Breakdown Read online

  Bursts of red and blue, and the scream of cop sirens that permeated wrath’s dense fog, snared me on Georgia 400, and the last I’d seen of her was the flash of taillights as the Jeep dashed between lanes and vanished.

  Caught and released with a warning to “sleep it the fuck off” instead of collared on a DWI, speeding, and menacing driving—because fame begets favors—I’d turned the Harley around and gone home to find my father on the floor of his study.

  The soft golden glow of low lamps touched the mahogany and leather, and seemed to spotlight him sprawled on his treasured Ziegler rug with a sleeve rolled up past his thickly haired forearm and a syringe next to him.

  Lithium. The autopsy and toxicology reports had enlightened investigators, news media, Twitter conspiracy theorists, and acquaintances who’d waited with perverse curiosity as they salivated over the tragic death of Sawyer Creed.

  Mogul.

  Philanthropist.

  Widower.

  Father to alternative metal musician Atticus Creed and opera singer Imogen Creed, the bastard and bitch he’d blamed for the secret acquisition of Authentix and the statement that Perversion was moving toward hip-hop with or without him.

  All I’d done was written songs. Because Sophie had asked, and there’d been no request to pass her soft, yielding lips that I wouldn’t have moved heaven, hell, and the earth in between to grant. I hadn’t known she and Imogen conspired to bleed A-Town Sound dry and absorb its talent into Perversion, rebranding our label in the image Imogen had dreamed while faking serious pursuit of college and opera.

  I’d written songs, and for that I’d ended up with my father’s fist in my jaw and his death on my hands.

  The amount of lithium injected into his bloodstream had been enough to kill three men.

  Suicide.

  Because his children and business partners had screwed him.

  Sawyer had berated Imogen, calling her a failure for trying to kill herself on the night of her Sweet Sixteen ball with the revolver he’d given her as a gift. I’d been within range to hear the shot and had sprinted to the ballroom in time to apply pressure to stem the blood flow and keep her engaged with confessions of the fucked-up shit I’d done during Jugular’s tour stop in Prague.

  She’d failed at dying because I’d intervened.

  He’d succeeded because I hadn’t intervened.

  I’d been distracted exiling Sophie Drew from my life while he’d filled a syringe with lithium to take himself down.

  And then I exiled myself, discarding my band and birthright like an empty bottle of Plantation to the side of a dirt road, hitting the pavement on steel and rage until my beaten soul broke down in tears.

  CHAPTER 6

  Present day...

  Atticus

  Damn Imogen for reminding me that there’s no escaping the ruthless glory of Perversion.

  Wrapping up a wine tasting that’d been cut short thanks to one of Leander, Washington’s, random rainstorms—and the first-class arrival of my sister in a chauffeured Maserati—I’d thanked the last of the guests, locked up the barn, and come in through the mudroom of my farmhouse to toe off my boots and take a piss.

  The redhead who called herself my fiancée had already been leaning against the wall, waiting with a freshly laundered towel in her arms and a smile on her elfin face. It wasn’t the encouraging smile she reserved for PTA meetings and story time at the library. No, this was the dirty-dirty smile that had caught my attention at a shitty taproom in Snohomish a few months ago.

  “C’mon,” she urged now, leading me into the bathroom and patting my rain-soaked shoulders with the towel. “You’re almost as wet as I am.”

  I defied anyone to find me a kindergarten teacher with a sluttier mouth than Katrina D’Orsay.

  Words like that were an invitation to gather her copper-colored hair in my hands and wedge myself into her freckled pussy, except…

  “Thin walls, Kat. Use all the innuendos and sexy smiles you want, but I’m not screwing you while my sister’s in the house.”

  She tossed the towel onto the floor and watched me unzip. “For the zillionth time, Atticus, buy a house with thicker walls. A famous billionaire shouldn’t live the life of a blue-collar farmer. It’s just strange.” Then, while I was mid-fuckin’-stream, she dropped to her knees, grabbed my penis from my grip, and opened her mouth for a drink.

  “You’re hanging on a toilet with my piss dripping from your lips, and I’m strange?”

  Laughing, she grabbed the towel to wipe her mouth. “Urine play is not strange. Kinky? Maybe.” In the mirror she finger-combed her hair. “Naughty? Absolutely. Spank me for being a bad girl.”

  “Quit.”

  “No, I want you to spank me.” She pushed her jeans down her hips.

  I flushed, washed up, and brought my hand down hard on her bare ass. “Understand? We’re not doing this now.”

  A look of shock replaced the arousal that had darkened her jade-colored eyes. “I wanted a foreplay spank. Not…that.”

  Katrina was about fantasies and games, always pretending she was something she wasn’t, that we were something we couldn’t be.

  I wasn’t going to marry her.

  When she’d asked, her eyes two orbs glimmering with hope, I’d tried to say no without the blunt honesty that I was an unfaithful asshole. Unfaithful because Sophie Drew still lived inside me in visceral memory and sharp, senseless cravings. No matter how hard I fucked my fist or how deep I buried myself into someone else, I couldn’t satisfy the ache for her.

  Katrina had interpreted my hesitation as an unspoken yes, and had spread the word of our engagement like wildfire in a windstorm to her contacts and mine.

  It had started a fight, which she’d finished by crying. The tears had triggered something distant and weak in me—shards of flashbacks that revealed the woman I loved naked and crying in my bed, running from my house, swerving through traffic to escape me.

  Katrina, wearing my handprint on her ass, thinking we’re engaged, said, “When we tie the knot, you need to unwrap yourself from around your sister’s finger. She’s an adult, not some defenseless child who needs her big brother’s protection. What are you protecting her from anyway, the concept that her filthy rich, amazingly gorgeous rock idol of a brother has a sex life?”

  “Imogen shows up out of the blue like this when she’s in trouble,” I said.

  When she’d appeared in the barn, luring everyone’s attention with a California tan, runway fashions, and unshed tears sparkling splinters of blue in her green eyes, she’d whispered in my ear, “We need to talk about Perversion. It’s time, Atticus.”

  She was in trouble. Perversion exploited her every debauched instinct, as it did mine.

  “Simple,” Katrina said, righting her jeans. “When sis wakes up, ask her what’s wrong. Until then, my sore butt will be here waiting for you to kiss it better.” She winked and started for the door.

  “Wait, Imogen’s asleep? Again?”

  “Yes. I think the rain beating on the roof relaxes her straight to REM.” Her eyes widened with excitement. “Ah, I can’t believe it. The Imogen Creed is asleep on my sofa.”

  “It’s not your sofa, Katrina.”

  “Semantics. Ooh, I should check my Insta and see how many likes the pics got.”

  “You took photos of my sister sleeping?” I threw open the bathroom door and stalked down the hallway. “Where’s your phone?”

  She tried to grab my arm but I shook her off. “Calm down. It’s not like I sold them to tabloids. I posted them on my personal social media accounts.”

  Jesus. Every platform there was had a Katrina D’Orsay account. She snapped selfies every time she got into a car, used the word hashtag in everyday conversation, and had been a self-proclaimed “popularity whore” from her cheerleading and beauty pageant days. She measured her
worth by interactions with strangers, bots, and anyone who claimed they attended the same school and church that she did.

  In spite of the warnings, I’d let her undo my jeans at the bar that first night and had kept her around afterward because a sloppy blow job wasn’t something a man just took for granted.

  Now she was thinking my willingness to fuck her entitled her to a ring on her finger and the right to violate my family.

  “What the fuck, Kat? She’s sleeping, for Christ’s sake.”

  “She won’t be for long if you keep yelling.” She snatched her phone from the living-room coffee table before I could crush it in my goddamn hand. “Celebrities give up privacy for fame. It’s a tradeoff. You should know that.”

  What the fuck?

  Riding the shallow sensation of dread that worked its way to my temples, I said quietly, “Open the photos app and give me the phone.”

  She hesitated, then unlocked the device with her thumbprint and opened a storage app. “Uh…just let me do something important first— Atticus, stop!”

  I was already twisting it from her grasp, canceling the backup, and going to her social apps.

  There was a selfie of her pretending to yawn next to a sleeping Imogen, captioned “hard partying last night. we’re beat. #besties.” Another was captioned “#bling” among a cluster of other hashtags, featuring Kat wearing the diamond bracelet she’d clearly taken off Imogen’s wrist and had replaced after taking the photo. A third showed Kat kissing Imogen, captioned “how many of you bitches can say you tasted atticus AND imogen creed? dm for deets!”

  Kat retreated, walking backward until she met a wall. “Okay, you’re probably mad about the kiss. It was just for shits and giggles.”

  “She might not see it that way. You want the kind of attention that comes with pissing her off, schoolteacher?”

  “Oh my God, are you serious? It was a joke.” She glanced at my sister, who was still completely under. “Imogen gets attention. All the paparazzi and bloggers and fashion gurus follow her around. No one cares that she can sing opera. No one cares that she’s a genius. They care that she’s hot. I’m hot and I can work the red-carpet life too.”

  “Is this delusion or jealousy, Kat?”

  “Neither. This is your fiancée trying to forge a relationship with the only family you’ve got left. I heard her mention your old record label in Atlanta. Are they going to produce your songs—the ones you’ve been writing about me?”

  What did she know about my songwriting? I hadn’t shared my work with anyone since quitting Jugular and leaving Georgia. I’d drifted years before buying land in the Pacific Northwest and trying my hand at growing blueberries. Why the fuck not, I’d figured.

  Blueberries, a kindergarten teacher, working through the day and sleeping at night—it was all supposed to stabilize the chaotic tilt of fame and infamy. But I’d brought the ghost of Sophie’s love along, not fully freeing myself of her because part of me wanted its chains and anchors. I wrote lyrics to tuneless, unfinished songs inspired by the gouges left by my loathing and lust for her.

  “I’ve never written a song about you,” I told Katrina.

  An impatient huff escaped her lips, drawing my eyes to the freckle on the top one. I’d spent hours distracted by that sexy solitary freckle, licking it, grazing my fingers across it, watching it stretch as Katrina’s mouth formed a wide O to take me in.

  That freckle had touched my sleeping sister’s lips, ’cause Katrina was willing to exploit what I loved—that perfect fawn-colored freckle, and Imogen—for the shallow, fleeting favor of an algorithm.

  “Of course they’re not finished,” Katrina said, “but they’re still songs about me. And the poems. Oh my God, the poems.”

  “They exist, yes, but they’re not about you. They’re about a woman who abused my trust. They’re about someone I never want to see again, but sweet Jesus Christ, if I did, I’d probably last all of ten minutes before burying my cock in her.” Regretful that I was the cause of pain flaring in her eyes, I still didn’t regret the truth that should’ve already been said. “Am I a bastard for letting you get starry-eyed about my money and who I used to be? For fuckin’ you like a deviant, knowing good and damn well a wedding ain’t in our cards? Damn straight.”

  “But you’re not apologizing?”

  “No.”

  “You’re only saying this because you’re angry about the photos. I’m sorry, all right? I’ll delete them if you promise to take back what you just said.”

  I was under the radar, with no social media accounts and no publicists to communicate with the fans who mourned the loss of Jugular, but even I knew that screenshots meant deletion wasn’t the same as genuine erasure.

  Nor could Katrina’s motives be walked back. “I know what you want, Kat, and it ain’t a farm in Leander. You want what Imogen’s got.”

  Fucking shame that Imogen was uncomfortable with her life, unable to accept brilliance and infinite potential as enough. But Katrina saw only a narrative the press pushed, not considering what ugly realities rested underneath Imogen’s glamor.

  “Atticus, I spend five of seven days a week with children and drive a Prius. Your sister flew to Washington in a private jet and rented a Maserati—with a driver. She showed up courtside at the NBA Finals looking like she was at the Oscars. The clothes she’s wearing this minute must be worth half a million dollars, at least. The scales should be more balanced between the two most important women in your life, if not tipped in my favor. I’m your wife, practically.”

  “Hell, no. The answer’s always been no.”

  “So why didn’t you say this in the beginning?”

  “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “You’re hurting me now,” she accused. “You led me on, dangling the idea of marriage in front of me to get me to sleep with you. You pressured me. That’s what I’ll tell every media outlet if you even think about coming back to music and reuniting Jugular like everyone wants.”

  There wouldn’t be a reunion. A jogger had found Skid swinging from a bridge days after Jugular’s split; Peppers had hooked up with another band briefly before hitting the books and becoming a professor.

  I was a farmer now.

  “A dozen witnesses at that bar saw you approach me, Kat. You were quick about bobbing on my dick because you thought there’d be a paycheck at the end of this. You were fuckin’ wrong.” A quiet battle raged between us as the wind rattled the windows and rain bounced off the Gambrel roof. “Don’t make me your enemy.”

  Subdued, she relented and silently watched me delete my sister’s photos from her phone. Browsing the albums, I found one that contained photos and videos of me. In bed, in the shower, in between Katrina’s legs.

  As I returned my gaze to hers, she started shaking. “I didn’t post any of your content, okay? That’s just insurance.”

  “Insurance?”

  “For when you hook up with someone high-profile—in case the relationship goes sideways and they don’t want to compensate.” Wincing at what she’d admitted, she held out her hand. “Give me back the phone. It’s my private property.”

  “Hey, Kat, answer me this. How can a woman who gives such incredible head be so profoundly fucked in hers?”

  Tears quivered and trickled down her flushed cheeks. “That’s insulting.”

  “I don’t give a single fuck.”

  “Excuse me? I’m experiencing a feeling and you need to validate that feeling.”

  “Babe, spin that shit on your kindergartners. Get the fuck out of my house.”

  Startled, she protested, “It’s raining.”

  “Guess you’ll get wet.”

  “But the wind—”

  “Ain’t high enough to lift your Prius off the road,” I interrupted. “Any last words for your phone? ’Cause I’m going to smash this bitch into a thousand pieces.”


  None for the phone, but she had one for me—asshole—as she collected her shit and bolted.

  CHAPTER 7

  Atticus

  I opened a bottle of Katrina’s favorite blueberry and Riesling wine from the tasting earlier, turned it up, and muttered, “A toast to the softest pair of lips to suck my cock in six years.”

  People like her, motivated by money and status, weren’t rare.

  I’d loved someone like that. I’d written songs about her.

  Except, at the same time Sophie Drew was dizzyingly different. Her smile could freeze my mind. Her touch could light my body on fire. I’d immortalized her pussy in the song “In Your Crimson,” written during a night of insomnia the week after I’d met her. It remained unpolished and unsung, confined to the pages of an old notebook.

  Funny that my church’s reverend had never said evil could be beautiful, could sound like the most vulnerable melody, could feel so damn good wrapped around you.

  Evil was Sophie, a woman who’d deceived her way to the top. It had begun with me in an Atlanta arena parking lot seven years ago. Now she was one of the most influential players in music entertainment.

  Wine bottle in hand, I felt simultaneously weary and wired. Somehow, I’d hold the threads of my sanity together…for Imogen.

  Still sleeping through the storm, she needed me to be a pillar of strength. Rarely did she visit, and when she did, she’d talk shit with the farmhands then settle on the porch with a beer and a handful of concord blueberries and watch the wind flatten the lawn. When she passed through, like a leaf drifting and tumbling in the wind, it was only to remind herself that she still belonged to somebody.

  Today was different.

  She’d come to this farm by no urging of wind or need to belong, but an agenda that involved Perversion. She’d brought it up in the barn, and when I shut her down, she’d gone into the house for a nap. Then she’d woken up and accosted me with the conversation again, only to have Katrina monopolize her attention until she’d fallen asleep.