Toxic Kiss (Wrecked Encore #1)

Chapter 1

chapter

one

FIVE YEARS AGO

“There’s no guide for how to suffer gracefully. Just scars where the rules used to be.” - Haven

CYRUS

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The bass is a fist to my sternum, and I let it bruise me.

Fuck the world and everyone in it. My body moves before my brain catches up.

Hips, shoulders, arms, all swaying in a sea of bodies that press and try to forget.

Names blur. Faces smear into neon streaks like rain on a windshield.

Nothing matters except the next hit, the next shot, the next thing that takes the edge off being awake and still alive.

A mist machine hisses, and cool water hits my face. I close my eyes and soak it up like the wet shirt clinging to my ribs. I laugh because the music, the liquor, and the blunt I’m smoking stitch me together in a way that almost…almost feels like surviving.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The DJ is killing it. I don’t even know this song, and yet I’m chanting along with a thousand strangers. Our lives forgotten as we dance in a private lie. The lie that we are okay.

Someone grabs my hand and pulls. My kidnapper has their hood up and shoulders hunched.

It may be a friend or a stranger. I don’t fight.

Tonight, anonymity is a mercy. I let myself be dragged toward the exit, and through air that smells like sweat, regret, and summer heat.

The red EXIT sign cuts through the haze like it is trying to burn the fog from my mind.

But I won’t let it. I smile without meaning to and suck the last hit of my blunt before tossing the butt down on the concrete for someone else to stomp out.

We pass under the glowing sign, and I’m hit with the humidity that adheres to me like a second skin. I hold the smoke in my lungs until we are outside and slowly blow a long, sensual stream up into the night sky to be claimed by…by…by…it doesn’t matter who, just that it joins the stars.

My head is light, and I look from left to right and smirk. People move like ghosts between the club and the curb. The hooded person in front of me slows, and I finally see her hair blowing out the side. It’s bright and impossibly red. Something dark slides down my spine.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I growl.

“Taking you home, that’s what,” she says.

I stop. The smile dies. Even with the chemicals trying to micromanage my pain, I know that voice. Know it the way you know a knife before it’s in your ribs and carving out your heart.

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I snap, and watch as she drags the hood back like a revelation in a movie. My heart triples in time. Her fucking green eyes lock on mine, and I swallow the lump in my throat.

Haven. My stepsister. My constant wrong note. From the second our lives collided, it’s been nothing but sabotage and a war between us. We’ve turned hating each other into a battlefield with no winner.

“Cy, I know you’re hurting,” she says. She always sounds like she’s reading from a manual meant for people who still care. “This…” She points at the club. “This isn’t how you fix it.”

Who the hell is she to tell me what fixes anything?

“You don’t have a clue,” I say. “You don’t have friends. You don’t know what it feels like to lose what I have.”

I pour the venom slowly, knowing that it’s bullshit, but not caring as long as it hurts. And as Haven’s face shadows with pain, I shudder and suck in air that tastes like sweet satisfaction.

She looks away.

“Wow. Just when I think you’ve reached the lowest you can, you somehow dig deeper.”

Maybe on another day, her green eyes would tug something loose in me.

Some guilt, grief, perhaps a fractured tenderness.

But I’ve been hollowed out for years, and the last few months…

have felt like my body is free-falling over a cliff.

When I’m not empty, I anesthetize the rest. It’s a conscious, precise kind of suicide-by-party.

“I speak the truth. Sorry if it’s too much for you.”

Haven was different before. She was popular and laughed a lot.

Her smiles were like sunlight, and she could fill a room just by stepping into it.

I hated it. So, I threw the first punch.

Technically, I threw them all. But, it was easy especially when she is a walking calamity.

I wanted to crush her like a bug under my boot and squash all that fucking happy right along with it.

She crosses her arms, and I do the same…my mockable pose of the night.

“You have two choices,” she says, and I smirk because, of course, she lays out choices like she’s handing out lollipops.

“You can come with me—”

“Or come inside you,” I cut her off, the words a sharp barb. But the reality is that I want her.

She gags, face contorting into an offended grimace which only pisses me off more.

“No. Eww. You’re my stepbrother.”

Confrontation with Haven is the best drug. Despite it all, she is the one fucking thing that makes my heart race, my skin warm, and my brain still.

“Step is the operative word. We aren’t blood. We hate each other. Angry sex will be hot, poetic, and a beautiful fuck you to our parents.”

I close the distance between us until I can feel the heat coming off her body. Her green eyes go wide with shock. There is a flash of fear under the surface of her well-crafted bravery and it spins something inside me.

She stumbles back off the curb, almost falling. There’s a clumsy, endearing quality to Haven when she’s nervous. It’s the only time she is truly vulnerable.

Haven is too small for the world to notice, too quiet for most to give a shit, too smart, too talented, and too damn beautiful for her own good.

She’s fucking infuriating, and that’s dangerous.

Haven is sexy in a way I will never admit out loud and yet crave with the very fabric of my musical soul.

She is the kind of girl that makes me want to write songs for her, but I’d rather toss the music sheets into the fire and watch them burn as she cries.

That is Haven fucking Gaillard.

She steps back, and I follow, matching her stride for stride until she is trapped against the car with my hands close enough to feel the tremor that runs through her. I trace her jaw and watch the way she follows my finger like someone wanting to cross a line they’ve never been allowed to go near.

“You gonna bite it?” I tease, dragging the pad across her bottom lip.

“Don’t tempt me,” she snaps.

“But what if I want you to?”

The air between us thickens with something that smells sickeningly sweet, like broken things, unfinished sentences and dark desires.

She says it’s never going to happen. But when I press forward, there’s a flicker…a fault line in her denial. My mouth goes dry. Maybe it’s the mix of drugs, whiskey, and numbness, but I imagine breaking her hard…audibly. The kind of earth-shattering sex that lets the world know she is mine.

Her hair blows across her face, and I twist the strand through my fingers. She jerks away.

“Do you mind?”

“Not at all.” I do it again to piss her off.

“Your pupils are fucked. What the hell did you take?”

“Not enough of whatever it is.”

I grin because I’m allergic to restraint tonight, and she is trying to slip cuffs around my wrists.

Haven plants both hands on my chest like a shield, a useless press of skin against my ribs.

She’s a year younger and still looks like someone’s little sister if you squint.

She’s never been a fighter at least not physically.

She couldn’t even push a fly away and claim victory. But, that fucking mouth of hers…

“Cy, stop being a jerk. I came to help you,” she tells me, and the word help tastes like ash on my tongue.

“And this is how you help? Drag me away?” I press my forehead to hers. “Do you ever think about me naked? Admit it.”

“No. Of course not.” Her voice is tight and wavers enough for me to catch it.

“Liar.” I lean in, and she tilts her head back until the glass of the car window stops her. She smells like blueberries and cream, like honey in tea, like something safe, and yet totally wrong. My jaw tightens.

I can’t resist Haven in this state and drop my head to the side of her neck, inhaling the intoxicating scent that is constantly driving me insane.

“Cy, stop it,” Haven says, her hand moving right over my pounding heart.

“Say the word, and I’ll bend you over the trunk of your shitty car and make you scream my name.

” My voice is low enough that it’s more a promise than a threat.

I trace the line of her throat and feel the flutter.

Her pulse is wild and fast beneath my fingers.

“You’ll come all over me and then beg for more. ”

She gasps as I grab her neck and press my fingers into her soft skin. Something fierce and ugly rises in me. Something feral, something willing to kill to keep her.

Then Patrick’s face flashes in my mind…him laughing at my jokes, the way he used to sit in the corner humming as he scribbled lyrics with a cigarette hanging off an always-smiling mouth. Losing him gouged out all the good in me. I’m nothing more than a shell walking around on display.

He wasn’t just a friend. We were brothers, closer than blood. Losing him felt like losing a limb. I keep picking at the phantom itch.

“Cy, I know why you’re doing this, and Patrick wouldn’t want you traveling down this path.”

“Don’t you ever use his name against me again,” I say, voice as sharp as any blade. “He was my best friend, mine. You don’t get to tell me how or when I grieve, or where, for that matter.”

I grip Haven’s arm until my fingers hurt. She winces, and despite the rage, I immediately release her. She slumps as if someone has punched her.

“You’re wrong,” she says quietly. “You can say what you want and try to rewrite history, but I did know him.”

If looks could kill, Haven would be dead at my feet.

“Shut up or put that mouth to good use.”

“Fuck you, Cy.”

“Fuck you, Cy,” I mock and then smirk. “If you’re only here to satisfy your savior complex, get in your car and drive back to your boring as fuck life.”

I grudgingly step back, my body buzzing from the drugs and being near her. Haven pulls out her phone like it’s a loaded gun. I eye her as she unlocks it and then holds up the screen to show her thumb hovering over the number.

“Police,” she says, slowly as if daring me.

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Get in the car now, or I’ll call the cops and have the entire party shut down. I’ll be sure to give them your name for the record so that all these people know what a royal asshole, snitch you are,” she says, all sweet and wholesome. “Your choice.”

“My mother already hates you. Do you have any idea what she will do if you get me arrested and ruin my record deal?” I growl, heat rising like a tide inside me. “You don’t have the balls.”

“Try me,” Haven snaps, fiercely.

There it is…Haven will play the hero rather than save herself. She’ll punish me instead of staying safe. I watch that stubbornness, and it enrages and fascinates me. How can one person act like they care so much?

“Fine. Whatever. I’ll leave.” My surrender is similar to that of a general with no troops left.

I can’t bear to even think about sitting through my mother’s intervention speech if she has to pick me up from holding.

Anita is the fun police armed with high heels, a know-it-all attitude, and a laptop.

Her lecture will be worse than any hangover.

Still, when Haven turns for the car, I grab her arm one last time.

“You’re a virgin, aren’t you?”

I say it to be mean because cruelty is a muscle I keep well-oiled.

But also, because I need to know if she’s saving herself for someone…mainly me. The thought of another guy touching her—it makes me postal. She remains quiet. I shove her just enough to get her attention and let my next insult hit.

“Of course you are. Pathetic,” I spit. “No wonder you’re a stuck-up, tight-assed bitch.”

Her lips press together in a firm line. Sadness pools in those green eyes and for a second…just for a second…I want to gut myself for making her look like that. But…misery loves company, and I’m a collector.

“Since you aren’t getting on your knees, get out of the way,” I say, because I can’t stop. I need to keep cutting now that I’ve started.

She breathes in, calmly which angers me further when I want her chaotic, angry, and wild, but that’s not Haven.

“How did I get such an asshole for a stepbrother? I don’t know why I bother being nice.”

“You call this being nice?” I bark. “You’re dragging me away from a perfect night and threatening to ruin my buzz. That’s not nice. That’s spiteful, and you should be the one brought up on charges.”

She pokes me in the chest, right between two ribs that still ache from a pain that never leaves.

“What do you think will happen if you keep sabotaging things? You call this grieving?” She looks past me to the club.

People arrive and leave as the music flows in constant motion.

“Your band loves you, but they need someone stable as their frontman. Have you ever considered that you’re replaceable?

They need to keep moving. Recording contracts don’t wait for mourning.

My father is a patient man, but not that patient.

So yeah…I call that being nice. In fact, I call it saving your career. ”

Ouch. Haven’s words cut like a blade, not deep, but efficient and impossible to ignore. I’ve missed sessions. I haven’t been to practice in weeks. The first tour is breathing down our necks, and I’ve been slipping. LG Records isn’t giving out second chances. Dates don’t hold for grief.

Haven stomps around to the driver’s side of the car and gets in, slamming the door. Fuck my life. When I climb in, she stares at me like she’s waiting for the apology I never learned how to give.

“Don’t bother gloating,” I tell her. “You might be right. Maybe I should leave tonight, but don’t think that I’ll ever give you a shot in the band, write our songs or let you tag along. The only thing that wants to hear you sing is a cat in heat,” I add.

It’s another lie. Haven has a sensual and smooth voice that I can listen to all day.

She bites her lip, and I know I’ve hit another nerve.

I look away, laying my head back on the headrest. Everything feels off and unsteady, and maybe that’s the point.

Nothing shocks me anymore. Getting under Haven’s skin is, absurdly, the highlight of my day.

If I can make someone else bleed, I don’t have to look at the hollowness in my chest. Or the pain my mother inflicted by yanking me away from everything I knew so soon after my father’s death to marry another man.

If I can make Haven hurt, then good. The sharp ache of guilt and loss is as sharp today as the moment I got the call that Patrick died. It never let up.

I want to rage, to run, to smash every amp and rebuild it in a new life, a fantasy world where I choose if the statues are made from candy instead of stone.

But…instead, I flick on Haven’s radio and let the night swallow me.

Thump, thump, thump. An ugly heartbeat marching me toward oblivion.