Raw Need

by Cherrie Lynn

  “Sorry to hear. I hope she’ll be okay.”

  “The doctors think so. But what happened with Zane? Is it his baby? Everyone is going crazy to know.”

  Jesus Christ, people had no shame. But Rowan didn’t have it in her to be completely rude to a total stranger. Only a little rude. “It’s my husband’s baby,” she said flatly. The girl’s eyebrows drew together in her pixieish face. “He died.”

  “Oh . . . oh my God. I’m so sorry. I don’t mean to pry, it’s just . . . how often do you get chances like this? You’re so lucky to be friends with him. I need a friend like that.” She laughed lightly and, thank God, went back to staring out the window at the gray clouds beyond.

  How much of a friend to him was she, though? And how soon would this story storm the Internet?

  The sooner the better, maybe. Everyone would move on to something else and she could forget any of this had ever happened.

  Even if she could never forget last night had happened.

  Savannah answered her phone almost immediately when Rowan called from the airport forty-five minutes later. “Rowan! Thank God. Where are you?”

  “The airport. Come get me.”

  “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  It was raining in New Orleans, just as it had been the day of Regina’s party. There was slow, sluggish, snarled traffic, and the heavy weeping skies above reflected the heaviness in her chest. Rowan stared out at the dismal world as Savannah drove her home, neither of them speaking for a while.

  It wasn’t a hostile silence, though. Savannah even held Rowan’s hand as she drove. She’d hugged her at the airport as if she’d never thought to see her again.

  “Was Zane upset when you left?” she finally asked as they turned onto Rowan’s street. The rain intensified suddenly just then, the windshield wipers beating the gray wall back before it washed back down again.

  “I didn’t tell him,” Rowan said. “He would’ve only talked me into staying. Talked me into fighting. And there’s no use.”

  “Fighting what, Rowan? Us? Why do you feel like you have to fight? We love you.”

  “You love me, maybe, but your mother loves me enough to threaten to take my baby away from me. What was I supposed to do?”

  Savannah was silent. Rowan wondered if she even knew that threat had been made. “She’s waiting at your house.”

  “What?”

  “To make amends, okay? We have to. Please, just try.”

  “Savannah.”

  “I had to tell her you were coming home.”

  “You know, I seem to remember a time when I was the one who couldn’t keep secrets from your mother, even though you always encouraged me to. Now you’re the one who tells her everything. When did we swap places?”

  “Maybe when you began keeping real secrets?”

  Maybe. Rowan recognized Regina’s Escalade parked at the curb in front of her house. She didn’t even wait for Savannah to kill the engine of her car; she bailed out into the downpour, closing the door on Savannah’s protests. By the time she tromped up the steps of her front porch, she was dripping from her clothes and her hair. Regina snatched the door open, a stricken look on her face. She must have been watching out the window.

  “Rowan, you’ll catch pneumonia,” she gasped, pulling her inside.

  Home.

  Everything was as she’d left it. She wasn’t sure why she expected it to be any different. Maybe because she felt so different herself.

  Regina was hugging her. “Thank God you’re back. We were so worried.”

  “Sounded like it.”

  Tommy’s mother pulled her back to arm’s length and cupped her face with both hands as Savannah came in the door, closing her umbrella. Regina’s eyes glistened with tears, dark eyes so like her son’s. “I want us to start all over,” she said, so earnest that the tears broke free and slipped down both cheeks. “We were going crazy while you were gone. I am so sorry for everything I said to make you think that we don’t love you, Rowan. Everything I said to make you think you had to run from us.”

  And now I’ve had to run back to you because of everything you said yesterday. So tired of running. So done. This was home. This was it.

  “Thank you for that,” Rowan said. “It’s going to take me some time, though, Regina. It really is.”

  Regina dropped her hands and straightened, drawing herself up with her usual dignity. Those tears were probably the only emotion Rowan could hope to get out of her. “I would expect no less. But . . . let’s start. Today. All right? We have so much ahead of us. So much to be thankful for.” Her gaze wandered down to Rowan’s belly, and she smiled. “Are you feeling well?”

  She had been, until today. She still felt twinges of the nausea that had plagued her on the plane. “I’m okay.”

  “I’ll make us some coffee,” Savannah said, slipping past the women and into the kitchen. “Decaf,” she added quickly, when her mother gave her a sharp look.

  “I need to go change,” Rowan said. She also needed a hot shower, even if she was reluctant to wash Zane from her skin.

  “You go do that,” Regina said, patting her arm. “We’ll all talk when you come back down.”

  She trudged heavily up the stairs, feeling more pregnant than she ever had before, as if she’d doubled in size from this morning. Her bedroom taunted her with its sameness, with its happy photographs of her and Tommy, with the big empty bed she would sleep in alone tonight.

  She sat down on the mattress with a sigh, listening to the rain patter against the windows, then pulled her phone from her cardigan pocket. Zane hadn’t tried to contact her. She’d hoped he wouldn’t, but that didn’t make it hurt any less.

  He must be so confused and upset. She was confused and upset too.

  Her clothes still smelled like his bus. She discarded them, then inhaled their scent one more time before tossing them in the laundry. Her bags were in Savannah’s car, forgotten in the downpour, but she could get them later.

  Stepping from the shower, she felt somewhat human again. Regina and Savvy were waiting for her at the breakfast nook, sipping from cups as the shadows deepened in the windows beyond. Night was falling; Zane would be going on stage soon.

  “Feel better?” Regina asked with a smile as Rowan sat. Savannah had already poured her a cup, knowing how she liked it.

  “A little,” Rowan said, wondering what she was about to endure at this table. Once she took a sip and set her cup back down, Regina reached over and laid a hand on her wrist.

  “Honey, I want you to know that we realize you’ll move on someday. You’re young and beautiful, and you’ll meet someone. Maybe you feel like you already have, and maybe that would even be fine, but . . . that lifestyle, Rowan. It’s no place for you or our granddaughter.”

  There were arguments to be made, but she didn’t bother. Plenty of the musicians had families they took on the road with them. Besides that, Zane wasn’t bad. He didn’t drink, he didn’t do drugs. But he used to, and Regina didn’t subscribe to the belief that anyone could change. Not really. So Rowan kept her mouth shut, and smiled, and agreed . . . everything Regina wanted her to do. Anything to protect herself and her child.

  Savannah wasn’t fooled, though. She watched Rowan over the rim of her cup, a knowing grimness in her eyes.

  * * *

  He could hear the thundering anticipation, taste the excitement of the crowd in the air. This was the empire he’d built, he and his band, and the faithful were out there right now, waiting on them to destroy the stage. And he gave not one single fuck about any of it.

  “Ready yet, Z?” Jase asked. Zane hadn’t even heard him come in. He was staring at the whiskey bottle in front of him that some asshole had left in the dressing room. Sweet amber oblivion, three feet from him. And milling around anywhere backstage was no shortage of yes-men, drug dealers, and rock doctors who could get him anything and everything he wanted, from a chicken sandwich to an orgy to enough blow to kill a horse.

&n
bsp; “Zane.” Jase’s sharp tone tore his gaze away from the Jack Daniel’s at last. In four long strides, Jase had grabbed the bottle and held it in one beefy fist. No amount of prying would get that fucker loose. Zane knew from experience. “Somebody’s gonna get fucking fired. You haven’t been hitting this, have you?” he demanded.

  “I’m sitting here staring you in the eyeballs, ain’t I?”

  Jase breathed a sigh of relief. He knew the truth in that too. Zane didn’t drink to have a good time. Zane drank not to remember one fucking thing tomorrow, if he woke up at all.

  “Don’t let this jack with your head, man. They’re waiting, so don’t blow it. You’re the rock star, so go be the rock star.”

  He sounded like Mike. Zane couldn’t blame Jase for Rowan running out on him. He couldn’t. One look into her heartbroken green eyes, and Zane was her willing slave too. It was obviously contagious.

  She hadn’t thought him worth even a goddamn note. Not even a text. His phone had been attached to his hand since he woke up to the news, and not one word of explanation had come through.

  That was all he wanted. An explanation. If he could just hear her reasons . . .

  “Zane.” Jase clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s go. The guys are worried.”

  He didn’t give a fuck about the guys. Those people out there, though . . . those people were the reason he was out of the shit and in the spotlight. Those people had paid their hard-earned money to be here, to see the guys play, to hear him sing.

  Jase stepped back when Zane stood, giving him a wide berth as he stalked to the door and snatched it open. Visible relief crossed the expressions of Deke and the rest of the crew out in the hallway. “You good? Ready to rock?” Deke asked, falling in step beside him as Zane headed toward the stage. Crew members followed along; Jase took up his place on Zane’s other side, an arm outstretched to keep the press of people back.

  “I will be,” Zane assured Deke. And he would; he just needed to wreck himself out there. He needed to push himself to his physical limits, leave it all on the stage, give it away to all the people. Leave himself so exhausted there wasn’t room to think about anything else. That was his drug now. That was the only thing that would get rid of the pain for him now: screaming it all out.

  The usual chaos thrummed around him as they waited to go on. He was used to it. Arms crossed, he watched the last-minute panic attacks and raucous laughter, the roadies yelling to be heard over the restless crowd. The tour manager stopped by for a few words. Techs and engineers swept past, shouting into walkie-talkies. Groupies with painted eyes and fake tits on display. A few fans who’d managed to get side stage stared in starstruck awe as Deke brought the guys in for the preshow group hug, and then the lights went out, a deafening roar of thousands of voices greeted the darkness, and it was showtime.

  After all these years, he still got nervous in the few minutes before they went on, usually mellowing out once the show was in full swing. Now . . . he didn’t feel a thing. Not the rapid pounding of his heart. Maybe Rowan had taken it with her. The list of the ten-thousand-plus things that could go wrong wasn’t playing through his head. All he worried about was if she was okay. Jase had assured him she was, at least when he’d left her.

  The spotlight hit him dead in the face as soon as he reached the mic and, not expecting it quite so soon, he almost stepped back. He heard the answering adulation from the crowd, but he couldn’t see a single face, only a sea of lighted cell phone screens. They stretched from twenty feet in front of him into the cavernous reaches above, little blips of light receding into nothing. It was disconcerting, like falling, like being dropped in the middle of a dream where you didn’t know what the fuck was going on, or if a monster was about to tear out of the shadows and eat you.

  It felt that way sometimes, whether he was onstage or off.

  But he opened his mouth, and the words came, echoing through the colossal room and bouncing back at him from the distant walls. His voice sounded strong and steady through his in-ear monitors, his only true indicator of what the audience was hearing on the other side of the line arrays. If he sounded as if his heart were about to spill out his mouth in front of all of them, well, they would love it. That was what he’d always been about.

  His intro ended, the spotlight went out, and then everything kicked off at once into a mad blur of lights and faces and a towering wall of muddy sound. He plunged though the hour-long set with reckless passion, paying no attention each time he caught one of the guys looking at him oddly. It felt good to wear himself down physically, felt even better to scream out some of the darkness in his soul. The crowd loved it, moving in waves like the ocean. Multiple pits opened up in front of the stage on their more brutal tracks, plastic cups and bottles flying. He kept a wary eye on those situations, having stopped midsong before to call out assholes who were ruining it for everyone else. So far, everyone was playing nice and having a good time.

  After all this time, the band was a well-oiled machine, and rarely did any snafus derail their live show. The older songs, the staples of their performances, were as much a part of them as their blood and bones. The newer songs went over well, but it was the older hits that a lot of the people came to see.

  And all too soon it was time to do “Faceless,” one of the tunes they saved for closer to the end of the set for its bring-the-house-down dynamic. One of Rowan’s favorites, she’d told him. Ironically enough, it was about feeling invisible after being abandoned. What many people didn’t realize was that he’d written it about being abandoned by his mother, not a woman he was in a relationship with. Tonight, the lyrics were taking on an entirely new meaning for him.

  During the bridge, when he screamed “Who the fuck do you think you are?” five times in a row, he almost didn’t realize he’d gone to his knees until the pain jarred up his thighs. Gripping the mic until his knuckles cracked, he tried to shred his fucking vocal cords. Just fucking end it, here and now, career and all. She couldn’t deal with what he did, with what he was, when what he was and what he did had pulled her through some of the hardest times in her life. Or so she said. Just another user in a long line of addicts, sucking him the fuck dry, getting her fix and moving on.

  If the crowd was alarmed when he threw the microphone across the stage and fell over on his hands, the volume of their cheers didn’t show it. He stayed like that as long as he damn well pleased, shoulders heaving as he caught his breath, sweat dripping from the ends of his long hair. He watched each drop spatter on the floor. Just sweat. No one touched him. He might have hit anyone who tried. Put that shit on YouTube.

  At last, reason returned, and he pulled himself together, lumbering up to one foot and then the other, pushing his hair back from his face and taking a long look at the fist-pumping audience. Drawing a deep, cleansing breath that finally reset everything back to normal. One of the stagehands ran out to bring him his mic. He stared at it as if he didn’t quite know what to do with it.

  Never had he been much of a talker onstage. The people were here to listen to him sing, not to hear him yak at them for half of the set. It had always pissed him off as a concertgoer, and now that he was putting on the concerts, he kept it in mind. He liked to squeeze in as much bang for their buck as possible. Right now, though, he felt like talking, like raging, but better to channel that into the songs.

  With one more glance at the writhing crowd, he placed his mic back on the stand, then turned and walked off to the side, where he guzzled an entire bottle of water while the band took up his slack with an impromptu jam session.

  “You good?” Jase asked, passing him a towel as he scrutinized him.

  “Yeah.” Zane scrubbed his face dry. Drank more water. Wished it was that fucking bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

  Rowan had her life, and she had obviously decided this wasn’t it and he wasn’t in it.

  He walked back out through the smoke from the fog machines, taking his place under the sweltering lights and the watchful eyes. Som
ehow, he managed to finish the set, but the ghost of her betrayal was in every song he sang.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Rowan opened her eyes and immediately winced at the pain in her head. In the weeks since she’d fled Zane’s bus, she’d felt like absolute hell, but it had only gotten worse. Her last doctor’s appointment had gone well, but she wondered if an early one wasn’t warranted this time. Savannah had suggested she might be anemic, because she looked pale, and exhaustion was a constant companion. Even though she had no basis for comparison, somehow Rowan had a feeling this wasn’t typical pregnancy tiredness . . . this was a bone-deep heaviness in her limbs, in her entire body, even in her mind, to the point that she didn’t want to get out of bed or off the couch, and even when she did, she could hardly function or concentrate.

  At this moment, though, she felt rested, considering. It was only the freaking headache. She rolled from her bed to seek out the meager Tylenol dose her doctor would allow her, trudging into the bathroom to swallow two pills with a drink of water. The room swam a little bit around her as she focused on her reflection in the mirror, but that had been par for the course lately. She thought she might have a bit of a sinus infection.

  She looked like hell too. Paler than usual. Puffy dark smudges under both eyes. Other women boasted of the pregnancy glow—she had a pregnancy low. She’d never looked worse in her entire life; she didn’t care what anyone said. Her ankles were so swollen they throbbed with her pulse. Her wedding ring cut so deeply into her finger that she didn’t think she would be able to get it off right now if she wanted to, but she was afraid to try. Not being able to pry it off would freak her out.

  All in all, pregnancy sucked. Having someone to go through it with her wouldn’t have made it suck any less.

  Her phone rang from where it still lay on the bed: Savannah’s good-morning-how-are-you call. They had occurred daily, along with Regina’s visits, since Rowan had returned to New Orleans. Those visits Rowan suffered through as best she could, but she needed Savannah and looked forward to talking to her each day, now more than ever.