Tainted Forever Read online

  Copyright © Terri Anne Browning/Anna Henson 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of Terri Anne Browning, except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976.

  Tainted Forever

  Written by Terri Anne Browning

  All Rights Reserved ©Terri Anne Browning 2018

  Cover Design by Sara Eirew

  Photo by Eric David Battershell

  Model Andrew Inkredible England

  Edited by Lisa Hollett of Silently Correcting Your Grammar

  Formatting by M.L. Pahl of IndieVention Designs

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Tainted Forever is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book can be reproduced in any form by electronic or mechanical means, including storage or retrieval systems, without the express permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Table of Content

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  Playlist

  Chapter 1

  Kin

  May

  Biting down on the apple I grabbed from the kitchen, I sat at my desk in my bedroom and opened up my laptop. Finals were over, thank goodness, but I still had some writing to do for myself. I promised Aunt Emmie a new song by Monday so she could sell it to some record producers. I didn’t want to know who was getting the song, because it didn’t really matter who sang it as long as it got recorded and I got paid.

  It meant my name was getting out there more and more, and with producers asking for me by name, I knew I was on the up-and-coming list. Or so Aunt Emmie and Jace kept telling me.

  Thinking of Jace made me smile. He hadn’t wanted to leave last night, but he had obligations on the East Coast this weekend, and he was going to spend today and Sunday with Alicia in Bristol before flying back Monday. Carolina Rebellion was going on, and Tainted Knights had gotten one of the best slots on the roster for Friday. They weren’t closing the show, that honor was reserved for Demon’s Wings and OtherWorld, but they weren’t anyone’s opening act, not by a long shot.

  My guy and his band weren’t on the up-and-coming list, they had already arrived, and I couldn’t have been prouder of him.

  After I typed in my password for my laptop, I saw there was a window already open. Since it was a social media page, I figured Jace had been the last to be on there. He was always messing around with a video or a teaser recording for one of the band’s newest songs, posting on the TK fan page that already had over two million followers.

  He needed someone just for social media these days, but he liked to do most of it himself. Between him and Kale, who was always posting the pictures Santana took of the band, their fans got their daily dose of all things Tainted, and then some.

  Shaking my head, I started to close the window when a message alert popped up at the bottom of the screen.

  Frowning, I glanced at the top of the page and instantly realized it wasn’t the band’s fan page, but Jace’s personal—and set to private—page. The name on the message at the bottom wasn’t one I recognized.

  Eden Smith.

  Who the hell was that?

  The picture of her beside her name drew my attention, letting me ignore the actual message for a moment, which was some picture that hadn’t yet downloaded. I clicked on her photo, unable to completely make it out. It was some blonde who was super skinny. Her face was scarred from either really bad acne or maybe even past drug use. I couldn’t tell which.

  But it wasn’t the scars that had me enlarging the picture even more, and they sure as hell weren’t responsible for my heart rate doubling. I scrolled over her face, taking in the beauty under the scars and bad makeup. The chick hadn’t learned to contour for shit, but that didn’t completely disguise just how pretty she was.

  Her hair was naturally blond, not the dyed and fried job some blondes tended to have going on. Her eyes were a piercing blue—or they would have been if they hadn’t been glazed from whatever the hell she was drinking that made the whites of her eyes more red than white due to being so bloodshot. She had a smoke in her hand, something hand-rolled. With her bikini top, I could see easily she had a decent rack and a tight stomach. The shorts she wore were jean cutoffs. There was nothing outstanding about the photo. She was pretty, sure, but not overly beautiful.

  So why the hell was my heart trying to escape my chest just looking at her?

  I didn’t understand it. I didn’t know her, even if she did look familiar—I just couldn’t put my finger on why. She had nothing to do with me. And I knew for a fact that she wasn’t friends with Jace on this social media page. He didn’t let fans become friends on his personal page. We agreed early on when we’d started dating again that he wouldn’t let work cross over into our personal lives, and that meant social media especially.

  I exited out of her profile picture and clicked on the message icon. The picture had finally loaded, showing the Eden chick with a huge smile on her face and the most adorable little baby in her arms wrapped in blue. The baby boy had a full head of blond curls, just like the woman holding him. As she was in what looked like a hospital bed and based on the small size of the baby, I could only assume he was her son and she’d recently given birth in this picture.

  As I was looking at the adorable baby, happily skimming my gaze over that cute as hell little dimple in his chin, a message appeared below the picture.

  Finally here! Our baby boy is perfect, Jace. I can’t believe he’s here! Wish you were here with me. I miss you. Love you more than anyone…except our beautiful boy.

  All the air seemed to be sucked from my lungs, and I nearly choked on the bite of apple still in my mouth. Hands trembling, I coughed up the apple and spat it into the small wastebasket under my computer table.

  Our baby boy.

  Our beautiful boy.

  Our.

  Why the fuck did she keep saying “our,” damn it?

  Then I started doing the math. If she’d just given birth, that meant she got pregnant the same time Jace and the band were on their summer tour the year before.

  The same tour Jace returned from acting like an entirely different person. Moody as hell. Always on his phone talking to someone but never telling me who. Keeping secrets. For a while, I was sure he was cheating on me. He was so distracted that even our sex life had started to suffer.

  Until Lucy and Harris had their bachelor and bachelorette weekend. Whatever happened then, I didn’t know, but things had changed between us.
He’d been more open, swearing to me he wasn’t cheating. Promising me that nothing was going on with any other woman. He loved me. I knew that, never really doubted it, but there had been plenty of times I’d wondered if he was loving me and someone else too.

  But no, he swore there was only me for him. He was just going through some stuff.

  Stuff. That was how he explained it. Not what kind of stuff, just…stuff. I hadn’t been happy with the answer, but things had gotten better between us. He paid more attention, wasn’t on his phone as often when we were together. We made love every day now, and I thought we were going to be just fine.

  So what if he hadn’t proposed yet? He would when the time was right.

  Or so I kept telling myself.

  I wasn’t jealous of Kassa and her massive ring Gray had given her after only a few months of dating. Nor was I jealous of Lucy’s rings and the adorable baby bump she was now sporting with pride. Those things would all be mine one day, I was sure of it. Jace just needed a little more time.

  Right?

  Looking back at the picture now, my heart suddenly felt like it was being sliced in two. Was that Jace’s baby? Was he the father of someone else’s little boy?

  I looked closer, trying to find some resemblance to the man I loved.

  Not the dimple in his little chin, that definitely wasn’t from Jace. But there was something about the facial features that kept drawing me in. It was very much a possibility that Jace could be this beautiful little boy’s daddy.

  No! I didn’t believe that. I wouldn’t without more proof. Jace just wouldn’t do something like that to me.

  I scrolled through his past messages with Eden. Nothing much, just the occasional message asking why Jace hadn’t texted her that day or to remind him to call her. Some of the dates were from after the Vegas weekend, some from before. Checking the date on the very first message, I saw it was from September. With it, there was a picture…

  Thought you would want to see our little nugget. I don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl yet. What do you think? Either way, I hope the baby has your good heart, Jace. Love you.

  Right underneath that message, dated and time stamped just a few hours after the picture of the ultrasound and message was Jace’s reply.

  Love you too, E.

  I slammed the top down on the laptop, hiding those words from my eyes, telling myself I’d read it wrong. But my heart was already shattering. Tears pouring down my face, I threw the laptop across the room, not even caring when it landed on the floor with a loud thunk.

  “Kin?” Angie yelled from the direction of the living room.

  I was already in my closet, pulling out my carry-on case before the bedroom door flew open and my stepsister was storming in like the little whirlwind she was, ready to fight any danger that threatened me. I barely spared her a glance as I started tearing clothes off their hangers and throwing them into the case, uncaring that they would wrinkle.

  “What’s wrong?” she demanded, grabbing my wrists when a sob tore out of me without my permission.

  “He…lied,” I cried, pulling free so I could scrub my fingers over my soaked face.

  “Who lied?” She pulled me into her arms for one of her tight hugs. Normally, they made everything seem better, but not this time. Nothing could make this better. “Sugar bug, I swear, if you don’t start talking—”

  “Jace!” I screamed, pushing away from her and returning to my packing. “Jace lied. All this time, he’s been lying. He’s been cheating—” An intense burning in my chest robbed me of my breath as that realization began to rot what was left of my heart. “He’s been cheating on me this whole time.”

  That had my stepsister pausing. “Really?” I could only nod. “Huh. I didn’t imagine that was what was going on all this time. I knew you two were having problems a while back, but I thought you sorted all that out when we went to Vegas for Lucy’s bachelorette party.”

  “So did I,” I whispered brokenly.

  “Where are you going?” she asked as I continued to pack. “You flying out to North Carolina so you can kick him in the balls and tell him to go fuck himself?” She was practically rubbing her hands in glee. She and Jace had a love-hate relationship, only getting along for my sake.

  “No. I’m going home.” I didn’t want to be there when Jace got back Monday night. I didn’t want to see him, didn’t want to talk to him. If I heard his voice, I…I didn’t know what I was going to do. Fall apart, most likely. Three years, that was how long we’d been together this time. Three years of—for me, at least—perfection. I loved him; he loved me. We took on the world together. We were going to be together for the rest of our lives.

  Or so I thought.

  No wonder he hadn’t proposed.

  Fuck, he didn’t even want to talk about moving in together, always changed the subject whenever it happened to be mentioned. Three years apparently wasn’t long enough for him to determine if he wanted to live under the same damn roof, share the same bed, the same life.

  I closed the case, grabbed my purse and headed for the door. I just wanted to go home, to the house I grew up in. Crawl into the bed I slept in every night until my mom died, be beneath the same roof she used to live under. It was as close as I was going to get to her now that she was gone.

  “Let me drive you to the airport, at least,” Angie said as she followed me out of our apartment. I threw her the keys to my Range Rover and tossed my case in the back, not even second-guessing her.

  Once I was in the passenger seat, I pulled up my airline app and booked the first flight out. There was a single seat left on a nonstop to Roanoke that left in ninety minutes. I could easily make that one. Selecting it, I didn’t even care that the last available seat was close to the bathroom in the very back of the plane. I’d take whatever I could get as long as it meant I was going home.

  Angie was trying to get me to talk as she maneuvered through traffic. Normally, her driving scared the hell out of me, but right then, I wasn’t even paying attention to what was going on outside the vehicle. All I could see was that damn ultrasound picture and the one of Eden holding her son. Jace’s son?

  The truth was, I didn’t know, and that was what hurt the most.

  I didn’t know, because I’d lost all trust in my boyfriend months ago. I didn’t know if he would cheat or not, but all the proof was screaming that he had.

  “You should at least call Lucy and let her know where you’re going,” Angie tried to reason. “She’s pregnant and hormonal, and she’s going to be upset if you don’t tell her you’re leaving.”

  “I’ll call her later. I…can’t right now, Ang.” Lucy would understand. She knew more than anyone how things were between Jace and me. She would know this was killing me, and she’d understand why I had to leave.

  I just wanted to go home for a little while. To figure out what to do now that it was so glaringly obvious Jace and I could no longer be together.

  As Angie pulled up into the drop-off lane, I gave her a quick hug. “Love you,” I told her and pulled back. “I’ll call you when I land.”

  “I love you, sugar bug. Take care of yourself, and come back soon.”

  Seven plus hours later and I was parking my rental in the driveway outside my family home. The two-story house on the golf course was where I grew up, where the majority of my happy memories took place. It was also home to some of the worst memories of my life, the biggest one saying the final goodbye to my mother.

  Fuck, why had I come back here?

  Because even though I missed my mother, I needed to be as close as I could possibly get to her. I’d never needed her arms around me as desperately as I did in that moment, but this was as close as I could ever get to her now.

  Chapter 2

  Kin

  Carter was gone for the weekend on business, but Caleb was home. My beast of a stepbrother took one look at my face and pulled me into a gentle hug.

  Once I f
elt his arms around me, the tears flowed with a torrent of pain that felt as if it was going to drown me. I couldn’t hold back the sobs I’d been fighting the entire flight and drive home. Now that I was where I wanted to be, there was no holding back the heartbreak rotting away at my soul.

  Caleb lifted me like I was nothing more than a pillow and carried me into the living room. Sitting me on the couch, he produced my favorite blanket and the remote to the huge flat screen mounted on the wall. Pushing what appeared to be a new box of tissues into my hands, he proceeded to pile the coffee table with enough junk food to feed a small army and Diet Coke.

  When my tears slowed and the sobs ebbed then faded completely, he put a bowl of freshly popped, buttery popcorn in my hands and told me to turn on whatever “girly-ass movie” I needed to make me feel better. There were no questions. No demand for answers I wasn’t ready to give yet. I was certain his twin had already filled him in on why I was there, so he really didn’t need me to tell him what happened yet.

  I shoved a handful of popcorn into my mouth, no doubt looking like a chipmunk. I didn’t care. There was no one I needed to impress. Only Caleb, who would never judge me.

  A Twilight marathon was on, and I could hear him grinding his teeth together, but he didn’t voice a single complaint as I cuddled into his side and watched stupid Edward tear poor Bella’s heart out when he broke up with her in the woods. When she got lost running after him, I could relate.

  I felt more than a little lost myself.

  My stepbrother sat with me all night, and I finally passed out as the sun was coming up, my tears still fresh on my face. When I woke up late Friday afternoon, he had a fresh box of my favorite Chinese and a new marathon of chick flicks for us to binge together.

  It was late when Caleb’s phone went off. He picked it up after kissing the top of my head. “I know nothing,” he spoke into the phone, and I immediately tensed up. Meeting my gaze, he mouthed, “Cash,” to let me know who was on the phone.

  I relaxed, but only slightly. If Cash was calling, that meant there was a good possibility Jace was close by. I didn’t know the band’s full schedule, but they were all probably partying hard after the exhilaration of playing for the masses. I leaned in closer to Caleb, trying to hear what his best friend was saying.