Only for You (3 page)

Everett takes a couple
steps, so that we’re standing toe to toe. He’s broader than I am
and still in shape from what I can tell, but I’m younger and I have
an advantage that he doesn’t. I don’t give a shit about what the
world thinks of me. Only Rae. And in this, my girl would support me
whole-heartedly.

Out of the corner of my
eye, I watch as a few people begin pointing at us. But I’m not
backing down.

“
I’ve claimed a lot more
than I should.” My dad tips his chin at my brother, who’s being
escorted pass me by two huge dudes. He rolls his eyes and sort of
waves at me. “Like that one for instance.”

Yeah, like that was a
shocker. Everett’s too white to be Parker’s dad. “Wish I could be
so lucky.”

“
Look, I’m not here to see
you, to talk to you… to drink with you and make up for lost time.”
Hurt slashes through me, unexpectedly, at his words. “I don’t want
to be your daddy, so stay out of my way, kid. And leave Violet the
hell alone. You’re just like your mother, everything you touch
turns to shit.”

My fist flies before I can
stop myself and connects with his face, bone and cartilage
crunching. He howls and blood spurts from his nose.

“
Son of a bitch.” I wince,
shaking out my hand. Apparently, my looks weren’t all that I
inherited from Everett. The son of a bitch has a hard
head.

A woman with blond hair and
expensive clothes runs up to him, her brown eyes wide. There’s a
long scar on the side of her face, disappearing into her hairline.
“What happened?”

“
Get me something to mop
this up, Callie,” Everett says, like he’s speaking around a
mouthful of marbles.

She grabs a towel from a
waitress that had been bussing a table and presses it against
Everett’s face. “Keep that there, and I’ll call the police and
911.”

Ford steps between us. “No
need, ma’am, I saw the entire thing.”

Cradling my hand, I let my
head fall back. Of course, my temper would get me in trouble
tonight, on the night of nights. When Rae needs me out here,
supporting her like she’s supporting me. And my baby sister, Kelly…
I had promised her I wouldn’t be going away anymore.

“
Oh thank God,” Callie
cries and I lift my head up, giving her a long, hard stare.
Something about her is fake, real fake.

Holy shit. This Callie is
Rae’s former best friend, Callie Hughes. I hate the girl on sight,
just for Rae’s sake, but for my sake, I kind of want to thank her,
because if she hadn’t been a boyfriend stealer, I wouldn’t have
Rae.

“
Oh thank you, Officer,”
Callie adds, beaming at Ford.

I roll my eyes and brace
for the worst.

“
Yep.” Ford casually stirs
his Shirley Temple. I narrow my eyes at the extra cherries in it.
“Poor bastard tripped over his own feet and slammed his face into
this here post. Good thing Cole was nearby to help him
up.”

“
Are you high?” I ask
Ford. There’s no way he’s not arresting me. It’s his favorite thing
to do. I swear the man plans his days around it. I’m pretty sure
his to-do list has—Arrest Cole Morgan—at the very top, and that his
list
never
changes.

He pops a cherry in his
mouth. “Nope.”

Normally, I’d argue with
Ford. But, normally, he’d be putting me in the back of his squad
car by now. So I’m going to keep my comments and my disbelief to
myself. A part of me knows that I’ll have to thank him later. I
won’t like it, but it’s the right thing to do.

“
Nice.” Callie’s eyes
narrow as she looks at me. “Violet sure did know how to pick
them.”

“
And how to get rid of the
trash.” I wink at Callie. Her brow scrunches, confused by my
remark.

“
Maybe you should get one
of your waitresses to come mop up this floor,” Everett says, half
his face obscured by an ever-reddening towel. “I think I slipped on
something.”

Not taking my eyes off him,
I yell for Jane. Within a couple of minutes, she has the “spill”
cleaned up and is serving drinks—a non-alcoholic one for Callie.
Ford even checks it, his mouth dipping into a frown when he
discovers it’s legit.

A sigh of relief leaves me.
Everything’s back to normal. I cut my gaze to my dad. He’s talking
to some guys that are taking notes on their iPads. Okay, so not
everything is back to normal.

Callie lets out a huff.
“Just how long am I supposed to wait for Jaxon to talk to
her?”

“
Her who?” I ask, but I
already know the answer. I head for the back, waving off Callie’s
reply.

When I get there, this
guy’s blocking the door and Rae. She doesn’t look scared, but she
does look bothered. Bothered isn’t a look I want my girl to have
when some dude I don’t know is trapping her in a room.

“
Who the hell are you and
why are you blocking Rae from leaving?” I growl.

Slowly the asshole turns
around and my eyes widen. I can’t help it. It feels like I’ve just
been sucker punched. All the air has been sucked from my body and
it’s all I can do not to double over in pain.

*** *** ***

Jaxon

Violet doesn’t look the
same, and it’s not just her pink-tipped short hair, the nose ring,
or the outfit. Although, I have to admit she looks hot wearing a
short, white skirt and pink tank. Bracelets cover her wrists on her
right, none on her left, and I wonder if anyone around here knows
it because she’s a leftie.

Yeah, this isn’t the same
girl at all. How she holds herself… how she looks at me. This isn’t
the same person I was
permitted
to visit
once
while she was recovering, all broken and
defeated. Not that she should have been any other way, because at
the time I knew exactly how she felt—well, maybe not
exactly.

But how should any guy feel
when the woman he loves loses their baby? A baby he had no idea
about. A part of me is sad and another part is numb. I’d envisioned
a lifetime with Violet, with kids and everything that comes with
being married.

But I blew all that to
hell, with one not-so-simple decision.

When I close my eyes, I can
still see the jagged piece of windshield embedded in Violet’s body.
I’ve had nightmares about the wreck, about being forced to leave
her, the massive lying, and the major cover up… Yeah, I hadn’t been
the one driving drunk that night, but I still feel
responsible.

I blow out a breath and run
a hand though my hair.

“
You want
me
?” Incredulous doesn’t
even begin to describe the expression on her face.

Normally, I wouldn’t repeat
myself a third time. It’s bad enough I had to say it a second, but
I’ve missed Violet. “Yeah.”

I’m not quite sure what I
expected her to say to my third declaration, but for her to stand
there, saying nothing at all, with a look of shock, and maybe even
disgust, on her face never entered the realm of
possibilities.

Her face smooths out, her
expression so unreadable that I’m not sure if shock and disgust
were ever there in the first place.

“
You have Callie,” she
says. “I have Cole. So there’s nothing you need from me, and
there’s nothing I need from you.”

“
I don’t have Callie.” I
take another step closer and she steps back. Not that long ago, she
would have wrapped her arms around me, eager to kiss and hold me.
But I fucked that up, with too many lies. “And who cares about
Cole? From what I know, he’s this white trash—”

“
He’s your brother. Half,
step, adopted… whatever the right term is, he’s your brother and
don’t you dare saying anything about him.”

“
I’m adopted and that
makes us exactly nothing.” My parents had paid some woman to carry
me, since my mother’s unable to have kids. Or should I say
unwilling to get pregnant, because she thinks it will give Everett
an excuse to be more of a horn-dog than he already is. Like he
needs an excuse to step out on my mother.

Violet’s eyes narrow and
her lips purse, like the time I made her try a Lemon Drop. I had
kissed those puckered lips, reveling in the taste of
her.

“
Still sucking down lemon
drops, baby girl?” I ask casually, but my intentions are anything
but casual. I want to remind her of our time together. Of the time
I kissed her sour lips and hadn’t stopped. I’d coated all the
vulnerable spots of her body with the sour concoction and licked it
away.

A blush rises to her face.
Point to me.

“
It’s all in the past.
You’re my past. Cole’s my future.” She picks up her guitar, slings
the strap over one shoulder, and starts for the door. “Better get
used to that.”

“
Still singing with you
tonight.” I block the door with my body.

“
The hell you are,” she
growls and I smile. Yeah, I’m digging this new Violet.

“
Your contract says you
can’t sing in a public venue, charity even, without the permission
of your record label.”

Her fingers drum on the
neck of the guitar. “I heard you the first time,” she
snaps.

“
You’re the one making me
repeat everything,” I reply, growing more uncomfortable by the
second with all the animosity quickly filling the room. This isn’t
us… well, it used to not be us.

During the last few months
of our relationship, when things had started getting bad for me,
and she had started getting suspicious, we’d argued a lot. I had to
pacify her a lot, constantly assuring her that the rumors about me
with another girl were just lies to sell magazines and get hit on
websites.

Until that
night…

“
You have to leave now.”
Grabbing her clothes, I throw them at her. She throws them back at
me and jumps on the bed. I dodge them and march to the bed, tugging
on the safest part of Callie—her arm. “I’m not playing y’all’s game
anymore.”

“
We’re in this together,
until the end, Jaxon. Whether you like it or not,” she says, right
before her leg comes out of nowhere and hits the knee that I’d hurt
in an ATV accident the month before. Pain shoots upward, all the
way to my groin. I fall into bed, grabbing my knee and
moaning.

“
Damn it, Callie, I don’t
want—” She shoves a sock into my mouth and I spit it
out.

“
Jaxon?” I hear Violet
call out.

“
Don’t do this,” I plead.
For the first time in my life, I’m begging a girl to get
out
of my bed.
“Please.”

“
Bless your heart.” Callie
climbs on top of me, raking her nails down my bare chest just as
Violet walks in. “Oh yeah,” she moans, her hips moving on
me.

“
Callie? Jaxon… How could
you?” Violet cries.

“
Who the hell are you and
why are you blocking Rae from leaving?” a deep voice asks, pulling
me out of my memories.

“
Cole,” Violet cries,
happiness and longing apparent in the word. Envy rakes her nasty
claws across my heart, digging in deep. “Move out of the way,
Jaxon.”

Taking my time, so that the
jealousy doesn’t show, I slowly turn around to face this “brother”
of mine and almost hit the floor in shock.

Black hair, blue eyes, and
an unsmiling mouth. It’s like Everett went to God and demanded that
he make this guy in his image.

“
Damn.”

Apparently, I’m not the
only one who is shocked by our first meeting, because his eyes
widen a little and then narrow at me. I lift up my chin, the couple
of inches I got on him making me smirk.

Chapter Three

Cole

I’m staring at the negative
of me. I’m staring at this guy, a guy Rae says is adopted, but
there’s no damn way.

He has my mother’s eyes,
all violet blue with girly lashes. He has her hair and the male
version of her face, with our father’s build.

“
Damn,” he mutters, just
as shocked it seems. Then he lifts his chin and smirks, reminding
me of Beau, with his attitude and height. He would have to be
taller than me.

I glance at Rae, but she’s
pissed off rather than confused. Me, I don’t like staying confused.
Confusion is a weakness I can’t afford.

“
Rae says you were
adopted?”

That smirk of his stays
plastered on his face. “Yeah.”

“
Sure about
that?”

“
Really don’t see how
that’s any of your business or
Rae’
s either.” But that smirk falls
just a little. “Anyway, it’s time for Violet Lynn and me to sing,
so you can keep the cockroaches in business.”

Oh hell no. This
cocky-as-shit attitude is not happening. “Get out of my
bar.”

“
Be happy to, right after
I perform with Violet,” he says.

“
Her name’s
Rae.”