A Seductive Melody (The Kelly Brothers Book 5) by Crista McHugh Read Free Book Online Page A

her reaction and found the same patient plea for him to continue.
    They say confession is good for the soul….
    He took a deep breath and opened his up to her. “I’d always been more of a dabbler, getting high here and there as needed. My best friend was more of a King Kong user, mixing his daily heroin with something else to achieve different highs. Sometimes it was as simple as smoking it with marijuana. Sometimes it was harder stuff like crack or PCP. Whatever was available at the moment. But until the last few weeks of his life, he still functioned. He showed up to work, and he never, ever bailed on me.”
    His voice caught as he added, “That is, until the one morning when he didn’t show up.”
    He wasn’t used to a woman with nothing to say, but Becca’s silence rattled him to the core. No questions. No sounds of acceptance or judgment. No movement to or away from him. He had no clue how she was reacting to his story, and he refused to look up from the table to read her face. The frustration mounted inside until it finally erupted with a bang of his fist on the table.
    “I was so fuckin’ angry at him,” he admitted. “He’d thrown his life away. Wasted the talent he’d been given. Destroyed everything we’d worked so hard for. At first, all I could feel was rage. Then this ache followed, like he’d taken some part of me with him. And God, it hurt.”
    He pressed his hand against the center of his chest where the emptiness still lingered. “Once I experienced that pain, that anger, that sense of abandonment…”
    He shook his head as though it would clear the dark emotions swirling inside. Visions of his mother and brothers going through the same hell filled his head like they had in the days following Ty’s death. “I never wanted anyone I cared about to go through that.”
    “So you found a reason to get clean,” she said at last.
    It wasn’t a question, but he still nodded.
    “Then keep holding on to that.” She reached into her purse to pull out some bills before rising from her chair.
    He reached out to stop her. The second their hands touched, something changed in the air between them. Or maybe it was just him. He’d been trying so hard to push her away that now that she was leaving, he wanted her to stay. But when he looked up at her, he noticed subtle surprise playing out across her features, from the widening of her eyes to the parting of her lips.
    She sank back into her chair, her attention never wavering from him.
    And more important, she didn’t try to pry his hand away.
    He wasn’t ready to admit he needed her or anyone else, but somehow, confessing everything that had been bottled up inside for the last month eased the burden of guilt that had been weighing him down. Just knowing someone who’d been there was willing to listen and not call him weak or stupid or a lost cause made the darkness seem a little less impenetrable. And that gave him hope that he might succeed.
    Yet his tongue refused to form the words to express his gratitude. Instead, what came out was, “I can pay.”
    The corners of her mouth rose into a smile that held no pity, no disappointment. If anything, she appeared to be proud of him. “You paid last week.”
    She slipped her hand out from under his and went to the counter to pay.
    Ethan chugged the last of his coffee and tried to pull himself together. Maybe it was a good thing she was ending the night here. If she let him continue, who knew what else might come out of his mouth. As it was, he’d probably revealed too much about himself. It wouldn’t take her long to put two and two together and figure out who he was.
    And yet, oddly enough, he was okay with that. After all, she was Becca Shore. Even if she bore little resemblance to the person she’d been a few years ago, she probably still remembered how important privacy was when trying to stay clean.
    He grabbed his helmet and followed her outside. A whiff of her perfume floated past him as she