I buried my face in his chest. “What exactly does that mean?”
He hugged me to him, madly, as if I might have the power to hold him together. To help him stand. “It means everything is changing.” He sucked in a breath. “Don’t know who the fuck I am anymore, Alexis. Don’t know who I’m supposed to be. Don’t know who I am outside the band.”
I pulled back and threaded my fingers through his. “Come here.”
I led him to the couch and curled up at his side, our fingers still bound. “Are you okay?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Is this about Mark?”
The sound that huffed from his lungs was unsure. “Think it’s always about Mark.”
I hesitated as my heart rate picked up a notch, knowing I was pressing, but needing to understand him better. “Tell me about him. About what happened to him.”
Zee gulped for air, the pain that ripped through him palpable. “Mark…he was always there for me. Always had my back. Because that’s what family does. They stand by you no matter what. But when shit went down and he needed me the most? I wasn’t there. Mark needed me, and I didn’t have his back. I failed him. God, in so many ways, I failed him.”
I squeezed his fingers as I peered up at him. “How?”
He hesitated as if he were searching for what he could share with me, those secrets churning in the depths of his eyes. “A bunch of shit went down right before he died. He was leaving on tour and we had this big blow out, things going to hell between us. He called me a couple weeks later. Told me he was in trouble. I didn’t listen.”
Horror climbed into my chest. “What kind of trouble?”
He lifted a shoulder. “I thought it was the same old shit. Drugs. He said he needed money. It wasn’t a few days later that I got a call from Baz telling me he had OD’ed. He was just…gone.”
Zee’s gaze drifted toward the window, lost in the memory as his voice went quiet. “I got this agitated, unsettled feeling, knowing something was off. Deep inside, I knew it went deeper than that. I told Baz, but Baz…Baz was the one who’d found him. He was certain it wasn’t anything more than an overdose.”
I curled up closer to him, wishing to take some of his pain as he continued. “It wasn’t until four years ago that we found out it was more. You live a corrupt life, and you’re bound to get messed up with corrupt people. Apparently, he’d found out some shit he wasn’t supposed to know about a girl this bastard Martin Jennings had planned on taking out.”
I clutched him tighter, my pulse thrumming in my ears, terrified of what he was getting ready to reveal.
“Turned out it was Shea.”
I gasped. “What?”
“We didn’t know the connection until Baz and Shea had gotten involved. Mark knew about it and stepped in to stop it. He saved her, Alexis. He saved her and no one fucking knew it. Everyone assumed he’d filled his veins too full when it was that piece of shit Jennings who’d had him erased.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered, unable to fathom the atrocity of it all. “I’m so sorry.”
He looked over at me. “It fucking destroyed me, Alexis. Both times. The lies and the truth. But part of me is glad he didn’t die for nothing.”
“But then I can only imagine there’s another part of you who wishes you could change it,” I said softly.
Bitter laughter ripped free. “Sacrifice is a bitch, isn’t it?”
Zee shook his head. “But I set it all in motion, Alexis.”
“And now you think you owe him.”
He sighed. “I do owe him. I—”
Zee cut himself off, as if he couldn’t say more, refusing to let me in further, the corner of his mouth tipping down as he murmured, “Don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to do now. Who I’m supposed to be.”
“Who is it you want to be?” I edged back, holding on to his forearm as I stared up at him. “What is it you want to stand for?”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Zee
Anthony tossed the stack of glossy sheets to the middle of his desk.
“What are you doing, Zee? You know better than this. All these years, and you don’t slip up once, and then this?”
I fought the panic that welled in every cell in my body, coalescing into a hot point of anger and fear right in the center of my chest.
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fucking fair.
I was looking at picture after picture of me and Alexis from the last couple weeks. Her coming into my place and her leaving. A couple of me in front of her house.
What got me were the ones of us outside the hospital, that sweet, trusting girl staring up at me with all that belief.
My hands on her face. The girl in my arms where she belonged. Kissing her like she was breath. Air. Sanity.
Killed me to look at it as if it were something dirty. Something bad.
“You know the definition of lying low better than anyone, Zee, and then you go and pull this? Veronica will ruin you. It’s a goddamned miracle she’s kept to the agreement this long.”
I scoffed. “You think she would’ve if it weren’t for the money?”
“Of course she’s only kept it a secret because of the money. And you know how much she loves holding that secret over your head.”
“Like taking care of my family is some kind of sin.” Disgusted, I spat the words.
Lines dented Anthony’s brow. “You were the one who didn’t want anyone to know, Zee. You can’t have it both ways.”
That was what I’d been terrified of all along. Walking this shaky balance. Trying to juggle these two worlds and dreading when they collided.
“Just…don’t know that I give a fuck anymore, Anthony. Not if it means letting her go, too. Not sure I can do it.”
Cautious, he stilled, like he was bracing me for his words. “But what about for him?”
Grief cut me in two. I bent over, trying with all of me to hold together the threads of my life that were unraveling faster than I could repair them.
Or maybe they’d just been lit at the end.
Burning out.
I fisted my hand with the tattoo.
Just like the stars.
Regret had taken me hostage. Pain throbbed with each vapid pulse of my heart like those little bits that had sparked to life had suddenly been dimmed.
When the doorbell rang, I slowly moved across my loft, wishing I could ignore it, pretend like I hadn’t made that call to Alexis saying I needed to see her right away.
But I had to end this before it got any messier than it already was. Before I went and fucked up the last good thing I had in my life.
Before this hurt Alexis any more than I already knew it was going to.
I had to remember what was important. Why I was doing this in the first place.
I fumbled with the heavy metal lock and slid it free, opening one side of the massive doors. I jerked back when I saw it wasn’t Alexis on the other side.
“Veronica…”