Men in Control: Special pack: The Smith Brothers Series

by Brenda Ford

  “Fuck,” I groan, my head tilting backwards, my neck lolling to one side with desire. “Freya, you are too much.”

  She has no idea how much she is unraveling me, how much of me is tearing apart because of her in the best way possible. This is the woman who will change me, who will bring me back to what I once was, who will stop me from screwing up my life, I just know it. She is the one in so many ways, which is the one thought crashing through my brain as I erupt like a volcano, exploding with pleasure deep inside of her, setting everything free.

  Clinging to Freya, having her swallow up my cries of bliss as they leave me, her holding me like I am precious to her… it’s everything to me. I know for sure that I need to be a better man now, that I can’t slip up again, because I can’t push Freya away. If I lose her, then I will lose myself. Possibly for good.

  Chapter 19 - Freya

  Tonight I wanted to kiss Alex before he went out on stage after me. It nearly killed me that I couldn’t. But too many eyes upon us and the silent understanding that we need to keep things between us for the time being, stopped me from doing so. It prevented me from grabbing him and holding him in my arms just for a second… and now I kinda wish that hadn’t happened. I wish I had kissed him because at least then I would have known what was to come. I don’t know what I could have done about it, but at least I wouldn’t be so helpless now. Just standing on the side of the stage watching him crumble and fall apart. Watching Blood Red Masters Fail.

  “Fucking hell,” Hank growls beside me, almost as if he isn’t even aware that I’m here anymore. “For fuck sake. What the hell is Alex doing? Why is he getting drunk yet again? I thought he was okay again.”

  As I watch Alex stagger forwards, struggling to even remain on his feet while he plays, I realize that I thought the same. I have tried to convince myself otherwise, I have tried to be smart and tell myself that I can be there for this man but never fall for him because of his demons and addiction… yet I have been falling the whole time.

  Two days ago, when he woke up in bed with me after going on a bender, I thought that I could see something new in him. I assumed that the messes such as this one was going to be behind him, that the booze would slowly stop being an issue because he was happy now. I naively assumed that we were going to be happy together…

  But the sad thing is I need to accept that I’m not enough. I’m not ever going to be enough and I never was. Just because we have slept together a couple of times and we have this wonderful bond; doesn’t mean I need to get lost in the idea of a happy ever after. Of course it isn’t going to be a happy ever after, I know that. So, why have I allowed myself to slip into the place that I told myself not to?

  I fold my arms across my chest and bite back tears, hating myself for not helping Alex. For not making him happy, even during the time that we have been together. I selfishly had to add sex into the mix, and now… well, now as I watch him losing everything that he wants, all that he’s worked so hard for, die, I want to weep.

  “We have the fucking after party tonight.” Hank bangs his palm to his forehead. “With industry people around. Why can’t Alex give me a Goddamn break already? He wants me to lose my shit.”

  I know about the party, I have been excited about the party and all the people that I will get to meet, but now all I can think about is the disaster it will become. With Alex drunk and acting the fool, being as rude as he likes because of the booze in his system, it’s going to be a nightmare. Hank can’t tell him not to be there either, can he? Not unless he wants to explain. As the front man, people will want to see him, to talk to him, to discuss everything to do with the band and their future. Even if Gary is more in charge, Alex is the face.

  What can I do? I feel like I want to help somehow. I want to make sure that I can at least be useful to Alex, even if I haven’t done much to support him this far. There must be something that won’t back fire…

  “Can we try and sober him up?” I ask quietly, reminding Hank that I’m here. “Will that work?”

  “I don’t see what fucking choice we have. Although I don’t know how can you sober someone up? He won’t have time for sleep, and I know that isn’t the best plan anyway because when Alex passes out you can’t get him back up again, so coffee? Would coffee work?” I start to shrug because I have absolutely no idea, but then I nod quickly. It’s obvious to me that Hank just needs an answer right now. A solution in the making. “Good, coffee it is. You’re close with Alex, aren’t you? Like you guys are friends now, right?” I nod, unsure how I would even begin to categorize what we are. “Do you think you could get some coffee in him as soon as the show is over? Then while you are doing that, I can get things set up and stall people a bit. Give you some time.”

  “Sure,” I rasp, secretly praying that anything I do will be effective. “I can do that.”

  “Probably not what you thought you would end up doing when you came on tour with us, huh?” Hank continues wryly. “I will have to make sure that Nathan knows what a super star you have been.”

  Nathan… that’s someone who hasn’t been in touch for a while. Probably because he hasn’t done anything to get me out of the contract with Blood Red Masters… not that I’m keen to go now. I wonder what he will think if Hank does call him about this. He hasn’t got a damn clue what this tour has been like. I almost can’t wait to get back and fill him in on all of the details… or at least most of the details anyway. I don’t know if I will be sharing the graphic information of me and Alex hooking up. He’ll be shocked… either that or he will want me to write a biography about my experiences. Who the hell knows? With Nathan, it could be anything.

  Hank nods at me before he leaves, putting me effectively in-charge of baby-sitting Alex and ensuring that he’s in a suitable state before working the party circuit. That shouldn’t be too difficult… should it?

  “Alex?” I scream as I race through the room, giving up the pretense of looking for him quietly now. The panic has well and truly set in and I know for a fact that it won’t subside until I lay eyes on him. “Alex?”

  “What’s going on?” Rachel grabs me and pulls me to one side, hissing at me to quiet me down.

  “It’s Alex!” I yell, ignoring her silent pleas to be quiet. “Hank asked me to… to look after him. To make sure that he has some coffee before coming to this party to sober him up a bit.”

  “Oh no,” Rachel groans. “Hank knows that once Alex starts, there isn’t anything you can do.”

  “I didn’t grab him. I didn’t get him when he got off the stage. He went the other way, probably to avoid me, and by the time I got around there he had vanished. He’s gone, Rachel. How does someone just go like that? It doesn’t happen, does it? So, I assume he came to this party. He knows that it’s happening, doesn’t he? So, it makes sense. Plus, if he is already drunk, he will be searching for another drink…”

  “Freya.” Rachel rests her hands on both of my shoulders. “You need to calm down. Can you breathe with me?” I feel stupid, but I do as she commands. “Right, good. Now I want to remind you that Alex isn’t your responsibility. It doesn’t even matter that Hank asked you to do it. If it was so important to him, he could have helped.” I start to argue that he wanted to get here to set up, but then I realize that she’s right. If Hank cared enough, he would have waited behind to sort Alex out. “This is something that Alex does all the time. He vanishes when he’s been drinking, and we can’t find him. He has found the craziest ways to hide so we don’t even bother anymore. There’s no point in looking when he could be anywhere in the city, when he doesn’t want to be found, and when he won’t come back with us anyway. And he really wouldn’t want to be found right now because he knows how mad we will all be. You need to just leave him. Come and enjoy the party. Remember, this is about you as well. You and your career. There are people here that you should meet.”

  I dart my eyes around the room and note all the people that I could do with talking to. Even if it’s just to introduce m
yself and say hi so they know my name and how to get hold of me. It’s what Nathan wants me to do. It’s what I always have done. Music is my life. My career is the most important thing. It always has done, and it always will be. I need to remember that music is all I will have when all of this is over.

  “People I need to meet,” I gasp. “Yes, you’re right. I do need to meet people.”

  “Freya, is there something going on here? Something that means you might be a bit more freaked out about Alex than you should be? Because I am here for you, I hope you know that. I can help you?”

  “No, I…” I try to pull away, to run before answering this question, either in to the room to speak to people, or out to run away, but Rachel grabs me and pulls me back to her. She has started this now and I can see that she isn’t about to let it go. “I don’t… I just need to…” Her warning look silences me. I can see that she isn’t about to let me make any excuses to stop this. I need to play it off somehow. “We have gotten close, that’s all. We have a good friendship and it makes me worry about him.” I shrug helplessly. “I know that you are all confident he will come back and all will be okay, and that’s because you have been in his life longer than me, but I can’t help it. I’m worried about him. Really worried about him out there on his own that drunk.”

  “That isn’t too drunk for Alex, believe me,” she shoots back wryly. “But I think there is more.”

  “What do you… mean?” I can’t meet her eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “If you admit to me right now that you have feelings for Alex and that something might even have happened between you, then I will blow off this party off with you and help you find him. Because if it isn’t that, then you should focus on your career and remain here where you are most needed.”

  Love or career… a choice that I never thought I’d struggle with. I didn’t think that it would ever become anything of an issue for me. But here I am, really struggling with it, unsure of what to do.

  “Come on, Freya, I’m only trying to help you here. You know me.”

  “Fine.” I toss my hands in the air in frustration, but also giving up. “There are feelings. Things might have happened, but it hasn’t helped him. It hasn’t made him happy enough to give up his drinking so perhaps I should just stay here and focus on my career. Is there any point in me looking for him to make him sadder?”

  “Sweetie.” Surprisingly, Rachel beams at me. “You can’t do anything to stop Alex’s addiction, however happy you make him. It isn’t up to you to heal him. That’s something he needs to do himself. But if you have feelings for him, then he has something else to fight for, to heal for, so let’s go and find him.”

  Chapter 20 - Alex

  I blink a few times, barely able to open my eyes through the agony shooting through my skull. It’s like I have a building site up in there, complete with drills hammering against my brain. The smell of sick radiates around me making my stomach churn even more violently. If I could move, I would probably throw up again, so maybe it’s a good thing that I can’t. I’m stuck here in this unfamiliar bed, wishing that I could go home.

  “Where the fuck is this?” I moan as I spot the crack in the ceiling above me. This isn’t the standard that I have become used to with Hank as our manager. Sure, it isn’t always five star deals. What would be the point when it’s just a room to crash in? But it’s never got yellowing walls and a crack in the ceiling.

  I might not be in the most logical place right now. My brain might ache with confusion, but I’m pretty sure that there is only one conclusion that I can come to. That this isn’t a hotel booked by Hank. I must have wandered off at some point throughout the night and gone too far to go back to the hotel.

  “Fuck, he is going to be pissed,” I moan aloud. “They all are because I’m in such a state.”

  It’s bad enough thinking about how Rachel, Hank, and Gary are going to react to this. It won’t be good for sure, but actually, I might be more concerned with how Freya is going to take this. She will be heart broken, probably she won’t want anything else to do with me just because I couldn’t keep away from the booze. I don’t even have a good reason for it this time, there is nothing that drove me to the drink, aside from a compulsion. An uncontrollable need to just have a little sip… which in turn became far too many sips.

  “You don’t deserve her,” I scold myself. “If you have pushed her away, it’s your own fault.”

  I turn over on to my front, pausing for a second to suck in a couple of deep breaths just trying my hardest not to throw up. It’s hard to hold myself together when all I want to do is fall apart. Then I allow my eyes to drift towards the window to see what shit the outside world has to offer me…

  “What the…?” I bolt upright, forgetting the sickness and the pounding head ache as I immediately realize that I’m not where I’m supposed to be. There’s no way this is any of the cities that we’re supposed to be performing in, which is the weirdest thing ever. I know that I was the drunkest that I have been in a very long time, but did I get on a train or something? A bus maybe? I must have left somehow…

  My blood runs ice cold as I realize just what this means. This is worse than I could have imagined. Now, not only will I be getting my ass kicked for drinking when I wasn’t supposed to be and skipping out on the hotel, it seems that I have also really left. I don’t know where the hell I was headed or where I should be going, I just know that things are about to get incredibly real and raw for me. Life will get harder than it already is, and I only have myself to blame for the current state that I am in. Marvelous.

  “Where the fuck am I?” I scrabble around to find my cell phone, hoping that it will have all of the answers. I just hope that the battery is still charged on it. It’s usually pretty good, but I don’t know when I last plugged it in.

  Holy shit. I freeze even more when I look at the screen and notice hundreds of missed calls that I have. From everyone in my life. It’s safe to say that everyone knows about me missing, and no one is impressed.

  “Fuck…” I scroll through them all feeling sicker by the moment. “What did I do?”

  Then there are the messages from everyone getting increasingly panicked by the moment. Somehow, they seemed to just know that this isn’t the usual vanishing act from me, and I soon realize why. I haven’t just been gone for a few hours. Actually, in reality while I have either been so shit wasted that I don’t know what is going on, or during the time I have been passed out, a couple of days have gone passed. And in those days, we were supposed to do a show. I have got myself in such a state that I have managed to miss one of the tour dates.

  “Fuck.” I pinch myself to check that I’m not asleep. “Tell me this isn’t real. It can’t be!”

  If it is then I don’t know what I will do. There isn’t any turning back from that, is there? There’s no way to make up for missing out, which means I am about to be roasted. The band will despise me, management will be fuming, and the fans are going to hate me too. I have gone missing and none of them know where I am. I didn’t perform for them which means they wasted their hard earned cash on tickets that were worthless.

  “Oh my God.” Just as I am about to do some more research into this, to see how bad it really is, the battery on my cell phone which has served me faithfully up until this point, gives up and dies. The black screen taunts me with absolutely no information to give. I can’t find out anything else… well, I suppose I could always go to the reception desk to beg for a charger, but I will have to be in the right frame of mind to face another human being. Especially with all of this new information bursting around and around in my brain.

  All of a sudden, a small dusty box in the corner of the room catches my eyes. A TV! That might not be quite as useful as the Internet would be, but it gives me a chance to search without seeing another person. So, with my pulse racing like crazy, I grab the television remote and bring the screen to life. Immediately, I find the news, and it’s only a
few moments later that I see my face and how much all of this has spiraled out of control.

  “Holy fuck.” I clasp my hands to my mouth, stunned at what I’m seeing. “Holy mother of God.”

  This is out of control for sure. Way out of control. I’m basically being listed as a missing person and there is a nationwide man hunt for me. This certainly isn’t being kept a private matter with the band which means… well, I don’t even know what it means. It’s too much for me to wrap my head around.

  “What the hell? How is this even happening? It’s bizarre.”

  I dive up towards the window and close the curtains sharply. I don’t want anyone to see me, to know that I am here. The last thing I need right now is to be in the middle of a media shit storm. If anyone gets wind of where I am now, then every reporter in a hundred mile radius will descend on me and make my life hell. The questions they will ask don’t even bear thinking about. They will dig deep in to me, not caring that I might want some space to deal with my personal issues. They are vultures, wanting to pick apart anyone in trouble, and they will love this. I’m sure they are all already coming up with their own theories, picking up on how things have been for me recently, and they will all want to prove them right. That’s the thing with journalists, they don’t care if they are right or wrong. They just want to have a good story. They just want to be the first one to witness someone falling apart. Someone once said that I might be causing the end of Blood Red Masters, and they might have been right.