Thirteen
Shiloh
Two weeks.
In the grand scheme of things, fourteen days doesn’t seem like an outrageous amount of time. But when you’re treated like a piece of furniture for a full eighty of those three hundred and thirty-six hours, they become the longest stretch of time in history.
That’s right. After leaving me questioning my sanity up against a brick wall, I can count the number of times Cary has looked me in the eye on one hand. Any communication between us has come in the form of grunts and one-word commands, which inevitably ends with my eyes glued to his ass as he slams his office door.
It’s poetic in a tragic Shakespearian kind of way. I figuratively slam the door on him, and he literally slams it on me. This fragile dance we’ve been playing for years has only amplified to a tango that has no structured steps. No rules. No way for me to protect myself by just walking away.
I’m stuck—held against my will by a court order and my own foreign responses to a man I have no business thinking about.
My days are occupied with masking my own confusion while my nights are filled with memories of his hard body commanding mine in dangerously seductive moves masked as a dance. A lethal mix of lust and retribution battled for control in his eyes, and honestly, I’m not sure which one I find myself fearing more.
His desire, or his justice.
How in the hell is he capable of making me want both? Am I so damn self-destructive that the possibility of his touch is worth standing too close to a raging fire?
“Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”
Snapped out of my thoughts, my mother’s breathy voice fills the backseat of the limo as it stops beside a graffiti covered curb. It’s early, and I’m still shocked she’s dressed and coherent before lunch.
I glance up and watch her pop a tiny blue pill in her mouth.
Okay, somewhat coherent.
“I’m sorry, what?” I ask as she tosses her chin back and works the pill down her throat in a way that almost seems elegant.
Looking out the window, she wrinkles her sculptured nose. “I’m not comfortable leaving you here, darling. This isn’t exactly a desirable part of town.”
I can’t help but laugh as I pull my phone out, verifying the address Will gave me against the numbers on the building. “Mother, everything three blocks south of our gated community is undesirable to you.”
I’m glad no one else is in the car besides Malcolm, because that has to be the biggest case of the pot calling the kettle black in the history of stupid comments.
“I’ll be fine. Just have Malcolm pick me up in an hour.”
“What are you going to do? You know, in there?” She waves her hand toward the rundown one-story building as if saying the words out loud might infect her with a sickness that has run in her veins for over two decades.
Hypocrite.
I blink at her a few times, pretending to think before finally giving an uninterested shrug. “Well, after we sacrifice a baby, I assume the usual. You know, chanting, orgies, and snacks.”
Her perfectly lined eyes glaze over, and I find myself way more amused than I should be. Inching away, she presses her back against the padded limo door as if it’ll swallow her up and transport her back to the land of maids and homeowner’s associations. Inevitably, I put her out of her misery because an on-edge Bianca West is a pill-popping Bianca West, and she’s already taken a stroll down the Klonopin highway once today.
“Just kidding, Mother.” Patting her knee, I swipe the pill bottle lying next to her leg and drop it in my purse. It’s a risky move, considering where I’m headed, but someone has to cut her off. I should’ve let it go at that, but I can’t resist fucking with her. As Malcolm opens my door, I give her a dramatic wink. “They save all that for the second meeting.”
Leaving her sputtering, I walk to the building with an added bounce in my step. It’s probably a little sadistic to screw with my poor mother’s head like that. However, sending her away with visions of a hedonistic, socio-economic melting pot of group sex gives me the giggles as I swing open the door to my first drug and alcohol meeting.
I have no idea what the hell I expected, but this isn’t it. In California, rehab was simple. After the accident, I spent so much time in the hospital, I detoxed by circumstance, not by willpower. Granted, it was the easy way out, but the easy way has always been my exit strategy. Anything else requires too much effort and commitment on my part.
However, this is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Maybe I’ve been watching to many made for TV movies, but last night I pictured a room full of bandana wearing thugs and dealers—not khaki wearing Little League coaches and soccer moms.
Silence fills the room as I grip the doorknob. At least a dozen pairs of eyes settle on me, some widened in shock, some narrowed in suspicion, but all bright with curiosity. It’s not like I expected to slip in unnoticed. I mean, come on, I’m not exactly blendable. However, the level of animosity in the room almost chokes me.
Thank you, national news coverage.
Unease churns in my stomach as I slip past the long rectangular table, trailing my fingers along the starched white tablecloth, already stained with the red fruit punch from the bowl in the center.
Keeping my eyes lowered, I slip around a chipped metal chair that’s obviously seen better days, when a familiar chuckle catches my attention.
“We’ve gotta stop meetin’ up like this, Snowflake. People are gonna talk.”
The white noise in my head vanishes, and I wrap my arms around his neck without thinking. “Frankie! Oh my God, what are you doing here?”
I honestly don’t care to hear the answer. I’m just ecstatic to have a friendly face by my side who doesn’t look at me like I’m Satan incarnate.
“I’d ask what a nice girl like you is doin’ in a place like this, but I kinda know the answer,” he jokes.
I pull back and smile awkwardly. “Plus, you already know I’m not a nice girl.”
“Still playin’ the poor me act, huh?”
I give the room another once-over, still noting the scowls on everyone’s faces. “Just imagining the things you’ve been told.”
“People tell me lots of things. Doesn’t mean I listen.”
If he’s hoping to shut down my inquiry, that’s not the way to do it. “What’s that supposed to—”
Frankie slaps a hand over my mouth. “Quiet, it’s about to start.”
I fling his arm back in his lap and slump back into my chair, the unforgiving metal hard against my spine. “How do these things go anyway?”
His dark eyes glitter with amusement. “You know, blood, sacrifices, robes, chanting. Your typical underground cult shit.”
I hold in a laugh, remembering my mother’s deer-in-the-headlights look from earlier. The tension in my shoulders eases, and I palm my forehead. “Be serious.”
Placing his finger over my lips, he nods toward a middle-aged man in jeans and a t-shirt approaching the front of the room.
“Hi, everyone, I’m Gary. Welcome to Substance Abuse Rehab and Awareness, or as we simply call it here, SARA.” Opening his hands wide in a welcoming gesture, he makes a point of looking everyone in the eye, and I immediately drop my stare. “For those of you with us for the first time, if you’d like to introduce yourself, now is the time.”
Frankie nudges me, and it takes all I have in me not to punch him in the face. As I move my chair away, a woman with a brown bob haircut stands and makes her way to the front, obsessively tucking her short hair behind her ears. The more it falls back, the harder she tucks.
Newbie. It’s written all over her face. I remember the same fidgeting and hollow expressions on the faces of all the newborn kittens. That’s what we called the fifteen-year-old ingénues the agencies shoved onto the catwalks. None of them were ready for the harsh glare of the runway or the cutthroat backstabbing that went along with it. Most kittens never made it to full grown feline status. The pressure proved to be m
ore than they could take.
I was never a kitten. I went into the show already a lion. That’s why I can smell her fear. She’s a kitten in the wild, and I’m simultaneously ashamed for her and morbidly fascinated. I’m trained to never show fear. To be the unflappable ice queen.
Smile for the camera.
Click. Smile.
Click. Pose.
Click. Plastic.
The sweat pouring down her temple intrigues the hell out of me, and I can’t take my eyes off her. Here’s a nobody—a housewife in mom jeans and clearance rack clothing—about to do something I would never even consider.
Show her true face.
She clears her throat. “Hi, I’m Kelly.”
“Hi, Kelly.” Startled, by the booming response by everyone around me, I slump down into my chair.
“Wow,” she says, double tucking her hair. “This is even scarier than I thought it would be.”
“You’re doing great, Kelly,” Gary encourages her from the corner of the room.
Kelly tosses him a grateful grin and tucks her hair again. I wonder if she even knows that’s her thing. Probably not. No one ever does. Everyone else seems to, though, and as countless eyes fixate on her hands, I silently wish for a couple of bobby pins so I can run up there and pin it back for her.
“Right. Well, as you all can see, I’m no one special.” She tugs on the hem of her pink shirt and gives a self-deprecating laugh. “I don’t fit the mold of anyone’s typical addict. No bells or whistles went off on anyone’s radar for me. Even my husband’s,” she adds in a hushed voice.
Like a spectator at a blood bath, I find myself inching toward the edge of my seat. Part of me feels ashamed, while the rest relishes in hearing a story more fucked up than mine.
Kelly blows out a long breath. “It started out as a way for me to get everything done around the house. I mean, the energy from coke is like nothing else, right?” She glances up, searching for solidarity. When a couple of heads nod in agreement, she hugs her arms around herself. “I was on top of the world.”
“But the high didn’t last, did it, Kelly?” Gary broke in, guiding her confession back on track.
“No. When you’re on top, eventually, you just keep moving closer to the edge. Getting more and more reckless until eventually you fall.” As the memory unfolds, her face tightens in raw pain.
You have no idea, Kelly. The higher the star, the harder the fall.
My pulse races as tears spill down her cheek. I can feel Frankie’s eyes on me, but I don’t dare turn to face him. I can’t face anyone but Kelly.
“I met my dealer in a gas station parking lot,” she recalls, brushing the back of her hand over her wet cheeks. “I didn’t know I’d been followed, and the cops busted us both. My husband left me after my arrest and took my kids.” The composure she’d held on to throughout her speech breaks.
Kelly’s knees buckle and she collapses into Gary’s waiting arms. I’m frozen. I can’t speak or even breathe. At first, I don’t recognize the blurriness. The stinging. The strange dampness. I blink repeatedly and that’s when I taste it.
Salt.
I lick my lips again. More salt. I lick a third time and in disbelief run the tips of my fingers down my cheek.
Tears.
I haven’t cried since Kirkland’s funeral. Even then, I fought them, determined for my pain not to be tomorrow’s headlines. My tears were only for her. I shed them when I kissed her coffin, letting them dry on the polished marble so a part of me would always be with her.
I never allowed another one to fall after that.
I have no idea how much time has passed when Frankie gives my arm a squeeze. “There’s still time to share, ya know.” He nods toward the front of the room, and I notice all the intricate tattoos on his arm. Why did he get them? What do they mean? I’ve never asked anything about him, yet I cling to him as if he’s the only piece of stability in my fucked-up storm.
Expect everything and give nothing. Just like always.
“No,” I manage to say in a raspy voice. “I never learned to share.”
Too late, I’m realizing that one of the things I never had to share is the one I should’ve treasured the most. And now, I’m now sharing him with the woman who loathes me almost as much as he does.
Breaking the silence, Gary claps his hands together. “Okay, so how about we hear from our regular members now? Anyone want to share any updates? Frankie?”
I’m already headed toward the door before Frankie speaks.
Expect everything and give nothing.
The phrase repeats itself in my head as I push the door open and call Malcolm. As I drop my phone in my purse, the brown bottle catches my eye, and months of resistance vanish the minute I wrap my fingers around it.
Fourteen
Cary
“We had a visitor yesterday.” My father shoves his hands into his pockets, and I notice how frayed they are. In fact, his pants are completely worn, the knees barely held together by a single thread. He’s standing by the door of my office, staring out the window with a blank look on his face. I know that look. And even if I didn’t, the dark circles under his eyes betray him. He hasn’t been sleeping.
That makes two of us.
I raise an eyebrow, still keeping my eyes on the laptop screen as I ignore another unpaid invoice. “Oh? The Queen passing through town again?”
He chuckles, jingling the change in his pocket. “Close. Mitch McDaniel.”
The name sends a jolt down my spine. The fact that Taryn’s father made a special trip to the motel to see my parents isn’t good. It means I’m running out of time, and that’s the one thing I can’t afford to lose.
“I assume he wasn’t dropping by to invite you to lunch at the country club. Is there a problem?”
“No, no problem.”
I wince as the jingling gets louder. My father always flips coins in his pocket when he lies. Groaning, I close out the accounting program and lean back in my chair, giving him my full attention. He’s aged in the last few months. His salt and pepper hair has lost most of its pepper, and the lines around his mouth have gone from hints to caverns. The knife that sank into my heart when he sold his soul for mine twists a little deeper.
“The next place he visits will be here, so you might as well be straight with me.”
He sighs, the incessant jingling coming to a stop. “He wants payment, Carrick. For the last three months and this month with interest.”
“And if we don’t pay?”
“He’s going to take the motel.”
“He can’t do that.” I simultaneously slam my fist on the desk and kick the inside of it.
My mother gives me a weak smile. Her black hair is streaked with gray and pulled back in a low ponytail. The style shows off a once youthful face now riddled with fatigue. “He can, and he will. We signed the contract. Since his son’s company built those two high-rise hotels on either side of us, we can’t compete. The Castaway Sands isn’t bringing in enough income to cover our employees’ salaries, our operating expenses, and to pay him. I think it’s a lost cause.”
I refuse to back down. “Don’t say that. There’s got to be something we can do.”
Before I can say anything else, my office door swings open so hard it bounces against the doorstopper. All three of us turn to see a tear-streaked Shiloh with her fists curled by her side. She looks destroyed—as if she’s just walked through hell and fought the devil on her way out. We lock eyes and she starts to speak, but stops herself the minute she sees the woman sitting across from me.
The muscles in my mother’s hand tighten underneath mine as she pulls it away. She narrows a gaze on Shiloh and sits up straight. “So, the rumors are true.”
Shiloh’s face pales. “Mrs. Kincaid.”
“Mom, Dad, you remember Shiloh West,” I say, trying to cut the tension in the room.
“How could we forget the woman responsible for putting our son behind bars?”
“Pa
m!” my father warns, shooting my mother a look.
“What? It’s true. Because of her, our son payed two years of a sentence that wasn’t his. How do you do it?” she asks, looking back at Shiloh. “How do you sleep at night living with the guilt of the lives you’ve ruined?”
“Enough!” I yell.
The clouds in Shiloh’s eyes fade away, revealing a familiar empty void. I saw it the night she walked away. There’s nothing but detachment and coldness.
And then she’s gone. Leaving the door wide open as she tears down the hallway with her hand over her mouth. She deserves my mother’s words for the pain she’s caused my family. Her feelings shouldn’t matter. I shouldn’t care, so no one is more surprised than me when I find myself out of my chair and halfway across my office, just as my mother grabs my wrist.
“Don’t you dare fall under that woman’s spell again, Carrick.”
“I’m not. But I’m legally responsible for her while she’s here and she looks unstable. I have minors to protect, Mom.”
It’s total bullshit. The boys are twice as big as Shiloh and three times as strong. They could take her down in two seconds flat, and my mother knows it too. Which is why I don’t give her the opportunity to respond, shrugging off her hand and giving her a quick kiss on the cheek as I barrel through the door.
“I’ll come by the motel later to talk more about this. Love you both.”
I have no idea if either of them respond because I’m already across the center, searching every corner for a mass of blonde hair and long legs. Not finding her anywhere, I start to get frustrated when I hear soft sobbing coming from the darkened hallway on my right. The only thing back there is a locked supply closet and a small bathroom.
“Shiloh, are you okay in there?”
Silence.
“Shiloh? I need you to come out of the bathroom and talk to me, or I’m going to break this door down.”
More silence.
“Shiloh?” Pressing my ear against the door, I hear nothing but light shuffling, so I back up. “Fine, have it your way.” I let out a grunt as my foot makes contact with the cheap wood, sending it crashing inward and hanging off its hinges. As I step inside, it takes my eyes a minute to register what they’re seeing.
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