Her belly was peeking out of her Demon’s Wings shirt, and I cringed at the thought of the little spawn growing inside of her. That little demon child made my Emmie evil at times. When she saw me, her big green eyes lit up and Nik helped her stand. She wrapped her arms around me and wanted to know all about my night out, but I wasn’t ready to tell her about it. For now, I wanted to keep the time I had spent with Lana locked inside, holding onto it for as long as I could before I shared it with Emmie. I hated to admit it but I was probably the least closest with Emmie and it was my fault.
I loved her and would lay down my life for her, but because of what had happened all those years ago, I held a part of myself back, even from her…
Shopping with Lana and Lucy was fun. I was enjoying watching Lana try on clothes that looked as if they were made just for her.
The fun ended when I bought all the clothes that Lana tried on and a couple pair of shoes. She exploded on me and became the fierce little bitch that lurked under the surface of all her angelic beauty. I refused to let my body respond to the sight of how incredibly sexy she looked spitting mad. Instead, I got mad too.
Lana stormed out of the exclusive boutique while I finished paying for the clothes and accessories. Lucy sighed and shook her head but helped me carry the bags to the Escalade. We gave each other the silent treatment while shopping for Lucy.
When I pulled into the driveway a few hours later, Lana jumped out without so much as a word. I followed behind her, and Lucy, weighed down with all the bags from the shopping expedition, walked at a slower pace. Layla met us at the door. Lucy was already talking a mile a minute about the day.
The bedroom door slammed shut just as I entered the guest house, and I glared at the closed door. Even though I was steaming mad, I still wanted to be close to her. And now that stubborn little brat—really she was a bitch sometimes!—hadn’t even let me tell her goodnight.
“Lucy, go watch some cartoons,” Layla told the still bubbling Lucy. “You can tell me all about your day later. I promise.”
“Okay.” Lucy sighed. “Don’t yell at Drake. It isn’t his fault that Lana is so rotten.”
I dropped the bags on the floor. “How was your day?” Layla asked, and I heard the amusement in her voice.
I turned my glare from the closed door to Layla. There was a ghost of a smile on her face. “Your sister is so stubborn,” I told her.
Her lips twitched into a full blown grin. “I’m sure it wasn’t that bad.”
“She didn’t want me to buy her anything. Nothing! Not one little thing. Then, when I bought them anyway, she stormed out of the store and left me there with poor little Lucy. She refused to speak to me the rest of the afternoon…” I broke off, running a hand through my hair and pulling on the ends. I probably looked demented or something, but that was the way I felt right then. “She makes me f…” I stopped before the curse word left my lips and corrected myself. “Freaking bonkers!”
“Give her a little while. She won’t stay mad forever.” Layla assured me with an encouraging smile. “Lana’s the type of girl that doesn’t want material things. She learned the hard way that people trying to buy her affections doesn’t exactly mean that they care about her.”
My heart clenched at her words. Lana had told me a little about her childhood, but like me, she had mostly evaded the subject. The last thing I wanted to do was treat her like some douche bag from her past.
“She would rather you stop and pick her a flower beside the road than buy her one from the flower shop.”
“I wasn’t…I just wanted…” I raked a hand through my hair again, stopping the flow of words that didn’t make sense. I guess I had really fucked up, and I felt a little nauseated that I had hurt Lana, even if it was unintentional. “I’ll call her later,” I muttered.
I couldn’t sleep that night. All I wanted to do was text Lana, but I knew she needed a little while to calm down. To keep myself from picking up my phone, I swallowed a fifth of Jack and let the numbness take me off to nightmare land for the night. I woke at dawn in a pool of sweat and rising bile in the back of my throat.
When I had my shit together, I forced down some breakfast and finally pulled out my phone. My fingers didn’t hesitate as they raced over the keys.
I’m sorry.
I didn’t do that often. There wasn’t much I felt I should apologize for, but I knew I had been wrong this time. I should have listened to her when she said she didn’t want me to buy her anything.
A full minute went by before my phone buzzed. I glanced down to see the message across the screen and felt the tightness around my heart ease.
I’m sorry, too! I was a bitch.
My hands hovered over the keys. Can I come over?
I was hoping you would.
I tossed my cereal bowl in the sink. It took me exactly two minutes to get through the house, cross the patio and small yard, and knock on the front door of the guesthouse. My knuckles barely touched the door before it opened and Lana was throwing herself into my arms. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Wrapping my arms around her small waist, I held her tight for a moment and breathed in the sweet scent of her shampoo and the lotion she always seemed to be putting on. Lana didn’t do perfume. Her fingers combed through my hair, and I closed my eyes tight, basking in the peaceful feeling of having her in my arms for the first time.
“I hate fighting with you,” I muttered as I set her on her feet. “I’m not sure I’d survive if I really pissed you off.”
A small smile tugged at the corners of her bee-stung lips. “Nah. You can handle it.”
I grinned. “Let’s not find out, okay?”
“I’ll do my best.” She rolled her whiskey colored eyes at me, and I smacked her on the ass as she turned into the living room. Her squeal was music to my ears. I picked her up and tossed her on the couch and then spent the next five minutes tickling her until she had tears running down her cheeks. I didn’t normally get so close to her, but my relief at making up with her after our fight was too overwhelming for me not to find a reason to touch her.
Our playing woke Lucy up, and I spent the rest of the day just hanging out with them. Around noon Lana started getting worried about Layla, and we went over to the main house to ask Emmie if she had heard from either Layla or Jesse. I figured that Jesse had been unable to contain his feelings the night before and the two were shacked up in a hotel room somewhere, but I didn’t dare speak my thoughts aloud.
After Emmie assured her that she would call Jesse and make sure they were okay, I talked Lana into a swim. It wasn’t hard to do, but after seeing her in her bikini for the first time, I was seriously regretting my decision to spend a few hours by the pool. What sick bastard invented bikinis anyway? Lucky for me Lucy made a great chaperone, and I was able to keep my reactions in check for the most part.
When I found myself drooling at the sight of Lana’s chest in the lemon yellow top barely containing her curves, I knew it was time to order some dinner. Anything to get some clothes on my angel so I wasn’t constantly in a state of pain from just looking at her.
A movie and some good Chinese rounded out the day. I didn’t want to go back to the main house, but I knew that staying wasn’t an option. Lana and Lucy both had school the next morning, and I had to go into the studio. I placed a kiss on top of Lucy’s dark, curly head and one on Lana’s cheek. “I’ll text you,” I promised.
“Okay.” She bit her lip and I saw the disappointment in her eyes. She was just as reluctant for me to leave as I was to be going. “Thanks for dinner.”
By the time I reached the house, my chest felt like I had an elephant sitting on it. I raced up to my room and found one of my fifths and swallowed a third of it in one go. I was used to the burn as it flooded my throat. The heat as it hit my stomach was a welcoming distraction from the pressure around my heart, and I dropped down on the edge of my bed before swallowing another third.
I didn’t want to be alone, so I ended up o
n the sectional, watching football with Nik and Shane. They didn’t say anything as I sat down between them and swallowed some more of my Jack. The bottle was nearly gone, and I was still feeling like I couldn’t breathe. Fuck! I hated this feeling. All because I couldn’t stand to be away from a girl I had no business having anything but brotherly feelings for!
Jesse came home sometime later. I wasn’t exactly sure what time it was. By then, I had found a second bottle of Jack Daniels and started chasing it with beer. I had no idea what was going on with the football game and no clue as to who was even playing. I was numb but still unable to breathe.
When the bottle was empty, Jesse helped me up to my room and I fell onto my bed. “So what happened?” he asked as he pulled off my shoes. “You and Lana have a fight?”
“Yesterday...” I told him about the shopping trip and the argument we had had. “But I ‘pologized to…day.”
“She didn’t forgive you?”
“Nah. She did. Spent rest…the day ‘er…and Wucy.” My words were getting slurred and I tried to concentrate on forming them. Not that it mattered, all my band brothers had spent so much time around me in a drunken state that they had picked up the language. “One of… best days of my wife,” I admitted.
“So why the fuck are you drinking?” Jesse demanded.
I glared at him. Was he crazy? How could he not know why I was drinking? Was he blind? “‘Cause I want ‘er so fuckin’ much! ‘Cause I feel like I need ‘er to breathe. ‘Cause she is seventeen fuckin’ years old!” I shouted.
The drummer dropped down on the edge of my bed. “Dray, she’s beautiful. A blind man could see how beautiful she is. And it isn’t just on the outside. She’s really sweet, man. Lana is special.”
I knew all of that. It made all my feelings that much more intense. Lana was my angel. And I couldn’t touch her. “I know that,” I whispered.
“And I think she has some strong feelings for you too.”
I knew that too, but for Lana it was just a crush. A girl her age couldn’t understand the feelings I had. I couldn’t imagine her feeling for me what I felt for her. No, I refused to even think about it. I was her friend. That was all.
“What are you going to do?” Jesse asked after a few minutes.
I scrubbed a hand over my wet eyes. “Nothin’.”
“Nothing? So you just go on being friends, but killing yourself with alcohol to numb your pain?”
I shrugged or at least thought I did. “I can’t touch ‘er. I won’t touch ‘er!”
“Have you at least talked to her about this?” Jesse demanded, sounding frustrated.
“No. She’s too young ter understand. I’m not going ter burden ‘er with it.” I didn’t want to put my nightmares in her head. That ugliness didn’t belong inside my angel’s mind. “Shanks for taking care of me, man…” I attempted to say as I let myself float off to sleep…
The dreams haunted my sleep. The fight, the gun shots… Emmie crawled into bed with me, holding me close and whispering things that I couldn’t make sense of through the drunken haze. My tears dried and the shaking in my limbs slowly faded. Her presence alone soothed some of my pain, her fingers stroking through my hair like a lifeline connecting me to the present.
As I drifted back off to sleep, the dream was still waiting to consume me, but it took a different turn than usual. Instead of a nine year old Emmie sitting on my couch, it was Lana. She smiled up at me in that mysterious angelic way of hers, but it didn’t calm me like it normally did.
The trailer was dark, the heat from the summer pressing in on us as Rusty came down the hall. He said something and I watched as Lana turned to me with a disgusted look on her face. Then she faded from the couch as if she had never been there…
Chapter 3
Lana
I should have known it was going to be a sucky day the second I woke up.
The sound of the alarm only made me groan. Since we had moved to Malibu I had to get up an hour earlier so I could get to school on time. Normally I would shower, but this morning I wasn’t in the mood to get my hair wet. I climbed out of bed and went into the bathroom. As I passed the sink, the mirror caught my attention and I saw the effects of a sleepless night.
After falling into bed last night, I hadn’t been able to get to sleep. Instead, I had stared at my cellphone, mentally willing Drake to text me. I didn’t know why, but I had this ache in my gut and a weight around my heart. Once or twice I was sure that I was actually having a panic attack. I had never experienced something like that.
Something deep inside told me that Drake needed me, and I wasn’t sure how I could help. If I went over to the main house and told them that I couldn’t sleep because I was scared something was wrong with Drake they’d think I was a freak. Having gotten to know Shane a little over the last week, I knew that he would only laugh at me.
But the feeling hadn’t gone away, and I tossed and turned all night, finally falling into a restless sleep only an hour or so before the alarm went off.
I brushed my teeth and washed my face. Not in the mood to put on makeup. I didn’t like to wear it anyway, I pulled my hair back into a pony tail and added a headband to keep the stray strands out of my face. Picking up my backpack from the bedroom floor, I found Layla’s car keys and headed for the door.
Layla came out of the kitchen, a package of Pop-tarts and a small bottle of orange juice in her hands. “Drive carefully,” she told me with a warm smile.
For some reason tears burned my eyes, and I could only nod as I left the guesthouse. Layla was my rock. She had been the mother I needed when I was growing up. The day that our mom tossed her out was the worst day of my life. I cried myself to sleep for six months, wanting my sister to tuck me in because Mom wouldn’t. I was only nine, but within a week I was doing things that some grown women didn’t even know how to do—like cooking my own dinner and washing my own clothes.
Just before Mom died she and I had been arguing a lot. I was scared to death that she was ready to kick me out too. Lucy was still so young, so defenseless. It sounds inhumane but I had breathed a sigh of relief when Lydia Daniels died. Moving in with Layla had been the best thing to happen to me since the day I had last seen her.
I was five minutes late for my first class because traffic was so horrible that morning. The teacher let me off with a warning and a lecture on punctuality. Really, I would have rather taken the detention than hear that bag of hot air preaching to me. At lunch I had to settle on a bag of chips and a bottle of water because nothing the lunch ladies had fixed looked edible. Of course Mr. Mills was his usual douche bag self to me during English. I was about five seconds away from telling that prick off when my phone vibrated.
Glancing down at my desk, I saw a text from Drake.
Wanna grab dinner later? Me, you and Shane?
Definitely! I quickly answered back.
I thought my shitty day was over until I got into Layla’s car after school and the damned thing refused to start. Muttering a few choice curses that would land me a scolding from my sister, I popped the hood on the old car then wondered what I had expected to accomplish by doing that. I wasn’t exactly mechanically inclined!
I thought about calling Layla but knew that she wouldn’t know what to do any more than I did. Fishing out my phone from my back pocket, I texted Drake.
Know anything about cars?
A little.
Layla’s car won’t start… I texted, not sure if I was asking him to be my white knight or not…
On my way, Angel!
My heart turned all mushy when he had quickly come to my rescue without me really even asking. It took him thirty minutes to get to my school. A taxi pulled up beside me and both Drake and Shane stepped out. I was one of three cars left in the parking lot. As soon as I saw them, I got out of the car. I put the time to good use by finishing up my Calculus homework while I waited.
Shane had a backwards ball cap on his shaggy head and sunglasses over his eyes. Drake
was sporting some scruff on his sexy jaw, and I was almost hypnotized by him. “Thanks for coming. Sorry to pull you guys away from the studio.”
“You’re more important,” Drake said, making my heart melt all over again. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Layla’s car on the other hand? Well, I’ll leave it to you guys to determine that.”
Shane fiddled with some wires, checked some fluid levels, and then tried to start the engine. It did more for him than it had for me by making a gravely noise, but it still didn’t start. He pushed his glasses up on top of his hat and shook his head. His dangerous good looks were startling when you had those blue-gray eyes looking right at you. He and Drake looked so much alike they could have passed for twins at first glance. Drake was a few inches taller than his brother, but Shane was wider in the shoulders.
“I’ll get it towed,” Shane said after he told me what he thought was wrong with it. I didn’t really understand anything that had come out of his mouth, but I knew that it wasn’t a good thing.
“Great,” I muttered. “How am I going to get to school tomorrow?”
“We can drop you off before we go into the studio,” Drake assured me. I started to argue that it would be too far out of their way, but he gave me a look that told me I was best to keep my mouth shut. Not wanting to start another fight when the last one had left me miserable, I just nodded.
The tow truck arrived, and Shane called a taxi for us. I had already texted Layla with what was going on so she wouldn’t worry that I was so late getting home. But apparently she had already known about the car trouble and that the Stevenson brothers were helping me out.
“Let’s grab something to eat before we go home,” Shane suggested. “I’m freaking starving.”