Wherever You Are (Bad Reputation Duet Book 2) Read online

  Contents

  Title

  A Note from the Authors

  1. PRESENT DAY - January

  2. PRESENT DAY - January

  The Calloway Sisters & Their Men – Fan Page

  3. PRESENT DAY - January

  4. PRESENT DAY – January

  5. BACK THEN – October

  6. BACK THEN – October

  7. BACK THEN – November

  8. BACK THEN – November

  9. PRESENT DAY – August

  10. PRESENT DAY – August

  11. PRESENT DAY – August

  12. BACK THEN – November

  13. BACK THEN – October

  14. PRESENT DAY – December

  15. PRESENT DAY – December

  16. PRESENT DAY – February

  17. BACK THEN – December

  18. BACK THEN – December

  19. BACK THEN – December

  The Calloway Sisters & Their Men – Fan Page

  20. PRESENT DAY – February

  21. PRESENT DAY – March

  22. BACK THEN – January

  23. BACK THEN – April

  24. BACK THEN – April

  25. BACK THEN – May

  26. BACK THEN – May

  27. BACK THEN – May

  28. BACK THEN – May

  29. PRESENT DAY – March

  30. PRESENT DAY – March

  The Calloway Sisters & Their Men – Fan Page

  31. PRESENT DAY – March

  32. BACK THEN – August

  33. BACK THEN – August

  34. BACK THEN – September

  35. BACK THEN – September

  36. BACK THEN – February

  37. BACK THEN – October

  38. BACK THEN – October

  39. BACK THEN – February

  40. PRESENT DAY – June

  41. PRESENT DAY – June

  42. BACK THEN – August

  Epilogue

  Video Game Reviews

  Thank you!

  THE ABBEY LOFT

  Also by Krista & Becca

  About the Authors

  Special Thanks

  Wherever You Are Copyright © 2020 by K.B. Ritchie

  First Edition - Digital

  All rights reserved.

  This book may not be reproduced or transmitted in any capacity without written permission by the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any names, places, characters, resemblance to events or persons, living or dead, are coincidental and originate from the authors’ imagination and are used fictitiously.

  Cover image © iStock

  Book cover design by Twin Cove Designs

  www.kbritchie.com

  A Note from the Authors

  Wherever You Are is Book 2 in the Bad Reputation Duet and should be read after Book 1, Whatever It Takes.

  Wherever You Are contains mature language and graphic sexual content and is recommended for readers 18+

  CONTENT WARNING

  This book contains graphic scenes of physical abuse from older brothers to a younger brother and verbal abuse that may be upsetting to some readers.

  “Broken souls are mended every day

  by mended souls that were once broken.”

  Connor Cobalt

  1 PRESENT DAY - January

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  GARRISON ABBEY

  Age 21

  Heading into the first day of the new year, I try to be positive. Don’t fuck it up, Abbey.

  It’s only been 48-hours since everything went down in London. But it’s honestly felt like a millennium. Officially, I think I spent less than two hours in the country before flying back to Philly. It’s pathetic on multiple levels, and embarrassed doesn’t even cut it.

  The only upside: it didn’t end up on the internet. The students at Wakefield haven’t really recognized Willow or just simply don’t care. It’s another big reason she needs to stay out there for school.

  “I can come visit next week,” Willow says, her soft voice echoing through my car speakers. I swivel the steering wheel and turn down a crowded street, traffic almost bumper-to-bumper.

  Willow never got mad at me for punching her friend Salvatore. She wasn’t even disappointed in me or sad. It makes me feel worse because she has every right to hate me.

  She said that she understood I’m going through something. Her understanding is like air, helping me breathe. But I’m not sure I deserve my girlfriend’s kind heart and empathy. I’m the bad boyfriend fucking with her perfect friends and her perfect London life.

  I can’t let her go.

  I can’t lose Willow, even if I’m the thing tarnishing the perfect world she’s building.

  She never even pushed me to reveal more of what happened in Philly. I’ve never pushed her past her limits either.

  We’ve always been careful with each other, and that’s something I appreciate. Because I don’t want to lie, and I think if she asked point-blank—did you see your brothers?—I would’ve come up with some shitty excuse. Anything but admit that I was stupid enough to go home during the holidays, knowing they were there.

  What she did ask: Are you ready to talk about it?

  What I said: Not yet.

  The moment she finds out I saw my brothers again, she’s going to send in the cavalry to check up on me. Daisy. Ryke. Maybe even Lo. I don’t need them to bombard me, especially when no one but Willow even knows that my brothers have hit me before.

  I want to keep it that way.

  “Garrison, did you hear me?” Willow asks over the phone.

  I stop at a red light, hands tight on the steering wheel. “You don’t need to visit. I’m fine, Willow.” I take another breath, about to tell her something that might put her on edge. But this, I do want to be honest about. “I’m actually headed to my house. I have to apologize to my mom for bolting and pick up a hard drive on my old computer.” It’s got some stuff on it that I made back in prep school. It might be useful for the video game I’m creating.

  “Wait—you’re going home?” Willow’s voice spikes with alarm.

  “Yeah, but just for a second,” I say quickly. “Davis, Hunter, and Mitchell already all left yesterday. They didn’t want to spend New Year’s Eve with my parents.” I pull up to the gate at the neighborhood entrance. “So I’m not going to run into them. It’s alright.”

  A security guard recognizes me and immediately presses a button to let me in. I wait as the gates slide open.

  “Why don’t you let Daisy pick it up for you?” Willow suggests.

  Sweat builds, I lower the blasting heat and unzip my hooded jacket. “Because Daisy will ask questions. And like I said, my brothers aren’t home.” It’s safe.

  The line is quiet.

  A lump lodges in my throat, but I want to say more… I miss you.

  I’m sorry I fucked up.

  I love you.

  Driving forward, all I say is, “You still there?”

  “Yeah.” She sounds concerned, but with a big breath, she layers on resolve. “Can you call me when you leave?”

  I feel like I’ve already been calling Willow too much. We talk all night. Which is her entire morning.

  Currently it’s 9 a.m. for me, and I know she’s not in class now. But Winter Break is almost over, and her business courses will be starting back up soon. This break is when she should be hanging with her college friends.

  “I’ll text you,” I say.

  “Right when you leave.”

  “Right when I leave,
” I agree.

  We say I love yous and goodbyes as I park in the empty but plowed driveway of my parent’s mansion. No other cars. It confirms what I already know: my brothers are gone.

  I’ll be quick.

  Leaving my Mustang running, exhaust gurgling and visible in the cold morning, I take lengthy, fast steps up the front porch. The January chill barely touches me as I fumble for a house key. How my parents let me keep one—I don’t know. They love me, I guess. Still after everything I put them through.

  I unlock and enter. “Mom!” I call out in the posh foyer.

  No one answers. Veering into the kitchen, I skid to a stop and locate my mom through the window. Towards the east side of the pool, she wears a pink pea coat and Burberry scarf, and while she’s bent down, she shears thorns off rose bushes that surround a locked greenhouse.

  I watch her brush snow off red petals. She’s pretty meticulous about gardening. Don’t get me wrong, we have gardeners, but no one except my mom is allowed to touch the flowers around the greenhouse and the plants inside.

  It’s her “calming” thing or whatever.

  Maybe she needs calming after seeing me.

  Great.

  And this conversation is going to be happening outside. In the frigid ass cold. I’m not boiling hot anymore, and so I pull up my hood while I exit through the backdoor. My shoes slide on the icy patio, and I extend my arms for balance.

  “Mom!” I call out again and catch myself from a face-plant.

  Fuck, I hate the outdoors.

  She lifts her head, brunette hair glossy and twisted in an intricate updo with diamond pins, and even though she looks like a rich housewife who’d have her fourth glass of pinot grigio by noon, I’ve never seen her drink more than a couple seltzers, and she’s not too hands off or too overbearing. When my brothers and I played lacrosse in high school, she actually watched us and didn’t just socialize with her PTA friends. She’d film the end for our dad who’d miss the action because of work.

  So I’m not surprised that when she sees me now a genuine smile overtakes her face. “Garrison.” She rises to her feet, brushing gloved hands on tweed pants. “What a surprise. Come here, sweetie.”

  I near the garden. “I just wanted to—” Words die in my throat as I see shadows through the frosted greenhouse windows. People are in there.

  What if my brothers are home?

  No.

  No.

  Fuck no…

  “Garrison, what’s wrong?” She touches my shoulder but I’m like the ice on the ground. Frozen. Only difference is that I break easier.

  I need to go.

  I need to go.

  But I can’t fucking move.

  The greenhouse door swings open, and my pulse stops dead as Davis, Hunter, and Mitchell pool out together.

  My oldest brother sets a glare on me. “Nice of you to show up when all the work is done,” Davis says.

  I feel my face crunch in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

  “The greenhouse,” Mitchell explains. “You didn’t hear mom talk about how she needed help rearranging the plants and lights? You were at that dinner the other night.”

  I don’t remember. Heat gathers again. Sweat caking my body and stifling me, but I can’t unfreeze enough to unzip my jacket.

  Our mom looks between them. “Boys, that conversation happened after your brother already left.”

  “Like he always does,” Hunter adds, digging the knife in my back.

  I drag my gaze across the snow.

  Our mom lets out a sigh and says, “Be nice.”

  “He doesn’t make it easy,” Hunter snaps.

  Likewise.

  I swallow the retort and clear my throat to ask, “How did you all even get here? I didn’t see your cars?”

  “Uber,” Davis says. “We were all still a little hungover from last night.”

  Right.

  “We actually still need some help with the heaters and lights,” Mitchell says to me. “You want to pitch in?” He nods towards the greenhouse and his eyes soften on me.

  I think that Mitchell really believes he’s giving me a lifeline to be in good graces with our parents and our brothers.

  It’s sad.

  Because what I really need is for him to stick up for me. To keep our two older brothers from beating on me. But even if Mitchell tried now, he’d be twenty-one years too late.

  “I left my car running,” I say. “I wasn’t staying long.”

  My mom squeezes my shoulder. “I’ll shut it off for you.” She holds out a palm so I can pass her the keys. “Go spend some time with your brothers.”

  I want to say no.

  Deep in my gut, I don’t want to be here, but it feels impossible to leave in this moment.

  I nod tensely, and my brothers disappear back into the greenhouse while I search my pockets for car keys. My mom waits for me, patient.

  I’m hot and I end up pulling off my jacket. Doing a piss-poor job, half my T-shirt rides up my waist in the process. As I clutch the keys and wad up my jacket, I look over at my mom.

  Her eyes are unblinking and zeroed in on my bare abdomen. At the fresh welts that mar my cold skin. Ones from Hunter after he tackled me outside, the holiday dinner from hell. It wasn’t even the first bad one I’ve had.

  We’re both motionless, except for our gazes that meet. Truths exposed and raw, and it’s not like she hasn’t known or seen before.

  This just feels different. Maybe because I’m older. Maybe because she has the ability to protect me right here, right now, and I’m twenty-one and suffering under the belief that she won’t.

  She never has before.

  My keys are cold in my hand.

  She reaches out to stroke my cheek, and I stare down at the snow. Her soft touch feels as painful as the thorns she cut.

  I glance at the greenhouse, then to my mom.

  “Just give them a chance,” she says in a pleading whisper.

  I want to shake my head, but I can’t. “They’re not going to change.”

  She lets out this tiny breath and rubs my arm, and in her pitying gaze, I know that she’s not waiting for them to change. She’s always been waiting for me to change—to grow thicker skin. To be less sensitive.

  More of a man, right?

  I could make her a PowerPoint with all the evidence of their fucked-up deeds and she’ll still claim I left the majority of their brotherly love off the slides.

  I stick my arms back into my jacket sleeves, and once I shake off the snow from my hood, our eyes lock for another beat. Protect me, Mom.

  Please.

  I drop the car keys in her palm. Giving her my escape.

  She has a choice to make, and she doesn’t even hesitate. I watch her leave for the driveway. To shut off my running Mustang.

  As soon as I walk into that greenhouse, I know for certain that I’m doomed.

  It hurts to breathe. Pain splinters up my side with each inhale.

  How do I reach my apartment? I have no clue—the whole drive is a blur. Like a dusty Sega game, the TV screen crackling with static. But I remember the greenhouse.

  I remember pushing Davis so hard that he fell into a stack of ceramic pots. They shattered. Dirt spilled. The door was finally clear.

  And I left to the sound of my dad yelling at me. For destroying my mom’s precious basil plants. They could’ve been parsley or spinach for all I know.

  I didn’t get a good look.

  I didn’t care, and I guess that’s my fault, right?

  Stupid, clumsy me.

  Once I’m inside my Philly apartment, I hold onto my ribs and search my kitchen cupboards. Banging each one open. Trying to find some pain pills. When I was a teenager, one of my friends in the neighborhood dealt pills and gave me oxy. Her therapist would write her all kinds of prescriptions.

  All I have now is ibuprofen.

  With one hand, I place the bottle on the counter and twist the cap off, having perfected the one-handed
twist on “child-proof” caps years ago. It pops. I purposefully knock the bottle and the pills spill on the granite countertop. I scoop a handful, not even counting and toss them back into my mouth.

  As soon as they go down, I cough.

  Sharp pain erupts in my ribs. They’re broken.

  I know they’re broken.

  Sinking onto my desk chair, I try to forget what happened. Maybe I can see the events from Hunter’s fucked-up vantage. He just…he threw a bag of potting soil to me. It was heavy. I didn’t see it coming. The bag slammed into my gut and knocked the wind out of my lungs.

  I doubled over. Coughing. And the bag—it landed on a gardening hoe and tore open. Soil littered the floor.

  Davis slapped me on the back of the head.

  I tried to put distance between us, but I walked closer to Hunter. He shoved another bag at my back. As if I had hands connected to my spine to grab the damn thing.

  He knew what he was doing.

  The brunt force plowed me into a wooden shelf, and the corner jammed into my ribcage. I can still hear the crack in my ears. I can still feel my feet slipping beneath me and my legs buckling before I dropped to the ground.

  “Come on, get up,” Davis said. “Don’t be such a pussy.”

  I blink back the images, and my fingers tremble as I type on my cell. I’m keeping my promise to Willow.