The Girl's Got Secrets (Forbidden Men #7)

by Linda Kage

  “Sure.” I dusted crumbs off my fingers and onto the thighs of my jeans, tempted to lick them clean. “The box is over there. I usually keep it here in the garage because it just seems easier that way. Less of a chance to misplace anything.”

  Sticks nodded and sat his bag on the floor next to his stool. As he wandered toward the box, I returned to the bike and tried to come up with a line to complement the last few I’d written, but nothing seemed to measure up.

  “Hey, there are a couple of receipts in here too,” Sticks spoke up suddenly, making me glance over to watch him frowning into my box.

  “Yeah.” I waved my pen. “I put everything related to the band in there. Like a catchall. It’s simple and helps me keep track of where things are.”

  “Really?” His eyebrows rose in disbelief. “Because I don’t know how you could find jack shit in here. This thing is a fucking mess.”

  I had to laugh at the horror on his face. “Feel free to organize it however you like,” I said. “Just don’t lose anything.”

  Sticks snorted. “You’re worried about me losing something? Increíble.”

  “Oh, shut up, smartass.” I laughed and reread the last line, finally coming up with a new one.

  Holden arrived then. It took Gally another five minutes to show, so while I continued to fiddle with my song, Sticks attempted to drag a conversation out of Holden while he stacked papers on the floor around the box, but he didn’t have any more luck than I’d ever had. Holden only answered him with a couple grunts and a nod or shake of the head.

  Once everyone had arrived, I put my pen and paper down, and we spent a good half hour hashing out which songs we wanted to sing for the Chicago gig. For the new drummer’s benefit, I added “Hot for Teacher” to our list of cover songs since we didn’t have enough original compositions yet to last through a full show, and it reminded me of Noel, who’d hooked up with his college professor and married her.

  Sticks hooted in pleasure when I mentioned that choice, which made me smile. No one really picked on the song choices I’d selected; it was the order in which I wanted to sing them that set Gally off into a tangent.

  “Man, ‘Stone-Hearted’ is our biggest hit. We need to lead with that shit.”

  “I disagree,” Sticks spoke up. “No concert I’ve ever been to started with their most popular song. It needs to wait until later, so people have time to show up and then make them stick around a bit waiting for it. About three-fourths of the way into the set is best.”

  Which had been exactly where I’d placed it. I sent Sticks an appreciative smile, but Gally sniffed. “Shut up, queer. You don’t have a say in this.”

  “Hey!” Glaring at the bass guitarist, I snapped, “Will you stop with the derogatory remarks already? And yes, he does too have a say. Sticks is just as much of a member of Non-Castrato as any of us are now.”

  Gally sent us a round of dirty scowls, but at least he shut his trap before he moodily crossed his arms over his chest and muttered, “Whatever.”

  “I think it needs to come later, too,” Holden finally said.

  “Three against one,” I told Gally with maybe a bit too much glee.

  “I said what the fuck ever,” he snapped. “But I think we should start with that Kongos song then. ‘Come with Me Now.’”

  “Actually, we should probably start with an original,” Sticks argued.

  I knew Gally was going to say something else totally uncalled for, and I was fully prepared to come down on him for it, but at the last second, he closed his mouth and smoothed up his Mohawk, which was green today. “Hell, why doesn’t gay boy here just decide everything?”

  “Honestly,” I said. “I already had an order planned, and yeah, the first song I put down was ‘Ceilings.’”

  Sending me two thumbs-up, Sticks mouthed, Good one.

  I had to glance away to keep from grinning, which I had a feeling would send Gally into an even moodier pout. So I read off the complete list I’d planned. Everyone had their own input, so we tailored it until most everyone was happy. By the time we actually got to practicing any of the songs, I was so ready to drown myself in music I picked the most vocally challenging ones that forced me to put everything into my voice.

  By the time we finished, my throat was a little sore from the workout, but I felt better than ever, achieving a high that only came when I sang.

  “Shit, man,” Sticks said in awe. “You sure can belt out a melody when you want to.”

  I grinned at him, amused with the way he’d phrased his compliment. “Not so shabby yourself, drummer boy. You weren’t lying when you said you did a good rendition of ‘Hot for Teacher.’”

  “Oh, Jesus.” Gally groaned. “I’m leaving before you two start complimenting each other’s purses and hair ribbons. Go shopping at the mall together or something, and get it out of your system already. Fuck.”

  With that, he flung his guitar strap over his shoulder and stomped from the garage.

  “He doesn’t like it when he doesn’t get his way,” Holden said in his deep, quiet voice.

  “That or it’s just his time of the month,” Sticks agreed.

  I laughed. “Well, I think we have a decent list to play on Saturday, despite his mood.”

  “We totally do.” Sticks stood and stretched his muscles. “We are so going to rock the fuck out of that club.” He returned to the box of music sheets and receipts, picking up where he’d left off in his self-appointed task of organizing.

  I packed my guitar, and Holden did the same, waving us goodbye before silently slipping out the opened bay door.

  Sticks glanced my way as I found a more comfortable place to sit than the bicycle seat and hiked my ass onto the top of an old scarred nightstand table.

  He frowned. “You don’t have to stick around here just for me. I’ll close the door when I leave.”

  “It’s fine. We have to padlock it too, and I haven’t gotten you a key yet. So, yeah, I kind of do have to stick around.”

  “Oh.” He stood abruptly. “Shit, sorry. I can go then. I didn’t mean to keep you.”

  “No, really.” I waved him back down. “I’m in no hurry. I don’t have to be at work for another hour or so. And this…” I motioned to the notebook I was writing in. “I can do here just as easily as I can at home.”

  He gingerly reseated himself on the floor where he’d been sitting with his legs crossed. “Well, if you don’t mind… I think I’ll finish organizing this shit then, or it’ll drive me batty.”

  With a laugh, I waved him on. “Knock yourself out, man.”

  So we worked in companionable silence for a while until he suddenly said, “All these songs are written in the same handwriting.”

  “Yeah.” I glanced up curiously. “Was there a question in there?”

  “No, I just…” Sticks looked down at the sheet music, then a couple other pages. Then he whipped his head up to gape at me. “Wait. Did you…?”

  I arched an eyebrow, waiting for him to continue.

  Finally, he blurted, “How many of the songs for Non-Castrato did you write personally?”

  I cocked my head to the side, confused. “All of them. Why?”

  “All….all of them?” he squawked. “Get out. Even ‘Ceilings’?”

  Unable to help myself, I grinned. “Yeah. Why? You like that one, don’t you?” I knew he did. It was the only one he ever requested.

  “I love it,” he gushed. “I can’t believe you wrote that.”

  “Yeah, I could tell it was your favorite. What makes you like it so much?”

  Sticks lifted a hand as if to wipe hair out of his eyes, when there wasn’t any hair in his face. “I don’t know…” The move made me crinkle my eyebrows because I’d seen Caroline do that to her hair many times. Made me wonder if he’d recently had long hair. “It reminds me of my mom, I guess,” he finally answered.

  That caught my attention. “Really? Your mom?”

  With a nod, he mumbled, “Yeah, she uh…she was p
retty heavy into drugs for a while there when I was younger.”

  I understood immediately. “Ceilings” was a depressing song. The lyrics followed the journey of a girl who spent her life looking up at ceilings during her most pivotal moments. She fell in love while staring up at the ceiling of the backseat of her boyfriend’s car. Then she gazed up at the ceiling of an auto repair shop where she was hiding when a drive-by shooting took his life. The ceiling of the hospital was what she watched as she gave birth to her dead lover’s baby at sixteen. And she cried up at that very same ceiling as she made the decision to sneak out of the hospital and abandon him. When her family refused to have anything to do with her, she hooked up with a drug dealer who turned her into a nasty addict. And she stared up at the ceiling of her bathroom as she tried to abort the baby that drug dealer had knocked her up with. And finally, she gazed up at the ceiling of his living room while the drug dealer took her life.

  “It’s such a poignant, way-too realistic story that always sends shivers up my arms.” Sticks rubbed them now as goose flesh pebbled the skin. “And every time I hear it, I don’t know…I automatically think of my mom.”

  I stared silently at Sticks, experiencing a weird connection with him I’d never experienced with anyone else before. Because what he said…it rang exactly true for me too. I always thought of my mom when I sang it. Probably because it was about her, but whatever.

  Remy gave a sudden, self-conscious shrug. “I mean, if her family hadn’t kept such a tight leash on her, I could’ve so easily seen my mom falling into that very kind of life, hooking up with some guy who beat her to death and everything. Hell, if it hadn’t been for my uncle and grandma, she probably would’ve either left me at the hospital or tried to abort me, too.”

  My heart thudded in my chest, because I totally got what he meant. “That sucks,” I murmured. “What ended up happening to her?” But I already knew it couldn’t be a happy ending. I didn’t know anyone who’d gotten into drugs and then met a good ending.

  Sticks glanced down at his hands. “She fried her brain and ended up in a mental institution.”

  “Jesus.” I shook my head, sympathy filling me. “I’m sorry, man.”

  But he only shrugged. “Not your fault. I’m the one who’s the shittiest kid ever, because I can’t even stand to visit her. It hurts too much. She never remembers who I am. Last time, she thought I was her sister.”

  I frowned. Then I said, “You mean, she thought she was your sister?”

  The expression on Sticks’s face froze before he shook his head. “Uh…yeah. What did I say?”

  “You said she thought you were her sister.”

  “Oh. Shit. Sorry. Anyway, if it weren’t for Abuela and Tío Alonso, it’s hard to know where I would’ve ended up, but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have been anywhere good.”

  When he began to play with the necklace he wore, I lifted an eyebrow. “Abuela?”

  “Yeah. That’s Spanish for grandmother. She, along with my mom’s older brother Alonso, plus a couple more of her younger brothers, and all their families came to America two years before I was born. They’re a huge, overly religious group that’s always in everyone else’s business, but…I still kind of respect them for that. It keeps us together, you know, taken care of, which is a hell of a lot better off than I know I’d be on my own.”

  I continued to watch as he toyed with the necklace’s medallion before my curiosity got the better of me. “Is that a family heirloom?”

  “Hmm? Oh, this? No. Well… I guess, yeah. Abuela told me it was her mother’s but it’s actually just a pendant of la Virgen de Guadalupe.”

  I shook my head. “Who?”

  Sticks grinned. “The saint…Guadalupe. She’s famous in México. If you see someone wearing this, they’re probably Mexican. Personally, I’m not super religious, but…I don’t know. I like to wear it anyway. It reminds me of my roots, my family. It brings me a level of comfort, as if I’m home again. My family… It’s strange, but no one can drive me as crazy as they do. They’re all, like, complete opposites of me, but…there’s just something about them I adore. I love their culture, and Latin pride, and just everything that makes them them. They’re my heritage. My foundation.”

  “That’s cool.” I watched the gold of Guadalupe’s image glint in the light and suddenly wished I had some family heirloom too. But, nope. “I don’t have anything like that.” I glanced down at my feet where I was idly winding a guitar cord around the toe of my shoe. “My mom…she’s the girl in the song. So my roots, a family foundation, just sort of got yanked out of the ground with her.”

  I have no idea why I told him that. It was just…he’d told me about his mom. It only felt right to say something about my own, especially since both of ours had fallen into similar addictions.

  He frowned at me a second before his eyes bugged. “You mean in ‘Ceilings’? You wrote that about your mom? It’s all…factual?”

  I nodded. “Every single word.”

  “But…” He shook his head, and I could tell he was trying to figure out which kid I was; the one she’d left at the hospital or the one she’d tried to kill in the womb.

  So, I said, “I was her failed abortion attempt, the mistake she had with the drug dealer.”

  Remy’s mouth dropped open. “Whoa. So, wait… Then, your dad…?”

  “Is in jail. Statesburg,” I added stupidly.

  “Holy shit. Where were you when he, you know…?”

  “Killed her? I was sitting on the couch.” I have no idea why I answered his question. I didn’t want to talk about it. But then I just kept…talking. “Eating a bowl of cereal and watching Power Rangers on TV.”

  That old familiar weight of crushing guilt swept over me. Not sure how to combat it, I swiped a hand through my hair. “He came in one morning from being out somewhere, probably at some other woman’s place, and asked where she was. I just said she was in her room, didn’t bother to mention she wasn’t there alone. And I didn’t bother to run and warn her that he was home. It only got me into trouble whenever I involved myself in the shit those two stirred with each other. But, Jesus, I can’t help but wonder…if I’d only done something that morning instead of eating my breakfast and watching TV, things would’ve turned out a lot different.”

  “How old were you?” Sticks asked quietly.

  I shook my head. It didn’t matter. I’d been old enough to know they’d fight when he found her in bed with one of his drug-dealing partners. But I said, “Seven.”

  “Jesus. What the hell were you supposed to do at seven?”

  “I don’t know.” I stared at the wall, seeing nothing. “Something. When he finally went back there and found them together, I still did nothing. My dad started shouting and the other dude came running out of the room, pulling on his pants. Then Mom started shouting. I guess she packed a bag and threatened to leave because she came storming into the front room with a suitcase, clothes sticking out each end. When she tried to open the front door—”

  “Wait. Did she just plan on leaving you there?” The shock in Remy’s eyes made me sniff in amusement.

  “It wasn’t the first time. But she always came back for more shit to stuff up her nose, so I wasn’t too concerned about never seeing her again. When my dad slammed the front door to keep her from leaving and then hit her, I still wasn’t surprised. They pounded on each other all the time. And if I tried to help either of them, the other would turn on me and pound on me, so I just continued to sit there like an idiot…as he killed her.”

  “Fuck, Asher. What he did wasn’t your fault. You don’t really think you could’ve stopped him and saved her, do you? He would’ve just turned on you and killed you too.”

  “I could’ve run and gotten help,” I argued. “But I just sat there and watched as he shoved her into the television and broke it. When it landed on top of her and shot sparks everywhere, she fucking screamed in pain and I just…I just watched. It wasn’t until she was already gone and h
er lifeless glassy eyes were staring up at the ceiling that I did anything. My dad looked at me with shock and panic, and I knew…I was next. I’d seen too much. So…finally, that’s when I ran.”

  “¡Dios mío!” Sticks set his hand over his mouth. “Where did you go? Did he catch you?”

  I shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable for sharing so much. “Just to a neighbor’s place. The old guy who lived there let me stick around until the police showed up, so no…my dad never caught me. I didn’t see either of them again that day. The next place I saw him was in the courtroom when I had to give my testimony.”

  “Damn, that’s…intense.”

  I cleared my throat and glanced at the papers he’d stopped sorting and was still holding fisted in his hand. “If you want, you can just take the box home with you. Bring it back later.”

  I didn’t want to hang around here much longer, not after opening up the way I had.

  “Huh?” Sticks glanced down at his hand and then jumped. “Oh, shit. Sorry. But yeah, sure. I’ll do that.” He started to stuff the sheets back into the box, but froze when he saw something already in there. “What…what is this?”

  He pulled the single page closer to read it, his eyes growing bigger with each second. “Oh…fuck,” he whispered.

  “What?” I asked, curious…but also relieved for a complete subject change.

  Looking up with a dazed expression, he waved what looked like my hand-printed sheet music for one of our songs. “This isn’t…we don’t play this song. Where did this come from?”

  I took it from his hand and immediately groaned. “Oh, Jesus. I need to burn this damn thing.”

  “No!” Sticks hopped to his feet and snagged it from me, only to hold it protectively against his chest, gaping at me in horror. “You can’t. Just…what is it?”

  I sighed, my shoulders slumping in defeat. Talking about this was almost as bad as telling him about what had happened between my parents. “It’s just a stupid song I wrote after seeing some girl sing on karaoke night at the bar.”