For a second, I resisted, head shaking several times, before I cut my gaze over to her.
Teeth clenched.
Jaw rigid.
Pain rushed up her throat. Strangled and hurt. “You’re high?”
She wheezed it as tears filled her eyes. “Oh my God. You’re high. You promised…you promised.”
She started struggling in her seat, fighting to get to the seatbelt latch. “Stop the car, let me out.”
“No. Taking you to your parents’.”
“I said stop the car and let me out,” she wailed.
“Kenzie, cool it,” I yelled. Didn’t mean for it to come out the way it did, like I was lashing out, but she was freaking the fuck out, yanking at the door handle like she was going to bolt.
“Let me out!” she screamed.
Maybe it was the screech of her voice that let me know I’d shattered our thinly set mold. Broken this good thing we could have had.
Crack.
Crack.
Crack.
At least my fucked-up mind thought it was her, physically rending our bond, my stupid mistakes cutting us in two. Until the blacked-out car sped around us on the left, Adrian leaning out and firing from the passenger-side window.
The windshield shattered.
I sucked in a shocked breath, yanking the wheel all the way to the right as I slammed on the brakes.
Sebastian was totally wrong.
Adrian wasn’t a pussy.
He was crazy.
Out for revenge.
Because of pride and money.
Money.
That’s what’d gotten me here in the first place.
Or maybe it was just my pride.
Base and vile.
Needing one more taste of everything I shouldn’t have.
The car skidded and careened, the wheel jerking as I fought and pulled against it.
A street lamp pole came up fast. Streaks of light glinted in the splintered windshield. Head on, we slammed into it. The car came to a grinding halt.
Only sound was the ringing in my ears.
Stunned, I sat there still gripping the wheel as my mind raced to catch up with what’d just gone down.
Slow realization filtered in. We hadn’t hit all that hard. The airbags hadn’t even deployed.
I breathed out relief, shaking my head to orient myself, to clear the muddled hum deafening my left ear.
I blinked through that high-pitched trill, tried to focus on Kenzie who stared back at me with those wide brown eyes.
Wild and frozen.
Shocked.
Completely shocked.
“Kenz, baby, are you okay?” I finally whispered through the clogging fear. I was fumbling for my seatbelt when everything went completely numb.
Kenzie lifted her hand that been pressed to her side.
She was shaking so badly as she held it up in front of her. Confused. The color was so bright, almost shimmery as it glistened in the street lamp glaring from above.
Her fingers were dripping with blood.
“Kenzie! Baby! Kenz…where are you hurt?”
Frantic, I searched her.
High on her side, a red stain climbed fast across her shirt.
“Oh my God, Kenzie.”
Hands shaking so damned bad, I fumbled with my phone and dialed 911.
What do I do?
What do I do?
“Please, hurry,” I begged when the dispatcher answered.
What do I do?
Silence.
The ticking of the engine as it cooled. The hiss of the radiator.
Silence.
I wrenched open my door and stumbled out. Paced. Gripping my hair. I finally made it around the car.
Sirens blared in the distance.
I pulled open her door.
“Kenzie.” It was a plea.
Lights blinded me from behind and paramedics came stampeding forward. Pushing me out of the way.
Suddenly, a flashlight was glaring against my eyes. It twisted me in knots, the look in the cop’s eyes as he took me in.
Suspecting.
Adding.
Kenzie.
Her name was the only thing I could think.
I batted the flashlight out of my face.
Another officer was ordering Baz to get out of the car. Sebastian resisted, a snide “Fuck off” sliding from his mouth.
Next thing I knew, I was being shoved to the ground. Face down on the pavement.
“Stay down,” a hard voice shouted as he stepped on the back of my neck when I fought to get to my feet, boot cutting into the skin, arms being wrenched behind my back.
My eyes were locked open wide in horror. Lights flashed and flashed and flashed, a dizzying whorl of colors and blips of sirens and pounding feet.
“Kenzie,” I kept screaming as paramedics moved by, voices obscured and lifted and drowned out by the panic still ringing in my ears.
“Kenzie!”
Next to me, Sebastian was face down on the pavement, too. Wrists cuffed behind his back. The cop standing over him pulled the bags out of his pockets, one by one, at the same time another was patting me down.
Discovering my guilt.
Someone was reading me my rights, but the words were garbled together like I was hearing them underwater. Didn’t care if they locked me up forever. Didn’t fucking care. Just needed to know she was okay. That he was okay.
The officer dragged me to my feet.
“Kenzie…please…Kenzie. Please…just tell me she’s okay. Please.”
Please.
Hours passed. Each minute excruciating. Every second complete torture. In a holding cell, I sat on a bench with my back propped against the block wall, knees pulled to my chest, eyes closed in a silent prayer I didn’t have any right to pray.
In it, I bartered my life.
As if it was worth anything at all.
The hands on the round clock sitting high on the far wall told me more than twelve hours had gone by since they’d left me in here without a word. Without any idea of what’d happened to either of them. Left me to my thoughts and self-hatred and fear.
Agony.
Hadn’t slept in close to two days, and that low after my high was begging me to find sleep. To curl up so maybe I could just die.
Fighting the fatigue, I banged my head against the wall and shouted out another unheard plea.
“Kenzie.”
Startled, I jumped when the lock buzzed and the heavy door gave.
I scrambled to my feet.
“Got a visitor, West. Let’s go.”
They shackled my wrists in the front, leading me down one long hall then another, before they ducked me into a small room, the walls the same dingy white like the cell.
But this one had a table in the middle, a single chair on the side closest to me and two on the other.
Doug Cartwright sat in one of the far two chairs, brown hair sticking up all over the place like he’d run his hands through it a million times, cheap suit wrinkled, tie loose, eyes red.
Dread shook me to the core, and my knees went weak. I stumbled. The guard huffed and grabbed me by an elbow, forcing me up and shoving me forward where I slumped into the chair facing Doug. I closed my eyes, throat so fucking thick and dry I was pretty sure it was going to strangle me.
“Tell me they’re okay.”
I begged it against the blackness of my lids, unable to look at Kenzie’s father if he told me anything different.
There was a charged silence before he finally spoke, his voice rough, reticent. “They both made it.”
There was nothing I could do. My entire body collapsed forward, bones dislodged in relief. A sob erupted from a place so deep, so intense, I felt it ripping from me, fracturing as I expelled the pent-up, festered agony. It echoed off the walls, torment and relief as my forehead rocked against the cold table.
Didn’t care I probably sounded like a sniveling bitch.
That I knew Doug was watch
ing me crumble into a million splintered pieces.
Disintegrating.
Viewing it with disgust.
I forced myself to find a breath, to sit up, to look at this man who’d done everything in his power to keep me away from his daughter.
How could I have ever blamed him?
He cleared his throat, though everything coming from him was still craggy and pitted with grief. “They took Brendon by C-section. He was born at 6:12 this morning. He had no issues other than mild fetal distress, probably brought on by Kenzie’s trauma. They delivered him and transitioned her straight into surgery to repair her abdominal wall.”
His bottom lip trembled. “Inch lower, and they’d both be dead.”
My eyes dropped closed again. Thinking if I closed them long enough, it might set time in rewind. Take me back to where it all started. To that one decision I’d made.
One mistake.
All it took was one mistake for the world to fall down around you.
One mistake to set you on a collision course with yourself.
Knew it all along.
Kenz didn’t belong in my world, hard as I’d tried to keep her there.
Doug leaned forward. Anger eclipsed the sorrow and exhaustion that’d sagged his shoulders just a minute before. He rammed his index finger into the table. “One inch, Lyrik…one inch and you would’ve killed my baby and yours.”
I couldn’t even respond, because what was I going to say?
Knew I was to blame.
Guilt swallowed me like a ship going down in the middle of an icy ocean.
A shiver slicked down my spine.
He flipped open the folder sitting on the table.
I tried to breathe.
To sit still and accept my punishment when I somehow realized the executioner had come to collect.
I blinked long, focus blurry yet somehow excruciatingly clear.
On the top was a sheet where my charges were listed, and he pushed it across the table toward me.
Possession of cocaine and heroin with intent to distribute. Two counts of reckless endangerment.
I gave him a slight nod of understanding.
He pulled out a short stack of papers clipped together at the top, hand shaking when he slid it my way.
It was a plea bargain.
What the fuck?
My attention jerked up to meet the weariness lining his face.
“What, you’re my attorney now?” Didn’t mean it to sound so bitter.
“Just want the best for all parties involved.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He hefted a shoulder. “Read it.”
I lifted my shackled wrists to the table, metal clanging as I pulled the papers closer so I could see the details.
The bitter fucking details.
I got a free pass.
No doubt, there were all kinds of strings being pulled, and it was Doug who held them like a puppeteer.
I could walk as long as I signed away my parental rights.
As long as I agreed to never see Kenzie again.
Didn’t even know if this shit was legal.
I shook my head. Blinking. Unseeing.
“You want me to walk away from them.” It wasn’t a question.
He kept his voice even. “I just want the best for them.”
On a heavy exhale, he shifted, dug into the inside pocket of his jacket, and pulled out an envelope. “Can’t have this on record, but sign and it’s yours. It’s all the money I have to give. You walk away and I promise I’ll take care of them. I’ll make sure they have the kind of life you could never give them. Or you can sit and rot in jail for the next five to ten years and you won’t have her anyway. Your choice.”
Your choice? There was no fucking choice. Either way, I’d lost my family.
Ruined it all.
He set the thin envelope next to the agreement.
Overwhelming grief formed in every cell of my being. But I pushed it down, and instead let each inch of me harden to the point of pain. Brittle and broken and harsh. I welcomed it. Could feel the grit of my teeth. “And Baz?”
“Your friend’s going to jail one way or the other. Got him down to a couple of years, and he’ll probably be out in less than a year if he keeps his nose clean on the inside.”
I ran my finger under the open edge of the envelope, lifting it enough so I could peek inside. Not that I gave a shit what the number read.
One hundred thousand dollars.
No doubt, this was their entire life savings.
“Need to talk to Baz…” I swallowed over the razors in my throat. “And I want to tell Kenzie myself.”
He hesitated, and I shook my head. “Won’t do it any other way.”
It seemed in reluctance, but finally he nodded. Quickly, I scanned through the agreement then scribbled my name on the line, not giving two fucks if I was unknowingly signing away my life. I’d just paid for the one thing I wanted.
One minute with Kenzie.
One minute with my son.
I picked up the envelope and shot Doug a grin.
He dropped his gaze.
Like he couldn’t stand to look at me.
Seemed about right, because I couldn’t stand myself.
“You expect somethin’ different?” I asked, that bitterness baring its teeth.
He looked up and met my stare straight on. “Yeah…guess maybe I did.”
“Last thing I meant was to sell you out, leave you in this hole by yourself when I belong here, too, but this is the one thing I need.”
My voice was desperate, my demeanor the same. “The one thing I’m asking of you. I need to see them once. I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you.”
I just needed to see them once.
Baz gripped me, his hug a stranglehold, his voice a harsh whisper in my ear. “Don’t, man. This is my fault. Everything. Dragging my whole crew down and into this bullshit lifestyle. You know it’s on me.” Pulling back, he studied my face. “Are you sure this is what you want?”
Of course it wasn’t.
I’d taken the good I was given. Trampled it like it was nothing. Thrown it away in one reckless night.
But I was going to do one thing good.
I was going to let the good go.
“Yeah.”
Baz stepped back and gripped me by both shoulders. “Take whatever time they’ll give you. Then go…step up and take my place while I’m in here. Keep the band together. Make sure all this nonstop partying bullshit ends. Take care of the guys. Watch over my baby brother. Need you, man.”
I jerked through a nod. “Anything. It’s done.”
The door buzzed and I shuffled out into the emerging night.
Freedom.
But I’d never felt more chained.
I’d gone back to our tiny apartment, showered and changed, fighting the loneliness that moaned from within the walls, tentacles burrowing into my skin and hunting for a way to become one with me.
It would.
I knew it.
But I had one task left before I could let it.
I took a cab to the hospital and stepped onto the sidewalk. Night in full bloom, the sky seemed a tired, drooping canvas, grayed with the reflection of city lights. A thick fog stretched across the space and meshed with the clouds encroaching in the distance.
Tumultuous.
Fierce.
Energy held fast, something ominous and dense.
A dark warning I was getting ready to sell my soul.
Welcome to hell.
Sucking in a breath, I found my way inside, anxious as I jabbed at the elevator button. It lifted me to the seventh floor, and I ducked by the nurses, headed down the hall to the room number Doug had supplied.
Outside her room, I had to take a minute to convince myself what I was doing was right. When that didn’t work, I just fed myself a few lies, drew in a breath, and cracked open the door.
Kenzie was propped up i
n the hospital bed, gown slung down over one shoulder with our son flailing a bit where he was pressed to her breast.
Grief slammed me. Another stake to my blackened soul.
Forcing myself to step forward, I let the door click shut behind me.
Startled, Kenzie’s attention flew my way. Her face transformed into an expression of sheer relief. Her mouth parted, smile tilting at the corner. She heaved out a breath, wiped at her face, and I was just seeing then the tears that had been making a slow path down her face.
I wanted to drink her in. Memorize her sweet, soft face. Because I wouldn’t ever get to see her again.
“You’re here.”
“Yeah.”
I stood over them, and she looked down, away from me, tender as she touched his face. This tiny thing with swollen eyes and pouty lips, this little boy that tore everything I had left inside apart.
Shredded.
Soggy laughter tumbled from her, and she grinned between us, vacillating somewhere between awe and sorrow. “This is so much harder than they make it out to be…the breastfeeding thing…” She started to ramble. “I’ve been trying all afternoon, and he just keeps falling asleep…and I keep trying…and…”
Her voice broke on the last, and she heaved a sob.
Overridden by shame, I moved across the room and sat down on a chair, stared over at her.
“I’m so mad at you,” she finally whispered through her tears.
“I know.”
“Lyrik…you can’t—”
I cut her off by quickly standing again, because I couldn’t take it. Couldn’t take her pleading with me to be someone I obviously couldn’t be.
I inched back over to them, the back of my finger caressing Brendon’s cheek. “Can I?”
She frowned. “Of course you can…he’s your son.”
Only he wasn’t really. Not anymore.
Carefully, I lifted his tiny body that was wrapped in a blanket, a blue and pink cap on his head. The weight of him was next to nothing yet wholly profound.
I rested him on my shoulder, inhaling as deeply as I could when I breathed him in.
Memorizing everything I’d lost. Pouring anything I had left back into him.
Loved him with everything I had.
Silent promises began to rush out.
My heart. It belongs to you. Won’t ever give it to anyone again. You’re the last. I won’t ever fall in love again. Not after you.
My son.
He made this gurgling, sweet sound. With my hand, I guarded his head when I pulled him away so my eyes could trace his face. So I could commit it to memory.
Where Lightning Strikes (Bleeding Stars #3) Page 33