Heartbreaker (Unbreakable #1)

by Kat Bastion

  All I could hear were my own footfalls, my pulse pounding in my ears, the rasp of my breath from my parted lips. A brisk north wind chilled my face. The branches of the pine trees swayed.

  As I fell into the rhythm of the run, all thoughts in my head melted away.

  A slow burn warmed my muscles. But I pushed them further. Not solely because Darren had challenged me. Also because I enjoyed the reprieve and didn’t want to deal with him right now. Our early arrival at the remote trail—plus my head start—gave me a run in solitude.

  And he was far behind me. Or so I’d thought.

  On the first steep incline, he barreled ahead.

  “Show off!” I accused as I pushed my legs.

  “Keep up, Flash. Let’s see whatcha got.”

  Resolve pulsed through me, fueling my drive to run harder. Sure, he had longer legs, hence a longer stride. And maybe he’d been running longer than I had.

  But he hadn’t been training daily.

  And I had a sudden determination to best him. His actions reeked of him thinking he could win at this. I needed to prove to myself that I was in control, no matter the obstacles.

  He remained ahead of me during the rest of the punishing incline. On the straightaway, I gained ground, but I slowed to catch my breath, pacing myself.

  On the second left-hand turn, I passed him.

  For the rest of the run, I never looked back.

  I could feel him right behind me, though.

  The new trail was glorious. Lots of surprises. Plenty of hairpin turns and challenging climbs. Two recent bends had moss-covered boulders that stair-stepped upward; one, I had to scrabble over its enormous granite surface.

  The challenging run left no room for anything other than pinpoint focus on the task at hand.

  On several downhill sections, I pushed my pace: not quite walking, not quite running, but instead planting one foot after the other in a focused stair-stepping power march. A couple of times, an avalanche of small pebbles caused me to power slide several feet, but I never lost my footing.

  The last turn came and went.

  At the end of the four-mile loop, muscles screaming, breaths coming in ragged gasps, I pushed my body to its breaking point; I forced my legs to sprint toward the imaginary finish line, marked by the trailhead’s large information board.

  Still running over the packed-dirt surface, I shot my arms up into the air and spun around, jogging backward. “Haaa!” I shouted into the wilderness. My echo followed.

  Darren jogged down the trail, a slight smile on his face.

  As I ran in place, claiming my victory, my heel caught on something.

  A split second later, the ground slammed into me. Hard.

  “Ow.” I groaned at a flash of pain in my head.

  “Shit. Kiki, you okay?” He hovered over me in an instant, blocking out the sun.

  I pressed the heel of my hand against my eyebrow. “Don’t know yet.”

  He pulled off my sunglasses. “Open your eyes.”

  The moment I did, he stared into them. Clinically.

  “Pupils are good.” Leaning forward, he palpated my head, running his fingers over my scalp.

  “Ow!” I winced as fresh pain lanced through my skull.

  He eased the pressure, but still rubbed his fingertips over a bruised spot. “No concussion. But you’re gonna have a good-sized knot there.”

  “Cade always says I’m hardheaded,” I muttered.

  “Your brother knows you well.” He stared at me, amusement sparkling in his eyes.

  I slowly dropped my head.

  He cradled the back of it until it rested on the ground. “What about the rest of you?”

  Still breathing hard from my finish-line sprint, I gingerly pushed myself up.

  He nodded toward the straps of my Camelbak. “The water bag protected your spine.” But my black yoga pants had dirt scuff marks on my right hip. He tugged down the waist of my pants until a bleeding scrape appeared.

  I leaned forward enough to see it was superficial. “That’s not so bad.”

  “Nothing a Band-Aid won’t fix.”

  “Have one of those handy?”

  He gave a short nod. “Got a first aid kit in the truck.”

  When he held out a hand, I took it, then winced as my elbow brushed against my side. After pulling both sleeves up, I found two more scrapes: a matching set, one on each elbow.

  “Can’t believe I bit it at the end. With all the sprinting up boulders and negotiating down rocky crevasses, I have to fall at the very end…jogging in place.”

  He let out a slow breath as he raised a hand toward my face. With a gentle touch, he held my chin with his forefinger and thumb. He searched my eyes, intensity shining in his steadfast gaze. “You let your guard down.”

  “Yeah.” Exactly what I was so damned afraid of.

  Darren…

  Saturday night. Another two days of silence from Kiki.

  Except for a text from her that morning:

  Skipping run today

  No explanation.

  You okay?

  About ten long minutes later, her reply popped up.

  Yeah

  Wasn’t sure what irritated me more, my disappointment or her lame-ass reply.

  “Fuck it,” I bit out under my breath. I shoved off the couch and jogged up the stairs, following the sounds of Nirvana’s “Lithium.”

  Logan had left her door open a crack. She never did that. Typically it was closed and locked. I flattened a palm on the center of it and pushed it halfway open.

  I let out a slow breath and just stood there, watching my sister sit in the middle of the queen-sized bed, arms wrapped around her bent knees. Eyes wide open, she stared blankly at a spot on the flowery comforter two feet in front of her.

  Loud music thumped around us, her on her bed, me in the doorway. I wondered how many times she’d been holed up behind a closed door, totally zoned out with music hiding her pain.

  My heart ached for her.

  I felt like an intruder. But maybe me barging into her space was what she needed, the open door a hint.

  Unwilling to stand unnoticed any longer, I knocked.

  Her only response was a heavy blink.

  I cleared my throat, raising my voice a notch above the bass decibels. “Logan?”

  A few more blinks followed. Then she grabbed the remote, turned down the volume, and turned her head toward me. “Oh, hey, D.”

  “You okay?” The themed question of the day.

  “Yeah.”

  Oh, hell no. Enough with my girls and their pat answers. “Doesn’t look like it.”

  “I’m good.” She shrugged. “Just bluesy again.”

  “Again? What about the meds? And Doc Jamison? Didn’t you say she was helping?”

  “I stopped taking the new stuff. It made my heart race and my hands shake.”

  Fucking drugs. “So, you’re off the meds?”

  She gave me a nod.

  Part of me was relieved. She’d burned through them with no real improvement. But the risky alternative scared me shitless. “And Doc Jamison? Does she know?”

  “I’m going to tell her on Tuesday. She already told me if I couldn’t handle it to lower the dosage. I just stopped taking it.”

  “And you’re feeling better?”

  She finally glanced up at me, her lips tilting into a half-smile. “Define better.”

  A little sarcasm. Good. “No more heart-racing and hand-shaking?”

  “No more of that.”

  “But still the depression. As bad as a couple of years ago?”

  Her brow wrinkled. “No. It feels different.”

  I leaned a shoulder against the doorframe. “Different how?”

  “Less drowning in an abyss of despair. More…numb?” Her voice held a tone of humor, uncertainty.

  I snorted. “Numb sounds better than ‘abyss of despair.’”

  I shoved off from the doorway and took a seat at the foot of the bed, ch
ecking out her room from the inside, for once.

  The bed didn’t have a chance to settle with my weight before she scooted forward to sit beside me. When I lifted my arm, she nudged under it and rested her head against my shoulder.

  “I like what you’ve done with the space.”

  The lamp had a blue scarf, one of Logan’s, thrown over the top. On the wall above the bed, a strand of white Christmas lights hung over a collage of sorts: twine had been crisscrossed in a diamond pattern, magazine clippings and music CD jackets tucked underneath.

  My attention paused at the low dresser beside the closet. On one side, a silver picture frame sat behind a small pewter box. Aside from the furniture, they were all that I could see of our mom’s belongings—the only personal items.

  “Thanks.” Her gaze followed mine. “It’s been a work in progress.”

  “We all are, you know.”

  “You mean I’m not the only one?”

  I huffed out a dry laugh. “Hell, no. We’re all screwed up. It’s the great test of life: how strong we keep fighting no matter what the world throws at us.”

  “Why didn’t Mom fight harder?”

  Heart heavy, I tried to speak, but had to force a swallow past the lump in my throat. “She fought as hard as she could, Lo.”

  What I keep telling myself every day. Truth or not, was the only way I could deal with it.

  Silence surrounded us. She wrapped her arms around my waist and took a deep breath.

  Pain burned in my chest, and I let out a hard sigh, rubbing my sternum with the heel of one hand while I tightened my other arm around Logan.

  “We are fighting to survive. We have each other. All that matters.”

  “Will we…ever be” —her voice broke and she cleared her throat— “happy again?”

  “Yeah, we will.”

  “How do you know?”

  Because I’ve already caught glimpses of it. With Kiki.

  “When we look for the good in this world in spite of the bad? That’s when we find happiness.”

  She gave a slow nod. “Maybe just small things, at first.”

  “Sure.” I thought about what I’d busied myself with. “Gotta put yourself out there when you feel ready.”

  “Would it be okay if I watered the lawn? Planted flowers in the pots?”

  I coughed out a surprised laugh. “Don’t need my permission.”

  “But can we afford it?”

  “Yes. You buy all the flowers you want.” Whatever it took. But then the real question she’d been trying to ask hit me—time with each other. “We’ll go to the nursery together. Maybe tomorrow. Gonna need a whole lot more than water to revive our front yard. Probably some sod, the space is small enough.”

  My spirits lifted. It would be good to do a project with her.

  When she pulled away, her eyes glittered with unshed tears. But her face brightened with a smile. “I’d like that.”

  “You know you can talk with me anytime, right? You can leave the door open and let me in. Doesn’t have to be an urgent text from a rooftop.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Good.” At least I hadn’t failed to let her know I was there for her. “We’re family. I want you to know I’ve got your back.”

  “I do.” She took a deep breath, then let it out. “You understand why I go to the roof, right?”

  “I understand what you’ve told me...and Kiki.” Which wasn’t much. She’d said she wanted to be close to our mom. Yet being in her room felt like all of the best parts of Mom. The roof? Felt like the worst. “Scares the fuck out of me whenever you’re up there.”

  “I’ll never jump. That’s the point. If I’ve inherited depression from Mom, I can’t help that. But I can control what I do with it. It’s like a test for me. That no matter how bad I feel, I’m never gonna jump. I feel like Mom sees me up there. And…maybe she’s proud of me for knowing that.”

  I half-turned, then wrapped both arms around her, squeezing her tight. “I’m proud of you. And when you really need to go, let me know. I’ll be there with you.”

  Logan sniffed. “Thanks.”

  Torn between my original mission and our recent epiphany, I just sat there and held her.

  All of a sudden, she shoved at my ribs. “Okay. Enough of the touchy-feely.”

  When I pulled away, she wiped her fingers over her eyes, smearing her eye makeup, and sniffed a couple more times. Then she glanced around, confused, as if just now realizing I’d entered her sacred space for the first time in over two years. “Did you need something?”

  “Yeah. My music. Thief.” I stood from the bed and pulled a CD from the lineup while scanning for more.

  “My music,” she corrected. “Possession rules. And there’s a time limit on claiming your stuff.”

  “Whatever you tell yourself to keep your loot and sleep at night.”

  As I collected CDs, her head pressed into view under me. She folded her arms onto the desk, rested her chin on them, then glanced up at me. “What are you doing, anyway? Isn’t your DJ music at Loading Zone? I thought this was your personal stash.”

  “Aha! So you admit it’s mine.”

  “Ours.” She pulled the top CD from my hand, then flipped it over. “What. Are. You. Doooing?”

  “Grabbing some music for Kiki.”

  “A playlist?”

  “No. Not a ‘playlist.’ It’s not a sappy romance thing.”

  “Doesn’t have to be sappy or romance. And you’re doing it all wrong.”

  I dropped her a deadpan look. “I’m doing it wrong.” The statement bordered on ridiculous.

  “Yep. Put those back. We’ll burn a playlist.” When I hesitated, wondering how we’d do that without the source, she grabbed them from me and carefully filed them back in their open slots.

  She sat in her chair and powered up her computer. “I’ve got all your songs in a database. Which ones do you want?”

  Amazed at how she’d perked right up at the thought of helping me, I sat back on the edge of the bed behind her. “‘The Stroke’ by Billy Squier, ‘I Wish It Would Rain Down’ by Phil Collins, and ‘Pour Some Sugar on Me’ by Def Leppard.”

  At the last, she glanced back, face contorted into an odd mix of revulsion and confusion. “You’re kidding.”

  I arched my brows. “You helping or mocking?”

  Her expression softened into mild amusement as she raised her hands in mock surrender. “Helping.”

  “Then load songs, no questions.”

  Halfway through the next ten minutes, as I gave her additional songs, Logan figured out what they had in common. She nixed one of my choices and added two others. Then she popped in a blank disk and began burning the playlist. “You sure she has a CD player?”

  “No.” I hadn’t thought of that. I’m a DJ for fuck’s sake. But apparently, my brain fuzzed when it came to all things Kiki.

  “Give me your phone.” She held out her hand.

  Before giving it to her, I glanced at the screen to see if Kiki had sent anything. Nope. Of course not.

  Lo grabbed it impatiently, and I was left staring at my hand. Then she pulled out a cord from her top desk drawer and plugged my phone into her computer. “Just in case.”

  “Thanks,” I said, amazed at how quick she was to figure out the playlist theme. Then I took a second look at the way she’d organized my music CD’s before my attention landed on her bass guitar leaning against the wall. “You’re really getting into music.”

  “Yeah.” She handed my phone back to me. “You love it so much.”

  “And?”

  She’d been jamming with the band the past couple of months after I bought her the guitar for Christmas. She’d gotten a few private lessons from Nick. But every other time I’d asked about it, she’d been tight-lipped and shrugged.

  But tonight, something had changed. Like enough time had passed, and we’d finally broken through the cloud of loss that had hung thick between us.

  Her gaze gre
w unfocused for a second in thought. Then she smiled wide—the biggest smile I’d seen on her in way too long. “I love it too.” Her tone had lowered, reverent.

  “Awesome.” Pride filled my chest. “Anytime you want help with it, let me know.”

  “Thanks. But I want to do this on my own.”

  I gave her an understanding nod. “Hey, you sure you’re gonna be okay alone tonight?” My thoughts flew to the despondent girl I’d seen on the bed not twenty minutes ago. No way in hell would I leave her on a high note only to have her spiral back down.

  “Yeah, I’m good. Trevor’s coming over.”

  “Trevor?”

  “It’s cool. He’s been here before.”

  “He has?” I ground out, unable to stop the shift in my tone.

  “Relax. He’s helping me with the tighter riffs I’m trying to play.”

  “Music. He’s coming over for music. Only.”

  “Yes.”

  “No…sappy romantic playlists…”

  “No.” She gave me a stern look. “And no condoms either.”

  I let out a relieved sigh. “Good.” I walked halfway out, then grabbed the doorframe, and glanced back. “No need for condoms with…Trevor? Or no need for condoms…ever?”

  She burst out laughing as I struggled with the concept. “I will be having sex, D. Not yet, but sometime soon. And there will be condoms.”

  “Okay. Good. I think…”

  She threw a small green pillow at me when I hovered in uncertainty for too long. “Go! I promise not to do anything but music tonight.”

  By the time I made it over to Kiki’s, I had it all worked out in my head. I’d already barged in and broken through with one of the silent women in my life; how hard could it be to do it again?

  After the third heavy knock on the front door to her warehouse however, I began to wonder if I’d misjudged. I tried to open it, but it was locked. No noise came from inside, yet her car was parked just a few feet away.

  I scanned the front of the building. Then I walked a few paces and rounded the corner, checking out the nearest side wall. The only windows began twelve feet off the ground. Dim light glowed from them.