“What about your baby, Ava?” Jera seethes. “Or didn’t that count as a mistake?”
Ava’s eyeliner-armored eyes jump to me for only a second before they return to Jera. I freeze. What baby are they talking about? Ava has an IUD. But maybe before we met...
“Jax never intentionally hurt anyone. But you made the choice yourself, on your own. You killed on purpose.”
Ava’s whole body flinches, the back of her head smacking the wall with a surprisingly loud crack.
“Don’t you judge him,” Jera says, low and mean. “Don’t you ever put your nose in the air and look at him like your slate is so clean. The world may not know the truth about you, but I do. I fucking do.”
“That’s enough,” Kate says brusquely. “We’ve got a show to put on here, people.”
Jera looks like she might actually spit on Ava as she backs up a step. “You’re not good enough for him. You hear me? You’re not good enough.”
Ava straightens and tries for a sneer, but her whole face crumples. I struggle without remembering what’s holding me back, why I can’t move. I don’t know what Jera is talking about, I just know I have to get to Ava. But then she turns and strides away, stilettos sharp like knives against the floor.
On the third step, her ankle wobbles and her shoulders fall, but then she’s back again, straight and untouched as she disappears down the hall.
Danny releases me, but now I don’t know where to go. There’s no fight to break up, and I can’t go after her. She doesn’t want me, and I’d be no comfort to her.
Jera turns, digging both hands back into her hair and pulling. “God, that bitch!” she explodes.
“Backstage?” Kate’s professional conciliatory voice is gone along with Ava. “Really, Jera? You had to throw it in her face backstage with half the fucking crew watching, fifteen minutes before curtain? She has seven damn albums on you, and all of them are shiny, shiny platinum. If you think she can’t get you all thrown off the label in a big way, you’re crazy.”
“Oh, pull your iPad out of your ass, Kate,” Jera sneers. “You’re the one who went digging, not me. You’re just as pissed at her as I am, only you didn’t have the guts to say it to her face.”
“Okay.” I crowd between them. “First of all, knock it off, both of you. Second of all, what the hell are you talking about?”
Kate looks at me, her lips pressed together, and drops her voice. “It wasn’t so we could use it against her, Jax, I swear. But she was treating you so badly and she’s been a star for a lot of years. Nobody stays in this world for long without doing something they regret—you’re far from alone on that front. I did look into her past, but I was going to tell you at the right time, just to help you get past all this damn guilt.”
The stage manager comes up. “Look, you guys are on in ten, and I’ve got no fucking lights. Ava’s nowhere to be found, and our lighting designer suddenly says his contract is in renegotiation. What do you want me to do?”
“I’m so sorry,” Kate says to me. “We’ll talk about this later, I promise.” She pulls her phone out and takes off, already texting as the stage manager scrambles to catch up.
Jera is looking down the hallway where Ava went, bouncing slightly on her toes.
“Jera, don’t,” I warn, catching her arm
She turns back to me, vibrating with fury. “But she had no right! No right at all!” she sputters, and then her eyes meet mine. Her face twists and falls as she begins to cry.
Whoa, okay. I pull her into my arms and she’s crying louder than I’ve ever heard it, her whole body convulsing against me. We have to be on stage, like, now.
“Jera...” I don’t know where to begin. I can’t believe she lit into Ava like that, and she has no right poking her nose into my life. I hate that Ava’s hurting right now, over her sister, and Raz, the addict neither of us really knew and neither of us can forget. I don’t know how long ago it was that Ava was pregnant, but I’ve never seen her crack like that and never wanted to.
And yet in the midst of everything, I have to love Jera: my tiny, crazy drummer who damn near throttled someone for looking at me sideways. She’s always been pro-choice and normally, she’d never blurt out a secret as personal as Ava’s, but there are no boundaries on what Jera would do to protect her friends.
“You didn’t need to do that,” I finally manage, trying to figure out how to hold her as her next sob rips out, her head quaking bruisingly against my collarbone. “I’m fine. I’m really okay.”
Jera pulls away, her whole face a mess of tears and stage makeup. “That bitch,” she says, her voice clogged with tears. “You’re good, Jax. You’re the sweetest and the best guy and she’s just crazy and stupid and judgy and I hate her!”
“Uh, okay,” I say. “Just calm down. I’m okay, all right?”
Danny reaches past me and takes her, pulling her against his chest and squeezing brutally tight, his shoulders folding in around her and his chin coming down to rest on top of her head. One more sob rips out of her, shaking her all the way to her combat boots, and then she quiets, sagging into his chest.
I blow out a breath. It’s like the guy’s body vibrates at a lower pitch than the rest of us, and I don’t understand it, but I’m thankful.
I need a damn vacation, about forty hours of sleep, and a fuckload of answers.
Kate comes tearing back down the hall, her steps so directed I’m surprised they don’t leave a rip in the tile in her wake. Every ounce of softness is gone from her expression.
“You need to get ready,” she raps out. “I’ve got a lighting engineer from Queens busting his ass to get through Penn Station right now. He’ll be ready to roll on only venue equipment in five minutes; I want you on in eight. You’d better pray to all the gods and demons I can dig Ava up in time for her set or I’m not even going to wait for her to kick you off the tour, I’ll do it myself.”
“Hey,” I tell her. “Ease up, would you?” I nod to Jera, still folded against Danny’s chest.
Kate’s eyes flare. “Ease up? There are one point two million dollars of receipts out there you will be refunding out of your checking account if Ava doesn’t go onstage tonight. We are not in the high school cafeteria anymore, kiddies, do you understand?” She curses. “Now can you play, or do I need to start leveraging your damn assets?”
Jera steps back and turns, pushing tears away from her eyes with the heels of her hands. “Oh, I can play,” she says, her bravado somewhat dampened by her clogged nose. “I can beat the shit out of my drums or I can beat the shit out of that holier than thou diva, but if you need anything else from me tonight, it’s too bad because I’m spent.”
“You know what?” Kate snaps. “I’m pissed, too. But this is business right now. I expect this crap from other bands, but not from you. You better start acting like professional musicians and not whiny little entitled rock and roll babies, or I’m out of here and you can clean up your own messes, got it?”
Danny laughs. “That’s right, O’Neil. Screw ‘em, we’ll just get a new band.”
She tosses him a furious glance, but at his smile, her muscles unwind almost imperceptibly. She rolls her eyes and subsides.
“Screw Ava,” Jera says. “I’m glad I did it, and I’d do it again at twice the decibels. I’m not the one acting like a child around here.”
Kate’s spine whips straight. “You still don’t get it, do you?” she seethes, her voice dangerously quiet. “That just happened in public. One word. Tabloi—”
“Kate.” Danny’s voice cracks across hers and she drops off immediately.
“We can deal with all that after the show,” she says instead. “Six minutes.” And then she’s off again.
“Shit, I need to wash my face and find about a case of Kleenex.” Jera sniffles.
“No kidding.” Danny peals off his shirt. “And I gotta get a change, because you snotted all over this one.”
“A couple of tears. Don’t be such a baby.”
�
��Oh no way.” He holds it out for her inspection, a big line of mucus smeared across the front. “That’s not a couple of sparkling teardrops, sweetheart. That’s a full on schnozz imprint.”
I push my fingers back through my hair. “You guys, I...” They shouldn’t be on my side. They should be on hers. Ava’s a better singer than I am, a bigger star. She’s kinder than I am, and she’s the one who should have her friends at her side right now. But I’d bet she’s alone, probably hiding in some closet where not even Kate will find her. I can’t go after her because she doesn’t want me, and five thousand strangers do.
But however wrong Jera is about Ava, she’s right about one thing: I wouldn’t have done what Raz did. She loaded those syringes to kill us both, and I never would have pushed the plunger if I had known.
If she’d actually given me the choice today, that day, any day of my life...I wouldn’t have helped her die. That means I’m not a murderer.
The knowledge turns in me like the edges of a key: jagged, but perfectly fitted. And it changes everything.
“I love you guys,” I say quietly. “And I am proud to be part of this band.”
In the past, Jera might have defended my poor behavior for the sake of the band. Tonight, she defended me. With dirt dug up by Kate, the consummate professional who doesn’t care about anybody’s dirty laundry. This whole time, I’ve been thinking it was just our career keeping my group of friends tight around me, and it would disappear along with Danny. But maybe it was actually just...me.
Danny snorts. “Oh come on, we don’t have time for a circle jerk right now. I need a shirt.”
But then Jera starts to sniffle again and his casual air drops away. He turns and takes her face in his hands, dropping his forehead to hers so he’s looking her right in the eye. “Jimi,” he murmurs. “Listen to me.” He pushes the tears off her cheeks with his thumbs. “You told that bitch what was up. And now we’re going to go out there and rip the shit out of the stage so the crowd won’t even remember she’s supposed to come on.” A laugh bursts out of her and she nods. Danny hooks one hand behind her neck and pulls her in, cradling her face against his shoulder for a second. “Show her what rock and roll would sound like if it had some balls, hmm?”
“Fuck yes!” She gives us both a dangerous, brilliant grin, and bounces off in the direction of the dressing room.
Danny meets my eyes, and now that the girls are out of the picture, I see he fully expects me to hit him.
“Don’t you ever hold me back again,” I warn. “And she’s not a bitch.”
“I know,” he says, and waves to a crew member to get a new shirt. “Doesn’t mean she’s not acting like one.”
My shoulders tense and my hands curl into fists, but Danny’s next words derail every thought in my mind.
“Do you think she knows she’s pregnant?”
My brows leap upwards. “Kate?”
He rolls his eyes. “No. Jera.”
I relax, managing a stressed little chuckle. “You better hope your wife didn’t hear you say that. Jera’s upset, not pregnant.”
“Yeah, okay,” he scoffs. “When was the last time she had a period?”
“What do I look like, her gyno?” I recoil. “Dude.”
“One week a month she arm wrestles me for every scrap of chocolate in the tour bus. It’s only happened once, and we’ve been out for almost three months now.”
I shift my weight. “Maybe she isn’t in the mood for chocolate anymore. Or she got one of those implant thingies. The ones that make you not go on the rag anymore. Shit, Danny, I don’t know! How is this my problem?”
He gives me a level look and that’s when my stomach drops. “Fuck. Me.”
She’s not going to be playing shows nine months pregnant. Or with a newborn. How far along can she be? We’ve got six months of the tour left, at least assuming Ava doesn’t get us fired. In which case every single one of us will be filling out applications for Starbucks by the time we’ve managed to hitchhike home.
“Better not give her that face when she tells you the news, man,” he says, but he’s facing away from the dressing room. Which means he doesn’t see Jera standing behind him, eyes red and face pasty white, her lips parted in shock as she listens to every word we say.
Chapter 23: Good News/Bad News
“What did you say?” Jera whispers.
Danny turns around. “Ah, fuck.”
“This isn’t a bad thing.” I try to backpedal. “You guys wanted a baby, I thought.”
“Yeah, but Jacob said we should wait until I had a few albums and things were stable with the band...” Jera’s eyes go huge, and she rakes both hands back through her hair. “Oh no, I just screwed our career, didn’t I?”
“If anybody screwed it up, it was me.” I start toward her. “It’s going to be okay, Jera. Even if the band goes south, I’ll...I don’t know, I’ll do something. You’ll have enough money, okay? You guys are going to be okay.”
“Jakey-boy’s a fuckin’ engineer,” Danny drawls, not looking up from whatever he’s typing on his phone. “Pretty sure she’s not gonna have to drop her drawers for grocery money just yet.”
“Wait, wait wait.” She waves her hands. “We don’t even know I’m pregnant. I have to take a test, or go to a doctor, or call Jacob, or...oh God, he doesn’t even know.”
“Uh, Jera, we are sort of supposed to be on stage in like fifteen seconds.” I cringe. “You’ll still be pregnant after the show, right? Can we just deal with all of this after we play our set?”
Jera blinks at me. “Are you freaking serious?”
“I already texted Kate,” Danny says. “She’ll get you a pregnancy test and we can go on at ten past, no biggie.” He strolls over and bends to kiss Jera’s forehead. “Congratulations, Mommy.”
“That sounds so gross when you say it for some reason. And don’t think I’m gonna forget that chocolate comment.” She socks him in the stomach.
I wince and jump forward to stop her. Jera freezes and frowns at me, and Danny gives me a murderous look.
“What?” she asks, her eyes bouncing between us.
“Nothing,” Danny says.
“Nothing,” I say, at exactly the same time. Jera’s eyes narrow farther.
Kate steams up the hall, waving a small box. “You guys better be saying your prayers of thanks to Acid Fingernails because I’ve still got a test left over from their last tour and it doesn’t expire for another six weeks.” She stops in front of Jera and bites her lip. “Are we okay? I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you when all of this is my fault and I didn’t realize that you—And are you feeling okay or can I get you—”
“Just come with me.” Jera grabs her hand and starts towing her down the hall. “Please, I know it’s weird, but Jacob’s like twenty million states away and I don’t want to do this alone.”
“Is it too early to celebrate?” Danny stuffs his hands into his pockets. “I could smoke the fuck out of a cigar right now.”
TWENTY-THREE PAST THE hour.
“I know, I love you, too! I’m really going to hang up this time, and it’s going to be totally fine—no, I know. No, seriously don’t fly out.” Jera laughs, the sound drifting in through the open door of the dressing room. “Okay, maybe do then. Yeah, we’ll be at...shit I have no idea. Check the tour schedule, okay? I love you. Oh God, I’m going to have to stop swearing!” More laughter. “Yeah, but I’m good about not swearing in front of Maya. Shut up. You are not funny. Or cute. Maybe a little cute. Shit, I mean crap, I’ve really got to go, this is the latest show in the history of late shows and I’m supposed to be responsible now and I love you and I’m going bye!”
Kate sits on the couch next to me, her unused iPad screen starting to dim on her lap. She should probably be backstage, but I’m not going to say a thing about it even though I’m practically vibrating with the urge to snatch her constantly ringing phone and see if any of the messages are from Ava, or someone who has found Ava.
&
nbsp; Danny sits on the couch across from us, hands clasped behind his head as he gazes up at the tiles on the ceiling, his beanie crooked and one ankle crossed over his jiggling knee. I look away.
Baby.
The word is on constant repeat in my head since Jera blurted out Ava’s secret. Not that she said the whole thing, but there was baby and death and...
Ava was pregnant once, and something about listening to Jera celebrate her own news is making that thought all too three-dimensional to me. When was it? Who was the father? Does she miss him? I saw the look in her eye. I know how much she misses the baby she never met.
Jera bounces back into the room. “So...anybody want to guess? Kate, you didn’t tell them, did you?”
I pull on a smile, but it feels weak. “Two blue lines?”
“Pink!” she squeaks. “But that doesn’t mean girl, that means...” She glances around at our faces. “You guys, this is good news, seriously. Jacob is like, freaking out. He made seventeen puns in twelve seconds and I promise that’s even more than usual. He also lasted one millisecond before he told Maya, and he texted his sister while he was still on the phone with me.”
Kate gets up, but she forgets to set aside her iPad before she does it. It falls to the floor, the screen cracking loudly.
“Oh shit—crap!” Jera says.
“Forget about the iPad. It doesn’t matter.” Kate reaches out to hug her, tears leaking out of her eyes.
Jera flashes me a look over her shoulder, trying to crane her head to take another peek at her friend’s face. “Hey, since when do you happy cry? Or um, cry at all? Are you—” She coughs as Kate’s arms tighten and then she pats her on the back, shifting her belly back a little like she wants to protect her unborn baby from the pressure.
Kate pulls out of the hug, smiling the most horrific, strained smile I’ve ever seen in my life, tears dripping off every fold of it. “It’s...” Her voice breaks, and Danny gets up, but as soon as he touches her, she starts to crumble.
Danny freezes, his eyes flashing helplessly to mine.
Insatiable (Sex, Love, and Rock & Roll Book 3) Page 25