Lilac

by Reid, B. B.

  There was a lot I should have said.

  “So tomorrow then,” I decided out loud. If I let my mind linger on things I couldn’t change, who knew what would happen. Nothing good. “Operation Stalk the Fuck out of Braxton until She Files a Restraining Order begins.”

  “What if she doesn’t forgive us?” Rich proposed like an ass. He could be so goddamn pessimistic. “We’re supposed to be in Europe in three weeks.”

  “Fuck the tour.” There would always be another one, but there was only one of her. If I’d listened when Braxton warned me, we wouldn’t be standing here.

  “If Carl—”

  “Fuck Carl Cole.” He could take that three-sixty deal and shove it up his ass. He’d already taken everything that mattered and didn’t matter. I wasn’t letting him take Braxton too. Moving over to the couch, I dropped down onto it and let my head rest against the back as I stared at the ceiling. “We were going to take her to meet Mom today,” I reminded them.

  My head fell to the side so that I could meet Houston’s somber gaze. His grandmother would have loved Braxton, and he knew it.

  Rich gave us his back.

  The only sign that he’d lost the composure he’d held until now was his shoulders as he walked away.

  Jericho’s desolation would be a slow descent. His heart breaking wouldn’t just sneak up. No, he’d make us feel every splinter. He’d make us watch the pieces wither to dust. The only difference was the girl he’d given his heart to this time had given hers too.

  Braxton had offered him everything his lonely soul had been hunting.

  And then she took it away.

  We kept our word, but Braxton stuck to her guns.

  Every day for five days, we tried and failed to get Braxton to let us see her so we could explain. It wasn’t until her friends screwed up by getting Braxton to leave their apartment that we got our chance.

  We were waiting inside their apartment—it had been way too easy to break in—when the three of them stumbled in after two in the morning. I shook my head. Even in the dark, they should have noticed us occupying their living room by now.

  “Oh, shit,” one of them drunkenly slurred. Maeko, I think. “I left my bone—I mean phone.”

  The three of them erupted into laughter that made my ears ring. I think it was Houston that groaned like he was being tortured by nails on a chalkboard. Even though he’d tried to conceal his voice, the apartment fell quiet.

  I guess they’d heard him too.

  There were more stumbled footsteps, hurried this time, and a moment later, light flooded the room. My gaze caught Braxton’s, who was standing by the door with her hand still holding the switch and her full lips slightly parted. I stared at them, lost in the memory of how they felt against mine, until they started moving.

  “Are you kidding me right now?”

  I smiled at her greeting to silence the roaring in my head. “Hey, baby. Missed you.”

  “Get out.”

  Ignoring her request, I turned to Rich, who was slumped in their armchair with the hood of his black sweatshirt pulled so low over his head that I couldn’t see his eyes.

  I imagined he was staring at Braxton like she was heaven’s gate, and he held a one-way ticket to hell.

  I was going to fuck him up, though, if he didn’t start pleading his case soon.

  Sitting up slowly, he pulled his hood back and…yup.

  Just as pitiful as I imagined.

  He cleared his throat, but his voice was still hoarse when he spoke because he hadn’t said a word. Not one goddamn thing since she’d left us. “Can we talk?”

  “What is there left to say?”

  The moment she asked the question, her friends quietly made themselves scarce, and I thanked God for small favors. It was right there in her tone—the first crack in her armor. Chin in my hand, I kept my focus on Rich because if I looked at Braxton…I’d start pleading my case too.

  I would.

  Just not now.

  Because I knew who she needed to hear from, which meant I had to wait my turn. It was just proving harder than I thought to be patient.

  And hope that Rich didn’t fuck this up.

  “Everything,” he said as he stood up. “Starting with the fact that I lied, and there’s no excuse for it. I should have told you about Emily. I could tell you that I didn’t know what would happen between us, but it would just be another lie. You’re the reason those papers existed for you to find.”

  “So I’m responsible for you wanting to leave your wife?” She rolled her eyes and looked away just as the first tear fell. “That’s just great, Rich. Thanks.”

  I’m sure he could feel my glare, but he paid me no mind as he inched closer to Braxton, who still held up their front door. Houston stood by the window overlooking the street while I sat on their ratty sofa.

  “I should have left her a long time ago, but I didn’t care about any of that until you. Emily stopped being my wife the moment she fucked Calvin.” I saw Braxton’s surprise as her shocked gaze darted from Rich to Houston and then me for confirmation. All my fault. “If that’s not enough to convince you,” he continued, “it’s been over four years since I’ve seen or heard from her. I owe her nothing.”

  “No?” Braxton challenged, suddenly pushing away from the door. She was in his face now, all fire and no mercy, while Rich gazed down at her, pleading for some. “Then what about me? If not the truth, what did I deserve?” Her tears ran freely down her face as she stared up at him. Rich couldn’t look away, and neither could I. “You promised you were mine, but you were only pretending.”

  She broke his restraint, and I tensed when he grabbed her hips and yanked her into him. I relaxed only when he simply pressed their foreheads together.

  “If nothing else, Braxton, please believe that I wasn’t,” he pleaded with his eyes closed. “I haven’t always been truthful, but I’ve been honest about that.”

  “Why did you lie?” She didn’t pull away from him, but her tone made it clear that her guard was still up. I think it was the first time Braxton’s ever had it up this high with Jericho. The wall she’d built in seven mere days towered higher than the one she’d been building for seven months. She had only started to let us in.

  “I—”

  “Don’t tell me,” she cut in when he tried to speak. “Tell them.” My brows dipped when she nodded toward Houston and me. “Tell them the reason why you still hesitated to leave your estranged wife even after you drew up the papers and decided to be with me.”

  Rich let her go, and her dead gaze followed him as she watched him back away with no emotion. His legs seemed to give out, so he sank onto the arm of the couch with his gaze fixed on the floor. The four of us waited in the heavy silence that followed, and I wondered if they could hear my heart beating out of control.

  “I wasn’t going to leave her,” he eventually whispered so low I almost didn’t catch it.

  As I sat up, my confused gaze flew to Houston, who gave no obvious reaction. He was pissed, but he didn’t seem surprised.

  What the hell had I missed?

  “Come again?”

  Rich looked at me, and I was surprised to see the same plea in his eyes that he’d given Braxton moments ago. “Emily. If her baby was mine, I wasn’t going to go through with it. I wasn’t going to divorce her.”

  I can’t explain why I suddenly smiled when nothing was funny about what he said. Houston moved away from the window as soon as I stood because he knew what was on my mind. Jericho knew it too, but he didn’t move to try to defend himself if it came to that.

  He’d let me beat him.

  Jericho deserved every broken bone and ounce of blood lost after what he just admitted to, so he’d allow me the pound of flesh.

  “Let me make sure I heard you correctly. While Houston and I were risking everything, you were plotting behind our backs to leave us and ride off into the sunset with Emily?”

  “Yes.”

  I stood there in the w
ake of his confession, waiting to hear him explain or make excuses.

  He didn’t.

  He simply sat there. He let me see his shame. I couldn’t hide my hatred or the betrayal I felt, so he welcomed it so that I wouldn’t succumb to it.

  I was as furious with myself as I was with Jericho. I chose to trust my best friend instead of this very suspicion that had been prickling my mind for months. I’d underestimated him again, but not in the way I could ever respect.

  Or forgive.

  The truth had been there the entire time. I refused to believe it because I trusted him. Jericho had built enough evidence a long time ago to get a court-ordered dissolution without Emily. She’d run for no fucking reason other than to keep Jericho in her claws. She knew he’d never divorce her without confronting her first. And without knowing if the kid she may or may not have had even belonged to him.

  After Braxton, I assumed only the former still held.

  I believed he hesitated for the reason his surname implied.

  He had to be so goddamn noble.

  He had to give Emily the honor of telling her to her face that he should never have married her, that he wasn’t in love with her anymore, and that Braxton was the woman he should have fucking waited for but didn’t.

  Jericho hadn’t just been playing Braxton.

  He’d been playing us all.

  “Fuck you.”

  I didn’t allow myself to say more. I didn’t allow myself to look at Braxton, Houston, or even Rich.

  When I stormed through the door, I didn’t just walk out on our fight. I knew in my heart that I’d just walked out on us.

  On Bound.

  THE BOUND & BELLICOSE TOUR HAS BEEN POSTPONED

  Sources report difficulties among the band. There are also rumors circulating that Bound’s newest guitarist, Braxton Fawn, is dating not one but all three of the band’s original members. Could this be the end of Bound?

  I clicked out of the article and hit the ignore button as soon as Xavier started calling me. I’m sure he wanted to see where my head was, but there was nothing he could do about the answer. Climbing out of my truck, I stared up at the country château that had taken me an hour of driving and pondering to reach.

  I still didn’t know what I was going to say.

  Loren had made us buy and restore that monstrosity in the woods so that he could tell his father that his was bigger.

  I hope he got the chance because I wasn’t leaving here without him.

  It had been three goddamn weeks.

  I thought the last six years had been rough, but it was nothing compared to the feeling of actually being without your best friends and losing your girl all in one week.

  Braxton had shut down, Loren had run back to Portland, and Rich…he was a fucking ghost. He wasn’t eating, he wasn’t sleeping, and he had an episode whenever he did. None of that was what concerned me the most.

  Jericho hasn’t spoken a single word in twenty-three days.

  My fear had reached the point of being irrational. I was afraid he’d forgotten how. I was terrified he’d lost his will—for anything. I was watching our best friend waste away so, yeah. I’d hogtie Loren and drag his ass back if he forced me to.

  No, you won’t.

  Loren’s claim that I was no better than his father was a blow I hadn’t been expecting. I still hadn’t recovered. This insatiable need to control my universe and everyone in it was rooted deep.

  All I had left of the source was a newspaper clipping and my grandmother’s memories of Susan and Jake Morrow. I’d been left behind to survive on my own in a world too cruel and chaotic to endure. I’d spent the last fifteen years since their deaths trying not to repeat the cycle, so whenever my world began to spiral, I grabbed the reins, and I held on tight. I never paid attention to who I was hurting or stifling. I only cared about my survival.

  But what if I had looked beyond myself just once?

  Would Rich have trusted me when I warned him not to marry Emily? Would I have convinced my friends to take Savant’s deal? Would Loren have pushed aside his pride and come to me rather than ruining our best friend’s marriage?

  If I hadn’t indirectly caused all of the above because of my obsession with control, would Calvin have been able to turn them against me? Besides fucking Emily, all Everill had done was force to light resentment already brewing in the dark. Tearing Loren, Rich, and I apart was how he’d punished us for keeping him out.

  Our past was four runaway trains heading to four destinations, only to crash and burn at one intersection.

  As much as I was struggling with our turbulent present, my persistent thoughts wouldn’t allow me to push away the most important question of all. If our past had played out differently, would we have ever met Braxton?

  I hated that the answer wouldn’t allow me to regret my actions fully. I wasn’t convinced the universe I fought so hard to rule would have found another way to place her in our path.

  The love of our life would have slipped us by, and that would have been my fault too.

  Fuck.

  Ringing the front doorbell, I crossed my arms as I leaned against the pillar and waited. Here’s to hoping Loren still cared enough to come back on his own.

  I didn’t have to wait long since Orson James insisted on round-the-clock staff. Loren, Rich, and I hired a cleaning service twice a week and someone to handle the landscaping, but other than that, we fended for ourselves.

  Out there in the woods, we were able to pretend that we’d carved out a world only the three of us inhabited.

  Braxton, when we got her back, would know what that felt like too.

  “What do you want?” Loren asked.

  He’d taken me by surprise answering the door himself, but it was the beard adorning the lower half of his face and the blond hair covering his forehead and eyes, making him look like a wet dog, that caught me off guard. He wore stained gray sweatpants, a white T-shirt, one sock, and smelled like he hadn’t showered in three or four days.

  “Loren?”

  He didn’t bother answering my stupid question. He turned around and shuffled away, leaving the door open, so I followed him inside. The house was mostly quiet since it was mid-morning on a Monday. I was sure Orson was busy running the empire he’d lorded over his son for years. It just showed how little he knew him.

  Loren belonged on a stage, not inside a boardroom.

  He sure as fuck didn’t care about metal fabrication or whatever made his father rich enough to believe his ambitions mattered more than his son’s.

  “Why are you here?” Loren muttered when I followed him into his childhood bedroom. Unlike my grandmother, his parents hadn’t left it alone. They’d converted it into a guest room, completely wiping away everything that helped shape Loren into the man he was today. It was only unusual or unnecessary when you had nine other available bedrooms for guests.

  He took a seat on the foot of the queen bed before planting his back on the mattress and closing his eyes.

  “You know why,” I said as I watched him from the doorway. “Come home.”

  “I am home.”

  It took everything I hoped to be one day not to storm across the room and wring his goddamn neck.

  He didn’t get to say that shit to me.

  When Loren’s father threw him out for finally getting his mother to leave him, he had no one else but us. We were his family, and it had been that way ever since. Loren thought it had all been in vain when his mother crawled back like a thoroughly whipped dog, but it hadn’t. We made sure of it.

  I then took that shitty deal with Savant and convinced my friends to do the same.

  I couldn’t let Loren back under his father’s thumb. He’d been close to giving in and ready to accept whatever scraps his father threw for a price much too high when that deal came to the table.

  But Savant had only wanted me.

  Loren and Jericho had been optional, but I insisted, begged, giving Carl Cole the leverage he needed
to fuck us. I’d told myself I was helping my best friends. Loren could support himself and Rich would avoid prison. After a while, I couldn’t live with that lie anymore.

  Some days I felt guilty, others I didn’t.

  Loren knew, and that was why he hated me. It wasn’t because I liked taking charge. Frankly, Loren was too lazy for the role. It was because I succeeded where his father had failed. I forced a life on him rather than let him make his own choices. He trusted me, and I used him to feed my addiction.

  “You know as well as I do that isn’t true.”

  He didn’t respond, but I knew he was listening.

  Swallowing my pride, I finally let free the words I should have spoken a long time ago but hadn’t. I’d never been afraid that I might actually lose him before. “I’m sorry, Lo.” It seemed like I waited an eternity before his eyes slowly opened, and his black gaze met mine. “I’m sorry for breaking your trust in me, I’m sorry for not letting you choose your own path, I’m sorry for making you think we didn’t need you, and I’m sorry for not being sorry sooner.”

  He made me wait.

  Loren made the silence stretch as long as he possibly could before he simply said, “Thanks.” I was pretty sure my gut couldn’t hold any more dread. Clasping his hands underneath his head, Loren closed his eyes again. “You can go now.”

  I narrowed my gaze on him as if he could see the warning in them. “Don’t test me, Lo.”

  “Or what?”

  I casually crossed the room without saying a word. When I reached him, I gripped his collar in my fists and yanked him from the bed until there was no space left between us. He let me. “Or I do everyone a favor, and I make you a bottom.”

  Loren needed some humility, and one of these days, he was going to push me into giving him some. He made me see the difference between a leader and a dictator, and while I was determined to temper those urges, I would always run this shit. If Loren forced me to make that an undisputed fact, so be it.

  We stared at one another for a long while before he swallowed and tried to push me away. I tightened my grip.

  “You stink,” I informed him. My eyes were starting to water being this close.