Rock King by Tara Leigh (25)

Delaney

No. No, no, no.

My limbs, which had been so languid mere seconds earlier, tensed up, and I flinched at Shane’s casual pronouncement. I shoved at his shoulders. “Get off me.”

Was that a proposal? Two sentences. Neither one a question.

Every little girl dreamed of this moment, including me. Especially me.

That settles it. We’re getting married.

Not one of my daydreams had ever ended that way.

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. My life hadn’t exactly gone according to plan so far.

The only world I’d ever known had been completely obliterated in the blink of an eye. Happily married parents, top schools, no worries beyond finding a boyfriend or a summer internship. All it took was a quick text to distract me for a minute, to take my foot off the brake just long enough for the car to drift a few feet into an intersection, setting off a chain of events that killed my mother and stole my father’s freedom.

From that moment on, guilt had eclipsed my carefree life, leaving just an inky darkness that seemed as if it would never end.

And then I’d met Shane Hawthorne.

He rolled off me, his amber eyes studying my face from beneath furrowed brows.

Shane didn’t know that the most recent chapter of my life had been written with a poisoned pen. He’d kissed me until I was senseless, and in the next breath offered me a future I’d thought was out of reach forever. And as if that wasn’t enough, he’d faced his own checkered past, found redemption in the truth.

There would be no redemption for me. I was the one behind the wheel that day. Once I told the truth, my father would be free.

And I wouldn’t.

If only I hadn’t promised to keep my mouth shut. Promised my father he would never visit his daughter in jail.

That pledge had tied my hands more effectively than a set of handcuffs.

I couldn’t keep it anymore.

“That wasn’t the response I was hoping for,” he said, his scowl deepening.

Hope was a dangerous thing. It could only carry you so high before gravity pulled you back down to earth. The higher you flew, the harder you fell. Being with Shane these last few months had been a wild, crazy, exciting ride—especially after the past three years wallowing in guilt and grief. Somehow I’d discovered a frantic, feverish hunger that only Shane had ever spawned in me and that only he could satisfy. Shane had brought joy into my life again, and I’d let his wounds eclipse mine. Living life in his arms, looking at it through his eyes…I’d nearly forgotten that no matter how real my feelings, I was still hiding behind them.

Deep inside though, I was holding out hope that once I told him the truth, he would stay by my side. That he would fight for me, for us, as I’d done. Even if it meant walking back into a courthouse and holding my hand while I faced whatever was coming my way.

But Shane couldn’t do any of that until I told him the truth.

This time, the choice would be his.

Would he stay?

“Frankly, that wasn’t the proposal I’d dreamed of either.” My softly spoken rebuke coated the back of my throat with burnt ash, incinerating any lingering desire pumping through my veins. “But that’s not why I can’t marry you.”

Shane’s jaw clenched as he rolled off the bed, grabbing for his clothes, which littered the carpet. Worn jeans were left unzipped as he pulled his shirt over his head and settled his mussed hair with those elegant fingers that had worked such magic on me just a few minutes ago. “Why the fuck not?”

Somehow I managed a tremulous smile, reaching for the lowest-hanging fruit first. Delaying the inevitable. “For starters, you can’t replace an employment contract with a marriage pact. It’s like you’re trying to frame our relationship with an arbitrary set of rules and expectations. We don’t need that.”

Shane sighed. “What do you want from me, Delaney?”

My tongue swept across suddenly dry lips. “I want you to know that I’ve been with you because it’s where I wanted to be. Maybe not from day one, but definitely from day two. I stayed because I couldn’t bear to leave. Because I fell in love with you, Shane. You don’t owe me anything.” Only your heart.

“I—”

“Wait.” I put my hand up, drawing the sheet around my chest as if it could protect me, and took a shaky breath. It was time to stop beating around the damn bush. No matter what Shane had or hadn’t said, right now the only thing that mattered was what I hadn’t said. Shane’s secrets were all out in the open, his legal battle in the rearview mirror. But mine was just beginning. Because after I spoke my truth, I was going to have to face the consequences, the condemnation. Including Shane’s. I couldn’t hide anymore. “There’s something else. Something you don’t know.”

That I’d done the very same thing he still hated himself for. I had been behind the wheel of an accident. I’d walked away. My mother hadn’t.

I was the murderer.

“I can’t marry you—can’t even be with you—until I’m not betraying you with every other word out of my mouth. I’ve wanted to tell you the truth so many times, for so long. I’m ready to take responsibility for my lies, face the consequences of my actions. But first I need to be honest with you.”

Caramel eyes held mine, and I drank up this moment, these last precious seconds before Shane would know what I’d kept hidden for so long. The horrible, awful truth that was killing me a little more every day. “I was the driver. It was me. I picked up my phone, just for a second, on our way home. I caused the accident. Not my father. Me.”

My heart sank as those eyes hardened into amber, tightening around the truth. Going dark. No. Don’t walk away. Don’t let me go. But even as my soul cried out, I knew it was no use. Standing right in front of me, Shane was already gone.

“You were the driver,” he repeated, the words cold and harsh.

I flinched as if he’d banged down a gavel. “Yes.” The word was little more than a puff of air.

I watched as hardness spread to Shane’s face, the muscles in his cheek twitching until they turned into granite. Fury rolled off his skin, leaching into the air between us. He stood up slowly, tugging at his zipper as he stepped into his boots.

“Say something, please,” I begged, a sense of urgency winding through my misery. Was he really going to leave without saying another word? Was he really going to leave?

“What’s there to say?” he shot back.

“I don’t know. But something. Anything.”

Shane leveled a hard look at me. “You’re a liar. You’ve lied to me day after day, even after I was honest with you. And you were going to leave, just walk away from me—from us—without ever admitting your deception?” His eyes burned with fury. “You were right, you know. That first night we met.”

“What—” My throat closed, and I swallowed. Started again. “What do you mean?” I asked, fear rising in my gut like a summer squall, heavy and drenching. I knew what he was going to say before he said it, and I wanted to cover my ears and drown him out. But I didn’t, my hands wrapping around my chest instead, preparing for the inevitable blow.

Shane delivered, repeating the same words I’d spoken to him in Travis’s backyard. “You’re no one I want to know.” His voice was practically emotionless, and it dragged along my flesh like a serrated blade.

Months ago, I’d used them in a desperate bid at self-preservation.

But right now, Shane sure looked like he meant every word.

The tears I’d been trying to hold back overflowed, falling unchecked down my cheeks as he walked away. I pitched forward, Shane’s parting jab eating me up inside. I had told him my deepest, darkest secret. I’d opened up, let him see me. All of me. Deep down I thought he would fight for me. For us.

Shane’s delicious swagger was just a blur as he covered the distance to the door, his quick pace further proof he couldn’t wait to get away from me.

I was no better than any of the groupies stalking Shane across the globe. I’d allowed myself to fall, so hard and so far…for what?

Shane had been honest about his needs and expectations at the outset—and then he’d thrown them all out the window when we became real.

But Shane didn’t want real. He wanted flawless.

Shane

The hurt written across Delaney face was the perfect counterpoint to the shock I felt at her admission.

No wonder we fit together so well. We had the same wounds, the same cracks in our soul. We’d both been responsible for the death of someone we loved.

We’d both stolen lives.

Delaney’s mother was dead. She was living free while her father wasn’t.

My best friend was dead. I’d taken center stage because Caleb couldn’t.

Stolen fucking lives.

Would I have to watch my gorgeous girl go through what I just had? Tried in the court of public opinion. The possibility—no, probability—of jail time.

Could I stand to see Delaney caged behind iron bars? Jesus. The thought was a cattle prod dragged along my spine. Agony.

I loved her too damn much to lose her.

All this time I’d worried about dragging her beneath my dark cloud. Didn’t want to ruin her.

Now I knew better.

Delaney was the cloud.

Caleb’s death had nearly killed me. But Delaney gone…that would ruin me.

How could she do this? How had I gotten so wrapped around her damned finger that the thought of being without her set my soul on fire?

I’d let my guard down. I’d trusted Delaney with every piece of me, even the ones I despised. And she’d lied to me in return.

All I wanted to do was move past what I’d done, and now I would be reminded of it every time I looked into Delaney’s eyes. Because she’d done the same thing.

She killed. She ran. She lied.

Delaney shouldered crushing guilt and self-hatred every goddamn day. Just like I did.

The girl I’d put on a pedestal didn’t belong on one. She should have been standing with me toe-to-toe. Trusting me with her deepest secrets, as I’d trusted her with mine.

After all this time looking up at her, could I look down? Could I get past Delaney’s flaws? Could I reconcile who I thought she was—who I fell for—with this new reality?

Not tonight. Maybe not ever.

Even though my love for Delaney Fraser flowed through my veins with every caged beat of my heart, it was chased with the bone-deep knowledge that I didn’t know her at all.

We were on a goddamn merry-go-round of secrets and lies. Bliss and betrayal. Fuck-ups and forgiveness.

Delaney had forgiven me my sins without question. But I was drowning in hers. Maybe that made me a selfish bastard.

But I wanted off.

Trudging down the hall, I felt like a thousand-pound bag of dog shit on a hot summer day. Dirty. So fucking dirty.

Disappointment and disgust brewed in my gut, polluting my lungs, hurting my chest. I should have known. Should have known from the first moment at Travis’s house when Delaney looked at me.

Delaney knew me. And I’d let her in. Told her everything. And she didn’t run away. She had stayed.

I’d been so fucking stupid.

Yeah, Delaney knew me all right. Because she was me.

But I didn’t know her at all.

She was living in a web of lies. Lies she was still spinning. How could I be with someone who mirrored the worst choice I’d ever made?

“Two wrongs don’t make a right” was one of my mother’s favorite sayings.

In the elevator, I scoffed. Then why the fuck had the past few months with Delaney felt so right?

She had made me feel again. Crave the future I saw in those gorgeous whorls of blue and green, her eyes shining like a beacon within that angelic face.

I pulled up short just as I set foot outside, and it wasn’t because of the flash of a dozen cell phone cameras documenting my departure.

I fucking loved her. I loved Delaney Fraser.

And she loved me.

Fuck.

Dizziness assaulted my mind, the feeling that Delaney was just another penalty for what I’d done swirling right along with it. I pressed a hand to my stomach, feeling gutted.

Slipping back into the car parked just a few feet away from the hotel’s entrance, I swiped a hand over my mouth as if I could erase the bitterness filling it. Piper was still in the backseat, thumbs and eyes glued to her iPhone.

I dropped into the cool leather seat, feeling shredded by Delaney’s betrayal. Piper glanced up, a sleek eyebrow arching as she set her phone aside. “I take it congratulations aren’t in order?”

A sour laugh gurgled from my throat, and I glanced out of the window, my eyes immediately going to the highest story. Even now, all I wanted to do was go back to Delaney, take her in my arms and devour her until I’d forgotten everything she’d just said. She had told me to live in my truth, to face everything and everyone I’d once run from. What a crock of shit.

Now I was running from her.

I turned away from the window, glaring at Piper. “There any whiskey in this car?”

Delaney

I didn’t leave the room. I couldn’t. Instead, I spent the rest of the night with my face burrowed beneath covers that still smelled of Shane. Taking deep, longing breaths. Desperately hoping he would come back. Knowing he wouldn’t.

It wasn’t until the sun began to creep above the horizon, turning the hulking silhouettes of the buildings surrounding the hotel into oversized, pockmarked gray tombstones, that sleep finally came. I fell into its embrace, grateful for a respite from the pain splitting me in two. But even then, I couldn’t quite escape. It throbbed in the emptiness of my lungs, and I kept sputtering awake, trying to catch a breath.

As I lay there panting, scared to go back to sleep, scared to fully wake up, I heard a noise that sounded like the click of a key-card reader. I bolted upright. “Shane,” I called out, my tone blatantly hopeful.

Only silence answered back.

Leaving the empty bed to investigate, I saw an innocuous envelope pushing crookedly beneath the door. My full name was clearly printed across the middle, the return address still obscured. I peered through the keyhole in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the delivery person, but I saw no one. Whoever had pushed it beneath the door was gone.

Dread unspooling in my stomach, I tugged at its edge, the words in the upper-left corner sliding into view. TRAVIS TAGGERT & ASSOCIATES.

A soft whimper escaped my lips as I extracted the crisply folded stationery through the unsealed back flap. As I unfolded the letter, pulse racing, blood buzzing in my ears, a cashier’s check fell out, fluttering slowly to the carpet before landing, faceup, at my bare feet. Containing more zeroes than I’d ever imagined on a check with my name on it.

I remained standing, still and quiet, as I read the short paragraph.

It was unsigned.

Pain assaulted my senses, the attacking shards so razor-sharp I looked down, expecting my skin to be in ribbons. Performance bonus? Thank you for your service?

I shuddered, staring at the words on the crisp linen page until they blurred, then crushing the paper into a ball and throwing it across the room. It should have made a sound as loud as a meteor hitting the earth. It should have exploded like a grenade, shattering the windows and turning the suite into a fiery, gaping hole.

It did neither of those things.

The wrinkled parchment ball didn’t travel very far, and it landed softly. Harmlessly. With absolutely no correlation to the damage it had done to my heart.

Tears came, and they were not nearly as quiet. Racking sobs burst from my spasming rib cage, scraping my throat and shattering the silence. I pulled my knees into my chest, rocking back and forth as hot tears streaked down my face. They tasted bitter rather than salty, and I rubbed at them with a sleeve of my terry-cloth robe.

In an angry haze, I fought an urge to tear up the check. The words in the accompanying note might have been venomous, but I’d sure as hell earned the obscene amount staring at me. Not on my back, but with my heart.

Surely Shane had taken the vital organ with him. I felt so empty, completely hollow. And yet I was still breathing, still crying.

Whoever said “the truth shall set you free” had never been dumped by the love of their life because of it.

I thought I would feel better after being honest with Shane, even if he decided to walk away. Especially since a part of me had wanted him to walk away, wanted to keep him out of my contamination zone.

But I’d thought wrong. Big-time.

Shane’s absence had left a black hole in the space my heart had been, and I was being pulled into the void.

Foolishly, I’d hoped that he could have looked past that awful link between us. That he could forgive me. But I should have known better.

My eyes were red and puffy as I stumbled into the bathroom and turned on the shower. I couldn’t stay here anymore. Not with the smell of Shane still clinging to the pillows. Maid service couldn’t remove the knowledge that Shane and I had once lain together on that bed, finding rapture in each other’s arms.

I’d wiped it all away with a few words. Words that had been clogging my throat for three years. A truth that had pushed between us like an electrified fence, miles of barbed wire heaped on top.

In a frenzy, I emptied tiny bottles of shampoo and conditioner into my hair and lathered my body with the contents of another bottle. The scents clashed with each other, the combination jarring. Lemon and jasmine and vanilla. I nearly gagged.

Without a stylist, or hair and makeup people fussing over me, I stumbled out of the hotel in still-damp hair, wearing my oldest, most ragged pair of jeans and a stained T-shirt that I’d meant to throw out ages ago. I didn’t have many clothes from my old life, and I couldn’t stomach wearing something Shane had paid for. Ridiculous, I knew, since the check in my purse basically proved that he’d paid for me.