She rolls her tongue over her lips in preparation to say something, but there’s a heavy knock on the dressing room door. Creasing her brow, she yells out, “Come in.”
David pops his head into the narrow opening he’s made in the door “Have you seen Lucas?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” She tips her water back and then swipes the back of her hand over her mouth. “Why, what’s up?”
Shaking his head from side to side in confusion, the edges of David’s lips twist down. “There’s a couple of men out here looking for him. Says it’s urgent they find him.”
Pushing myself up off the floor, I stare at David, waiting for an answer, feeling as if as soon as he speaks, everything will change.
I quickly learn that my intuition is right a moment later when David runs his giant hand over his face.
“They’re cops, Kylie.”
Three words and everything suddenly changes. Three words and my world comes shuddering to a painful stop.
Chapter 24
Lucas
We cancel nearly all the remaining dates on the tour.
For the first week or two after s.h.i.t jumps headfirst into the fan, I find myself drawn to the video that Sam had made for me. The Samantha on the screen doesn’t look anything like the woman I saw earlier this summer, or even the woman from a year ago. When Kylie does a little digging into the history of the file, she discovers that Sam made the video almost two years ago.
My ex-wife sat in the middle of that pristine white sofa that used to be in the living room of her Atlanta apartment. Her legs were crossed at the ankles, and she arched her thin body forward. On camera, the track marks on the insides of her elbows weren’t obvious, but she still tried to hide them with her hands.
And though she mostly avoided making direct eye contact with the camera, there were rare moments during the video where she did look up. The look in her gray eyes was intense, and I feel like she’s staring right at me, telling me everything in person.
In a way, I guess she is.
“Lucas,” she began. “I can’t do this to your face, so this is the only way I could get what I wanted to say out there.” Taking a deep breath, she moved her hands in front of her chest as she attempted to work out what she’s going to say next. “It’s my fault Bryce Roberts died. I did it, and I’m so sorry.”
The first time I watched Sam’s video, I had stared blankly at the computer screen, wondering what the f**k she was talking about but I kept looking. Kept waiting.
“I killed him,” she said, pinching the end of her nose to try to hold back her tears. She didn’t succeed, and they fell freely down her face. “I met him through one of my friends. But he just . . . he wasn’t you, you know? And then I found out you were seeing Priscilla, and I lost it. I lost it, and I asked him to mess with her. Shake her up some.”
She got up from her seat then, and when she returned, she was lighting a cigarette.
“I was with him the night you fought in the parking lot.” She looked straight into the camera. “And after you went back inside that bar I hit him with the tire iron from the back of his car.”
After that she never explains why she killed Bryce, or why she let me believe that I was the one who did. She only says that she’s sorry. That she screwed up. And that she would fix things.
And in the end, Sam did what she said she’d do when she turned herself in. She’d given her statement. She’d given the cops the wallet she’d taken from Bryce Roberts the night of his murder. And then she’d waived her right to an attorney.
And by the time I found all of this out right before the Nashville show—because I was listed as her next of kin—she was already gone, and I was left piecing together the truths to the lies she had let me believe.
In life, Sam had been a brief part of the band’s history—the woman who was married to Lucas Wolfe before he hit it big. But in death, somehow she overshadowed every woman I’d ever been with, including Sienna.
Epilogue
Lucas
November
What the f**k do you do when you find out that the secrets that you buried, the lies that you paid to cover up, were just that? Lies.
Do you linger in the past; holding on to those f**ked-up regrets, wishing you could change things?
Or do you move forward?
I decide to do both.
It’s not Samantha who has to live with what she did to Bryce—it’s me having to face that I lived for four G.o.dd.a.m.n years thinking I was a monster and pushing away the woman who wanted to bring me out of those shadows.
The fact that she’s here with me tonight is a miracle.
“You look like sin, Red,” I murmur, looking up at her reflection as she comes up behind me. She’s wearing a tiny black dress that I think should be on my dressing room floor instead of her body, and heels that make her legs go on for days.
“The best kind.” Her hair falls around me as she drapes her bare arms over my shoulders and wraps me up tightly, like she doesn’t want to let go. “Last show.” Her clear blue eyes find mine in the mirror, and she takes a long, deep breath. “Are you ready, Mr. Wolfe?”
Reaching back, I ravel her hair around my fingers before I turn my head and find her mouth. I devour her. And she consumes me. This is the only way it will work.
When I pull her away, watching in amazement at the way she’s looking at me, I offer her a grin. “Sinjin will break my fingers with his drumsticks if I’m not ready.” Zoe is supposed to show tonight, and he’s h.e.l.l bent on impressing her.
“Then you should probably let go of my hair,” Sienna suggests, and when I do, she flips it over one of her shoulders. “Do I look presentable?”