by Jayne Frost
“Mr. Knight, I hope you’ve had a pleasant stay,” he said, loading my suitcases onto the cart.
“Fine.”
Grabbing my sunglasses from the table, I looked around the room for any items I might have left behind. Only the memory of Lily in every corner of the room and in every object she touched remained. Closing the door, I left it all behind and trudged toward the lobby. The farther I walked, the stronger the ache in my chest became.
I turned and ran for the bungalow. Pushing open the door, I crossed the room and pulled the drawing from the trash.
I’m sorry. Please don’t hate me.
Folding the drawing in half, I stowed it in my backpack.
“I’ve got to make a stop.” Sliding into the limo seat, I looked at each of my bandmates.
Logan and Christian nodded while Sean looked out the window. He was the only one that left a girl behind when we started the band. Ally, his high school sweetheart. She was a really nice girl. Sean crawled into a bottle for a month when she married someone else. At the time, I thought it was weak. But if alcohol would make this ache go away, I’d bathe in it.
“Thanks. It won’t take too long.”
The silence was deafening. Logan scanned the local newspaper, quickly folding it in half and tucking it under his leg. He didn’t need to bother. My twitter was blowing up with the news of my “confession.” My declaration. My disaster. Downing my vodka and orange juice, I placed the glass in the cup holder, wiping my sweaty palm on my jeans when we pulled to a stop.
“I’ll be right back.” Swinging the door wide, I stepped out, searching for any landmarks to jar my memory.
I headed up the cement path, hooking a left at the first set of doors. Ducking into the alcove, I spotted the familiar mat in front of the door to Lily’s apartment.
I kneeled down and lifted the mat, pulling the small plastic bag that contained the necklace with the gold pick out of my pocket. Laying it next to the solitary key, I replaced the mat and pushed to my feet. I pressed my forehead to the door, cursing her under my breath even as I said a silent prayer for her to find me there. It took a good five minutes to tear myself away. Turning, I ignored the tug in my chest and walked back along the same path I had come on.
Chapter 23
We love you, Dallas! Goodnight!” Logan shouted into the mic as the audience went wild.
Pulling the strap off my neck, I handed the guitar to one of our roadies and headed toward the light at the side of the stage. The crew for the next band brushed past me in a frenzy to set up their equipment while ours was being torn down.
My t-shirt clung to my damp skin, chilling me in the night air as I pushed through the curtain. The crowd was whipped into a frenzy after our last number. The air was electric with excitement, and the ground shook beneath us.
“Fuck yeah!” Logan turned, pulling me in for a bear hug. “You were on fire!” He pulled back, taking my head between his hands.
“Fuck yeah, I was!” I yelled above the roar.
“That was amazing!” Sean crashed into my back, throwing an arm around my neck.
I turned and gave him a hearty pat on the back. The high of performing had me on top of a mountain. My head was in the clouds as we pushed our way to the dressing room. Christian ambled behind us, talking to one of the crew.
Grabbing a beer from the bucket filled with ice in the hallway, I twisted the cap and downed half in one gulp.
“Lookie-lookie.” Logan whistled, turning to me and raising a brow. Twenty or so girls lined the hallway in front of our dressing room. Blonds, brunettes, and redheads. It was a smorgasbord of perfect tits and firm asses in tight micro minis.
“Betty or Veronica?” he yelled over his shoulder at me as he waded into the adoring crowd.
Downing the last half of my beer, I slid between two girls, pulling them to my sides. They squealed their approval, running their hands over my chest, my stomach, and my ass.
Arching a brow at Logan, I slid my hand to Blondie’s ass and squeezed.
“Both.”
My head was pounding.
Pounding. Pounding.
Jerking up, I looked around the dark room. I ran my hand over my bare chest, my eyes adjusting to the single beam of light that cut through the blackout curtains.
Pounding. Pounding.
“Open the fucking door!” Logan’s voice and more pounding.
Shit. Sliding off the bed, I wobbled to my feet.
“I’m coming!” I stumbled toward the door. “Stop the fucking —” pulling the door open, I reeled back like a vampire against the harsh light in the hallway, “—pounding,” I groaned.
“It’s about fucking time. I’ve been out there for ten minutes.” Logan brushed past me, stalking to the window and throwing open the drapes. “Our plane leaves in two hours.”
“Oh, God,” I groaned, walking listlessly to the bed and falling on top of it. “I’m dying.”
He chuckled. “You’re not dying, you fucking pussy.”
I was dying. Or I was dead.
“What the fuck happened?” I buried my face in the pillow.
The very cool, soft pillow. It was the best fucking pillow I’d ever felt.
“To you?” Logan smiled, dropping onto the couch and planting his feet on the coffee table. “About a fifth of Jack.”
Lifting my head, I looked around. “Where is everyone?”
Bits and pieces of the night filtered through my foggy brain. Betty and Veronica. The limo. I tried to piece it together.
“Sean and Christian are downstairs.” Logan stifled a yawn.
“What about…the girls?” I swallowed hard.
The girl. My girl. Lily. If I was going to have a bout of amnesia, why couldn’t it be her that was erased from my memory? I rubbed my bare chest, the ache returning the moment I thought of her.
“What girls?” He snorted. “The ones you chased off with your whining about Lily? Her hair, her eyes, her feet…really, bro? Her feet?”
“She has cute toes,” I blurted. “So I didn’t—”
“Nail Betty and Veronica? Fuck, dude, you couldn’t.” He smirked. “After you drank all the Jack, you curled in a ball and passed out.”
Great. Lily not only ripped my heart out, she took my balls along for the ride.
“I’m going to grab some breakfast.” Logan pushed to his feet. “Take a shower. You stink.”
I pulled the pillow over my head.
“We’re leaving in thirty minutes.” Stalking over to me, he kicked my leg. “With or without you.”
“I’ll be there,” I grumbled.
I wanted to get out of Dallas as fast as I could. Two hundred miles away from Lily might be far enough to cure the ache.
My stomach dropped as the elevator descended. I pressed my back against the wall when we stopped at different floors and more people piled in. By the time we got to the lobby, I could feel the bile rising in my throat.
Pulling my sunglasses from the neck of my t-shirt, I slipped them on, ignoring the remaining Jack that sloshed around in my empty stomach. The whoosh of cool air hit my face when the doors slid open. Hoisting my backpack higher on my shoulder, I took a few steps into the atrium and knelt down to tie my shoe.
A pair of high heels stepped into my line of sight, stopping just short of the tips of my boots. I looked up, my gaze falling on the white gold pick hanging from the delicate chain and then up to the sky blue eyes. My hand was frozen, my fingers wrapped in the laces of my boots.
The crease on Lily’s forehead deepened the longer I stared.
“C-Cameron.” She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”
Pushing to my feet, I looked down at her hesitantly. “Lily, what are you doing here?”
“I came to apologize. I didn’t know what to do.” Looking down, her hand went to her neck, fidgeting with the pendant. “I got scared.”
The urge to grab her and wrap her in my arms was so strong my fingers curled into fists at my side. “Scared of me
—of us?”
“N-no.” Blinking up at me, tears welled in her eyes. “Of everything.”
Softening, I ran my hand down her arm, lacing our fingers. “Baby, what are you scared of?”
“A lot of things.” She gave me a watery smile. “I talked to my father. He just wants me to be happy. And I can’t be happy without you. I-I want us to be together. But I don’t even know what that looks like.”
“Like this.” Slipping my hand in her hair, I cupped her neck, tilting her face to gently brush a kiss to her lips. She stood, fixed in her spot. Breathing with me. Being with me. Her eyes locked with mine.
“And like this.” I kissed her again. Falling into her. She parted her lips, a deep sigh escaping a second before her tongue tangled with mine slowly. So slowly.
Bending time in that way that she did, the last twenty-four hours disappeared along with the ache in my chest.
Chapter 24
Two Months Later
It’s a full house.” Logan burst in the room, clapping his hands and rubbing them together feverishly. “You know who’s out there?”
Glancing at him, I continued to jot down the lyrics that were filling my head. I wrote like a demon when Lily and I were apart. I managed to convince the guys to stay in Austin for the last couple of months while we worked on songs for the next album. Yeah, I had my reasons. And they knew it.
It turned out for the best. Every time I returned from my weekly trip to Dallas, I had a new song to work on for our weekend shows at The Parish. Caged was playing a prolonged engagement at my brother’s club. It wasn’t a hardship. The Parish was the largest venue in Austin, and the biggest bands in the country graced the stage from time to time.
“Dylan Boothe and Liam McConnell,” Logan whooped. “FRONT ROW.”
Sean crashed through the door with Christian hot on his heels. “Guess who’s here?”
“Dylan and Liam,” I deadpanned, trying to hide my smile when his face fell.
Dylan Boothe and Liam McConnell were the lead singers for Leveraged and Revenged Theory, respectively. Along with Drafthouse, they made up the “Big Three:” the powerhouse trio of bands that hailed from Austin. They dominated the charts and sold out venues from coast to coast.
“What do you think they’re doing here?” Sean grabbed a beer from the bucket on the table and twisted off the cap. “And where’s the rest of the crew?”
We knew every member of the Big Three, but not well.
I shrugged. “They’re not touring right now.” Chewing on the pen I was holding, I reclined against the cushions of the couch. “I heard Leveraged is cutting an album in L.A.”
“I’m surprised Tori let them stray that far from home base,” Logan said, motioning for me to throw him a beer. “She keeps pretty close tabs on them. I don’t know how they can stand it, letting their manager call all the shots.”
I raised a brow at Logan.
“I know, I know.” He rolled his eyes. “She’s not a ‘regular’ manager, but she’s not performing anymore. I had to do a double-take when I saw her in the paper a couple weeks ago. She was wearing a suit. I mean, it was a chick suit, and she looked pretty fucking fine, but it was still a suit.”
“Dude.” Christian shook his head incredulously. “You know why she doesn’t perform. Have a little empathy.”
Logan looked down at his boots. The room fell silent for a moment, the way it always did when someone spoke about Tori Grayson. She was our age, no more than twenty-six, but she was a legend. Her band, Damaged, was the first band out of Austin in two decades to hit it big. Huge. Tragically, they were cut down at the height of their fame. A freak bus accident took Rhenn Grayson, Tori’s husband and the genius front man for Damaged, and Paige Dawson, her best friend and their lead guitarist.
“Who cares how she looks—it’s a miracle she’s still breathing,” Christian said quietly. “She broke nearly every bone in her body.” Wincing, he reached reflexively for his ribs. The injury was slow to heal, taking a month before he was able to walk around without taping his ribs. And he was only in the hospital overnight. Tori had been in a rehab center for months.
Looking at the clock above the door, I felt the band around my chest tighten. Lily was on the road, making the two hundred mile trip from Dallas. The thought of her bleeding or broken from an accident turned my blood to ice water. The girl was still too stubborn for her own good. She wouldn’t let me buy her a car. At least she agreed to “borrow” mine. I promptly went out and bought a Mercedes SUV, the safest one on the market.
“Where’s Lily?” Logan read my expression, his brow furrowing.
“She’s on her way.” I glanced at the clock again.
Sean stood up to grab a beer, nodding toward my phone. “Call her.”
The guys loved Lily. They prodded her almost as much as I did about making the move to Austin. I almost cracked Sean in the head one day when I heard him talking to her about handcuffs, until I realized he was threatening to kidnap her and bring her here by force.
My leg bobbed as I waited for her to answer. “Hey, baby!” I barely heard Lily’s voice over the blast of music in the background. It was so loud, I nearly burst an eardrum. “Turn the music down!”
I released the shout a second after the music died in the background.
“What are you yelling at, Cam?” she said, the amusement in her voice evident.
The guys sipped their beer, taking in the floorshow. Since girls weren’t allowed in the dressing room any longer, this was the only entertainment they got anymore.
“Nothing.” Raising my brows at them, I put my index finger to my lips. “Where are you?”
She let out a sigh. “We go through this every time. If I tell you where I’m at, you’re going to start worrying. If I hit traffic, you’ll be distracted when you go onstage. I’ll be there in a little while.”
“Ok.” Chewing my lip, I raked a hand through my hair. “Be careful.”
“I will. I love you.”
It never got old. Not the first time she said it, the night she found me in the lobby of the Omni, and not now.
“I love you too, baby. So damn much.”
“I love you, Lily. So much,” Logan mimicked me in a high-pitched voice, making smacking noises as he leaned toward the phone. He jumped back when I jerked the beer bottle I was holding, spewing suds on his vintage Pearl Jam t-shirt.
“Asshole,” he muttered.
Lily cracked up. “Be nice. I’ll see you soon.”
Clicking the button on the side of the phone when it went dark, I looked down at her picture. The only thing worse than not having her here was having her here part-time. I glanced at clocks and counted minutes, whether she was here or there, only getting any peace when we were so close I could feel her breath.
Three loud raps on the door brought me to the present. Moving to the door, Logan looked over his shoulder at me. I raised a brow in warning.
“I know, you big pussy,” he groused, leveling me with a glare as he pulled the door open. “No chicks in the dressing room.”
“Well, I’m in the clear,” Dylan Boothe said as he sauntered in, an easy smile on his face, “since I don’t have a vagina.” He turned and looked at Liam who was a step behind. “Better wait outside, Liam.”
The room burst into a fit of cackles.
“Very funny, asshat.” Liam chuckled.
Sean reached into the metal ice bucket, offering the guys a beer.
They took it gratefully, surveying the dressing room.
Dylan leaned against the wall. “Sweet setup you guys got here. I wouldn’t mind spending a few weeks at home.”
“I wouldn’t mind selling out a few of those arenas.” Logan chuckled. “But we needed a break. Why are you guys in town?”
“Eh, Tori called a meeting.” Dylan shrugged, letting his eyes drift around the dressing room. “She’s announcing a big memorial concert at Zilker for Rhenn and Paige.”
The event would be major if it was taking pla
ce at Zilker. The Big Three were the only acts large enough to bring in the kind of crowd it would take to fill it. The fact that it was a memorial show for the greatest band that ever came from these parts only sweetened the pot.
“That sounds epic.” Taking a sip of my beer, I glanced at the clock. Again.
“Are y’all touring soon?” Dylan looked confused when my band mates turned to me.
“What are y’all looking at me for?” I raised a brow. “I’m not the one that books the tours. And I didn’t fire our manager.”
“Hey!” Logan protested. “I was standing up for your girl, man. Remember?”
Nodding, I smiled.
“You know, I could talk to Taryn for you,” Dylan offered. “She might be able to solve your management issue. No promises though.”
“Taryn?” Crossing his arms, Logan waited for Dylan to elaborate. “I thought y’all were exclusive with Tori?”
Dylan took a sip of his beer. “Taryn is Tori’s partner. Well, kind of. She managed Damaged when Tori was still playing in the band. Everyone always gives Tori credit, because of the story, you know?” His smile faded a little. The story. The tragedy. “And she’s always managed Leveraged. She’s Derik’s girl. Was Derik’s girl,” he amended.
I didn’t have a nemesis, but if I did, it would be Derik, the guitarist for Leveraged. He did most of the writing and arranging, the same way I did for Caged. And the boy could shred a guitar.
“Where is Derik?” I was going for casual, but I didn’t fail to notice Logan’s smirk.
“Working out some shit in L.A.” Dylan shifted his gaze to Liam. A tense look passed between them. “He’ll be home soon. He’s seeing someone out there. But she ain’t from Texas.”
Liam snorted. “And she ain’t Taryn.”
“Anyway.” Dropping his bottle in the big, metal trashcan, Dylan turned to Logan. “I’ll talk to Taryn about y’all after the concert. She’s got a lot on her plate right now. Are you guys in a big rush? Signing with her is worth the wait.”
We all nodded when Dylan’s gaze swept the room. Signing with Twin Souls, Tori’s management company, would definitely be worth the wait. But I wasn’t holding my breath. We weren’t signing with some junior manager, even if it was at the most sought after management company in the country. Tori was notorious for turning down any band that directly competed with the Big Three. Not that we were in the same league, but we were close. We were all from Austin and played similar music.