Down to My Soul (Soul Series Book 2) (37 page)

“Someone’s been blackmailing Kai.” The words land with a thud into the kitchen quiet. Gep glances at Kai surreptitiously, but Bristol out and out stares at her, and the questions begin.

“With what? Blackmailing how?” Bristol demands of Kai, her eyes narrow. “And what the hell does this have to do with Rhys? How are you involved?”

Even though she’s looking at Kai, I will answer her because as angry as I am with Kai right now, no one’s gonna bully my girl. Not even my twin sister.

“I’m involved because she is.” My voice is quiet, but so firm there is no doubting I’ll lay into her if I have to. “And you’re here to fix it. You’re here to work on this problem as if it’s my problem because it is.”

Bristol presses her lips together and sits on one of the high stools at the counter.

“All right.” She takes a sip of her coffee. “So let’s hear it.”

I make myself look at Kai, even though for the first time since we’ve met I don’t want to. I’ve barely been able to take my eyes off this girl since that day in Grady’s rehearsal room, and now when I look at her, she’s covered in lies.

“Tell us, Kai.”

She leans her elbows to the island in the middle of the kitchen, her eyes down, hair covering her face, and begins.

“About three months ago I got a text message from an unknown number.” She pulls the hair behind her ear, showing me only her profile. “There was a link to a write up on the fight Rhys and I had, and a warning that we should stay apart or they would release this tape.”

She glances up at me only briefly, but the connection between our eyes still runs through me like a volt. I want to turn it off, but even pissed off with her, I can’t.

“It was a clip of me . . .” Her words die, and she gulps with eyes closed, before resurrecting the sentence. “A clip of me having sex with Drex.”

“Shit,” Bristol says under her breath, but loud enough for us all to hear. She drills a look into me until I finally have to look at her. Fury and frustration pool in the eyes just like mine, reflecting some of what I’m feeling.

“You fucked that douchebag?” she asks Kai.

Kai nods, biting her bottom lip, the breath trembling over her lips before she answers.

“It was before Rhys and I met. I was a dancer in one of Drex’s videos, and after the shoot wrapped we . . . well, went back to his place.” Her eyes squeeze shut like she can’t bear us looking at her. “I had no idea he was recording it, and I never . . . God, I’m so sorry.”

Tears leak over her cheeks, and she doesn’t even try to wipe them away they come so fast. I’m surprised when Bristol grabs a box of Kleenex Sarita keeps on the counter and walks it over to Kai. Everything in me strains to comfort her, but I just can’t. I’m not past the lie, the deliberate deceptions and blocking me out of this when I gave her everything. And if I soften toward her at all, I’ll lose focus. And right now my focus is a search and destroy mission.

“So he’s disappeared.” I take up where Kai left off as she wipes her cheeks and sniffs. “San’s been looking for him, and they spotted him yesterday in Topanga. Obviously he’s connected to this, but maybe not working alone. We don’t know.”

“What do you want to happen, Rhyson?” Gep asks quietly. “Blackmail is a crime, potentially a felony. We could contact the police.”

“No,” Bristol and I say in unison. I’m not even surprised. We may not be your typical twins, but in cases like these, we synch.

“This needs to stay as far off the books as we can keep it.” I shake my head. “I don’t trust the LAPD, not even a little bit. There have been too many leaks to tabloids. I can’t chance this getting out.”

“Yes,” Bristol chimes in. “Even though Rhyson isn’t on that tape, he’s been linked to them both, and this would drag his name through as much mud as it would theirs.”

“I want to make something perfectly clear,” I say. “This isn’t about protecting me. This is about protecting Kai, about making sure that damn tape never sees the light of day. Anything short of us finding the tape and destroying any and every copy in existence, short of finding out who is behind it, and destroying
them,
is failure to me.”

“But Rhyson,” Gep says. “If we do this off the books, we—”

“I said we keep this off the books.” I back up my words to Gep with a cold look. “There isn’t another option. No police. Less exposure. This motherfucker is fighting dirty with
my
girl, and as soon as we bring the police into it, we can’t fight dirty back.”

My words drop like a bomb, and for a moment it’s complete silence. I glance at Kai, and she’s looking right at me. I’m no less angry with her. I feel no less deceived, but she’s still my girl. And protecting her is still the most important thing.

“I need to see your phone, Kai,” Gep says, his eyes softer than I’ve ever seen them, his voice gentler. Gep is a hard ass recruited to the CIA before he even left college. I don’t know half of what he’s done, but the little I know would give me nightmares if I were him.

“My phone?” Kai’s panicked eyes toggle between Gep and me. “Why?”

“I know it’s tough, but I need to see the number the text and the video came from,” Gep explains, firming his lips before speaking the next words. “And I’ll need to watch the tape.”

“No!” Kai’s protest explodes into the quiet kitchen, and tears fill her eyes again. “I can’t . . . no, Gep. Please no. Don’t watch the tape. I’ll answer any questions you have. I’ll—”

“Kai, there may be something retrievable there,” Gep interrupts softly. “And I need to see if there are any clues embedded in that video, if the link has anything traceable, IP codes, anything. Who knows what information we can get from that. It’s the only smoking gun we have, and we need it to get to the bottom of this.”

He glances at me, twisting his mouth.

“Especially if we aren’t bringing the police into this.”

“And we’re not.” I extend my hand to Kai. “Give me your phone.”

One elbow on the island, she shields her face with her hand for a moment before lifting her head and walking over to me. She offers the phone to me, but when I try to take it, she doesn’t release it right way, looking up at me, her eyes pleading.

“Please don’t watch it.” Her voice breaks on a sob she tries to clamp her lips over. “I know Gep has to watch it, but you can’t. I can’t . . . promise me.”

I know what it costs her to ask that of me in front of Bristol and Gep. I can’t explain why, but I have to see that tape. I
will
see that tape. If only to prove to myself and to her that I was a fool to think seeing it could ever affect how I feel about her. I can’t promise her that I won’t, because I know I will.

“Did you take your meds?” I pull the phone all the way from her fingers.

“Rhyson, please. I—”

“I can’t have you relapsing, Pep. You had pneumonia and were in the hospital last week. You look exhausted.” It’s a habit to touch her, and I force myself not to push her hair back. Not to wrap my hands around her small waist. Not to dip and kiss her lips, as richly red as her mother’s strawberry preserves. “Go upstairs, take your meds, and go to sleep.”

“To sleep?” Her eyes stretch, mouth falling open. “I can’t sleep with this hanging over my head.”

“You have to.” I allow myself one touch, a hand at the small of her back to turn her toward the back stairs, just above the curve of her ass, one of my favorite spots on her body. “I’ll let you know if we need anything else.”

There’s more she wants to say. Protests she wants to make. Apologies in her eyes when she looks up at me over her shoulder. I see it all, and as usual, everything about her tugs me centripetally.

“We’ll talk later,” I tell her, looking away from the plea all over her face.

“Promise me,” she whispers, eyes fixed on me and blocking out Bristol and Gep.

I don’t know if she means promise we’ll talk later, or promise I won’t watch that tape. Her deceit builds up between us like a wall, each lie a stone to block the intimacy I’ve never wanted to resist until today. But today, I’m resisting it, and I’m not making her any promises, so I just turn away from her and hand Gep the phone.

IT’S THE CRASH THAT WAKES ME.

When I take the medicine, it drops me like a stone to the bottom of the sea, and I have to struggle to swim to the surface and break through. My body is still recovering from the abuse I put it through on tour. Not even the pneumonia, but the exhaustion. Even though the medicine imposes much-needed rest on me, I hate the way it makes me feel. My limbs are heavy and my tongue feels thick. Sleep clings to me, but the crash from below jerks me up and past the dreamless surface.

I’ve gotten spoiled waking up with Rhyson. Not because he’s famous, but because he reaches for me in his sleep and makes me feel safe. Because he can’t go two minutes without kissing me once he’s awake. And waking up alone . . . well, it’s not the same. I roll into the cold void beside me with its undented pillow and unrumpled sheets. He hasn’t been here at all. I’d smell him. I’d know.

Still in my fitted t-shirt and jeans, barefoot, I stumble from the bed and out onto the landing. Another crash reaches my ears, and Rhyson’s voice, hoarse and rough, joins the chaos. Quietly, I make my way down to the first floor and then down another to his music room.

“Fuck!” Anger and frustration strangle the word in his throat. Another crash and more “fucks” and a few “shits” and “dammits” sting the air like hornets. I poke my head just a little around the wall. I can’t face him right now, and judging by our last interaction, he doesn’t want to see me.

The glimpse I have almost makes me gasp, but I catch it before the sound gives me away. Several of Rhyson’s autographed guitars lay splintered and ruined at his feet. The side of his drum set is completely gone like a cannon blew it out. A growl, a low feral sound, rumbles in his chest as he stands drawing in labored breaths amidst the beautiful debris of his priceless instruments.

He watched the tape.

The thought sucker punches me, makes my head spin and leaves me reeling. I sink to the step, too ashamed and afraid to enter the room. To face him. So I sit there with the wall between us. Not just the wall, cool against the side of my face, but the wall of my betrayal and subterfuge.

After the crash and the destruction, there’s a few moments of complete silence. So quiet I hear his heavy breaths in the wake of the storm. I’m just about to gather my courage and walk around that wall into the room, when the music begins. I haven’t heard this song since Grady’s wedding. It’s a skeletal version of
My Soul To Keep
, but enough for me to recognize the song he wrote for me. He can’t be playing this song and not thinking of me, not aching the way I am. I’ve run and I’ve hidden so many times before, but I have to come out of the shadows to fight for this man. The future he dreamed about, our future, is worth that.

Hearing the notes of my song in this tight, unnatural quiet after the violence of his anger hurts. It’s like I’m in one key and he’s in another. I’ve never felt this far from him, even when I wouldn’t let him in.

I rest my head against the wall, helpless to move. I want to taste my tears, so I don’t even check them as they roll over my cheeks and into my mouth. They are salty and taste of the recriminations I deserve. I’m not sure how long he plays. That first night months ago in Grady’s studio Rhyson’s music awakened something in me, and tonight it lulls me back to sleep.