Consumed (27 page)

Sam laughs again, this one more forced. Colder. “I can do whatever it is I want, sweetheart. The ball is in my court. All I have to do is go to the cops, and—”

“You
can’
t do this,” I repeat. 

“I’m sorry, but I can’t do this anymore.” 

Why is she calling to tell me all of this? And why is she apologizing to me? Leaning my face against my knees, I close my eyes and think of the only time I met her in person. How there had been something so off about her icy gray eyes. This woman is dangerous. Dangerous and crazy, and I am scared to death of her.

“Why?” I ask, my voice hoarse. “Why did you put me through so much shit, just so you could do this? Why bring me into it?”

When she speaks, her words are broken, and I think she’s crying. Samantha, who is calling me to wreak havoc and ruin lives, is crying. “Because you love him. Because I wanted you to know the real Lucas before I tore everything down. And now that you do?”

“That doesn’t change how I feel about him,” I hiss. “It doesn’t change the fact that I love him. What he did happened because he was trying to protect someone.”

“And he’s a coward,” she snaps. “You forgot about that.”

“No.” I hold my hand to my chest because I feel like it’s the only thing that will get me through this. “You wanted me to see Lucas for what he really was, but I saw you too. If you wanted the truth to come out about him so badly, you would have turned him in a long time ago. You’re the coward.”

“Maybe I am. I guess it doesn’t change anything, does it?” She’s still crying, and she sobs loudly into the phone for several seconds before drawing in an unsteady breath. “This ends now.”

“Sam? Samantha?” But she’s gone. And even though I know I shouldn’t, I try to call her back, but she doesn’t answer. I’m sent directly to her voicemail after the first couple of rings. I want to think that there’s no reason why she’s ignoring them, that this call is just another one of her games. 

But I can’t. This feels different than before and panic swells through me.

Because I’ve made a vow to myself that I wouldn’t keep things from Lucas any longer, I immediately wake him up. While I sit on the floor of the lounge talking in hushed tones, he strides back and forth down the aisle, his chest moving slightly as he takes it all in. And he takes it better than I ever imagined. His face is a stone mask when I’m done speaking.

“She’ll do what she wants to do.” He stops moving. “But I’m not going to keep chasing after her just to keep myself in the clear. I can’t do it anymore.” 

Those were Sam’s exact words from earlier, and they’re even more terrifying when they fall from his lips. I grip my hands in my hair, shaking my head wildly. 

“There has to be something.” I gasp for air, and once I find it, I say, “You don’t deserve this.”

Kneeling down in front of me, he tilts my chin up with the tip of his index finger. “Maybe I don’t, but I messed up. I’ve been living with what I did for four years now and these past few days of you and Kylie knowing have been the most liberating fucking time I’ve had since then.” Massaging my cheek with the back of his thumb, he lays his forehead to mine. “Let Sam come after me. She has to already know that I’m going to take her down, too. After all the shit she’s put you through—let her come.”

After this, he refuses to say or hear anything else about Samantha. We spend the rest of the day up until sound check with a stressed silence lingering between us, and when I tell him that I have to go home, he follows me out to my car.

“You’ll come tonight?” he asks, and I just stare at him. I want to scream. Or hit him. Ask him why he’s letting Sam win. 

But finally, I close my eyes and urge my lips to twitch into a smile. “I wouldn’t miss it.”

He drags me to him, kissing me until a sob builds in my chest, and I have to push him away from him. The look of fear and uncertainty within his hazel eyes is startling. I turn away, my shoulders limp. 

“I love you,” he says simply.

I count to ten under my breath slowly, hoping that it will help calm my breathing before I even attempt to look at him again. As soon as I’m done, I twist around. 

He’s already gone.

At first I have no plan to be apart of the backstage scene tonight, but after Kylie pleads with me to come, I go ahead and get dressed early in jeans, a long-sleeved shirt from Alternative Apparel that will hide the bruises on my arms, and ballet flats. I consider putting my hair up, but when I examine myself in my dresser mirror, noticing how some of the purplish splotches outlining my face are still visible through my makeup, I release my red locks around my shoulders. I leave the hairband on my dresser next to a box of tissues.

And, as much as I hate to admit it, I leave my hope at home.

An hour later, I step into Your Toxic Sequel’s dressing room, and I’m met with an awkward silence from Cal and Wyatt—the only band members back here at the moment—that only Kylie can break. Meeting me at the door, she grabs my hand, lacing her fingers through mine, and pulls me over to the loveseat. I know it’s all a show. That much is evident in her dark brown eyes and the way her hands tremble every time she pushes her short brown hair behind her ears.

“After the show we were thinking about going to that bar you’re always talking about,” she says to me in a high-pitched voice. “The Bea—”

“The Beacon?”

“I think we all just need to get some stress off our chests.” She reaches for her bottle of water but knocks her hand into Cal’s Monster instead. It falls over, sending liquid pouring over the edges of the coffee table and onto the floor. “Shit.” When she tries to clean it up, I shake my head.

“I’ve got it.” 

As I kneel down on my hands and knees, wiping up the spill with a wad of paper towels that I found in the bathroom, Cal leans in close to me. “So . . . how are you doing?” This is probably the most serious that I’ve ever heard his voice.  

“I’m better. Still a little shook up, but I’ll be fine,” I lie.

He releases a rough sigh. “We were worried about you. All of us so don’t let Sin try to tell you something different.” 

“Thank you,” I whisper. 

Giving my shoulder a careful squeeze, Cal rises to his feet. “And speaking of Sinjin, I’m going to go track him down. I haven’t seen that asshole since sound check.”

As soon as he leaves, Wyatt volunteers to go too, using his pre-concert chain-smoking as an excuse. “You need me, you call, beautiful,” he says sternly to Kylie, and her eyes narrow. 

“I will let you know the moment I have to pee,” she answers him, a sardonic smile playing at the corners of her mouth. As he shuts the door behind him, Kylie slumps forward, sinking her face into her hands. “I’m a mess,” she admits in a muffled voice. 

“God, I’m right there with you.” Ever since I left the venue earlier this afternoon, I had been trying to reach the number Sam had called me from. I had hoped that if I got her back on the line, I would be able to reason with her, but I hadn’t had any such luck. I swallow over a lump in my throat. “Do you know where he is right now?”

Wrapping her arms over her stomach, she shakes her head. “Said he had something to do with Tyler, but who knows. He’s been so annoyingly calm today that I couldn’t take being around him anymore.”

I make a fist around the messy stack of dry paper towels beside me on the floor. “I’m scared.”

She rolls her tongue over her lips in preparation to say something, but there’s a heavy knock on the dressing room door. Creasing her brow, she yells out, “Come in.”

David pops his head into the narrow opening he’s made in the door “Have you seen Lucas?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” She tips her water back and then swipes the back of her hand over her mouth. “Why, what’s up?”

Shaking his head from side to side in confusion, the edges of David’s lips twist down. “There’s a couple of men out here looking for him. Says it’s urgent they find him.”

Pushing myself up off the floor, I stare at David, waiting for an answer, feeling as if as soon as he speaks, everything will change.

I quickly learn that my intuition is right a moment later when David runs his giant hand over his face.

“They’re cops, Kylie.”

Three words and everything suddenly changes. Three words and my world comes shuddering to a painful stop.

Lucas

We cancel nearly all the remaining dates on the tour. 

For the first week or two after shit jumps headfirst into the fan, I find myself drawn to the video that Sam had made for me. The Samantha on the screen doesn’t look anything like the woman I saw earlier this summer, or even the woman from a year ago. When Kylie does a little digging into the history of the file, she discovers that Sam made the video almost two years ago.

My ex-wife sat in the middle of that pristine white sofa that used to be in the living room of her Atlanta apartment. Her legs were crossed at the ankles, and she arched her thin body forward. On camera, the track marks on the insides of her elbows weren’t obvious, but she still tried to hide them with her hands.

And though she mostly avoided making direct eye contact with the camera, there were rare moments during the video where she did look up. The look in her gray eyes was intense, and I feel like she’s staring right at me, telling me everything in person. 

In a way, I guess she is. 

“Lucas,” she began. “I can’t do this to your face, so this is the only way I could get what I wanted to say out there.” Taking a deep breath, she moved her hands in front of her chest as she attempted to work out what she’s going to say next. “It’s my fault Bryce Roberts died. I did it, and I’m so sorry.”

The first time I watched Sam’s video, I had stared blankly at the computer screen, wondering what the fuck she was talking about but I kept looking. Kept waiting. 

“I killed him,” she said, pinching the end of her nose to try to hold back her tears. She didn’t succeed, and they fell freely down her face. “I met him through one of my friends. But he just . . . he wasn’t you, you know? And then I found out you were seeing Priscilla, and I lost it. I lost it, and I asked him to mess with her. Shake her up some.”

She got up from her seat then, and when she returned, she was lighting a cigarette.

“I was with him the night you fought in the parking lot.” She looked straight into the camera. “And after you went back inside that bar I hit him with the tire iron from the back of his car.” 

After that she never explains why she killed Bryce, or why she let me believe that I was the one who did. She only says that she’s sorry. That she screwed up. And that she would fix things. 

And in the end, Sam did what she said she’d do when she turned herself in. She’d given her statement. She’d given the cops the wallet she’d taken from Bryce Roberts the night of his murder. And then she’d waived her right to an attorney.

And by the time I found all of this out right before the Nashville show—because I was listed as her next of kin—she was already gone, and I was left piecing together the truths to the lies she had let me believe.

In life, Sam had been a brief part of the band’s history—the woman who was married to Lucas Wolfe before he hit it big. But in death, somehow she overshadowed every woman I’d ever been with, including Sienna.