Skye’s heart hammered, her chest constricting with fear.
“Is it true you tricked Blaze into marrying you?”
“Is this a publicity stunt for the upcoming album release?”
“Did you marry him for his money?”
“Skye, where’s the fucking key?” Forest shook her, his breathing little more than ragged gasps.
Her head spun from the endless questions.
Forest ripped the keys from her hand and fumbled at the lock. Moments later, the door creaked open, and he thrust her inside, pushing her away from him. She stumbled into the foyer as he slammed the door shut.
“Where’s the fucking light?” His voice was hoarse and desperate.
“What?”
“The light!” he screamed. “Where’s the fucking light?”
She found the light switch and flicked it on.
Forest scanned the narrow hallway. His entire body shook. His complexion was flushed, his pupils dilated. He struggled to take a breath, and then he staggered down the hall, yanking off his shirt and pulling at the catch of his jeans.
“Bean?”
He held a hand out. “Don’t come near me. Don’t you fucking come close.”
He kicked off his shoes, but she saw the damage those few moments of physical contact had done.
Forest disappeared, desperate, responding to a stimulus conditioned into him by the demon of their combined past. A door slammed shut down the guest hallway, and an agonized moan followed.
She took in a shuddering breath.How far back had those few minutes sent her brother on his road to recovery?
There was a reason they didn’t touch. She made a beeline for her liquor supply where she uncorked every bottle of wine and poured it down the drain. Once Forest achieved the physical release he needed, he would come looking for a chemical outlet for his pain.
There were no drugs in her home, and she would be damned if he started drinking again because of her. Not when he was so close to earning his sixty-day sobriety coin. Not when he’d come to helpwith her problems. His body couldn’t avoid the conditioned response, and she knew his mind would struggle against the chains that bound him.
The next few days would test her brother’s sobriety, and if he failed, it would be all her fault.
The cops came by twice to move people off the front steps of Skye’s brownstone. The officers introduced themselves, expressed their sympathy for the disturbance, and gave Skye their assurances that they had the crowd controlled. After offering congratulations on her nuptials, they sheepishly asked for autographs from her husband.
She had saved one bottle of wine. Shielding Forest from the demon of his addiction had come at a hefty price—ten bottles down the drain. She poured a glass of chardonnay and stared at the shuttered windows.
Flashes of light flickered through the wood. Eager reporters would not give up on that one-in-a-million shot.
Already down one doctor due to maternity leave, Bob Manley couldn’t afford to lose her as well. She had to work, but she couldn’t leave her beanpole alone. Not in his fragile state. His compulsions and addictions were primed to explode with the emergence of a conditioned response that crippled him on many levels. It was another horrific reminder of the torture inflicted upon a poor frightened boy and a helpless girl.
In the meantime, Forest needed to be constantly watched.
Ten p.m. already, and one glass down.
She would have arranged for the protective detail herself, but the contact info was locked in Forest’s phone. There was one other person she knew in town who traveled with a team of security experts, people trained in how to deal with the mob outside. The only question was whether Ash would accept her call.
Texting Ash instead of calling showed her weakness, but she didn’t trust herself to speak. Her voice would crack and crumble as herheart fell to pieces. As succinctly as possible, she laid out her problem. There were paparazzi outside her house, and she asked if she could please borrow his bodyguard and one or two of his friends.
She hated asking for such a huge favor, but she needed someone large and strong enough to intimidate Forest—someone to babysit him and keep him from tumbling into a chemically induced fugue. Sam would lose in a fight against her brother, but all he had to do was keep Forest inside and away from any mind-altering substances during her day shift.
Her phone vibrated within seconds of sending the text.
