Prologue
zee
Seven years earlier
A smoky dimness cloaked the night sky. City lights glowed against the fog that sagged so low and thick, I could almost reach out and touch it. It cast my entire world in an ominous haze, everything I’d ever known vapors and mist.
I sucked in a desperate breath. Guilt ate me alive as I pressed my cell harder to my ear. “I’m sorry. I’m so goddamned sorry,” I begged.
Grief clogged his voice as it traveled across the miles. “You’re sorry? You were my best friend. My brother. I trusted you. Would have trusted you with my life.”
I blinked hard, trying to see through the torment. “It was a mistake.”
But simply labeling it a mistake felt like committing treason. Another dose added to the mounting disloyalty.
His words trembled with anger. “A mistake? You betrayed me.”
My hand fisted in my hair, and I began to pace. With each desperate step, loneliness closed in. My chest felt too tight and too empty, like I could feel the connection that had always bound us together loosen.
Because I couldn’t ever take back what I’d done.
I could feel the world splintering around me, my foundation crumbling beneath my feet.
Opening to reveal my wrong.
It tossed me headfirst into a bottomless chasm.
Endless.
Purgatory.
“I’m sorry, man. I’ll do anything. Anything. Come back to LA. We’ll work it out. Just…tell me you forgive me. Tell me you’re okay…that this won’t cause you to slip.”
His laughter was hollow. “What’s the point of staying clean…the point in working hard for what is right…when it’s just taken away from you anyway?”
I gulped around the agony. “Mark—”
“I have to go.”
He ended the call, and I choked over a strike of fear that hit me like a bolt of lightning.
Searching for an answer, for courage, I turned my face to the heavens that glowed like I was at the brink of day without the promise of a sunrise.
The stars were obscured.
Hidden.
Stars I knew shined and glimmered so damned bright when you stepped out of the limelight and depravity of this sordid city. Somehow, I’d always thought those twinkling stars the guardians of the wishes I’d cast upon their fallen as a child.
As if they held them protectively where they forever danced until the day those wishes were released and that dream became a reality.
In that moment, I swore I heard a silent curse uttered that left them permanently dimmed.
As a kid, I had breathed a million of those wishes.
Countless.
Infinite.
Now I could feel them falling all around me. Burning and bleeding out.
Disintegrating into nothing.
That had been the last time I talked to my brother. I knew I deserved it. I could never ask for anything more. I never questioned it. Never dreamed it could be any other way.
Not until the day I met her.
One
Zee
It was late when I took the walkway toward the modest house in the quiet suburban neighborhood. My flight from Savannah had been delayed, and I was fucking wiped.
Ash and Willow had arrived a week ago. The rest of the band and their families would be there within the next few days so we could finalize plans for the next tour, which was kicking off next month.
Over the last couple of years, things had skyrocketed for Sunder, the band gaining more fame and prominence than we ever could have dreamed. We’d been working our asses off in Savannah, putting the final touches on the album we’d recorded while there over the last couple months.
Now we were shifting gears and turning our focus to the promotion, which meant playing live and getting in front of our fans.
Thank God we got to take a breather for a bit, because I was exhausted.
Still, I shouldn’t have been surprised this was where my feet carried me the second we’d landed.
I rapped on the door.
Four months had passed since I’d been back in LA, a sin in and of itself, and my chest tightened with a shot of anticipation that always came with a healthy dose of regret as I lifted my hand to knock at the wood.
Waiting in the shadows of night, I sucked in a deep breath, wondering again how the fuck I’d gotten this deep. Torn between two worlds. Pretending one didn’t exist.
I guess none of us really knew what direction our lives were gonna go. As kids, we imagined and dreamed. Most of the time, those dreams were bigger than life.
Outrageous and bold.
Unattainable and impractical.
Sometimes we got real close to reaching them, and other times we landed in an entirely different stratosphere.
What seemed ridiculous was I was the one who’d landed here. Living the life so many kids considered the wildest kind of dream.
The rock star life.
Endless roads and boundless fans.
Money, fame, and fortune.
Crazy, because I never really felt I was living it. Just a stranger who glided along the periphery. Close but never quite stepping over the line.
I hadn’t wanted it. Had never pictured myself in this position. The things I’d wanted had been similar but distinct. Different but the same.
Truth of the matter? That’d been me and my brother Mark all along.
Polar opposites but entirely in sync.
Contradictory but identical.
He’d been my hero, and I’d been his rock.
Maybe that’d been our demise.
A light flipped on somewhere in the house, and anticipation flooded me. How could I regret any of that now? Maybe I’d done everything so incredibly wrong, but it’s true what they say—sometimes miraculous, beautiful things come out of your greatest tragedy.
I’d be lying if I said the situation wasn’t shitty, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t the best thing I had. What got me through the lonely nights.
A silhouette passed by the opaque drape that hung across the side window and movement rustled on the other side of the door. I swallowed around the nerves that gathered fast at the base of my throat.
This was the part I hated—dealing with her.
Metal scraped as the lock disengaged, and those nerves shivered and spiked with warning when the door barely cracked open two inches.
Guarded, a woman I’d never seen before peeked out at me, confusion in her sleepy gaze. “Can I help you?”
I did my best to ignore the dread that climbed into my chest.
“Is Veronica here?” The question came out harder than I intended.
Something registered on the woman’s face. “Veronica? The girl who used to own this house?”
That dread took a sharp turn south and blazed into anger. “Used to?”
Warily, she blinked, stammered as if she was the one who needed to explain herself. “W-we bought this house almost three months ago.”
I nodded, though it was entirely in disbelief. Of course, I wasn’t really surprised now, was I?
Not at all.
I was fucking pissed.
I took a step back, trying to hold it together. “Sorry to bother you so late at night. I haven’t been in town for a while.”
She looked at me almost apologetically. “I hope you can touch base with her.”
“Thanks,” I said before I spun on my heel and yanked my phone from my pocket, thumbs banging out her number as I stalked back down the walkway.
It rang four times before her sickly sweet voice came on the line, recorded and just as fake as the rest of her. I listened to her message before I was growling the words right after the beep.
“You better have a good explanation. Because I’m fucking done.”
Two
Alexis
No fear. Just life.
No fear. Just life.
No fear. Just life.
I chanted it over and over beneath my breath and tried to make it true. To pretend terror didn’t saturate my skin with a sickly sweat and that my breaths didn’t come both labored and shallow as I tried not to inhale the vile stench of the darkened alleyway.
I could smell him everywhere, this nauseating odor that reeked of something wicked and corrupt.
I tried to stand my ground. I was there for my sister, and I wasn’t leaving without her. But fear had me fumbling back another step. My back hit the pitted exterior wall, and I gasped when I realized I’d walked myself straight into a corner.
He sneered when he took a step closer.
My gaze darted to my right, my words dripping with a plea. With a promise. “Avril…please…come with me.”
“Go.” He didn’t even glance at her when he issued his command. He just glared down at me with a twisted grin that sent a shiver of fear down my spine.
Maybe it was worse that he was somehow attractive. Had he used that against her? Had he dragged her deeper into this disgusting world with some kind of depraved charm?
I begged my sister with my eyes.
Remember. Remember us. I’ll help you. You don’t have to be afraid.
“Go!” he shouted again. The single word struck in the air like a gavel blow.
Her entire body bowed, curling inward, her expression a pitiful, useless apology as she backed away.
Grief struck me from all sides when she turned and disappeared into the shadows like thin, transparent mist. Frail and weak.
She left me.
I wanted to chase her. To grab her. Shake her. Tell her she didn’t have to live this life. How many times did I have to do it before she’d believe me?
But I couldn’t move. I was pinned to the grimy wall by his salacious stare. He edged closer, and I kept my head to the side and squeezed my eyes closed as if it might hide me.
He pressed his body against mine.
Tears streaked free and revulsion rolled through my being. I inhaled a jagged breath that broke on a sob. “Please.”
It was the wrong thing to say.
I already knew I’d stumbled into a world without compassion. A place void of grace.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that instead of sympathy, he laughed and jammed a knee between my thighs, forcing my legs apart.
I gasped a cry as he fumbled to get under my shirt, his words menacing as he breathed them at my ear. “Told you the next time I saw you, you were gonna regret it, stupid bitch. Did you think I was joking? Think it’s time I teach you a lesson. Girls that keep coming around here, they don’t ever get to leave.”
“No.” I didn’t want to beg, but it was there as panic surged through my veins. Fight. I bit and flailed and fought.
He growled and gripped both my wrists in one hand, and pinned them over my head, as his free hand tore at my shirt. I kicked, but he just pressed me harder against the wall. Coarse, ragged concrete cut into my back.
“Oh my God. No. Stop. Please.”
“Shut the fuck up.” Dark blond stubble lined his sharply angled jaw. It scraped across my face as he spat the words. “Don’t say a goddamned word. Do you understand me? One sound and I end you.”
No fear. Just life.
I screamed.
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