NO TREBLE ALLOWED, 1st Edition Copyright 2019 by Kristine Allen, Demented Sons Publishing.
All Rights Reserved.
Published in the United States of America. First published in April, 2019.
Cover Design: Clarise Tan, CT Cover Creations, www.ctcovercreations.com
Photographer: Eric McKinney, Cover’d by 6:12 www.612photog.com
Cover Model: Chance
Editing: Olivia Ventura and Tina Moran, Hot Tree Editing, www.hottreeediting.com
Formatting: Champagne Book Design, www.champagnebookdesign.com
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content. For information, contact the author at [email protected]. Thank you for supporting this author and her rights.
Warning: This book contains offensive language, violence, substance abuse, and sexual situations. Mature audiences only, 18+ years of age.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Epilogue
Other books by Kristine Allen
Acknowledgements
About the Author
To Sybil. Without you, I wouldn’t be where I am today.
Fifteen Years Old
“Fuck. Logan…. Buddy, wake up.” My head was swimming and I had a hard time opening my eyes. I ached everywhere. Sinking into the peaceful blackness was so much better than what was out there.
Slaps to my face roused me again. Trying to swat the person away, I was frustrated to learn my arms didn’t work.
The voice wouldn’t leave me alone. “Logan! Get up!”
Another voice mumbled in the background.
“Shut up. Shut the fuck up. I don’t even know what to say to you.” The voice was so angry. Shaking.
The other voice came closer, and it made me cringe.
“Son, it’s not what you think. He just ended up having too much to drink.” Shrinking in my head from that voice, I welcomed the blackness. It was safe.
“Don’t you ‘son’ me, you sick fuck. He shouldn’t have been drinking! He’s fifteen goddamn years old. I’m going to kill you for this. Do you hear me? When you least expect it, I’m going to fucking kill you.” Jostling followed as I was dressed like a rag doll before I was thrown up in the air to land on my stomach.
I wanted to puke.
With each bouncing, staggering step bile rose in my throat.
Finally the movement stopped. Trying to figure out where I was, I fought to pry my heavy eyelids open. I was so tired though.
“Logan? Buddy. Wake up. Please.” Eyelids cracking open, I saw lights flashing by. I was in a car. Lucas’s car.
It was dark out. Weird, because the last thing I remembered was being at the park with my friends playing football. But it was daylight then.
Telling Lucas I was okay proved to be impossible. Not only wouldn’t my arms work, but my mouth wouldn’t form the words. I hated seeing Lucas worried. I needed to tell him I was okay.
Fight, fight, fight. Wake up.
Except as consciousness found me, flashes of the past several hours blinded me. Whimpering, I knew I was going to be sick. “Puh overrr.”
“What? Logan, what did you say?”
“Sick….”
And like that, the tires screeched and the car swerved to the side. Fumbling and fighting to find the door handle, I was barely able to move my hands.
An arm stretched across me, caging me in, and I began to panic.
The door flew open and I nearly tumbled out, vomit spewing from my mouth like a never-ending fountain. Tears mixed with the sweat pouring down my face as the heaving continued.
“I’m sorry,” I gasped when the gagging became nothing more than dry heaves.
“Don’t be. It’s okay, buddy. Here.” Raising my eyes and looking over my shoulder, I realized my brother held my shirt in a tight grip so I wouldn’t completely fall out of the car.
A bottle of water was in his hand. With trembling hands, I took it and rinsed my mouth. Spitting the foul-tasting shit out of my mouth, I drank more and fell back in the seat.
Chancing a quick glance in his direction, I saw his white knuckles gripping the steering wheel. Jaw clenched, he stared straight ahead. Lucas was my idol, and the thought of him being angry at me made my stomach churn again.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“No. You don’t need to be sorry, Logan. You didn’t do anything wrong. But I don’t know what to do. When you didn’t come home for dinner and none of your friends knew where you were—” He paused before he said softly, “I need to take you to the hospital.”
Alarm spread like wildfire in my blood. “No!”
“Logan.” His voice cracked with emotion. “We have to make sure you’re okay. He….”
Tears filled my eyes, then spilled over and down my cheeks. When our equally tortured gazes met, the childish sob burst from me. “Lucas, please, no. I don’t want anyone to know. God, if Mom and Dad… my friends… Levi…. No. No way.” Crying like a fucking baby, I shook uncontrollably.
“He can’t get away with this. What if you’re not the only one? He teaches music to kids, Logan. Jesus fucking Christ.” He roughly ran his hands through his hair. Then with a frustrated growl, he beat on the tattered steering wheel of the old Challenger he’d been rebuilding.
Looking back, I know he didn’t mean to scare me, but the violence in his body had me cowering in the corner of the seat. The tears had dwindled, but my body was occasionally wracked with gasps and shudders.
Realization dawned and he stared at me, stricken. One hand reached imploringly for me.
I cringed away from his touch.
Then I broke again and allowed my big brother to shelter me
in his arms.
God knows how long it took for me to dry up, but once I did, he pulled out his phone. After a few seconds, he spoke. “Hey, Levi. I got him.” His eyes darted my way. “He’s safe now. I’m bringing him home. Mom and Dad in bed? Good. Okay, see you at the house.”
Quietly, he looked over his shoulder, pulled out onto the dark road, and we went home. The house was dark by the time we got there. When we reached the top of the stairs, Levi peeked his head out of his room.
“Fuck, where the hell were you? Lucas and I looked all over for you.” He looked toward Lucas. “If Mom finds out how late he was out, he’s a goner.”
Lucas glanced to me, then back to my other older brother, his twin. “It’s all good, he’s home safe, and they don’t need to know.”
Levi shook his head and returned to his room, closing the door.
Lucas stood there with pain in his eyes. Silently, I locked myself in the bathroom and showered until the water ran cold, then curled in a ball on the floor of the tub, the tears I thought were gone mingling with the icy flow.
When my hands were wrinkled and my skin numb, I shut off the faucet and dried off, then dug through the drawers for something to help the pounding in my head and the ache in my body that I didn’t want to acknowledge. I found an empty bottle of Tylenol. Pushing things around more, I saw a prescription bottle with the label nearly worn off.
It was from when Lucas broke his arm last summer at the lake. Dumping a couple in my hand, I chased them down with water straight from the faucet.
Slowly and jumping at every sound, I went into my room and pulled on a pair of pajama pants and a T-shirt. The tree branches outside my window morphed into giant sinister fingers as the wind blew.
Covering my head with the covers didn’t help.
After tossing and turning a few minutes, I pulled the comforter from my bed and tiptoed to Lucas’s room. Not wanting to wake anyone, I didn’t knock.
His bed was empty and still made. Wrapping my blanket around me, I sat in his desk chair and pulled my knees to my chest.
Time ceased to exist as I stared into space, trying not to think about what I’d remembered. The pills I’d taken kicked in, making me feel relaxed and sleepy. The shit from earlier didn’t seem so important anymore as I floated there in the chair.
I must’ve dozed off, because I started and almost fell out of the chair when the click of the door woke me. Lucas stepped in and silently closed the door.
“Where were you?” I mumbled. He obviously wasn’t expecting me to be there because he nearly jumped out of his skin.
“Jesus. You scared the shit out of me,” he whispered.
As he undressed, I saw dark splatters on his white Avenged Sevenfold shirt. Balling it up, he shoved it and his jeans in a plastic grocery bag and tied it shut before shoving it under his bed.
“Lucas.” My eyes were wide. “What did you do?”
The coldness in his eyes was something I’d never seen before. “Nothing. I didn’t do anything.”
That night we made a silent pact. No one would ever know what had happened.
Two days later, he had packed his stuff, and to the shock of our entire family, he left for Florida.
“Everything Zen”—Bush
Now—November
One might think becoming famous and well-off would solve all a person’s problems.
Hell, well-off was being conservative.
We’d literally become an overnight success. The whole fucking rock and roll fairy tale. But two years later, regardless of the level of our success or the size of our bank accounts, inside I was still a fucked-up mess.
Money doesn’t fix what’s in your head.
I know, I know, shocker. Right? But the only place my head was sane was on stage.
The money wasn’t what held me together. It was the music. When the deep tones resonated from my bass and I felt it controlling the rhythm of my heart, that was when I came alive and nothing else mattered.
Not the loss of my oldest brother, not the fucked-up mess in my head, not the guilt I carried, not the loneliness.
The drugs and alcohol helped numb shit, but the music… that was my salvation. If I could have played 24/7, I’d be golden.
I pried my eyes open, slowly waking. Rolling my ass out of the luxury bed, I got caught up in the sheets, fumbled, and fell flat on my face.
“Fuck!” Trying to orient myself to the spinning room, I lay with my cheek smashed to the cold tile. My gaze was staring straight under the bed to the bright light streaming in the window on the other side. A pair of red heels, one upright and one drunkenly on its side, sat on the floor with a small crumpled piece of lace, mocking me.
“Fuck” was right. Scrunching my eyes closed, I belatedly realized I must not be alone in the room. Too much alcohol and whatever else I’d ingested last night obviously led to stupid decisions.
Once again. Surprise, surprise.
Goddammit, Levi is going to kill me.
This wasn’t me. Or at least it didn’t used to be before that fateful summer. Lately, it was me more often than not. It only added to my self-hatred.
Once the room seemed to settle to a slow rock, I rolled over to my back. The ceiling held nothing fascinating, but you wouldn’t have known that by how long I stared at it.
“Fucking A,” I whispered. “I need some goddamn coffee.”
Quietly, I stood, proud that I’d only wobbled once. Whatever I’d done the night before, it was still having an effect on me that morning.
Hesitantly, I turned toward the figure in the bed. She was sprawled facedown with the sheet barely over her ass. Shoulder-length hair fanned out around her and partially obscured her face.
Not enough that I couldn’t see who it was, unfortunately.
“Oh my God. I’m a dead man.” I’d just committed one of the biggest fuckups of my life. One that could cost me everything.
Stumbling backwards, I grabbed the wall. My head couldn’t quit shaking, much like my mind couldn’t quit exploding.
Without a single thought or care to how clean anything was, I quickly began to dress in the trail of clothes that went from the bedroom out into the living area. Knowing she wouldn’t steal anything in my room, I shoved my wallet in my pocket and pulled on a beanie.
It was Boston in late November. A jacket would’ve been nice, but I wasn’t taking time to find one. Last night’s hoodie would have to do.
After letting myself out of the room, I rushed to the elevator and hit the down button about twenty times. Because you know that makes the elevator arrive faster.
After riding down and picking up six different people from four different floors on the way, I waited until everyone had disembarked and I stepped out into the bustling lobby of the high-end hotel.
At the front desk, the young girl in her navy-blue blazer looked up at me expectantly. “Can I help you with something, sir?”
“Umm, where can I get a good cup of coffee?”
“Did your room not have coffee stocked, sir? I can have some run up to you. Is there anything else you needed?”
Shaking my head had my brains sloshing around again. “Uh, no. I wanted to go for a walk and have a cup of coffee with… uh, a friend I’m supposed to be meeting.”
“Oh! Okay, well, there’s one at the end of the block to the left and one about halfway down the next block on the right.”
“Which is quieter?” Too many stimuli were bound to make my head explode. Plus, I wanted somewhere not as busy so hopefully I wouldn’t get recognized.
“The one to the right. Definitely. It’s a smaller, independently owned shop. The one on the left is a chain and always packed. During the week, only locals go to the smaller one because they know. Tourists go for what’s familiar.” Her smile lit up her face, and I nodded my thanks and left.
Before exiting the building, I pulled on the sunglasses I’d found in the pocket of my hoodie on the way down. Thank God for small favors.
Carefully
making my way down the sidewalk, I dodged the late-morning people crowding the sidewalk. I wondered if they had fucking jobs. Christ, there was a lot of people.
After crossing the street, I saw the swinging sign above a mint-and-brown striped awning. “Cup O’ Java, it is.”
The tinkling bell over the door rang incessantly in my head for several seconds. “Jesus.” Rubbing my temple helped ease it a minuscule amount. Stepping up to the counter, I ordered the biggest size of the special of the day, Toasted Coconut Mocha.
Casting a quick glance around the room, I was relieved to see there was only one other customer. She was so into what she’d been working on that she didn’t even make eye contact with me. Hell, I wasn’t sure she was aware I’d entered the shop.
I waited until I had the steaming cup of “wake the fuck up” in my hand, before I went and found a seat along the back wall. Making note of the rear exit door, I set my cup on the small table, and sat sideways in the chair, leaning against the wall, so I could watch the room. In case I was spotted and needed to make a quick getaway.
Slowly tipping the cup up, I relished the hot liquid as it skimmed my tongue and sluiced down my throat. “Fuck, that’s good.”
I was talking to no one in particular, so I was shocked to hear a laughing voice say, “Yeah, it’s good, but not as good as an Analog Coffee.” The strangely familiar lilt to her voice had the thoughts of what awaited me back in my room fading to the background. When I glanced over, the first thing I noticed was a mass of dark blonde hair piled haphazardly on top of a beautiful heart-shaped face.
The messy construction of hair chose that moment to lose a section, which fell over her eyes.
For a moment, I forgot about Aiden’s sister lying in my bed.
“Drive By”—Train
Shhhhhhit. Why couldn’t I keep my mouth shut?
After hearing the bell ring over the door, I’d looked up from my computer. It was a habitual gesture, one I did anytime I heard it—unless I was writing. Since I was studying, when I’d seen him walk through the door, I noticed.
No Treble Allowed: A Straight Wicked Novel Page 1