by Caisey Quinn
I can hear myself crying out but my words are unintelligible.
I’m covered in a thin sheen of perspiration and writhing on the bed like a woman possessed as Gavin continues to lick me down from my orgasm.
Slowly I become aware of the parts of my body I’d assumed had drifted into outer space. Gavin pulls back from the apex of my thighs and I see it, the rabid lust and determination. This is it. He’s going to make love to me—or maybe something much more intense that I have no name for—right now.
A sudden persistent knock peppers the door to my room like gunshots to my chest. “Dixie? You in there? Open up.”
My brother’s voice effectively murders the moment and threatens to give me a heart attack. Gavin mutters a curse under his breath and I sit up.
Using the blanket on the bed to wipe the sticky ice cream remnants from my stomach, I pull my shirt back over my head and try not to die while yanking my jeans up my legs.
“Maybe you should, um, hide?” Panic scatters my thoughts around the room and I can’t seem to grab hold of a single one that tells me what to do next.
“I don’t hide. Not even from Dallas.” Gavin stands and strides confidently toward the door. How he’s so calm is beyond me. I keep forgetting to breathe and my lungs are exceptionally pissed about it.
“What are we going to—”
“We’re just hanging out. Eating ice cream. I think he can handle it.”
Yeah, but I can’t seem to. Eating ice cream now has a whole new blush-inducing meaning.
“Okay.” I nod and try to arrange myself casually on my bed, folding my legs beneath me. My entire body pulsates as if my heart had quadrupled in size and is pounding so hard it’s reverberating through my core.
I nearly fall over snatching the television remote and clicking the on button before Dallas walks in. The preview channel shouts that for 19.95 we can subscribe to the adult movie channel for a full twenty-four hours. I’m changing it as quickly as I can, barely landing on a country music video channel, when my brother charges into the room.
“What’s going on in here?” The blue of the screen glows against his hardened features.
Gavin stands calmly behind him, as if all he was really doing was hanging out eating ice cream.
“Looked like you might have some company tonight,” Gavin says, propping on the wall beside the bathroom door. “Figured we’d give you some privacy.”
“Company?” He looks utterly perplexed at the suggestion.
“You seemed to be in a deep discussion with Mandy,” I clarify.
My brother sighs and drops down heavily on my bed, grabbing the remote to lower the sound. “Speaking of Mandy, we need to talk.”
Gavin folds his arms over his chest. “What’s the word on the showcase?”
Dallas is silent, which never happens unless something is up. His gaze swings from Gavin and back to me again before his chin drops forward. “About that . . .”
“What about it?”
Dallas’s forehead is creased as he tries to look at the both of us simultaneously. His expression reminds me of pictures I’ve seen of my dad when he was younger—both of them intense and rugged in the same handsome way. Not that I’d ever tell him that. He’s cocky enough as it is.
“The only way she can get us into Saturday’s showcase is if we sign with her. She pulled all the strings she can, but we’d have to sign something with her first.”
My surprise and subsequent irritation must show plainly on my face.
“She said we could do something short term, give her a trial run and see how things go. If after six months we’re unhappy or she just can’t make anything happen for us, we walk away unscathed. No hard feelings.”
Gavin snorts out an angry sound that surprises me and from the looks of his expression, Dallas, too.
“What is it with you two thinking you’re untouchable? Six months or one year or one night or however the hell long, making a commitment to someone like this has an impact. Maybe the effects will be short term or long term, but let’s go ahead and scratch escaping unscathed and unaffected off the fucking list here.”
Dallas begins lining out the many artists Mandy has launched careers for. It’s an impressive list for someone who is only twenty-seven, and I agree, but I can’t take my eyes off Gavin. He’s visibly upset, whether it’s about the new stipulation from Mandy, the one-night arrangement with me, or the fact that my brother interrupted some seriously intense foreplay, isn’t clear. But the fact that he’s immensely aggravated is.
When Gavin’s eyes finally meet mine, and I make a concentrated effort to convey silently to him that I know our one night will have an effect on me. I do. I’m just willing to do what it takes to survive the fallout because I know it will be worth it. Whatever pain comes after will be worth knowing how it feels to be that close to him, to be connected to him in that way. For him, it’s one night. One he might even forget within a week’s worth of one-night stands. But I know I will keep that one night with me forever. It’s the memory that will become the final piece in my mental treasured-experiences box where I keep the most important moments of my life.
“So we’re okay with this then? Signing the short-term contract with her and seeing what she can do?”
Gavin stares at my brother intently. “You think this chick is the real deal? If you believe she’ll make the right decisions for the band and you trust her, then I think you know I’m in. But if you’re not sure, or you doubt her intentions at all, then slow your roll, man. We’re not in a race here and I’d rather wait as long as it takes to find the right manager than rushing to sign a bad one just to say we have one.”
Dallas turns from Gavin to me and lifts his eyebrows, indicating it’s my turn to speak, so I shrug.
“If you think signing with her is the right decision, then I’m with you.”
With you, but still planning to lie to you because hell will freeze over and grant underprivileged orphans free admission to the ice rink before I tell you about Gavin and me.
My brother nods. “I do. I wouldn’t be here right now if I didn’t. You both know the band is my whole world. I’d never risk doing anything that could ruin what we have.”
The silence hangs heavy in the air as Gavin and I take turns avoiding eye contact with each other. When I can’t take it anymore, I hold my stare steadily on him until he returns it.
“So we’re doing this then.” Maybe it should be a question but somehow it isn’t.
His eyes darken and I know that we’ve crossed our moment of impasse. It’s time for him to lay it on the line and jump into the abyss with me or bail out while he still can. “Yeah. Yeah we are,” Gavin says quietly as if my brother isn’t even there.
Dallas claps his hands together. “Then it’s settled.” He grins at us, and I do my best to look excited about this decision despite an entire universe of things that could go wrong teeming to life in my mind. “We’ll get out of here and let you get some rest, Dix.”
I walk him and Gavin to my door, freezing solid where I stand when Dallas turns to us and asks, “So how was the ice cream?”
My mouth drops open but can’t seem to form any words, but Gavin looks my brother right in the eyes when he answers.
“Best I ever had.”
Chapter 14
Austin MusicFest—Day 4
GAVIN’S PHONE RINGS ELEVEN TIMES DURING OUR INTERVIEW with Scott Levinson, a hipster thirty-something from the Indie Music Review. Scott adjusts his rectangular black-framed glasses frequently while he asks about everything from how we developed our unique sound to Emmylou.
Dallas is midway through explaining our sound to Scott when another one of Gavin’s attempts at silencing his ringer before we hear it fails. Mandy gives him an icy glare. She has an authoritative presence about her that makes me feel even younger than I am. I keep waiting for her to confiscate Gavin’s phone the way teachers did in high school.
“Everything okay?” I mouth silently to Gavin over
my shoulder after we finish the interview and prepare to play a few numbers for Scott and Mandy. He gives me a slight nod but averts his gaze and focuses on his drums.
Dallas said Mandy suggested we ditch some of our reworked editions of classic hits and replace them with acoustic versions of billboard chart toppers. Right now I don’t really care what we play. I just want to know what’s going on that has Gavin’s phone blowing up.
I stare at him until Dallas plays the opening cords to our new show closer.
The sound of Gavin’s cymbals shattering the silence sends a delicious shiver down my spine. I watch him tap the snare lightly, and notice the line between his brows. Playing is usually an outlet for Gavin, always has been. But right now he’s working through something and I have no idea what it could be. Guilt prickles at the edge of my awareness because it’s possible that his frustration has something to do with our one night, and yet I have a persistent intuition that whatever is bothering him has to do with his relentless caller.
We’ve just finished a slightly modified set when the sound of Gavin’s phone buzzing interrupts Scott telling us when the edition with our article will run.
After Scott and Mandy say their goodbyes, Dallas shakes his head while yanking a cord free from our amplifier. “Take five. And Gavin, answer your fucking phone and tell that chick to move the hell on.”
Dallas jogs out of the warehouse, chasing Mandy down to apologize, I suspect.
“Gav? Something going on?”
“It’s nothing,” he answers quickly without looking at me. “I’ll turn my phone off.”
But he doesn’t.
My stomach curls painfully inward. Could be one of his randoms calling like Dallas suggested. Though I don’t think I’ve ever known one to be quite this tenacious. The thing about Gavin is that he’s always honest with them. He doesn’t pretend to want more and they know this going in. Just as I do.
“Maybe you should just answer it.” As if conjured to life by my words, the phone buzzes in his hand. He must’ve turned the ringer off but not the phone. He closes his eyes as it continues to vibrate. Whoever is calling is upsetting him. A lot. “Okay. I’ll answer it then.”
I’m impulsive enough to snatch it before he can stop me.
“Hello?”
An automated voice answers me. “You have a collect call from an inmate at the Potter County Women’s Detention Center. Say yes to accept. Say no or simply hang up to decline.”
My mouth drops open but no words come out.
The robotic female voice begins detailing the instructions that I should follow if I no longer wish to receive calls from this number, but Gavin snatches the phone from my hand and presses the disconnect button before she’s finished.
“What are you going to do?” I’m barely able to harness my heartbreak for Gavin and my murderous rage for Katrina Garrison. It has to be her. He’s bailed her out more times than I can count on one hand. Nobody deserves this kind of mother, and the injustice of Gavin being stuck with her has my blood pressure rising steadily.
“What can I do?” He gives me a half shrug as if the weight of the world on his shoulders is too much to allow a whole one.
“Don’t go,” I whisper, knowing better. I’ve never known him not to bail her out. Ever.
His tormented gaze meets mine and I know. He’s going.
I do some quick calculations in my head. When my mental math gets to be too much, I begin working it out aloud.
“Potter County is about eight hours from here, seven the way you drive. There’s still no way you could make it there and back before tonight’s show, obviously. We could leave right after we get offstage tonight. But then you figure they probably won’t open for visitors or bail until eight tomorrow morning. And then it’d probably take an hour or so for the paperwork, but if we didn’t stop for food or to use the restroom too often we could make it back in time for—”
“Stop. Just stop.” He shakes his head, looking at me as if I’ve just rattled off my thoughts in a foreign language he doesn’t comprehend.
“Gavin, look at me.”
He complies and I can see from the way his hazel eyes have dimmed that he’s switched over to autopilot. “What makes you so sure I’m going to go?”
“The fact that you always do.”
Tension ripples along his jaw, but he doesn’t argue with me.
“I know you’re going to go get her, and I know you’d probably prefer to go alone, but think about how much time you’d save if we could drive in shifts. Straight there and straight back.”
The thought of him going alone hits me like a fist. If he goes alone, gets sucked into his mother’s dark, depraved bullshit, I fear I’ll never see him again. Dallas never told me the full extent of the details, but I know that during my time in Houston—the year we stopped performing together as frequently—Gavin sank like a rock in a black sea. I can’t lose him again. I won’t. There’s no way in hell I’m letting him go home alone.
He swallows hard, the thick knot in his throat bobbing as a piece of his unruly dark hair drops over his forehead. He needs a haircut, but now is not the time.
“Tomorrow’s the last day of the festival,” I remind him. “Dallas said Mandy’s boss would be here to check out our show. He’s the one who determines whether or not she can actually sign us. Imagine screwing that up because you were too stubborn to let me come with you.”
“No,” he answers abruptly, not even bothering to pretend he considered my offer.
It stings, but I continue making my case in this one-sided debate. “You’ll have to sleep. Like it or not. And you won’t make it back in time. Even if you’re a superhuman machine that doesn’t need sleep to live, what if your phone dies? Or the van breaks down, or bikers swarm you on a deserted road and decide to have their way with you?”
He closes his eyes as a short huff of amused breath escapes his chest. A tiny smile teases at one corner of his mouth, allowing me to finally exhale.
“You gonna protect me from the big, bad bikers, Bluebird?”
“If need be.” We’re joking now, but the protectiveness I feel for him surges in my chest. I want so badly to keep him safe, to keep him away from anything or anyone that would cause him pain. His mother included. His mother first and foremost.
“Your brother would never go for it.”
I lower my voice, even though Dallas and Mandy are likely too caught up in their own conversation to pay attention to us. “I wasn’t planning on telling my brother. Or asking him for permission. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I’m a big girl now.” I force a smile and wink, even though I’d prefer to take him by the shoulders and shake. Hard.
His eyelids lift and he scans me slowly from head to toe. “I noticed. Believe me, I noticed.”
If I had even the slightest hope that I could convince him not to run off to his mom’s rescue, then I would. But at this point, I know it’d just be a waste of time. Years of watching him drop everything for someone who wouldn’t spit if he was on fire has erased any ability I had to think that maybe one day he’d just walk away from her.
“Then it’s settled. Meet me at the van as soon as we’re done tonight.”
I don’t know how this impromptu trip is going to affect our deal for tomorrow night, but for as much as he protested, there is obvious relief smoothing the lines of concern on Gavin’s face once it’s decided that I’m going. Which I am. Whether he likes it or not. And for me, knowing that I’ve eased even a fraction of his pain is enough. For now.
Of all the people who could screw up my plan to ride to Potter County with Gavin tonight, Afton Tate is the last one I expect to actually do it. And yet, here he is. Standing next to the stage as soon as we step off it. We opened for his band again and he looks entirely too happy to see me considering our “breakup.”
“I’m so glad I caught you,” he greets me while smiling warmly.
“She’s not a fish,” I barely hear Gavin mutter from behind me.
; It doesn’t appear that Afton heard him, because he continues with exactly as much gusto in his voice as he started with. “There’s a party after the shows tonight. At Crave. A lot of the big-timers will be there. We got invited and I’d love for you to come as my date.”
Crave, Lick, what is it with Austin and their one-word verb-titled food places? There’s something to be said for getting straight to the point, I suppose.
I sigh and try to let him down easy. “Um, I don’t think I—”
“She’d love to,” my brother chimes in unexpectedly. Turning to me he grins like he’s giving me some great gift. “Dix, this will be such a great opportunity for you to meet other people in the business. Have a great time.” With a wink he turns and walks off with Mandy, leaving me to glare at his retreating figure. I told him to back off a little before we came to Austin and he thinks this is what I meant.
A quick glance at Gavin reveals that he isn’t quite as thrilled with this new development but isn’t going to do anything to prevent it from happening. His stare stays straight ahead as he calls something I can’t make out to my brother and makes his way toward the van. He didn’t say goodbye to me. Didn’t ask me if I needed a ride back to the hotel.
“Yeah, um, I guess I’ll see you after your show,” I say to Afton while simultaneously formulating a plan in my head.
“Cool.” Afton smiles and I almost feel guilty. But it’s not like it’s a date, it’s just an after party and I’m not using him for his connections. I couldn’t care less about that, which my brother would be sorely disappointed to know. “I’ll pick you up at your hotel around eleven. I’ll text you when we’re done and I head that way.”
“Sounds good. Have a great show.” With a hurried smile, I wait until he’s heading up onto the stage before I turn and practically sprint in the direction of where the van is parked. Luckily it’s not far.
Gavin slams the back doors and heads around to the driver’s side. I’m in the passenger seat by the time he’s in and has pulled his door closed.