by Selena Kitt
“He was just twelve?” I asked, doing the math in my head.
“Yeah.” Tyler shrugged. “Puppy love, you know. But I don’t think he ever really forgot about her. Not after that day.”
“The day… your father was killed?” I blinked in the dark, putting the pieces together. “Catherine was there?”
“Our parents were fighting. My father had his gun. He put it on the kitchen table. He was hitting her. Just… over and over… I thought he was going to kill her…”
“Catherine?” I whispered.
“My mother,” he replied with a shake of his head. “God, it happened so fast...”
Tyler’s voice was low, almost like he was talking to himself.
“They were fighting, and everyone was screaming, and Sarah was hiding by the fridge. Rob was there, and Catherine said, ‘He’s going to kill her! He’s going to kill your mother!’ and I knew it was true. Her face was turning purple! And then—”
“Oh my God,” I whispered, closing my eyes. I could practically see it all. “Did Rob do it? Did he kill your father?”
The silence stretched out, but somehow, I just knew it was true.
“Did he do it to save your mother?” I asked softly. “To save Catherine?”
“My father would have killed them both,” Tyler said flatly. “We told the cops it was an accident. But it didn’t matter. My mother went to jail—there were drugs everywhere. And we all went into foster care. If it wasn’t for Rob—getting Arnie to help him look for us?—I’d probably be in jail right now.”
“But he found you.” I snuggled closer to him. “All of you. Even Catherine. And he… married her.”
It was like Rob had been trying to put together the pieces of something long ago broken, carefully gluing them all into place.
“Well, Catherine found us… but… yeah…”
“Do you really think they shouldn’t have gotten divorced?” I asked him. “Sabrina is so in love with him…”
“No, he loves Sabrina.” Tyler sighed, squeezing an arm around my shoulder. “I think he only thought he was in love with Catherine. The truth is, she’s fucked up. She’s always been fucked up. I think he thought he could save her. That he could save all of us.”
“Why did they get divorced?”
“You mean, besides the crazy?” He snorted a half-laugh. “She was unbelievably jealous. She didn’t trust him on the road. Not that, you know, I blame her. But to be honest, Rob’s not like me.”
“Like you.” I raised my eyebrows even though I knew he couldn’t see that in the dark.
“Before I met you, baby.” He chuckled. “Since I met you, I don’t even see other women.”
“Uh-huh.” I rolled my eyes.
“I mean it.” His lips found my forehead. “I’m a fucking monk now, when I’m not with you. My dick won’t even work unless I’m thinking about you.”
I snorted. “Lay it on a little thicker.”
“Look, I know I was bad.” I could hear his grin. “But Rob wasn’t. That’s my point. He never fucked around. But Catherine… she wouldn’t believe him. They fought constantly. It was… nuts.”
I puzzled over this. “But Rob loved her?”
“I think… he loved the memory of her,” Tyler said. “I think he was trying to somehow make things right. I don’t know. Anyway, after she attacked Celeste, it was over.”
“Catherine attacked Celeste?” My head came up off his chest in surprise.
Tyler nodded. “Celeste still has the scars. Ask her about it, she’ll tell you.”
“I don’t remember reading about that in the tabloids.”
“Arnie kept it out of the media,” he explained. “He’s a fucking genius when it comes to that stuff.”
“I guess so,” I mused. “I mean—you and Rob are brothers. How can that be a secret? There have to be records? Birth certificates? And the shooting! Isn’t that on record somewhere?”
“Those records are sealed,” Tyler told me. “Since we were kids. You know, juveniles. Even if the media wanted to dig, they couldn’t find anything. And Arnie… he gave us pasts, a trail of paperwork. And histories. We just have to live them, at least in public.”
“But you can be a family here,” I mused. “At home.”
“Rob did everything he could to bring us back together,” Tyler said. “I don’t know what I would have done without him.”
“It must have been hard, being separated,” I said.
“Well, I was an addict long before he found me, if that gives you any indication.”
“Oh, Ty…”
“Got that from my mother’s side. Didn’t get a damned thing from my father, thank God.” His voice changed when he talked about his father. It got harder, more brittle. “But who knows?”
“What do you mean, who knows?”
“Who knows what we pass on?” I felt him shrug. “We’ve talked about it a lot, me and Rob. About what kind of crazy, fucked-up shit we might have lying dormant in our genes. What if we had kids and they ended up…”
He let that trail off and I heard him swallow. “I just don’t want to take the chance of passing on that kind of evil into the world.”
Rob had been the one who had insisted they always have condoms in the rooms on tour, who didn’t want any surprise pregnancies. But he’d gotten Sabrina pregnant, and they were both happy about it, as far as I could tell.
But Sabrina had no idea, did she? About Rob’s history?
Or… maybe she did know—and she just hadn’t told me? Maybe Rob had shared it with her, like Tyler had with me, but had sworn her to secrecy? The irony. The one thing I wanted to share with my best friend in the world, but I couldn’t. I had to decide where my loyalties really rested.
But could you really pass something like that on?
I had no idea.
The whole nature or nurture debate was too inconclusive, as far as I was concerned. But I tended to think that nurture had far more to do with how you ended up. If my parents had stayed together, instead of divorcing, I was sure I’d be different. But still, there were things about me—like my sassy mouth and my stubborn, adventurous nature—that were probably ingrained. But had I gotten them from my parents?
Where had Rob and Tyler’s talent come from? I wondered. And why had it skipped over Sarah, then? She’d joked with me that she didn’t even like to sing in the shower, where no one could hear her, because she was so bad. Having lived with her, I knew it was true. She couldn’t carry a tune to save her life. Yet Rob and Tyler had ended up being incredibly musically talented.
Did Tyler really believe that whatever mental illness his father had might be passed on through his genes? It wasn’t like the tendency to get breast cancer or Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. If it had been something that had real, genetic markers we knew about, I might feel more obligated to tell Sabrina, considering that she was now carrying Rob’s baby.
But this was something different. It was like saying that the traits of a serial killer could be passed on from one generation to another. That made me think of Dexter, which was kind of the premise there. But did I believe that? It seemed like a stretch to me. Too simple. More fiction than reality. But the fear was clearly very real for Tyler, and I wasn’t about to minimize it.
“Thank you.” I leaned in close to kiss his cheek.
“For what?” He sounded surprised.
“For telling me. For trusting me.”
“Rob would kill me if he thought you knew.” He sounded a little sorry he’d revealed so much. “Please, Katie…”
“I’m not telling anyone,” I assured him again. “I swear.”
“Don’t let it slip,” he cautioned me. “It’s easy to forget. We’ve been doing this for years. You have to be careful.”
“Who else knows?” I asked.
“Me, Rob, Sarah, obviously,” he said. “And Arnie. And Celeste.”
“No one else?” I asked, incredulous. “Daisy? Jesse? The rest of the band?”
“No.”
<
br /> “I wonder if Sabrina knows?” I mused out loud.
“No way.” Tyler sounded so sure. “He wouldn’t tell her. Not unless he had to.”
“Why did you tell me?” I wondered aloud. “You didn’t have to.”
“I know.” He sighed. “When you ran to the bathroom… I just… I wanted to come after you. I wanted to tell you so bad. I kept thinking how pissed Rob would be if I did. And that just pissed me off even more. I’m so tired of living this lie, Katie. It’s like… it feels like I’m living in darkness. And all I have to do it reach over and turn a light switch on…”
“Oh Ty…”
“But I can’t!” he cried. “It would ruin everything. Can you imagine the publicity?”
I tried to imagine the media coverage, if it leaked out that Rob Burns, lead singer of Trouble, had killed his own father at the age of twelve. And that was, apparently, just the tip of that giant iceberg. The rest involved drug abuse and child prostitution and subjects so dark most people didn’t even think about them, let alone live them. My life hadn’t been a picnic, what with my dad leaving my mom, leaving the state, even—but I hadn’t been through a fraction of what Tyler and Rob and Sarah had gone through.
“But I feel better, telling you.” His arms encircled me completely and he kissed the top of my head. “I feel… a little lighter.”
“Well that’s good.” Recovery was all about telling the truth, right? No wonder Tyler had never come really clean. He couldn’t. He couldn’t tell anyone the full truth.
“You don’t hate me?” he asked softly.
“Tyler, I love you.” I couldn’t seem to hold onto him tight enough. “Nothing would make me stop loving you. Nothing.”
“What if I told you that I’m a serial killer?”
“Okay, Dexter.” I snorted, lifting my face to kiss the grin off his face. Then I pulled back. “You’re not a serial killer, are you?”
“No.” He laughed. “But I do secretly watch American Idol.”
“Oh, my gawd, that’s a deal breaker.” I rolled my eyes and tried to escape from his arms, making as if I was leaving.
“It better not be.” He grabbed my arm and pulled me back to his side. “This is the last season and you’re watching with me.”
“Oh, I guess, if I have to,” I relented, letting him pull me under him as he rolled on top of me. I could feel his cock growing hard against my thigh. “But Simon Cowell’s not on it anymore. And you know, The Voice is so much better…”
“Blasphemy!” He gasped, nipping at my throat, making me squirm. “You know I have to fuck you again, now...”
“Oh darn.” I giggled, opening my thighs and squeezing his hips between them. He felt so strong and solid, and I wanted him inside me more than anything.
“I was so afraid you were going to change your mind.” Tyler shifted his hips, his cock riding the seam of my sex, making me moan.
“About you?” My arms went around his neck. “Are you kidding me?”
“I thought for sure you were going to decide that being with a rock star was just too crazy.” He gave a little grunt of satisfaction as he moved back and then forward, perfect aim, sliding into me in one, fluid motion.
“Ahhhh, baby.” I clung to him. “There is no ‘too crazy’ for me. I live for crazy.”
“Well then, looks like we’re a perfect fit.”
“I’ll say.” I rocked up to meet him. “Now shut up and fuck me so hard I can’t walk tomorrow.”
“Everyone’s gonna wonder why you’re waddling like a little duck.” His cock was still inside of me, thick and throbbing.
“Promises.” I squeezed him with my muscles.
“Guaranteed,” he whispered, drawing back and plunging in so deep I lost my breath.
“Oh!” I gasped. “Fuck!”
“Mmm hmm.”
I didn’t remember much of anything after that.
Chapter Five
It really was all my fault.
I played out all the what-ifs afterward. My head wouldn’t stop reminding me of all the different scenarios, all with better outcomes, which were possible, if I’d just done something else. One small thing could have changed the course of everything. Maybe that was the way of every disaster. People who ended up in the towers during 9/11, I wonder if their last thoughts were something like, “If I’d just stopped to get an Egg McMuffin?”
Because that’s what I kept thinking. What if Tyler or Sarah had come with me? What if Rob had asked someone else to do him a favor? What if I’d insisted on staying in bed that morning, after Daisy brought us breakfast in it, instead of getting up to greet Sabrina and Rob when they came home?
But we didn’t do any of those things.
Well, we spent the morning in bed, after Tyler picked up the phone on the night stand and asked Daisy in a groggy, hoarse voice—we’d been up half the night talking, the other half making love—if she would mind bringing us breakfast on a tray. I was in the shower when breakfast arrived, too excited to sleep anymore. I couldn’t wait to see Sabrina.
The last time we saw each other, I was in rehab and she was barely starting to show. She was probably big as a house by now, I thought with a smile, as I came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel to find Tyler sitting out on the balcony in his boxers, the sliding door open to the early morning breeze, already eating scrambled eggs and sausage.
“That smells amazing.” My mouth was watering. Thank God I had an incredibly fast metabolism. Daisy’s cooking could easily put ten pounds on without a second thought. Of course, just finding my way around the maze of the house was enough exercise. Who needed Pilates when you had a mansion and a swimming pool?
“It is amazing,” Tyler said through a mouthful of eggs. “Come eat.”
I put on a robe and joined him on the balcony for breakfast. We grinned goofily at each other, him over eggs, me over waffles—Daisy had been taking requests, the beautiful food angel that she was—remembering the night before. It wasn’t just that we’d spent most of it making love, coming together repeatedly, in so many ways.
It was like the air was easier to breathe now. I felt so much closer to him, knowing how much he had trusted me with his secret. And I imagined Tyler felt lighter, having shared it. His face looked brighter. He smiled easier. Even his posture was looser. I hadn’t seen him this relaxed since—well, hell, since we were using together.
Which said a lot.
I got a text while we were eating breakfast—I heard my phone buzzing next to the bed. I ran to get it, thinking it had to be Sabrina, but was surprised when I discovered it was Rob.
Hey Katie—I’m planning a surprise for Sabrina. Can you help?
A text from Rob himself? Well, what could I say to that besides sure, whatsup?
Turned out that Rob had bought Sabrina a puppy. He wanted someone to go get said puppy, without Sabrina knowing about it. He’d arranged for Daisy to buy all the puppy necessities—food, of course, plus a collar and a house and all that stuff. But Daisy would be busy cooking people food today, and Jesse would be picking them up from the airport.
I told Tyler and his jaw practically dropped into his eggs.
“He bought her a puppy?” Tyler blinked at the phone in my hand like it was Rob himself delivering the message. “What the hell? A baby wasn’t enough?”
I raised my eyebrows at his tone. “Well the baby’s not due for a couple months, right?”
“Then we’ll have a puppy and a baby running around.” He groaned.
“Babies don’t run for a while.”
“But they cry all the time.” He frowned. “And they smell.”
“Oh my God, Mr. Grinch.” I laughed. “This house is huge. You’ll never hear them if you don’t want to.”
“Still…”
“So, should I tell him no, Tyler doesn’t want you to buy Sabrina a puppy?”
“It’s his house, he can do what he wants…” Tyler grumbled.
“What do you have against babies and puppies?�
� I poked him in the ribs and he half-smiled. “Do you have the same feelings about kittens?”
“Not if they’re named Katie.” He tilted my chin up and leaned in to capture my mouth in a kiss that reminded me just how much I loved him.
“So, can we go pick up the puppy?” I asked, my eyes fluttering open. “Because I kind of like puppies.”
“Oh, all right,” he agreed grudgingly. Then he cocked his head at me. “Do you want a puppy?”
“No.” I laughed. “I’d rather have a grandpuppy—or a godpuppy.”
“Huh?” He blinked.
“You know…” I shrugged, grinning. “A puppy I can give back when I’m done playing with it?”
He laughed as I texted Rob back, telling him that yes, I would be happy to go pick up his surprise puppy. Tyler checked his phone while I did that, and I saw him frowning at the screen, shading it with his hand so he could see more clearly.
“What’s up?” I asked, nudging him.
He handed over his phone. “Arnie sent this.”
“Arnie?” I raised my eyebrows, shading the phone so I could see the photograph, the same way he had. What I saw made me gape in surprise. It was a photograph of Rob and Sabrina on a beach. Sabrina was in a bikini, white with red polka dots—and her belly was much bigger than it had been the last time I’d seen her. She was quite obviously pregnant.
“Look at that belly.” I let out a low whistle. “Where’d he get that?”
“Tabloids.” Tyler sighed as he took his phone back. “Apparently, Catherine saw it. And she’s not happy.”
“Oh.” I wrinkled my nose. “But they’re getting divorced. I mean—she doesn’t really get to say anything about it, does she?”
“It’s not final yet,” he reminded me with a grim look. “And Catherine… she can be vindictive.”
“Well…” I started Googling on my own phone, finding the tabloid Tyler was talking about. Sure enough, it was all over the news. TMZ. Even Entertainment Tonight. “What can she do about it?”
“A lot, actually.” He sighed. “She’s got a bit of leverage.”
“Leverage?”
“Rob has a tendency to go overboard with the women he falls for,” Tyler explained. “You know, giving them everything they want?”