“It’s okay.” She shifted to set that frail hand on my cheek, taking my fingers with her.
I pressed her hand closer.
Desperate to keep her near.
She stared at me, her scratchy voice barely breaking the surface, “It’s a good life, Violet. A good, good life. Miss me, but do not despair.”
Her thumb stroked my cheekbone, my mama shaking as she murmured, “I am missing only one thing. There is only one thing that I would change.”
Grief lashed through her expression, and I saw it for what it was.
She glanced at the empty doorway, at the sound of Daisy bounding back upstairs.
She looked back at me, the truth of her loss flooding out. “Find her, Violet. If there is any way, find her. Bring her home to me. I want to see her one last time.”
Anguish squeezed my heart in a fist, completely crushing it when Daisy appeared at the door and came racing in with the tape dispenser lifted over her head. “Got it!”
She ran around me and grabbed the picture, oblivious to the torture that raged inside me.
The fear.
The worry.
I pushed to my feet and pressed a soft kiss to my mama’s temple. “I’ll try, Mama. I will try.”
Knowing her last request might very well be my end.
Peals of laughter floated through my open bedroom window, a soft breeze blowing through and billowing the sheer drapes.
Fall descending on the hot air.
I glanced out at my father who pushed Daisy on the swing, the child squealing and begging him to push her higher.
Little daredevil.
Affection pulsed through my veins at the same second as my heart trembled in a quiver of dread. Fear glided over my flesh in a sticky flash.
My mouth went dry as I turned back to my laptop that was set on the small white desk under the window. I set my fingers over the keys, and a rush of dizziness canted through my mind.
I was unable to type. Unable to focus. Unable to see.
God, I was terrified.
Terrified of the unknown.
Of what was to come.
Of what I could possibly find.
Of what this might cost.
When she’d first gone, I’d searched for what had felt like forever, desperate to find someone who didn’t want to be found. Unable to process the selfishness while I’d reeled with the grief.
I glanced back out the window. Daisy pumped her legs, her sweet face stretched in a brilliant smile as she tipped her head back toward the sky. “Look at me, Papa! Look at me! I’m flyin’.”
Emotion clogged my throat, and I squeezed my eyes closed as I forced myself to type the name into the search.
Liliana Marin.
Nausea swept through me when I peeled my eyes back open and I read what the screen had populated. As the same results from all those years ago showed.
Mentions from college where she’d attended in Charlotte.
The restaurant she’d worked at here in town.
The last was a missing person’s report that had been written in the paper.
Then nothing. Her Facebook account inactive. Her phone disconnected.
My older sister gone without a trace.
Daisy’s precious voice flooded my room. “Higher, Papa. Higher! I flies so high in the sky. Just like a bird. I’m not even scared. Not even a little bit.”
I swallowed hard as I turned back to the computer, typed in a search for a local private investigator, and then inputted the number on my cell.
I clutched it in my hand.
Warring.
Wavering.
Then I pressed send.
And I realized I’d never been so scared in all my life.
Six
Richard
I kissed her like mad in the hallway at the back of the swanky restaurant where we’d just eaten in Hollywood.
I didn’t care we were basically right out in the open.
I had my hands on that face as I devoured her mouth. “I love you, Violet.”
She grinned beneath that kiss, those lips slipping into one of those smiles I wanted to be responsible for every day of my life. “I think I’m plenty aware of that.”
I pressed her farther against the wall, my jean-covered cock rubbing at the floral dress that had been driving me nuts all night. “I think you might need a reminder.”
She rumbled a seductive laugh. “We’ll have plenty of time for that later.”
I groaned. “Don’t make me go.”
Violet giggled. “This is the whole reason we’re here. Go. Enjoy. They want to take you out. Show you what this life is goin’ to be like.” She leaned up and whispered in my ear, “Superstar. Just wait…everyone in the world is gonna know your name.”
I edged back and stared down at her.
Violets and grace and the good.
“Every dream I have is one I want to give to you.”
She smiled in sheer adoration. “Together.”
“Together.”
“Wakey, wakey, asshole.”
I jolted awake with the shock of the obnoxious voice ripping me from my dream, and my head jerked from my pillow. I squinted through the bleary light, doin’ my best to process the earthquake that shook me awake.
The fucker was jumping on my bed near my feet.
In his boots.
Rhys Manning.
Our bassist.
My best friend for my entire life.
Ex-best friend if he kept pulling stunts like this.
“What the hell?” I threw my pillow at him.
Rhys caught it against his chest. He busted up laughing like he actually thought this shit was funny. “Get up, sunshine. We’ve got important things to do. Day’s almost half done.”
With a moan, I slumped back onto my mattress. “You couldn’t call or text like a normal human being?”
Rhys jumped off the side of the bed, house quaking as he hit the floor. “Uh, I’ve texted ten times and called three. And if you lump me in with normal humans, you and I are gonna have a problem. How dare you compare me to a mere mortal when I am a god amongst men. Do you even know me?”
I scrubbed my face.
It was too early for this shit.
“Go away.”
He ripped my hands back. “Nope. We have a mission from my mama.”
Distress banged through the fucking hangover staging an assault in my head. “I think I’m just fine right here.”
Last night was a disaster.
A travesty.
A motherfucking joke.
All of it on me.
“Dude, my mama is making her special homemade chicken pot pie…and she needs a chicken, so we’re going to the store. That or she’s going to have our asses out at the barn plucking one out of the coop. Your pick, man.”
Ugh.
No. Just no. I might have been born in the country, ridden a horse or two, but that’s where I drew the line.
Tossing off the covers, I sat up on the side of the bed. “Fine.”
A spike of pain pierced my brain. I moaned and rammed the heels of my hands into my eyes.
Shit.
Good fuckin’ luck with the whole drowning my problems bit. Only thing taking a swim in a bottle of bourbon had done was double the misery. The gaping hole in the darkest part of me ached and moaned. A blade struck right through my brain, the piercing stab of it a reminder of what I was in the middle of.