Dirty Secret: A Bad Boy Romance (Bluefield Bad Boys Book 3) (2 page)

Chapter 3

Dawson

I climbed into the man trip with all the enthusiasm of a kid suffering a gnarly toothache climbing into the dentist’s chair. Kellan stared at the side of my face as the vehicle rolled toward the mine entrance.

“What the hell are you gawking at, Braddock?”

“Just wondering what the pouty face is about.”

“Fuck you. You try living with my dad. It’s only been three weeks, and I’m ready to tear my damn head off listening to him. I’ve got to get back into the cabin and soon. Otherwise, you’re going to read about me in the papers, and it’s not going to be a pretty story.”

“Thought your dad had mellowed some after your mom’s health scare.”

“Yep, for a brief time, he thought he might lose the only person on this planet who still liked him. But now that it seems my mom will live a good long life, he’s back to being his ornery, assholery self.”

“How much longer until you move back to the cabin?”

“The landlord said three more weeks. He’s going to raise the rent to make up for the damage. So, I’m out a roommate, and now I’m going to be paying more for that shithole of a place.”

“Sorry about that, Dawz. Hey, but at least you’ll be on vacation in California for one of those weeks. Are you still meeting your sisters down at the beach?”

“Yeah, they rented a couple of rooms at some motel on the beach. Most of the schools will be back in session, so the summer crowd will be gone. It’ll be nice getting away from Bluefield for a week. Just not sure what the hell I’m going to do down there. Aubrey and Megan aren’t exactly into the same stuff as me.”

Kellan laughed. “Should be good times.”

Darkness and the familiar bitter smell of float dust swallowed us as the man trip descended into the massive hole that we called ‘the pit of hell’. After high school, we’d all been anxious to put on our work boots and trudge through the lightless, suffocating passages of the mine. It had been our calling, our destiny, to work the Bluefield Mine. Or at least that was what we’d told ourselves. Lately, especially since the dreams had started, I’d been questioning the idea that we were born to be coal miners.

The lights on the man trip lit up the black ribbed walls of the mine. The walls and roof were the only things between the gritty pocket of air that we worked inside and the entire crushing weight of the earth. Kellan had always had bouts of claustrophobia, something that he’d learned to deal with. If he hadn’t, there was no way he could work in the mine. You had to keep the demons out of your head when you were a thousand feet below the surface shoving pins into the rock to keep it from falling and crushing you.

“Hey, Dawz, did you talk to Huck this morning?”

Tommy, or Huck as we called him, had grown up with terrible asthma, a result, no doubt, of growing up on the south side of Bluefield where most of the coal dust drifted to on a breezy day. His breathing problems had not stopped him from mining though. Just like Kellan and I, he’d gone to work for the Bluefield Mine straight after high school. The mine was the one place in town where you could earn a living wage, money that could give us the independence we’d always craved. Tommy was able to secure a position above ground filling coal cars, which was still not great for someone with asthma, but it beat a gig underground.

I picked up my lunch pail and put it on my lap. “Nah, I didn’t even see Huck this morning. Is he ready to give up his coveralls for farmer’s overalls yet?” After a good deal of resistance from me, Tommy had hooked up with my twin sister, Andi. I’d always known deep down that my best friend was madly in love with my sister, but the idea had just never sounded right in my head. And I’d given him plenty of shit about it. But now they were together, and my sister was insanely happy. It made the whole damn thing a much easier pill to swallow. Even though it meant that Tommy had way less time to hang with me. Kellan’s high school sweetheart and love of his life, Rylan, had returned to Bluefield a year ago. They fell right back into the same love story they’d started in high school. He, too, had way less time to hang. I’d been stripped of my two best friends in less than a year, and it had been fucking dull around Bluefield ever since.

“Actually, I think Huck might just be giving those coveralls up soon. He says when they’re out on the farm, his breathing is way better. And Andi is determined to make him quit the mine. Being a nurse, she knows this job is going to send someone like him to an early grave. They’re trying to figure out a way for Tommy to stay home and work on making that piece of barren land a thriving farm while Andi works at the hospital.”

I shook my head. “What the fuck does Tommy know about farming?”

Kellan looked at me. “You sound pissed.”

“Yeah, I’m fucking pissed. So my sister is going to support him while he cruises around on a secondhand tractor?”

“Thought you’d be happy for Tommy. You know this was never the right job for him. Your sister is right. It’s going to kill him.”

“He’s got a cushy fucking job above surface, so excuse me if I don’t shed tears for him.”

“Damn, Dawz, you’ve definitely got to get out of your dad’s house. You’re starting to sound like him.”

“Yeah, well fuck you.” I slumped back against the seat and pulled the front edge of my cap low to let him know I was done talking. Deep down, I knew this was right for Tommy, but deep down, I was envious as hell. He’d found his happiness, and I was sure it wouldn’t be long before Kellan left the mine too. Rylan wanted badly to move out of state where she could put her college degree to better use than the local library. Then I’d be left alone in the pit of hell.

The man trip made its first stop. Kellan and I would be riding down to the last mined out area. Our job was to secure the emptied sections with roof bolts to keep the place from sandwiching all of us.

We traveled the rest of the descent in silence. I was too busy stewing in my misery to want to strike up conversation with my buddy, who, now that Rylan had returned to him, had everything he’d ever wanted. After Sasha had left the night of the fire, I’d realized that I wanted someone too. Hopping from woman to woman and never really making a connection was starting to make me feel like a lonely fucking loser, like one of those lifelong bachelors who spends his nights alone sucking down beer, playing video games and jacking off to porn flicks. Shit. I was already that guy.

The supervisor and two engineers, who made rounds in their comfortable white trucks, were at the mouth of the section where Kellan and I would be bolting the roof.

Kellan glanced over at me. “Wonder what that’s about?”

“Who the fuck knows? Never saw all of them in one spot before, so it can’t be good.”

We climbed out, and Jake Carson, our supervisor, headed toward us. “Braddock, Sullivan, we’ve got a kettle bottom. A big one.”

“Fuck, this job just keeps getting better,” I muttered so that only Kellan could hear.

Kettle bottoms were flat tree stump shaped bulges in the roof of the mine, loose sediment that had pooled around a petrified tree. And they were unstable and dangerous. Just like a massive dead branch, ready to fall on the lumberjack below, kettle bottoms were a miner’s widowmaker. It was going to be our job to push a bolt through it, to keep it from falling.

Carson motioned for us to follow. The LED lights on our caps threw long white streams of glow over the otherwise black chamber. Columns of coal, or chain pillars, were left to hold up the entryway into the mined out section. The brow got lower, and we had to drop down to a crouch to make it to the place where the kettle bottom had reared its ugly face.

“Jeezus,” Kellan mumbled next to me.

The flat, cylinder shaped protrusion looked as if someone had carved it out of the rock ceiling. You could almost count the rings and root system of the prehistoric tree. A coal ring, a layer of smoothly striated bark turned to coal, showed where the kettle bottom could easily slide from its mold and crush all of us. It would have been an amazing site to see if it hadn’t been so damn dangerous.

“Biggest damn one I’ve ever seen,” Carson said. “We’re going to need you to push up some bolts to get it stabilized.” He said it as if it was no big deal to drive a bolt through tons of unstable earth, earth that was above our heads.

“How do you know the cast is shorter than the bolt?” Kellan asked. “How do we know we can even reach the end of this monster?”

“We don’t,” the engineer, Spalding, said from behind. “This is more than three feet in diameter. Probably closer to five, in fact. We had to bring down a steel strap, a bacon skin. Have you men used one before?”

“Never taken care of this big of one yet,” I said.

Spalding crouched past Carson. He pointed up to the roof next to the coal ring. “You won’t be drilling into the kettle bottom. You’ll send two bolts through the shale. One on each side of it. Then the steel strap runs across the two bolts to secure the kettle bottom.”

“Hopefully,” I grumbled, earning an angry scowl from my supervisor. It was easy for him to scowl. He’d be well out of the danger zone long before we started poking holes around the damn thing.

Once the roof bolter equipment and steel strap were moved into place, the three big shots with sparkling clean gloves and a pretty truck to cruise around in, moved out of the way to let Kellan and me do the work.

I watched as the three of them walk-crawled out of the room, eventually moving out of the scope of my light. I looked back at Kellan, who seemed just as excited about our task as me.

“Don’t know about you, Kel, but I forgot to strap on my balls of steel this morning. I’m not looking forward to this.”

“Yep, that about sums up my feelings too, Dawz. But the longer we wait, the harder it’s going to get.”

We moved the roof bolter to a spot where we could drill a hole right next to the protrusion. That was when it hit me, a suffocating feeling that made it seem as if the walls, the roof and the ground beneath my feet were all turning in on me. It was something that I knew Kellan had dealt with many times, even if he didn’t talk about it much. But it had never swallowed me before. I froze and waited for my heart rate to slow. Instead, it seemed to be charging off in every direction as if jolts of electricity were pulsing through my veins. My skin prickled as if cold, clammy fingers were poking at it, and the egg sandwich I’d shoveled down for breakfast was threatening to launch back out of my stomach. My recurrent nightmare was coming back to me in one epic long flash.

“Dawz? Hey, Dawson.” Kellan’s voice snapped me back from the darkness that was pulling sharply at my confidence. “You all right?”

I nodded but couldn’t pull up an answer.

The light on Kellan’s cap shouted at me like the angry light the cops shined at you when you were screwing around in the backseat of a car. “Dawz, get a grip. We need—”

It was all I needed to push me off a cliff that I’d had no idea I was standing on. The pressure, the looming threat of being swallowed by the earth, flattened beneath the fossilized remains of a tree, had gotten to me, and there was only one, unsuspecting target in my path.

“Fuck you, Braddock. You think just cuz you’re a fucking pretty boy, you can be the only one who crumbles down here? Got news for you, bro, we’re all in fucking danger down here.”

Kellan’s jaw clenched, and his face pulled tight beneath the small brim of his yellow cap, a cap that might stop a small avalanche of debris from killing you but that was otherwise comical safety gear for a kettle bottom. My partner and best friend didn’t say a word as he started the drill and pressed it into the rock ceiling above our heads.

The twist in my mind slowly unraveled as we finished securing the steel strap and the rest of the roof. Kellan and I worked in our chalk dusted tomb without a word to each other. I knew I’d stepped over a line in our friendship, a line that should never have been crossed. It had been the tension of the moment.

With the last bolt of the morning set, we crawled out from the mined out section and stretched our legs for the first time in two hours. Kellan walked ahead of me toward the cross entry, a passageway that would take us to the underground station for break.

“Look, Kellan, I lost my cool—”

Kellan spun around as if he was in the fight ring. He looked angrier than I’d ever seen him. My helmet clinked against the solid ribs of the mine as he pushed me up against the cross entry wall. He jammed his forearm against my neck. Of the three of us, Kellan, Tommy and me, Kellan was the smallest, but he was still tough as fucking iron, especially when he was pissed. And he was definitely pissed. I could have fought back, but I didn’t need to. I was getting what I deserved.

“Lost your cool? Yeah, I’d say you lost it. Don’t know what the fuck is wrong with you, but we’ve always got each other’s backs down here, remember? Whatever the hell is bothering you, deal with it. Just don’t fucking take it out on me.” He shoved his arm harder against my neck, temporarily choking off my air. But I didn’t smack his arm away. I stared down into his angry face and waited for him to back off. Which he did.

Kellan pulled away his arm and headed toward the break station without another word.

Chapter 4

Lenix

“Hey, Lennie, grab me the rest of that chicken out of the fridge while you’re snooping around in there,” Duff called to me over the kitchen island.

Duff, our keyboardist and, more importantly, our primary composer, was the quiet member of the group. When he wasn’t tapping out tunes on his piano, he was reading or playing video games. He was tall and thin, like a stick figure with shaggy black hair, and for the most part, he was the complete opposite of Brick when it came to women. Not that Duff didn’t have his share of groupies. He definitely did. But when he liked someone, he put his whole heart and soul into the relationship. Unfortunately, two bad marriages later, he had discovered that he needed badly to work on his girlfriend choosing skills. That was where his main character flaw merged with Brick’s, boobs before anything else. They both tended to see a girl’s breasts long before they noticed anything else.

I pulled out the chicken and slid it across the granite to Duff. I popped open a soda and walked around to the stool next to him.

Rex walked into the room, and his focus went straight to the chicken. “Dude, I had my eyes on that chicken this morning.” He tapped the side of his head. “I made a mental note that it was going to be lunch, and now there you are, sucking those bones dry.” He reached for a drumstick on the plate, but Duff held up a hand to stop his quest.

“Too late. Next time try a sticky note. I didn’t see any damn
mental note
on the chicken.”

Rex was his own animal too. He was sort of halfway between Brick and Duff on the woman front, but most of the time, he was too damn caught up in something stupid like a big gambling debt or shady business investment to have time for lovesick groupies. Rex had wisely decided that our luck would eventually run out and that Ice Cake would lose its mojo. He wanted to be ready to keep the millions rolling in the moment our fate was sealed.

“Who the fuck is eating my chicken?” Brick sat up from the couch in the next room. A girl with pink streaks in her hair sat up groggily next to him.

“Oh my god,” I sneered at him. “We all sit on that couch.”

“Relax, Lennie, we were just napping.” He kissed the girl and said something to her. She buttoned her blouse as she climbed off the couch. She tiptoed past all of us, as if it would make her less noticeable. Then she skittered off in the direction of Brick’s bedroom.

Brick combed his long hair back with his fingers. Like his pink haired friend, he was busy buttoning himself up as he got up from the couch and headed toward the kitchen. “That was my damn chicken to begin with.”

Apparently the chicken debate was not going away anytime soon.

Duff looked at him with a bored expression. “I think I could bring it back up if I jammed my finger down my throat. It was good, by the way. But next time you should order the extra spicy.”

Brick walked around to the refrigerator. “It was extra spicy.” He inclined his head toward the hallway where his friend had just scuttled off to. “Brynn likes the spicy sauce, so I let her lick it off. It was a lot of fun to watch.”

Duff’s face blanched, and his smug expression faded as he dropped the last piece of chicken onto the plate. “Now I really
will
stick my finger down my throat.”

“Dodged that fucking bullet.” Rex’s laugh boomed off the kitchen walls.

I stifled a smile and sidled past Brick with my soda.

“When are we leaving for California?” Duff asked as he shoved the plate away, seemingly hoping to distance himself from the tainted chicken.

Brick grabbed a banana and peeled it. “Saturday. We’re stopping in Virginia for a day.”

“Why is that?” I asked.

Brick took a bite of banana before talking. An annoying habit of his. “I’m meeting up with that collector about the Les Paul I’m thinking of buying. I want to see it before I shell out the big bucks for it.”

“So, we all have to sit around Virginia for a day while you check out a friggin’ guitar for your collection?” I slid off the stool.

Duff looked over at me, and I knew one of his lectures was going to follow. “Lennie, we’re all going to waste an entire fucking week on the beach in California, and it’s well past bikini season, so you can
rest up
from exhaustion.”

His words hurt, and he knew it. Duff was the one person in the house who could lecture me and get away with it.

Brick and Rex were shooting me the same disapproving looks.

“You’re all mad at me?” My throat tightened as I spoke.

“Nah,” Brick said, and I braced for one of his heavy doses of sarcasm. “We’re all thrilled to give up two sold out concerts so you can get over your bout of little girl nerves.”

I blinked back tears. It seemed I’d been doing that a lot lately. I looked over at Rex, who I could usually get to move to my side or at least defend me. But he was standing rock solid like a statue.

“Sorry, Lennie,” Rex said. “You know I love ya, but this was a raw deal.”

“My gosh, you’ve all been talking about this, about me, behind my back. You guys have never done that before.” I sobbed once but took a deep breath to pull myself together. “Total fucking betrayal, all of you.”

“Lennie—” Duff reached for my hand, but I yanked it out of his reach.

“That’s great. And thanks so much for your support on this. Good fucking friends, all of you. Really. Good to know how you guys feel.”

“Lennie, you’re being dramatic,” Brick said.

“Fuck you, Brick. Fuck all of you.” I stormed out, and the tears burst free. I reached my room, my personal sanctuary, one of the few places on the entire planet where I could be alone, and slammed the door shut behind me.

There was nothing I hated more than knowing that I’d stomped off in a tantrum, thus lending weight to Brick’s ruthless comment about my little girl nerves, but I couldn’t stop myself. We’d all had our beefs with each other. We were four people acting as one entity, an entity that was making us all rich, so differences and disagreements were commonplace. But I’d never had all three of them angry at me at once. I hated it. It brought me back to that time in my life when I’d felt completely alone, as if no one alive noticed me or cared whether I existed. Including me. At sixteen, I’d reached such a low point in my life, I spent most of my day wishing the earth would open up and swallow me. Then Graham Rushton walked into my life, and everything changed so fast, I never had a chance to say goodbye to the darkness. I never had a chance to reconcile my mind and emotions with that former life, with my horrid childhood.

I pounced onto my bed, a bed that was flooded with more pillows than I knew what to do with. Any time I found a pillow I liked, I bought it. It helped erase that time when a pillow, even a stained, mildewed-covered one, was a luxury. I pressed my cheek against the silky pillow with the tiny sheep running across it, and my tears streamed down toward the shiny fabric. Now I had all the pillows I could ever use, and I was still crying. I’d been so happy and everything had been going relatively as smooth as it could with this whirlwind lifestyle, but then something changed. Something that was pulling me back to those old feelings of inadequacy and being completely alone. And all of it was affecting my performance on stage. I needed badly to get a grip on things. For a short span of time, I’d believed this trip to the beach, this vacation away from the craziness, would do the trick. But now I’d be stuck in a house where I’d apparently be suffering the angry scowls and behind-my-back conversations from the three people who meant the most to me.

A knock on the door startled me.

“Lennie, it’s me.” Graham’s voice came through the door.

“Good for you. I’m in no mood to receive visitors.”

“Yeah, well I’m not a visitor.” He opened the door to the room. “I’m those little devil and angel figures that sit on your shoulders and help you make decisions, whether they are good or bad.”

He walked over and, uninvited, he sat on the edge of my bed. “You’ve got to understand why the guys are upset.”

I sat up and pushed some of the pillows out of my way. “Did they send you in here as some kind of liaison or mediator?” My harsh laugh caused the little muscle in the side of his jaw to twitch. “Tell them to fuck off, and you can do the same. And I’m not going to the beach with you people. You are all assholes, every one of you.” I flopped back down and scooped a mound of pillows over me to hide.

I felt the mattress move as Graham stood. He swept away the pillows with one angry arc of his arm. He pointed down at me. “We will all go to the beach . . . together. I sure as fuck don’t want to have to scramble around tamping down any rumors that the band is breaking up or having problems. It was hard enough getting the reporters to believe that a perfectly healthy and fit twenty-three-year-old was suffering from exhaustion.” With that, he turned and walked toward the door.

“I hate you, Graham.”

“I know you do, Lennie.” He turned around, and I thought, if Satan had bad taste in clothes and a spray tan he’d look just like Graham Rushton. His big bossy pointing finger came up again, reminding me of Mrs. Burner, my fourth and last foster mom, or at least she’d thought she was a mom. Graham took three steps toward the bed with his E.T. finger still up in the air. “Just remember this—I pulled you from the edge of hell, Lenix Harlow, and I can send you right back there.”

“Please do. And this time, if you could just give me a little push, it would be greatly appreciated. Now get out of my room, so I can wallow in my pile of pillows.”