by Anna Zabo
A little thought niggled at Zavier, one that reminded him he’d pulled away exactly as Ray was reaching out—which meant he was at fault for all this, too. But he couldn’t change the past, couldn’t go back and undo his actions. His soul roiled. And here he thought himself so careful, so controlled, yet his emotions and fears had gotten the best of him.
“A shared burden is an easier one,” Mish said.
Very true. But far too tempting. “Well, this crisis is averted. We should all turn in.”
Dom nodded and headed back to his door.
Mish stooped, picked up the ice bucket that had been sitting at her feet, and handed it to Zavier. “It’s a little melted.”
“I’ll manage.”
She chuckled and gave him a smile. “I still like you. You’re messed up, but you have a heart.”
“Gee, thanks.” One tired smile later, and he was back at his own door and into his room, shutting out the chaos behind it.
Except he still heard the echo of Ray’s moan in his head and felt the heat of that body in his fingertips, even when he plucked some ice out of the bucket to add to his glass of water.
He hadn’t lied when he’d told Ray he wasn’t a sub. Ray couldn’t be Zavier’s submissive, for so many reasons, self-control aside.
God, he so wanted to take on that bundle of nerves and desire and need, but Ray made him impulsive and uncovered too many of his own worries. Leaving Dimitri and the orchestra had been easy—not entirely painless, but easy. Leaving Twisted Wishes would gut him completely. He’d already tangled his own hopes and fears, the want to make it big and the terror he’d screw their chances up somehow. He fucking cared for Mish and Dom and especially beautiful, fractured Ray Van Zeller. He had no idea how to prove to Ray that he was worthy of every bit of praise, that Ray was the reason the band was skyrocketing in popularity.
Yeah, the media focused on Zavier as the point of change, which was unfair. Ray was the heart and soul of Twisted Wishes. If he was cut out—the terrifying suggestion Ray had made—they’d all wither and die.
Problem was, Ray took the weight of the band onto his back. Zavier could take that weight off Ray, if only for a time. He could. He so clearly could. The desire was there, wound so tight around his core. It would be a delight, and honor. And if it went wrong, an act that would tear their whole world apart.
Zavier downed his glass of water, then poured another. He couldn’t risk Ray or the band, not even to help in the one way he knew how.
Chapter Thirteen
Ray expected the next day to be utterly awkward, prepared for it and dreaded it, but when he cracked his hotel door and looked out into the hall, all he saw were the room-cleaning carts. No signs of his bandmates or the crew. No one waiting outside his door with a scowling face. No cops or reporters there to ask him questions about drugs.
He closed the door and tried to still his racing heart.
It was past one in the afternoon. At least he’d managed to show and dress before dinner—that was a plus. Thankfully, Carl wasn’t around, or Ray was sure he’d have heard an earful, either by phone or after Carl pounded on his door, even if this was a day to recuperate from the past few shows. A few quick texts told him Dom was museum-hopping with Zavier, and that made Ray pause. Hitting every museum Dom could get his hands on wasn’t new, but Dom hanging with Zavier was. A twinge of worry wiggled through Ray, but he pushed it down. He shouldn’t be jealous of Dom, but that flicker of envy was there. Worse, he was as jealous of Zavier.
Dom had been his best friend from their very first day of high school. They’d been in the same homeroom, Dom in the first desk, Ray in the last. B and V. Not the beginning or the end of the alphabet, but close enough. He missed just hanging out with his friend like Zavier got to do today.
And Zavier? Something told Ray that he wouldn’t say much about what had happened. The only thing that might happen was that Zavier would discover Dom was far more in control of himself than Ray when it came to being on tour and keeping his dick in his pants.
Dom was the far better catch. Brighter, more even-keeled. He was the type of guy Zavier should date—not the mess Ray was.
When did I get like this? He stared at his hands. He hadn’t always been so fucking afraid of every single action. Hell, he’d done everything he could to get Twisted Wishes going. Bared his soul in lyrics and notes. Threw money and hours and years after a dream. Worked odd hours and some interesting jobs to support the band.
Here he was now, afraid even to leave his hotel room. The weight of Carl’s words pinned him to the ground. Not good enough. In debt. Label not amused. Fuck.
And Zavier. Oh god, Ray wanted so much more. Another night with Zavier’s hands on him and that voice brushing his back, and those lips on his skin. A moment in time that wasn’t fraught with Ray’s stupidity and poor choices. Maybe he’d find out if he actually liked being tied up as much as his cock thought he might.
Ray shook himself. It wasn’t like Dom and Zavier would be fucking in the middle of an art museum or even contemplating sex.
He texted Mish next. She was closer—down by the pool, enjoying a drink, a snack, and the weather. And yes, of course he could join her. Which was good, because he needed to eat something, and ordering room service and eating alone or sitting at the bar with a soda seemed way the hell too depressing. Despite the need for time away, he missed his friends.
Mish was tucked into a nice, shady spot by a cabana with waiter service. Ray slipped into the other chair, and she pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head. “Hi, honey. You doing okay?”
Something about her question made him uneasy. She must have known. “Yeah. Um.” He stopped and poked at the drink menu. “How—what do you know?”
She shrugged. “You had a groupie who had a pile of drugs on him, but nothing happened.”
Oh. So they knew. His throat tightened. “Yeah.” So many of the alcoholic drinks on the card looked good. “Um, Zavier chased him out.” He swallowed. “Which was good. I don’t know if he would have done anything to me, but...”
“Yeah, Zavier said as much.” Sadness there.
“I didn’t mean to.”
“Oh, sweetheart, I know.” She took off her sunglasses entirely and put them on the table. “You just wanted a break.”
“Except a story about me being addicted to drugs would have destroyed the band.” It came out as a whisper.
She nodded again.
“Zavier says... Zavier thinks I have no self-control.”
She huffed. “I’m not sure that’s true. I’d have decked Carl about a million times if he treated me like he treats you.”
Fair. “I’ve come close.” He paused and flipped the menu over. Nonalcoholic drinks. Yeah, probably the better idea. “Instead I take it out on others. On you guys, and that’s not fair.”
“It’s not fair for you to take it out on yourself, either.”
“No one else left.”
She sighed and patted his arm. “But that hurts us, too.”
Yeah, it did. Especially when he pulled stupid maneuvers like last night. “I just don’t know anymore.”
Before Mish could answer, a waitress came over with a glass of water. “Care for anything else?” She smiled brightly at him.
“Um, how about one of these ginger sours?” He tapped the virgin cocktails. “And a bacon cheeseburger, medium rare.”
“Fries or coleslaw?”
He ended up choosing the coleslaw. When the waitress left, he played with the condensation on his water glass and didn’t look at Mish. “I still don’t think Zavier likes me.”
Mish burst out laughing and didn’t stop until she was hiccupping. It wasn’t until after she took a long drink of water to quell those that she spoke. “Oh, hon. Not even you are that unobservant.”
He must have been beet red because the ice water he s
wallowed did nothing to cool his face. “There’s a difference between lust and actually liking someone, you know.”
She waved his words away like cobwebs. “Honey, it ain’t just lust. He worries about you, same as Dom and me. Wants to protect you, too, but you won’t let him in.”
Because fucking your bandmate was asking for trouble. Especially if it got back to Carl. And—it would. “That’s because being Zavier’s friend is a bad idea.”
“Why?”
He wavered. “’Cause... I’m me. And he’s him and—” He didn’t want to say it out loud. “It’s not like when it was someone in the crew.”
“No.” Mish’s tone had dropped to serious levels. “I daresay it isn’t. Not with you two.”
Ray fought through the tangle of emotions. Zavier wouldn’t fuck him until he could control himself, but Ray could stop being an ass to his bandmates and let the shit Carl piled on him run off a bit more—talk to them about it—and that would fix quite a few things.
He was saved from having to say anything more to Mish when his cocktail and burger arrived. He chowed down on the burger, grateful that he had a distraction. Maybe the Zavier and him part of this conversation could die off before he got any more embarrassed, or worse, turned on. Well, turned on more, anyway.
“How long have you had a crush on him?” Mish took a sip of her cocktail.
Ray nearly choked on his hamburger. Well, there went the chance of a change in topic. “I don’t have a crush on him! He... I...” He shook his head. “Mish, the best thing for me is to let Zav be.”
“Is it? Because what I see is that when you guys are talking, you’re a hell of a lot calmer.”
Was he? Ray took another bite of his food and pondered. Maybe. Zavier had good thoughts about the band and he seemed to listen to Ray about songs and set lists. He also treated Ray like he actually had talent. “Okay.”
Mish snorted. “And he’s the last person who will go crying to Carl about anything.”
There was that. “Are you suggesting I hook up with Zavier?”
She shrugged. “I’m suggesting you stop flipping him off and stop acting like he hates you. And get over whatever it was that pissed you off ten years ago in high school.”
Maybe he was holding the high school band stuff a little too hard. He rubbed his temple. Zavier had been so far above him then. “That’s fair.”
“I hate seeing you miserable, kiddo. And you’re not miserable at all when you let Zav in.”
Also fair. “Okay. I’ll stop being a prick to him.” See where that went. He shivered and covered that by picking up his drink and sipping. Wasn’t too bad—essentially a whiskey sour with ginger beer rather than whiskey. He didn’t really miss the booze that much, probably because he’d never been that much of a drinker in the first place. It was Carl’s order itself that chafed, not the lack of a buzz.
“Besides, you could use a friend.” Mish sipped her own cocktail.
“I have Dom and you!” They’d been through so much together already.
She rolled her eyes. “Dom and I are like your siblings. You need a friend.” She paused. “And maybe a fuckbuddy, too.”
“Mish!” He plunked the glass down on the table.
She was laughing again, and a moment later he joined her. It felt—good. They hadn’t actually talked in a long time, not like this. Not as pseudo-siblings. Yeah, they’d needed a break from the tour, not just to clean and restock and maintain the buses, but to untangle and smooth out their lives, too.
He looked out at the pool. There were children and parents splashing around and a small group of other people—college kids—by the edge. One guy shoved another and the first fell into the pool with a shout and rose above the water with a laugh. His friend cannonballed in to join him.
All at once, it was as if he’d been hit in the gut. Two years ago, he’d horsed around with Dom, Mish, and Kevin at a hotel pool in the Poconos. Splashing. Drinking. Having fun. They’d just signed with the label and decided to road-trip to the mountains for a little celebration.
Fuck. He took a ragged breath. “I miss Kevin. I mean, the guy we knew when we started, back when he was fun and happy and...” A lump took over Ray’s throat. “But... I also don’t miss Kevin. The shows on this tour...” He sat back and focused on Mish. “They’ve been everything I ever wanted and dreamed about.”
“And that has a lot to do with Zavier,” Mish said. Her eyes held a similar sadness. “Yeah, hon, I feel that way, too. And the guilt gets you, huh?”
“Yeah. Like—maybe if I’d caught things sooner or done something different, Kevin would be here with us to enjoy this.”
She shook her head. “Oh, honey, it wasn’t the touring. It wasn’t you. Kevin said—” She looked at her drink, grunted, then picked up her water. “When I talked to him last, Kevin said he’d been a functional alcoholic for years. He could hide it from us when we weren’t touring.” She took a sip. “None of that was your fault, and he doesn’t blame you at all. You gotta let that go.”
He didn’t know if he could. All the thoughts and emotions blended with what Mish was telling him. Words looped and repeated. Notes arrived like splotches of color. Light blue against black. Swaths of red, velvet like rose petals but dark as fine wine.
He stared at where the water lapped along the pool edge and listened to the laughter. “I think... I think...” He’d forgotten his notebook but had his phone, so he opened that to a notepad app and started typing.
He vaguely heard Mish chuckle, but was too busy trying to get what he saw and tasted and heard out. The music would have to wait, but that was easier to snatch back from his head. Words, though, those were like butterflies. A moment of brightness, then gone.
In the heat of a summer day
We were gods with a thousand dreams
But in the night of winter’s death
We were nothing but dust and ash
Where did the light we held go
Strands of gold and silver
When can we meet the sun again?
When nothing else came, he sat back, blinked, and looked up.
“Better?”
Much. So much so. The lyrics were rough and there was no music sketched down to go with them, but it was a start. “Yeah.” He’d see if he could borrow one of Dom’s acoustic guitars later on, and pick out the colors and shapes in his head. A title swam in his head, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to write that down yet. Make it real.
She nodded. “It’s good to see you smile, sweetheart.”
Was he smiling? Ray laughed. But yeah, his mood was lighter, the lump gone, and the fear that had gripped him held on less tightly. Kevin wasn’t here, but Zavier was. Ray could handle both things.
And if he could manage to remain calm, maybe Zavier could handle him—in whatever way that ended up being.
* * *
The café in the museum district was far more hip than Zavier, and younger, too. However, Dom fit right in, as if he was an early twenty-something student studying art or history or—well, anything, really.
Zavier had dressed pretty casually for their museum-hopping trip: an older pair of jeans and a T-shirt he’d picked up in Budapest during one of the symphony’s European tours. Dom, though... Zavier eyed his bandmate for about the fortieth time. Dom looked completely different. He’d seen this side of Dom when they’d rehearsed in private all those weeks ago, but even then, some of his Domino persona bled through.
Not today. Dominic Bradley wore green-framed glasses that matched the forest green in the checkered vest he’d paired with a soft blue button-down. He looked like something out of a freaking twink catalog, despite the muscle Zavier knew lay under the dapper look.
Dominic had shed his rock-god persona entirely—and was positively vibrating with joy. Who knew Dom was such an art and science geek? At every stop, he had regale
d Zavier with some interesting tidbit of information about pretty much everything they looked at.
It was, in some ways, intimidating. That was a strange experience, not being the know-it-all for a change. At least Dom had rolled up the sleeves and worn a pair of jeans, or Zavier would have felt underdressed for their jaunt out to as many museums as they could stuff into a couple hours.
They’d managed to see art and dinosaurs and walk through part of the nearby park. There was still the zoo, about a dozen other smaller places, plus galleries, the park itself, and the university district.
The coffee in the café was good, as was the southern food. And, honestly, so was the company, even if Zavier’s brain was ever so slightly overloaded with information. They’d been at this since nine in the morning.
Dom tapped a map of the local area. “Did you know there’s an amphitheater nearby?”
“That’s one thing I do know,” Zavier said. “I performed there with the symphony. A year ago? Two years?” He shook his head. “It all blends together sometimes.”
Dom looked up. “Do you miss it? Playing with them?”
The question caught Zavier off guard, mostly because the answer came so quickly, he had to sit back and figure out why. “No.” He spoke slowly, more to taste the words than for any other reason. “No, I don’t.”
Dom cocked his head, obviously expecting more.
“I did enjoy playing. There’s a lot more to being a timpanist than kettledrums and triangles, which is what most people think the position is like. But I don’t miss the symphony.” He certainly didn’t miss Dimitri, who had been a demanding asshole of a conductor, even before they’d hooked up.
A quirk of a smile on Dom’s lips. Made him look even more like a college student. No wonder he got carded sometimes—he did look young. “Rock gets into your soul.”
It did. It had. “So does classical.” He still found himself humming snatches of music only aficionados would know, or tapping out complex rhythms that would befuddle a whole host of rock musicians, though he doubted there’d be a time signature or beat he could throw at Dom that would confuse him. Or, for that matter, would confuse Ray or Mish. Twisted Wishes used some interesting rhythms indeed.