Reckless Hearts (Reckless - The Smoky Mountain Trio Book 3) Read online

  Reckless Hearts

  Sierra Hill

  Contents

  Untitled

  Other Books by Sierra Hill

  The Reckless Serial

  I. Sage

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Reckless Hearts

  Reckless – The Smoky Mountain Trio

  Book 3

  Copyright © 2018 Sierra Hill

  Published by Ten28 Publishing

  2nd Edition

  Cover Design: Porcelain Paper Designs

  Photography: CJC Photography

  Models:

  Gus Caleb Smyrnios

  Lauren Summer

  Christopher John

  Editing by: Two Naughty Book Babes Editing

  All rights reserved.

  Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without prior written permission by the author, except where permitted by law. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected].

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or used factiously, and any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, business establishments, or educational systems is entirely coincidental.

  All products and/or brand names mentioned are registered trademarks of their respective holders/companies/institutions.

  Created with Vellum

  Other Books by Sierra Hill

  The Physical Series

  Physical Touch

  More Than Physical

  Physical Distraction

  Physical Connection

  Standalones and Short Stories

  One More Minute With You

  The Reunion

  Character Flaws

  His Fairytale Princess

  Whipped: A Second Helpings Story

  The Sweetest Thing Series (College Sports)

  Sweetness

  Sweet Girl

  Sweet Summer Love

  Sweet Disaster

  Sweet Little Lies

  Reckless – The Smoky Mountain Trio serial

  Reckless Youth

  Reckless Abandon

  Reckless Hearts

  Reckless – The Smoky Mountain trio boxset

  The Reckless Serial

  A Menage Serial Romance

  Reckless Youth (Part 1 - London)

  Reckless Abandon (Part 2 – Cam)

  Reckless Hearts (Part 3 – Sage)

  Part I

  Sage

  Chapter 1

  Present

  I was eighteen when I wrote my first hit single from the inside of a jail cell.

  It didn’t become a hit until years later after I was released on parole. After I’d served my three-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter for killing my father.

  As you can imagine, careers and jobs are slim pickins’ when you’re a convicted felon, and there’s not much opportunity for a guy like me. Born and raised in a small-town, a high school diploma, and no living family to speak of.

  With no one and nobody to go back to, I moved to Nashville and did what I had always dreamed about doing before my shitty life came to a screeching halt and I was imprisoned. I formed a band.

  The fact that I became a famous alt-country singer after I was paroled is a gigantic what-the-fuck moment and something I’m still scratching my head about. I never dreamt I’d become an award-winning, highly sought-after musician. My dreams were never that big.

  The crazy ups and downs of my roller coaster life could easily fill ten amusement parks. The lowest point being my years in prison.

  Getting out and starting over, without London and Cam, definitely another low.

  But the highs of stardom, of being a revered celebrity and musician, is pretty fucking high.

  As was the unexpected opportunity I recently had to spend a weekend with London and Cam.

  For once in my life, things seemed to finally be turning around for me, giving me hope for something good to last. Something that will endure and make me feel whole. Lord knows I’d give up this crazy, chaotic rock-and-roll lifestyle in a heartbeat if I could spend the rest of my life with Cam and London. To be with them in the manner in which I’ve always wanted. To love them like a family – a forever home within my heart.

  “Yo, Sage. We gotta roll, man. Bus leaves in five minutes and you need to get your ass on it.”

  I heave a sigh and stamp out my cigarette butt on the cement with the heel of my boot. My tour manager, Cliff, steps down off the tour bus and gives me the hurry the fuck up sign with a flick of his wrist. He’s a good man and has been with me since I started on this crazy-ass journey. He keeps me on a short leash when we’re on tour, which is probably a wise thing to do. And possibly something London tapped him to do.

  The exhaust from the retro-fitted bus that has my band’s name in big bold print across the side filters through my nostrils and a cough escapes my throat. I hesitate, glancing sideways in both directions, wishing for a miracle. Hoping to see the two people I love – the two people I’ve given my heart to - walking toward me.

  No such luck.

  They don’t love you like that anymore.

  I check the phone I’ve been clutching in my hand for the last hour to see if I’ve missed any notifications from either Cam or London. Maybe they’re simply stuck in traffic or running late and will be arriving any minute?

  It was a long shot to invite them to come on tour with me. But after the incredible reunion and weekend we spent together last week, I couldn’t bear to say goodbye for the next two months. My lonely and reckless heart needs them by my side.

  Just thinking back on our night together – the sex, the laughter, the memories – and the possibility of having more of that has my dick perking up in an uncomfortable manner. It was a night that my dreams were made of, with the two most important people in my life.

  I stare off, unseeing, at the car that pulls up in front of me. While it’s a long-shot that it’s either Cam or London, my heart hammers loudly in my chest, growing tight with anticipation that they’ll step out together and into my arms.

  But I’m left disappointed when Deg, my drummer, hops out of the back, dragging me from my wistful thoughts. He stumbles out, throwing a wave in the air at his girlfriend, Madeline. Ducking down, I peer into the car, realizing I’m wrong. It’s not Maddie. It’s an entirely different chick.

  I shake my head, watching as he staggers toward me, dripping in leather and not much else, a pair of drumsticks shoved in the waistband. Makes me queasy to consider what else may have been stuffed down there. My body shivers unbidden.

  “Sage, you’re here on time, man. That’s a first.” He gives me a one-armed bro-hug, smelling of booze and weed, his voice hoarse from too much whiskey.

 
Lifting my eyebrows, I pin him with a snarly smile. “I think you have me confused with yourself, dude. And who the hell was that?”

  Deg shrugs with a quick look over his shoulder. “Dana? Danni? Deena? I don’t know man, not a clue. You know how it is. Me and Maddie broke up so I’m a free man now.. You of all people should know how it is since you’re the king of snatch, bro.”

  He’s not wrong there.

  I’ve had a pretty wild past and been notorious for my conquests with groupies, both men and women. While I made it look like I was having fun, it was really only a way to block out my past. To shut down those memories with sex, booze and drugs was the only way I could survive.

  Inside my heart, I only ever wanted Cam and London.

  But the boy I loved hated me and left me without a single goodbye. I hadn’t heard from him in over ten years until recently.

  And the girl. London kept me dangling on a string, with all the pull and leverage to do so. She never let me keep her close and gave me ultimatums that I couldn’t abide by; I couldn’t be who she needed me to be.

  I hated myself for that. If I could’ve been the man she needed, I would’ve pulled out all the stops.

  But we both knew that wasn’t possible.

  I wasn’t enough for her.

  She needed Cam, too.

  Regardless of that tear in the fabric of our relationship and my unforgivable behaviors, London would still come every time I called. Anytime I needed her loving arms and her warm body to make things right again. No matter where I was in the world – and I’ve been everywhere – she’s been just a phone call, a text message, and a Skype chat away.

  But she’d never stay long, claiming her job and life demanded her attention back home. And her answer was always “No” to my proposals.

  We both know I never deserved her love. This was just the universe’s way of righting that fact. There is no doubt that London is my grace and salvation, always quick to save me when I’ve been down and lonely and needing rescue.

  Lord knows she should’ve left me long ago.

  Just like Cam did.

  He left me the moment I was locked away and my freedom was taken away. She should’ve hightailed it out of my pathetic life, too, while I wasted away in that jail cell for three years.

  Yet, she never truly let go.

  Just like a kite on a string, she kept hold, even through the windiest and harshest years of my life. London never strayed far but lived a separate life without me, while I was on the road, living my pathetic excuse of a rock star life on the road.

  I shrug and chuckle at Deg’s comment. “Just make sure to make good life choices and wrap it before you tap it.”

  Deg laughs loudly at my advice and swings his thick, beefy arm around me as we walk side-by-side toward the bus, where our other bandmates and tour personnel await our arrival. I inhale a deep breath before stepping on, the anxiety steeping inside the bowels of my stomach. Scratching and clawing to get out.

  It happens every time I go on tour. Being on this bus affects me in the way only being locked inside four walls can do. The only difference between the bus and prison is that I’m not surrounded by felons when I’m on tour.

  The similarity, however, is that I don’t own my life when I’m confined to this bus – just like I was without my freedom in prison. When on tour, I’m told where and when to go, how to get there, and what I’m supposed to do when I’m there. The next two months will be a test to my strength and willpower.

  And the only thing I have to look forward to is the moment I can have both London and Cam back in my arms.

  Chapter 2

  Past

  The cell door clanged behind me with a loud metallic thud as I land on my ass on the barren and cold cement floor, shivering out of fear and dread.

  Everything is cold and metal in this fucking god-awful place. I’d been led to believe as a child that Hell was fiery and hot, but it’s not. It looks, feels and smells just like this jail cell. It’s a stench of bodies – still living, but dead on the inside - along with my butchered heart. It used to beat with the warmth of love and blood, and now it only serves as a reminder of everything I’ve lost.

  Everything that happened to me in the past six months was akin to living out a nightmare.

  A nightmare that never goes away.

  I’m gripped with sadness over what my life has become. Eighteen years old looking at three years in this god-forsaken place.

  Why did this happen to me? What did I do to the universe to make her hate me so much? To be given a childhood so fraught with abuse and neglect and shame that it’s a touchstone of my future, branding me with a bleak existence. Why was I born into a family where hatred was as prevalent as the booze and pills that littered the home I lived in?

  The night I accidentally killed my dad still feels surreal. As if I’m looking through a pair of 3-D VR goggles and my life is shown in slow-moving, distorted animation. Not real, just a version of reality.

  There was no disputing what I did. I murdered my father.

  I watched him bleed out and take his final breath, all while he stared up at me with unseeing eyes. But his death wasn’t in cold-blood. It wasn’t premeditated or planned, even though I’d wished him dead too many times to count throughout my childhood.

  It was an accident, plain and simple. But in the state of Tennessee, it’s still manslaughter, a Class D or E felony. The question is whether my attorney can get the charges dropped down to a lesser sentence, not that a jury would ever let me off the hook. I only hope I can plead to the lesser crime of criminally negligent homicide, involuntary manslaughter instead of first-degree.

  Either way, whether it’s reckless homicide or criminally negligent homicide, I’d still be facing hard time with a two-to-twelve-year prison sentence.

  While my two best friends would begin their adult lives in college and the military, becoming model citizens, I’d be locked away, chains around my hands and shackles at my feet, as well as my soul.

  I hung my head in my hands, wallowing in self-pity over the circumstances that led up to this pitiful existence. I put myself in this position by being stupid. By making the wrong choice.

  Prom night was supposed to end with me wrapped up in Cam and London’s arms – our bodies melding together in perfect harmony. Instead, I ended up being handcuffed and tossed in jail.

  That night and the decisions I made, will haunt me forever.

  I was supposed to go directly to the hotel after work to meet Cam and London, but I had to run back home to get my clothes and money. I should’ve brought everything with me when I left for work that day, but I was in hurry and my head was in the clouds, thinking about what it would be like that night. Would Cam let me touch him like I’d been dying to do? Would I let him fuck me while London watched? There were so many possibilities, and my imagination was full of all of them.

  None of that happened, though, because the moment I got home and got a whiff of the wretched stench of my father, I knew I wasn’t going.

  I found the old man in my room, wildly ransacking and turning it inside out and upside down in search of my money. The hard-earned, “get me the fuck out of Dodge” savings that I was going to use right after graduation. He was yelling and screaming at me in a way I’d never heard before. He’d gone mad.

  There was no way in hell I’d even give him a wooden-nickel from my savings. I didn’t owe that fucker a goddamn red cent. I wasn’t stupid enough to hide my money anywhere in that house. I’d been very careful over the years, knowing something like this was bound to happen one day, so I’d hid it in old lady Manoff’s backyard. She paid me to mow her lawn once a week since I was thirteen and I kept the money in a box underneath a loose floorboard in the shed where she stored her lawn equipment.

  Needless to say, it didn’t go over well with my dad when I called him stupid.

  “What’d you call me, boy? You’re a worthless piece of shit.” He stumbled back on drunken legs, catching himself wit
h an unsteady hand against the wall, spittle drooling across his chin.

  Merle Hendricks was once again wasted. An addict who’d lost everything when his wife, my mom, died. The way he saw things, it was all my fault. Her body wouldn’t have given out like it did had she never gotten pregnant with me. I was the constant reminder every time he looked at me of how shitty his life had become.

  I scoffed, sneering at my dad. “Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, then, I guess.”

  Stepping back to keep my distance, I crossed my arms defensively, eying his movements carefully, puffing out my solid chest appear more intimidating, like someone he shouldn’t fuck with. Merle was known to fly off the handle without cause and backhand me on more than one occasion.

  It was then that I saw his half-lidded eyes track across the floor to the corner of the room where I had a baseball bat and my guitar. My beloved guitar.

  The look in his eyes told me exactly what he was thinking.

  “No,” I shouted, lurching across the bed and wailing on him, just as he picked up my guitar. “Don’t you fuckin’ touch that.”

  My guitar wasn’t just an instrument. It held sentimental value. It was the only thing I owned that was mine and had nothing to do with my dad. I got it for my fifteenth birthday, bought and paid for with the birthday money that London’s mom gave me. It meant everything to me and I loved making music with it, hearing the chords chime and feeling the strings vibrate under my fingertips. It was an escape from reality when I wrote and played my music on that guitar.