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Everyone was out of bed for this.
I couldn’t stop shaking, and it was only when I was in the back of a cop car with my mom’s arms and a blanket around me that I finally looked up. I looked up just in time to see another cop car pulling away. Someone was in the back of that car too, but he was alone.
My physical nightmare was by himself.
He looked so unusual back there, a kid like me. He glanced over his shoulder at me, the car putting distance between us, and as soon as he made eye contact, I pressed my face back into my mom’s shoulder. I couldn’t look at those cold blue eyes. I’d stared at them every day for an entire summer, and I couldn’t look at them again.
Instead, I let fear take me again because I only glanced up after his own cop car took him away. I saw nothing but a head of dark hair while a boy no older than me was driven into the night. The other campers saw him too. They saw what he did too. Thatcher Reed was a monster.
And now everyone else knew it.
CHAPTER
ONE
Aspen - the present
“Excuse me. Are you incompetent? My daughter’s dresses go in her closet. Not on her coffee table, honestly.”
Eugena Davis spun on her red-bottom heels. The middle-aged black woman directed her staff with a firm hand while she questioned their intelligence. She waved at another, her expression terse, frustrated. “And you definitely be careful with that. One string on that cello matters more than your life. I assure you.”
Jesus Christ.
“Mom,” I gritted. One would think after so many years of hearing my mother speak to people as if they were below her wouldn’t faze me, but I could honestly say the opposite. I cringed. “Please.”
She was embarrassing herself and me. I didn’t want people to think I was above them. Never had. Even with all the attention my career had gotten in the past few years.
My mama grunted, twisting in my direction. She popped her curled fists on her designer jeans, seemingly ready to tell me off. That was until someone came into the room with another one of my cellos and set it on the couch of all places.
I had to rub my temple when she told them what an idiot they were, how accidents could happen and someone could sit on it. Again, the cello itself mattered more than his life. At least to my mama, and what was sad was I knew she believed that.
Instead of losing my fucking mind, I sat on the couch next to the cello case. I continued to let my mother direct bags upon bags into my new dorm room like I was some royal princess. She’d had our staff pack up my entire life.
She glared at a man with hat boxes. “You set those down gently. The pearls on that…”
“Matter more than his life.” I was smart enough to keep the quip under my breath, but I got the attention of Franklin Jones. He was surveying the room like he was supposed to, his suit polished, professional. The guy was jacked and looked like he belonged elbows deep in dirt while he dragged himself through trenches. Actually, that was how I’d first come across his work, a war film.
Keeping that thought to myself, I watched Franklin’s eyes flare wide when my mom literally grabbed something out of someone’s hands. She once again called them incompetent, and I palmed my face.
Not long now and she’ll be gone.
I’d be counting the minutes. I had been counting the minutes and long before the decision was made for me to go to college this semester. I’d always planned to go to school, but life had different plans for me.
I didn’t think either my mom or I thought those cello lessons she’d invested in for me when I was five would amount to anything. Most kids got involved with music at a young age, but I’d taken really well to it. In fact, so well that people now paid me to perform. This little dream my mom and I’d had turned into a career and a lifestyle I certainly hadn’t been ready for. My life had seemingly changed overnight in a matter of years. The cover of music magazines. Award shows and sold-out arenas…
I’d actually gone on tour with some of the biggest hip-hop artists in the game. I played with people I’d grown up watching, and now, people paid to see just me. It was crazy, overwhelming.
My mouth dry, I continued to study my mom’s frustrations. People said we looked alike, but I thought I resembled more old photos of my dad. Not that I could compare since he dipped when I was a kid. A judge, he had another life and apparently Mama and me didn’t fit into it. He actually only started calling when he saw me at an award show, which was honestly just embarrassing. He had another family too, according to the tabloids, and I couldn’t help feeling sorry for them.
I wished I looked more like my mother. She was that classic American beauty featured in jeans ads in the nineties. Literally, she used to do modeling before she put everything on hold for me and my career. We also both had locs and people compared us, said we looked more like sisters on red carpets than mom and daughter. This was also the reason she was rail thin, and though I didn’t get those genes, I was happy with my curves. They were modest, and I wasn’t anything more than a C-cup, but I liked to eat and wasn’t willing to sacrifice them. If things were up to my mom, though, that would be different. I had to look a certain way with this life, cameras and all that.
“You can go. In fact, please go,” my mom said, and I could breathe now that all my stuff was finally in the room. All my mom’s dictating was doing was stressing me the fuck out. Everyone but Franklin left the room, and once they had, Mom got out her phone. “I’m obviously going to have to look into hiring some new help when I get back to LA. Honestly, we’ll be lucky if they didn’t break anything.”
These people were new, and that was due to the staff’s choice. No one wanted to work for us since my mom was so strict. She liked things a certain way and was the epitome of a momanager.
“Everything looks fine,” I said, pretending to look and appease my mom.
I got a look from Franklin along the way, the man doing his own pretending. I had to say he’d done a lot of research for his role. He actually looked like a bodyguard over there with the way he studied the windows and peered outside at college students like he was making mental notes about them.
