Drowning to Breathe Read online

  Drowning to Breathe

  Copyright © 2015 A.L. Jackson Books Inc.

  First Edition

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior permission of the publisher.

  A.L. Jackson

  www.aljacksonauthor.com

  Cover Design by Mae I Design

  Editing by Making Manuscripts

  Formatting by Champagne Formats

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Names, characters, places, and plots are a product of the author’s imagination. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-938404-90-0

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  drowning to breathe

  More from A.L. Jackson

  prologue

  one

  two

  three

  four

  five

  six

  seven

  eight

  nine

  ten

  eleven

  twelve

  thirteen

  fourteen

  fifteen

  sixteen

  seventeen

  eighteen

  nineteen

  twenty

  twenty-one

  epilogue

  thank you

  other books

  about the author

  More from A.L. Jackson

  Bleeding Stars

  A Stone in the Sea

  The Regret Series

  Lost to You

  Take This Regret

  If Forever Comes

  The Closer to You Series

  Come to Me Quietly

  Come to Me Softly

  Come to Me Recklessly

  Stand-Alone Novels

  Pulled

  When We Collide

  More Bleeding Stars Novels Coming Soon

  Where Lightning Strikes

  Through the Storm

  Embers and Ash

  Whispers in Winter

  Also Coming Soon from A.L. Jackson

  Hollywood Chronicles, a collaboration with USA Today Bestselling Author, Rebecca Shea

  I WEPT TOWARD THE SKY.

  Hemorrhaging.

  Crumbling.

  Breaking.

  “No…Kallie…Kallie!”

  Sebastian’s arms tightened around me as the rain began to pour from above.

  A torrent of pain splintered through my chest. As if it were cracking my ribs open wide, every hope I’d allowed myself to have spilling free.

  Wind whipped through, like a deranged madness that swept along the ground, chasing after the taillights that blinked out at the end of the street.

  Agony.

  Agony.

  Agony.

  “No…please…how could I allow this to happen? Please…Kallie. My baby. My baby. He can’t have her. I won’t let him have her.”

  “Shh…” I felt his breath in my hair, the soft kiss at the top of my head. “We will get her back…I promise you, if it’s the last thing I do, we will get her back.”

  “She’s gone,” I whimpered.

  As the sick realization leached into my bones, I slumped into his hold.

  She’s gone.

  This…this was my penance. The payment for my sins.

  Punishment for every naive choice I had made.

  For every deceit I had blindly swallowed.

  For every lie that had fallen from my lips.

  But every one of them I’d told for her.

  To keep her safe.

  To allow us a life he would never let us live.

  But we can run as hard and as fast as we want, and until we put our pasts to rest, they will always catch up to us.

  Now mine had us in its grip.

  LIGHTNING FLASHED, AND THE heavens wept their torment from above. A furious fall of rain hammered into my body as harsh gusts blew through the downpour.

  A frenzy of earth and wind and sky.

  My entire being strained against it. I clenched my jaw as fat rivulets of water gathered in my hair and streamed down my bare chest and back to soak my jeans.

  Two feet ahead, Shea stood in front of me. Facing away. Her head drooped between her shaking shoulders. My girl, bent in half, and broken in two. All that blonde drenched, like a swilling river overflowing with pain.

  Around us, chaos howled like a demon.

  A hurricane.

  A fucking devastating storm.

  Dark.

  Dark.

  Dark.

  For once, I saw none of her light.

  Rage blistered across the surface of my skin. The pain and fear I had for Kallie ate me alive. That rage headed south and twisted through my stomach, inciting the anger of betrayal throbbing from within.

  “Who the fuck are you?” It scraped from my throat, low and bitter and confused.

  It felt like an eternity passed before she slowly turned around. That face. That fucking gorgeous face I couldn’t erase from my mind looked back on me with misery, and my chest felt like it just might cave.

  “I’m just Shea,” she choked out and hugged herself tighter, going back to the same thing she’d told me on the beach two days ago. I’m just Shea. Three little words that should mean nothin’. But they’d sent a ripple of warning through me then, my gut telling me whatever had brought on her discomfort was caused by whoever the fuck had fathered Kallie.

  Of course, at that time, I’d been under the very misguided impression he was dead—whoever the piece of shit she’d chosen to keep a secret happened to be.

  Now I could only wish he was.

  Martin Jennings.

  My skin crawled and my teeth ground with the accusation. “You lied to me.”

  A sob tore through her. The tortured sound ripped through my insides. “Yes.”

  I opened my mouth to make more accusations when I felt the figure approaching from behind.

  “Shea,” she whimpered over the driving rain. April, Shea’s best friend, slowly edged down the first porch step, hanging on to the wooden rail as if she might fall to her knees.

  More torment made a pass through Shea’s expression. “He took her.”

  Every fear Shea’d ever had was wound up in the statement. I heard it. Fucking felt it.

  “He took her,” she said again, only this time she was begging, looking to April as if she might have the power to wipe it away.

  Holy shit.

  April knew.

  Of course she did.

  I felt like I’d been sucker punched.

  Because that’s exactly what I was.

  A sucker.

  A fool because I’d just let myself go…let go of all my control and gave it to this girl.

  The girl I’d trusted with my fucking life because I’d wanted to give her that, too.

  I felt like the brunt of a cruel, sick joke. An outsider looking in on Shea’s dirty little secret. A secret kept from me when I was the one supposed to hold all her truths.

  But this girl had just given me lies.

  “We’ll…we’re going to get her back,” April whispered almost maniacally, her dark brown eyes wide and scared.

  “He took her.” This time the words on Shea’s tongue sounded foreign. Faraway. I saw the moment the reality crashed down on her and her knees went weak.

  I rushed forward and scooped her into my arms just before she hit the ground. There was nothing I could do but pull her to me. Hold her. Couldn’t stop the way my nose went into her hair
or the way my mouth pressed to her temple. “I’ve got you.”

  I’ve got you.

  Did I?

  She buried her face in my chest, her arms clinging to my neck as if I could be her rock. “He took her, Sebastian. He took her.”

  Her breath seeped all over me. Plea after plea. Like she was asking me to make it better.

  Asking me to be a part of it now.

  I felt torn in a million directions. Shredded. My love for this girl, the devotion that pumped through me with every violent beat of my heart, at all-out war with the voice that kept whispering I didn’t know her at all.

  In what seemed like shock, I carried Shea up the walk and started to climb the porch steps. I twisted sideways to get by April who still clung to the railing. She seemed to be frozen in her own shock.

  Wood creaked beneath my bare feet as I walked across the porch. I didn’t stop when I hit the polished hardwood floors inside. I headed for the staircase.

  I gulped over visions of the nightmare that had just transpired here—The little girl standing at the top of the landing whispering for her mommy, having no clue how her world was about to be crushed.

  As soon as I crossed the exact spot where Kallie had stood, Shea yelped as if she were in physical pain.

  “Kallie.” Her gasped name hit the air like grief.

  I gritted my teeth and pulled her a little closer. “I know, baby, I know.”

  Shea’s room was just as dark as it’d been ten minutes before, the covers still rumpled, and the room smelling like sex. As if we were still back in that moment when I was confessing things I didn’t think I’d ever get to feel.

  Love for a woman I never thought I’d deserve.

  Love for a child who’d caught me up in a whirlwind of tinkling laughter, unending smiles, and a precious, perfect world filled with butterflies.

  Fuck. I wanted it.

  I wanted it so bad but now I didn’t know up from down. Didn’t know who was who or where I belonged.

  Carefully, I set a drenched, shivering Shea on the edge of her bed. Hunched over, she wrapped her arms across her chest as if looking for a way to hold herself together.

  “Don’t move.” I went into the adjoining bathroom and grabbed a couple dry towels from the cabinet. Striding right back out, I wrapped one around her shoulders then began to work the other through the length of her hair.

  Slowly, carefully, I looked down at her as she looked up at me. Her face was wet from the rain, but there was no mistaking the ceaseless tears streaming down her cheeks.

  Caramel eyes latched onto mine, a molten stir of remorse and shame and outright fear. She reached up and wrapped her delicate hand around my wrist. An electric current streaked down my spine. A rush of light and heat and agony. The threads of that unfound tether that tied her to me pulled softly and steadily and somehow urgently.

  I stilled my movements, strung up by her silent charge.

  Didn’t matter I didn’t have the first clue who she really was. She still had the power to command all my senses.

  Her bottom lip trembled. “I didn’t want you to find out this way.”

  I took two steps back and let the towel drop to the floor.

  The words wavered between severe and hurt. “Or you didn’t want me to find out at all.”

  Wasn’t really a question. Just another accusation that made me sound like a first-class dick, because there was no question in my mind she was hurting.

  But shit…who could blame me?

  I gave a harsh shake of my head, pissed at myself.

  How many times had I wanted to go rooting around in her dark? Fucking drawn to it like it might be my saving breath.

  Now here I was, drowning in it.

  As if she accepted my anger, expected it, she dropped her gaze to her fingers twisting like blanched bows on her lap. “I didn’t want you to find out this way,” she murmured like an oath. “This is what I was trying to tell you when the social worker rang the doorbell.”

  I swallowed hard, feeling my eyes narrowing as I pinned her to the spot with the heat of my glare, with the demand. Because even though I already knew it was the truth, I needed to hear her admit it aloud. “Martin Jennings is Kallie’s father.”

  Shea flinched like she’d been struck, lines of horror striking bold across her face.

  Terror.

  Hurt.

  Regret.

  All those emotions made my head spin almost as dramatically as it felt like my heart ached.

  Sorrow squeezed my chest.

  Fuck, I hated him. Had hated him since the second I saw him coming off the tour bus the night I’d gone in to find Austin sprawled face down on the floor. OD’ing on whatever the bastard had fed him.

  Left him there to die.

  Wasn’t like I’d thought all that highly of him before then. Asshole had screamed nothing but seedy pretention and greedy arrogance. Like the snake he was, every strategic move he’d made had been to bring him one step closer to whatever devious goal he’d set his sight on.

  Money.

  Power.

  Insatiable gluttony.

  But that night was the first time the name Martin Jennings became synonymous with destruction. With the highest kind of threat.

  Rocking, she hugged herself tightly. She breathed the admission toward her lap. “Biologically, yes, but in every other way, no.”

  Rapidly I blinked and began to pace, raking my hands through my sopping wet hair as I tried to process the fuckery that had spun my life out of control. One disaster after another.

  Trouble.

  Knew it the first time I saw her. There was just something about her that wouldn’t let me go. Something deep and unfathomable. Funny, I’d still felt like I needed to protect her from the depravity that seemed to make up the definition of who I was.

  And here she was, pouring on another layer.

  Guess I was right. That shit found me anywhere I went.

  Swinging back toward her, I stared her down, unable to contain some of the anger pushing its way free. “You lied to me? After all this time…after everything we’ve been through, you let me go on believing Kallie didn’t have a father?”

  “She doesn’t have a father. He has never been her father.”

  My laughter was bitter, and I began to storm around the room, my feet eating up the floor while vile images of that sick bastard Jennings touching my girl ran through my brain on an unbearable loop.

  I flew back around, my head bent down and cocked to the side as I approached her. Like maybe if I looked close enough, I could see everything she’d been hiding. “I thought we were finished with all the bullshit and lies. I thought I knew you.”

  My face suddenly pinched up with the hurt she’d inflicted. Because it was the truth. She’d gutted me. I’d trusted her, and here I was, uncertain if I’d been the pawn in some twisted game.

  Everyone wanted a piece of Sebastian Stone.

  Now I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d been played.

  My eyes locked on her. Soft and frail and glimpses of that light fighting for a comeback.

  God, how could I even think for a second this wasn’t real?

  I fisted my hand at my chest, giving her raw honesty. “I gave you my fucking heart, Shea. All of it. Wanted to claim Kallie as my own. Wanted everything with you, and now it turns out I know nothing.”

  Tears distorted her voice, and her own truth bled free. “Do you really think you don’t know me, Sebastian? Do you really think you don’t know every single thing that counts? This room…this house…me being a mother to Kallie…loving you.” She emphasized the last, and it struck me deep.

  Tonight was the first time I’d truly accepted she could love me. Accepted maybe I deserved to love her back.

  Creases deepened at the corners of her eyes. “Those are the only things in my life that count.”

  Fear welled up as frustration, and I fisted my hands at my sides. “You think it doesn’t count that prick Jennings had the power t
o just roll in here and steal Kallie away from us?”

  I took a step forward and lowered my voice. “You think that doesn’t matter? And you want to know the sick part, Shea? The only fucking thing I want right now is to comfort you. Make it better. Fix it. And I don’t even know what the fuck I’m fixin’. You lied to me…for months. I’m not sure I even know who you are.”

  “You know me,” she pled. More tears fell, and she sniffled and inhaled. She brought those eyes up to mine. Something fierce billowed out from within them.

  Her voice was a whisper, but there was no mistaking the strength behind it. “Yes, I lied to you. But it’s a lie I’ve told everyone, including myself. It’s the only way I knew how to survive. It was the only way Kallie and I could live a normal life. You don’t know what that man is capable of, and if lying about his existence kept my daughter safe, then I would do it a million times over.”

  I swallowed hard. I’d be nothing but a hypocrite if I said I didn’t understand. How many secrets had I kept locked up tight, refusing to show them to protect my family? My brother? The band?

  I mean, fuck, Shea’s and my entire relationship had been built on a foundation of lies. I was the one who’d kept my identity hidden in the first place. Now I knew what that shit felt like.

  But her being Delaney Rhoads and wanting to leave behind a life she didn’t want was one thing. Martin Jennings being Kallie’s father was a whole different story.

  Did she have any clue how tangled I was in Jennings’s life-sucking web?

  My words were strained. “That’s where you’re wrong. I know exactly what that asshole is capable of. That’s what scares me most.”

  Another rush of chills trembled through her, and she nodded as if she were attempting to make sense of her own questions. “I can’t believe you know him.”

  Biting laughter escaped me before I could stop it as I was struck with another rush of doubt. “But didn’t you already know that, Shea?”

  God, I was so back and forth. Swinging from sympathy and care to wondering if she was some kind of mole planted in my life with the sole purpose of ripping it apart.

  Her chin quivered. “I would never have kept this from you as long as I did if I’d known.”

  “Then how?”

  Helpless, she lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know. Why were you in Savannah, Sebastian? You’re the one who came into my life. I had no idea Martin was a part of yours.” She squeezed her eyes closed, like maybe she didn’t want to ask the question, before she opened to me. “I need to know how you know him.”