The blonde purred, rubbing her fingers across the cotton at my chest.
“You were magnificent,” Miss Acrylic whispered in my ear. “Just fucking magnificent.”
She ripped at my cummerbund, sliding it to the floor. Another flick of her fingers, and she loosened what was left of my half-bounded bowtie, her toned thighs straddling me as I sank back into the cushions, clutching the only object that made sense in the confines of the luxury car.
My award.
Reality TV producer of the year.
I vaguely remembered drinking out of its gold surface before finding my way into Miss Acrylic’s arms. Several fuck you’s to a couple of angry-looking bouncers and many shots of Don Julio later, and I was heading God-knows-where with a very plastic-looking, life-sized blow-up doll in my lap, my bruised fists and bloody lip just a few signs of all the fun I’d been having.
I smiled, spreading more blood across my teeth. I look up at my unexpected guest with a grin.
“Am I being kidnapped?”
She blinked sweetly down at me. “More like man-napped.”
“Uh huh.” I nodded, my temples starting to throb. “And might I ask the name of my man-napper?”
She kissed the buttons of my white collared shirt, her lips sinking lower as she gazed up at me, her body sliding down mine over the elongated seats. She stared.
“Does it matter?”
I wanted to say “No, it doesn’t.” I wanted to say “Who gives a fuck?” And any other night, I would have, if it weren’t for the niggling in the back of my tequila-soaked mind, a simple thought that told me I was forgetting something. Something damned important.
But I couldn’t think about it that much.
My phone, tucked in the confines of my tux, started blaring and I fished it out of my pocket, just as Miss Acrylic’s pink lips took a detour between my legs.
I answered the call, my eyes sinking closed. “Sparrow,” I grunted.
“Holy fuck, man. I’ve been calling you all day.” Brett’s voice on my speaker breaks the silence.
“I’ve been preoccupied,” I murmured. And getting punched, I don’t add. “I won the producer award, in case you were wondering,” I told my best friend, my teeth tightening. “But you would know that if you actually brought your ass out here to LA once in a while.”
“Sparrow.” His voice sank. “We can talk about that another time. Right now, I’ve got something more important to tell you.”
“What?” I laughed, the sound long and loud. “Have you decided to take me out of my misery with this wedding shit and elope?”
That was what I forgot. The wedding.
My best friend’s nuptials were just over two months away, the pre-wedding events even less so. The grunt I gave when my phone rang turned into a groan, and though my cock was dangerously close to splitting the cavern of Miss Acrylic’s eager lips, the noise that grumbled in my throat was more from anger that I was losing my best friend than arousal.
He exhaled loudly. “I wish, bro.” His silence was deafening as he waited. “It’s about Marilyn.”
His words were the beginning of the end, and in the span of an hour, I’d booked a flight back to the cold streets of New York, not a bag in sight, my bowtie still attached as I ran for the next flight back to the city.
Now here, in the hospital, sweating in a five thousand dollar Tom Ford tux, the laughter has stopped, been twisted and replaced into a strange regret. The regret turns into a hardened rage when a balding man in a suit enters my sister’s hospital suite without knocking, a phony small smile on his wrinkled face.
I know that look. Can smell the lawyer on him. And as he comes closer, I hold out my hand, stopping him from approaching the doctor and me any farther. My frown slides into a scowl.
“Don’t. Don’t you even dare. Leave.” My voice is a grisly growl. I lean towards him. “Now.”
Despite my anger, the attorney in front of me is as cool as a cucumber. His graying blond hair sits proudly on top of his tanned head, and he sweeps a hand through it as he regards me with warm, steady gray eyes. He nods as if understanding.
“I don’t mean to intrude, Mr. Sparrow…”
“Then don’t.”
“But it’s about your father.”
My brow furrows, my hand lowering as the lawyer talks. I blink. My father?
“What about him?”
His stare slants at me, his skin pulling tightly at the corners of his eyes. His proud shoulders sink as he glances at the doctor beside me. His stare returns back to me.
“They didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
He sighs—a weighty sound. “Your father was in the accident, too, Mr. Suh-Sparrow.” His tongue seems to trip over my name. Maybe because it’s a bitter surname to say. Even to me. He inhales as if needing his next breath more than life, and I watch his face, reading it. As I’ve done with so many others so many times before.
The look in his eyes translates to tragedy. He glances up at me, misery hidden in his rainy irises.
“Mr. Sparrow…your father is in a coma. He’s suffered major brain damage, and according to his living will, he would like for you to…”
But the words are fading from my consciousness. Replaced by a roar that doesn’t end. I blink slowly as my vision becomes blurry and as I glance over the head of the older man in front of me, I swear I almost see a vision. A hallucination. An image in the hallway that can’t be real.
Red hair and long legs pass through my periphery across the open door, and flashes of memories I’d rather forget swirl in with the other images floating through my muddled head. None so powerful as the thought that nothing—not a goddamned thing in my life—will ever be the same.
Chapter Three
VIOLET
The beating of my pulse matches the rhythmic beeping across my wrist.
The ground is cold beneath my feet, especially hard, and as I run across its black surface, I can hear my own breathing, feel my body coming alive.
It’s the December air, the winds of winter.
The early morning air is crisp, beautiful to taste. And though I open my mouth to inhale that New York oxygen, it mixes ominously with the bitter flavor of worry, still sitting on my tongue from last night.
I couldn’t sleep last night. And it shows.
My stride is slower than normal, my gait stilted. Even New Kids on the Block in my headphones can’t drown out the vision of Marilyn—one of my now closest friends—laying in the hospital, nearly lifeless, the blood practically drained from her pretty face.
I turn the corner, my jogging jacket and tights stiff amongst the East Coast cold, and I consider abandoning my morning run altogether when my Apple Watch rings against my wrist, signaling an incoming call.
I answer it, holding my hand up to my frosty lips as I continue huffing down the beaten paved path. I take a deep breath, releasing it quickly.
“Violet Keats.”
“Violet!” I hear from the other line. My name on the call is more of an order than an acknowledgment, and my body perks up, my pulse peaking as excitement finds its way into my skin, making the air shimmer around me. I haven’t heard this voice in several days. I grin.