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I slowly lifted my eyes from my phone lying silently on my desk and met the bright blue eyes of my friend. We were in our last period of the day and honestly it was the only class that I actually cared about. I’d been writing for the school paper since I was ten years old. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind which senior was going to be the editor this year. This job had had my name on it from the time I’d turned my first article in to my English teacher.
Kin was in the same class since it was the only creative writing class that had been open. She’d originally wanted poetry but, like always, that one had filled up the last day of school the year before. I loved writing but I wasn’t a fan of poetry. It drove me mad looking for all the hidden meanings behind the words. There were too many things that one poem could mean and I would rather deal with the straightforwardness of a newspaper or a book.
At the moment, Kin was holding what looked like a rough draft of the article she was writing on the Christmas carnival that the cheerleaders had hosted over the weekend. Since she and I hadn’t gone to First Bass she’d had to go with her step-monster and stepsisters to the carnival and I’d asked her to do a piece on it for the school’s paper. Her stepsister Georgia was the captain of the cheerleaders so she was able to get a better idea of the carnival than anyone else could have.
Or so I’d thought.
Georgia hated Kin and vice versa. Kin had tried to be nice in the beginning but Georgia had made that pretty impossible from day one. I couldn’t blame Kin for her animosity against the other girl. She didn’t even want to be in California, and if she hadn’t promised her dying mother that she would try to get to know her father and his family she would still be in Virginia with her stepdad and twin stepsiblings.
Pushing my phone as far away as possible, I took the rough draft from Kin and started to read over it. I edited it with my favorite red pen and then handed it back to her without another word, hoping that she wouldn’t bring up going to First Bass tonight.
“You can’t hide from me you know,” she said with a smirk. “I want to go to open mike tonight. Don’t make me go alone, Lucy. Tiny won’t let me past the front door without you. I’ll have to stand in line for hours and probably still won’t get in. And if I do I’ll have to deal with Jace all by myself. If Marcus isn’t there to save him, I might be tempted to kick him in the balls if I see him with his tongue down some skank’s throat again.”
Muttering a curse, I rubbed my hands over my eyes and leaned my head back, glaring up at the ceiling as if it held all the answers to my aching heart but refused to share them with me. “I’ll pick you up at seven thirty.”
Her smile was bright but her eyes told me she knew what going with her would cost me. “Thanks, babe.”
“As soon as you do your thing, we’re leaving, though.” I didn’t want to be there any longer than I had to be. If Harris was there I didn’t want to have to face him.
Marcus would have to step in and save him instead of Jace if I saw his face. I’d moved on from feeling disappointed and hurt—mostly. Now I was angry. Okay, that wasn’t exactly true. I was beyond angry.
I. Was. Pissed. The. Fuck. Off.
How dare he kiss me, tell me he wanted to be with me, and then completely ignore me for almost two weeks? If he thought that I was going to go out with him now, he was out of his mind. I wasn’t emotionally equipped to handle this, damn it.
“Of course. I don’t want to be there any longer than we have to be, either. I can only stomach so much of Jace St. Charles at a time.”
I looked at her and saw the pain that dimmed her normally bright blue eyes. I didn’t know all of what had happened between my friend and the rocker, but I knew enough. Kin and Jace had met at the club where Jace and the rest of Tainted Knights had performed every weekend until Harris had discovered them. They had begun dating and things had started to get serious between them. Then Kin’s mom was told her cancer was becoming more aggressive and there was nothing more the doctors could do for her. Two weeks later Jace had left and hadn’t looked back.
There had been no calls, texts, emails, or even a Dear John letter. He’d packed up and moved away without telling her goodbye and Kin had to face her mother’s death without the guy who had said he loved her while holding her hand.
Douchebag.
--
I di
dn’t have homework so I jumped in the shower as soon as I got home and then got to work on my hair. I was not going to show up at First Bass with my usual crazy curls. It always took at least an hour to straighten my hair—if I was lucky. So by the time I was satisfied with my hair, it was dinnertime and I had to rush downstairs to help my mom.
Dad was just coming through the door after a day spent with Aunt Emmie and the rest of the Demons doing who knew what at Aunt Emmie’s offices downtown. She used to work out of her guesthouse but a few years ago she found a place that suited her and bought an entire floor of offices downtown. Back then she’d only had a secretary and Natalie Cutter to help her. Now she had thirty people on her staff that helped out since she had so many people she represented these days.
“You look beautiful, Lu,” my dad told me after he’d wrapped his arms around my mom and kissed her. “You going out with Harris tonight since he didn’t show up last night?”
I shook my head and continued to set the table. “Kin wants to go to open mike at First Bass.”
His oddly ever-changing eyes brightened at the mention of my friend. “I like that girl. Blew Drake’s mind with the way she can play the guitar. Can she sing?”
“She’s good—not great, but good. Better than some of the pop stars out there at the moment if you ask me. But it’s not her talent as a singer that gets her so much attention. She’s got some serious talent writing songs.” I set the last plate down and turned to face him. “I think Nik should check out an open mike and listen to one of her originals. He’s written some amazing songs over the years and I know he would be interested in what she’s got.”
Jesse Thornton scratched his fingers over his smoothly shaven head, thinking seriously, and I stood there grinning at him. “Yeah, okay. I’ll mention it to him. We might stop by next week and check it out. I’ll talk to Emmie and have her come with us.” He wrapped his arms around my mom’s waist and nuzzled her ear with his nose. “Why don’t we get a sitter for the boys and make it a double date, baby?”
Layla’s face brightened with her smile. “Sounds good to me.” She turned and kissed him quick but deeply. I had to glance away. I loved the way my parents were with each other, but I just couldn’t handle seeing them be all loving and touchy right then. Not when I’d basically lost my best friend because I’d let him kiss me…
“Go make the boys wash up for dinner,” she told him after a moment and my dad left the kitchen yelling for Luca and Lyric.
After dinner I finished getting ready and was just putting on the platinum hoops that my sister had gotten me for Christmas the year before when I heard Marcus and my dad talking outside my room. My bodyguard didn’t live with us, even though I was sure that my dad would have preferred that. He stayed in the guesthouse at Aunt Emmie’s, who lived two houses down from us, with another bodyguard named Rodger.
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