Vanishing Dreams: Vanishing Dreams (Devil's Bend #2) (12 page)

She had a feeling that life as she knew it had just crumbled around
her. Because if Dalton had found out about her other life, then there was a
good chance Cooper and Tessa were going to find out soon enough.

It’s your fault for keeping all those damn secrets
, she told herself.

And it was true, but Katie had her reasons.

Or at least she thought she did.

Katie’s shift seemed to crawl by. At one point, she had found herself
watching the clock, something she rarely had the opportunity to do. She blamed
it on whatever was making her sick. Maybe she had the flu.

Right.

The flu.

When closing time came, she was anxious to get out of the bar. As soon
as her cleanup was finished, she made a beeline for the door, not bothering to
tell anyone she was leaving.

It wasn’t until she was walking into her apartment that she actually
took a deep breath.

Not that it helped.

“Wow, you’re home early,” Sarah, her roommate, greeted. “I figured
you’d be out with Dalton. What happened?”

“He didn’t come back,” Katie whispered, still feeling a little stunned.
“Do you think he knows?”

“Oh, crap,” Sarah mumbled, pushing to her feet.

“Where’s…?” Katie asked before her friend could wrap her in a
stranglehold and attempt to put Katie’s world back together the way she had so
many other times.

“Sleepin’. It was a good night.”

Sarah was Katie’s roommate, but she was also so much more than that.
She was her best friend, her confidante, and the only person who’d stood by
Katie for the last five years.

“Come on, sit down,” Sarah encouraged, taking Katie’s hand in hers.
“Have you talked to him?”

“Who?”

“Dalton. Good grief, woman. Snap out of it.”

Katie shook her head as though trying to do just that. It wasn’t easy,
because for the better part of the last few hours, she’d been wandering around
in a fog, fearing the worst.

“No,” Katie admitted. For the last month, Katie had been pretending
that she was still communicating with Dalton, more for Sarah’s benefit than
anything. She didn’t want her best friend to worry about her. Granted, she was
pretty sure Sarah knew better. She was tired of pretending. “Not since before
Christmas. He doesn’t try to contact me anymore.”

It was what she wanted, she reminded herself. In fact, that was
something she had reminded herself of every day since she’d last seen him. She
was the one who’d set this in motion. Rather than be truthful and tell him who
she really was, Katie had kept it all to herself, hoping to spare him the
heartache.

“Is that what all this has been about?” Sarah asked, her disappointment
etched on her pretty face.

Katie nodded. She was tired of lying, tired of acting as though
everything was perfect in her already fucked up world.

“Why didn’t you tell me, Katie?” Sarah asked incredulously. “Why would
you keep that to yourself?”

“I… I just didn’t want you to worry.”

“Right. Like I haven’t been worried that you’ve spent the last few
weeks walking around like a zombie, making yourself sick… Oh. My. God.”

Katie met Sarah’s piercing blue gaze, waiting to see what she would
say.

“Are you…?” Sarah moved closer, taking Katie’s hand in hers. “Honey,
are you pregnant?”

God, she hoped not, but she could no longer pretend that wasn’t an
option. Not that she’d ever been pregnant before, but she’d done enough reading
up in the last few days to believe it was a real possibility. “I haven’t taken
a pregnancy test,” Katie told Sarah, glancing down at her lap.

“But it’s a possibility?”

“Yeah.” Admitting that aloud actually felt surprisingly good. It took
some of the weight off her shoulders. Not that it made anything better, but it
helped.

“We need to take a test,” Sarah stated firmly.

Katie lifted her eyes until their gazes met. “We?” she asked with a
small smile.

“I’m here for you, Katie. You’re my best friend in the entire world.
I’d do anything for you. You know that.”

Katie did know that. But during all of this, she had shut out the one
person she knew she could depend on.

“Do you want me to run out and get one now? There’s a twenty-four-hour
pharmacy not far from here.”

“No,” Katie said adamantly. “Not now. Today, though. I promise.” It was
after three in the morning; Katie did not want Sarah to go anywhere, especially
not on an errand for her.

“Okay. After my shift this morning, I’ll stop and pick one up.”

Katie nodded. She didn’t move, trying to put together the next words,
trying to formulate the questions that had been plaguing her. She swallowed
hard and met Sarah’s eyes once more. “Do you think I should? You know, reach
out to him?” Katie asked Sarah, dropping to the couch when the cushion hit the
back of her knees.

“Are you ready to tell him the truth? Because if you’re not, what good
is it going to do?” Sarah questioned.

Sarah had a point. Katie wasn’t looking to tell him everything that was
going on. It would defeat the purpose of all her suffering for the last month.
And it wasn’t as if he was going to look at her and say all was forgiven. She’d
lied to him. She’d omitted the truth for weeks on end, and there was no way he
could forgive her.

After all, she was a stripper. A woman who took her clothes off for cash.

Didn’t matter that she hated it, despised going to work at the club.
But it was a necessary evil, one that paid the bills and kept her little world
spinning.

“He knows,” Katie whispered, fighting the tears that were clogging her
throat.

“You don’t know that.”

Katie shook her head. “He knows, and now he knows I lied to him.”

“How could he know?”

Katie shrugged while she said, “He’s a celebrity. People dig up dirt on
him all the time. Maybe someone figured it out.”

“But y’all have been broken up for weeks. Why would anyone care?”

Katie processed her friend’s questions, but the words weren’t what
bothered her. Sarah’s expression said it all, confirming Katie’s worst fears.

“I should’ve told him.”

“I won’t argue with you there,” Sarah stated, not helping at all.

Katie stared at the wall, wishing like hell that life had been easy,
that she’d been given the opportunity so many other people had. Instead, she’d
had to make difficult — no, make that impossible — decisions that were now
going to come back and bite her in the ass.

Knowing that sitting around wasn’t going to help the situation any,
Katie pushed to her feet and headed for her bedroom. She snagged her purse and
her cell phone on the way.

Maybe Dalton didn’t want to hear what she had to say, but now that the
truth was out, she needed to explain. It wasn’t going to fix anything, but
maybe if he heard it from her … maybe then he’d be able to forgive her one day.

“Sonuvabitch,” Dalton groaned as he tossed and turned, grabbing the cheap-ass
motel room pillow and yanking it over his head.

He should’ve turned his damn cell phone off.

But he hadn’t and there’d been a reason for that.

Honestly, he’d been hoping that Katie would call. Every fucking night
for the last month, he’d been hoping she would call to tell him that something
had happened. That she would never purposely turn her back on him. That she
wanted to be with him.

That call had never come.

But she had called last night. More than once. Only he hadn’t answered
any of her calls, not wanting to hear the disgusting truth.

Disgusting? A little judgmental, huh?

Dalton squeezed his eyes shut, trying to force that damn voice out of
his head. He had every right to be pissed. Katie had lied to him.

And she was a fucking stripper, for chrissakes.

That doesn’t make her a bad person.

“Shut. The. Fuck. Up,” he told that damned voice in his head. There was
no way in hell that Dalton was going to rationalize what Katie had done. At
least he had that closure he’d been searching for. The truth was brutal, but he
was no longer left wondering what he’d done to fuck things up.

She was a fucking stripper.

But it didn’t matter anymore. What she did in her spare time wasn’t his
business, and by God, he didn’t want to have anything to do with her.

Then again, it wasn’t as if it was his choice. Katie’s voice mail had
pretty much told him everything he’d been wanting to hear but nothing that made
anything better.

As much as I had hoped Cooper was wrong, that you weren’t staying away
because of me, I guess the truth lies in me talking to your voice mail for the
tenth time. I don’t know exactly what’s going on, Dalton, but I’ve got a pretty
damn good idea. I’d say that I was sorry, but you know what? I’m not sorry.
This was the very reason I did what I did. If you heard the truth, then you’ve
already pre-judged me. I knew it would come to that sooner or later. I thought
you were one of the good guys, and I was trying to spare you the pain.

One of the good guys, huh? Was that why she hadn’t bothered to tell him
she was a fucking stripper in the first place?

Anyway, I’m sorry things came to this. Walking away from you was the
hardest thing I’ve ever done. I… Well, let’s just say I haven’t felt this way
about anyone before. I… God, I can’t even say it. I really am sorry, Dalton. I
was trying to spare you. But don’t worry, you’re not the only person I’ve ever
let down. And I doubt you’ll be the last. Believe it or not, I was trying to
protect you. I didn’t want you to get hurt. I love you.

Those last three words had nearly knocked him sideways.

Goddammit!

What could he have possibly done to make her think he would turn his
back on her?

Then again, he’d been lying on that hard-ass mattress for the last few
hours, trying to force his eyes to close all while picturing her taking off her
fucking clothes for a bunch of assholes. For the life of him, he couldn’t seem
to wrap his mind around the fact that the girl he found himself falling in love
with was a fucking stripper. And a liar.

“Fuck!” Dalton roared, throwing his pillow across the room and knocking
something off the dresser in the process.

Why the fuck had this happened to him? What the hell had he done to
deserve all this shit?

And when had he become such a fucking whiner?

Since the day he’d turned eighteen and realized his entire path in life
had been knocked off course thanks to a stupid-ass decision and some shitty
friends, Dalton hadn’t felt sorry for himself. No, he’d vowed not to.

Yet here he was, thinking about all of the ways people had done him wrong,
starting with his so-called friends when he was a senior in high school, months
away from graduating.

Drug charges. That had been the beginning of the end for him, the start
of the disappearance of all his hopes and dreams. Thanks to the people he’d trusted,
those who’d said they were his friends, everything he’d wanted had crashed and
burned at his feet.

Dalton had never blamed anyone but himself, although the drugs that had
been found in his car that night weren’t his. In fact, he’d never done a single
drug in his life. Not one single fucking time. Not even so much as smoked a
cigarette.

Well, except for liquor. 

But that hadn’t mattered at the time. It was his car, he was driving,
and all the kids he’d considered friends had pointed their fingers at him.

“Dude, chill the fuck out,” Dalton yelled at Jeremy, his buddy riding
shotgun. “Worst case, I’m gonna get a speeding ticket.”

“Right. Speeding ticket,” Jeremy retorted.

Dalton pulled his Mustang over onto the shoulder, glancing in his
rearview mirror to see the cop pulling up behind him. Dave and Alan were turned
in their seats, watching out the back window.

“Fuck,” Dave muttered.

Dalton continued to watch, noticing how Dave and Alan were getting
antsy.

“Seriously?” Dalton laughed. “What the fuck are you so freaked out
about? I was the one speeding.”

“Just shut the fuck up,” Jeremy snapped at the two guys in the back.

The next thing Dalton knew, there was a tap on his window, and he
turned, plastered on a smile, and rolled down the window. “Officer?”

“Do you know how fast you were going?” the officer asked without any
pleasantries.

“Probably close to eighty,” Dalton said truthfully, figuring it would
be better not to lie.

“Try eighty-five in a sixty. License and insurance,” the cop requested.

Dalton handed over both, keeping his eyes trained on the cop. The guy
was shining his flashlight into the car, first over at Jeremy and then to the
backseat, where Dave and Alan were sitting.

“Don’t move,” the cop instructed before heading back to his car.

“Fuck,” Dave exclaimed again.

“Dude, what the fuck is your deal?” Dalton asked, twisting in his seat
to face his friends.

“Nothin’, man,” Alan snapped, punching Dave in the arm.

The hair on the back of Dalton’s neck stood on end. He knew something
was up, he just didn’t know what. Did one of them have a warrant or something?
They were both a couple of years older than Dalton. They’d known each other for
a while, but they hadn’t hung out all that much.

The cop returned a few minutes later and shined his flashlight in the
car once again. “You don’t have any guns, knives, or other illegal weapons in
the car, do ya?”

Dalton noticed the cop’s tone had turned friendly, and that didn’t help
his bullshit meter. It’d already redlined, thanks to the freak out that Dave was
having in the backseat. He shook his head and added, “No, sir.”

“Would you mind if I checked?”

“Nope. Do your worst,” Dalton said confidently, smiling at the cop
before opening the door slowly. The cop took a step back and allowed him to
exit the vehicle.

“You boys go ahead and get out, too,” the cop ordered the others.
“This’ll just take a couple of minutes.”

When Dave exited the car, Dalton realized he was sweating profusely,
and it was then that he knew something bad was about to happen. He just didn’t
know how bad it was going to be.

His dreams of joining the FBI had died when felony charges had been
brought up against him. As it turned out, a certain amount of marijuana could
get you in some deep, deep shit.

That was where Dalton had found himself.

But he’d been given a second chance with his music career, although for
whatever reason, he’d just stumbled upon that one, thanks to some wild nights
in a karaoke bar. Right place, right time.

Sure as shit beat the wrong place, wrong time
, Dalton thought to himself as he remembered that
night when the red and blue lights had flashed in his rearview mirror.

Marijuana, for fuck’s sake.

Forcing himself out of bed, Dalton headed for the bathroom. Why the
hell did he do this to himself? That part of his life was over. He’d done his
time, paid the price, and here he was.

For the first few years after he’d started his music career, the drug
charges had loomed over him; every reporter in the country had jumped all over
that shit. But Dalton had persevered, moving past it and forcing the public to
as well.

He’d been wrongly accused.

Sort of like Katie?

“Fucking shit,” Dalton grumbled, turning the plastic knob on the
shower.

He did not want to think about her. He did not want to think about the
fact that men saw her naked nightly.

Not that she didn’t deserve an explanation.

She’d get one. As soon as Dalton could get over the rage that burned
like diesel fuel in his bloodstream. Until then, he’d just return the favor. He
would ignore her the same way she had him.

And with any luck, he’d be able to forget about her.

Right. Because that’s what you want, you stupid shit.

Yeah, shut up, subconscious.