Very off.
“Sir, I’m so sorry for interrupting, but I just need a few moments of your time.”
“George, it’s a night for celebrating. Let’s save work for the morning.” Merriment shone in my dad’s eyes.
But it wasn’t reflected back by George.
I felt a lead weight settle in my chest.
Something was seriously wrong.
“Forgive me for overstepping, but this can’t wait until morning.”
My dad sighed. “Fine. Get on with it.”
I’d never seen my dad act so petulantly, but then again, I’d rarely actually seen him have a conversation with George. Typically their conversations took place behind closed doors.
George glanced over at me and then back at my dad. “Sir, this is sensitive information. I just need a moment.”
“Whatever it is, you can say it in front of my daughter and my future son-in-law. I need to fill them in on some recent developments anyway, but that can wait for another time.”
“Surely this is news you’d like to hear in private.”
“Just spit it out, George.”
George glanced nervously over to me again. I wanted to hear the news, too. The way he was acting made me think it somehow involved me.
I wasn’t sure why my dad was suddenly forcing George to talk in front of us, but I was glad. If it involved me, I deserved to know. I was tired of the secrets. I was tired of being in the dark.
I appreciated that whatever it was, my dad wanted me to know about it.
Maybe he finally agreed that my status had elevated to “need to know.”
George lowered his voice so that he was talking only to my dad, but it didn’t matter. His words carried across the small space toward me. And when I caught them against my ear, I fell into Parker’s waiting arms.
“Damien Williams was found dead this evening.”
fourteen
My dad’s eyes found mine. My immediate thought was Randy, and it terrified me that he was getting closer. He was gaining on us. He’d found Damien, the man my dad had hidden in another state across the country in order to protect.
But Randy had sliced right through that protection.
“Would you like me to go on, sir?” George asked. His voice sounded muffled, like he was farther away than a few feet. But he was surely standing there. I knew Parker’s arms were holding me up, but I didn’t feel them around me. My legs had buckled at George’s pronouncement.
My dad helped Parker get me over to the couch to sit.
“How?” my dad asked. I supposed he figured now that I knew, I might as well hear it all.
“He was shot.”
“Where?”
“His home.”
“I meant where on his body.”
I closed my eyes and said a quick prayer in my mind. I wanted Damien’s soul to find the peace he never found on Earth.
George didn’t speak, so he must have pointed. I was fairly certain I couldn’t handle that particular detail, anyway.
My prayer ended when my dad cursed. “Jesus Christ.”
“There was a note,” George continued.
“A note?”
I opened my eyes and saw George rustling in his pocket. He pulled out his phone, swiped the screen, tapped on it for a few seconds, and then handed it over to my dad.
My dad studied the screen as I felt the anticipation building.
“That’s it?” my dad asked grimly. He texted the photo to his own phone and handed George his phone back.
George nodded.
“Step up security on CC and PJ. Get me two on each of them at all times. Get someone on Arlene and call her to let her know about Damien. And Jadyn doesn’t go anywhere without me.” My dad’s voice was direct, quick, and firm.
George nodded once and left the room to take care of the orders my dad had just issued. I wondered why my dad had mentioned Arlene. My mother. I wondered when they had last spoken. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had talked to her, but maybe they’d kept in touch more than she and I had.
“Dammit,” my dad muttered. “He never should’ve risked coming to that show in New York.”
“New York?” I repeated. So it had been him. He’d been there, and he’d seen me.
And it was the last time I’d seen him alive.
“Do you mind if I ask what the note said?” Parker finally spoke up.
My dad glanced up at the two of us, concern evident in his eyes. He sighed resignedly, and I knew that expression on his face. He had to tell me something he didn’t want to tell me. I’d seen that look more than once in my life. CC, I have to go to New York for a week. CC, I’m going on tour with the band again. We’ll be gone for the summer. CC, I would love if you could accept my new wife into your life.
My dad looked at me. “CC, I am going to read this to you because you and Parker deserve to be in the inner circle. I don’t want you to be scared, because you are protected. Okay?”
I nodded, feeling like the lost little girl who had to say goodbye to her daddy every summer.
“It says, ‘No one cares about the family of a rock star. Are you starting to understand yet?’”
fifteen
I tucked my head into the little nook my arms created. I felt cold. Ice cold. Like I’d never be warm again.
Parker slipped into bed beside me and simply held me. He provided body heat, but it wasn’t enough to warm my chilled skin.
I couldn’t get George’s words out of my head. They echoed on repeat, and every time the word “dead” repeated, goose bumps broke out across my skin.
It had only been a few hours since I’d learned the news.
I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t throw up. I couldn’t talk about it.
I could only catalog my feelings in my mind. I had the Parker category, which meant happiness and warmth and love. Despite the fact that he was beside me, working his hardest to warm me, the drawer to his compartment was closed.
But Damien’s drawer was wide fucking open.
Damien’s drawer represented loss, depression, and darkness.
I couldn’t help but think of the dark times as I reminisced about our relationship, but that only made me feel guilty.
Certainly it was wrong to think ill of the dead, but Damien had been dead to me for almost a year.
I wasn’t sure if the chill that racked my body was because Damien was dead or because of my resentment and my subsequent feelings of guilt.
I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye to him. Maybe it hadn’t been the kind of love I shared with Parker, but it had been something. We had substance together. He’d been my best friend for a long time, and I had loved him in my own way. It wasn’t a forever kind of love like I shared with Parker, but it was still love.
And even though it was his own fault that he left me, and even though I no longer blamed myself for it, I still couldn’t help the terror of knowing I’d officially lost two of the people who were most important to me.
I wanted to protect Parker from the curse of being close to me, but it was far too late for that. We were both in too deep, and I knew nothing I could say or do would push him away. I didn’t want to push him away.
So instead of being weak and fighting him and playing games with our lives, I was going to be honest with him. I was going to make sure that he knew the rule of threes. I was going to make sure that he was fully aware of the danger being with me could bring to him.
As I shook in bed from the cold or the guilt or the fear, I wished I could form the words to warn him.
The only other time I could think of when I’d been unable to speak from trembling so hard was when I’d drank too much one night. I remembered a horrible night of shaking in my bed. The room spun around me, just as it had the night I’d been drunk. Only this time, I didn’t have the pleasure of a night of drinking. Last time, at least I’d been able to throw it up to get it out of my system. I wasn’t sure how to get the guilt and remorse and sadness I felt out of my system.