Lost Lyric (Found in Oblivion Book 4)

by Cari Quinn

  “Admittedly not my finest hour, but I was doing really well there for a while. Too well.”

  He curled his fingers around his ribs. “So, they made sure I was aware of a few rules.”

  “I can’t believe you.”

  “It was just for fun. No big deal.”

  “Oh, yeah? Feel fun now, you idiot?”

  “Would you stop calling me that?”

  “Um, no. Not right now.” She stalked over to him. “Because that’s what you are. You didn’t think there would be consequences?”

  “Yeah, well. I’d gotten away with it before,” he mumbled.

  “Unbelievable.”

  He sighed. “Look, I get it. I learned my lesson, mom.”

  “Don’t you do that. You don’t get to scare me then say crap like that.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She fisted her hands. “God. I am so mad at you.”

  He started to slide down the wall, but caught himself just as she grabbed for a fistful of his shirt. “Where’d you leave the bus?”

  “In front of MOMA, where you’re supposed to be.” And he’d ruined her plans to walk around Rockefeller Center that night. Not Hell’s Kitchen, dammit.

  She looked around. Not even a cab in sight. She flattened her hand against his chest to make sure he stayed upright and flicked through her car apps.

  “Can we not?”

  She glanced at him. “Not what?”

  “Go back.”

  She frowned. “Of course we’re going back. You have a radio show at eight in the morning.”

  “We’ll go back early, but can we just crash somewhere tonight?” He glanced away. “I don’t want anyone to see me like this. A shower and some sleep and I’ll mostly be back to rights.”

  Her chest tightened. “Yeah. You’re not really in any shape to spend it on the bus. We can grab a car and get a hotel.”

  “With what money?”

  She curled her fingers into his crooked button-down shirt. Anger and worry made her want to club him over the head. Dammit, it could have been so much worse.

  Two of the buttons were missing and for once he wasn’t wearing one of his concert T-shirts under it. Her pinkie slipped across his skin and a smattering of freckles seemed to dance in the shadows of the overhead streetlight.

  He covered her hand. “Look, I just need a break. Just you and me tonight? I don’t have to think when I’m with you. I can just be.”

  Her cold, black heart couldn’t hold up to that. “Not fair, Ry.”

  “I’m not really feeling fair tonight, Den.”

  “I don’t have much cash on me.”

  He was quiet for a moment before swiping his forearm over his sweaty brow. “I can slum it if you can.”

  She looked around. A buzzing neon light had a missing L in motel. “Hummingbird Motel for your evening’s pleasure?”

  He followed the track of her gaze. “Normally such a classy bird.”

  “Pretty on target for a no-tell motel. Quick as a lick.”

  Ryan snorted. “That’s true.” His lids went heavy. “You like it quick, Denver?”

  She let him go. “Nothing wrong with quick and dirty, pal.”

  He hooked his arm around her neck. “That’s very true. However, dirty and long is even better.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.” She grunted as he leaned in on her. He looked like one big skinny dude, when in fact he was full of muscle. He was definitely more lethal than he looked, even if tonight he hadn’t come out victorious.

  But he was still alive. That was a victory all its own.

  She slung her arm around his back and his untucked shirt rode up. More skin, hot and smooth. So different from the Italian men that—

  She shook that thought off. No need to think about that right now. The past could stay there, where it belonged.

  At a break in traffic, they staggered forward. Heat came off him in waves. Add in the dense air of the July evening and the baked-in heat in the pavement and the whole world was getting a bit too shimmery for her taste.

  They weaved to the left and she steered him back to the center of the sidewalk. A crush of teens came barreling down the street. New York City never slept. By some miracle, no one recognized Ryan. It helped that he was even more rumpled than usual.

  His scruffy face was heading toward beard. His peach-fuzz curls were normally closely cropped, but they’d grown out until he looked more like a disheveled troll doll minus the pink hair.

  Yet he was still super hot, and somehow even more so now that he was all roughed up and dangerous looking. Not that she wanted to view him that way, but some truths were impossible to deny.

  “You owe me,” she muttered, groaning under his weight. It almost seemed like the jerk was intentionally leaning more on her than necessary. “Like the never-going-to-let-it-go kind of owe me, buddy.”

  “Since when did we keep score?”

  “Since you started disappearing like a petulant teen.” And he’d scared the holy shit out of her.

  He merely grunted.

  She knew something was up with him, but she couldn’t begin to figure it out. He was getting crazier onstage. Almost as crazy as West. To the point that the guys were starting to talk about him in whispers.

  Well, in between their own issues. Between the heart eyes coming off West and his girlfriend Lauren, the eternal nighttime Skype sessions with Michael and his wife Chloe, and the dirty talk between Juliet and her duo of delicious boys, there wasn’t a lot of room for the other band members to worry about Ryan.

  So, she did the worrying.

  And while everything inside of her told Denver to bring him back to the bus, there was a niggling part of her that knew he was right. If the band saw him like this, there’d be more questions than answers.

  More arguments especially.

  Because Ryan wasn’t ready to talk. While he was usually the most easygoing of the group, when he dug his heels in, it was pretty much impossible to move him.

  And only part of it was because he was well over six feet tall and surprisingly sturdy.

  “All right, you need to pull yourself together. It might be a hotel that porn is probably filmed in, but they can turn us away for public intoxication.”

  “I’m not drunk.”

  “No? Then why are you leaning on me?”

  “Because you smell good and I kinda like the way your boobs squish against me.”

  “Pig.” Why the hell was he talking about her boobs? “And let me tell ya, buddy, I can’t say the same about how you smell.”

  He straightened up and sniffed at his collar. He turned away with a grimace.

  “Yeah, it ain’t pretty.” She wrinkled her nose at the alcohol coming out of his pores and the less-than-stellar status of his shirt.

  July had been a brutal bitch since they’d pulled in yesterday. The air conditioning unit was working overtime on the bus and there were too many bodies crammed into the space.

  Not one, but two stowaways were onboard right now. Okay, Lauren Bryant, West’s significant other, wasn’t exactly a hanger-on, but she was one more body. And there was a lot of action going on in that bunk.

  Lauren’s sexual revolution was a work-in-progress.

  Denver wasn’t jealous—much.

  When Ryan listed a little bit, she resumed her place under his arm. As she and Ryan sailed through the front door, they managed to look more like a love-starved couple than a guy who’d been having a very bad day. She hoped.

  Deciding it was a better fit for this particular situation, she played up her hold on him. She flicked the remaining button open at the center of his chest and tried not to focus on his smooth, warm skin.

  Two women slinked out of the darkness along the sides of the lobby. Harsh faces with eyes void of life made the back of her neck prickle.

  She aimed Ryan at the check-in desk decked out in way more Plexiglas than should be warranted for a motel.

  “We need a room.”

  Th
e disinterested guy gave her a bored stare. He rattled off the prices for an hourly stay, and one for the night.

  She shifted Ryan against the counter and dug into her pocket. “The night, please.”

  The guy gave a snort when she pulled out her Wonder Woman wallet.

  “What?” she asked as she shuffled out the number of bills she needed. She didn’t carry much cash normally, but she was even lighter tonight. She’d frequented a few of her favorite small shops from her college days.

  “Wish I had a Wonder Woman taking care of me.” He grinned at Ryan. “Did she bring the lasso with her?”

  Ryan’s jaw flexed, but he said nothing.

  The dude shrugged and pushed scraggly blue-tinged hair over his shoulder. He tossed a key through the little half circle cut out in the makeshift booth. “Checkout at ten.”

  She took the key. “Thanks.”

  “Enjoy.” The guy folded a piece of gum into his mouth before picking up his phone and sprawling in his folding chair.

  She flipped over the key. “Eight-oh-six.” Denver looked around. A battered orange cone stood in front of the elevator. “No second elevator?”

  The guy snapped his gum. The familiar maniacal giggle of Angry Birds came from his phone. “Nope.”

  “No rooms on a lower floor?”

  “Nope.”

  She sighed. The idea of climbing that many stairs in this heat made her stomach churn. “We can just go somewhere else.”

  The guy peered up from his game. “No refunds.”

  “You’re an asshole.”

  The guy shrugged. “Guess he’ll have to earn his fuck tonight, hey? More than the cost of the room, that is.”

  Ryan growled. “Don’t fucking talk to her like that.”

  The guy smirked. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “Feel pretty safe behind that plastic box, huh?”

  The guy shrugged. “Pretty sure I could take you, but I wouldn’t want Wonder Woman to have to defend your honor.”

  Ryan lunged forward and she looped her arm around his waist. “C’mon, baby, we don’t want to waste a minute of tonight, do we?”

  Ryan glanced down at her, his eyes narrowing. “No, I guess not.”

  She tipped her head up and slapped a big smile on her face. “No, we don’t. Let’s just get upstairs.”

  He nodded.

  They shuffled off and she breathed in a sigh of relief. Ryan didn’t exactly have the asshole gene that the check-in dude did, but she had to push down the jittery reaction at the flash of anger in his spring-green eyes.

  The mixture of fear and thrill was definitely not a good thing.

  At least not when it came to Ryan. He was her safety blanket, her warm sweatshirt on a cold night. He wasn’t the guy who was supposed to get her revved.

  Ever.

  Chapter Two

  Ryan Waters groaned at the stained carpeting of the narrow stairs. Hummingbird Motel, my ass. This place was a toilet covered in a thin veneer of civility.

  He grasped the railing and dragged himself up the first seven stairs. His side throbbed with each step.

  The bouncer from the Red Rooster Club had been fairly merciful. Ryan had only taken the house for twenty grand. A drop in the bucket when it came to the underground gambling room. His buddy, Zane, from Brooklyn Dawn had told him about the place.

  One wall of televisions fed the sports gambling portion of the establishment. Ryan had never been into that kind of betting. He wasn’t the type to bet on anyone but himself. It was too easy for a sporting event to go sideways because one of the starting players was having a bad night—or worse, an injury.

  No, he’d been locked into poker. It was man against man and a little bit of nature thrown in. He’d always been good at reading people. Add in a little math with statistics and card decks, and he’d run the table for an hour before the floor manager had gotten wise to his talents.

  He wasn’t even sure one could technically call it cheating. Just because he was an observant guy didn’t make him a monster. However, counting cards was frowned upon in most establishments.

  Instead of leaving with his windfall, he’d been kicked to the curb quite literally.

  All his money, including what he’d started out with when he walked in the door, was now in the jacket pocket of the guy with ham hocks for fists.

  He’d gotten off easy, to be honest, but it didn’t make the steel-toed boot to the ribs any easier to bear. He’d nursed his share of black eyes over the years. His little brother, Jason, had always been quick to swing when they were kids.

  Add in Michael and West’s penchant for college shenanigans, and he’d learned how to take a punch. The fact that he didn’t remember how he’d ended up in the alley was the clincher. The dude had a helluva right cross. Denver finding him in that alley had been unfortunate, but it was a lot better than having to explain his situation to his bandmates.

  At least she’d keep it quiet.

  Ryan huffed out a breath as they rounded the bend for the fourth flight of stairs. The stench of musty piss strengthened, as did the temperature. July in the city was a steambath of bad choices, and he’d walked right into a number of them tonight.

  Even worse, he’d lost way more than he could afford to. A hit single and a platinum record didn’t bring a bevy of cash with it—quite the misconception there. The band earned a good living—one that kept him in soda and kitty litter for Elvis, the Siamese cat who sometimes stayed at his place.

  Technically a stray, Elvis did what he wanted. They both liked it that way. And he’d never had to worry about anyone else since he’d moved to Los Angeles.

  He lived with West, but neither of them did much more than land at the apartment as a last resort. Between touring, the studio, and the occasional hookup, there wasn’t much reason to stay there, but they needed a home base. And he didn’t want to fuck with West’s precarious situation with Lauren. They were living in their little happy bubble and Ryan wasn’t going to be the one to pop it.

  Now he was overextended to the point where he wouldn’t make rent without a serious intervention from a money fairy. He could probably get an advance from Lila, their manager, but that would bring questions.

  Again, questions he didn’t want to answer. He’d gotten a taste of winning and had sat at the table for too long. He’d gotten too cocky.

  Even now he wanted to borrow a twenty from Denver and turn it into the grand he needed. Just a little seed money and he’d be good to go again. He’d be more careful this time.

  He clenched his fingers until his bones cracked.

  “You’re not telling me something.”

  “What’s there to say?”

  Not much when your best friend had to peel you off a pile of garbage bags. Oh, now he was supposed to ask her for money too?

  The idea of it made his dick shrivel to a bean.

  “You can tell me anything, Ry. You know that.”

  He scrubbed the top of his head. “Not this, Colorado.”

  “Nothing you can say will be worse than finding you in that alleyway.”

  He growled. “You would be wrong.”

  “Is it drugs?” She looked down at her sneakers as she jammed her fists into her pockets. “We can get you help.”

  “No. God, no. It’s…stupid.”

  She peered up at him. “Alley, remember?”

  He tipped his head back. “As if I can forget.”

  “Then spit it out.”

  “I fucked up. Like killed-my-bank-account fucked up and now I can’t make rent.”

  “Oh.” She blinked at him. “That’s no big deal. I can float you the money. I know you’re good for it.”

  “No.”

  Her eyebrows snapped together. “Why not? It’s just money.”

  He huffed out a laugh. “Only people who have money say that.”

  “Well, I’m not swimming in green, but I have plenty. I get my daily per diem and barely use that. Most of my paycheck just goes in th
e bank.”

  “Is that why you carry cash?”

  She shrugged. “We get twenty-five a day just for pocket money when you’re a driver. You see what I eat and drink.”

  He sighed. “Tea bags aren’t all that expensive.”

  She punched his arm. “Don’t forget the cupcakes.”

  “How could I forget your chocolate Hostess cupcakes?”

  “Damn right.” She bounced on the balls of her feet a little. “What do you need?”

  He blurted out his half of the rent before he could chase his tongue back into order.

  “I’ll have it to you by tomorrow.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Look, I know you guys have to wait on tours and shit to make the real money, but royalties will be coming in anyway, right?”

  “Yeah, supposedly.” They’d gotten advances set up like paychecks with an option for a bonus if they hit the charts. Well, they’d hit the top twenty on Billboard. It just took time for the money to come in.

  “Then you can give it back to me next paycheck. All good. Now can we go?”

  “Yeah.” He blew out a breath and turned for the stairs with a hiss. He’d almost forgotten how hard he’d landed on the pavement earlier.

  “Are you sure you’re all right? We can—”

  “I’m fine. Just a little banged up. A hot shower and some sleep is all I need.”

  Her huge brown eyes searched his. Even now he knew he was squirming under her scrutiny. He’d never been great at subterfuge when it came to his friends and family. Poker tables were easy. It was a game to find a way around tics and tells when it came to strangers.

  Denver Casey saw way too much.

  Since the first day he’d met her, she’d called him on his bullshit. It was one of the main reasons he’d glommed on to her. He’d only kept things in the friend zone because she didn’t seem inclined to get naked with him. After a few weeks, he’d become more worried about messing up their friendship, so friend zone he stayed. Usually he could ignore the knocking of his cock against his zipper.

  Most of the time.

  His eyes dropped to her ass as she hiked the stairs ahead of him to the next floor. With herculean effort, he moved his gaze to her slim back and bouncing ponytail. Much safer.