Dirty Shame (Bluefield Bad Boys #1) (14 page)

Chapter 28

Rylan

I stared into my cup. The whipped cream had long turned to milk in my coffee. The super sweet smell was actually turning my stomach sour. It turned out a fancy cup of java wasn’t going to help me out of my funk. I cared deeply for my parents, but they’d really stretched my affection for them today. Knowing that they’d rather see me unhappy in New York with a man I didn’t love than at home with the man I loved made me question their values. It was still all about money and status for them, and it seemed they would take those priorities with them to the grave.

“Oh, I didn’t tell you this bit of gossip. Actually, I don’t even know if it can be classified as gossip because no one cheated or two-timed on someone else, but it’s interesting nonetheless.” Becky waved her hand in an attempt to stop her own tangent. It was something she did often, and I always found it humorous. She leaned closer as if the other patrons in the coffee shop had any interest in our conversation. “Scott told me that Jason paid off his enormous gambling debt. And just in time too. Scott knows the bookie Jason was involved with, and he’s not a nice guy, if you catch my meaning.”

“Yep, I catch it. Where did all the money come from? His dad, maybe?”

Becky sat back with a shrug. “Not according to Scott. He said Jason’s dad would never part with that kind of cash. He doesn’t even know about Jason’s gambling problem.”

“Maybe Jason finally found a rich girl who could stand to be around him longer than three minutes.”

“Three minutes? That would be long in my book.”

“I’ve been lucky enough not to run into him since I’ve been back.”

Becky plucked off another piece of blueberry muffin. “How come you aren’t with Kellan today?”

“I was earlier. We had plans but then something came up. He’s going to text me when he gets done.”

“So I’m just filler?” She winked. “That’s all right. I’m waiting for Scott to finish up with office work. He’s taking me to dinner in the city. It’s so rare when he takes a night off from The Hole.”

“That sounds nice.” My phone buzzed with a message. “That’s probably Kellan now.” I picked up the phone. The message was from an unfamiliar phone number.

“Just took this picture five minutes ago.” I slid my thumb over the picture to open it. It took me a second to decipher what I was looking at. I held the phone closer and then dropped it as if it had caught fire on my palm.

Becky looked up from her muffin. Her eyes rounded. “Oh my god, what is it, Ry? You look like someone just socked you in the stomach.”

I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. I glanced at the phone on the table. Becky grabbed it and turned it over. Her brows fused together as she squinted at the fuzzy picture. “Shit. Is that Lilly hugging Kellan? No way. I mean I know Lilly was always sniffing around Kellan whenever she came to The Hole.” She stopped when she apparently noticed that her words weren’t helping. “There has to be some kind of explanation, Ry.”

I took a deep, stuttering breath hoping it would clear the sudden fog from my head. It didn’t help. “There is an explanation, Becky.” My throat was so dry it hurt to talk. “I’m an idiot.”

My phone rang. I stared at it again as if flames were shooting out of it. Sometimes I hated phones and texts and everything about technology. I picked it up, not completely sure if I’d be able to speak if I heard Kellan on the other end. But then, he was busy with Lilly, so he wouldn’t have time to call.

It was the same unfamiliar number. I was about to find out who my private eye was. “Hello.”

“Hey, Rylan, just thought you’d be interested in that picture.”

“Who is this?”

“Well, if that isn’t a slap in the face. It’s Jason, Jason Meade. I was playing pool and—”

“How did you get my number?”

His laugh was ugly and harsh. “That’s your main concern? How I got your number? It seems that Kelly boy is fucking with you again.” Another laugh and he hung up.

Becky had not taken a new breath in her angst to hear what the call was about.

I stared at the phone. “That was Jason. He’s the one who took the picture.”

Becky twisted her mouth in thought. “Well, it makes sense. He always hated Kellan, and he always loved you.”

“I don’t even know how he got my number.”

There was a flicker in Becky’s eyes as if something had clicked, something had gelled.

“What is it?”

She started to say something and then shook it off. “Nothing. I was just thinking about how Jason might have gotten your number. But I really have no explanation.”

“Becky, if you don’t mind, I think I’d like to go home now.” My phone buzzed. The sound of it nearly made me throw up. My hand shook as I looked at it. It was a text from Kellan. “I’m done with what I had to do. Should I pick you up?”

I didn’t answer. The ache in my eyes melted to tears. I was numb from my head to my toes. “Please, Becky, just take me home.”

Chapter 29

Kellan

I plopped down on the couch. It had been a long afternoon. For a few tense minutes I wasn’t sure Lilly and I weren’t going to leave Browning in one piece. But she was back home, and I knew her parents. They were decent, and I was sure they’d take care of her. I’d called and texted Rylan, but she’d never answered. I figured she got busy doing something else, so I decided to wait at home.

I ripped open a bag of chips and popped open a beer. I’d only just started up a video game when Dawson and Tommy pulled up. Tommy was the first inside. He stared at me as if he was waiting for me to change colors or sprout horns.

“What the hell you looking at, Huck?”

He didn’t answer but looked back as Dawson stepped inside. “I don’t think he saw it yet.”

“Saw what? What’s going on?”

Just then my phone received a text. I pulled it out of my pocket expecting it to be Rylan. It was Meade. “What the fuck does he want? Did we leave a locker door open or something?”

Tommy stepped toward me and held up his hand. “Wait.”

“Too late.” I rubbed my thumb over the picture. It was a picture of Lilly hugging me. Nothing was coming together for me. Dawson and Tommy waited in dead silence for my reaction. “Shit, it’s like that asshole is my shadow. Creepy of him to take a picture without me knowing it. And why the hell are you two looking like you just wet your pants? Lilly was in trouble. Jigsaw beat her, so I went and picked her up. All was cool. The Grunge Devils escorted us out of town. They looked pissed at Jigsaw for giving Lilly a black eye.”

They still hadn’t said anything. Another text came through. It was Meade again. “This is a nice cozy shot of you and Lilly. I’ll bet Rylan thought the same thing when I sent it to her.”

“Guess he sent it to everyone,” Dawson said.

I put down the phone. My pulse was pounding in my ears. My fingers curled into steel balls. “This time I’m going to fucking kill him. I’m going to take that fat meat head of his and pound it into the cement so hard his tiny brain will splatter.” I got up from the couch.

Dawson stepped in front of me. Tommy blocked the door.

“Get out of my way, Dawz.”

“Nope. You’ll have to go through both of us. Then you’ll be hurting too much to pound Meade’s fat head. Just call Rylan and tell her what happened. She’ll understand.”

“Rylan. Fuck, this is why she’s not answering my calls. She’s already decided I cheated on her.” I slipped past Dawson. “Yep, I’m going to kill him.”

Tommy braced a hand against the edge of the door as if he was just casually hanging out. “Can’t let you through this door, bro. You’ll cool off. Rylan will cool off. Then everything will be . . . cool. And you won’t spend thirty years in prison for the murder of a guy who is definitely not worth thirty years. So walk your ass back to the couch, and I’ll get the beers.”

Taking a decent breath or swallow was hard with teeth clamped shut. I lifted my arm and threw my fist into the door right next to Tommy’s head. He barely flinched.

“Sorry, Huck, just needed to hit something if I’m not going to get a chance at Meade. Just step out of my way. I’ve got to go see Rylan. I’ve got to talk to her and tell her what happened.”

Dawson laughed. “So you’re just going to march up to the front door? I’m sure old man Graham probably has his old hunting rifle primed and ready for just such an occasion. Try and call her again. Leave a message.”

“Nope. I need to see her. I know if I can talk to her face to face she’ll understand.”

I reached for the door. “C’mon, Huck, give me a break. Get out of the way.”

He lifted a finger and pointed at me. “You’re not going to go search out Meade, are you? Otherwise, I’m going to buy you a big jar of lubricant for your jail time. I hear that helps.”

Dawson had a good laugh.

“Glad you two are amused. My whole fucking life just fell apart, and all I did was help a friend. I’ve got to find Rylan. I won’t go after Meade . . . At least not today.”

Chapter 30

Rylan

An ounce of luck had followed me into the house and I managed to get inside and up to my bedroom without running into one parent. I dropped onto my bed. Kellan’s scent still lingered on my comforter. My throat tightened as I thought back to the unbelievable morning we’d had together. I pulled the comforter over my body and head, giving myself a nice, downy cocoon against the rest of the world.

I could hear my parents’ voices at the other end of the hallway, readying for their dinner out. Apparently, ruining their daughter’s life in a traitorous move of siding with the devious ex-fiancé hadn’t diminished their appetites for steak and lobster.

Just the thought of food made me press my hand to my mouth. I felt sick to my stomach, but it had nothing to do with whipped cream topped coffee. I’d forced myself to stop crying while in the car with Becky. I didn’t need to put on the same pathetic show I had the last time Kellan had done this to me, the last time he’d completely shattered my heart. I wanted to kick myself hard. I’d done this already. I’d gone through the horrific pain that came with loving Kellan only to find that he didn’t return the same love. Or at least not enough to keep him from Lilly’s arms. I still couldn’t believe it or understand it. Was I really that naive and delusional about his feelings for me? When we were together, the connection I felt always seemed to go both ways. But I’d been wrong.

I heard Dad’s voice booming down the hallway as they headed to the stairs. He mentioned something about me coming to my senses and inheritance and some other words. All of them melted into nothing in my head. My dad seemed to be under the twisted notion that money was more important than love. While my mom had a small list of undesirable traits, that perverse obsession with wealth and status had always been the one thing I’d never admired in my dad. Now, it seemed, I was also lower than wealth on his list of priorities. I was stuck with no place to go. Fuck Chase. This was all his fault. Never again would I change my life for a man, or any controlling parent either, for that matter.

I burrowed down farther in the blanket, thankful that my parents hadn’t realized I was back home. The front doorbell rang. Dad’s loud footsteps pounded the stairs and the floor in the entry. Since Chase and I weren’t going to fill their reservations for four, they must have quickly invited some friends for dinner. No sense in an ugly scene with their daughter getting in the way of a lovely Saturday night out.

I closed my eyes hoping I’d just drift off and away from the awful day. Dad’s voice grew louder and sharper. I pulled the cover down to hear what was going on. That’s when I heard it, the voice that always tugged at my heart, that always instantly sent a tremble through me. But today the tremble was like a soft ache.

“Lanie!” Kellan’s voice rang out from the front steps.

I tossed off the cover but hesitated. What could he possibly say to fix this? He’d told me he had
something
to do. And that something had been Lilly. The same person who’d I’d spent seven years believing that he’d left me for on grad night. Even though he’d insisted that was a lie, the picture had made me question everything he’d told me.

“I will call the police!” Dad barked.

I threw off the blanket. If nothing else, I needed to tell Kellan to leave before my dad had him arrested. I had no doubt that Dad relished the idea of the police dragging Kellan off in handcuffs.

I reached the stairs and took a deep, steadying breath. Facing him was something I hadn’t braced myself for. I tended to be a weak, starry eyed girl when I came face to face with Kellan.

“How the hell did you get on my property?” Dad asked.

“I climbed your fucking fortress wall. I just want to talk to Lanie.”

I reached the bottom step just as Dad instructed Mom to call the police. She scurried enthusiastically off in her high heels to do Dad’s bidding.

“Lanie!” Kellan called again.

“I’m here.” My voice was ragged and quiet and barely audible over my dad’s thundering pulse.

Kellan looked past my dad. He looked as wrung out with anguish as I felt.

“No, you don’t get to look like that, Kellan Braddock,” I said sternly, gathering my strength to face him. This was what true heartbreak felt like, as if I had nothing left to lose. Seven years ago, I didn’t get to tell him how I felt. I wasn’t going to blow that opportunity this time. I walked a little closer.

Dad turned around. “Go back upstairs, Rylan. I will handle this.”

“And you don’t get to treat me like a little girl anymore, Dad.”

Dad stayed between us, and I was glad for that. My defenses were always shot when Kellan was too near. “You don’t get to look hurt. I do. I’m the one that gets to be heartbroken. Not you.”

Kellan took a step forward, but Dad stopped him. “Lanie, please. Lilly was in trouble. I helped her. That’s all it was. You’ve got to believe that. You know how I feel about you. I would never do anything to lose you.”

My resolve nearly cracked just like I knew it would when I saw him and heard him. He was my one true weakness. And so often, he’d been my one true strength. But now I knew I needed to depend only on myself for strength. “You’ve done this to me before. I don’t know why I let my guard down, how I managed to just ignore what happened seven years ago.”

In the distance I heard a siren. “You should go, Kellan.” Then the tears fell. I’d been lecturing myself to be strong but I crumpled. Telling him to go, hearing the words in my own voice had melted the composure I’d been working so hard to maintain.

Kellan looked at my dad and his gaze hardened. “Are you going to tell her?”

“Tell her what?” Dad barked.

“Are you going to fucking tell her about seven years ago?”

A flashing red light twirled around the front gate. Dad pressed the intercom and let the police inside. “You should have left when I told you to,” Dad sneered.

Mom walked triumphantly into the entry, proud that her part had been done.

Kellan looked at me. His dark blue eyes were deep with pain, and his chest was rocking with the short, deep breaths of anger. “Don’t do this, Lanie. Don’t leave me.”

The local head of police, Officer Walker, was, of course, a close friend of my dad’s. He was an ignorant, stern man who thought poorly of Kellan, and any other person from the south side of town.

“Braddock,” Walker said sharply through a megaphone, not even stepping out from his squad car. “Put your hands behind your head.”

Kellan’s face dropped. He put his hands behind his head.

“Dad,” I said, “I will tell you right now that if you press charges, if Kellan doesn’t walk out of here on his own, free to go with no other consequences, then I will walk out of this house and you will never see me again. I will be dead to you, and you will be dead to me.”

Officer Walker’s black police boots pounded up the steps with the handcuffs dangling at his side.

Dad’s face was still red from rage, but his big shoulders drooped in defeat. “Nate,” he said to Officer Walker, “this young man was just leaving. Sorry to have called you out here. Everything’s fine. Just a misunderstanding.”

Kellan shot one last look at me and held my gaze for long enough to wring my heart just a little harder. Then he turned around. Officer Walker waited until Kellan climbed onto his bike and left.

I waited until Dad closed the door. I couldn’t cry anymore. I didn’t even want to feel. I wanted to just drop back into my quilt and never get out of bed again. Dad avoided looking at me. But I stared straight at him.

“So, Dad, tell me about seven years ago.”

“I don’t know what he was talking about. Let’s just get all this behind us. It seems you have dropped him, and that’s a good first step.”

I shook my head. “You’re not telling me something, Dad, and I’m going to find out what it is.” I turned around and raced back up the stairs to the comfort of my room and my warm quilt. It took me a few minutes to decide whether or not the whole damn day had been real, the incredibly erotic morning with Kellan followed by the horrible moment when I discovered he’d gone right off to see another woman, the bizarre few moments when Chase was suddenly standing in our sitting room, the harsh reality that my parents had decided a future with the man who cheated on me would be more than suitable, and, now, the last few minutes when I’d told my parents that I was willing to walk out of their lives for good. The look on Kellan’s face, the brittle sound of his voice as he pleaded with me not to leave him still stayed with me. It had all been an emotional hurricane, and in the midst of it, something was said that I couldn’t shake off.

I reached over to my nightstand and fumbled for my phone. I dialed it.

“Hello.”

“Becky, I need you to tell me something.”

“Ry, how are you feeling? What’s going on? You sound even worse than you did after the coffee shop.”

“Becky,” I said sharply to get her attention again. “You know something. You know something about what happened on grad night, the night that Kellan stopped talking to me. I want you to tell me.”

“Rylan, I don’t know if you’re in the right state of mind to hear this.”

“Becky, tell me. My state of mind can’t get any worse.”

She paused, and I was sure she’d chicken out. At the same time, the pause worried me. She was going to tell me something bad. Something that was going to upset me. I waited. I needed to know. I felt as if I’d been a child kept away from a dark secret that everyone knew but me.

“This is all through Scott’s telling of the story, but you can’t let him know I told you. He’s been living with the guilt of it all this time, and he and Kellan have sort of called a truce on it. So, don’t say a word to Scott.”

“I won’t.”

“On grad night, Jason, Sean Gilly and Scott grabbed Kellan in the school parking lot. They beat him up pretty badly from what Scott tells me. They pushed him into the trunk of Jason’s car and drove him out to the railroad bridge.”

“But why? I knew Jason was a bully but—”

“That’s where the story gets tricky.” She hesitated again. “Oh, Ry, I shouldn’t be telling you this. I don’t know why Kellan never told you. I wish he had. I guess he just didn’t want to hurt you.”

I lowered the phone from my ear and closed my eyes. Maybe this had been a terrible mistake. I heard Becky say my name through the phone. I lifted it back to my ear. “I’m listening. I still don’t understand.”

“Jason had been hired,” she said the word
hired
quickly as if it was unimportant.

“Hired for what?”

“Jason was paid to make sure that Kellan stayed away from you. You were leaving town. It was the perfect opportunity to make sure the break was clean and that you would have nothing to do with Kellan anymore.” Now her words flowed fast as if a stopper had been removed and the secret that had weighed on her conscience was finally being set free. “Kellan didn’t care how badly they beat him. Scott said he basically told Jason that they’d have to kill him to stop him from seeing you.”

A small sob escaped, and I shut my eyes to stop the tears. “But it worked. I left town without another word from Kellan.”

“Yeah, that’s when Jason pulled out the biggest weapon of all. Kellan would lose his job in the mine if he continued to see you. Scott still can’t believe that Kellan jumped from that bridge. He was sure that Kellan was dead. Scared Scott good. He ended his friendship with Jason right after that night.”

“The railroad bridge?”

“Yep. They walked Kellan out there, bound and beaten. The train was coming. They waited at the end of the bridge to beat him more. He stayed on the bridge and jumped just before the train got him.”

“That Jason is a fucking monster.” I thought back to the word Becky had used.
Hired
. “Wait, Beck, who was it that paid Jason to do that?”

This time I could read volumes in her silent pause.

I squeezed my hand around the phone, not sure if it was from anger or disappointment or utter betrayal. “It was my dad, wasn’t it?”

She didn’t answer.

“Shit.” My stomach was tightening. I was sure I would throw up. “Becky, I’ve got to go. Thanks for telling me.”

“I just didn’t want to hurt you,” she said.

“I know, Beck. You’re a good friend.”

“Rylan, there’s one more thing.” She stopped.

“Becky, the wound is open. Just pour in the salt. How much worse can it get?” Then I decided it was probably a stupid question with the way my day had been on a downward spiral.

“Scott thinks that there might have been a money exchange between Jason and your dad again. That’s why Jason was able to pay off his debt. That’s why he sent that picture to you.”

“Of course, it was Kellan’s fault for giving him the perfect photo opportunity.” I slumped back against the pillows on my bed. “My dad is never going to be able to make this up to me.” Tears rolled again. I had always thought so highly of my dad. My entire opinion of him was dissolving. “I’ll talk to you later, Becky.”

I hung up and stared down at the phone in my hand. It had brought me so much bad news today, I wanted to hurl it across the room. Becky’s horrible story still didn’t explain why Kellan had run straight into Lilly’s arms today. One thing was clear. My dad was capable of deceit, and he’d stoop to any depths to keep Kellan out of my life. My being back in town had only made things bad again. For me. For my parents. For Kellan.

I opened up my contacts and found my ex-boss, Jane. I opened the text box and typed. “If the offer is still open, I would love to work for you again. I can start next week.”