Sarah Mine (10 page)

I wasn’t entirely sure if I meant the game or the idle mention of Sarah. Idle? I snorted as my gaze returned to Sarah. On my first night back, I had run into an older man I couldn’t really remember who had informed me, as I started for the bar, that Sarah had moved. He hadn’t even asked if I was looking for her. Address in hand, I had headed to where she was. In this place, even if I hadn’t been about to knock on the wrong door, they’d assume I was crawling into Sarah’s bed.

Where the hell else would I go when I returned? Why else would I return?

Hill Deveraux’s whore.

That phrase Sarah dropped echoed through my head like a poisonous snake. Who the hell had said that phrase? She glanced my way again and I met her gaze, the pretty girl with the big, sad eyes. The broken girl who had shattered and had put her pieces back together. By herself. Yeah, my brother had helped but she had done it. Brave, pretty girl who was stronger than she knew.

How could anyone not see that she wasn’t that girl anymore? She didn’t need the booze, or drugs, or sex to fill those empty holes anymore because she had filled them up on her own. However she had done it, she had done it. God damn, she was something. “Be right back.” I walked across the bar, not breaking eye contact with her.

Walking around the end of the bar, I was well aware everyone was watching. Whispering. Let them. Fuck them all. What did they think I was going to do? Rip her jeans down and bend her over the bar? Mm, maybe. “Sarah James,” I said as I backed her up against the counter behind the bar.

“What?”

I searched her eyes. “I have something to say to you.” Her eyebrows rose before her lashes lowered. “No, no hiding. This is important shit that you need to hear.” I waited patiently until she met my gaze. “You are amazing, Sarah Jane James. And I am humbled by how amazing you are.” I kissed her. She smiled, then wrapped an arm around my neck, returning the hungry strokes of my tongue. “I’m so proud of you, baby.” I kissed her nose, winked at her, and left her leaning against the counter, her cheeks flushed, her lashes lowered, and a little smile on her mouth.

“Aww,” a snide voice said, “Hill and his whore having a moment.”

My wrist snapped out and I smashed the pool cue against Alex’s chest. The man gagged, almost retching on his lap. Pity. That would’ve been fun to watch. The band halted mid-note. “We’ve had this discussion before, Alex. Don’t make me remind you of the ending.” I spun the cue up, resting it along my shoulders. As I stared down my former friend, Alex automatically swiped his tongue over the two fake teeth that replaced the ones I had knocked out a decade ago when Alex had said some shit about Sarah. My smile was sharp, lethal. When there was no rebuttal from Alex, I walked away.

“No blood, Sarah,” I called to her as I joined Avery, who was looking a little pale. “Did I just lie to her?”

“No, no.”

“Good. Your shot? I just had mine.”

CHAPTER TEN

Hill

I wanted to rip up the drawing and set it on fire. I hated that it existed. I hated that it was so beautifully drawn so I could see the grains in the wood, the Brandi’s logo on the shot glasses, and the stain on the carpet. That the table didn’t rise up off the paper and put me in that crappy apartment was a miracle.

The soother. That damn soother. Somewhere in this world was a little boy who was half hers and half some asshole’s named Donovan. Who named their kid Donovan? Rolling the camera lens from side to side, I wondered if he had Sarah’s big brown eyes. Sarah had a son.

And she had overdosed. Exhaling loudly, I looked at the sketches scattered around the room. Because I hated this one, this evidence that she had damn near died on me, I stood up and walked the room. There was one of a little girl’s bed, black snakes slithering out from underneath it and crawling up walls.
Sarah.

One stopped me cold. Just looking at it made me feel clammy and nauseous. Intricately drawn rocks dominated the picture but they weren’t the focal point. There was an empty plastic cup, and in the background were two shadow figures. They weren’t precise and there were no details, just black lines that formed two bodies. Subtle, sneaky. A male over a female. It was in the arch of her back, the slight rise of breasts. Two shadow bodies. Male. Female.

Me. That was me. I knew it. Down to my bare, cold toes I knew that was us that first night.

Shadow self
.

“Hill?”

I stared at the rendition of me, at the cup, at the overdose table.
Shadow self
. I walked back to the snake drawing, leaning over it as I looked. Really looked.

“What are you doing?”

Looking. Seeing. There she was. It looked like the shadow of a curtain until one saw it wasn’t fabric but a leg, an arm, a head bent over as if she was hiding from the snakes coming for her. I continued to study the drawing because…there. Under the dresser. A camera lens. Fuck. Jesus. I couldn’t breath as I really looked at her drawings. Finding her, finding bits of me. A camera here, a camera lens there, shadowed sex figures in another.

Wiping my mouth because I was pretty sure I was going to throw up, I stared down at that goddamn table drawing. Looking for her. It became an obsession to find her in this one, the homage to what had stopped her heart twice. “Show me. Fucking show me.” Because I couldn’t find her. I couldn’t find her at all in this one. Reaching up, I grabbed her wrist and pulled her down. “Show me. You show me, goddamn it.”

Tears fell down her cheeks as she pressed her free hand to her mouth.

Her hand was shaking as she pointed. I didn’t care about the camera. Fuck the symbolism of me in this. Yeah, I got it. I was part of the shit in her life. I was part of the problem. Hadn’t she said so the other day? What I so desperately needed to know was: where the hell was she?

“Where. Are. You?” I jabbed my finger toward the drawing as I glared at her. A broken sob came from her. I knew her tells. Hell no.

I couldn’t find her because she wasn’t in there. No Sarah. And it freaked me out. “You put you in there, Sarah. Right now. Right now, goddamn it!”

She shook her head slowly and I stood up, heading over to the neatly organized counter. Upending a cup, I grabbed one of the ultra fine tip markers she liked. She was bent over, crying. “You put you in there, Sarah.” I took off the cap and put the pen in her hand. Fuck, my hand was shaking. “You will go in there. I don’t care where, but you put yourself in there, Sarah.” That table had stopped her heart. Stopped it. Dead. Twice. I needed her in there.

I needed to know that in this macabre table where she had hatched out her overdose that she was in there. “I will burn this bastard to ashes if you don’t put yourself in it.” I sounded like an idiot, yelling at her over this but it didn’t feel ridiculous. I knelt in front of her and caught her arms, dragging her up so she was kneeling. Tears fell, her nose was running, and heart-breaking sobs made her body jerk.

“Please,” I whispered as I cupped her face, my voice shaking. My body was shaking. “Please, Sarah. You need to be in it, baby. I need you in there. Please, Sarah.” I pressed my forehead against hers. “You will not leave me all alone in that nightmare of a picture, Sarah. You will not leave yourself out.”

She gripped my neck and I kissed her, needing physical proof she was alive. My brother had somehow found a way to help her out of the shadows because I hadn’t.

She had died. In that fucking picture she had died.
That’s
why there was no shadow Sarah hidden in it.

“Please, baby,” I whispered, wiping her cheeks as I found her mouth again. When I looked at that drawing, I needed to see her. Needed to find something of her in it. I got that it was all her, but I wasn’t feeling very rational at the moment. I needed her in that picture somewhere.

Even though she was in front of me and I was touching her, I needed proof in that picture that she had survived. Lowering her to the floor, I didn’t break contact with her mouth. As if I’d fall apart somehow. “You tried to leave me, Sarah.”

“I tried to leave me.”

“Don’t,” I said as I buried myself deep into her, causing her to cry out as she wasn’t entirely ready for me, “do it again.” There was nothing gentle in me, in this room filled with her demons, and I tried to be gentle with her but Sarah was having none of that. Her legs hooked over mine as she drew my head down, kissing me with the same desperation clawing at my belly. I rolled away from the drawing, so she was above me.
Sarah.

Holding her head to mine because I couldn’t release her mouth for any length of time, I tried to watch her ride me. That was always a sight to behold. Her eyes closed, her body rolling and rocking to her sensual pace. There was nothing sensual about this. It was raw. It was a sexual frenzy. As if she needed to feel as alive as much as I did.

It wasn’t angry; we had done that before. This wasn’t a battle. This was need. Simple, basic.

Complicated.

When she came, I flipped her to the floor, a little sorry that this was on a hard floor. Not that sorry as I plunged and took until she cried out my name as she came again. I couldn’t have stopped my own orgasm if I tried. And I didn’t.

We lay there, gasping for breath and I shifted them so I was beneath her again. “Sarah,” I said softly as I brushed her hair out of her face. She rose up, then with a sigh, kissed me.

Sarah mine.

Hill

The house was big and ostentatious. A blatant shout of “I have money and you’ve got shit.”

I hated it. Everyone had thought growing up a Deveraux had to be fantastic. Money, power, position, wealth. Ha. What the hell did they know? The only one in the house who had any of that was Big Jack. I had had nothing. I had been the third son, yet another cog in the Deveraux genetic wheel. Evidence that Big Jack had sperm to land not one but three male heirs. Like that meant anything these days. God help us all, if one of us had been a girl.

Big Jack saw Pierce Point as his empire. He was a Deveraux so that made him king. I was his son and that meant I was a prince, destined to inherit all of this with my brothers. Only none of us had fit the mold Big Jack had built. Jax had been the quiet, artsy one. The romantic one–with granite fists. Matt had been the athlete: smart, tough. Had our childhood not been so restrictive, perhaps Matt would’ve followed in Big Jack’s footsteps.

And me.

Who had I been?

Nothing. No one special. The youngest who had no real ambitions aside from getting into as many pairs of panties as I could, the aimless one until the day I picked up a camera for a school project. Then shit had fallen into place for me because I was good at it. I hadn’t joined the school paper and wandered around taking pictures of school spirit and shit, but I had taken pictures. I learned about lighting and timing and everything necessary to capture a piece of time.

Big Jack hadn’t liked that at all.

If he couldn’t control it, if it wasn’t under his power, Big Jack hated it. That his sons had dared to find what they loved beyond Big Jack? Not allowed.

Had I not been as selfish as I had been, what would’ve happened to me had I caved to my father’s demands? Stuck here, hating my life, hating everyone because I was trapped. I’d have turned into a miserable bastard like my father. Hurting people because I could, manipulating because the power was in my hand.

I may not be the best person on the planet but I sure as hell wasn’t my father.

I climbed the low steps and rang the doorbell. The door was opened by someone I didn’t know. Did they know me? Whatever. “I’m here to see Big Jack.”

“He’s…”

“Dying. Don’t give a shit.” I shouldered my way in, set my duffel bag down, then pointed toward the staircase. “Upstairs?”

“Sir…”

“Call me Hill. This won’t take long. Truthfully, you can continue to hold the door. I will be that fast.” At least my father couldn’t put his hand around my throat and throw me out again. I took the stairs two at a time. Not much had changed. It still stank of money and pride and greed. The walls had changed color but that was about it. Not that I cared about the décor. A feminine gasp made me look as my mother walked out of a room. She was older. Her hair short, a silvery grey now rather than the pale blonde I remembered. She was still elegant, still regal. Did she still smell of expensive perfume? I should feel something because this was my mother. She had given birth to me.

“William?”

She was the type of woman my father had wanted me to marry. The daughter of money, the perfect society bride who knew how to walk the walk and talk the talk. The total opposite of Sarah.

Thank.

God.

I nodded as I adjusted my backpack on my shoulder, continuing to the other door. That my parents had created three children was a miracle. They didn’t share a room. According to Jax, they never had. They had gotten together long enough to procreate, to meld their superior DNA into three inferior sons.

I opened the door and stopped. Stared.

There was an oxygen tank pumping the big O
₂
through a tube; another bag hung by the bed spilling something into Big Jack’s veins. It smelled like a hospital: medicinal, sickly, deathly. The father who had stood so tall, proud and smug in his power suits was a shadow of himself. Dying. Because not even Big Jack’s money could buy off the cancer eating him alive.

“Now’s not a good time, William,” my mother said, without any sadness in her voice. Would she mourn him, her husband of forty-six years? Or would she feel free?

“It’s the perfect time.”

My father’s eyes opened at my voice. He frowned. “William?”

I nodded as I studied the dying man. Should I feel something? Remorse? Anger? I had been so pissed at Big Jack for years that it was surprising to not feel it now. Death—the great equalizer. The best thing that had ever happened to me was being kicked out of this family. This broken, dysfunctional excuse of a family. Because had I stayed and become what Big Jack wanted, I’d have turned into a miserable, selfish son of a bitch.