Transcending Nirvana (Dark Evoke #3) (21 page)

I nodded.

“I could see how wrapped up in him you were. And I don’t mean wrapped up in the lovey-dovey sense, I mean wrapped up in a distorted, Liam-DeLaney’s-shit-doesn’t-stink-and-I’d-kill-myself-to-make-him-happy sense. It wasn’t right, Kady. I’d been your best friend for years, and I could see him crushing you.”

“Just get to the point, Liv.”

“That was why I suggested a three-some. Kady, I’m a fucking stripper. I’m used to using my body and sexuality to my advantage, it’s all I know. I thought if you saw him crossing that line that it might have sparked something in you to stand up and say enough is enough. But it didn’t.”

My nail snapped and as I peeled the edge of it away, I shook my head and lifted it slowly to meet her gaze. “Yeah, it was my entire fault. It was my fault that I couldn’t see past him and my desire to make him happy, it was my fault each time he hit me and I made excuses, it was my fault that I didn’t see your sick, master plan for what it was,” I bit out, somehow managing to keep a grasp on a thread of control.

“She’s not blaming you, Kady,” Walker muttered to the floor. “She’s just saying that––”

“I know what she’s saying and I’ve had enough of it. Get. To. The. Fucking. Point.”

“You’ve got it wrong, Kady. It wasn’t your fault that you couldn’t see what he was doing to you. That’s what they all do, I know that. He was isolating you; you dropped your own sister because of him. I thought that if I used myself as a distraction for him, then things would be easier for you.”

This made absolutely no sense. “What? What planet are you on?”

Her hands were fisted into her brunette hair, which was drawn over her shoulder and braided. “I know it doesn’t make sense, but it did to me and it did at the time, Kady.” She dropped her hands to her thighs and, ejecting herself from the chair, she stepped around the coffee table, joining me on the sofa at my right. “I thought that if I was taking him away, letting him recharge his batteries and giving him something…different…that he wouldn’t be so angry and demanding with you, that it would give you a little space.

“When he had you put into Pinewood, Walker and I came up with a plan. Our intentions were the same so it made sense to work together.”

My heart rate spiked, I could feel the pounding of it against my ribs, ricocheting throughout my entire body as I turned my attention to Walker. “You…” I gasped, short of breath. My lone word beckoned the lift of his head. That timid expression with a raised brow and hooded eyes, for the first time I could remember, didn’t have an effect on me. It was an,
I’m as guilty as sin
expression; it made me choke and shudder.

“It was easy to blame the time away on business trips,” Liv continued to speak, still, my attention remained on Walker. “As you now know, there weren’t any meetings, he was with me. You can be pissed as much as you want, Kady, but if anything, me taking him away from you for those few nights a month helped you––”

I turned to face her. “Helped me––?”

“Were you ever on your own?” she asked, deadpan.

In those few seconds, I revisited each and every so called ‘business meeting’ Liam went on. Frowning, I turned to Walker. “We got closer…”

“And you started to find yourself again.” Her words continued flowing while I gaped at the man which held my confused and shattering heart. “That man over there gave you hope. He drew out the miniscule bit of the independent, carefree, Kady Jenson that I knew before Liam turned you into his punching bag.

“You were never on your own,” I jolted, feeling her hand on the back of my knuckles, I turned to face her. “I had to make a choice, chick. I either lost you as a friend or I lost you to a pile of dirt in the ground, and trust me, that was where it was going if I didn’t try and stand between you and Liam. I made my choice.”

“The look you gave me, Liv, the day of the accident in the coffee shop…” my voice broke as chills spawned in my body at the recollection alone.

“That was because I was relieved that we had been caught out, that you knew and could see for yourself what type of man he was. When you left, I told him that I was done, that I wasn’t going to do it anymore, but then there was the accident and you lost your memory and everything that both Walker and I had done, was wasted. So, I swallowed my pride, and just like Walker, I made the choice to repeat everything to hopefully spark something for you. I groveled for Liam to take me back. The ‘business trip’ excuse was used again, so he”––she tipped her head to Walker––“could swoop in and help you remember something.”

“But how did he know about us? He came home early. I thought Steinbeck had called him, but she told me the other day that she didn’t…who told him…?”

“Me…” I heard his broken, splintering voice come from my left. I turned in my seat. “I told him.”

“You…you told him?” I gasped. “You put me in danger, Walker. He…he…”

“I know. Trust me; a day hasn’t gone past where that action wasn’t regretted. That’s why I didn’t want to leave you there. You think I came back here when I left you? I didn’t. I went to Da’s and I gut myself open with what I’d done. That was where I was when I called the house and when that line went dead…”

Shaking, I lifted my hand up to stop his words. I felt so betrayed. It was less than six hours ago that I acknowledged that we were nothing but pawns in Liam’s game. Now I felt like nothing more than a prop in a well-directed play…it was too much.

Lifting my ass from the couch, I stormed out of the living room, down the hall to the bedroom.

Walker

It was tearing my heart to shreds, but I let her have a few moments to herself. The silence that surrounded Liv and I was suffocating. After the longest fifteen minutes of my life, I made my way down to the bedroom and knocked on the door once before pushing it open.

The last time she felt deceived, she fled to that very room and curled up on the bed. But not this time.

I watched her move toward the closest with an arm full of clothing, then back to the bed where she stuffed her belongings into a duffle bag. The need to reach out and take her in my arms and apologize was overwhelming. But I had to remain strong and fight that urge with all I had.

The sound of the zipper sealing the bag was so intense that I swore I felt the vibrations in my chest. She was standing at the foot of the bed, her hands wrapped around the black iron footboard as she hung her head. “Where’s the rest of my money?”

The lump in my throat stopped any words from being freed. My eyes screwed shut.

“I said, where is the rest of my money, Walker? I don’t have time for this; my cab will be here in a few minutes.”

I lifted my right hand to my mouth, scouring over the accumulation of stubble that she loved. Defeated and pained, I heaved a sigh then made my way around her, breathing in her scent as I passed and pulled a book from my bedside. Flipping it open, I removed the collection of hundred dollar bills spread out between the pages, before handing them to her in silence. I had to keep silent because if I didn’t, I knew I would have begged her to stay.

Into the bag she stuffed the money, and looked up at me for the first time in what seemed like hours. “You said you loved me, yet everything you did, whether it was out of good intention or not, just hurts me. I won’t allow myself to be hurt by never-ending lies like I was when I was with him. Not anymore.”

My thumb nail scraped at the center of my upper lip as I nodded. “Good.”

With the strap hooked over her shoulder, the bag was hauled from off the bed and she made her way to the door. For that brief moment when she halted with her hand on the doorknob, I saw her turn to face me, and as much as it killed me to do so, I lifted my head.

“Goodbye, Gerry,” she murmured, then fled the apartment, taking my heart with her once again and dropping kicking it down the stairs.

When I heard the apartment door closing, I left the bedroom and went to stand at the bay window in the living room. I watched her as she folded herself into the cab.

“You okay?” Liv asked.

“That was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do,” I muttered, gazing down at her closing the cab door.

“Letting her go?”

I shook my head and exhaled. Letting her go would have been easier, at least it would have been honest. “Pushing her away.”

“I still don’t understand why you did that?” I felt her presence behind me and I knew she had stood up from the couch and was standing in close proximity.

“Did what?”

“Say that you were the one who tipped Liam off that night? She already hates me, Walker. There was no need for you to take the blame for my actions.”

“It was the only way, Liv.” The glass was cold on my palm as I pressed my hand on the window, the car pulling off down the block.

“Only way?”

I turned to face her, muttering, “To get her to hate me enough so I’d stop thinking about what I was losing, and think about what I was protecting.”

Liv

I didn’t expect the phone call from Laurie that morning, let alone expect another from her the same afternoon. The first call she told me what Walker wanted to do. She didn’t agree with it, and to some extent, neither did I.

Over the year that had passed, I was thankful that I could call Walker a friend. I knew how in love he was with Kady, the lengths he went and would go to, was proof of that. And I feared that this idea, rustled up while under pressure, would somehow backfire. He didn’t deserve that.

We all had our roles in this production––the play of Kady Jenson’s life––more so since the accident. We had to band together and relive those Hellish years without so much as a word passing our lips, to make sure she was safe and hopefully, give her a form of courage––help her grow a backbone so to speak––and make her see what everyone else could see. Only then could she free herself from his reign.

The second call I had from her came as unexpected as the first. I refused to no avail, but when Walker demanded Laurie tell me what she had told him, well, I was simply lucky there was a seat behind me. Even after everything that had happened, I still loved that woman. And so, being told that all those injuries Kady had sustained weren’t purely from the accident alone, my world stopped and my body crumbled.

Each time I had Liam’s hands and lips wander my body, the voice in my head would repeat,
you lose her friendship, or lose her to the ground…
so when the words, that came as a sigh down the speaker finally came, and bared the fact that I almost lost her to the ground because of him, I knew I had to go along with Walker’s crazy-assed idea. Especially after he snatched the phone and told me that he made known to the police every sordid detail of their volatile relationship. Regardless of his denying it when he was questioned, it was still an undesirable brush with the law, and one which could potentially drag Liam’s name through the mud.

Shit was about to hit the fan. If I could help in any way, then I would.

And I did.

I was sitting on the couch in silence, my focus dithering between the cooling mug of coffee, my cell phone and Walker, who had been pacing the living room since she’d left. “You did the right thing with letting her go,” I murmured.

“Letting her go? I didn’t let her go, Liv,” he turned on his heel, his T-shirt rising slightly to display a sliver of flesh on his torso, while his biceps bulged upon fisting his hands into his hair. “I pushed her away––”

“But all with good intention.” Heaving myself from the edge of the couch, I made my way around the coffee table to stand in front of him, my hands cupping his face. “We all had our parts to play. Do we regret the outcome? Yes, we do. Not a day goes by where I don’t question what I had done, and if there was a better way of going about it. We need to think of how bad it could have gotten.”

His eyes began to glass over and he sunk his teeth into his lower lip while dropping his head.

“At least you know that she will be safe, because Liam isn’t going to take this light––” my words faded at the chiming coming from my cell on the table behind me. After a friendly, encouraging pat on Walker’s shoulder, I retrieved my handset.

Sliding my thumb up the screen, I opened the text message:

Laurie:
She’s at the airport, going home.

She’s going to be safe.

Thank you.

“Well, we know she’s definitely safe,” I said, handing the phone to Walker so he could read the message. He nodded, although frowning greatly. “This isn’t forever, Walker. It’s not like you’re not going to see her again. Think of this as the fallout, and when it has passed, she can come back.”

“’Aye. Thanks, Liv.”

“You’re welcome,” I breathed when he handed me the phone, then rubbed his arm soothingly. “Now we know what’s happened and that she’s okay, I’d better go.” I fetched my purse from the couch, and hooking it over my shoulder, I stepped towards the apartment door. “If you need me for anything, you know where I am,” was the last words to be spoken as I slipped the chain across the track, and left.

Have you ever had those moments where you’re so relieved to have a weight lifted from your shoulders, that you feel invincible? Those moments where you have to be the bearer of bad news just because you have proof that you outsmarted a person who thought they were shrewd enough to have control over anyone? That’s how I felt when I pulled up outside his house. Irrespective of how often he pushed on the fact that it was
their
house, it was always his, and always would be.