Dirty Secret: A Bad Boy Romance (Bluefield Bad Boys Book 3) (12 page)

Chapter 28

Dawson

Megan and Aubrey had not wasted any time packing up and leaving. If it hadn’t been for Lenix, I probably would have changed my flight too. I practically pounced on the door when Lenix knocked. Her earlier text had said that she had something kind of major happening, and she was bringing a bottle of wine so she could get plenty drunk and tell me all about it.

I opened the door. She lifted up a bottle of wine and in the other hand she held up a six pack of beer. “There is not a darn thing about you that says wine sipper,” she said as she brushed past me. “So I snatched a six pack from the fridge.”

She put the drinks on the table, turned around and pressed herself into my arms. It wasn’t her usual jump and cling and kiss-like-crazy greeting. There was an air of sadness around her. She stayed tucked against me for a long time without saying a word.

“Everything all right?”

“I guess. The world is just a little more lopsided than it was this morning. But I’m hoping it will right itself again. I came over because there’s a story that will probably be in the news soon, and I wanted to tell you first. However you feel about me afterward, I will completely understand. Just know, that I had the best darn time of my life with you.”

I reached for a beer. “I think I’m going to need this.”

She reached in her pocket and pulled out a corkscrew. “Kind of figured you wouldn’t have one handy. But could you open it? All I manage to do is obliterate the cork into tiny chunks without ever actually getting it free from the bottle.”

I worked at opening the bottle, and she settled on the end of the bed. “Are your sisters gone already?”

“Yeah. They took off about an hour ago. Megan seemed as if she was feeling all right. She’s better off without him. That’s for damn sure.”

“I’m glad she’s feeling better.”

I handed her a plastic cup of wine and sat down next to her on the bed with my beer.

Lenix leaned her head against my shoulder. “God, you have dreamy shoulders.” She sighed. “Dreamy everything.”

“Lennie, what’s going on? You know if there’s anything you need, anyone you need me to—”

“To scare off? Like Wyatt?” She lifted her head from my shoulder and peered up at me with those unforgettable jewel-toned eyes. “Trust me, that scene would not have ended as well if you hadn’t been standing there glowering at the guy. I almost had to give him kudos for staying with it so long.”

“Thought the same thing. Maybe he was stupider than he looked.”

She sipped her wine. “I don’t have any Wyatt types hanging around. Although I’ve dated my share of assholes. But that’s a whole other story. I came here tonight to tell you some stuff about my past, stuff that doesn’t exactly put a glowing halo around my head. It’s sordid enough that it might just affect the popularity of the band. Or, at least in my mind, it is. It’s always hard to know how the fans will react. I’ve relayed my story to a reporter to get a jump on Graham doing it.”

I scooted around to face her. “If you’re worried how it will affect my feelings about you, then there isn’t a damn thing you could tell me that would make me stop feeling the way I do.”

She reached up and fingered the stubble on my chin. “And how
do
you feel about me?”

“Let’s just say, I pace this stupid, fucking room like a caged animal when you’re not here. You’re all I can think about.”

“A caged animal?” She wrapped her arm around mine. “That probably shouldn’t turn me on, but it does. I can’t stop thinking about you either, Dawson. Just in case you were wondering.”

She kicked off her shoes. We scooted back on the bed and leaned against the propped up pillows. Lenix slugged back the last drops of wine and put the cup on the nightstand. I did the same with my beer. Outside the window, the blue sky was dulling to a gray dusk. The only sounds were the seagulls screeching overhead and the rolling waves.

“When I went back to the house,” Lenix started, “the guys were having a meeting. They’ve decided it’s time to get rid of Graham Rushton, our manager.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“Both, I guess. Graham has become somewhat of a controlling tyrant. Then there are some other concerns, but I won’t bore you with those. Graham and I go way back, before the band. He’s the one who introduced me to Brick, Rex and Duff. He’d heard me sing and thought I’d be a good match for the band.”

“He was definitely right. So, you feel a certain loyalty to him?”

She scooted closer and wrapped her arm around mine. “Yes, but that’s not why it’s hard to let him go. He’s changed a lot since then. He’s lost a lot of my trust and affection. But Graham pulled me from the depths of hell, for lack of a better phrase. He is the only person who knows just how far I’d sunk before I started with the band. And he’s used that knowledge to control me.”

“Blackmail?”

She nodded. “Yep, never thought of it in that term, but it was absolutely mental blackmail. I wanted nothing more than to forget about the past, but he was always there to remind me. He uses it to control me. If I don’t do as he asks, then he threatens to make sure my ugly past comes back to bite me in the butt.”

“Just can’t imagine how an amazing, beautiful, talented woman like you could have done anything that ugly.”

She fell silent and eyed the wine bottle across the way.

“Want me to pour you another glass?”

She took a long breath. “No, I just need to be out with it. It’s strange. It’s harder than I thought to tell you. Your opinion of me matters a lot. I told the guys earlier, and it was easier. And it is something that could affect their lives, the band.”

“How did they take it?”

“They were pretty understanding. They all knew I came from a less than desirable childhood.” She laughed softly. “Once they realized that Graham had been
blackmailing
me with the knowledge the whole time, they were really ready to send him packing. All along, I knew Graham wouldn’t tell anyone because he would never do anything to hurt the reputation of the band,
his
band. But when the guys told me they were going to fire him as manager, I knew I had to get it out there before him. I decided I’d be able to tell it from a personal perspective and that it might not sound as awful. Actually—” She hopped off the bed, walked over to the table and picked up the wine bottle. She took a few more sips and then scurried back to the bed.

She sat down next to me and took hold of my hand. “I told you about the day my mom died. As crappy as we had been living, never having enough money to eat or stay in a place for long, at least I had her. Until I didn’t. Her parents had kicked her out as soon as they’d discovered she was pregnant, and I never knew my father. Not even sure if my mom knew his name. I was completely alone after her death. I spent the next ten years bouncing around foster homes, just trying to survive the shitty hand I’d been dealt. Then, at sixteen, I ran away, no longer wanting to be part of a system that just didn’t seem to care about me.”

The entire time Lenix spoke there was no self-pity in her tone. A hollow, lonely sound but no self-pity.

“Like so many runaways, with no place to go or parents to keep me from making stupid ass decisions, I ended up living with a couple of guys. They were in their twenties. When they weren’t selling drugs from our seedy little room at the back of a duplex, they were playing music. We managed to make money on street corners. They’d play and I’d sing. That’s where Graham first heard me. But there was nothing holding us together, other than we were all looking for something better. Eventually, we parted ways, and I found myself alone again, looking through trash cans for food or discarded socks and scarves to wear. There were things—” She took a deep breath. “Things I did for money that I don’t need to detail to you. I’m sure you can figure it out.”

I squeezed her hand. “I don’t think that you did anything that anyone else wouldn’t have done in that situation. You had to survive.”

“There were things I had no choice over but then I let myself walk down a path that I’ll regret forever. A man I met one night told me he could give me a free room and meals if I’d act in some of his movies. I was only sixteen, but that didn’t seem to bother him. In fact, it seemed to only intrigue him. He was making hardcore porn with underage girls, and in a few months, I’d become his star.”

I looked at Lenix, but she stared straight ahead to the view outside, probably because it was an easier story to tell that way. “You did what you had to do to stay alive. No one, not even your fans, would fault you for that. It’s the guys filming underage girls in porn who have a history to be ashamed about. Not you.”

She dropped her gaze but still didn’t look at me. “But I did it willingly. There was no coercion, just the promise of food, shelter, even money to buy things, things I’d never had in my life. And the movies were terrible. The hardcore crap sold in back alleys.” She took a deep breath. “And there’s more. The easiest way for me to get through it was to be completely wasted on drugs. Crazy stuff that just let me drift from one day to the next avoiding any contact with reality.”

“I think anyone would have found comfort with drugs in that kind of situation.”

She rested her head against my shoulder. “You have the right answer for everything. But I was weak. I never should have gotten into it in the first place. I won’t ever forgive myself for that. Things have changed so dramatically for me, and trust me, I take none of it for granted. I’m using some of my money to fund homes for runaway girls, so they can eat and sleep and feel safe without having to resort to stupid, insane decisions to survive. It helps me absorb some of the guilt and shame of what I did. But I made all the wrong decisions back then, and I have no one to blame but myself.”

“Yet you pulled out of it stronger than ever. Not everyone does that. In fact, I’d say it’s safe to say, not many pull themselves up from something like that . . . ever.”

Lenix slid off the bed and curled her arms around herself as she walked to the window to look out at the beach. “That’s where Graham comes in. Without him, I’m pretty sure I’d be in jail or dead. Of course, his motives stemmed from greed and not from compassion or empathy. But still, I owe him my life.”

“How did he find you?”

“He was at a party with some friends and someone popped one of the movies into the DVD player.” She looked at me. “Graham’s not the type to watch underage girls in porn. Just to clear that up about him. He might be money hungry, but he’s not a perv. He’s never done anything to make me doubt that. He saw me on the screen and recognized me as the girl singing on the street corner. At the time, he was working hard to get Brick, Rex and Duff a singer for their band. He saw their potential, and, oddly enough, he saw mine too. He asked around and found out my name.” She smiled weakly. “Back then, I was Starlight Silver.” She rolled her eyes. “Genius, I know. Anyhow, Graham got me into rehab and cleaned up. The rest is, as they say, history.”

“It’s quite a story but not one that would make your fans stop listening to your music.”

“Guess we’ll find out. I regret that the guys are only just finding out about this.” She walked over to the bed and straddled my lap. She leaned forward and kissed me. “What about you? What’s going through your head?”

I placed my hand against her cheek. She closed her eyes and covered my hand with hers to hold my palm against her skin.

“Knowing what you were up against and everything you had to face—I think I’m even more nuts about you. If that was even possible.”

Lenix turned to the side, stretched her legs out and rested against my chest. She sighed contentedly as I wrapped my arms around her. “There are those dreamy arms again. I could just stay in them all damn day.” She grew quiet for a moment. “You should come with me.”

“Where?”

“Just wherever my life takes me next. You should just pack up your life and come with me.”

I squeezed my arms tighter. I always knew the vacation would end, that all of this would end, but the reality was getting closer, and it was weighing heavy on my heart.

“I can’t, Lenix. I’d be completely out of place in that world.”

“I know,” she said quietly. “I just thought I’d give it a shot.”

Chapter 29

Lenix

Stupidly, I’d been convinced that releasing my story during a time when the news cycle was focused on a murder would be like dropping a grain of sugar into sand, and it would disappear without much notice. But apparently, porn, and especially porn that involved underage girls, was just sensational and seedy enough to turn some of the heads of reporters away from Paula Nelson’s murder. It seemed that the case against her husband was fairly cut and dry, and, aside from some gruesome details and some possibly scandalous motives being floated about, the homicide was quickly losing its luster as a headline. But Lenix Harlow’s secret life as a child porn star was just sordid enough to rally the troops again. The paparazzi and press had had a double dose of luck handed to them. I often wondered what it would be like to have a job where you had to wait for something really awful or scandalous to happen to someone else so that you could have a successful week at work.

My nervous friend, Parker Jergen, was definitely having his. In the long run, I was glad that I’d given the scoop to him. He seemed to really need the push for his career. He’d written the story in a way that showed my struggle to survive and how it had brought me to some drastic choices. He’d done an admirable job and made quick work of it. The story was everywhere in two days, and Parker got credit for breaking it.

I’d managed to sneak out and see Dawson for the day in between when most focus was still on the murder, but now that the story was out, I was sealed up inside the beach house.

Graham walked into the kitchen where I was picking at a bowl of cereal looking for the raisins. He had hardly spoken two words to me since I’d taken away the power he had over me. And at the same time, I’d ruined his chance of ever making money on my story.

We were waiting for an attorney and the accountant to scour the books. We couldn’t just accuse the man without evidence to back it up. As much as I was glad to be free of Graham’s control, deep down, I hoped that it wasn’t true. I didn’t want there to be that kind of animosity between the band and Graham. I didn’t want to believe that his greed had led him to steal from us.

Graham poured himself a glass of orange juice and sat at the kitchen table across from me. As much as he had been my only family for a long time, I’d been his too. That made all of this that much harder.

“Meeting a young band when we get back to New York, day after tomorrow. They have a lot of potential. A really good sound,” he said before taking a drink.

“Excellent. I hope that turns out well.”

His dark brows always danced along with his moustache when he was uptight. And the dance had begun. “Why’d you do it, Lennie?”

I gave up on my quest for raisins and put down my spoon. “So you couldn’t beat me to it.”

I wasn’t about to bring up anything about the meeting we’d held in his absence. That was a decision and something that would require all of us and lawyers sitting at a table, but it seemed Graham had an inkling of what was going on. My giving the story to Jergen had been a great big, obvious clue. Oddly enough, it seemed Graham might just be fine with moving on to a new band. He’d done a lot for us, but sometimes relationships got stale. The prospect of a new band to coddle, shape and form would make it much easier for him to part ways with Ice Cake.

“Graham, I will always be thankful for what you did for me. You were the first person who made me feel safe and important and worthy of living a real life. I won’t ever forget that. But, in the end, you changed. I changed.”

“I haven’t been doing anything shady with the money, Len. I would never do that.”

My mouth fell open, and it took me a second to find my tongue. “Who talked to you? What have you heard?”

He inclined his head toward the television room. “As you know, the big guy has the hearing of an elephant. He mentioned it to me. Just wanted you to know.” He stood up. “I know where all this is heading and that you guys think it’s time we split up. I’m starting to think it would be the best thing for all of us.” He started to walk out of the room but stopped. “You made me feel worthy of a real life too, Lennie.”

My eyes burned with tears as he walked out of the room, his usually straight, self-important posture looking just a little less crisp than usual.

I got up and put my bowl in the kitchen sink. It had been one hell of a week. I’d met a man who now had me wrapped firmly around his heart, a man who I would more than likely never see again. My life story was now out in the open for everyone to know and decide whether they ever wanted to hear me sing again. And Graham Rushton, the man who had pulled me from the gutter and made me a star, would soon, it seemed, be leaving to find a new Lenix Harlow to primp and prime for the music world. All of it left me feeling emotionally drained. I knew there was only one pair of arms that could make me feel better.

I leaned against the kitchen counter and pulled out my phone. So many people had called and texted me, but I’d ignored them all. I wasn’t ready to
chat
with anyone about things yet. I knew most people were just curious and anxious to hear gritty details, of which, I had no intention of sharing. Thankfully, most of the movies I’d been cast in had been confiscated and destroyed. Still, I had no doubt someone with a lot of internet research savvy would be able to find at least pieces of a movie. I had to brace for that, but for now, I was just relieved to have it all off my chest and out in the open. I had this strange feeling that having the weight of the secret off my shoulders would alleviate some of the anxiety I’d been feeling at performances.

I decided I needed more than a text. The sound of Dawson’s voice was an instant comfort.

“Know what I could really use right now? You and those dreamy arms and all the other dreamy stuff that goes with them. Interested?”

“What do you think?”

“Good. Only one problem. I can’t get out of the house. Can you come here? You might have to fight your way through some reporters. I’ll tell Axel to wait by the door and let you in.”

“I’m heading out the door now.”

“See you soon.” I headed out to the front room. Axel had been keeping watch on the activity out front through the window.

“Axel, my friend Dawson will be at the back door in a few minutes. Can you let him in and show him to my room?”

“Is that wise?” Graham asked from the couch. “With everything that’s going on and all the cameras out front, I don’t know if we need strangers walking willy nilly into the house.”

“Dawson is not a stranger, and I’ll text him to go easy on the willy nilly.”

Duff was sitting in the front room leaned over his laptop. He looked up to say something, but I stopped him.

“Duff, I told you, no internet for a few days. I don’t want to know what anyone is saying. I’m trying to brace myself for the ugliness.”

Duff looked over at Graham. “You didn’t tell her?”

He shrugged. Graham was obviously feeling betrayed by us all and mostly me.

Duff looked my direction again. I put my hand up to stop him, but he talked right over my signal. “Internet’s lighting up with the story, of course. But almost everything is positive. People saying you’ve earned even more respect from them because you came from terrible circumstances. Of course, there are haters, but you could save a baby from drowning and there would be people snarling about it. For the most part, it seems that you should have told your story earlier. Graham apparently didn’t mention that his phone was ringing off the hook with movie deals and book deals.”

“Ugh, no. I never wanted that. It’s good to hear though that our next concert won’t just have seven people sitting in the seats.”

“Damn right that’s good.” Duff looked pointedly at me as he said it. Then he turned back to Graham. “Got the plane tickets changed. Tonight at seven. We’ll have to leave here in a few hours.”

My foot stopped on the first step, and I swung back around. “What are you talking about?”

Brick walked down the stairs past me. “We’re out of here. No sense in sticking around pretending you’re resting. Heading back home tonight, and I’m fucking glad to be out of here. Need a break from all of you.”

I looked over at Duff. He nodded. “No sense in staying here, Len. Besides, the local police came by earlier to see if we’d be vacating soon. Seems we’ve disrupted this quiet little neighborhood a bit too much.”

My shoulders sank and my heart dropped into my stomach. In my mind, I’d been calculating that I had two whole days to prepare myself to say good-bye to Dawson. Now that time had been shortened to mere hours. It wasn’t enough time.