Dirty Crown: A Bad Boy Secret Baby Royal Romance (with BONUS book - Rebel Rockstar!) (33 page)

I
lie
in the big empty bed, feeling lonely and sad. I know that Nate said he was going to be working late tonight, but this is something else. I decided to wait up for him because I’m so desperate to see him again. It feels like we’ve been apart forever, but now I’m realizing that it’s pointless. I’m going to have to wait for another day.

I turn over, sighing deeply, and try to relax my mind enough to sleep, but I just can’t seem to switch off. After speaking to Lola and slowly bringing her around to the idea of leaving Cole’s services (for starters—the rest I will work on later), I made the choice to tell Nate everything, to finally unload the secret I’ve been keeping in for far too long, but I haven’t managed to see him long enough to tell him.

I’m becoming afraid that he might find out without me. There’s nothing more in the world that I would hate, because I know he would never trust me again. I keep picturing myself discovering that he had kept something this massive from me, and I’m not sure that I’d be able to react well to it.

The phone rings shrilly, causing me to leap in the air in surprise. I grab it, answering quickly, my heart pounding heavily in my chest. Late-night phone calls are only ever bad news—everyone knows that.

“He…hello?” I gasp into the receiver, holding it tightly to my head as I wait for what I’m sure is going to be something negative.

“Jem?” comes the weak, vulnerable-sounding reply. “It’s Nate.”

“Nate? Where the hell are you? What’s going on?” The metallic taste of fear sits firmly in my mouth. Something is really,
really
wrong, and I don’t like that one bit.

“I’m really sorry.” There’s a pleading in his tone that scares me. “I hate to do this to you, but I really need your help.”

“Anything.” My mind whirrs with possibilities, each one of them with Nate in some kind of danger, or really hurt.
Has he been kidnapped? Or been hit by a car? Maybe someone has a knife to his throat?
My overactive imagination runs wild, and I pray that I’m wrong.

“I need you to come down to the police station. I need bailing out.”

Bailing out?
It takes me a few moments to allow those words to settle in my mind. They don’t make any sense for a while.

Then everything we’ve
just
been through comes flooding back. How the hell has he managed to get himself in trouble again? This is ridiculous. I can hear the regret in his tone, but that means nothing. He’s supposed to be behaving for real this time, sorting out his career, helping to build a life for us. Does none of that mean anything to him?

“What have you done?” I ask cautiously, dreading the answer. The last time, it involved a kiss with my best friend. My heart can’t take anything else like that. Not when I’ve defended him so many times.

“I can’t…I can’t go into it now. It’s just a fight.” A fight? I can’t imagine Nate fighting anyone. He just isn’t the violent type. “Can you bring my checkbook? The bail is pretty large, but I can’t spend another night in here.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll come.” I shut him down before he becomes really emotional. “Just sit tight. I’ll grab a cab now.”

As he hangs up the phone, I can’t help but wonder what the hell is going to happen to us this time. We’ve just been through so much, dealt with so many awful things, and we were
finally
settled. Whatever the hell has disrupted that must have been pretty essential.

I just can’t think of
anything
that would be worth it…

* * *

T
he police officer
smirks nastily at me as I hand him the ten-thousand-dollar check. I still don’t know the truth of what happened, only that it was assault of some kind, and the more time that ticks past, the darker my thoughts become.

By the time I actually lay eyes on Nate, and I see what a bloody mess he’s in, I’ve made a bit of a monster of him in my mind, so when I spot the vulnerability plastered across his face, I race over to him to take him in my arms, wanting desperately to comfort him.

“Oh, my God, Nate, are you okay?” I ask, feeling his entire body slump against mine. “What the hell happened? Do you need to go to the hospital?”

“No.” He shakes his head against my chest. “I’ve been seen by a doctor. I’m fine. I really just want to go home. I want to spend one more calm night with you before the world finds out what I’ve done and I become headline news and a hated man all over again.”

I hold his face in my hands. “What did you do?”

He shakes his head sadly. “Please, let me tell you when we get home.”

As the taxi whizzes through the city, I grip tightly onto Nate’s hand, wanting him to know that I’m here no matter what. Now that my mind has calmed down a little, I realize that whatever he did, it must have been in some kind of self-defense or something. Nate is not a bad guy whatsoever. His eyelids flicker as if he’s struggling to stay awake, but I can’t let him sleep, however tired he is. Not until I know.

We crash through the doors of our home, both practically swaying with exhaustion, but I’ll never be able to sleep until he’s told me everything, so I sit him down on the sofa and plead with him to tell me what’s happened.

After a deep, long sigh, he begins. “After work tonight, I ran into Tonya. She’s…she’s worried about you.” Oh, God. My heart begins to race. There’s only one reason Tonya would be worrying. The pieces of this jigsaw are starting to fall into place. “She told me everything. She really didn’t want to. She kept telling me that I had to ask you, but I forced her to.” He stares right into my eyes, showing me the depth of the pain in his soul. He knows. I already know that he knows, but I wait silently for him to confirm it. “She told me about Cole.”

My world falls out from beneath me. My breaths start coming out short and ragged at the prospect of what he must think of me now. I don’t blame Tonya, not at all. I know that she wants to take this to the police, and she can’t understand why I’m holding off until Lola’s ready—she’s afraid that we’ll leave it too late—so I understand why she caved. I just wish that she hadn’t.

“…and I lost it,” he finishes. “I went to his office and I beat the hell out of him.”

“How…how is he?” My insides are swirling with fear, worrying that he killed him. Much as that horrible prick doesn’t deserve to breathe air, I don’t want Nate in prison for murder. That’s not fair either.

“Okay now. He’s in the hospital,” he replies flatly. “I don’t know if he’s going to press charges yet, but I’m pretty sure the press already knows.” He grabs hold of my hands, almost crying with it all. “I’m so, so sorry, Jem. I just…I couldn’t cope with the thought of him anywhere near you like that.”

“I know.” I say, gulping. “It’s my fault, really, for not telling you sooner. If I had, we never would have broken up in the first place.” A realization crosses his face as he remembers the first time we almost had sex, and how I freaked out and ran away. Things would be so much easier now if I’d just confessed then, but I was far too afraid.

“So it was going on while we were working on that movie?” I nod sadly, feeling like I’ve spent far too long betraying him. “How…how long?”

I take in a deep breath, preparing to finally tell him the truth. “Pretty much ever since he started to represent me. It started off small, and eventually built up, but I was young and naive. I wasn’t sure if this was how everyone was treated. I didn’t speak out because I was too scared.”

“What did your mom say?” Nate only ever met my mom once when we were together, and she liked him at the time. Of course, things have changed since then. We don’t speak very often anyway, and I’ve been avoiding her even more since we got back together—I’m too afraid to tell her. I’m sure she will have a whole range of awful opinions.

“Well, you know we’ve never been very close,” I admit. “And I didn’t want her to take me all the way home, away from my dream, so I never told her.” I look down at my nails, tears pricking at my eyes. “She was always so busy with my dad. He was sick back then, and by the time we lost him, a massive part of her was gone too. I don’t know…I don’t know if we’ll ever get things back, to be honest.” That was such a hard time in my life, and I backed away from my mom too. We both loved my dad dearly. I just haven’t ever managed to get things back, and nor has she. We’ve just sort of…accepted that this is the way things are now.

“Maybe you should tell her about this,” Nate suggests. “Maybe that’s a way to kick things off.” He’s unsure as he speaks, and it’s obvious why. Nate doesn’t have parents that he knows. He was raised in a variety of foster care homes, so he’s never had that parental bond, but he’s trying his best to get it.

“Yeah, maybe,” I murmur, knowing that I’ll probably never make the effort with my mom again. It just feels like too much water has gone under the bridge. It’d be far too difficult to even contemplate. “It was never rape, you know.” I don’t meet his eyes as I say these important words. For some reason, it’s really important to me that he understands this much. I need him to know that it isn’t as bad as I’m sure his imagination is telling him. “He did a lot of awful things to me, ruined a lot of my life, but it never got that far. Not everyone was as lucky as me…” I’m not sure how much Tonya has told him, so I don’t divulge that much, but I do want him to know that I consider myself one of the luckier ones. Whatever happened, it could always have been so much worse.

He stands up and paces the room, and I take a moment to have a full look at the extent of his injuries. His knuckles are bloodied and beaten, but his face and body look fine, which suggests to me that it was a very one-sided fight. I’m not overly surprised about that. Cole likes to intimidate young girls. A real man fighting him probably threw him completely. It’s likely that he didn’t even know what to do with himself.

Now we just have to hope and pray that the bastard lives, giving us the opportunity to bring him to justice. Nate doesn’t deserve to have his life ruined over something that dickhead did, any more than the rest of us do.

I’m just going to have to convince Lola that we cannot hold back any longer—that we
need
to get justice.

“
I
t was never rape
, you know.”
Her words circle over and over in my mind. Sure, anything that happened to her is terrible, but at least she was never subjected to that. It fills me with an odd sense of relief, despite the fact that I can’t help but wonder how she managed to keep such a monumental secret from me for such a long time. I understand why she did, of course, but she never had to. I would have always been there for her, and I never would have looked at her any differently. I hope she understands that none of this was ever her fault. It was always
him—
that smug fucker whose face I probably shouldn’t have smashed in, however good it felt to do so.

Although it does worry me that others experienced worse than Jem. I’m sure she meant Tonya with that comment, even though she didn’t specify. I’m not even sure if Tonya told me that much herself back in the alleyway. My mind was far too consumed with rage by that point. I was barely listening. I will have to call Tonya and apologize in the morning. She just confessed a huge secret to me, and I abandoned her in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere.

“He did a lot of awful things to me, ruined a lot of my life, but it never got that far. Not everyone was as lucky as me…”

I have to shake off all the awful images that are infecting my mind. I might not ever be able to get rid of them.

“Have any of you ever had any counseling?” I ask, assuming that they haven’t, since they never told anyone. “Have you and Tonya ever spoken to anyone?” She shakes her head, just as I predicted. “Well, maybe you should. Maybe that will help. And, of course, we have to go to the police about it…” I understand why they didn’t in the past, but they have to now. “If you tell the police what happened, then my charges will be lessened.” I grow excited at the possibility of getting away from this nightmare after all. “Even the media will be more understanding.” I’m just not sure that I’ll survive another hate fest
—
it damn near killed me last time. No one knows what it’s like to be detested and spoken about by the whole world until it happens to them.

“I know,” Jem insists, grabbing my arm and pulling my attention back to her. “If we tell the police everything, then everyone will know why you did what you did. You’ll be more likely hailed as a hero than anything. Trust me
—
Tonya and I want to anyway. But we need to think about Lola and her wishes, too.”

Of course. Lola. Tonya told me that fucker was messing around with her too.

“Is that why she kissed me?” The realization hits me all at once. The hard time she was going through in her life, the self-destruction, the fact that she thought I was the only one who understood her (even though she was clearly wrong on that count)
—
it all makes sense now. I feel even worse that I didn’t try harder to find out what was going on in her life. I should have made her tell me. She’s like my little sister, and that fucker has been doing things to her too. It’s not right.

“I’m so messed up, and we have so much in common, and you were being so nice to me…”

I wonder how long those words will haunt me, how many times I’ll wonder if I could have done things sooner, if I could have stopped it before it ruined Lola’s life.

Jem doesn’t answer me. She seems to know that I’ve already worked it out for myself. “She’s too scared of what will happen to her if we go to the police. She’s terrified of what Cole will do to her, and what will happen to her singing career. I don’t even think that Ben knows yet. She’s just so young, and so terrified
—
just where we were not that long ago.”

“She has to change her mind now. She’ll come out to the public to stop me from going to prison, won’t she?” I say, but I’m not fully convinced. She laid her life on the line for me once before. I’m not sure she owes me anything else, especially when it involves risking herself all over again. My head falls into my hands. My future lies in the hands of other people
again
, and there’s not a damn thing I can do to help myself.

Paul might actually kill me this time…

“I’ll do what I can,” Jem insists, rubbing my back gently. “She may very well come around. In fact, I’m sure she will, but there’s nothing either of us can do about it now. We’ll just have to wait until morning. I know that’s difficult, but if I call her now she might think I’m attacking her, and she’ll think she’s backed into a corner. We’ll deal with it tomorrow.”

“By then, my reputation will already be shattered,” I say sadly, glancing at my phone. The temptation to log on and find out what the world is already saying about me is almost too much, but I know that if I do I’ll collapse into a state of depression. I just need one night of ignorance with Jem before I can go through all of that again. I just need to be normal for a little while longer…as normal as I can be, at any rate.

“We’ll get through this, you know?” she whispers into my ear. “We’ve been through worse.” Everything else spins through my mind, and I wonder just how much I’m going to put Jem through before she gives up on me completely. She’s been far too patient, far too kind, and I can’t help but wonder if she would be better off without me.

“You think?” I ask morosely. Maybe I should have left her alone. Maybe she was much better off without me.

She twists her head around to face me and places the gentlest of kisses on my lips. “I know,” she says firmly. “No matter what crap is going through your mind right now, I know for a fact that you’re the best thing that ever happened to me. You did that to
him
to defend me. And Tonya and Lola too.” I don’t correct her. I don’t tell her that in the heat of the moment it was only her face I could see. I don’t want her to think any less of me. “Much as I’m not looking forward to the consequences of what’s happened, I know that he deserves what you did to him, and a lot more. He preys on young, vulnerable girls, making them feel like they are deserving of such treatment. I was silly enough to fall for it at the time, but now that I’m older and wiser, I can clearly see the truth.”

I stare at her, seeing a wisdom that I’ve never noticed before. In my eyes, Jem has always been strong and brave and mature, but now, looking at her, I can really see it. She really has grown into so much more than I could have ever hoped for. She really has become the perfect woman for me.

If only I could stop screwing things up…

Jem must be able to sense the negativity washing over me, because she pulls my face toward her, kissing me with a brand-new passion, offering me a distraction that I’m not quite sure I deserve. I try to pull back at first, but soon I lose myself in the sensations, and I allow Jem to send all of my negative thoughts flying away.