Sea Breeze 01 - Breathe

Chapter One
    JAX
    This was it. Finally. The last stop on my tour. I shoved open the door to my private suite, and Kane, my bodyguard, closed it firmly behind me. The screaming on the other side of the door had only made my head hurt. This had been fun once. Now all I could think about was getting away from it. The girls. The relentless schedule. The lack of sleep and the pressure. I wanted to be someone else. Anywhere else.
    The door opened and quickly closed behind me. I sank down onto the black leather sectional sofa and watched my younger brother, Jason, as he grinned at me with two beers in his hands.
    “It’s over,” he announced. Only Jason understood my feelings lately. He’d been with me through this crazy ride. He saw my parents’ need to push me and my need to push back. He was my best friend. My only friend, really. I gave up trying to figure out who liked me for my money and fame a long time ago. It was pointless.
    Jason handed me a beer and sat down on the sofa. “You killed it out there. The place was insane. No one would ever guess you were looking forward to running off to Alabama in the morning to hide away all summer.”
    My agent, Marco, had told my parents about the private island on the Alabama coast. They were so ready to have somewhere other than our house in LA that they’d jumped at the idea.
    Going back to my hometown—Austin, Texas—hadn’t been something they wanted to do. Too many people knew who we were.
    The security Sea Breeze offered had always allowed me the freedom I’d lost when the world had embraced me. For a few weeks every summer we were a family again. I was just another guy, and I could walk out to the water and enjoy it without cameras and fans. No autographs. Just peace. Tomorrow we were headed back there. It was our summer break. But this year I was staying the whole damn summer. I didn’t care what my mother or my agent thought I should do. I was hiding out for three months, and they could all kiss Marco’s ass. What had started as my mother’s insistence that we spend the summers together in Alabama had become mine. I needed time with just them. I rarely saw them the rest of the year. It was the only house we had to call ours. I had my house in LA, and my parents and Jason had theirs.
    “You’re coming down, right?” I asked him.
    Jason nodded. “Yeah. I’ll be there, but not tomorrow. I need a few days. Mom and I had an argument about college. I want to give it a few days before I face her again. She’s driving me crazy.”
    Our mother was a micromanager when it came to our lives. “Good idea. I’ll talk to her. Maybe I can get her to back off.”
    Jason laid his head back on the leather. “Good luck. She’s on a mission to make me miserable.”
    Lately I felt like she was doing the same to me. I no longer lived with her. I lived independently. I was the one who paid her bills. Why she thought she could still tell me what to do was beyond me. But she did. She always thought she knew what was best. I was done with that, and so was Jason. I’d talk to her, all right. She needed to remember who was actually in control here and back off.
    “Take a few days. Enjoy yourself. Let me prep Mom for the fact that I’m not going to allow her to control your life. Then come south,” I told him before taking a long drink of my beer.
    SADIE
    “Mom, are you going to work today?” I rolled my eyes at my very pregnant mother, who lay sprawled out on her bed in her panties and bra. Pregnancy made Jessica an even bigger drama queen than before having unsafe sex with another loser.
    She moaned and covered her head with a pillow. “I feel awful, Sadie. You just go on without me.”
    I’d seen this coming a mile away before school even let out. The last day of school landed yesterday, but instead of being able to go out and be a normal teenager, I was expected to make the money for us. It was almost as if Jessica had planned on me working in her place all along.
    “I can’t just go to your workplace and take your position. Haven’t you explained the situation to them? They won’t be okay with your seventeen-year-old daughter doing your job.”
    She pulled the pillow from her face and tossed me a sulk she’d perfected years ago. “Sadie, I can’t continue cleaning house with my stomach the size of a beach ball. I’m so hot and tired. I need you to help me. You can do it. You always figure stuff out.”
    I walked over to the air conditioner and turned it