Beautiful Elixir (Beautiful Oblivion #3) (17 page)

“All right. I think I’m locked and loaded and ready to go. I can’t wait to bring this bastard down.
Caleb McCarthy won’t know what hit him.”

My blood runs cold. My heart feels as if it’s finally stopped beating. That last voice belonged to Kennedy without a doubt.

I replay it again and again, and each time her words are a fresh knife to the heart.

A set of footsteps click over from the hall. Heels. Kennedy. I shut my laptop and slip the note under a stack of files just as she breezes through the door.

“Where is it?” Her eyes dart around the vicinity like balls breaking over a pool table. “Caleb? What happened?” She pants out the words as I rise to meet her.

“Maybe nothing happened.” I walk over to her, our eyes bound like links on a chain. “Maybe it was just a ploy to get you here?” I offer a crooked smile, but not one part of me believes in happiness right now. “Come here.” I wrap my arms around her, and we rock like we’re dancing for a good long while. I never did tell her what I had done for Solomon. I told her I’d let her in on it tonight by the fire, but we’re not by the fire, we’re in it. Hell, we’re not even who we thought we were. If what my ears heard is right, then we may never even get close to where I thought we were headed.

My lips find hers, and I offer a desperate kiss, an angry, fueled with rage and harrowing sorrowful kiss. My tongue moves over hers as she sighs right into my throat.

Her mouth glides over my cheek until she buries it in my ear.

“I’ve been framed very well, haven’t I?”

My chest heaves against hers as we continue our melodic slow waltz, our heads buzzing with a haunting rhythm of these daunting threats. It’s nauseating, treacherous, much like life without Kennedy has been all these years.

“What did they say, Caleb?” Her breath is hot and thunderous in my ear, a deafening rush like waves roaring against the sand. She takes a ragged breath in response to my silence.

I take a bite out of her lower lip and find her achingly delicious.

“I’m going to have my way with you, and then I’ll tell you.”

She pulls back, her lids heavy, her lips red as berries. “Tell me what, Caleb? What you did or what I did?” Kennedy examines me with those crystal eyes, her beauty bright as a flame in this dismal room.

“Both.”

Kennedy gives a delayed grin, the slight patina of anger hiding behind her eyes. Her fingers glide over my tie, smoothing it until she gives the knot a firm tug. Her fingers move slowly over my buttons as her cool hands fan across my chest like a rainbow. I tilt my head back and give my belt a firm tug, pulling down my zipper with a marked deliberation. Kennedy and I have always held each other at bay just enough to remain clever strangers in one another’s worlds. For as much as we craved a relationship, we each found excuses for not having one, and here we are, together at last—toxic in every capacity.

I strip her dress off, send her bra flying, and take a moment to enjoy the view. Kennedy has a perfect body—a body that can move me to tears, drive me to the point of insanity. If I were moved to break the law for my brother, what wouldn’t I do for her? I wonder. I already know.

My thumbs hitch into her panties as I glide them over her hips. Kennedy rolls her head over her neck, moans as if this were the height of pleasure. It won’t be. I can promise that.

She begins to flick her heels off, and I give her hips a firm squeeze. “The shoes stay on.”

“Yes, sir.” Her eyes widen, round and soft, as if she were dazzled by the command. Maybe that’s what Kennedy needs, someone to bark out orders at her. Some women eat that up in the bedroom. They crave a personality bigger than themselves when it comes to getting dirty beneath the sheets, and Kennedy’s personality is pretty damn big.

I lean in and give a hard bite to her earlobe. Kennedy explodes with a groan that rattles her whole body.

“You like that don’t you? A little pain with your pleasure?” I whisper hard in her ear. My hand travels to the inside of her thigh, and I’m met with her wet warmth. My fingers glide into her body, hard and fast, greedy to be inside her. She wraps her leg around my waist as she pulls me from my boxers and lands herself on top of me. Kennedy impales herself over my body with an enthusiastic jump as if it were her favorite sport. Her warmth glides down over me, slow and tight. Kennedy feels better than a virgin, better than a wet dream, better than any other woman I have ever had. Kennedy feels like the finish line, what I’ve spent my whole life wishing for and waiting for—and she is.

I back her against the window, as large and wide as the wall, and let the entire city watch as she rides me—as I have my way with her mouth, her perfect tits, her tight ass, for as long as I can hold out. I’m not sure why I didn’t push her against the door, the wall, my desk for the sake of keeping things intimate, instead I’ve invited the entire world to lend a watchful eye to our madness. I think, deep down, I wanted the lunatic who’s watching to know—to let the world know—that no matter what transpires, Kennedy and I will survive. Kennedy Slade is mine. The end.

Afterwards, after a long riotous session of aggressive trashing-the-office sex, I hold her on the uncomfortably small leather sofa, her body wrapped in my suit jacket like a blanket.

Kennedy curls up in my arms, her head turned toward mine. Her eyes glow like white powder. Outside, the skyline of Collingsworth lights up like a miniature version of Manhattan. It’s a beautiful portrait we get to look out at and be a part of.

“Tell me, Caleb. Tell me what they’ve done now.” Her voice is as steady as her gaze, and I’m left questioning her innocence once again. If she is innocent, this is what they wanted, to create a fissure of doubt, if she’s guilty then—well, hell, I’d still try to find a way to prove her innocent. It’s what I’m hardwired to do. It’s what she hired me for.

“First, I want to tell you what I did for my brother—the shithole he pulled me into, launching the both of us into this nightmare.”

Kennedy lets out a hard sigh, rubbing her thumb over my cheek, with grief pulling down her features. “Before this gets ugly, I just want you to know that no matter what you’ve done—I love you, Caleb.” Her eyes laser into mine with a painful clarity that only comes with the truth. “I will love you forever.”

“Kennedy.” I pull her hand to my lips and hold it there as I try to get my emotions in check. The last thing I want is to cry like a pussy. “I love you with everything in me. I gave you my heart that day I first laid eyes on you. Before we ever really met, I knew you were the girl I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.” I hesitate a moment. “And I still want that. Do you want that with me?”

“Yes.” She ticks back, stunned. “Hell, yes.” Her palms cup my cheeks as she pulls me in. “I can see the doubt in your eyes, Caleb. Someone is fucking with us good. Tell me what’s going on. Please.”

The air grows still between us. I’ve had these moments with my clients before, the stillness before the inevitable truth vomits out of them. This is the fork in the road, where the lie meets the truth. There always seems to be this awkward pause that each of my clients partake in, and, to be honest, I never knew why. But here I am, crossing that same intersection, and I suddenly get it. This is the moment where you admit defeat. I had held fast to the manufactured truths that Solomon gave me, but my next words will draw a big, fat red line over everything we firmly stood for. Sometimes telling the truth is painful, and, up until now, I never really understood that.

“About a year ago I was heading out for a day hike to the Gideon Wilderness right outside South Lux. Somehow, I managed to convince Solomon to come with me.” That day comes back in jags, heavy spring air clinging to a clear blue sky. “My father had just made my brother, Abel, partner—Abel who hated,
hated
that he had succumbed to the law disease as he calls it. I was resentful, mad as all hell. I was the one busting my ass for my father. I was the one with a belly full of fire, ready to take on the legal world, take over his company when it came time. But the golden chalice wasn’t offered to me. I didn’t get a sip of my father’s successful firm. As usual, I was left out in the cold. So”—I lean in and kiss her temple—“I took a day off and went for a hike.”

“I’m sorry you were bypassed, but maybe he was planning on pulling you in at a later time?”

“Perhaps, but I don’t see the reasoning, and I’m not sure why he wouldn’t have mentioned it by now. My father has a dark side. You saw the psychological aftereffects he left with my mother.”

“So what’s the crime? Did Solomon wear the wrong shoes?” She gives a gentle scratch to my chest, coaxing me along.

“No. He didn’t do a damn thing wrong. When we got back, he went home. The rest is a twisted, contrived version of history that I was asked to play along with. Solomon had a girlfriend,
has
, who the hell knows where they’re at. She went out that afternoon to her ex’s to pick up some money he owed her. They have a kid he was trying to wrangle from her. She was alone, and her jerk of an ex-husband was in the middle of the road when she got there, and she gunned it. She mowed him down in the middle of the street, and the only witness around saw my brother’s pickup. She was pretty messed up when Sol found her—terrified that not only did she kill her ex, but she was about to lose her daughter. Solomon, being the kind-hearted bastard he is, volunteered to take the blame.” I shake my head. “He called me up and told me to meet him at a bar—told me what story to stick to, that I went hiking alone, he didn’t need or want an alibi. He wanted to play hero for this crack whore who killed a man with a decent wife and two kids, and now my brother is paying the price for her very impaired judgment.”

“Oh my, God.” She buries her head in my chest a moment. “That’s so terrible. Are you going to do something?”

I let out a breath I’ve been holding for over a solid year. “Solomon.” His name breaks as I say it, and I swallow hard as my emotions try to jerk out of my throat. “He made me promise, swear to him, that I wouldn’t step in. He asked me not to come to the trial. To say the least, it’s baffled my family. He asked them not to go, but they’ve defied his wishes.” I wrap her silky hair around my fingers. “I’ve been thinking about things, and I’ve decided I’m not going to let my kid brother rot in a cell just because he wants to put on a cape and play hero. I’m heading to court first thing.”

“Caleb.” Her eyes glitter with tears as her smile widens. “I’m so proud of you. You’re my hero, you know that?” Her lips find mine again, and we share a hot, fevered kiss mingling with tears, hers and mine. Damn I hate it when I’m a pussy.

Kennedy pulls back, her face slicked and shining under the duress of the city lights filtering in. “Now tell me, Caleb.” Her tone sharpens. Her features harden to stone. “Tell me what the spineless bastard who is haunting me has done now.”

I gently slide her to the side and head over to my laptop. I spin it around so the speaker faces out. Kennedy heads over, wearing nothing but my jacket, and I refrain from telling her it’s a good look. I hit play and hope for the best.

“I made the delivery, and I saw his brother. I wrote down all the details for you. There’s enough to nail him to a wall.”

“Alright. I think I’m locked and loaded and ready to go. I can’t wait to bring this bastard down.
Caleb McCarthy won’t know what hit him.”

Kennedy’s face shines like marble in this dull light. I can see the word “no” forming on her lips as she shakes her head. Her eyes flash to mine like dimes.

“What’s this about, Kennedy?” I want to wrap my arms around her, but there’s a rising tension in the air that weighs me down, heavy as lead.

Kennedy takes a breath and holds it. She lifts her chin. Her body straightens like a rod as if she has a new sense of resolve.

“It looks as if I’ve finally been caught red-handed.” She tilts her head back and inhales the oxygen right out of the room. “I did it, Caleb. I’ve been fucking with you all along. Just like you’ve been fucking Zoey. I don’t take too kindly to cheaters. Looks like you had to find out the hard way.”

Kennedy picks up her purse and strides out of the office wearing nothing but my jacket and the heels I demanded she keep on. Her dress lies limp on the ground, and I swipe it up burying my face in it a moment. I stagger to the window and face the swelling city pumping below like a heartbeat and wonder what the hell just happened.

I
n the morning
, after a night of tossing and turning on the uncomfortable sofa in my office, I shower in the gym downstairs, put on what’s left of my wrinkled suit and head to the Morris Township Courthouse. I double park, and run up the steps holding my briefcase to the menacing muscleman in a security uniform.

“Stop right where you are!” he shouts, one hand on his weapon.

“I’m an attorney!” I fire back as I burst into the courtroom, and my eyes fall on a set of familiar faces, my mother, my father, my two very paranoid looking brothers.

“He didn’t do it!” I roar as I stop just shy of council. “He was with me,” I say, looking the judge dead in the eye. “He was never even in the fucking car.”

Solomon closes his eyes, and, for a brief moment, I see the distinct look of relief.

Sometimes, we only think we want to be the hero.

I wonder if that’s what it’s been all along with Kennedy and me.

Something in me stubbornly insists on being her hero.

L
oveless changes seasons
like a magician performing a rudimentary party trick. One minute you’re staring at the black hole of fall, and, the next, it’s holding up the white rabbit of winter.

The first snow of the season peppers the evergreens, frosting them with a dusting, soft as confectioners sugar. Last winter brought storms that gusted over ten feet of powder at a time. We had to dig our way into spring—they did, I was safely down the mountain at Yeats, blissfully unaware of the personal blizzard the next few months would bring me. At that point, I was already all but done with Keith—plotting how I would somehow spend my summer with Caleb and then the unthinkable began to happen, someone was toying with me, with Keith, and it felt dangerous. I quit school and went home. Then Caleb showed up in Loveless as a friend of the friendless—helping the helpless, pulling the downtrodden out of their hairy, dark pits, and I grew increasingly, ridiculously jealous. I didn’t want him to take on Gavin Jackson’s case. I didn’t want him going after Demi and saving her. I wanted him to take me on, save me from myself. I was whiny and selfish and decided to punish him by offering a cold shoulder—and for what? Keeping his promise to come back for me? Everyone seems to have a reason to be upset with me these days, and, after abandoning him in his office, for sure, Caleb does. Hell, I’m pretty pissed at me, too.

Caleb didn’t come home yesterday. I stalked his driveway from the upstairs window, getting up at all hours to see if the lights were on, but nothing. I had spilled a lie at his feet, slick as oil—force-fed it down his throat. I hated myself for it, but, deep down, I knew it was the right thing. Sometimes the only thing that can truly set you free is a good old-fashioned lie—only I wasn’t setting myself free, I was freeing Caleb.

I shower and dress and head down for coffee so I can figure out how in the hell to handle the rest of my life.

A murmur of voices fill the front hall, and I get to the base of the stairs to find my mother, father, and sister all locked in a heated conversation.

It’s like I hit replay on a scene that just panned out a few weeks ago.

“What the hell’s going on?”

Kam smirks. Her hair is both longer and shinier than mine, her lace up thigh high boots far cuter than the ones I’m sporting, and that longstanding superficial part of me is actually pissed by this.

“We’re here to try to save your neck once and for all.” She spits it out as if she’s not. “What the hell is with you anyway?”

“What did I do now?” I head over and join their unholy huddle.

My father’s chest expands with his next breath. He looks to the ceiling a moment as if to rein in his rage. “You sent out a press release detailing the fact Solomon McCarthy wasn’t driving the car the day he supposedly killed a man. And, by doing so, you incriminated his brother—your so-called-boyfriend. If this is true, it means Caleb perjured himself when he gave his statement. You realize they’re going to suspend his license at best. Please tell me this wasn’t you, Ken.”

My sister huffs as if she knows better. “Please stop priming her for another lie.” She looks to me. “Go ahead Ken, you’re used to spewing half-truths. And where the hell is that other boyfriend of yours? If this escalates to murder, you’re going to fry in hell for this.”

Shit.

I walk slowly toward my father, my gaze set on his, my feet floating as if I’m having an out of body experience. I’m about to take it all on the chin, lie upon lie, shoveling it out like digging my own grave but when I open my mouth, my heart demands to take a U-turn.

“I don’t know where Keith is. I didn’t give the press that unfortunate statement about Caleb. Someone posed as me and squeezed the truth out of his brother.” I close my eyes a moment. “I’m so sorry I lied in court all those years ago, Daddy.” A single tear rolls down my cheek. “All this time has passed, and I still think I did it for Mom, but I really did it for me and for Kam.” I can’t bring myself to look at either of my parents when I say it. “You hurt us all, and I couldn’t let you get away with it. I wish I could go back in time, but I can’t. And I can’t take back the confession I made to my friends a few nights ago. Whoever is doing this to me—they were listening in—they recorded the conversation. That’s how the leak got out. I pray I haven’t hurt you further. I would never betray you like that. I’ve grown. I’ve
changed
. I’m not the hurt little girl who would do anything for vengeance. I’m about forgiveness, acceptance, and protecting those I love.” I swallow down the brick in my throat. “I didn’t do this to Caleb either.”

“Then who did this?” Kam shouts, demanding. “Who hates you enough to run everyone you love into the ground?”

“I don’t know!” I scream it right back in her face. “Is it you, Kam? You’ve always told me that you wish you were me!”

“That’s because everyone bowed down to your idiocrasy! You had Mom and Dad wrapped around your pinky from the day you were born. You were, and, still are, their favorite.”

“Not true!” My father bellows.

“Well, guess who decided to keep quiet?” She shoots a dirty look to Mom.

My mother dives over her and gives Kam a violent shake to the shoulders. “Are you doing this to your sister?”

“No!” Kamryn stumbles and nearly falls out the opened door, and I block it with my body in the event she decides to bolt. “I would never hurt either of you.” She softens her gaze over mine. “I’ve missed you so much, Ken.” She glances to my mother. “And I missed you, too, Mom.” They wrap their arms around each other as my mother breaks into sobs, whispering her love for my sister over and over like a mantra.

I look at my father with that woeful look in his eye as he takes in the scene. That’s the look of a man who is very damn sorry he ever destroyed his family.

“Will you be here for a while?” I ask pulling him in and wrapping my arms around his thick chest, his heavy breath falling over my forehead. His cologne is zesty and spiced with a hint of rubbing alcohol layered underneath. It’s the same cheap cologne he’s worn for years. If my father is anything, he is a creature of habit.

“We’ll be up in a few days.” He breathes the words over my head. “I’ve got a lead in on Keith.”

“What? Is he okay? Is he alive?” My heart jumps to my throat. My first inclination is to call Caleb and tell him, but then I remember I burned that bridge to cinders. I still have his suit jacket. I suppose he’ll need that back. I wish he needed us back, and, ironically, I’m the reason we’re no longer together.

“I don’t know the details”—Dad tries to rub the fatigue from his eyes—“but, yes, he’s alive. I’m meeting with detectives and his parents this afternoon.”

“Oh, God. I’m going to be sick.” A heavy wave of nausea hits me, and I gulp down the chilled air streaming in around me.

“What now, drama queen?” Kam is relentless in her persecution of me and rightfully so. “You’re not knocked up are you? Any last minute secrets you want to let us in on?”

I turn to face them fully.

My mother steps in. “What is it, Kennedy?” The worry on her face breaks me. “Are you pregnant?”

“Good Lord!” Kam growls it out and rouses all the anger, the humiliation, that I’ve bottled up inside for so long. This family right here, these three people have brought me the most pleasure, the most pain.

“No, you little witch”—I get into my sister’s face with blood boiling in my veins—“I am not having anybody’s baby. And, if you all must know, there is one last secret I’ve been holding back.” My heartbeat races wild, beating against my chest so quick I’m half convinced I’m having a cardiac episode. The sounds of the world around me dissipate as my ears pump hard with the rhythm. “I did it.” Here it comes—the big one—the final truth shaking the walls of my lying heart just begging to be set free. “Keith may have deserved all of those horrible, stupid, downright petty things that happened to him, but I didn’t do a single one—except, of course, for the only one that mattered. But, then in my book, I thought that would have been enough. I’m the one who did it. I loaded everything to the Internet.”

“You put up those videos?” Kam takes a breath like she might be sick.

I give a single nod, closing my eyes in a brief show of remorse before bouncing right back into a rage.

“I
had
to!” I spit the words at her with venom. “Keith had them. He threatened to do it himself. I know for a fact he let his stupid, pig-faced frat brothers have at them. He was already humiliating me with other girls—and, by distributing something so intimate to his friends, it just proved he had no regard for me. There isn’t a punishment I could dream up that would supersede the fact he would do something so heinous. I figured it was already going to be done anyway—I took the power back from him. I did it myself. I uploaded every one of those damn videos.” There. I take a quiet breath, first one in months. This was the letting of a festering wound.

Dad bows his head in defeat while my mother clamps her hand over her mouth, her bug-eyed gaze set behind me. She wanted to mold me into her likeness, she wanted me to be the perfect debutant, and here I am, something just shy of a porn star.

Kam glances behind me, and I know.

It takes all of my fortitude to spin on my heels.

There he is—Caleb. Those navy eyes fill with a mixture of sorrow and rage—a storm brewing in each one. His lips twitch as if he might say something, scream at me. My heart drums in my throat, in my ears.

Caleb’s hard demeanor remains engraved over his features. Welcome to the new Caleb, the one who hates you.

I’d love nothing more than to comfort him—but I can’t.

So I do the only thing I can think of.

I push my way past him and run.