That didn’t mean I didn’t hate myself for not calling. Didn’t mean I didn’t dial her number every night and fight with myself about hitting send until I fell into a deep, restless sleep in my new bed three floors below my old apartment.
I tried to play my regrets off with indifference, and when that didn’t work, all-out hostility. I didn’t let anyone but Natalie talk to me about Lucy. Didn’t go near anyone else in her family, especially not her parents or Emmie. Honestly, I’d waited for weeks, hoping that Jesse Thornton would show up at my door and beat me to death for hurting his only daughter. I would have gladly let him end me just so I didn’t have to constantly feel like my heart wasn’t even a part of my body anymore.
He hadn’t.
Natalie had told me that he didn’t blame me for what had happened with Tessa or what had followed. She didn’t have to say the words for me to realize that Jesse probably felt sorry for me. That made it worse. He understood and felt bad, not just for the pain Lucy was in, but my own pain too. If it had been my daughter, I wasn’t so sure I could have been even half as understanding.
The graduation ceremony felt like it wasn’t ever going to end. Even though I told myself to look away, my eyes kept going straight back to Lucy. She sat there with her legs crossed, rubbing her feet, and I could tell she wasn’t paying attention. She must have been bored out of her mind. I paid no attention to the speeches, could hear nothing but the blood rushing through my ears as I silently willed her to look up at me.
My eyes stayed on her as she stood and waited with the others to accept her diploma. I watched as she smiled at the guy in front of her when he turned to say something to her. Watched as she played with the leather bracelet on her wrist. I itched to tear that damn thing off and expose the friendship tat that matched my own.
Without realizing it, my finger traced over the ink on my right wrist. That tattoo had helped me through more bad days than I wanted to admit.
“Lucy Daniels Thornton.”
“Yeah!” At least ten people screamed at once as Lucy stepped forward, shook her principal’s hand, and took her diploma. Rockers I’d known my entire life were whistling and calling out her name. People turned their heads to stare, but no one cared. Every one of Lucy’s family and friends were proud of her, including myself. Trinity’s little hands started clapping before I could even lift my own. My throat grew thick with emotion as I watched her do a little curtsy as she reached the end of the stage and smirked up at all her family and friends.
“Go, Lu!” My dad called out and her head turned in our direction.
Her smile was still bright as her gaze easily found him in the dimly lit auditorium, but I knew the instant she caught sight of me. That beautiful smile evaporated and I saw her swallow hard. Lowering her head, she slowly made her way down the four steps and took her place with the rest of the class. The last name was called, but I couldn’t have said who it was. My heart had turned to lead, my stomach already twisting and clenching.
Those eyes.
It was worse than the day she had come to beg me to ask her to stay. It was worse than watching her run away from me. It was fucking worse than having to spend the past few months with the entire country between us.
Her dark eyes had looked emotionless, almost…dead.
What information Emmie had passed along to Natalie obviously hadn’t been right. It couldn’t have been. Her eyes wouldn’t have been like that if she was doing okay. Maybe she could put on a bright smile and fool everyone else, but I wasn’t blind. She was still hurting.
And it was all my fault.
Chapter 5
Lucy
My face was starting to hurt from all the smiling I was forced to do. My body hurt from all the tight hugs my family was giving me.
My heart hurt from seeing Harris.
He was still there. I could feel his presence. Could pick out his voice as he spoke to Jace and Caleb and a dozen other people. Not once did he approach me, though. I tried to tell myself that I was glad he stayed away. Glad he didn’t even look in my direction. It made it easier.
Lie.
It made it worse. I wanted him to approach me. I wanted him to smile at me.
I fucking wanted him to hug me like everyone else did.
Another lie.
I didn’t want the same hugs that my family was giving me. I wanted one that told me he still loved me. I wanted him to pull me close, suck in a deep breath like he was trying to memorize my scent, and then have him whisper in my ear that he’d missed me so fucking much and he couldn’t think straight without me.
Each time someone told me to smile for a picture I did as I was told and mentally counted down the minutes until I could escape. Until I could go back to Kin’s apartment and lock myself in the bathroom. Until I could turn on the shower and sit on the edge of the tub and put a razor blade to my—
“Come on, Lu. Just one more picture and I’ll leave you alone.”
My face felt like it was going to break as I smiled up at my dad while my brothers stood on either side of me. The twins would be ten in October, but they were only a few inches shorter than I was. Each one put an arm around my shoulders as they smiled with ease for the camera that Dad hadn’t stopped using since I’d found them in the crowd outside the auditorium.
Five pictures later, Luca and Lyric hugged me—hard—and stepped back to examine me. “What’s wrong?” Lyric was the first to ask with a frown replacing his easy smile.
“Do we need to hurt someone?” Luca asked as he watched me closely. “I still have some firecrackers in my sock drawer back at the house.”
A small laugh escaped me and I wrapped my arms around both of them, for the first time giving a tight hug rather than receiving one. “I’ve missed you two little beasts so much.”
“Missed you too,” they both muttered.
Lyric pulled back, his dark eyes swirling with a mixture of emotions. “Harris make you cry?” he said and growled so low that only I could hear him.
I shook my head, trying to laugh his question off. “No one made me cry, Ric. I’m just tired. It’s been a long day.”
His eyes moved over every inch of my face for a long moment before he finally nodded and stepped back. “He makes you cry again and he’s dead.”
“Don’t talk like that,” I scolded him. “You’re too young to go to prison.” Knowing those two it would only take one word from me and they would both do just that, though.
My twin little brothers were just as protective of me as our dad was. While that made my heart melt, the thought of them hurting Harris in any way hurt more than any other pain could have caused right then. He might have crushed my heart, but if something happened to him it would literally kill me.
“My turn!”
I turned at the soft voice and crouched down to give Violet a hug as she wrapped her arms around my neck. Lyric stepped back to give her room, but Luca—as always—stayed right where he was so he could watch over his favorite person in the world. “Daddy said you’re graduated now. I’m so happy.”
I glanced up to find both Shane and Harper Stevenson standing just a few feet away. Harper was already snapping pictures with her professional-grade camera while their son Mason sat on Shane’s shoulders observing everything around him with a critical eye. Shane sent me a wink and I straightened so I could pose for even more pictures with Violet and then Shane.
With Luca and Violet now playing on the lawn behind us with Lyric and Mason, Shane and Harper moved in to surround me while my dad took over Harper’s camera and started snapping more pictures. “We’re so proud of you, Lu,” Shane told me as he looked down at me with the same pride that was shining out of not just my dad’s eyes but Drake’s and Nik’s as well.
“Thanks,” I murmured, trying hard not to cry. “Thank you both for coming today. It means so much to me.”
Harper’s arm tightened around my shoulder and she pressed a soft kiss to my cheek. “We
wouldn’t have missed it for anything, sweetheart.” Dad stopped taking pictures when someone came up to shake his hand and Harper moved so she was facing me. “Are you sure you want to do a summer term at Georgetown? I have an intern spot open at the magazine and I would love to have you fill it.”
It wasn’t the first time Harper had asked me to take an intern position at her magazine. Since she had branched off from Rock America she had been after me to work for her. Harper no longer worked with rock stars, but had turned her new magazine into more of a traditional news outlet that had become not only one of the biggest magazines in the country but throughout the world as well. She had branches in Paris, London, Toronto, Germany, Brazil and was now looking into putting a branch in Japan.
As first-time jobs for a journalist went, working with Harper Stevenson would be a dream come true for anyone. But I wasn’t sure if journalism was where I wanted to go with my English degree once I had it. My hesitation wasn’t just because I wasn’t sure if I belonged in California anymore or not. With all the branches Harper had, I could have worked anywhere in the world. I just hadn’t decided what I wanted to do once school was over. I wanted to work with current affairs in a journalist position. I also wanted to be an author, but I’d been contemplating teaching as well.
I was undecided, but no one said I had to choose between the three options. I could do them all if I wanted to. If anything, I wanted to try all three. Maybe then I would be kept so busy I wouldn’t have time to think about anything else.
“Maybe next summer, Harper,” I offered with a smile. “I’d really like to start the fall semester as a sophomore.”
“You work too hard,” Shane grumbled as he ruffled my curls. “We never talk anymore.”
He was right. We didn’t talk nearly as much as we used to. Before my birthday I would text Shane at least once a day and we would talk on the phone or meet up to go for a run together at least every other week. He wasn’t the only one I didn’t talk to like I normally would. I didn’t call Drake like I had in the past and my chats with my sister were getting fewer and fewer. I didn’t know why I was distancing myself from my family.
Liar.
I knew why. I couldn’t stand to hear their voices or see their faces when we talked via whatever video chat we happened to use. I felt so ashamed of myself for the things I continued to do to my body. The cutting was getting out of hand. I knew it but didn’t know how to stop. I was becoming addicted to the release it gave me.
“Okay, I think I got enough pictures.” I glanced over at my mother who was thankfully putting away her camera. With a smile that looked on the wobbly side, she moved between me and Shane and wrapped me up tight in her arms. “I’m so proud of you, baby.”
I buried my face in her hair, letting the comforting scents of her lotion and shampoo calm me like nothing else could. “Thanks, Mom.”
“I need a group picture,” Kin suddenly called out.
My head shot up as my best friend left her stepfather and grabbed Jace by the arm to pull him toward me. “Come on, babe. I want a picture with us all.”
I had a sinking suspicion I knew who ‘us all’ included. Sure enough, Kin stopped long enough to grab Harris by the elbow with her free hand and tugged him in my direction. “Where’s Carolina?” Kin grumbled as she paused to glance around for her stepsister.
“I’m coming!”
It was still hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that Kin and her youngest stepsister had become such close friends. I—like Kin, originally—had always thought Carolina was just like her mother and older sister, Georgia. The younger girl had always been around her mother and sister and we had assumed she was just as much a bitchy airhead as they were. She’d proven she wasn’t, however, when she’d become the friend Kin had needed once I’d left for Georgetown.
“Carolina, I said no.”
No one paid any attention to Jillian Montez as she called after her youngest daughter. Carolina, who had come not just to watch Kin and me graduate but also Georgia, had been sitting as far away from my family as humanly possible. It was a toss-up who Jillian disliked more: my mom or Aunt Emmie. Jillian was the kind of person who fed off of the attention she got. Mom and Aunt Emmie didn’t play those kinds of games, so she avoided them.
“I see she’s still as much a bitch as she always has been,” I heard Mom mutter to Aunt Emmie, who was standing right beside her.
Aunt Emmie shrugged. “As long as she leaves Kin alone, she’s safe. I told that bitch on Christmas morning that if she didn’t back off of Kin, I would make sure her husband didn’t get that next directing job with Paramount. I have the CEO’s daughter on speed dial. One word out of her about Kin and Scott’s ass is grass, which means no more designer shoes for the cunt-faced bitch.”
My mouth fell open and I turned to face them both. “What?”
Aunt Emmie didn’t even blink as she shifted her gaze from Jillian to me. “Did you think I would sit by and let what happened on Christmas Eve continue? Kin is family, Lucy. We take care of family, baby.”
“I know that, but I had no idea you were behind why Jillian backed off Kin like she did. She did a complete one-eighty after that stupid Christmas gala.” I glanced over at Kin who was oblivious to the new turn in our conversation. I didn’t know if I should tell her or not. She was happy today and I didn’t want to bring up her step-monster.
“Angie and Caleb, you two stand here.” Kin was already positioning everyone to suit her. “Lucy, here.” She grabbed my hand and jerked me roughly into place just in front of Caleb. “Caro, you should stand here. Harris, behind Angie, and Jace can stand beside me in the middle.”
I heard Caleb huff and lifted my head to find him smirking down at me. Just like his twin sister, I’d liked Caleb from the first moment I’d met him. Maybe even before that when Kin had told me all about the twins who couldn’t have been more her brother and sister if they had been blood related.
“There’s no use arguing, Lu. She’s going to get her way one way or another. Best to just give in and let her do her thing.” Caleb gave me a wink and I found myself relaxing a little more.
“I can’t get you all in,” Carter, Kin’s stepfather, complained as he stood in front of us with his camera. “Caleb, put your arm around the girl and pull her in closer.”
A big arm wrapped around my waist and I was suddenly off the ground several inches as Caleb pulled me closer into the group. I couldn’t help but squeal, which caused him to chuckle. That deep sound made his chest rumble and I laughed as he tucked me under his arm like I weighed nothing at all.
“That’s better,” Carter said with a nod as he started snapping his camera. Several others did the same and we stood there for a full minute, letting them all get their pictures.
“Change it up a little,” I heard someone call and I could have throat-punched them. “Lucy looks too small with Caleb. Dude, do you bench press trucks or something for fun?”
Caleb laughed again. “Only on Sundays.”
Kin started rearranging us, but as soon as she moved me, I knew it had to have been the plan all along. I was about to rip her hair out when she positioned Carolina next to Caleb and then shifted me so I was right up against Harris. “Bitch,” I muttered and she gave me an apologetic grimace before taking her spot with Jace once more.
Glaring after her, I started to move out of the group when another arm wrapped around my waist. I wasn’t lifted off the ground, but I immediately felt like I was rooted to the spot. My entire body suddenly felt like it had caught fire as Harris’s hand settled firmly at my hip and tightened like he had every right in the world to touch me.
My brain started screaming to get away—far, far away—from the pain he could and would cause. My heart, on the other hand, was crying—fucking sobbing—that it was about damn time. My body didn’t get either memo from those two conflicting organs and it came alive for the first time since Harris Cutter had last kissed me.
&nb
sp; I stood there, tension radiating off of me. Harris’s hand tightened and he lowered his head until I could feel his warm breath on my neck. “Relax.”
“Bite me,” I gritted out low so no one around us could hear.
“What, you can let Caleb touch you but not me?”
I refused to look up at him, so I had no idea what was in his eyes, but he sounded almost jealous. “Fuck off,” I snapped at him, still not relaxing or looking at him. I wanted away from him. Wanted to be on the other side of the fucking planet from him, anywhere but right there with his hand on me, making me feel so many things it twisted me like a pretzel.
“Smile, Lucy,” Nik commanded. I shot him a glare as he snapped a picture.
“Come on, Lu. Smile just once for me,” my dad urged.
If anyone else had asked me to smile, I would have flipped them off, but I couldn’t let him down. Somehow I found the strength to make my facial muscles lift in a small smile, but as soon as he snapped a picture I was jerking away from Harris and heading for the parking lot.
I couldn’t deal with this shit today. It was asking too much to have to smile like I was on top of the world while standing beside the guy who had destroyed me.
Chapter 6
Lucy
“One shot.” The tequila didn’t leave a fiery trail down my throat. I’d already drunk so much of it that I was numb to the blaze. “Two shots. Three shots, four.” I gulped the three shots down like they were water, welcoming the heat in my stomach. “How many shots until I feel no more?”
I paused in the process of refilling my four shot glasses and laughed at the little rhyme I’d just made up. I was already drunk and it was only nine thirty. I’d started drinking as soon as we’d gotten back to Kin’s apartment. Thankfully, Marcus wasn’t with us tonight. I’d asked for a night off from being the ‘rock princess’ so I could just let loose and be a normal eighteen-year-old celebrating with her friends. Luckily I hadn’t had to try hard. My parents hadn’t even questioned my request but had told me to have fun.