Read Online Finding Justice by Rachel Brimble - Free Book Online Page A

down flat on his back on the
blanket beside her. He stared at the salmon-pink and lilac sky. “I suppose this
is the perfect time to tell you all about it.”
    The night was quiet and he heard the subtle changes in her
breathing, the soft hitch and exhalation. After a rustle and swish of material
she lay down, too, the heat of her upper arm lingering at the point between his
biceps and elbow.
    “I suppose it is.”
    Jay closed his eyes. “It’s probably easier if you start with a
question and have me answer it. Knowing where to start when you messed up for
more than two years is hard.”
    She exhaled a shaky breath. “Okay, but first I want to
apologize for my reaction when you told me about the drugs. I didn’t know what
to say, think or feel when you threw it out there like that. I wasn’t... I’m not
judging you, okay?”
    Jay turned his head, his cheek brushing the fleece. Her eyes
darted over his face, lingered at his lips and slowly raised upward. Her eyes
were the darkest green imaginable, almost black in the fading light and Jay
suddenly wanted to drown in them.
    “You don’t have to apologize.”
    She turned away and looked back to the sky. “So, let’s start
with a question. How does the man I once knew, Jay Simon Garrett, confident,
masculine, hungry for the taste of whatever he wanted at any given moment, end
up hooked on a class-A drug?”
    He followed her gaze toward the sky. Typical Cat. Straight for
the jugular. He’d expected nothing less and it made it so much easier to speak.
“Earlier you asked about my singing. Remember?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “I failed.”
    The telltale shuffle of clothes again and Jay knew she watched
him. He didn’t look at her, didn’t want to see her eyes. He needed to get
everything out in the open in the shortest time possible.
    “I left town after a year of getting no further than gigging in
the local pubs in and around Templeton. Dad told me it was time to give it up,
they’d supported me long enough. I look back now and can’t believe he didn’t say
it sooner. God, if any kid of mine was still living at home without a job and
thinking he was the next big thing at twenty-four, I’d like to think I’d kick
him out on his ass. I was a jerk back then and didn’t realize the opportunities
my family could give me.”
    “You weren’t a jerk. You had a dream that used to eat you up.
Your singing was everything to you. Money or no money, when you feel like that
about something, it should be your focus.”
    “Yeah, well, like I said, nothing was happening, so Dad said it
was time I grew up and did something worthwhile. To him, that something was
following in his footsteps. At the time it was like asking me to stand in front
of a firing squad.”
    “So you left.”
    “So I left. Eventually I hooked up with a band. We had the
enthusiasm and talent but never did more than support bigger bands, but still
small-time. We all wanted something bigger, acknowledgment we were good, but not
a single producer gave us the time of day.” He blew out a breath, as the memory
and feeling of his youthful arrogance reeled up inside him like an ugly stain,
seeping into his blood and making him want to sink farther into the grass.
    “So then what happened?” Cat’s warm, soft hand stole into his,
and Jay’s breath shuddered out as he closed his fingers around hers.
    “Someone in the band convinced me the only way to keep the
momentum going, to keep the belief we’d make it in the industry, was to snort
half a gram of coke up my nose every time I felt myself waning.” He finally
turned to look at her. “For the following two years I thought it was
working.”
    She raised her eyebrows and met his eyes. Incredulous disbelief
shone in the darkness of her eyes and her mouth dropped ever so slightly open as
though she wanted to say something but had no idea what. Jay stared back,
disbelief he could handle, but disgust and disappointment like he’d seen from
his family, and Sarah,