by Layla Frost
Sitting back as we got our new drinks, more of my internal boxes were collapsed, shredded, and recycled.
“Why didn’t he say anything?” I wondered aloud.
Ray shrugged. “You’ll have to ask him.”
Finishing my margarita, I forced myself to not obsess and turned to Ray. “What’s new at the shop?”
“You finally coming in to get inked now that you’ve seen all of Kase’s beautiful body art?”
I shuddered. “Not unless you’re going to draw it on with a permanent marker.”
“One day you’ll do it. And the shop’s good. Slammed. I think we’re going to have to bring in a new artist.”
“That’s—”
“Hey Harlow,” a vaguely familiar voice called from behind me.
Turning around, I fought the urge to hide under the table as a trickle of fear ran down my spine. “Eddie?”
In all his velour jumpsuit, greasy haired glory.
“Surprised you recognize me since you spent all your time with your face in Lars’ lap. Guess you jumped from one ex-con to another.”
Frozen, I sat open mouthed as my brain sputtered.
Thankfully Ray was quicker, shooting out of her seat and signaling to the security by the door.
“Don’t bother, I’m leaving,” Eddie sneered, never taking his eyes off of me. “Didn’t know you were dating a criminal, huh? Serves you right, walking around like you’re better than everyone else. Tell Lars that Nash and I will see him soon.”
Hustling with a speed I wouldn’t have expected, Eddie made his way through the crowd to the backdoor, security close behind.
“You’ve gotta be fuckin’ shitting me,” Edge yelled as he approached, his spiky hair in even worse disarray than normal. “What is it about this fuckin’ place that makes assholes and bitches wanna start shit?”
“I think the name cursed it,” I muttered, my thoughts racing. “Instead of Voodoo, you should’ve named it Rainbows and Kittens.”
Edge looked amused before crouching down near me. “You good? He hurt you or anything?”
Not physically.
I forced a smile. “I’m okay.”
He stripped off his dress shirt, handing it to Ray. In only a beater tank top, his lean muscles were more pronounced than I’d realized. “Don’t wanna bloody that up, I know it’s your favorite.”
I stood up, alarmed at his casual mention of blood. “What?”
“Someone fucks with you, it fucks with my woman.” His expression darkened, his eyes going crazy intense. “And no one fucks with my woman.”
“Aren’t you gonna stop him?” I asked Ray as Edge stormed away. Her concern was focused on me, not his threats of violence.
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, like that’ll happen.”
“He said ‘ex-con’.” My stomach clenched as I watched Ray and Piper exchange a look. “Did Kase do time?”
Piper sighed, reaching for my hand. “I don’t know the details. I only know because it came out during the investigation, but Jake wouldn’t tell me anything more.”
“Do you wanna go talk to him?” Ray asked.
I shook my head. “No, it’s girls’ night. It can wait.”
“It’s okay.” Piper squeezed my hand.
I started to sit but bolted back up. My head was swimming, my palms sweaty. “I think maybe I just need… Yeah, I’ve gotta go. Sorry.”
Run, run, run!
Chapter Twelve
Beauty and the Covert Mobster Bullshit
Harlow
When I pulled into Kase’s driveway, he jumped off the porch, totally skipping the stairs. I hadn’t even turned the car off when my door was opened. Reaching in, he killed the engine, pocketing the keys.
This should be fun.
I barely unbuckled when he grabbed my hand and hauled me out, pining me against the side of the car.
“So,” I started when he didn’t say anything, “how was your day?”
“Shit, Harlow, I just talked to Edge—”
“Can we go inside? It’s freezing and I’m not really dressed for the elements.”
He slow blinked. “You wanna go inside?”
I nodded.
Clutching my hand as if I’d change my mind, Kase pulled me into the house, only dropping it when we reached the couch.
Neither of us moved to sit.
“Was Eddie telling the truth?” I asked.
He nodded once.
All the questions I wanted to ask swirled in my mind, trying to push their way out at once.
“How long?”
“A year.”
“When?”
“I was seventeen.”
“Why?”
Kase raised his eyebrow. “You gonna give me more than one syllable conversation if I tell you?”
“Yes.”
He gave me a look but started talking anyway. “You know how I told you about my sister?”
I nodded, my heart hurting just thinking about it.
“Shit,” he cursed, rubbing the back of his neck. “This is a long as fuck story and I don’t know how to give you the bullet points and still have it make sense.”
“So don’t. We’ve got time. Want me to grab us a couple beers?”
“I’ve got them. Sit.” Distractedly, he kissed the top of my head before going into the kitchen.
My legs shook slightly as I teetered on my heels. Kicking off my shoes, I sat down and tried to calm my flipping stomach.
This is Kase we’re talking about. It’s not like he got arrested for painting his face like a clown, stripping naked in public, and tying his dick into a balloon animal.
At least I hope not…
Kase came back into the room and handed me a drink, his usual good-naturedness replaced by an almost haunted contemplation. Though he was only a foot from me, it felt like miles.
Years maybe.
Lowering himself to sit on the edge of the couch, he put his elbows to his knees, letting his hands hang between his spread legs. A beer bottle dangled between his fingers, but he didn’t drink from it. Instead, he spun it as he stared down.
“If you don’t wanna talk about this right now—” I started before he shook his head.
“Nah, I want you to know.” He inhaled deeply. “Willa was my half-sister. My ma got knocked up by Willa’s father,” he sneered the word, “when she was seventeen. Shortly after, he started knocking her around, pregnant and all. When Wil was old enough, she started getting it, too.”
My stomach sank, rage coursing through my veins at the thought of someone using that kind of violence.
“Ma would take her and leave, but he’d find them. Every fuckin’ time.” He looked at me. “Shit is still fucked up in this country. But back then? Ma was Colombian, Willa’s father was white. He’d tell the cops Ma was high, it was just her jealous temper, all sorts of shit. The cops would believe him and hand her back.”
“That’s seriously fucked up.”
“Shit like that happens still, ipo. And, yeah, it’s fucked. Wil’s father would blow money on all sorts of shit, so Ma ended up working nights at a diner to make ends meet. One night she met a guy who was just grabbing a cup of coffee while he waited for a tow. He came back every night for a while after that.” He smiled, though it was small and sad. “Ma would always laugh when she told this part. She’d say, ‘Big shot doctor, wearing his fancy suits and drinking sludge coffee. Tipping too much like money didn’t matter.’ Dad would pull her to him and say, ‘When it came to you, nothing else mattered.’”
“That’s really sweet,” I whispered.
“Yeah, he was always like that. He’d say, ‘If she’s worth your love, she’s worth your life.’”
It wasn’t hard to see where Kase got his charm.
“Anyway,” he continued. “Willa went to the diner one night at three in the morning. It wasn’t a long walk, but definitely not one she should’ve been taking at eight years old. She was bruised up. Dad took one look in her eyes and that
was it. He’d been trying to finesse things with Ma since he could guess shit wasn’t good.” He looked meaningfully at me. “He knew she was scared so he didn’t want to rush things and fuck shit up before it had the chance to grow into everything he knew it would.”
At his words and the intensity of his gaze, my heart sped up.
“But when he saw Willa, all bets were off,” he continued. “He told Ma that was it, and she just nodded. Dad used the threat of a scalpel to the dick to get Willa’s dad to sign the divorce papers and give up his parental rights. They got married as soon as the divorce was official and he filed the papers to adopt Willa the very next day.”
I sipped my beer, not really tasting it as I watched Kase.
“He was always patient with Wil, but by the time he came into their lives, they’d been through so much shit. Ma was like me. The world could be falling down around her, and she’d focus on how exciting it’d be to rebuild it. But Willa struggled. They got her as much help as they could, but nothing worked until I came along when she was ten.”
I didn’t find that hard to believe. Kase had a knack for being just what people needed.
“They worried how she’d respond to a new baby. They planned for the worst. But she loved me. She stopped throwing tantrums and having meltdowns because she didn’t want to scare me. She started doing better in school because she wanted to be able to help me. I still don’t get it.”
“I do,” I said before I could stop myself.
Though I was willing to share, I didn’t want him to stop talking.
“Yeah?” he asked.
“I’ll explain some other time. Keep going.”
Reaching over, Kase rubbed my thigh. “When I was fourteen, my parents were travelling to something for dad’s hospital. They got on one of those little planes for the last bit of the trip and it went down.”
“Baby,” I whispered, reaching out to squeeze his arm.
Before I could, Kase gripped my wrist and pulled me to straddle him. He wrapped his arms around me and squeezed. “Better.”
“I’m sorry you lost them like that,” I said against his chest.
“It was more than half my lifetime ago.”
“Still, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me too.” He pressed his lips to the top of my head. “Willa filed for custody of me, which she got. She was out of college by that time and had a steady office job. She tried to keep it together. She loved me, but losing our parents, especially after all she’d been through? She slowly fell apart.”
I sat up and put my hand on his chest. I could feel his heart racing.
Kase rubbed his jaw, still lost in his story. “I tried to help, but it doesn’t matter how many hands you reach out to someone if they don’t want to take them. Drugs? They fuck people up. A little weed is nothing. But when someone wants to escape, they don’t head for a bowl or a blunt. They go for a needle. For powder. For something strong enough to take them away. And that’s what Willa was going for. My beautiful sister faded. She shrank. She dulled. She was a shadow of herself, harsh and twisted. Distorted.”
My heart was breaking for him, painfully heavy in my chest. Knowing his probably felt the same way, I rubbed the spot where I felt it pounding, wanting to ease it.
His hand covered mine and pushed it closer.
“I felt guilty that she’d had to take care of me. Like that extra responsibility pushed her over the edge. She’d get high, get sick all over herself, and I’d clean her up. I’d bail her out. But that guilt works both ways and it eats at people. She was a junkie addict, but it was the guilt she felt when she was sober that made her not wanna get clean.”
I remembered what he’d told me about my mom and guilt. When he’d said he understood, I hadn’t believed him.
Knowing how tired Mom was, how much her body hurt, I wanted to do everything I could to help. There were times when I’d gone out and had fun, only for her to have a flare-up shortly thereafter. Logically, I knew it was a coincidence, but I’d still felt guilty, like I’d abandoned her.
I wasn’t helping because of a sense of obligation. Staying close to home was an easy decision because I loved her and Hadley. I made sure to be there for doctor’s appointments and testing because I worried and it made me feel better to be informed. I’d never thought about how it would make her feel guilty.
Since you started seeing Kase and finally living your own life, how happy has she been? More energy and healthier, too.
“Baby, I’m sorry,” I said, wishing I had something more profound to offer.
He caught my gaze, his eyes filled with regret. “After a while, I started to hate her. Her addiction controlled her, and I couldn’t stand seeing her like that. Passed out, fucked up, bleeding and out of her fuckin’ mind. I lost them, and then I lost her. Even before she died, she was gone. And I hated her for it. That guilt tore me apart.”
I clutched him to me, blinking back tears.
“Harlow, it was a long time ago.” Kase squeezed my exposed thighs. “I’ve dealt with those demons. I’m only telling you so you’ll understand.”
As much as I hated hearing what he went through, I knew it was a big deal for him to tell me. And since it was a part of who he was, I wanted to know.
Inhaling deeply, I pulled back. “So what happened?”
“As her addiction grew, Willa had to find new ways to support her habit. She quickly blew through what little money she had, and couldn’t work anymore. Our folks left us money, but she couldn’t access all of it. I’d buy her food and clothes, but I wasn’t buying her crank or smack or whatever else she was injecting into herself. She became a familiar face in court. The judge warned her that if she got in trouble again, she’d be sentenced to a lot longer in a bigger prison.”
“Not rehab?”
He shook his head. “She didn’t want the help.”
“That’s crazy.”
“It’s addiction, ipo. Anyway, by that time I had my own studio apartment. And since I wouldn’t let her bring drugs in, she wasn’t staying with me. One afternoon, she called me out of the blue and wanted to take me to lunch. She said she was in the mood for a burger. I was skeptical, but she sounded good. Excited. When I picked her up from a friend’s place, she came running out with her bags, happy to see me. We had lunch and she was almost herself. Almost.”
He paused for a second, his jaw clenching. His eyes went unfocused.
“Why don’t we finish this a different time, baby?” I suggested.
He squeezed my thighs and gave me a small head shake. “When I was driving her to the new place she was crashing at, a cop pulled behind me and hit its lights. Willa started freaking the fuck out. She wanted me to keep driving, but I wasn’t an idiot. As I pulled over, she starts sobbing and swearing, trying to hide her stuff. The cop took one look in the car before radioing for backup and making us both get out. It took him one glance to see what I hadn’t.”
“What?”
“There’s a look junkies get when they have their next score. It’s a twisted version of a kid on Christmas eve.”
“She had it?”
He nodded. “And she set me up as her getaway driver. She hadn’t been running out of that house because she was excited to see her baby brother. It was because she’d just stolen a shit ton of drugs.”
“Holy hell.” My brows lowered. “Wait, so how did you end up doing time? You didn’t know she even had anything. Didn’t they believe you when you told them?”
“I didn’t tell them.” At my incredulous expression, Kase gave a humorless chuckle. “Guilt. All she’d been through, how hard she’d tried for me, how I’d started hating her. I told you, it ate at me. So I took the fall. I said it was all mine and she had no clue.”
“Didn’t she argue?”
“No,” he said, his voice soft and sad. “The amount of drugs she had, they charged me with intent to distribute. With her record, she’d have been gone for a long, long time. She cried that she’d die in there, swearing
she’d go to rehab and get clean instead.”
“And no one figured it out?”
“Sure, they all did. No record or track marks, clean drug test. Someone like that doesn’t jump into hardcore drugs, dealing or using. But I wouldn’t rat her out. And if I pled not guilty, I’d have been. I wouldn’t even talk about it. Still, they gave me a light sentence of five years.”
“That’s light?”
“You know what heroin is?”
“A drug?”
“No, like what it really is.” When I shook my head, he continued, his face filling with contempt. “It’s garbage. Toxins. It’s dirt fuckin’ cheap because it’s cut with whatever nasty chemical shit they can. People are dying left and right from it, so they come down hard on dealers. And Willa had a fuck of a lot of it in her bag. Not that she was planning on selling any of it, of course.”
“How did you only end up doing a year then?”
“Willa died ten months after I went in. Once my lawyer came to tell me there was no one to protect anymore, I told them the truth and they worked to get me released. Some lawyers and judges are crooked and smug, but not the ones I had. It rubbed them wrong to know they were putting an innocent man away.” He shrugged. “But like I said, I hadn’t given them a choice.”
I didn’t know her, but part of me hated Willa, too. “That sucks she didn’t take the gift you gave her.”
“She didn’t even try. Didn’t visit me, not once. Just faded more and more until one of her junkie friends found her a few days after she’d OD’d.”
I rubbed his cheek. “I can’t imagine what you went through.”
“It was a long time ago. I’m not booking a repeat stay, but prison wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been. Had a couple of guys that kept my back and I kept theirs. Made a big fuckin’ difference.”
“Still,” I whispered. I let my head drop to his chest as I tried to wrap my brain around his life. It amazed me that someone could go through all of that and still be functioning. Kase had a gorgeous home, a job he was passionate about, and a group of friends that were more like family.
He wasn’t running and hiding behind boxes.
Kase rubbed my back. “It’s not something that I blurt out to every person I meet. Actually, very few people know. But I was gonna tell you soon. I don’t want you to think I was trying to hide it from you.”