitched. “You didn’t kill anyone, Bing. Of course you didn’t.”
He pretended she hadn’t spoken. “We started drinking around…twelve, I guess. Started with a beer or two, just to see what a buzz was like. By the time we were fourteen, we’d made our way to the harder stuff.”
Another swallow of the whisky joined the roiling stew in his belly. “We were tall for our age, but hell, that probably didn’t matter to any of the women there looking for…whatever the hell they were looking for. Fame, excitement, a way into the business? Who the hell knows? I didn’t ask.”
“You were kids.”
“It didn’t feel like that pretty quickly. Cilla and Cami, they were sheltered from the worst of it, I think, by Gwendolyn Moon. But through high school we wandered around doing what we wanted, doing who landed in our beds.”
Her patience was admirable. She let a long pause pass before asking her question. “Did you think it was normal?”
“Fuck, no. But still, it sucked you in because there was the high, the haze, the utter hedonism surrounding you. Nothing really seemed wrong because nothing ever seemed right, either. Not in our world.”
“I don’t see how you got out of it.”
“Everybody—each one of the nine—broke free from the compound early on. Beck left first. I can’t remember who was next. Brody and I took off the day after our eighteenth birthday.”
The tension in the room went thick. Still, she waited him out.
“We had a friend—a girl who’d been in art class with us, which was the only class we semi-regularly attended during high school. She graduated a year before us, but we kept in touch. She wanted to come celebrate the big eighteen with us.”
“There was a party at the compound.”
“If the Lemons were in town, there was always a big party at the compound. We’d put Lynn off other times because it didn’t seem like it would be her thing—or maybe we knew subconsciously it shouldn’t be anybody’s thing—but it was our birthday and she was a talented musician who wanted to meet the Lemons in the worst way…” He shrugged. “We thought it was a favor to her and we told each other we’d keep an eye on her.”
“Nothing terrible happened,” Alexa said.
Sweet Alexa, wholesome Alexa, who he should never have touched. But now she’d have this in her mind forever. The ugliness that was him, his past always in her life because he’d been in her life. In her.
“Nothing terrible happened,” she repeated doggedly, “or I would remember hearing about it.”
It was another shame to burst her bubble. “Money talks and money silences too, doll. Her parents didn’t want the story getting out either.”
She let that sit a while too. “The story.”
“The truth. The truth was that we did lose track of Lynn that night. She was there, then she wasn’t, and we asked around but nobody had seen her. So we kept on…celebrating, figuring she’d gone home.”
“But she didn’t.”
“No.” He swallowed more Maker’s Mark and closed his eyes as it went down, hot and cruel. “Who knows what time we left the party and went to our rooms? Late, or early, I guess is the better word. It was heading toward noon when we stirred the next day. I know it’s weird, but though Brody and I had separate rooms beside each other, more often than not we would emerge from them at the same time. Twin hunger pains, I guess.”
“You came across Lynn.”
Smart Alexa. Such a smart woman, except for her involvement with him. “We came across Lynn.” He could see her, skin pale as moonlight in the bright light of day, her curly hair a halo, her brown eyes open and unseeing. “She’d OD’d on Oxy. Drugs were everywhere, of course, that night and any other time. She wouldn’t have known how much was too much. We found her in our hallway and I can only suppose she was on her way to our rooms. To find us.”
“Oh, Bing.”
“Nineteen years old and dead
because we granted her the favor of meeting the fucking Velvet Lemons. What great guys we turned out to be.”
“You are great guys. It was an accident—”
“Not in our minds. It will never be that in our minds.” He should look at Alexa now. See how the truth played out on her expressive, beautiful face. Coward that he was, he couldn’t.
“What does this mean?” she asked.
The bottle of whisky made a loud clack when it hit the countertop. He knew what she was asking by the question. “It means our fun and games are at an end, doll.”
“No—”
“You said it yourself earlier tonight. Your instincts were right. It’s time.” Though he was certain she’d walk away, he couldn’t stand another moment waiting for her to escape him. Without sending her a single glance, he stalked out of the kitchen. His bedroom was dark. Not peaceful, but dark. He locked himself inside it with his demons.
Chapter Fourteen
Alexa had lost so much in recent months. Her relationship with her closest cousin. A big chunk of her self-confidence. Worst of all, her heart.
She didn’t like missing these important parts of herself. The loss of their weight was not the least bit pleasant. Without a second thought, even a former fat girl would take on some pounds in trade to get them back.
She also didn’t know how to make that happen.
Her subconscious must have decided that a trip to Cilla Maddox’s house by the beach might provide some answers because a drive to the grocery store had taken her in another direction altogether. She should have called first, Alexa thought. Maybe the other woman wasn’t even home.
Still, she knocked on the door of the small house and hoped that someone would answer.
A few moments passed, and a tall, dark figure loomed in the doorway. Alexa’s heart jumped, but then she realized it was Ren. Ren Colson, looking at her through his eerie green eyes. His smile did little to soften the hard planes of his face. Another dark and magnetic member of the rock royalty.
“Uh, hi,” Alexa said, lifting her hand in a little wave. “Sorry to disturb you.”
“Come on in,” he said, widening the door.
She followed him inside, only then realizing he was in a pair of ragged jeans and T-shirt and that he had a short crow-bar in his hands. “I’ve come at a bad time. You guys are busy.”
“Working on Cilla’s roof,” he said, leading the way into a small kitchen. “Can I get you something?”
“No, I’m fine.” Alexa glanced up at the ceiling. “Is Cilla up there?”
“She was game for it, I admit, but…” He shrugged, grinned. “I’m a Neanderthal. I couldn’t breathe if she was skidding around on crumbling shingles.”
Written in the stars. Ren wouldn’t risk losing his destiny.
She twisted her fingers together. “So she’s not here?”
He shook his head. “Out shopping.”
“Oh. I’ll just be on my way, then.”
“Something I can help you with?” His gaze sharpened. “You look a little upset.”
Falling in love with the wrong man will do that to you.
Ren smiled. “Let me guess. You need insight into a Maddox male? I might be able to help with that.”
She put off having to admit it by asking another question first. “Hey, did you find out who Cami was singing to that night?” The first time ever I saw your face… The honesty that had come through in the other woman’s voice made Alexa’s throat ache, even now.
“No.” Ren frowned. “She won’t say and didn’t appreciate the grilling. But I worry. Maybe too much, I know, but love can put you through the wringer.”
“Yeah.”
“Hell.” His mouth twisted. “Cilla would kill me for sounding so negative. But is that the kind of trouble you’re having?”
She lifted a shoulder. “We come from different worlds.”
He nodded. “It’s something Cilla and I have going for us…that we don’t. She understands how our world messed with my mind and I’m grateful every minute of every day that she didn’t let the craziness of it close her heart.”
“I think Bing and Brody are messed up too.” She thought of Bing’s bleak expression and Brody’s drunken figure, stretched out on the lawn.
“It would be a miracle if they weren’t. But Lex, it doesn’t mean they’re ruined for life. For love.” He blinked, looked away, looked back. “I can’t believe I just said that. If you ever tell anyone I sound so sappy when I hand out romantic advice, I’ll call you out as a bald-faced liar.”
She had to laugh at his discomfort. “Nobody will hear it from me, Dear Abby. Thanks for the words, though.”
He walked her to the door. “One last thing, Lex.”
Her hand stilled on the doorknob. “Yes?
“You might very well be the sunshine Bing needs. But don’t let it be one-sided. He’s got to give you something back that shines as bright.”
She opened her mouth, closed it, then nodded.
“If he does, then give it your all, Lex.” He grinned. “Because when we rock princes stop fighting so hard, we make fucking great lovers.”
At the end of the walkway, four feet from her car, Alexa met yet another rock prince, this one making his way to Cilla’s house. “Hey,” Reed Hopkins said. He was dressed in worn jeans and had a pair of work gloves in one hand. “Did they call you up for roof duty too?”
“Um, no. I was here for something else. You’re going to help Ren?”
He blinked, his expression baffled. “Yeah, I guess I am. Cilla called me this morning.” His broad shoulders moved up and down in a shrug. “One minute we were exchanging small talk and the next…here I am.”
Hmm, Alexa thought. Cilla drawing the writer out of his cave. The youngest princess was turning into quite the queen. “Do you live nearby?” she asked him, trying to imagine an appropriate setting for the handsome horror novelist who wore “reclusive” like another man might wear cologne. A rocky, menacing abode, she decided, built high into a sea-swept Pacific cliff.
“Not too far.” Then he went on to name a wealthy residential enclave.
A very suburban residential enclave. She stared at him because it was so opposite of what she’d supposed. “Five bedrooms, four baths, and a pool?”
“Six, five, a pool, a tennis court,” he admitted. “And neighbors.” He said the word like it was the plague. “I have new neighbors.”
“That’s, um, nice,” she said, though he didn’t seem to think so.
“I don’t understand women,” Reed muttered. “She brings me food.”
It wasn’t hard for Alexa to comprehend why a woman would bring over a casserole or two. While Reed wasn’t thin in the least, he had a lean, hungry look, like he’d never been completely sated. At the basest of levels, it held quite the appeal. “Well, just so you know, we don’t get men a lot of the time either.”
“Then you should leave us alone,” Reed said absently, as he headed up the walk. “Really, that’s what we want. To be left alone.”
Alexa almost laughed as she climbed into her car. Talk about contradictory advice. Ren encouraged her to give her all to a relationship with Bing. Reed advised her to let men go altogether.
She was still stuck in a mire of indecision and going home wouldn’t be the place to sort it out, not when Bing would be so close. Work, she thought. Even if answers were not to be found, she could distract herself there. Her inbox was never empty.
After parking in front of Bella Bridal, she walked around the back to let herself in the rear door. Sundays, the salon was closed, and it was quiet inside as she walked down the hallway to her office. Her chair squealed as she settled into it.
But the quiet felt heavy on her shoulders and she suddenly didn’t feel like turning on her computer. Instead, she popped to her feet and headed for the closest workroom. Maybe there was some tidying to be done. Mindless busywork.
The first thing she encountered as she passed over the threshold was the dressmaker
’s dummy that was draped in her cousin’s wedding gown. The bride’s fascinator sat on a nearby table.
“I don’t think anyone would blame you if you took a pair of shears to the both of them.”
Alexa whirled around, her hand flying to her thudding heart. “I didn’t hear you.”
Drea stood in the doorway, her dark eyes and her petite figure so familiar. She wore cream-colored jeans, a black T-shirt and flats, and she carried the designer purse they’d found on sale together the previous year. They’d flipped a coin for it. “I saw your car and decided to stop by too.”
Glancing back at the beautiful dress, Alexa cleared her throat. “I would never damage your wedding clothes.”
Her cousin snorted. “Of course you wouldn’t.”
Alexa tossed up her hands, caught herself, and let them drop. “I don’t know why you seem mad at me,” she said mildly.
Drea stared at her, then her eyes narrowed. “You really don’t.”
“I really don’t.”
Her cousin made a frustrated noise, then, in a flurry of movement, she jerked back her arm and flung the purse at the dressmaker’s dummy. It wobbled, and though Alexa lunged, she couldn’t catch it before it toppled to the carpeted floor. Righting it swiftly, she shot an alarmed look at the other woman. “What is wrong with you?”
Instead of answering, Drea took off one black flat and hurled it at the wall. The other followed. Thump thump. Then, barefoot, chest heaving, she glared at Alexa. “What is wrong with you? Wake up!”
“To what?” She was honestly baffled.
“I’m mad at you because you won’t get mad at me!”
Alexa stepped back. “Huh?”
“I’ve tried everything I could think of to get a rise out of you so we could have an honest, sister-to-sister, flat-out fight about this and you just continue being reasonable and nice, and…” Her chest heaved again and the sound of a sob was choked in her throat. “Kind!”
Alexa held onto her patience by a fingernail. “Only you could make that sound like an insult,” she said calmly.
“Stop that. Stop doing that.” Drea pressed her hand beneath her nose. “Yell at me. Slap me. Throw that ugly fascinator.”
Love Her Madly Page 19