Down to My Soul (Soul Series Book 2)(86)

A memory of San’s face at the hospital flashes through my mind, that feeling I got that there was something he knew. Something I should know, but didn’t.

“Kai, baby, what is it?” I nudge her face toward me, dropping a kiss on her lips. “You know you can tell me anything, right?”

“Yes, I know that now.”

Now? I go still and then slide my hand up her slim back, feeling the tension in the muscles there.

“Rhyson, there’s something I need to tell you. I should have told you before, but couldn’t.” She runs a hand through her hair, her expression agitated. “I just couldn’t, but I should have.”

“Pep, you’re freaking me out here.” I interlock our fingers. “What’s going on?”

She draws a breath so deep, I’m not sure it will ever end before she looks at me, her eyes uncertain. How can she still be uncertain of me? After everything, still?

“Someone’s been threatening me, Rhys.”

The word “threaten” pummels me. Someone threatened her? Everything in me shouts for answers immediately, but I force myself to remain calm. To fake being reasonable.

“Who threatened you, Pep?” I ask quietly, my fingers tightening just a bit around hers. “Threaten how?”

She knows me too well to believe the calm fa?ade. She searches my eyes until she locates the rage I’m carefully concealing.

“Please don’t be angry with me,” she whispers.

“With you?” I lean back, sliding my hands to her hips, securing her in my lap. It’s bad enough I have to fake calm without having to solve riddles. “Pep, tell me everything now before I lose my shit.”

“Someone sent me a . . . a tape.” She drops her eyes and worries the corner of her mouth with her teeth. “A sex tape.”

My mind races to all the implications of someone seeing us together. Why would they go to her with it when I’m the one with all the money?

“They came to you with our sex tape? But why—”

“Not you,” she cuts in, eyes still averted. “You’re not on the tape.”

“But you just said . . .” My words die right alongside a chunk of my sanity. “Who? Who is on that damn tape, Pep?”

“It’s me.” She finally looks at me, tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. “It’s me and Drex. From that night. I swear I had no idea he was recording us.”

Her admission topples any semblance of calm and rationality I clung to. It all falls down. Rage rises. Finally, a legitimate reason to have Gep find a secret way to kill that piece of shit.

“So Drex is the one threatening you?”

Years of hatred and resentment wrap around the words, choking them like weeds in my throat. That viper has found ways to make life difficult for me since the day we met in high school. Him f*cking Petra, that was one thing. Him sabotaging my first album release, that was another. And he’s found dozens of ways through the years to piss me off, but this? Him threatening Kai with some bullshit tape from that one f*cking night is too much.

“I don’t know if it’s him actually making the threats. I assume he has something to do with it obviously.” Kai covers her eyes. “We’ve been looking for him, but he’s disappeared.”

“We?” Pieces of information begin clicking into slots, forming a clearer picture. “When did he threaten you? Yesterday when I left?”

She couldn’t have let even a day go by without telling me this. Right?

“Pep?” She shifts on my lap, head lowered again. “When?”

“It was at the beginning of the tour.” She directs the words down, unable to meet my eyes.

“Three months ago? He threatened you three months ago, and you’re just telling me? What the hell?”

“We weren’t together at first, and I . . . I wasn’t sure what to do.”

“You tell me. That’s what you f*cking do. Three months? And what about when we were together again? For the last six weeks you knew this and didn’t even mention it?”

“I thought . . . I thought I could handle it.”

“And what’s he demanding? What are the terms? Money?”

“No, not money.” She gives me a cautious glance. “Whoever it is only demanded that I not be with you.”

Whatever I thought rage was, it was a pale imitation of the fury that pounds in my temples when she says that.

“Is that why you didn’t want to go public?” I demand. “I mean the real reason, not the lie you fed me about not wanting to detract attention from your tour.”

“I did what I thought was best, Rhyson, for both of us. To protect you.”

“Bullshit. You did it to protect yourself. At least be honest with yourself since being honest with me obviously isn’t important to you. And that sounds eerily like my rationale when I took matters into my own hands with Total Package.”

“I know. I made a mistake, too.”

“You said we hit reset. We promised we wouldn’t lie to each other, and that’s all you’ve done for the last six weeks. I went to counseling with my parents for you.”

“That was for you, Rhyson.” She shakes her head, eyes barely holding mine. “You know it was the right thing.”