Playing At Love: A Rogue Series Novel

by Lara Ward Cosio

  Conor rolled his eyes. “Do me a favor, honey?”

  “Oui, mon cher?”

  “Keep in mind that I’m trying to repair my friendship with Gavin. I need you on my side, not working against me.”

  He felt her nod her head against his chest. The lack of her enthusiasm for his cause was disconcerting. In the silence between them, he absently stroked her hair and resigned himself to the likelihood that she wasn’t exactly the woman to help him fix his mistakes.

  CHAPTER NINE

  After the fiasco at the restaurant, Gavin lay awake in bed thinking of Conor choosing to be with a woman like Colette after he had admitted to loving Sophie for so long. The two women were so different that he couldn’t understand how Conor could go from loving one to the other.

  Memories of the silly games he had played when courting Sophie all those years ago came to mind. He had been so cocksure about everything in those days—sure that he and his band would be world-famous and sure that he could have Sophie if he wanted her. She had challenged him along the way but, of course, finally submitted. Which led him to the greatest journey of his life—the love and loss of her.

  Despite having worked to regain a true sense of control over his life for the first time in recent memory, there was an underlying emptiness. The void couldn’t be filled by his self-improvement efforts of getting his body and voice into shape, nor could it be lessened with the joy he felt when singing and creating with the band. The tentative relationship he had redeveloped with Conor over the past couple weeks had helped. What he was missing, however, were the two great females of his life: his mother and Sophie.

  Though, in truth, he had made an attempt with his mother. The reunion he had forced with her not long after returning brokenhearted from Los Angeles, had left him disillusioned and unfulfilled. He had spent his entire life justifying his mother’s absence and giving her the space he stubbornly imagined she needed in order to heal after the trauma of losing his two-year-old sister in a car wreck. He had funneled the pain of losing her into a fierce determination to become someone she would be proud of. Someone visible enough to eventually make connecting easier. Music had had a healing effect on him from an early age, and once he was old enough to understand that many of the artists he admired had also had some form of absent mother, he comforted himself with the idea that it was inevitable that he too would be a famous singer-songwriter. It had given him an unrealistic confidence in his teens, as he convinced himself his mother’s abandonment was his route to becoming something meaningful. Meaningful to others if not to her.

  The only problem with this scenario was that she never did reach out. Which meant that instead of feeling empowered by his success, he felt numb. After too much self-destructive behavior and feeling out of control, he had finally taken matters into his own hands and tracked his mother down. She had been delighted to see him, welcoming him with an awkward hug. Their conversation that evening had ranged from enlightening to confusing, healing to despairing. In the end, he recognized that his mother’s mental state was fragile and probably always had been. He walked out of her home offering her his friendship but yet neither had contacted the other. Above all else, he had determined that he didn’t want to be like his mother. He had idealized her for years but when he met her again as an adult he saw she had pushed away everyone who loved her. And he didn’t want to be that way. He didn’t want to push Sophie away when she had offered regret and apologies and promises of making it work.

  That epiphany had been months ago now, and as much as he still believed it, he couldn’t find the courage he needed to approach Sophie. He had purposely neglected any efforts with her. He knew he had to do one thing at a time. He chose the easier route of dealing with Conor first.

  But he knew he had to also think of how he could approach his estranged wife. How could he intrude upon the life she had built for herself without him? He saw enough of the tabloids to know that she had moved to New York City and was at the top of her game with modeling. Every now and then he caught a photo of her at a party or with a man. Though she was never reliably linked romantically with anyone specific, the implication was that she was open to dating.

  It sickened him that she might be with someone else physically, but the thought that she would invest emotionally in someone else was a worse feeling. He hadn’t touched another woman in these past months and wouldn’t even consider himself available to do so. But it was also true that he had abandoned their marriage, leaving her free to live her own life.

  He moved onto his side in bed, reaching for his cell phone. Scrolling through the contacts, he brought up her entry and stared at the photo he had placed there long ago. She was in this same bed, hand half covering her closed eyes and a laughing smile on her face. He smiled at her in return, unable to keep the old feelings at bay.

  Finally, he selected the text option and stared at the blank screen for several minutes, trying to conjure up something winsome to say. Of course he was faced with writer’s block. It was stupid to reach out to his estranged wife after almost four months of silence by text. But he wasn’t confident in how she would respond to his overture, so he chose the coward’s way out.

  “I know it’s late,” he keyed. “But let’s talk. Call me any time.” For someone known for his natural ability to charm, he knew this effort was terribly lacking.

  Grimacing, he hit “send” and put the phone on the bedside table.

  Before he could settle back and close his eyes, he heard a chime signaling a new text. He grabbed the phone quickly, unconsciously holding his breath as he retrieved the message.

  Confusion swept over him as he read an error message. The text he sent Sophie had bounced back. She had changed her cell number.

  He no longer had a way to get in touch with her.

  ~

  Gavin woke without knowing what had torn him from sleep. He looked at the clock. The digits glowed 4:36 and he was wide awake.

  Getting up from the warmth of the soft bedding, he pulled on pajama bottoms over his boxer briefs and wandered into his writing room. The space was small but comfortable with a corner window offering both sea and hillside views. There was a sound system with strategically hidden speakers. The twice-a-week housekeeper had neatly stacked his music books and magazines on the corners of a coffee table set before an overstuffed chair. An unadorned wood desk held his MacBook Pro and printer. Several leather-bound notebooks cluttered the rest of the desk surface. He opened one and found a blank page. Trailing his finger over the paper, he could see the words form in his distinctive handwriting before he even picked up a pen. They had been inspired by the thoughts of Sophie before drifting off to sleep. Songs sometimes came to him this way, almost fully formed. And when they did, he had to rush to set it all to paper before the vision ran away.

  ~

  When later that day it turned out that Martin’s youngest son fell ill and he couldn’t make it to Gavin’s house to work on new material, Shay argued that Conor had been right to say they should wait for him to get back from London to continue. Gavin resisted the delay, wanting to hang on to the momentum they had been building. But he was eventually convinced that Rogue was not a trio.

  That didn’t stop him from following the inspiration he found early that morning when he had begun writing in a frenzy. He was just resigned to the fact that he would have to work on it by himself.

  ~

  Over the next two days, Gavin finalized lyrics for a song he thought was honest. Then he began to compose the acoustic guitar that would go with it. Sitting alone in his living room, he performed for himself for hours. He got to the point where he didn’t want to work on it in a vacuum and yet was too excited about what he had created to wait until the band was together again to keep at it.

  And so it happened that at three o’clock on a Thursday afternoon, Gavin put on sunglasses and a hat and took his guitar to O’Connell Street to do some old-fashioned busking.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Conor
stood in the middle of the blindingly white photo studio backdrop waiting for Colette to finish being made up. The concept for the shoot was “simplicity,” which Conor found ironic given how much makeup was being put on Colette and how long it took for the lights to be adjusted.

  An industrial fan was rolled in front of him and turned on without warning. It made the tails of his white tuxedo shirt flap in the breeze. The photographer’s assistant, a lithe Asian man, snapped off several shots to test the light, and Conor’s patience waned.

  “We almost ready?” he asked.

  “Few more minutes,” the assistant replied in a sing-song voice.

  “Can we at least get some music?”

  “Oh sure. Let me sort it out.”

  Conor watched Colette over in the makeup chair. She was chatting with the crew while also tapping on her cell phone as false eyelashes were applied. He wondered how she could stand the boredom of this profession. It felt like 99% waiting and 1% action. At least when the band had photo shoots it was only a fraction of what went into their work.

  Acoustic guitar filled the room at high volume, followed by a familiar voice. Conor cocked his head, trying to sort out the song. He knew the voice. It was definitely Gavin but the guitar was not Conor’s.

  “What is this?” he asked, wandering over to the table where the assistant was looking at a laptop.

  “You don’t know?” the assistant said, incredulous.

  “Start it over.”

  Conor stared at the screen. He spent the next three minutes and forty-six seconds watching a YouTube video of his friend exposing his broken heart in song out on the Dublin streets.

  Take to bed, close your eyes, rest your head

  What would have been, bury those thoughts

  It was everything good we let slip away

  It was everything good we pushed away

  There’s no drug to numb you from this

  Wrap up this love for another day

  Didn’t keep you from throwing it all away

  They wrote our story from the start

  The greatest fiction is the heart

  When you tell yourself you don’t feel

  (Chorus)

  The sweetest would be

  The sweetest would be that won’t come to pass

  Darling don’t you know I didn’t want this

  We had it all and stumbled to defeat

  A piece of you and me, the sweetest would be

  Was this ever real or did we dream it

  Making big plans, we should have known

  It was only a tender vignette

  We conceived the one thing not meant to be

  Let’s steal time, darling, let’s still time

  Take to bed, rest your head, feel what’s missing

  It’s the ache in you and the hunger in me

  Feed it, give it everything you’ve got left

  You’re not done yet, don’t quit this

  Yeah you and me got more love, we got more

  (Chorus x2)

  The sweetest would be

  The sweetest would be that won’t come to pass

  Darling don’t you know I didn’t want this

  We had it all and stumbled to defeat

  A piece of you and me, the sweetest would be

  (Fading)

  You’ve got a lot left, you’ve got love, we’ve got love

  Gavin inhabited the song with his entire being. Every word appeared to weigh heavily on him as he grimaced and contorted with the effort of expression. He attacked the chorus, letting all of his anguish out with a kind of pain and rawness that couldn’t be mistaken. The performance was mesmerizing. As soon as it was over, Conor hit replay.

  “What is this?” Colette asked as she joined him and watched the screen for a moment. “Is Gavin going solo or something?”

  “Shh,” Conor told her softly.

  Colette, like the other million-plus viewers who had already seen the video, was drawn into watching what seemed to be an intense expression of pain by Gavin. When Gavin’s voice caught on the word “conceive” she couldn’t help but suck in her breath sharply.

  She took Conor’s hand as they watched it one more time.

  He felt the same wave of emotion once again until about halfway through when all at once he saw what was beneath the performance.

  “Oh, that’s clever,” he murmured.

  “What?” Colette asked with distraction, not pulling her eyes away from the screen.

  He didn’t want to tell her his take on this. He didn’t want to alter the obviously positive and empathetic impression she had of Gavin’s performance. Instead, he kept to himself the understanding that Gavin had performed a very personal song in a very public way—he had to have known he’d get photographed or recorded out there on such a tourist-laden street—in order to get attention for Rogue. The band had suffered such negative publicity in the past year, with the focus being on Gavin’s mother, drug abuse, and marriage falling apart. Now Gavin was offering this sweet song of regret and heartache as the first taste of new music from the band. And the song was good.

  Conor scrolled down the page to the comments section. There were already thousands of people writing to say how touched they were by the song and performance. It was clear that what Gavin had contrived through this performance ensured that Rogue was not only back in the news but in a positive and sympathetic way.

  More than that, though, Conor realized, Gavin had also just made his first step toward reaching out to Sophie. Gavin had to have had this in mind as well when he took to the street. It was a safe way to test the waters with her.

  ~

  The final Vogue cover shot would show Colette in an extremely short, intricately beaded silver dress with four-inch stilettos that made her legs look like they went on forever. Conor stood behind her, shirtless and pressing his face against her bare neck, his piercing blue eyes focused on the camera. With his classic good looks and hard physique, Conor fit right into the modeling world. Colette’s ring could clearly be seen as she held the flexed arm he had wrapped around her shoulders.

  Colette would have been over the moon with the cover had its release several weeks later not coincided with the publication of that year’s Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. The only thing that lessened her disappointment was the media focus her engagement ring garnered. It was a stunning seven-karat cushion cut diamond above double shank pavé platinum bands. The wedding band she would receive at the ceremony was a matching pavé style with two hundred and ten smaller round diamonds. With entertainment and wedding outlets estimating the cost of the ring as at least two-hundred thousand dollars, she happily made the list for most expensive celebrity engagement rings.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Colette answered the door at Conor’s house, and Gavin stifled his displeasure.

  “Out back, I presume?” Gavin asked, referring to Conor’s studio.

  He hadn’t seen Colette since that night at the restaurant and was glad for it but now he found her staring at him with doleful eyes.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “I just . . . you wrote an amazing song. I wanted you to know that,” she said.

  It had been a couple of weeks since the video of Gavin singing “The Sweetest Would Be” had become a viral internet sensation. The response had been phenomenal, with various media outlets declaring the song a sure sign that both Gavin and Rogue were on their way back to the top of the music scene.

  “Yeah, but the guitar part was crap, right?” he asked with a grin.

  “No. Everything about it is beautiful.”

  “Em, thanks,” he said, unsure what her next dig might be.

  “He’s in the studio.”

  Gavin gave her a small nod and moved past her.

  “The weirdest thing just happened,” Gavin said by way of greeting to Conor. “Your girl gave me a compliment.”

  “I told you the song had an effect on her,” Conor replied. “Listen, before the others
get here, I wanted to show you something.”

  Gavin tossed his keys and sunglasses onto the coffee table and sat down on the couch. “What is it?”

  “You know Colette was away doing some work a couple weeks ago?”

  For a moment Gavin thought Conor was going to tell him Colette had seen Sophie and had some sort of message for him. His chest tightened in anticipation.

  “Well, it was for Sports Illustrated—the swimsuit edition.”

  “Okay,” Gavin said warily.

  “Anyway, she didn’t get the cover but Sophie did. I got an early copy, thought you might want to see it in advance this time around.”

  Glancing down at the outstretched magazine in Conor’s hand, Gavin saw his wife on the cover. She was stunning. Her long blonde hair was partially wet, sticking to her shoulders, and the expression in her striking hazel-green eyes was one of pure determination—something he realized he hadn’t seen in too long. He had spent so much time dragging her down with him that he had almost forgotten the strength she used to exude. Then he took in the rest of her. Yes, she looked fit and strong, but also sexy in a skimpy flesh-toned bikini that upon first glance made her look nude, especially with the barest trace of her hardened nipples showing through.

  The headline was “Survival of the Fittest” and clearly alluded to the recent public struggles she had gone through—and survived.

  “So, it officially comes out tomorrow,” Conor said and waited in silence.

  “Good for her,” Gavin finally said. “She looks great.”

  Gavin hadn’t taken the magazine and so now Conor pulled it back and set it on the coffee table.

  “You’re fine with this, then?”

  “Sure, yeah. Whatever,” he said dismissively.

  “You don’t sound okay.”

  “I’m not thrilled that my wife is mostly naked on a magazine that men wank off to, you’re right,” Gavin snapped. “And you sitting out here with that doesn’t exactly make me feel any better either, but thanks very much for asking.”