Free Forever, Jack by Natasha Boyd Page A

to the door. There’s something so raw and primal and … painful about it.
    “What is it called?” I ask before I leave. I don’t even know where I’m going. I wanted to go and see Keri Ann and face up to all my shit, but now I’m not so sure.
    Mira walks around the other side of it and looks down at the card. “Just want to make sure I get the words in the right order. Oh! Oh, how funny.” She looks up, and then the quizzical smile on her face flattens out, and she looks nonplussed as she glances back down.
    Oh shit. What?
    “It’s called Ever Broken Sea. ”
    Jesus H. Christ.

 
     
     
    Outside the gallery containing the bold evidence of my badly handled relationship with Keri Ann, I fold my body back into the compact rental car and drum my fingers on the steering wheel. What the hell was I thinking coming here? I’m the last person Keri Ann wants to see, but I start the car anyway, and before long, I am almost at Butler Cove.
    I haven’t even told Devon I’m finally coming. He’s at his beach house taking some time off before hitting the road to get investments for the Dread Pirate Roberts project. Peak Entertainment, the people who fashioned the leash I’m attached to, are going to be a part of it. Of course, that is as long as I keep playing by their rules.
    My phone buzzes again. Expecting it to be Duane from Peak, I grab it, thinking I may as well get it over with. It’s not Duane. It’s Sheila, my publicist. Well, she’s on my callback list, too.
    “Yeah?”
    There’s a long silence on the other end of the phone.
    “Sheila?”
    “Yeah, I’m here. Sorry, I’m scraping my jaw off the industrial carpet with the heel of my Leboutin .” Her voice carries the husk of late nights and too many cigarettes. “You answered the fucking phone. Are you kidding me? You don’t call me back all week , and you answer “yeah?” I was getting ready to leave you a speech dumping your ass. I have it written out, typed up, beta’d and everything. I’ve been rehearsing. You’ve got some kind of luck, boy. One more trip to voicemail and I was done. ”
    The great thing about Sheila is she can talk the hind leg off a donkey, so I usually only have to nod, smile, or on the phone, grunt in the affirmative. It’s a good relationship. I do my part.
    She goes on. “Imagine? No agent and no publicist. What a world, how would you cope? Now, seriously, the shit is hitting the fan. How did I never know what a fuck-face Audrey is? Shit, that bitch is eee-ville-town. How did you manage to tap that so long? To think I even wanted to schtupp her once. Oi vey! So have you seen the picture?”
    “What picture?”
    “The one of you and that waitress chick all Romeo and Juliet-style on a balcony.”
    My blood freezes in my veins. “What? What the hell are you talking about?”
    “Well, if you’d answered your fucking phone or listened to any of my seventeen thousand and two messages, you would know Audrey gave you until today to get in a room with her and Peak to, as she said, “save her reputation,” or she’d take yours down. When she found you before, she had a P.I. track you down at Devon’s. The P.I. hung out having a nice beach holiday and taking lots of gooey pictures. How the hell she got him to not sell the pictures himself is beyond me. That broad is one capable c—”
    “All right, already.” My hand is trembling with barely controlled shock and rage. I feel like I … “Hang on.” I’ve managed to drive almost to Devon’s so I pull into a small parking area near a beach access path. I get the door open and gulp a breath of cool Carolina air.
    On a balcony?
    Son of a bitch.
    I know exactly when that was, the morning after we … the day Audrey showed up. Keri Ann had been standing at the open French doors of the bedroom, looking out to the ocean. I remember coming out of the bathroom and seeing her there, re-clothed in the sexy little dress I’d pulled off her body the night before. The morning