IN THE DISTANCE, LIGHTNING flashed as the storm headed north out of Savannah. The roads were wet, and streetlamps glowed in the foggy haze. My headlights glinted through the mist, creating the illusion of misshapen stars that shone too bright against my eyes.
I shivered, still fucking soaking wet, my insides just as cold as my skin.
I rubbed a hand over my face and tried to focus.
The river walk was almost deserted. Quiet at this time on a Sunday night.
It seemed ludicrous my first damned instinct was to go to Charlie’s to seek the reprieve offered within those old walls. But it, too, was closed for the night. The face darkened, as if the hope I’d found there had also been shut down.
Nowhere else to go, I headed back to Tybee Island. Twenty minutes later, I pulled into the drive in front of Anthony’s beachfront vacation home.
Sighing, I cut the engine and stepped out into the night. My boots crunched on the gravel and thudded up the seven steps leading to the sweeping entrance. I unlocked the door and entered, having no fucking clue where to go from here, because God knew this wasn’t where I wanted to be.
Inside, floor-to-ceiling windows took up the entire wall facing east, the waning storm eclipsing the stars in the sky. The main room was open to the lavish kitchen in the back where Ash, Lyrik, and Zee stood around the island, nothing else to do in this town that was locked down tight on a Sunday night. The smiles on their faces dropped when they saw the expression on mine.
Ash frowned. “Back already?”
Last thing they’d known, the pictures on the Internet had been taken down, and I was heading back to Shea’s with my heart on my sleeve. Wondering if she would kick me to the curb once she realized being with someone like me was too much to deal with, the paparazzi hounding us at every turn, making up lies to satiate their thirst for drama.
Little did we know what was actually waiting to bring us to our knees.
Agitated, I drove my hands through my hair.
“…and?” Ash prodded.
“And it turns out I don’t know two shits about Shea.”
Perplexed, Ash set his beer on the counter, and Zee and Lyrik straightened as they caught onto my agitation.
I exhaled heavily, finding it hard to speak. “Earlier tonight…Child Protective Services showed up to take Kallie away…apparently that bogus article and picture was enough to call into question Shea’s ability as a mother.”
“Bullshit,” Lyrik hissed. Ash and Zee both blanched.
Total, complete bullshit.
I bit my bottom lip, doing my best to contain some of the anger working to break free. “This social worker, she just walks right in, picks up Kallie, and carries her right out the door, saying they’re placing her with next of kin.”
Pain hit me again. The memory of the terror on Kallie’s face a punch to the gut.
“We follow her out, trying to make sense of what the hell is goin’ on…” I swallowed down the bile. “Martin Jennings is waiting on the curb.” I gripped my hair, the words sliding from me like I wanted to purge their truth. “He’s her father. Shea lied to me. Told me Kallie’s father was dead. She’s Delaney Rhoads.”
“No fuckin’ way.” Ash stared wide-eyed.
“Who’s Delaney Rhoads?” Zee asked, confused.
Ash coughed out some stunned laughter. “Country star…popular six, seven years ago. Up and disappeared with a ton of scandal surrounding her name.” Ash had the nerve to smile. “Dude…Shea is Delaney Rhoads. That is crazy cool. Can’t believe I didn’t recognize her, but hell, that was a long time ago.”
“Don’t even start, Ash,” I warned. I definitely wasn’t in the mood to deal with the fact everything was a joke to him.
“What?” He shrugged. “Don’t tell me you don’t think that’s the hottest damn thing to ever cross your path. Shea’s fucking beautiful…give her a mic and a guitar.” Blue eyes gleamed. “Hell yeah.”
Hadn’t even let my mind go wandering that direction. I was too caught up in the fact she’d lied to me and Jennings was a key in both our lives. That Kallie was gone.
“Martin Jennings has Kallie?” Zee’s voice shook, and he rubbed a disturbed hand over his face.
Finally somewhat got the fuckin’ consequence of the situation.
“Yeah.”
Stunned, he dropped his gaze and cursed.
Ash bounced around. If possible his demeanor grew cockier than normal. “So, let’s go get her back. Bust some faces. Make it right. No chance in hell are we leaving that little thing with that piece of shit.”
Ash made it sound so simple. Appealing. Because I wanted nothing more.
A curl of aggression wound through Lyrik. I could feel it, him feeding off me, the intense need I felt to track down that bastard Jennings and finally right all the asshole’s wrongs.
Lyrik was just like me. When you get pushed up against a wall, you push right the fuck back, fists and fury and uncontained aggression. Pair that with Ash spouting his mouth wherever we went? The three of us asked for trouble then turned around and kicked its ass.
But if we gave into that craving, we were only going to make things worse.
“Anthony’s on his way. He has an attorney lined up. We’re going to set this straight.”
“Okay?” Ash drew out as he set his hands on his hips, staring me down.
“Okay, what?”
“Then what the hell are you doing here?”
Running.
I gave a harsh shake of my head. “Martin’s using the assault against her. No question the asshole is the one who got the courts involved. I won’t be a liability.”
Just like Shea had said, he’d been waiting to strike. Bet the sick fuck had been watching us these past months.
Two birds with one stone and all that.
Lyrik swore, while Ash grew livid. “Are you kidding me, Baz? Did she ask you to go?”
I didn’t answer.
“Unbelievable,” he spat toward the ground.
Yeah. It was. All of it.
“You’re an idiot.” Ash kept on like the fucker he was.
Didn’t have it in me to go toe to toe with him, to debate what was right when every goddamned thing was wrong.
Feeling like I might crawl out of my skin, I turned my back on the disappointment rolling off the three of them, because they didn’t know, didn’t know how fucking bad this hurt or the lengths I’d go in order to protect Shea and Kallie.
I escaped out the glass-paned doors leading onto the deck.
Outside, the night was thick. Humidity clung to the sky in the wake of the storm that rolled away like the receding tide. It’d left the slightest chill. A dampness that sunk down to my bones.
My boots thudded on the wooden planks as I marched down toward the sea.
Drawn.
Lights glowed from the windows of the house behind me. Two stories were lit up like a torch, casting the beach in darkness.
I inched down the smooth sand where the tide had been pulled out to sea. I wanted to shout and rant and rave about how fucking unfair this world was.
Always stealing the good.
Blotting out the beauty and light when the vile was allowed to run rampant.
I stretched my arms out to my sides and let his presence crawl over me.
Julian.
He was always there, waiting for me.
I closed my eyes and let the unending regret consume me.
I froze when I sensed the presence behind me, and I slowly turned to find the lone figure hugging his knees to his chest. He was hunched over, obscured from the stretch of lights from the house where he sat at the base of a dune.
Lost to the dark.
“Austin,” I whispered. The sound was eaten up by the wind. I edged toward him, somehow cautious, hating the fact I’d had little time to take care of my baby brother over the last couple of days.
In the texts I shared with Lyrik after what had gone down with the paparazzi and those fucking repulsive pictures, he promised everything was cool. Said they had Austin covered.
Yeah, the guys were family.
But I wasn’t sure that could make up for my absence.
Only I could understand what kind of brutal blow the incident here on the beach with Kallie had been to Austin.
The memories it’d evoked.
He was back to covering his head with that goddamned hoodie.
Fuck, I hated it. Hated that he continued to hide from the past just the same as he allowed it to eat him alive.
I had the urge to shake him.
To tell him again it was not your fault.
I didn’t. Instead, I slumped down beside him. I pushed out a breath and scrubbed a hand down my face.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, digging his fingers into the sand where they dangled between his knees.
I gazed out over the sea. “You know when you think things are finally coming together…that you know you’ve finally touched on something good? Hurts that much worse when it’s ripped from your fingers.”
Eyes peered intently at me from the side.
“Knew I was going to bring her down, Austin. The first night I saw her?”
My heart sped with the memory—the energy that’d surrounded her—the need to get lost in all her sweet and soft enough to make me lose my mind.
He just watched, waiting for me to explain.
“Thought she had to be the most gorgeous girl I’d ever seen. There was something about her I couldn’t shake…not a damn thing I could do to stay away from her, even though I knew when I went back to that bar I was gonna end up hurting her.”
Confusion wound through his tone. “Thought you two had it all worked out? That’s why we came back here, right?”
I raked the back of my hand over my mouth, unable to contain the bitterness breaking free. “I’ve been fooling myself it ever could. Since we came back from L.A., I thought if I let all those walls down…let her in…everything would be okay. That somehow we could make it when my life was nothin’ but a disaster. But these last two days? It was like they were a warning I couldn’t keep up the charade and everything was going to fall apart. That I was still pretending.”
I blew a strained breath toward the sky, before I cut my attention to my baby brother. “She lied to me, Austin. Kallie’s father isn’t dead. Martin Jennings is her father.”
Quickly, I filled him in on the events of the night, every wicked word bleeding from my mouth.
With each one, Austin’s distress seemed to increase. He jumped to his feet and gripped his shaggy brown hair. “What? Shea is Delaney Rhoads?”
I was surprised he even knew the name, considering he would have only been thirteen when Kallie was born.
He paced the sand, back and forth in front of me, like a partner to the wind. More upset than I ever expected him to be.
He turned his grey stare back to me, his face twisted up in confusion. More disappointment. “So you just walked away? Left her there to deal with all this shit on her own?”
“The shit I caused, Austin. She wouldn’t be dealing with this right now if it wasn’t for me.”
“The shit you caused?” Incredulously, he snorted. “Everything you do is to get someone else out of trouble. If this is anyone’s fault, it’s mine.”
“Not your fault,” I grated.
I’d told him what felt like a million times.
When was he ever going to start believing it?
“You know what, Baz? You act like you’re the only person around here strong enough to shoulder any blame. You go around protecting and protecting and protecting until it’s suffocating. You won’t even let me take responsibility for what I did.” Twice, he struck his fist against his chest to punctuate it.
I winced with the bite of his words.
Then he softened, remorse seeming to seep through. “And you know how much it means to me. All you’ve done. What you’ve given up. You became my entire world. My mom, my dad, my brother, and my best friend. You made sure I ate when Mom couldn’t get out of bed, put yourself in Dad’s line of fire to protect me. Fucking hauled me around, this little kid thinking he was on top of the world because his big brother allowed him to tag along.”
“That was the worst mistake I ever made.” My rough voice clashed with the air. “Dragging you into all that.”
“Really? Where do you think I’d be right now if you hadn’t gotten me out of that house? I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t still be breathing.”
Pain clenched my heart. “I did it all wrong.”
“You were a kid, too. You think I don’t know you were doing the best you could?”
Disgusted, he shook his head. “We’ve had a whole lot of bad in our lives.”
His words echoed like my own. Have so much shit, Shea.
“And now you finally have something good. I don’t care who she is or what lies she told you, it doesn’t mean what brought you back here in the first place counts any less. She needs you. Fuck…she needs you, Baz.”
Hurt wound through me. Gutting. I ground my teeth.
He tilted his head, looking at me. Discerning eyes speared me in the shadows, the kid far more mature than I’d ever given him credit for.
Always watching.
“The way Shea looks at you? One day…one day I want someone to look at me like that. And guess what, you look at her the exact same way. And you’re really going to let that go because of an asshole like Jennings? You’ve fought for everyone your entire life, and now you’re going to step down—bow out—when you finally have something worth fighting for? Fight for her.”
“Austin.” I wanted to beg him to stop.
He just continued right on. “My entire life, I’ve looked up to you. Thought you knew everything. Even when I gave up, I somehow knew you were going to be there to save me. But if you think giving up on that girl is what’s right, then you’re a fool.”
He gazed back out over the sea, gentle waves lapping at the shore. The haze of clouds had begun to dissipate. A scatter of stars bled through.
He turned his face to the sky, before he glanced at me from over his shoulder. “I saw something better in you.”
Then he turned and left me there.
I dropped my face into my hands, rubbing my palms up over my head, too many voices clattering inside.
I saw something better in you.
I saw something better in you.
I saw…you…
I see you.
I see you.
I see you.
Shea had seen more in me than I could ever have imagined. Something better than I ever hoped I could be.
And it rushed me.
That sweet, soft girl.
Because the truth was?
I saw her, too.