Where Lightning Strikes (Bleeding Stars #3)

by A. L. Jackson

  Zee stepped forward, disappointment in the shake of his head. “Fuck you, Lyrik. I’ll go make sure your girl is safe at one-fucking-o’clock in the morning.”

  He stormed out the door, slamming it shut behind him.

  I winced with the loud clash of wood. At the truth of his words. At my actions. But I had no fuckin’ idea how to make this right.

  Ash scoffed low, voice even quieter. “You think everyone around here doesn’t know why you always take two, man? Why it’s too dangerous for you to have one girl, because you might just get close? Seems to me something has changed.”

  He edged forward. There was something hostile about his approach. A ripple of anger and a rush of disgust.

  Or maybe they were just reflections of my own.

  Cocking his head to the side, he pinned me with a glare. “You really think Kenzie—”

  He might as well have struck me in the face. Kicked me in the gut. My entire body reeled with the impact of her name.

  My chest squeezed, heart slamming in its confines.

  Ash caught it. His face pinched in slow disbelief, and he huffed out a breath. “You can’t even say her fucking name, can you? All this fucking time, and you can’t even say her name.”

  “Stop,” I warned. Fighting. Fighting the anger. Just didn’t know who I was most angry with.

  He kept right on, coming close, digging it in like a razor-sharp prod staked into my spirit. “You really think Kenzie is somewhere across town, jabbing needles in a black-haired Voodoo doll? Cursing your name? Hoping you’re rotting in hell?”

  My laughter was brittle. Breaking like everything else inside me. “After what I did? You really think she’s not?”

  He scoffed. “The only hell you’re in, man? It’s the one you created. You sentenced yourself, Lyrik, and that’s exactly where you’re gonna rot if you don’t wake the fuck up and look at what’s right in front of you. Look at what you’ve been given…”

  He flung his arm out to the side. “Because you just let the best damned thing that’s ever happened to you walk out the front door.”

  Fucking Ash and the way he saw shit.

  I shook my head, voice cold like a slow chill. “You know I can’t keep her.”

  He sobered. “When are you gonna stop blaming yourself?”

  I swallowed around the lump sitting like a rock in my throat.

  He took another step forward, a move that seemed both pleading and predatory. “What about me, man? You still blamin’ me? You think it doesn’t kill me to know I had a part in it? Kill me to remember I was the one who’d convinced you to go that night?”

  Emphatic and hard, his words were strained where he spat them close to my face. “Kenzie was a nice girl. And yeah, you fucked up. You fucked up bad. We were all so messed up then, doing everything wrong, making mistake after mistake. And I know it cost you the most. But I’m so fucking done with this. So done with you thinking you don’t deserve to live. You lost, too, man. She wasn’t the only one who got hurt by that whole mess.”

  I turned my head to the side, tone like grit. “I promised.”

  He took a step back. “Yeah? Tell me what difference that promise has made? Who’s it benefited? Not her and sure as hell not you.”

  “I promised. Not gonna go back on it now.”

  Not ever.

  He laughed, though there was nothing amused about it. “You and your fucked up sense of loyalty. You think I didn’t see that bastard Eric at the after show tonight? And you know what, Lyrik? I’m glad you turn your back. That you won’t let him fill it with all his bullshit. But you do it for the wrong damned reasons. You do it out of obligation. You might as well sign with them…because we don’t need that kind of loyalty. Only thing you’re really loyal to is your misery.”

  I pushed him out of my way, swiping the back of my hand across my mouth like it could wipe away some of the bitterness, forcing down the hatred boiling out. Needing air, I headed for the huge sliding doors that led to the pool.

  Yanking the sliding door open wide, I didn’t slow, not even when Ash’s voice pelted me from behind, “Tell me, Lyrik! What fucking good is that promise? Who’s it helping? You here with us because you care about us? About the band? Or are you doin’ it because you think you owe us?”

  As soon as I was outside, I gripped my head while the sounds of the night shouted around me, the rustle of the cool breeze rolling with the remnants of a party happening below, the dull hum of bugs held fast to the trees. All of it hit me like an echo of the loneliness I felt crawling over me like a disease. That gaping hole just getting larger and larger.

  In the distance, thunder rolled.

  My chest felt so damned tight. So tight I was sure I couldn’t breathe.

  I could almost see their faces, flickers of memories sent to test and taunt.

  I could almost hear her name on my tongue.

  But when I screamed, the name on my tongue was Blue.

  Six Years Earlier

  IT WAS 11:47 ON a Saturday night. Didn’t know when life had become one endless party. Maybe it’d been gradual. Maybe overnight. Really, the last year was nothin’ but a blur of highs and lows, moving into the small house with the guys, writing music, begging venues to take us, and feeling like we were living the all-American dream at the same damned time.

  Music blared from the speakers, and I sat on the dingy, worn-down couch with my baby cradled on my lap, stroking her strings and caressing her body. Feeling that stir inside me, something powerful, like it was my soul bleeding the song.

  Ash was all hyped up, the guy spouting off about how big Sunder was going to be as soon as we got our break to a handful of strays who’d made their way in. Kinda the way everyone did. No home. Lost. Feeling abandoned and looking for a purpose to claim.

  Apparently, this was the place to find it.

  Mark was in the corner, eyes mere slits, getting lost in his own isolated world. In the old recliner inclined to the right of the couch, Sebastian was already nodding out from the poison he’d pumped in his veins, and his kid brother Austin was sitting on the floor, nose pressed to the TV so he could hear above the disorder while he played a video game.

  No doubt this wasn’t the best atmosphere for him, witnessing shit no thirteen-year-old kid should see. Wasn’t the worst, either. Had to be better than him getting knocked around by the asshole who was supposed to be his father, anyway.

  Right in front of me was the coffee table. Lined up on top of it in a perfect row were five shots the color of licorice.

  Beside them were three fat lines of coke.

  I was just getting started.

  I barely looked up with the knock at the door and the turn of the knob, the lift of voices as a new group of people piled in. Ash was all welcome and hospitality as he shook a couple hands and patted a few backs.

  But it was a tingly awareness that had me lifting my head.

  Brown eyes peered back at me.

  Wide and curious.

  Both shameless and shy.

  They wandered my face, over my guitar, down to the shit littered on the coffee table, back up to me.

  Whole time, I just stared.

  Maybe it was the high getting the best of me.

  That rush of adrenaline beating my heart like the roll of a drum, just waiting to propel me on to something great.

  But there was no question I had to have this girl.

  Her friend touched her arm to get her attention, and reluctantly, she dropped her gaze and followed her into the kitchen. Ash slung his arm around her friend’s shoulders, no doubt whispering something saccharine obscene.

  Clearly, Ash had done the inviting.

  But I was all too happy to participate in the taking.

  She accepted a drink Ash poured. They filed back into the living room and grabbed a seat. And I could feel her edging in closer, just like I felt compelled to move her direction.

  The night moved on, a blur of shots and lines and shouted voices, the music nonstop
.

  Still the girl remained my focus. My eyes drawn. Dick hard.

  Wanting her more and more with every glimpse of brown eyes below those dark, dark lashes. Her tight little body begging to be devoured, skinny jeans and a ripped-up black T-shirt tied at the back where she constantly teased me with flashes of her milky-white skin.

  Ash kept plying her with drinks, and I smiled when she was suddenly sitting next to me, sidling closer with each shot we took. I shared one with her. Wiped the droplet of liquor that clung to the edge of her upper lip. I licked it from my thumb. Then my mouth was on hers, and she was straddling my lap.

  Kissing me and kissing me, my hands in her hair, her nails in my skin.

  I climbed to my feet, taking her with me, never breaking that kiss.

  Swore to God, I’d never tasted anything so sweet.

  It was a high unlike anything I’d known.

  I carried her to my room, set her on her feet, kicked the door shut behind us. Darkness swam through the room. But this girl was all I could see. A shadowy angel striking like the best kind of sin in the hazy light filtering in from the window.

  For a beat, we both just stared, panting, before I edged forward. She gazed up at me with those big brown eyes as she lifted my shirt. Fingers explored across the skin of my stomach, almost cautious, and damn if that wasn’t the hottest damn thing I’d ever seen. Then she went to work on the fly of my jeans, and I was kicking off my shoes while ridding her of that top and her plain white bra.

  I picked her up and tossed her on my bed.

  The remnants of my morning high were sitting on a tray on the nightstand. I swiped my finger through the powder and crawled onto the bed, hovered over her as I licked my lips.

  She seemed almost reluctant, those brown eyes wild when I dipped it into her mouth, before she was sucking with a moan and I was kissing her again.

  And I felt like a king.

  So damned powerful.

  Like nothing in this world could touch me.

  Nothing but this girl.

  Disoriented, I blinked against muted beams of morning light slanting in through the window. A dizzy glaze of glitter tossed what looked like translucent daggers into my room. I blinked, trying to find the source of what’d pulled me from sleep. The sleep I really didn’t want to let go of, considering I was pretty sure it couldn’t have been more than half an hour since I’d fallen asleep.

  Tangled with a girl.

  The girl.

  That fucking hypnotizing girl from last night.

  She was standing at the side of my bed, peering down, looking at me like she was memorizing a secret she was forever gonna keep. Brown eyes intent but confused and a little bit scared.

  God.

  In the daylight, she was pretty. All lit up in the shimmery haze that danced around her mussed-up hair and cherubic face.

  Really fucking pretty.

  And really fucking young.

  I scrubbed a hand over my face like it might rearrange the picture, then squinted at her. “What are you doing?” I finally managed to ask, my voice like gravel.

  Her throat bobbed. Anxiously, her tongue darted out to wet her lips. She started to take a step forward, then seemed to decide against it. “I need to go,” she said, so quietly I could barely hear her.

  My squinting eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  “I have to get home,” she whispered, all nervous and agitated. “I’m already late…and if my dad…” She trailed off, leaving me to fill in the rest.

  Motherfucker.

  I shot all the way up, running both hands over the back of my head with my elbows propped on my knees.

  The thin sheet just barely concealed the evidence of my naked body.

  I turned my attention her way. “Tell me you’re not sayin’ what I think you’re sayin’.”

  She winced, swallowed. “Last night…I…I don’t do that…I mean…I have before but it was with my ex-boyfriend…but you kept looking at me…”

  She waved her hand at me. “And look at you…and I was drinking…and…”

  Panic started to bubble up in her words, and she shifted on her feet.

  Guilt got me in a chokehold.

  What the hell did I get myself into?

  She was innocent. Yet still a little bit wild. Couldn’t quite connect the dots between the two.

  “Come here,” I finally said.

  She hesitated.

  “Come here,” I insisted again, softer, stretching out my hand, knowing doing so was just asking for all kinds of trouble. But I couldn’t stop myself. I wanted to wipe away the shame on her face.

  Okay. And I wanted to touch her again.

  Yeah.

  I really wanted to touch her again.

  Finally, she gave. She curled her soft hand in mine and let me pull her back onto the bed. She straddled me, knees supporting her on either side of my waist. She held onto my shoulders and I let my hands go to her hips.

  All that long, long hair billowed down around us like a veil.

  Hiding away what never should have been.

  Us.

  Finally got the secret she had planned on stealing away.

  My throat felt raw when I finally spoke, not having the first clue how to phrase it. Because damn, this girl had caught me off guard. “Listen…I’m sorry if I took advantage of you in some way last night. I didn’t mean to hurt you. Had no clue you were…”

  Clueless and a little bit scared of the answer, I looked up at her for help.

  “Seventeen,” she supplied, biting at her bottom lip.

  “Seventeen,” I repeated. I let that number roll around in my mind, coming to the conclusion the difference between that and twenty wasn’t really all that bad. Right?

  I set my palm on the warmth of her neck, feeling the erratic thrum of her pulse, my fingertips gliding into her hair. “I’m sorry if you regret last night.”

  She chewed at her lip a little more ferociously. “I don’t regret it. Not at all. It was—”

  “Kinda perfect,” I said.

  A breathy smile danced all over her mouth. Kind of like relief. Like she’d been wondering if she’d affected me the way I’d affected her.

  If she only knew.

  “Yeah,” she said, eyes downcast and shy and sweet.

  She glanced toward the door. “I really should go.”

  My eyes moved over her face as I made a decision. “What if I said I didn’t want you to go?”

  Redness splashed her cheeks, and the words rushed from her like a secret. “Then I’d say I really, really want to come back.”

  With a grin, I brushed the back of my hand down her cheek. “What’s your name?” I asked.

  She gave me the softest smile. “Kenzie. My name is Kenzie.”

  Kenzie snuck back into my bed the next night and the night after that, until it became routine. Until it felt strange when she wasn’t there. As if I was missing a piece of myself. That piece ached on the nights when she couldn’t slip out her window, when she had to hang low because the lies were mounting and her parents were becoming suspicious. The excuses and stories she spouted were beginning to do nothing more than point to our guilt.

  She could only say she was staying over at her friend Tricia’s house so many times.

  She slid right into the scene like she’d belonged there all along. Partying with the best of us. Up all night with me before she’d slink back to her place just before dawn, stealing into her bedroom window she’d broken out of eight hours before.

  Most of the time, anyway. This morning I woke with her still wrapped around me. Her head was on my shoulder, all that hair bunched in my face. I pressed my face into it.

  “Kenz, baby, what are you still doing here? You have school.”

  Her head jerked up. Disoriented, she blinked. She looked at the clock on my nightstand. It read 11:48 a.m. At least we could still call it morning.

  “Shit,” she muttered. Then she seemed to let the moment of panic go sliding by and she dro
pped her head back to my shoulder. “I can’t do it, Lyrik. It feels like I haven’t slept in days. I just want to stay right here…in this bed…all day.”

  Turning over, I moved to hover over her. “Think I like the sound of that.”

  She gave me a flirty grin, before we both froze with the sudden pounding at the front door.

  “Just ignore it,” I said.

  But the pounding continued. Her phone lit up on the nightstand. She fumbled for it, then squeezed her eyes shut when she saw the number on the screen. Finally, she opened to me. “It’s my dad. And I’ve missed like…ten calls from him.”

  She thumbed through her missed texts, shaking her head. “He showed up at school to talk to Tricia. She caved. Told him where I’ve been going. This is totally my fault,” she whispered under her breath. “If I just would have gotten up.”

  The pounding increased, this incessant, demanding hammer.

  I studied her for a beat, before I asked, “How do you want to handle this?”

  “I have to go out there. He’s just…worried. And I’m sure really, really pissed.”

  Guilt moved over her face, that innocent girl making a comeback. The one who didn’t belong here.

  Not at all.

  “Coming with you then.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  I touched her face. “We can’t hide this forever, Kenz.”

  “He’s going to try to keep you from me.”

  “I know,” I smiled down at her, “but he can’t.”

  Something like affection smoothed her features before dread took her back over, and she gave a tight nod. We quickly dressed. The hammering at the door never ceased. I could almost feel the anxiety and torment that came with it, the desperation fueled by anger and worry and panic.

  It only incited my own. My heart rate increased with each thunderous jolt. I was going through a million scenarios in my head, what I would say and what I would do. Because there was no chance I was going to deny Kenzie. Everything about that felt wrong. Not when me and this girl were so fucking right.

  That same panic had taken Kenzie whole as she shoved her feet in her shoes and quickly ran her fingers through her hair to straighten it. Desperate to put on a disguise of innocence when it was clear the situation was anything but.