A deadly calm fell over me as I watched Strader give Martin a tight nod. “I’m going out to the car. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
As soon as the door shut after him, I turned to Martin, chin lifted, hands balled into fists at my sides. “I won’t go with him.” I was so proud that my voice didn’t quiver.
He laughed. “Like you have any choice.” There wasn’t an ounce of mercy in his eyes.
What a fool I’d been to believe a man like Martin Skellin had ever cared for me.
He reached for me.
“No,” I managed to rasp though fear had sucked the air from my lungs. I shook my head vigorously and took a step back.
“You strung out bitch.” Martin’s eyes flared. He grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me so hard my teeth clattered together and my thoughts became rattled. “You can and you will.”
“No.” My eyes burned, but I didn’t cry and I didn’t back down.
That’s when he lost it. I didn’t even see the blow coming. The force of the impact knocked me back on my heels. I tasted coppery blood in my mouth. He glared at me. I glared back, never hating anyone more than I did him in that moment. I went after him, pounding my fists ineffectually against his solid chest. He easily knocked my hands away and smacked my face again with his open palm.
I backed away covering my burning cheek with my hand. He’d hit me before, but he’d never looked at me with such malice. The entire left side of my face was a fiery blaze now. Frantically I retreated, looking around the room for something to defend myself with. Then he rocked me with another blow. His fist felt like a brick as it blasted into the left side of my skull. I reeled into a side table, knocking it over. Everything went black for a moment. When I blinked away the haze, I found myself on the floor with his body looming over me.
“Ok,” I mumbled. “I’ll go. I’ll go.”
Those lips I’d once thought handsome spread across his face into a dark as death smile. “Knew you’d see things my way.” He offered me his hand to lift me up. I offered him my left, but the fingers of my right hand closed tightly around the base of the broken lamp beside me.
As he leaned down, I swung it at Martin’s head with all I had in me. Brass and bone came together with a sickening crack. He lurched face forward into the carpet, and he didn’t get back up.
I fled down the hall and out into the night with just the clothes on my back and the engagement ring he’d given me to pawn.
Shaken by the memory, I shoved my trembling hands into my jeans and stuffed those dark thoughts back into the box. I leaned back against a column and forced myself to refocus on Tempest’s performance. The guys were well into their set now. They were polished and confident, and there was no awkward space where I’d once stood.
As the disheartening reality of that sank in, my gaze stalled dispassionately on War. Wet and plastered to his head, his brown hair looked almost black. I watched him throw the tail end of his long lavender scarf behind his sweaty back as he strutted confidently across the width of the stage.
He’d made it so easy to resume our old relationship. I didn’t know why he had wanted me back, but he had, and I was grateful. He seemed to want to pretend that the past two years with the RCA deal and Martin had never happened, and that was just fine by me. We were on the same page in that regard though our reasons were undoubtedly different.
With Bryan, on the other hand, I was afraid there was never going to be a way back to the close friendship we’d had before. We never talked about the night we had spent together, but it was always there, an awkward and unbridgeable gap between us.
My eyes followed him as he prowled dangerously around the stage with his guitar, by far the sexiest guy I’d ever seen. Lids lowered, face an intense mask of concentration, I watched his fingers flying over his Les Paul. His instrument screamed like a complex climax above the rhythm of the current song. My blood heated remembering those nimble fingers and the effortless way they’d played my body with strikingly similar results.
Long after the music ended, my gaze lingered on Bryan and the puzzle he represented. There was still much of the handsome playful boy I remembered, but now some additional things much beyond his age. I wondered at the faint lines around his mouth and the guardedness in his manner that had not been there before.
I guessed the past two years had put some hard mileage on all of us.
5
“Where you been?” Every spike of Dizzy’s bleached hair was gelled into place when I arrived for sound check the next afternoon in Boston.
“Working out in the hotel rec room.” I set my iPhone in the dock and started to tune up my guitar.
“Your mom and the girls go back to Seattle last night?” His barbell piercing rose as he lifted his brow.
I nodded. I’d hated saying goodbye to my family, but even worse than that was the thought of sticking around to see the lovey dovey morning routine with Lace and War. Watching the two of them play house within the tight confines of the bus was pushing the limit of what I could take. She and War had disappeared last night right after the show and though I tried not to, imagining what they were doing in that back bedroom with the door closed made me almost physically ill. It was just as bad as it had ever been. I didn’t know how I was going to get a handle on it.
“You must’ve been at it really early. You were gone before I got up.” Eyes the same whiskey color as his sister’s narrowed suspiciously. “You been working out for two whole hours?”
“Yeah.” I slanted a brow. It hadn’t been near long enough.
“Trying to avoid War and my sister, huh?”
My head snapped up.
“Wish I could,” Dizzy shrugged out of his trademark black leather jacket and lowered his head down over his Ibanez RG, completely oblivious to my telling response. “When I left this morning they’d already started arguing at the top of their lungs. It was just like old times.”
“She tell you anything about what happened with Martin?”
“No.” Dizzy ran his tongue over the silver loop in his lip. “She doesn’t do heart to heart chats with me anymore. Besides, that always used to be your territory.”
“Hmm.” I grunted noncommittally. That came to an abrupt end two years ago. “I’d like to kill the son of a bitch for what he did to her.” I stomped down on my pedal board so violently that it bounced off the black hardwood surface.
“Me too, man. I wish she would’ve taken my advice and stayed away from him in the first place. But the way I hear it, the dude’s days are numbered anyway. Word is he’s gotten himself into a real tight spot. Owes a lot of money to higher ups and doesn’t have the funds to cover it.”
Before I could pimp him for more information, the sound of War’s raised voice reached us.
“What’d I tell you?” Dizzy’s chin lifted as War and Lace came into view. “They’re still going at it.”
“No, Warren Andrew Jinkins. I don’t want to.” Lace looked beautiful with her hair pulled back from her face in a messy bun, loose tendrils curling all around her neck, but her blond brows were drawn together. “I haven’t sung anything in over a year.” Her sexy lips pressed flat into a tight line. “Not in public anyway, and your label sure as hell won’t like it if I get up on stage during your set.”
“Come on, Lacey. Just do a number here at sound check.” War blocked her path, his tone turning coaxing. “I wanna hear that sexy voice of yours over the speakers.”
She shook her head, sidestepped around him, dropped down into an abandoned folding chair, and threw her coat on the floor.
Hands on his hips, War continued to glare daggers in her direction as King and Sager came strolling in side
