Down to My Soul (Soul Series Book 2) (36 page)

“Maybe one good thing came out of his visit.” She drops her eyes before looking back to me, even though it feels like she’s forcing herself to. “My Aunt Ruthie used to say that I was more like my father than I wanted to admit. That I was just as much his daughter as I was my mother’s.”

I nod, not wanting to admit Aunt Ruthie basically told me the same thing.

“Maybe she was right.” Kai bites her lip before going on. “Maybe the only legacy he has for me is the lesson of his mistakes.”

“Okay.” I frown a little, running a thumb over the high curve of her cheekbone. “Baby, what does that mean?”

“He said he hoarded his secrets, hid all the darkest things. The people who loved him most never really knew him. Not in the ways that matter. He said he ran when he couldn’t face the consequences of his actions.” She doesn’t lift her gaze any higher than my chest. “He’s a runner and a hider.”

She closes her eyes, dropping her head to my chest.

“And so am I,” she whispers.

Those few words cause a ripple in my peace of mind. Why is she talking to me about running and hiding and secrets? We’re done with all of that. So why, when she raises her eyes to my face, does she look so damn guilty? So afraid?

A memory of San’s face at the hospital flashes through my mind, that feeling I got that there was something he knew. Something I should know, but didn’t.

“Kai, baby, what is it?” I nudge her face toward me, dropping a kiss on her lips. “You know you can tell me anything, right?”

“Yes, I know that now.”

Now?
I go still and then slide my hand up her slim back, feeling the tension in the muscles there.

“Rhyson, there’s something I need to tell you. I should have told you before, but couldn’t.” She runs a hand through her hair, her expression agitated. “I just couldn’t, but I should have.”

“Pep, you’re freaking me out here.” I interlock our fingers. “What’s going on?”

She draws a breath so deep, I’m not sure it will ever end before she looks at me, her eyes uncertain. How can she still be uncertain of me? After everything, still?

“Someone’s been threatening me, Rhys.”

The word “threaten” pummels me. Someone threatened her? Everything in me shouts for answers immediately, but I force myself to remain calm. To fake being reasonable.

“Who threatened you, Pep?” I ask quietly, my fingers tightening just a bit around hers. “Threaten how?”

She knows me too well to believe the calm façade. She searches my eyes until she locates the rage I’m carefully concealing.

“Please don’t be angry with me,” she whispers.

“With you?” I lean back, sliding my hands to her hips, securing her in my lap. It’s bad enough I have to fake calm without having to solve riddles. “Pep, tell me everything now before I lose my shit.”

“Someone sent me a . . . a tape.” She drops her eyes and worries the corner of her mouth with her teeth. “A sex tape.”

My mind races to all the implications of someone seeing us together. Why would they go to her with it when I’m the one with all the money?

“They came to
you
with our sex tape? But why—”

“Not you,” she cuts in, eyes still averted. “You’re not on the tape.”

“But you just said . . .” My words die right alongside a chunk of my sanity. “Who? Who is on that damn tape, Pep?”

“It’s me.” She finally looks at me, tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. “It’s me and Drex. From that night. I swear I had no idea he was recording us.”

Her admission topples any semblance of calm and rationality I clung to. It all falls down. Rage rises. Finally, a legitimate reason to have Gep find a secret way to kill that piece of shit.

“So Drex is the one threatening you?”

Years of hatred and resentment wrap around the words, choking them like weeds in my throat. That viper has found ways to make life difficult for me since the day we met in high school. Him fucking Petra, that was one thing. Him sabotaging my first album release, that was another. And he’s found dozens of ways through the years to piss me off, but this? Him threatening Kai with some bullshit tape from that one fucking night is too much.

“I don’t know if it’s him actually making the threats. I assume he has something to do with it obviously.” Kai covers her eyes. “We’ve been looking for him, but he’s disappeared.”

“We?” Pieces of information begin clicking into slots, forming a clearer picture. “When did he threaten you? Yesterday when I left?”

She couldn’t have let even a day go by without telling me this. Right?

“Pep?” She shifts on my lap, head lowered again. “When?”

“It was at the beginning of the tour.” She directs the words down, unable to meet my eyes.

“Three months ago? He threatened you three months ago, and you’re just telling me? What the hell?”

“We weren’t together at first, and I . . . I wasn’t sure what to do.”

“You tell me. That’s what you fucking do. Three months? And what about when we were together again? For the last six weeks you knew this and didn’t even mention it?”

“I thought . . . I thought I could handle it.”

“And what’s he demanding? What are the terms? Money?”

“No, not money.” She gives me a cautious glance. “Whoever it is only demanded that I not be with you.”

Whatever I thought rage was, it was a pale imitation of the fury that pounds in my temples when she says that.

“Is that why you didn’t want to go public?” I demand. “I mean the
real
reason, not the
lie
you fed me about not wanting to detract attention from your tour.”

“I did what I thought was best, Rhyson, for both of us. To protect you.”

“Bullshit. You did it to protect yourself. At least be honest with yourself since being honest with me obviously isn’t important to you. And that sounds eerily like my rationale when I took matters into my own hands with
Total Package.”

“I know. I made a mistake, too.”

“You said we hit reset. We promised we wouldn’t lie to each other, and that’s all you’ve done for the last six weeks. I went to counseling with my parents for you.”

“That was for you, Rhyson.” She shakes her head, eyes barely holding mine. “You know it was the right thing.”

“Not the point, Pep. I went into counseling with my parents, whom I haven’t spent more than twenty-four hours with in over a decade,
for you
. So that you would know I’m serious about figuring out my shit. So that you’d know I’m serious about us having a healthy relationship, and you do this? Behind my back you hide this?”

I breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth a few times, truly struggling to bring my temper under control.

“I lied first. I know that. I deserved your anger, your silence.” I take a moment before looking at her. “But when you said you forgave me, I never planned to lie to you again. We hit reset, and it meant the world to me. So finding out you lied—well, that spits on everything.”

“Rhys, let me explain—”

“So this piece of shit contacted you three months ago.” I can’t deal with her right now. I need to focus on
him
. “What’s happened since?”

“Well, you and I haven’t been public, of course, so he hadn’t bothered me at all.” She closes her eyes, folding her lips in before continuing. “But then that
Spotted
piece came out the other day speculating about us, and he contacted me again. Texted me threatening to release the tape if I didn’t stay away from you.”

A threatening text?

“That unknown number in the shed?” I demand. “Was that him?”

She nods mutely, eyes afraid of the anger I know is building in my expression. It has to be because I can’t hold it in any longer.

“You told me that was San.” My voice has climbed to a yell. “You lied to my face. God, Pep, was any of that true that night? Has any of it been true? If you could—”

“How can you even ask me that?” Her voice shakes, then breaks over the words. “You know I meant every word about our future together.”

“Yeah, and how did you plan to spend your future with me indefinitely pretending we aren’t together?”

“I just needed some time to track down Drex so we could talk to him, rationalize with him, and now San has a lead so we—”

“San?” I interrupt. “He knew about this? Of course he did. Of course you’d tell him and not me. Trust him and not me.”

“It wasn’t a matter of trust.”

She’s too close. I can’t stand for her to be this close when I’m this angry, like a flame that might scorch her if she’s not careful.

“Get off me.” Rage mottles the words so I repeat them when she doesn’t budge from my lap. “Get the fuck off, Pep.”

“No,” she whispers into my neck, her fingers circling my wrist like she’s prepared to hold on.

“Fine, if you won’t move,” I say, grabbing her hips and lifting her up and off me, dropping her on the bed, “I’ll move you.”

As soon as I’m clear of her, I reach for the phone in my pocket and start dialing.

“Who are you calling?” I hate the fear in her voice. The thing I hate most is that she’s been living with fear for three months and didn’t share it with me. Didn’t let me protect her. Lied to me instead of trusting me.

“Dammit, Pep,” I say through gritted teeth while Bristol’s phone rings.

“That’s me on that tape, Rhyson, not you.” She stands on her knees in the middle of the bed. “I have a right to know who you’re calling.”

“No one says your name without thinking mine, Kai. So it may be you on that tape, but it affects me whether you like it or not, and if we—”

“What tape?” Bristol asks, voice gruff with sleep, from the other end. “This better be good, brother. What the hell?”

“Bris, how soon can you get to the house?” My eyes don’t leave Kai’s devastated face, shame burning a red spot in each of her cheeks.

It’s quiet on the other end, and I can almost hear the cogs of Bristol’s wheels turning as she brushes the sleep off.

“Twenty minutes.”

“Make it fifteen. Gep, too. I’ll explain when you get here.”

I hang up, striding for the door to wait for them downstairs. I can’t even look at Kai right now. I’m so furious with her. So . . . hurt by her. Is this how she felt when I pulled that stunt with
Total Package
? Betrayed? Split open? A raw wound salted with lies?

“I was just trying to handle things myself.” She trails me down the stairs. “Can’t you see I never wanted you to find out? To see me like that with him? God, even now just the thought of you seeing it makes me sick to my stomach.”

“I get that, Pep, but you lied.” I keep going, not turning to look at her. “For weeks you’ve lied.”

“I wanted to find Drex to get to the bottom of it.”

“And have you found him?”

“We’re about to. One of San’s contacts spotted him in Topanga a few days ago. We lost him, but we’re close.”

“Three months and that’s all you have to show for it?” I turn to face her in the foyer. “Did it ever occur to you and your Scooby crew that Gep is a former CIA operative? That he
might
just have some connections that go beyond some trash rag television show’s research department?”

She shakes her head, tears standing in her eyes.

“I didn’t want you to see, Rhys. Didn’t want you to ever know. You said you could never know details.”

“That was before . . .” I let the words fall off. I know I said that, but to keep this from me? For this long? “How could you think it was okay to lie to me about this? Did you just think it would go away? What was your plan here?”

“Once San found Drex, I was going to talk to him and—”

“Talk to him?” I’m seeing red. “On your own? This scumbag who recorded you having sex with him and is now blackmailing you, a criminal act by the way. You were just gonna track him down and say please don’t? Please stop? I wish you wouldn’t do that? That was your fucking plan?”

“I was scared, Rhys. I messed up. I hate that one night with that idiot is ruining everything.”

“That night and what happened between you and Drex isn’t what’s ruining everything. I don’t blame you for that.” I wave a hand in the abyss between our bodies. “Us. The lies and the deception. That’s your fault.”

“I know that, and I’m sorry.”

Her voice is so small. She is so small, and the thought of her putting herself in that kind of possible danger because she wanted to keep it from me when I’m the one who would literally lay down my life for her without a second thought . . . it infuriates me. Before I can tell her all of that, the front door opens, and Bristol walks in, punching in the alarm code from her phone. She lives close by, but she must have sprouted wings to get here this fast. She glances at the watch on her wrist.

“Seven minutes and several traffic violations later, here I am.” She glances past me to Kai. “Gep’s on his way. May take him a little longer, but he’ll be here soon. What’s going on?”

“We’ve got a situation.” I glance at Kai, whose eyes are fixed on the marble foyer floor. “I’ll explain when he gets here. I don’t want to go through it twice.”

I don’t want to go through it even once, but we have to. It’s probably good that Bristol got here so quickly. I don’t know what I would have said if my fight with Kai continued. I still can barely make myself look at her, and it’s not because of what we’ll see on that tape. It’s because she lied to me when I thought we had gotten past it. Because I fooled myself into thinking we had given ourselves completely to each other, and all this time she was holding back. All this time, she didn’t trust me. And that makes me question every moment we’ve shared since Grady’s wedding. And I hate that because those were the best moments of my whole life. And her lies cast a shadow over every one of them.

The three of us are brewing in a tight silence in the kitchen drinking coffee when Gep arrives. He looks fresh, alert and ready, like it’s the start of a new day, not just past midnight.

“What’s up?” Gep’s calm tone soothes me just a little bit. Kai tried to handle this alone, but couldn’t. I can. We can. We will, and I’ll deal with her lies after I’ve destroyed Drex once and for all. I’m determined that on that dude’s deathbed he’ll still be thinking about what I take from him because of this.