Katie Ashley - Strings of the Heart

To continue hiding me, Rhys twisted around when Jake appeared at the counter. Just the thought that Jake was close enough to touch me sent the shakes through my body. I heard the shuffling of items on the table before Jake said, “Got it.”

“Fabulous. Now will you get the hell out of here?” Rhys growled.

“I’m going, I’m going. My apologies to you and your lady friend. By the looks of it, she’s mortified by my presence at the moment.”

Rhys didn’t reply. Instead, his chest kept rising and falling in harsh, heavy breaths. When I finally dared to peek over Rhys’s shoulder, I thankfully saw Jake’s retreating form. As he strode across the dressing room, he tossed the bottle of spray up and down in his right hand. After shifting the bottle to his left hand, he reached out for the doorknob. Relief flooded me, and I started to exhale the breath I’d been holding. But then fear gripped me again when Jake’s hand froze over the doorknob. A tremor shuddered through his body.

“No. Fuck no,” he muttered.

Rhys’s shoulders tensed beneath my hands. We exchanged a panicked glance. Almost in slow motion, Jake turned around. When I dared to look at him, his expression was a mixture of agony and fury.

“This is NOT fucking happening!” he growled.

Rhys spun around, holding up his hands. “Look, it’s not what you think.”

Jake’s eyes widened. “Not what I think? How the fuck could I possibly misinterpret the situation? I caught you with your fucking pants around your fucking ankles screwing my…” He winced in agony. “My baby sister.”

“I’m sorry, Jake. I never meant for you to find out this way,” I said, as I slid off the table and straightened my dress. With extreme mortification, I reached to grab my discarded panties off the floor. I didn’t dare try to slide them back on—instead, I eased them into the pocket on my dress.

Jake pinched his eyes shut at my actions. Then in a strangled voice he said, “Don’t talk to me right now. I can’t even bear to hear your voice right now after seeing you being used like a…whore.”

I sucked in a pained breath at his harsh words. Rhys took a step toward Jake. “What the fuck? Don’t you talk that way about Allison.”

“And don’t you tell me how to talk to my sister!” Jake bellowed.

“You know what, fuck you, if you’re going to act like a moron,” Rhys retorted.

Out of nowhere, Jake lunged for Rhys, causing me to scream. The crack of Jake’s fist along Rhys’s jaw echoed through the room, and I covered my ears to try to block out the noise. Rhys staggered back momentarily. He winced as his hand came up to rub his jaw. “Jake, I don’t want to fight you. Please, let’s just talk about this,” Rhys said diplomatically.

“The time to talk is over, you motherfucking cradle robber. You should’ve had the fucking decency to talk to me before about this, but no, you had to be a coward and sneak around, screwing my sister behind my back.”

“I’m sorry. I truly am. But kicking each other’s asses isn’t going to make a difference.”

Jake narrowed his blue eyes. “No, but I’m pretty damn sure that leaving you broken and bloody will make me feel a fucking lot better!” And then he launched one punch to Rhys’s gut and then another to his chin. This time Rhys didn’t refuse to fight, and he threw two punches back at Jake, nailing him in the face and chest.

With a frustrated growl, Jake started pummeling Rhys’s face and chest. “No, Jake! Stop!” I cried. Grabbing onto his back, I tried pulling Jake away from Rhys. But with his adrenaline pumping, Jake slung me off with such a force I slammed back into the wall and collapsed onto the floor.

“You hurt her!” Rhys bellowed.

I shook my head as I tried catching my breath. “Didn’t…mean…to,” I tried arguing, but Rhys wouldn’t listen. He charged at Jake, sending them both careening back. When Jake’s legs hit the edge of the table, he went over, taking Rhys with him in a tangle of arms of legs. The table cracked under the combined weight of both men and then splintered into pieces. Jake and Rhys were momentarily disengaged as they crashed to the floor, but then they started punching and kicking again on the floor amid the rubble of the table.

The dressing room door banged open, almost flying off its hinges. AJ and Brayden stood wide-eyed and open-mouthed at the scene before them. “Please! Stop them!” I begged.

In one fluid moment, they rushed forward. “Stop it, guys!” AJ bellowed, as he reached out to try and grab Rhys off Jake. All he managed to do was be elbowed in the gut by Rhys. “Motherfucker!” AJ shouted, his face crumpled in pain.

After surveying the scuffling, Brayden stalked over to the dressing room table, reached in a drawer, rifled through its contents, and then proceeded to take out a small, locked box. As he worked the combination, I couldn’t imagine what might be inside—Mace or a Taser maybe? The truth was crazier than what I had imagined. My eyes widened in horror as he raised a sleek, silver pistol into the air. He fired once, causing me to scream and jump out of my skin.

Thankfully, the pistol fire was enough to stop the fighting. Rhys rolled off Jake onto his back. “Nice work with the gun,” AJ mused, as he rubbed his stomach.

“Yeah, the last thing I was about to do was risk breaking my playing hand on these fighting fuckers.”

AJ snorted. “Tell me about it. I think Rhys broke one of my ribs.”

“Pussy,” Rhys muttered, which caused AJ to playfully kick Rhys’s ass with his foot.

At that moment, two arena security guards along with two Runaway Train bodyguards burst through the doorway. They glanced around, surmising the situation. “Everything okay in here?” one of the security guards asked, his brows cocked questioningly.

Waving the pistol, Brayden replied, “It’s fine. I had to use this to get my bandmates attention. We have a permit for the gun, officers. It’s carried around in a locked box with our makeup supplies in case things get dicey, and our bodyguards can’t get to us.”

The bodyguards nodded their heads in agreement with Brayden’s explanation. “No problem. Just wanted to check,” the security guard replied. The four of them then left us alone.

Crossing his arms over his chest, Brayden asked, “Now you want to tell us what the hell you guys were fighting about?”

Rhys coughed before spitting a stream of blood onto the carpet. “It’s none of your fucking business.”

AJ’s dark eyes narrowed. “Excuse me? We come in to find our two bandmates, our brothers, in a brawl on the floor, and it’s none of our fucking business?”

“He’s no brother of mine,” Jake snapped. With a grunt, he pulled himself into a sitting position. “You should’ve let me kill him for what he was doing.”

AJ and Brayden exchanged a glance. “What do you mean?” AJ asked.

“I came in here to find him disrespecting my little sister like she was some groupie whore.”

I gasped while tears stung my eyes at his hurtful declaration. “It was not like that,” Rhys protested.

“You were fucking her in our dressing room up against the makeup mirror!”

I shook my head. “Jake, please, just let us explain. I promise it’s about more than sex.”

Jake snapped his gaze over to me. “There’s nothing to explain. You’re packing your bags, and you’re on the next flight out of here.”

My mouth gaped open in shock. “Excuse me?”

“I will not stand by and let you be used by him.”

“He’s not using me, I swear.”

“Yeah right,” Jake snapped.

The thought of being sent away from Rhys was almost too much to bear. Stepping forward, I grabbed Jake’s arm. “Don’t you see? I love him!” I blurted, my body beginning to shake from the sobs rolling through me.

Shock and disbelief sliced itself through the room, momentarily cutting off Jake’s argument. AJ and Brayden exchanged a look before cutting their gaze over to Jake. As if they expected my outburst to set him off again, they angled themselves protectively in front of Rhys. Brayden’s hand remained curled around the pistol in his hand.

Jake didn’t move. He didn’t charge for Rhys or act like he wanted to strangle him. He barely blinked as he stared at me.

Through my tears, I watched as Rhys took a tentative step forward. “And I love her with all my heart,” he said, in a strangled voice.

My hiccupped cry turned in a laugh. “You’re so stupid, Jake. Don’t you realize I’ve loved him since I was thirteen years old?”

Jake’s dark eyes widened in shock as he stared at me. AJ and Brayden once again stepped up to form a protective arc around Rhys. When Jake’s glare turned icy, they should have been standing in front of me. After a few seconds of silence, he finally spoke.

“You know what? I call bullshit. You’re just a twenty-year-old kid—you don’t know anything about love,” he snarled.

My tears dried up with my anger at Jake dismissing my feelings. “How dare you stand there and try to tell me what I feel! I know what love is. And I love him!” I said pointing at Rhys. “No matter what you do, you can’t stop the way I feel about him.”

Before Jake could say anything else, Rhys broke past AJ and Brayden to stand by me. Widening my eyes, I stared at him with disbelief as he took my hand in his. After bringing it to his mouth and tenderly kissing it, he said, “You can’t deny us being together. Someday I plan on marrying her.”

Wheezing out the breath I’d been holding, I struggled to keep my emotions in check at hearing Rhys voice his intense feelings for me in front of everyone.

Cocking his brows, Jake skeptically questioned, “You really do?”

Rhys smiled and squeezed my hand. “Yeah, I really do.”

Just when I thought I couldn’t get any happier, Jake crushed me. “Yeah, well, fuck that. Allison, you’re still out of here on the next plane.”

“But I don’t want to go.”

Jake held up a hand to silence me before closing his eyes in pain. “Don’t you get it? Even when it’s all said and done, I can barely look at you right now. Seeing you like that with him…” His eyes popped open, and he shook his head. “You broke my heart.”

“I’m sorry, Jake. I’m so sorry you feel that way, but as much as you want to, you can’t send me away. I’m a grown woman, and I can make my own decisions.”

“Then how’s this? You’re fired as our nanny and from the internship,” he seethed.

I hated myself for showing weakness when tears filled my eyes at his venomous words. “You don’t mean that,” I protested feebly.

“No, he doesn’t,” a voice came from the doorway. I swiveled around to see Abby standing with Eli and Gabe. With her arms crossed over her chest, she gave Jake a glare that could curl paint off the wall.

“This is not your concern,” he snapped.

She cocked her head at him. “Excuse me? While I may not be able to call the shots when it comes to Runaway Train, I sure as hell get to make the choice of who takes care of my children.”

“Abby—” Jake growled, his jaw clenching and unclenching.

Stalking across the room, she threw a hand up in front of his face. “Oh, hell no. This is not how you are going to handle this situation. I’m going to give you time to cool off and get your wits about you, and then you and Allison or you and Rhys are going to sit down and talk about this like a civilized human being would. I will not allow you to kick your baby sister—a sister you love and adore more than life itself—to the curb just because of something you’re not happy about.” As Jake’s chest rose and fell in angry pants, Abby shocked me by reaching up to cup his cheeks in her hand. “Just for a minute, I want you to think about how my brothers could have reacted to us. I was only a year older than Allison when we got together.”

“Your brothers were not my bandmates. We didn’t have a fucking bond and code that went back for years,” Jake hissed, cutting his eyes to Rhys.

Rhys exhaled an agonized sigh. “I’m sorry, man. I really am. I never meant to do anything to hurt you or our friendship,” Rhys said. He glanced over at me. “I never expected to fall in love with Allison, and when I did, I tried everything I could not to give in to my feelings.” Rhys’s expression turned apologetic. “In the process of trying to deny what I felt, I hurt Allison pretty badly. At the end of the day, her happiness—our happiness—mattered more than what you would think or do.”