by Tessa Bailey
He’d felt something, all right. Pity. He hadn’t taken care of her out of love, he’d done it out of guilt. Over their first encounter. Over wanting to play rough with a girl he didn’t think was mentally healthy enough to handle it. If she was being fair, her actions over the course of four years did nothing to prove his theory wrong. She’d been reckless, acting out at every opportunity. Perhaps it had been wrong to assume he could see beneath the surface to the strength beneath. Perhaps it had been naïve to think her trip to Modesto would show him in such a short space of time that she wasn’t just an unruly brat. She was a woman that loved him and hadn’t known how to express it, because she didn’t know what it looked like.
Until he’d shown her in his own way, among the trees, before tearing the ground out from beneath her.
Lita stared at the cards for long moments before rising to her feet and digging a pair of orange-handled scissors from the kitchen’s junk drawer. She sat back down on the floor and cut up the cards, snipping them in half, one by one. No more relying on other people for her needs. This was her life and she would take control. Starting now.
Ignoring the tears that blurred her vision, she dialed the bank to make an appointment to close her accounts and open new ones.
* * * *
James stared back at his reflection in the rearview mirror of his Mustang, wondering when he’d had time to grow a full beard. Although, time had become an irrelevant detail, hadn’t it? He showed up to places when he got there. Plans and schedules and punctuality were all laughable parts of a past life. The very notion of planning anything when his thoughts were so fucking occupied was impossible. He couldn’t think around the knowledge that Lita was somewhere hurting. And he was the cause. He’d been the cause for a very long time and making plans that didn’t include her felt like hurting her all over again, whether it made sense to his exhausted mind or not.
Since she’d walked away a little over a month ago, he’d worked. His father’s manager had shown back up to reclaim his position, but James hadn’t been ready to give up the distraction that was physical labor. So he’d taken on a co-managerial position that allowed him to take his frustration out on hard earth, day in and day out. Just as he’d done with Old News, James had found new avenues of success for the landscaping company, taking on eight new commercial contracts in the space of four weeks, allowing them to bring on new staff. Buy new equipment.
Distractions. All of them.
Distractions from the fact that he’d been wrong about Lita. He’d mistaken her inner strength for a weakness. She’d overcome huge obstacles in her life and he’d downplayed them, made them a pattern of which he’d become a part. Inexcusable. Her expression of horror and disappointment when she realized he’d underestimated her…it was the first thing he saw upon waking, if he managed to sleep at all. Most of the time, he didn’t. He lay awake, staring at the motel room ceiling, replaying their relationship since the very beginning.
At present, he’d made it to year two. The year Lita attempted to crack him with an extreme sports binge. Bungee jumping, cliff diving, racing lessons. He’d been a wreck for months, not sleeping for worry she’d sneak behind his back and attempt some stunt before he could verify it was secure. At the time, he’d been livid with Lita. Lecturing her nonstop. Using his authority to keep her out of harm’s way as much as possible. Now, James wished he could go back to those moments. Go back to having Lita parked on the tour bus bumper in front of him, belligerence in every line of her body…and tell her she was amazing.
That’s what she’d been trying to tell him, right? Show him? That she was resilient and unafraid. Daring and strong. While James had only seen someone hell-bent on harming themselves. How he could miss Lita’s message when he only ever looked at her baffled James. God, he’d been blind.
Well, he wasn’t now. And there was no way to come back from calling a woman like Lita weak. No way to repair four years’ worth of damage. He’d done the worst of it inside that very Mustang, could still feel the ghost of her sadness in the passenger seat, haunting him.
James shut off the ignition and stepped out of the car, into the hospital parking lot. His father was being released tomorrow and enough was enough. He’d respected the man’s wishes not to visit since arriving in town, but James’s resolve not to go after Lita was taking a rapid nosedive. He missed her like fucking hell. Missed her wit. Her cocky smile. And now he knew what she felt like beneath him, knew the bliss of being inside her. So going to her and begging until his face turned blue had become seriously appealing, especially since his return to Los Angeles was imminent. In order to prevent himself from going straight to her doorstep, he needed to go look his father in the face. And see himself reflecting back. James needed a reminder that Lita had a better future than one with a man like him.
A man who needed too much control. A man who needed to dominate her in an extreme way to get off. A man with violence in his blood. Lita might believe she loved him, but as he’d proven with his misjudgment, he wasn’t worthy of love that forgiving. He wasn’t worthy of a woman so strong when he couldn’t even overcome his own weaknesses.
James strode through the sliding glass hospital doors and walked straight into the waiting elevator. Since he’d been handling the insurance paperwork for his mother, he knew exactly where to find Malcolm Brandon in recovery. When he walked into the dimly lit room, one would have thought his father had been expecting him for the lack of surprise on his face. Malcolm had aged a lot, although since James hadn’t seen him in so long, it wasn’t apparent how much the stroke had to do with Malcolm’s pallid skin, new wrinkles. But his father’s eyes were exactly the same as he remembered. Steady and calculating.
“I don’t want to see you.”
James leaned against the far wall and crossed his arms. “Yeah? That’s too damn bad.”
Malcolm snorted. “Still not afraid of me.” At once, his father looked weary, his head flopping back against the pillows. “You never were.”
“No.” James waited for his father to start shouting, waited for his hands to fist in the bedclothes. To transform into the man of his memory. “I’m going back to Los Angeles tonight. I just needed to know some things before I went.”
After a heavy moment, his father waved a hand. Go ahead.
It took James a while to formulate exactly what he needed to say. He hadn’t walked in with a plan, only knew that he couldn’t let the opportunity to learn more about himself pass. “How did you stop?” He paced to the window without taking his attention from his father. “How did you learn to control the…violence?”
Malcolm’s face twisted. “What is this?”
“Just answer the question.”
His father’s shock faded in degrees. “I stopped feeling sorry for myself.” James hadn’t been expecting that answer at all, but Malcolm pushed on before he could question him. “Not all of us excel at whatever we set our minds to. Look at you, waltzing in here from Los Angeles and increasing my profit margins in the space of a month. Fifteen years ago, I would have hated you for that. Because I couldn’t do it. Still can’t do it.” The older man rubbed at the gray stubble dotting his jaw. “I would’ve felt how…smug you were. Even if you weren’t smug at all. And I would’ve felt the rage build and build at you, at myself. Until it took me over.”
A pushing started behind James’s eyes, someone prodding him with a fork from inside his head. This wasn’t what he’d expected at all. Wasn’t how he’d envisioned this conversation going. He’d expected to relate to his father on some unsettling level, but none of what Malcolm said sounded remotely familiar.
“It always went back to me feeling…less than. And it took me a lot of years to admit that.” He encompassed the room with a sweeping gesture. “I still feel less than once in a while. Why do you think I didn’t want you to see me like this?”
James stared out the window but saw nothing. “I thought you were still upset over all those times I called the police. Or what came af
ter. The fighting.”
“No. You did the right thing.” James turned to his father, saw his face was a mask of shame. “Thank God your mother forgave me or I’d have nothing.”
The fork behind James’s eyes twisted, visions of Lita’s smiling face in the forest dancing in his head. “So the violence…it was always about you. Not the person you focused it on?”
The older man’s swallow was audible. “James, sometimes I forgot who I was even fighting and only saw myself.”
Was it possible that he’d not only underestimated Lita…but himself, too? Never once had his urges been about harming Lita. Jesus. Never. His needs were driven only by giving her pleasure. Satisfying his darker tastes with her. Not using them against her. God, he’d even sensed she needed the same rough satisfaction he did. Perhaps she’d been the very thing that called his baser instincts to the surface.
No, not perhaps. Lita had been the catalyst, all those nights ago in that meat market bar. He’d not only spent the last four years denying his own needs, but hers as well. And that… That was unacceptable.
Every moment that passed without her was a crime. His stomach turned over and pulled, just imagining her miles away, alone, being her brave, irrepressible self without him. She didn’t need him. Her walking away had proven that. But James needed her to live, to breathe, to function. Needed her close.
Could he convince her to trust him again? How?
When the answer came to him, he was already halfway to Los Angeles.
Chapter Ten
Lita adjusted her headphones and closed her eyes, testing the drumsticks’ weight in her hands. Usually, that electric silence coming through the headphones before they started recording was chock-full of anticipation. Excitement. A high that couldn’t be explained to a non-musician. Sarge called it the Magic Minute and it was where he usually turned around and made some goofy face at her, guitar at the ready. He might even be doing it while she sat there, poised on her throne, but she couldn’t check because her eyes were stuck closed. She didn’t want to open them and see a stranger at the engineering desk.
Until now, the day they would begin recording the new album, Lita had been wearing blinders regarding the new manager. He would show up. She’d actually believed James would show up today. That he would be standing there, patient and sturdy, in the studio. That he would give her that classic James nod that meant, right, let’s get the show on the road. But he wasn’t there. He’d let her walk away and now? Now she would record her first album without his level gaze keeping her centered from behind the glass. And her heart was splintering and cracking all over again, sending little pieces of timber dropping into her stomach.
Tears she’d managed to avoid for weeks were poised, hot and ready to fall, so she reached into her back pocket and ripped her sunglasses free, shoving them onto her face. Her bandmates were watching her out of concern—and rightly so. They all needed to be on top of their game when recording. This morning, she’d woken up so sure she could handle this—and she would—she would.
Thirty seconds left until they started.
Lita exhaled slowly toward the ceiling.
“Lita.” Sarge’s voice invaded her ears. “You good to go?”
She nodded. She shook her head. She nodded again.
“We can stop,” said the lead singer. “Pick it up tomorrow.”
“No.” Her foot slipped and hit the bass drum pedal, making a low boom inside everyone’s headphones. “I’m fine. I’m fine.”
I’m not fine. I want James. I want him here. Why doesn’t he need me back? I hate him for not needing me back. But I love him so much.
The new manager’s light, feminine tone replaced the voice in her head. “We can take five, Lita, but we’re on a schedule. We need to lay this track today.”
Lita swiped her wrist under her nose. “I said I’m ready. I don’t need five.”
When her voice cracked on the final word, a silence filled with skepticism ensued. She gripped the drumsticks so hard, the bones in her fingers protested, pain bloomed and spread up her forearms. Oh God, she’d done so well until now. She’d bought furniture for her duplex. Decorated the shit out of that motherfucker. She’d been the one to schedule band rehearsals, even providing wake-up calls to their lazy bass player when necessary. All her accounts had been transferred into her name. She’d been paying bills on time without fail. There had been temptation to fly off the handle and do something reckless in the hopes of bringing James back, but she’d resisted.
But this…this was so much harder. She and James had started this band together, put it together piece by piece. They’d been here first, never acknowledging out loud that James’s intention had been to create something for her. A chance to do what she loved. All of it for her. But now she was abandoned and maybe, just maybe, she didn’t want any of it without James.
“Lita.”
Her rioting emotions screeched to a halt, then picked up at one hundred times their original speed, tearing through her blood stream like a horse race. She opened her eyes, afraid to draw breath in case she’d imagined James’s voice coming from the other side of the glass. But no, he was there. Bearded and dressed down. He was there. Familiar and different, all at once. She wanted to drop her sticks and run toward the booth. She also wanted to throw them at the glass. Unable to decide, she could only look down, rolling her stick against the high tom-tom. “We’re trying to record an album here. What do you want?”
Electric silence. “Is that what you’re doing? It looked more like stalling.” He reached up to adjust his tie, but he was wearing a T-shirt and that stupid, nothing movement almost choked her with love. “You’re the best drummer I’ve ever seen. So what do I want? I want you to stop moping and act like it.”
Lita yanked off her sunglasses, irritation needling her from all sides. Odd, though, there was something else beneath the layer of I-want-to-kill-him. It filled her with helium, making her weightless. “Take a seat and watch how it’s done,” she said directly into the microphone hanging over the kit, tossing aside her sunglasses.
“I’ll stand.”
She ground her teeth and gave the engineer her signal that they were beginning before giving the countdown. Just before they launched into the track, she caught Sarge’s smile, but everything but James was peripheral. He was the music. Always had been. She’d lost her love for it before they met, forgot she could be good at something, and he’d brought it all back in. Just as he was doing now.
As Lita wailed on the drums, leaning forward during the chorus to lend her vocals, she felt him inside every downward movement of her arms, every vibration of the bass in her stomach. Toward the end, her throat started to ache. Swallowing became difficult. She could feel James watching, watching, as always. His confidence surrounded her, lifting her off the ground. You’re the best drummer I’ve ever seen. He’d never said that to her before. Others had, but she’d only ever wanted to hear it from him. Because he never said anything he didn’t mean. Just like he’d meant everything he’d said in the car.
That reminder came just as the song ended. Lita let the sticks drop to her sides, winded, gaze locked on James through the glass. Her instincts screamed at her to run to him, jump into his arms and ask questions later. That was why he was here, right? Looking at her as if he might expire if they didn’t touch soon? But she stayed put. Waiting for what? She didn’t know. Only knew it better be fucking good.
James leaned forward, mouth hovering over the microphone a second before he spoke. “Lita, I don’t know how much time I have. But I need you to know…” he shook his head. “I live for you. You’re not just in my thoughts, you are my thoughts. Every single one. And somehow, I lived for you all wrong. I should have been living with you. Not only for.” His hand gripped the microphone. “I should have seen how capable you were and known we were always in this together. I’m sorry. I’m…sorry doesn’t really cover it. Because you’re crying and I wish I was dead seeing that. Fuck, I really do. But I al
ready died when you left.”
Lita swiped the back of her hand across her cheeks, dashing away the rolling moisture. His explanation was necessary, but God help her, as soon as he’d said I live for you, any remaining resolve had broken. But her legs weren’t moving, weren’t allowing her to travel his direction. Relief and love and surprise had weakened her knees. “What do you m-mean, you don’t know how much time you have?”
James threw a glance at the door but didn’t answer her question. “I love you, Lita. Even if my mistakes made it so you can’t take me back, I’ll always be somewhere, loving you with every single thought. Every memory I have stored up.” Even though everyone in the studio could hear him, it felt as if only she and James were present. “My first memory of you is that brave, determined girl in the bar. I don’t know how I forgot. I don’t know—”
Adrenaline found its way to her heart, jumpstarting the organ along with her legs. Lita jumped from her throne, leaping over wires and sprinting full speed toward the sound booth. She caught just a hint of James’s relieved expression through the glass before the door swung open and she tumbled through. James scooped her up before she’d set foot inside the room, burying his face in the crook of her neck and chanting her name in a gruff voice.
“I lost you. I lost you.”
She wrapped her legs around his hips and clung, treasuring every frantic kiss of his lips up and down her neck. “You found me, too,” she whispered. “Twice now.”
He pulled away just enough to press their foreheads together. “There’s no excuse for what I said. I was wrong, Lita.” The words floated over her lips. “I’m protective over you because I remember living without you. I remember the waiting, even though I didn’t know that’s what I was doing. And when you finally appeared, I took protecting you too far. You didn’t need protecting. You needed me. We needed each other.”
Her heart couldn’t take any more. It pounded in her chest like the bass drum during a wicked solo, erratic and powerful. “Do we have each other now?”