Idiot.
Zander stood there, his eyes never leaving mine, as he seemed to have an inner struggle. I knew the instant he gave up. He thrust his hands into his jeans pockets and smiled down at me. Not just any smile. It was a smile I remembered well, the one he’d always reserved for me all those years ago. My heart clenched at seeing it now. “Are you busy tonight? I’d like to take you to dinner, maybe catch up.”
I couldn’t stop my eyes from widening in surprise. What the hell? “Are you fucking serious?”
Another shrug. “I’ve stayed out of your way while you and Emmie were so busy with Brie’s stuff, but now that things have calmed down I was hoping we could… I don’t know, talk?”
“You want to talk? Now?” My voice was rising with my anger, but I couldn’t help it. Seventeen years of pain, of gut-wrenching hurt, and anger—so much anger—was beginning to boil in my veins. “Where were you when I wanted to talk to you seventeen years ago? I called Rich Branson, begging him to make you talk to me. Just for a minute. One little minute. I mean after everything, I thought I at least deserved that. How about twelve years ago when I called again, sobbing with my desperation to just have you answer the damn phone? Where the fuck were you when I wanted to talk, Z? When I fucking needed you?”
His entire body tensed, his face going pale. I watched through angry eyes as he swallowed hard and lifted a hand toward me. I slapped it away—no way could I handle his touch right then—and reached for the handle of my car. “I don’t want to talk to you, Z. It’s too late for talking.”
“Anna…”
“No!” I screamed, so close to breaking I hated myself a little right then. “No.” I whispered it that time, fighting back tears. “Goodbye, Z.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Annabelle
Somehow I made it through the lunch meeting with the record-label dick. It hadn’t been easy, that was for sure. I still had anger simmering in my gut along with all the other emotional pain that Zander always stirred up in me. Add to that a record label exec who thought he was entitled to stroke my thigh under the table while we shared a meal and discussed Tasha Vowel’s future with his label, and it had really made for the afternoon from hell.
The exec, I’d been able to handle, although I knew that if I’d had Emmie’s name backing my own I wouldn’t have had to deal with his shit in the first place. Still, I’d had a professional smile on my face as I’d stabbed my fork into the back of his hand. He’d muttered a curse, grinned at me, and then proceeded to give me what I’d come for. Tasha Vowel had been pleased with the results when I’d called her.
It had been Zander who had rotted my brain, making it impossible to concentrate on anything else. I hadn’t even called my family back in Tennessee to talk to them about Emmie’s offer like I’d planned. Noah would have known immediately that something was wrong with me, and my overprotective big brother would have been on the first flight out to California. Right then, that wasn’t something I wanted even though I ached to see him.
I ate dinner with Emmie and her family that night and then went to bed early. As I climbed into bed, my phone buzzed, alerting me to a FaceTime call from my brother. I didn’t have the energy to rehash my day with him, though. Turning my phone off, I pulled the covers up over my head and closed my eyes, hoping for sleep.
A firm, urgent knock on my bedroom door startled me awake half a second before the door opened and Emmie walked into the room with a cordless phone in her hand. “Annabelle, it’s your brother. He says it’s an emergency.”
My heart stopped and everything inside of me went cold. I jumped out of bed, not caring that I was only in a T-shirt and panties, and took the phone from her. “Noah?” So many bad memories were flooding my mind that I knew my brother clearly heard my terror.
“She left, Annabelle. She just up and left.” His voice held no less terror than my own. And anger. Lots and lots of anger. I could hear my nephew’s voice in the background, but couldn’t make out what he was saying. The blood was rushing through my ears, making it nearly impossible to hear anything. “Shut up, kid. I’ll deal with you in a minute… Annabelle, she sent Ben a text about thirty minutes ago telling him where she was. He says she’s fine. I’m going to beat you, boy. You just wait. I’m going to beat the hell out of you for keeping this from us.” We all knew that wasn’t going to happen, but I knew Noah was struggling with the same bad memories as I was. My brother sounded wild, his fear making my own rise. “She’s out there, Annabelle. She’s in L.A.”
“I’ll just go pick her up at the airport. She’s fine, I’m sure of it.” Oh, God, please let her be okay. I couldn’t fucking go through this again. She had to be fine.
“No, Annabelle. You don’t understand, honey. Mieke is already there. Ben said she wasn’t coming to see you.” At those words, some of my fear faded and was replaced by ten tons of dread.
Ah, fuck.
The hand holding the phone dropped to my side and I fell onto the edge of the bed, my legs no longer willing to hold me up. That stubborn girl. My beautiful, stubborn girl.
“Annabelle?”
I slowly lifted my head to look at Emmie. “Um… I need to go out.” Good, I was able to get out a full sentence. At least I hadn’t fallen off the edge. Yet.
Her brow furrowed. “Of course. Is everything okay?”
My chin trembled. “I don’t know,” I whispered.
“Can I do anything?”
Clenching my jaw, I forced myself to my feet and straightened my spine, resolved as to what was to come. “I need Zander Brockman’s address.”
Zander
Ding. Dong.
I ignored the doorbell. I hated the sound of the damn thing. I’d been debating on just disconnecting it altogether. No one ever rang it the way I needed them to and my OCD always went haywire because of it. Tonight, however, it was easy to ignore the damn thing.
Seeing Annabelle today had been equal parts heaven and hell. I hadn’t been able to get my fill of simply looking at her. For weeks, ever since I’d seen her again that first day, I’d been struggling to stay away. The only thing that had kept me from demanding her attention was that she was so busy all the time. At times it had looked like she was going to drop from exhaustion from all the chaos that she and Emmie had to deal with each day.
Now that things were calmer, I’d been trying to find a way to see her. I wanted another chance with her, a do-over—something. Anything. I was tired of feeling so numb, hadn’t even realized just how numb I actually was until I’d seen her again that day in the hospital waiting room. Seeing her again had untwisted something inside of me, and for the first time in seventeen years I was able to breathe again. This morning I’d been handed the chance to try and start the ball rolling for us again.
Only to blow it.
What was I expecting after seventeen years of avoiding her and anything that might be connected to her? I’d skipped award shows where I’d known her brother was up for a country music award. I’d left parties when I’d realized that Noah and Chelsea Cassidy were on the guest list. Fuck, I’d even stopped going back to Tennessee except for when I absolutely had to. When Liam had his accident and we all stayed on Wroth’s farm, it had been the first time I’d even been in the state in over ten years.
Ding. Dong.
Gram and Gramps had both died not long after I’d gotten to California. First Gram that January and Gramps only a few weeks later. It had been like he couldn’t live without her and had gone in his sleep one night. I understood how he felt. Fuck, it was the same for me even seventeen years later with Annabelle. Sure I hadn’t died, but I wouldn’t call what my life had been like without her living.
I’d flown out for my grandparents’ funerals, but that was all. I hadn’t even stayed overnight, leaving the sorting of the house and other things to a lawyer. Some might think that I was being disrespectful, not sticking around to properly mourn the people who had raised me.
I considered it self-defense. The temptatio
n to see Annabelle had been too strong. If I’d stayed even a second longer, I would have been up in Nashville knocking on her door. Knowing she was better off without me, I’d jumped back on the plane Rich had chartered for me and returned to L.A.
Ding. Dong. Ding. Dong. Ding. Dong. Ding-dong-ding-dong.
Shaking my head at the continued ringing of that damn doorbell, I lifted my glass of bourbon to my lips and swallowed half the contents. The hundred-inch flat-screen that took up one wall of my penthouse apartment was on, but the volume was muted. SportsCenter was on, but I didn’t care who had won whatever baseball game that day, or who was playing whom in a pre-season football game.
It was only on because Devlin and Harris had spent the evening at my place. We’d ordered pizza and wings, having a guys’ night while Natalie had gone home to rest after working most of the day at Emmie’s house.
I swallowed the rest of my bourbon, grimacing at myself as I thought about my best friend’s wife. I wasn’t sure why I’d gotten so hung up on Natalie… No, that was a lie. I did know. She was the first person to try to understand me since Annabelle. She’d reminded me so much of the girl I had loved—still loved—that I’d confused affection for something else and nearly ruined not only my friendship with her and Devlin, but also their chances together in the process.
Ding-dong-ding-dong-ding-dong.
Muttering a curse because obviously whoever was at the door wasn’t planning on going away, I jerked to my feet and started toward it.
Ding-dong-ding-dong-ding-dong-ding-dong.
My hand was lifted, about to open the door and snarl at whomever was on the other side when my fucked-up head realized that the bell had rung fourteen times. Frowning, I opened the door, figuring it was Devlin or Natalie, hoping for the impossible and that it was Annabelle.
It was neither.
I found a beautiful girl on the other side of the door. No, she wasn’t just beautiful. There was something almost surreal about her. I put her age at somewhere in her late teens, but I wasn’t sure. She could have been in her twenties for all I knew. She was tall, at least five-foot-eight, with long, curly dark hair and green eyes that had patches of gold in them. Her complexion was a soft tan color, making me wonder if it was natural or if she just spent a lot of time in the sun. Her body was slender, with just a few curves in the right areas, but my gaze kept going back to her eyes. There was something about them—not just their color but also the shape—that reminded me of someone.
There was a mixture of emotions churning in those green and gold eyes: wonder, amusement, anger. That particular mixture confused me, because I didn’t understand any of it. Sure, I’d seen young girls like her with wonder in her eyes because she was meeting a member of OtherWorld. I experienced that daily. The amusement confused me, but not nearly as much as the anger.
“Yeah?” I asked, realizing that we’d been standing there staring at each other for several minutes with neither of us speaking.
“She was right. It is like looking into a mirror.” Her voice was husky and full of the wonder I’d seen in her eyes.
My brows lifted. “Excuse me?”
The amusement only increased. “You don’t see it?”
“See what, kid?”
She rolled her eyes, the amusement being replaced with more of the anger. “Never mind. Can I come in? I expect she will be over here soon. After I texted Ben with where I was, he was supposed to wait thirty minutes before he told his dad. I figured that was enough time to at least get in the door.” When I didn’t move, she pushed past me and walked toward the living room, her green and gold gaze taking in my apartment. “Nice place you have here. I like your view.”
I stood at the open door, unsure what I was supposed to do. Who the hell was this girl and what was she doing here? I had no idea, but my gut was churning as I watched her, and I couldn’t help but feel like she belonged there. She sure as hell acted like she belonged there. Shaking my head to clear it, I closed the door and followed her into the living room.
My guest sat on the couch, where Harris had been only an hour before, and picked up the huge universal remote that controlled almost everything in the room. She studied it for less than two seconds before figuring the thing out and turning to the weather channel. It had taken me two weeks to figure out how to even turn on the flat-screen with the damn thing.
“Oh, look. It’s raining in Nashville.” She sighed and sat back before flipping the channel again. “I love the rain.”
“Me too,” I found myself admitting as I sat in my favorite chair. My eyes were still on this kid’s face. Why couldn’t I stop staring? It wasn’t like I was interested. Just the thought of that turned my stomach. No, it was something else. She had a glow about her, and I was so intrigued.
She grinned and dropped the remote, leaving the volume on mute. The wonder was clearer in her beautiful eyes now, eclipsing the amusement and anger. “Mom told me. She told me everything about you, actually.”
“Oh, yeah?” I had no clue who this girl’s mother was, and couldn’t understand why she would be telling her daughter all about me. Very few people knew the real me anyway, so I doubted that this kid knew very.
She laughed, the sound husky and beautiful. My heart skipped a beat at the sound and I rubbed at my chest as if I were in pain. What the fuck? “You don’t believe me, but you will.”
“Whatever, kid.”
“I’m hungry. Got anything to eat?” She stood gracefully, as if she’d spent years dancing or something. Without waiting for me to answer, she walked into my kitchen and I heard the door to my fridge open. “Gross, don’t you ever clean this thing out? This carton of eggs went bad in May. It’s freaking September.”
I didn’t cook often—more like ever. The eggs had been put in there by the housekeeper from the service I used long before I’d gone on the summer tour with OtherWorld and Demon’s Wings. I hadn’t called the housekeeping service since I’d gotten home this week, so it was hard to tell what she would find in my fridge.
“I just got back from tour. I’ve been meaning to get the housekeeper in here for a good cleaning,” I found myself explaining, and then frowned at myself. I didn’t explain myself to anyone, why should I start with this kid?
“Ah, that would explain the loaf of bread that has mutated into some kind of yeast monster. Scary stuff, right there. I’d be careful if I were you. It might attack you in your sleep.” She laughed again—making my chest ache yet again—and reappeared in the living room. “But seriously, I’m hungry.”
I grabbed my cellphone from the coffee table where I’d tossed it hours ago. “Pizza?” Devlin and Harris had polished off the last of the pizza and wings we’d ordered earlier.
“No, thanks. I don’t like pizza. Can I have something else?”
“Who doesn’t like pizza?” I muttered to myself as I pulled up a few of the local restaurants I liked that I knew would deliver.
“I have a lactose problem,” she said and shrugged as she sat down on the couch once more. “I like Chinese.”
I pulled up the number for my favorite Chinese place and handed her the phone. “Order what you want.”
She clapped her hands excitedly before taking the phone from me and putting it to her ear. “You want something too?” I shook my head and she shrugged as she waited for someone to answer on the other end.
While she ordered, my doorbell rang again. I gritted my teeth, not wanting my OCD to go into overdrive when I had a mystery guest sitting in my living room. Then I realized that whoever was at the door was ringing it enough times.
“That’s Mom,” my guest lowered the phone from her mouth and muttered before returning to ordering enough food to feed a small nation. How the hell was she going to eat all that?
Shaking my head at her, I stood and slowly made my way to the door. I had no clue who was going to be on the other side, but at least they hadn’t put my OCD into overdrive. Glancing back at the kid who was still ordering food—six egg rolls, and
I had no idea where the fuck was she going to put them—I opened the door.
I knew it was her as soon as the door started to open. I felt it in my bones and not just because she pushed hard on the door, knocking the damn thing into my shin. My entire body was like an Annabelle detector and as soon as we were sharing the same air, I could feel her. She blew into my apartment like a hurricane, pushing past me as if I weren’t even there, and stormed into the living room.
Rubbing at the sore spot on my leg, I followed after her. The kid had finished ordering her food and was staring patiently up at Annabelle. Even from where I was standing, I could see the amusement dancing in her eyes. “Mieke, what the fuck are you doing? Do you realize how scared I was when Noah called me? Do you?”
“Hi, Mom. It’s so good to see you too.” She grinned and Annabelle stumbled over whatever she had been about to say. I stood in the doorway, confused as hell. Annabelle grabbed hold of the girl who had just called her ‘Mom’ and pulled her to her feet and then into a hug that should have squeezed the breath out of the kid.
“You are in so much trouble, do you hear me?” Annabelle was still raging even as she hugged the kid, but I thought I heard a small sob in her voice. “I’m grounding you until the end of time. I was so scared when Noah called. You can’t do shit like this to me.” Finally she pulled back, staring down at the girl who was her freaking daughter. “I love you so much.”
“I love you too, Mom.” The girl glanced my way and smiled. “I told you she would be here soon.”
Annabelle stiffened as if just then realizing I was in the room. What was she expecting? I fucking lived there, after all. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at me. What the fuck? I hadn’t done a damn thing to her to earn that icy glare. “What did she tell you?” she snarled.
“Nothing,” the girl assured her mother. “Honest, Mom. I was waiting on you.”
The two females shared a long look I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand any of this. Motherfucking hell, I was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that Annabelle had a daughter. She had a kid. A. Kid. Someone other than me had touched her. I’d always known she would find someone else. It was something I’d told myself I wanted for her—and yeah, I’d had nightmares about the faceless sonofabitch who would one day take my place in her heart. Still, I’d known she deserved so much better than my fucked-up ass. But having the proof of what I’d wanted for her thrown down my throat like this was like having my chest sliced open with a katana.