The Lover’s Promise (No Exceptions #3)(15)
Author: J.C. Reed

“You don’t know?” he asked and his expression darkened.

“Know what?”

Kenny’s hesitation whether to tell me shimmered in his blue eyes. He had never liked Tiffany. The two of them were at each other’s throat most of the time, but he wasn’t the gossipy type.

“She crashed five times during the last seven years, not including the one crash she had earlier this year,” he finally said.

I stared at him, taking in his words. Finally, I sucked in my breath. “Shit. I had no idea.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I wish I had known.” I looked at him, suddenly feeling faint. “We met at the bar, you know? She chose the place because she was fine with it. She claimed she hadn’t touched a drop in years, and I believed her.”

“Obviously, she lied,” Kenny said. “She’s the most unstable person anyone can ever meet.”

I turned my gaze to peer out of the window, lost in thoughts. Tiffany was still in love with me. When I returned, she might have harbored the hope that we’d end up together. If my rejection hurt and alcohol was served somewhere nearby, there was a huge chance that she’d let her demons out.

“Fuck.” I turned back to Kenny. “Fuck! She booked a hotel room, and I told her that I didn’t care for her. I said some horrible shit, and now she might be shacked up alone, drinking herself into a stupor.”

“Not necessarily.” Kenny didn’t sound convinced.

“Have you seen her around?”

“No,” Kenny admitted hesitantly.

“When did you say was her last relapse?”

“Sometime in April, I guess. We found her passed out in the basement, next to a pile of pills and booze.” Kenny shrugged as he racked his mind.

“That’s around the time she gave up her son for adoption,” I whispered.

“Yeah, possibly.” He stared at me as the meaning of my words hit home. “It was definitely before you returned. Don’t beat yourself up. It’s probably nothing to do with you.”

“Does Brian know about the relapse?”

“Yeah. Everyone does.”

“Except me,” I whispered.

“You were gone too long, man. Much has happened in those four years.”

I nodded silently. He was right. In the fours years I had been out of touch with most of my old friends, I had built a career in real estate, made a name for myself and turned in a huge fortune.

And then came Brooke.

“What about her treatments?” I asked, pushing her name to the back of my mind.

Kenny raised his eyebrows, and snorted. “Over the past years, she’s tried anything, including weekly AA meetings, and she still crashed.” He paused, considering his words. “She ran through a designer rehab clinic that cost Brian hundreds of bucks an hour, and she still crashed. Every time she wanted to get better, she did. She worked hard, and stayed sober for a while. She would keep away from the old neighborhood, the usual bars she frequented, she’d help other alcoholics, and it always seemed like she was doing better. And then bam… after a few months, maybe a year, the first crack would emerge somewhere, and the slide would begin again, only each time it was worse than the last.” He sighed. “Brian thinks there’s a cure for alcoholism, that she’ll wake up cured one day, but I swear it’s getting worse.”

“It doesn’t’ matter now.” I jumped up and grabbed my keys from the table.

“Where are you going?” Kenny said, pushing his laptop aside.

“The Trio hotel. We need to find her.”

“What if she’s not there and you’re wasting your time?”

“Then she’s not there and we’ll look elsewhere,” I said. “What choice do I have? If something happens to her, I’ll be held responsible.” I looked at him. “Brian would try to kill me. That wouldn’t worry me because I could easily beat the living shit out of him. However, the last thing I’d want is for him to go after the ones who are close to me, and that would be Brooke.”

BROOKE

Present Day

I woke up, gasping for air, my eyes scanning my surroundings in distress. My heart hammered so hard that I feared anytime now I might have a heart attack. I scanned my hands and then the floor. All was clean. No sign of a knife. No sign of any sort of struggle. No sign of Jett. A glance at the clock showed me it was shortly before 4 a.m. The sky outside the window was still dark.

It was a dream.

Except the dream had felt horribly real. Another shudder ran through my body as I remembered the pain written on Jett’s beautiful face, the shock in his voice, the red, vivid blood on his skin, and the stone cold feeling of the knife in my hand. But most of all, I remembered the heavy sadness I felt as I saw him lying on the floor in pain, and the realization that nothing could be done to save him.

A stray tear trickled down my cheek. I wiped it away angrily. My limbs shook as I hugged myself for support, conjuring up memories of affirmations I had read earlier.

Breathe in. Breathe out. My baby is safe. I’m safe. Nothing had happened.

It was official. Jett was not only haunting my dreams; the fears he had ignited in me were now playing sick games in my mind. I thought I hated him. But did I hate him enough to want to kill him subconsciously?

I couldn’t even claim that it had been self-defense or an accident. One minute he had been speaking to me, the next he was bleeding, pointing to the knife in my hand—as if I was capable of murdering him. The mere thought of me being a killer was insane, as was the idea that I might have somehow given him a key. I had never offered Jett one, and he had never asked for it.

The signs had to be metaphorical.

In my dreams, I might be the monster, seeking revenge on Jett by stabbing him for the way he had pierced my heart when he hooked up with Tiffany. However, I knew I would never go that far in real life. Sylvie once said that dreams were messages of the subconscious mind. Waking up from my dream made me realize how much I wanted to see him and how much I longed for his touch. Even though my mind refused to give in, my broken heart longed to forgive him, to ascertain he was okay. I knew then that I truly loved him. Loved him enough that, even though he had broken my heart, I’d never want to do the same to him.

Reality will catch up soon enough.

My body began to tremble again as it remembered his mysterious words in my dream. I had no idea what they meant and I was sick of pondering over a dream. Time to get a prescription for sleeping pills that would help me fall into a dreamless state because I had more pressing issues to think about. Like the fact that a killer was still out there. Or that I had no clue who killed Gina, and I sure had no idea what the future would bring now that Jett and I were separated, and he was a suspect in a murder case.