Hell, I’d skip breathing for her.
Tyler’s alone, and when he sees the look in my eyes, he starts shaking his head. “Don’t do this, man. You don’t have to decide this now. You’re still angry about Kristina. I get that. But don’t make your decision to leave just because of that.”
I set my jaw, unwilling to hear him. He’s been my best friend since high school, when I was playing football and pawing cheerleaders and he was this too-tall gangly guy who couldn’t get a date. He got me through math and out of trouble more times than I can count.
“Jayce, you know I’ve got your back. Always.” I nod, and he continues. “And so I’m telling you not to do this. Don’t break up the band, don’t leave us over this. If I’ve got your back, that’s got to count for something.” Tyler’s pleading, seriously freaking out.
“It counts, Ty. But it’s not enough.”
Gavin bursts through the door and stops cold, sensing the dark mood. Maybe sensing danger. Dave’s on his heels and I look, but Chief’s not behind him.
Good. Then it’s just the four of us. That’s how it should be.
“Ready to practice?” Gavin asks, but it’s a half-assed attempt. We all know shit is going down.
I stalk to the couches, three set up in a U-shape. I sit, Gavin sprawls on the couch next to me, and Dave squats on the third, directly across from me. Tyler takes the other half of my couch. I send Ty a mental note of thanks for siding with me, even on something so small.
“This is the end of something,” I start, and panic fills Tyler’s eyes. I hold up a hand to prevent his interruption. “Kristina did something unforgivable. To Violet, and that means also to me. She betrayed my trust and shared a secret that I never even told you guys. Violet never told Stella or Beryl. And Kristina gave it to a reporter to hurt Violet.”
There. The facts are out, and I stare at my band mates, daring them to contradict me.
No one speaks.
“So I see two choices. Either you cut Kristina out like a cancer—cut her out of your life forever, so she never gets near any of us or our girls—or you choose her. But if you do, you’re against me and Violet. And I’m out of the band. Period.”
Dave narrows his eyes. “So we’re taking sides for our girls? What the fuck, Jayce? Where’s your ‘bros before hoes’ macho shit, or does Violet have you pussy-whipped now?”
I lunge across the space between the couches and grab his shirt, my arm drawn back for a punch that never lands. Tyler hooks his arm in my elbow so I can’t smash my fist in Dave’s face, but I’ve still got him by the shirt.
“Calm down, you fucknugget!” Gavin’s still seated, his voice patronizing. “Kristina took a secret to the press. Keep in mind, Stella threw my song out there, basically stole it from Beryl, and you didn’t get in Tyler’s face and tell him to leave her.”
“She did that before I met her,” Tyler growls at Gavin. “And it wasn’t malicious. She wasn’t trying to hurt you or Beryl. And she’s apologized, up, down and sideways, trying to make it right.”
“Fine. So this is different. What are you going to do about it?” Gavin’s hard gaze challenges me.
“That’s what I want to know from Dave.”
His lips thin and he pulls back from me. I let go of his shirt and he sits, raising a brow as I tower over him, challenging me to sit, too.
I do. I wait for an explanation. This better be good. No, this better be fucking poetry with the kind of hurt I want to throw at Kristina, and at him if he defends her.
He puts his elbows on his knees and rests his head in his hands, rubbing his face like he’s trying to wake up from a nightmare. “I didn’t go home last night.”
He means home to the Brooklyn townhouse he shares with Kristina. The one he’s bought and paid for, but that she lives in and controls like its hers.
“I didn’t know what to think when Tyler called me,” he continues. “I didn’t want to believe she’d do that to Violet or any of us. But the truth is, she could do it to all of us. Especially to me.”
Tyler’s loft is silent as blood rushes in my ears. What is he saying?
“What could she do?” Gavin’s voice is cold and hard.
“For you, it’s Lulu,” Dave says. “Kristina saw what was happening, saw her wasting away and spiraling into junkie madness. She saw you give Lulu drugs. You think that story’s behind you, but she could bring up more. She knows things Lulu’s family could use for a civil suit that would kick your ass to next Christmas.”
Gavin’s face is a mask, but I smell fear.
Dave turns to Tyler. “For you, she could corroborate enough of Kim Archer’s timeline to make you look like a heartless bastard, even if you aren’t the father.”
Tyler shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. Kim lost her moral high ground the minute she got arrested with drugs in her baby girl’s diaper bag.”
“I don’t think you’re hearing me, Tyler. If that’s not enough to cut you, she’ll go after Stella. Something about a pregnancy when she was a teenager, and the father being a famous director.”
Tyler visibly pales, and I know Dave’s hit the mark.
I’m next, and I brace myself.
“How many groupies have you been with, Jayce?” Dave asks.
I shrug, not wanting to admit the number. It’s a lot, a hell of a lot more than any of them, and I’m thankful Violet’s never forced me to share it with her.
That’s behind me now. I hope.
Dave snorts. “I don’t really want to know, either, but Kristina knows. She’s got most of their names and numbers. You think she can’t get Shelly and Teal to do a tell-all piece with a tabloid for ten grand? She saves their numbers, buddy, and calls them when you dump them, letting them cry all over her shoulder and pretending to be their friend.”
My jaw goes slack, stunned by Kristina’s duplicity.
“Hit me, Jayce.” Dave stands, takes a couple steps toward me, squares his shoulders and tilts up his chin. “Hit me if that’s what it’s gonna take to get it out of your system. Hit me like you want to punish Kristina, but don’t fucking break up the band. You guys are all I got.”
His voice wavers in that last sentence, and suddenly I get it. “She has something on you, too.”
Dave’s nostrils flare but he stiffens with resolve. “Hit me, Jayce. Do it.”
“Is it worse than Gavin’s secret? Or Tyler’s? Or mine?”
He closes his eyes and nods, a tiny tilt of his head. His whisper is choked. “Hit me so hard I can feel it. Because I can’t feel fucking anything right now.”
I stand and see Dave brace himself. Tyler’s eyes are wide and fearful, but I shake my head to tell him to stand down. I reach for Dave, a hand on his shoulder that makes him flinch like I just sucker-punched him in the gut. His eyes fly open.
“You don’t kick a man when he’s down, Dave,” I say. “What do you mean, we’re all you got? You’ve got a fucking great record we’re about to put out, a sweet place in Brooklyn, and an evil bitch you’ve got to kick to the curb.”
I grab both shoulders and shake him, trying to force him out of this daze of self-loathing.
“I can’t. If I leave her, she’ll bury me.”
“Then let her try. It’ll be four against one,” Tyler promises.
“Cut her loose.” Gavin agrees.
Dave looks at me hard before he gives an answer. “If I do, do you promise to stay? With the band?”
I work my jaw, debating. “Will you stop being such a controlling jackass?” I say it in jest, but Dave hears me. He’s always been pain-in-the-ass pushy, but that’s what made him a great manager when our band was starting out. It’s just the last few months, especially when Gavin was gone, that turned him.
Made him different. Harder. More demanding. Angrier.
But maybe it wasn’t Gavin’s absence. Maybe it’s was Kristina’s presence. “You found out the dirt she had on all of us while Gavin was gone, didn’t you?”
He nods. “She’s always had s
omething on me, but it was our secret. Just a horrible thing that happened when we were young and fucked up and stupid. But when I found out she was … collecting … on you, I realized how much she knew about Lulu. How much she could prove about Gavin.”
“Fuhhhhhhhhhk,” Gavin groans. “And you stayed with her to protect us? Because, Dave, that’s like giving her insider access to get even more shit on us!”
“I know!” Dave explodes. “But what could I do? If I dump her, she’ll ruin me. She’ll try to ruin all of us.”
Gavin’s voice drops to a snarl. “Then let her try.”
EPILOGUE: VIOLET
The air feels different here, and it should. We bid the oppressive humidity of early August adieu and launched ourselves into the crisp, thin air of Steamboat Springs, Colorado, elevation 6,695 feet.
That’s more than a mile high, and more importantly, it’s nearly two thousand miles west of the crazy fallout in New York City.
Now I’m that girl in the naked pictures.
That girl dating a rock star.
That girl whose father is running for congress. (And it turns out my naked pictures didn’t ruin his shot at this election—if anything, they’ve helped him.)
But here in Steamboat, I’m just Violet.
Jayce has shed every shred of being a rock star. He’s back where he grew up. He’s Boot, or JC. He’s my Justin.
We stay at a condo meant for skiers but it’s way out of season, so the place is dead. That’s good, because Jayce likes to walk around the tiny downtown holding my hand like we’re a normal couple.
He drags me into a bakery bursting with every form of carbohydrate that makes me drool. The older woman behind the counter recognizes him immediately. “It’s on the house, Boot.” She hands us a pair of scones. “You tell your parents hi for me.”
On our second night in Steamboat, Jayce tells me he has a surprise. He pours wine into a stainless water bottle, rolls up two towels, and stuffs flashlights in a backpack. He drives our rented Jeep top-down, bumping along the gravel for a couple miles until we find a lot dotted with cars.
“A late-night hike?” I study him in the light from the dash.
“Trust me.”
I follow Jayce down a zigzag path that curves around a series of wide pools of water, each cascading into another. The stars are bright, saturating a velvet sky like I’ve never seen in the city.
A few people are wading waist-deep or sitting in the water, but they’re far enough away that I can’t hear their voices.
Jayce strips off his shirt, unlaces his shoes and drops his shorts. He stands, his naked body gilded by moonlight. “Come with me, Violet.” He waits until I’m naked too, then takes my hand and we ease ourselves into water that’s just right, the temperature blending with my skin so perfectly that I feel like I’m weightless.
“Lie back.” He supports my neck as I float, one hand in my hair and the other by my hip. Water feathers across my body as he moves me in it, a trance, a dance, with stars scattered above us.
I hear him humming, a rumble in his chest, and I strain to recognize the melody. He swirls me through the water and I close my eyes, my skin tingling with sensation.
When I recognize the song, Tattoo Thief’s driving rock anthem, “Sweet and Wild,” I lift my head. Jayce sits on a ledge beneath the water and I curl up on his lap.
“You changed it up. That song. You made it a ballad.”
Jayce chuckles. “You caught me. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. I like it when things are unexpected.”
“Like us.” He dips his chin and touches his forehead to mine. “You’re deliciously unexpected, Violet.”
Our shoulders are exposed to the air and the tops of my breasts pucker with gooseflesh as a breeze ripples through stands of aspen. I press myself closer to him.
“I love you, Justin,” I say, and let his soft lips take mine. His tongue curls and flicks and his hand cups my breast. “I never thought I’d find … this.”
I don’t have words to describe our unique mixture of connection and control. It defies everything I thought I knew about the one right way to love or be loved.
“I think I’ve always been searching for this,” Jayce says and presses his hand to my heart. “It’s just like that song.”
I pull my head back in question. “Changing it up?”
“Making it whatever you want it to be. I think love is like music—whether you play it sweet and gentle or hard and wild, what matters is that you get to choose what speaks to you.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This is not entirely a work of fiction. Revenge porn is part of our real world.
Violet’s nightmare was inspired by a series of articles detailing the victims, activists, and owners of revenge porn (RP) sites.
In some cases, nude pictures and sexts are posted on a site together with a person’s real name and photo, often culled from Facebook. Gawker called it “a new generation of amateur erotica: stalker porn,” and noted that nude photos taken with a cell phone are often submitted to these sites by vengeful exes.
A Jezebel article stated that RP might include identifying information such as the victim’s full name, address, workplace, boss’s email address and parents’ phone number. Harassment of the victims, their families, and their employers has led to firing, ruined personal relationships, and at least two women have killed themselves over RP.
When Facebook took legal action against one RP site, “I replied with a picture of my dick,” Hunter Moore, the site’s then-25-year-old founder, told Gawker. “I’m not a virgin to cease and desists—I get about a million a day. I think [Facebook] is under pressure from users to do something about me ... I don’t give a fuck. I’m never going to stop.”
Jezebel published an article by Charlotte Laws, whose 24-year-old daughter Kayla took pictures of herself posing in lingerie in front of a mirror. She sent her cell phone photos to her email, which was hacked, and the hacker forwarded her images to an RP site.
Laws also wrote about a kindergarten teacher in Kansas whose pictures were posted on an RP site. Viewers promptly bombarded the principal with messages such as “fire that slut,” and “you have a whore teaching your children.”
While I was writing this book, Hunter Moore was indicted in a federal court in California following an arrest by the FBI on charges of conspiracy, unauthorized access to a protected computer, and aggravated identity theft. According to the indictment, many of these crimes were committed in an effort to obtain nude images of people against their will.
Also in January, Israel became the first nation to classify RP as a sex crime. In the U.S., the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative launched a campaign to end RP, which includes anti-RP legislation. At the time of this writing, just seven states have RP laws: Arizona, California, Idaho, New Jersey, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin.
COMING SOON
Dave and Willa’s story is the final novel in the Tattoo Thief series.
Dave faces an ultimatum—dump his toxic girlfriend Kristina or break up his band Tattoo Thief. But Kristina won’t go quietly. She has enough dirt to ruin each member of the band, and enough on Dave to send him to jail.
This stinking, bloody threat has haunted him for years.
As Dave hangs in limbo, a new star emerges: Willa, dubbed “The Lady Banksy” by the modern art world. When a magazine feature article catapults the graffiti and tattoo artist to sudden fame, she must cope with the spotlight when all she’s ever known is the shadows.
Life as a runaway jaded Willa, and it leaves her deeply in doubt of her fifteen minutes of fame. Nothing good lasts forever. Especially not love.
It seems like everyone wants a piece of Willa now. Except Dave. When their music and art worlds collide, she finds the one person who isn’t trying to take something from her, and who might have something to give.
As Dave’s secret is laid bare, a mystery unravels, pointing to his guilt and its dangerous intersection with Willa’s old life on the
streets.
Both must risk their success and the intense connection to each other to prevent their pasts from defining their future.
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DEAR READER
Thanks for reading Revenge Bound. I hope you enjoyed it!
There are more books in this companion series, each a standalone love story about a different member of the band. I hope you’ll check out Tyler & Stella for their story, and Tattoo Thief for Gavin and Beryl’s book. I’m working on Dave and Willa’s so far untitled book now.
Would you like to know when my next book is available? I don’t email often, but I’ll alert you to new releases (and sometimes sneak in book extras and gift cards). Sign up at www.tinyurl.com/heidisbooks.
If you enjoyed this story, please take a moment to review it. No matter how long or short, your recommendation helps other readers discover books and it’s the greatest compliment you can give an author. You can also share this book with a friend through Amazon’s lending program.
For me, the very best part of writing books is getting to know readers. I’d love to hear from you via facebook.com/author.heidi and at my website, www.heidijoytretheway.com.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Huge, heaping gratitude goes to my critique partners Emma Hart and Katie Ernst. From the kernel of the idea to egging me on to land the damn plane (in other words, finish the story), these insanely talented ladies make writing a delight. We plotted future books together in a Paris apartment fueled by wine, laughter, and fabulous French carbs.
Every writer needs a team, and I have wonderful people in my corner. My developmental editor, Jim Thomsen, guided four novels and helped me grow by leaps and bounds. He ensures the mistakes I make are opportunities to hone my craft.
Cynthia L. Moyer kills it with copy edits (hundreds!) while wrapping her red pen in truly encouraging feedback. Amy Duryea is my proofreader who picks up on the tiniest details, including my penchant for mistyping than as that. She tells me I tend to skip words during the hot scenes. (What can I say? I get caught up in the moment.)
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