Losing Streak (The Lane) (18 page)

She stood slowly, painfully, and with a whisper of a pat to my cheek, she walked to her bedroom at the back of the house, leaving me kneeling there on the living room floor as if I was praying to one of her saints. A second later, I felt Brandon’s presence at my back.

I dropped my head into my hands and waited.

I’d told Jackson to come ASAP but apparently that translated to, “Whenever you feel like it o’clock.” It was almost an hour later when he finally walked in the door. By then Mama had rejoined me in the living room and we sat together waiting silently for him while Brandon paced. Mama hadn’t asked me a single question, hadn’t even inquired again about the strange boy in her house, something that made me feel even worse somehow.

Jackson took one look at us and whistled low.

“Okay. Who died?” he asked, stopping in his tracks and looking at each of us in turn. He didn’t even quirk an eyebrow at Brandon’s presence. “Did our dog get ran over?”

“We don’t have a dog,” I pointed out and his frown deepened.

“Right. So did we get a dog and then it got ran over?”

“Sit down, Jackie,” Mama ordered him in a quiet but commanding tone. “Your sister has something she needs to tell us.”

Jackson shot me an unreadable look but did as he was told.

“Okay, Rose, we’re all here. What’s going on?” Mama asked, her voice firm and resolved. As if she knew that whatever I was about to say, she wasn’t going to like it. Maybe she did know. After all, wasn’t she the one who’d said mamas always knew on some deeper level? Mother’s intuition and all that?

I took a deep breath and squared my shoulders, determined to be strong and I opened my mouth, letting the words fall out where they may. I told them everything, everything I had kept secret for years. I told them the truth about Brandon, of the bets and the eventual loss. I told them about Joshua and his threats and the truth of our relationship, that there wasn’t one. I talked for hours, it seemed, until my voice grew hoarse and my jaw ached and all of my secrets, nearly every last one of them, were laid out in front of us next to my bare and bloody soul.

And when I was done, silence stretched out between us as Mama and Jackson processed all they had learned. Finally, Mama stood, moving slowly to the window that overlooked her small backyard. Jackson’s eyes sought mine, questions there, and I shrugged, just as confused. I couldn’t begin to guess what Mama was thinking.

“Brandon,” she started after a minute, her gaze locked on the darkness outside the brightly lit house. “Are you a good boy?” I opened my mouth to answer her and she held up her hand as if she could see me. She probably could. Mama had always had that way about her. “I’m talking to him, not you, Rose. Are you a good boy, Brandon?”

I turned to look at Brandon, eyes wide, and we stared at each other for a second before he turned his attention to Mama.

“I’m...not sure,” he answered slowly. “I’d like to think so.”

Mama nodded once and turned to face us.

“And Joshua? He’s the one who hurt you, Rosie?”

I winced, remembering the angry look on his reddened face, and I nodded.

Mama sighed and glanced around once, as if taking stock of her modest kingdom. A steely kind of resolve washed over her face, and I was struck once again how she looked like a fair queen, now preparing herself for war.

“Such pretty lies I’ve been fed,” she murmured so quietly that I almost missed it. Then, louder, “When should we leave?”

I jerked slightly, caught off guard by her compliance being given over so easily.

“Tonight,” I answered her. “Brandon already called his aunt Bonnie and she’s happy to take us in.” I paused, knowing what I was about to say needed to be said, but deathly afraid, so afraid that it made my gut ache, that it would be the deal-breaker. “Mama, you know you might not be able to come back. M—Maybe not ever.”

“Yes,” she replied simply. “I figured as much.”

And then she was moving, picking up pictures off shelves and the few trinkets sitting around, gathering them up in her bone-thin arms like the simple treasures they were before heading back to her bedroom, stronger and quicker than I’d seen her in years.

Jackson shot me a bewildered look that I returned as I stood and followed her.

Her back was to me when I entered her room and it struck me how straight it was, how determination clung to her like the perfume that she never wore. From the doorway, I watched her pack the bag on her bed, adding the few mementos she’d collected.

“Mama?” I whispered to her back, feeling a little like the child I never remembered truly being. “Mama, I’m so sorry.”

She didn’t pause from her packing, didn’t even turn around to face me, but her voice was gentle as she responded.

“For what, Rose?”

“For this. For lying to you. For putting you and Jackson in danger and for never telling you about it.”

Mama chuckled softly.

“Did you mean to?” she asked, finally turning around. “Or did you think what you were doing was for the best?”

“I don’t know,” I told her honestly. “Both, maybe.”

She smiled at me, a closemouthed tilt of her lips that looked a little sad.

“You’ve never asked me for a thing, Rose. You know that? You never asked for one single thing. Not clothes or toys or money. You were such an easy child, especially compared to Jackie at times, who constantly wanted and got into trouble. But I knew. I knew how you ached for those things and I ached to give them to you. To give them to you both. I wanted so badly to believe you had found your Prince Charming in Joshua but I think, deep down, I always knew that wasn’t where your heart was.”

She crossed the space between us and framed my face in gentle hands. “I could never give you what you wanted, but I can give you this.” She glanced over her shoulder at me with a look so full of love and warmth that it burned through me like whiskey. “Now let’s get on with it, shall we?”

When I came out of the room a few minutes later, leaving Mama to finish packing, I heard low, harsh voices coming from the kitchen. I rounded the corner and stopped short, finding Brandon and Jackson standing close, clearly arguing. They were so focused on each other, they hadn’t even noticed me standing in the doorway, watching them suspiciously.

“What’s the problem?”

My suspicion skyrocketed when Brandon jerked and moved back quickly, though Jackson continued to stare at him, a mulish look on his face.

“Nothing,” Brandon said at the same time Jackson ground out, “I’m not going.”

“What?” I snapped. “Of course you’re going. Were you not listening just a little bit ago? There’s no way you’re staying.”

“I heard every word you said and I’m not going.”

“Oh you are most certainly going.” I took a step in his direction, my hands planted on my hips. “Go get your shit because we’re leaving soon. I’m not doing this with you, Jackson James. Not right now. You can throw your attitude later after we’re away.”

“If he doesn’t want to go—” Brandon started before I cut him off.

“No. He’s going. This isn’t up for debate. I already told you. If this is happening, he’s going.”

“No. I’m not.” Jackson balled his fists at his sides. “I get it. You’re worried—”

“Hell yes, I’m worried. This whole thing has the potential of blowing the hell up and I don’t want any of us here for it! But since I can’t talk sense into him—” I pointed accusingly in Brandon’s direction, “—I can at least make sure you and Mama are safe. You have no idea what Joshua’s capable of. You have no clue the shit he can have done to you guys. There is no way I’m leaving you here, do you understand that? There is not a chance in hell that I’m leaving you here.”

“I’ll be okay,” he insisted. “King won’t touch me.”

I shook my head, frustration spiking through me like lightning as I crossed the space between us and glared up at him, noting for the first time how much larger he seemed to have gotten suddenly. When had he gotten so much bigger? Taller and broader and defined in his arms that had always been lean? “You don’t know that!”

“Sis, I understand. You’re worried and you’re scared and I’m sure you feel like you got reasons to be. But seriously. I’ll be fine. I’m a big boy, yeah? A devilishly handsome one at that.”

“This isn’t a time to joke around!” I looked up at him, begging him with my eyes to listen to reason, to give in like he once would have done. “Jackson, please.”

“You know you’re the only one who ever calls me that?” he asked suddenly, grinning like it was an epiphany. Like I hadn’t been calling him by his full name for our entire lives. “I’ve always been Jackson to you. Never Jax. Kinda weird. Even Mama calls me something else most of the time. But not you. Never could figure out why that is.”

“What on earth does that have to do with anything?” I asked him, frustrated and scared all at once, a mixture of emotions that should never be combined. “Just listen to me. We’re going and that’s fucking final.”

“No, Rosie. I’m staying. I’ll be okay.”

He leaned over suddenly and kissed me lightly on the cheek. I felt the stubble that lined his jaw and I ached a little, hurt for the boy who would have once listened but now had hair on his face and a new attitude to go with it.

“I’m gonna make him pay,” he vowed as he straightened, his cold, honest words making my heart stutter. “I have just as much of a right to do that. Maybe more than anyone else. And I can now.” He glanced over at Brandon. “Your boy can vouch for that.”

Brandon’s face said everything, everything, and my stomach twisted as the impossible started solidifying into possibles in my mind, and dread settled heavy like a brick in my chest. “You didn’t.”

“Babe—” He started to take a step in my direction and I held a hand up.

“No. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me what I’m thinking is fucking wrong.”

“Babe—” he tried again but I wouldn’t let him finish. I couldn’t let him finish. Because, goddamn it, I knew.

“You said you were training a new fighter. Before. You said you were training a new fighter. Tell me it is not my brother.”

“Rosie, it’s fine,” Jackson said, but if he was going to continue, I didn’t give him a chance.

“No, it’s not fucking fine!” I screeched, knowing that Mama could hear and she’d wonder and if for no other reason I needed to keep my voice down for her sake. But I was too far gone. Too thoroughly and completely far gone too quickly to reel myself back in to somewhere rational. “You knew! You knew this entire fucking time that everything I have ever done is to keep him out of shit, and you’ve been training him? Why in the fuck would you do that?”

“What choice did I fucking have?” Brandon yelled, loud enough that it caused even Jackson to take an uncertain step back. But not me. God, not me. “It was either train him like King said or risk something happening to you. So, yeah. You’ve been doing shit to keep him safe and I’ve had to do shit to keep you safe, okay? You think I didn’t know how fucked up it was? You think I haven’t hated every fucking minute of it? But I had no damn choice. Not if I didn’t want shit happening to you!”

“You were ready to make a damned stand over Mrs. MacBain. That was your last damn straw. But the fact that you’ve been going against everything I was working for wasn’t? What kind of fucked-up shit is this? Huh?”

“You think I just got here out of nowhere?” he roared. “That was the final damn straw because I’d been doing it to keep you safe and you got hurt anyway!”

“Yeah? You’re right. I did. But guess what? You managed to hurt me twice as bad as Joshua ever has.” I glared at him, so angry, so impossibly angry I could barely see around it. “I’m going home. I’m going to get my shit. When I get back, you, Jackson, are coming with us.” I pointed at Brandon. “And no matter what happens here? You don’t bother coming for me when it’s all over. Bastard.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

I don’t know how I managed to make it back to the penthouse with the rage storming through me so hard my bones vibrated with it. The closer I got to it, however, that storm shifted into something else, something quieter but just as hard to think around. It was equal parts dread and anticipation. I didn’t think Joshua would be there, not at this time, and the thought was reassuring, knowing that I wouldn’t have to face him, wouldn’t have to come up with some kind of story about why I was grabbing things together and throwing them in a bag. I wouldn’t have to try to explain why my movements were hurried or why I kept eyeing the door like salvation rested on the other side of it.

But as I pulled into the underground garage, I realized that was exactly what I was going to have to do. Because, for reasons I couldn’t fathom, Joshua’s car was parked in the spot next to mine. He was home and waiting for me. I dropped my head onto the steering wheel, my mind buzzing, trying and failing to come up with an explanation about why I’d need to pack. I was going to have to wait him out, I decided. When he left, then I could go about my business. I’d be gone before he got back anyway.

Yet I knew, somehow, deep in my gut, something wasn’t right as I rode the elevator upstairs and was deposited outside the penthouse. Silence stretched out on the other side of the door, thick and heavy. I took a hesitant step toward it, unease digging its cold fingers around the back of my neck. I wrapped my shaking hand around the knob, and as if on cue, it twisted in my grasp, the door swinging open, causing me to stumble slightly over the threshold.

“Rosemary.”

That was all he said as he latched on to my wrist with a bruising grip. It was all he had to say. And I knew. Down to my bones I knew, that somehow, some way, Joshua was already one step ahead of us. Maybe he always had been.

I felt my jaw drop, a nauseous feeling taking root in the pit of my stomach as I was dragged roughly into the penthouse. Joshua was talking, such a normal tone. He was asking me about my night maybe, but I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t hear what he was saying, not over the roaring building up in my head. Because there, just there—above the couch, on walls built and held together with sin and lies, so numerous they were overlapping—was a sick black-and-white wallpaper of our every moment together, hazy but unmistakable photos of Brandon and me.

I walked closer on legs that didn’t quite feel solid, as if transfixed.

Behind me, Joshua stopped midsentence and chuckled darkly.

“Do you like it? I know you weren’t a fan of the old decor. I thought I’d take it upon myself to redecorate for you.”

I didn’t respond, I couldn’t. All I could do was stare, horrified, at my grainy image captured with Brandon’s over and over again. Dancing at a club in Monroe, making out outside the liquor store, standing too close to be casual in an alley on the Lane, outside his apartment. They were all there, our every movement, tracing back weeks. As if those weren’t bad enough, damning enough, there were numerous shots of us having sex. Each snapshot fired off a memory in my brain, only now the memories were tainted, browned and blackened and scarred at the edges.

I wanted to scream, could feel it welling up inside me, bubbling just beneath the surface, begging to be released.

Abruptly, a shift so sudden and unpredictable, my shock gave way to a consuming rage and I whirled around to discover Joshua standing just behind me.

“Do you like it?” he asked again, a smirk on his face. Something inside me snapped at the sight of it and, with a crazed shriek, I launched myself at him.

A droning buzz filled my ears, rising to a loud roar as I clawed at every bit of exposed skin I could reach. Beyond the roar of anger, I could hear otherworldly screeches, so inhuman and deranged-sounding they could only belong to some mythical creature hell-bent on destruction. With a start, I realized it was me making those wild noises, and I paused in my assault, stunned into immobility.

It was all the opening Joshua needed.

With a bellow, he seized me around my throat, his meaty hand all but wrapping around it completely. Using his grip on me, he drove me backward until my head connected sharply with the wall. I rolled my eyes to the left, catching sight of a particularly damning shot of Brandon and me tangled together. I made a noise between a gag and a groan.

“I asked you a question, Rosemary.” Joshua shook me once, hard enough to rattle bones, and slammed my head into the wall for a second time. “How do you like it?”

It was hard to speak around the grip he had on me, hard to squeeze the word past the lump his fist created in my throat, but I managed to croak a strangled, “Bastard.”

“Wrong answer!”

“Psycho.”

His fingers tightened, making me gurgle and claw uselessly at his hand, panic filling me as what little oxygen I still had was cut off.

“I loved you, you bitch!” he screamed in my face, spit flying, his face a splotchy, mottled red. He was crazed. It was there in his eyes. There was a ledge somewhere behind him but he’d taken a running leap, tumbled over it and was now free-falling into madness. “I fucking loved you!”

For a brief moment, the fight left me and my hands tearing at his went lax.

“What?” I forced out, pushed past his rough grip. “You what?”

“What, she says. Like you didn’t know. Like you didn’t know that I fucking loved you, that I loved you this whole time! This entire fucking time! I gave you everything. Not because I had to but because I loved you!”

I laughed once, hard as it was, without humor. It came out like a strangled sob. “You didn’t love me,” I managed to choke out, only barely. Only just. “You don’t even know me.”

Like lightning, he struck and slammed me into the wall for a third time, so hard that for a moment, stars fired off in front of my eyes. Maybe it was them that had told. Maybe they’d been the ones to spill all my secrets. Maybe the fault was in them, those crooked, cruel stars who had observed my and Brandon’s every movement like spies. I rolled my head to the side, the winking stars dancing along in my field of vision, and caught a glimpse again of Brandon and me.

Joshua followed my gaze and snarled.

“Of course I loved you. I’ve always loved you. Every single thing I’ve ever done, I’ve done because I loved you! And you went behind my back with him. You betrayed me.” He bent low to my face and if I would have had it in me, if I’d been capable, I would have spit. “You want that? You’d give up all this for that? For him? You have more sense than that. You’re better than that, Rosemary!”

“Rose,” I spat at him, turning back to glare. “My. Name. Is. Rose.” Each word was a struggle that I only just won.

He slapped me with his free hand.

It was such a shock, so unexpected that I gasped, which only succeeded in him tightening his grasp on my throat. Saliva pooled in my mouth as gray overtook the edges of my vision, threatening to move in and conquer it completely.

“I built your mom a house. I’ve kept your thieving, no-good brother employed. I’ve given you everything, everything, and you spit at it!”

Not yet. But I would. If I could.

I lashed out then. I don’t know what the catalyst was, aside from blind panic that this was the end and hearing him talking about my people that way. I kicked and clawed and gargled my rage because he gave but he took. He took so much. My truths. My life. Brandon. My brother. He’d taken everything and driven us to this moment where he had me trapped against the wall like some sort of monster that needed to be contained.

I was not the monster here.

I caught him off guard with my fight but it only lasted a minute. Any ground I gained was snatched back as he pinned me again, forcing me against the wall papered with my desperation and necessary lies.

“Where is your mother going, Rosemary?” he growled, his cheeks blotched with his anger. “I had the house watched. Did you think I wouldn’t? Did you honestly think you could pull anything over on me? Me? I could have them stopped right now. One call and I could have your entire family wiped off this earth and that house burned to the ground. So where is she going? What are you planning? I know you’re planning something and sending her somewhere, you conniving bitch!”

“Fuck you.”

“Later,” he promised and I felt my stomach turn in on itself with a painful twist. “What. Are. You. Planning?”

“Bite me, asshole.” All I had was an impression of flashing teeth and then my cheek was burning, throbbing, pulsating from the spot where he’d latched on and drew blood.

The bastard bit me. He actually bit me.

Something about that struck me as both ridiculous and hilarious and I threw my head back in the limited, confined space, and I laughed long and hard.

“You’re a psycho,” I gasped, laughter and that damned fist still around my throat choking me. “A megalomaniac psycho and I won’t tell you a
damn
thing.”

I fought for each word and they felt like victory. A short-term but hard-earned victory.

“Am I?” he murmured, which was somehow more disturbing than his yelling. “Or am I a man in love?” He leaned closer. So close that I could smell the aftershave on his skin and his breath that was both minty and sour. “We will be married.”

I laughed again, wilder this time, harder. It was more painful somehow.

“I mean it. We will be married and if you don’t—” He shrugged and grinned maniacally. “You may find that your brother has gone missing. Maybe even dear old Mama will meet her end in a tragic car accident as she attempts to flee.”

He said it like “mah-mah” and for some reason, in spite of bigger, more immediate things to be angry at, it irritated me. I had stars fading in and out in front of my eyes. My head was being shoved so hard into the wall that I was afraid that it would go through it. And I was aggravated by hearing a bastardized version of her name on his lips.

He grinned wider, all teeth, and stroked my arm with his free hand. “Don’t think your precious Brandon is safe either, while we’re on the subject.”

Jackson and Mama were enough to put a vise on my heart and squeeze. The added threat to Brandon was too much. I broke out in a cold sweat, fighting back the shivers that wanted to accompany it. My mouth opened and closed, working uselessly to form the words to express my horror.

“Yes,” Joshua murmured, a lion toying with his prey, clearly thrilled to see the defeat in my eyes just starting to sink in and well up. “So many lives. So many precious, fragile lives, all resting on your head. Tell me, is he worth it? Is he worth them?”

I didn’t answer. Not with words. Instead, I stared horrified, as if in a trance, as his words continued to sink deeper, their claws piercing into my lungs.

“You will marry me,” he continued, that poisonous, malicious smile never wavering. “You will marry me and you will put a stop to whatever is being planned, including this running-away foolishness, and we will be happy. So very happy. Do you understand?”

I nodded, throat thick with my defeat, my surrender, the faces of those whose fates rested on my obedience running through my mind on repeat. Inside, deep down, I wailed and thrashed. On the surface, I forced that same old calm mask over my features. I allowed Rosemary to surface and I put Rose away. Rose who had always been the beast I’d felt lurking. I stuffed her down to a place deep inside me, and fastened her with chains, and she ducked her head because she knew she belonged there. That she had always belonged there, and we were foolish to ever think she could be let out.

* * *

It had been two days of silence, of not knowing what was going on in the outside world, of waiting and inward wailing and outward apathy. Days of me regretting my final words to Brandon and of Joshua gazing at me with eyes filled with his victory and me meeting them with a blank, indifferent stare of my own. He planned a hurried wedding, called up caterers and halls and a local pastor. The only satisfaction I got was in not contributing in the least. If it bothered him, my lack of care, if it grated on his nerves, he didn’t show it. My phone had been confiscated, so I had no way of knowing if anyone had even tried calling. If Brandon had correctly guessed something wasn’t right and had gone ahead with his plans to get Mama and Jackson out of town. I didn’t know if he’d even have bothered, with all that I’d said to him before I left. I could only hope he still had. That no matter what was happening here, Mama and Jackson were at least safe. I thought they might be, judging by the way Joshua would alternate between threatening their lives and retreating into his office, yelling into his phone to “find them.” The latter moments were the closest I came to smiling.

It was evening on the third day when Joshua came out of the office beaming. A shudder ran through me as he came to stand over where I sat on the sofa, positively vibrating with his exuberance. Something was up and it wasn’t good. Because Joshua was happiest when everything was in flames around him and he stood holding the matches and gasoline. Destruction was foreplay to him, and I’d never seen him so turned on.

He didn’t say a word, just stood there with that chilling grin on his face while I eyed him warily. The Lane, stretching and fully coming to life in the gathering dusk, filled the charged silence of the room. Then, like a crack of thunder, a knock suddenly pounded on the door. It sounded as if the person on the other side was more interested in splitting the steel with their bare fists than they were on getting an answer.

“Well, aren’t you going to answer it?” Joshua asked with an exaggerated pleasantness.

The knocking came again, impossibly louder this time. More persistent. It took real effort not to cringe from the noise. Because I knew. Maybe I’d always known he would come looking for me, wondering why I hadn’t shown up like I was supposed to. Maybe I’d been waiting for him this whole time, my knight in beaten-up leather jacket.

“Rosemary, answer the damned door,” Joshua commanded, his voice sharp enough to cut. It was the voice of the real Joshua. The one who spun dreams into garish nightmares and took an immense pleasure in doing so.

And, of course, like a coward, I obeyed him.