Ever After (Dirtshine Book 3)

by Roxie Noir

  I’m convinced that he even knew about the show with Dirtshine and he somehow got the court date a few days before so it’s nearly certain I’ll miss the show, the one thing I’ve wanted more than nearly anything else for two years.

  You shouldn’t have punched him, you idiot, I think. Your actions have got consequences and now you’re facing down the barrel of a bad one.

  I don’t know what to do. The letter says I’ve got to appear in court on those days and I’ve got to pay him this and I’ve got to do this and that, but I wasn’t born yesterday, and I know that barristers love making claims about what I have and haven’t got to do.

  Numbly, I grab the package, slice into it with a knife. Inside is a wooden box with a crest stamped on the top, and though I don’t recognize it, I’ve got exactly one guess as to whose it is.

  I pry the box open with the knife, take the lid off.

  Inside, lying in a nest of tissue paper, is a single bottle of Nokov vodka. It’s completely at odds with the posh letter and the posh packaging, given that it’s cheap shit in a plastic bottle, but I understand the message loud and fucking clear.

  I take it out, stare at it for a long time, the clear liquid inside sloshing unsteadily. I wonder if that prick somehow knows about the night on the bridge, the first time I met Frankie. I wonder if I was drinking this brand that night, though that particular recollection is gone forever.

  I put it down on the counter, stomach turning, and pick up the note that was beneath the bottle.

  Chin up, mate!

  A hundred thousand quid isn’t so bad, and besides, I sent you your favorite to take the edge off. Go ahead, first drink’s on me.

  Alistair

  That prick. That utter fucking inbred, arse-headed, shit-for-brains prick. As if he hasn’t got enough money, he’s got to play the victim about one black eye and try and take what I haven’t got, even though he knows full well I haven’t got it.

  Because that’s not what he’s after. Forcing me to pay him for years to come is the cherry on top, because no matter what now I’ll have to spend for court fees, a lawyer of my own, flights back to England. Even though I’m due to get another royalty check in a few days, I’ve a feeling that money will get sucked into this black hole instantly, and the few studio gigs I’ve played so far haven’t paid me enough to deal with this.

  Suddenly, I realize the bottle’s in my hand, my knuckles white. I’m squeezing it hard enough that the plastic is dimpling. It’s absolutely stupid vodka, probably made in a factory in Newcastle or something, but there’s a picture of the Kremlin below the name as if that makes it legitimate.

  And despite everything, despite Alistair’s dickish letter and three months of sobriety and the fact that this shit is one step above drinking turpentine, I think about it.

  I think about how fucking good it would feel to guzzle this down right now, throw the empty bottle, smash the box in came in. Call Alistair and tell him just what I think of him, let the warm blanket of vodka take care of this problem, too.

  Because why not? Why fucking not, right now, when it feels as if he’s already won?

  I can start sobriety over again tomorrow. No reason why not.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Frankie

  “How the fuck did he even get a court date that fast?” I shout, shoving open the door to Trent’s house. “That’s in ten fucking days! You can’t even do that on Judge Judy or whatever, it takes fucking months to get the government to do anything!”

  Liam’s on Trent’s leather couch in the middle of the living room, his head in both hands and a battered notebook full of scribbles in front of him.

  “I don’t know,” he says miserably. “He’s got a title and a fuckton of money and I assume there are ways to make the world bend to your advantage when you’ve got those things.”

  I slam the door behind me, rattling a picture on the wall, but I barely even notice as I stomp into Trent’s house, absolutely fucking furious. I angry-sobbed in my car on the way over here, knuckles white on the steering wheel while I sat in traffic.

  Liam’s not perfect. Of course he’s not, but god damn is he trying. He’s lightyears away from the man I saw on the bridge all those months ago, almost unrecognizable as the guy in the paparazzi videos and pictures I found that night when I googled him.

  And Alistair wants to drag him down. That’s exactly what’s going on here, and worse, it’s my fault. It’s because he’s with me that Alistair’s this angry. A hundred thousand pounds is just silly, but God knows that Alistair can afford the best lawyers and Liam will be lucky if he’s not representing himself.

  “I’ll murder him,” I say, stomping to the couch where Liam’s sitting, still hunched over the notebook and his phone. “I swear to God, he acts like the world is his shit buffet or something, like if he doesn’t get his way he can just fuck people over willy-nilly until he does—”

  “I did punch him,” Liam points out, rubbing his face with one hand. “And plowed a car into a brick wall around his garden.”

  “Good, I hope it fucking hurt when you punched him,” I say, plopping my bag on the couch and pulling out my laptop. Liam hasn’t got a computer, just a smart phone, since he sold his laptop long before he sold the drum kit and never got a new one. “I hope he needs new glasses or something now, and I hope his nose feels weird every time it rains.”

  “I hope not or he’ll come back and ask for more,” Liam says. “The letter’s still on the kitchen counter.”

  He opens my laptop and I walk into the kitchen, grab the letter, lying open next to a fancy wooden box and a note in Alistair’s handwriting.

  I read it, and my blood runs cold.

  First drink’s on me.

  The tissue paper in the box is in the shape of a bottle, but the bottle’s not in here. I hold my breath, heart nearly stopped, look back out to where Liam’s got my laptop open on the couch.

  Please no, I think. Anything but this, please don’t tell me...

  But at least the bottle’s not out there with him. Heart thudding, I step forward, open the trash can, peer inside. No bottle. I open the recycling bin, the cabinets, the freezer.

  Then I finally see it. In the sink.

  Empty.

  “I poured it out,” Liam’s voice says behind me, and I jump about a mile in the air.

  “Right,” I say, face flushing red because I got caught. “I just saw it and I read the note and...”

  I trail off, not quite sure how to phrase thought you might have drunk a whole bottle of liquor.

  “You can smell the sink,” he offers.

  I look at the bottle in my hand, the ceramic white of the kitchen sink.

  “I wouldn’t believe me,” he goes on, leaning against the counter. “I’d smell the sink and then probably also ask me to stand on one leg while touching my nose and reciting the alphabet backward.”

  I sigh, lean over, smell the sink.

  It smells like rubbing alcohol, so sharp that it makes my eyes water.

  “Zed, why, ex, vee, double-you — wait, is that backwards?”

  He’s also standing on one leg, both arms out for balance as he stares at a cupboard in concentration.

  “Shit, I think it’s double-you and then vee, that’s the problem with only ever having to do these tests while legless, you never get any proper practice.”

  “You’re not touching your nose,” I point out.

  My voice is quiet, but I’m fucking relieved, because I don’t know what I’d do otherwise. Being in love with Liam feels a little bit like riding a horse — mostly smooth, mostly fine and lovely and wonderful, but there’s always the possibility that he could rear up and buck me off with no warning.

  And I hate it, but I can’t help but be wary of him. Three months sober isn’t all that much, not really, and he’s got years and years of poor behavior prior.

  He raises one eyebrow, squints at the cabinet, and brings one finger to his nose.

  “I’ve lost track
of which letter I’m on,” he says. “T?”

  I take a deep breath, run the water in the sink to cut the vodka smell, grab the letter. Liam takes his finger from his nose and stands on two feet.

  “I did think about it,” he says quietly. “That’s why it’s down the drain. I’m not better, Frankie, and I don’t know that I ever will be. You do know that, right?”

  I look at him and think about what I told myself constantly when I was with Alistair but wanted Liam so bad it hurt.

  “What you want is only what you want,” I say. “It’s what you do that matters. C’mon, let’s go figure out this bullshit.”

  Instead Liam pulls me in, kisses me quickly, but then he just holds me tight against his thick chest, lips on my hair.

  “Thank you,” he murmurs.

  Hours later, I think we’ve gotten somewhere with all this. I’m still pissed at Alistair and I can tell that Liam is pissed at himself, but after a long time trying to untangle British property law and combing through available lawyers, I feel a little bit better. Like there might be some hope, like Liam might only be in debt to Alistair for the next ten years instead of fifteen, but it’s something.

  He’s still on the couch, hands over his face, fingers V’s around his eyes.

  “All right,” he says. “This page says that a court date can be postponed in the event of business travel or family emergency if I file the proper appeal paperwork within a fortnight of said court appearance and present proper documentation of a pressing and urgent need...”

  He goes on. My brain is fried, and I think I’m only processing about a third of the words he’s saying.

  “Is that for common court or ordinary court and which one are you being sued in, again?”

  “I don’t think either of those are types of court,” he says, still looking at the laptop.

  I glance at my phone. We’ve been doing this for nearly four hours, so I take a deep breath and toss the notebook where we’ve been taking notes on barristers onto the coffee table. There’s nothing else we possibly have the brainpower left to accomplish tonight, and besides, I’ve got one more thing I want to take care of.

  “Stop for the night,” I tell him. “Go to bed, get some sleep, untangle this archaic mess in the morning.”

  He leans back against the couch, takes a deep breath, exhales.

  “I’m sorry for dragging you into this mess,” he says.

  I walk behind the couch, run my fingers through his hair, massage his scalp.

  “If it weren’t for me you’d be in small claims court and paying a fine,” I tell him. “It would be done already.”

  I lean over, standing on my tiptoes, and give him an upside-down kiss.

  “I’m gonna go sit by the pool and chill out for a minute,” I say.

  “Don’t fall in.”

  “I’ll try,” I say, rustle his hair one more time, and head downstairs and out the sliding glass door on the lower level. The pool has a great view of downtown Los Angeles, and I sit on one of the chairs, watching it for a moment.

  Then I pull out my phone. Ten-fifteen. That makes it six-fifteen in the morning in Downhamshire-on-Kyne, which is far too early for Alistair to be awake.

  Perfect.

  It rings five times, then goes to voicemail. I hang up and dial again. Five times, voicemail. Again.

  I admit I’m getting a perverse pleasure out of this.

  Finally, after I do it three more times, the line clicks. There’s a long pause, and finally, Alistair mumbles, “‘ullo?”

  “You motherfucker,” I say.

  Oops. I’d meant to be slightly nicer, maybe taunt him a bit before he wakes up, but it slips out of my mouth without my meaning to say it.

  On the other end there’s a long pause, and then he clears his throat.

  “Françoise,” he says. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

  “You’re an asshole,” I say, the words charging out of my mouth before I can think them through. “A hundred thousand pounds? Court in less than two weeks? Who’d your father pay off for that to happen?”

  He laughs. Laughs. I want to strangle him.

  “The justice system works at no man’s beck and call, as I’m sure you know,” he says, sounding impossibly smug. “And you do know that he drove drunkenly to my house, destroyed part of a garden wall, and then punched me, don’t you?”

  “I also know that your stupid face isn’t worth that much money.”

  “It wasn’t even a good punch,” Alistair says. “Rather off-balance, glancing blow. But still, damages were done and for months now I’ve been terrified to attend any pub that’s got an ugly, drunken lout behind the bar so there’ve been emotional damages as well.”

  I take a deep breath, because I know exactly what he’s doing. He’s trying to make me angry by being blithe and acting like he’s too sophisticated to take the bait.

  “You just don’t like the thought that he’s got something you don’t,” I say quietly. “And it’s because you’re small, petty, and jealous, and you’re not even smart enough to see yourself for what you are. It’s because you think the world owes you everything because of how you were born, and you can’t stand to see life turn out otherwise.”

  Far, far away, there’s a pause. Then he snorts.

  “You think I’m jealous because you were stupid enough to leave me for a junkie?” he says, his voice over-the-top incredulous.

  That’s not really what I said, but I don’t bother responding to argue semantics.

  “Do you know anything about him, Frankie? Do you know that he’s fucked a few dozen women, been arrested in several countries, and was responsible for someone’s death? Do you know that he’s got six months tops before he’s back to doing all that shit and then you’ll be crawling back to me?”

  “I wouldn’t crawl back to you if I were on fire and you had a fire extinguisher,” I say. “And yeah, I know.”

  I don’t bother defending Liam to Alistair. It’s not going to work, and I don’t want to somehow give him more ammunition by accident.

  “That doesn’t surprise me, Françoise, since you’re both stubborn and stupid,” he says, his voice cutting. “Not to mention cowardly for breaking off an engagement in a note. You’ll be glad to know the ring’s been put to good use.”

  That knocks me for a loop. I didn’t expect him to beg for me to come back or anything, but I also didn’t expect him to already be engaged to someone else.

  Then, suddenly, I remember Bridget. The last day I was with Alistair, when I found them alone in the locked study. At the time I had too much on my mind to care, but now? Looking back, remembering how she wiped her mouth off?

  “Good,” I say sweetly. “I’m glad you’ve found someone to suck your limp, crusty dick in exchange for trinkets.”

  He laughs, and I hold the phone away from my ear, hit the red button. Suddenly the night is cool and silent again, lights and the moon reflecting off the trembling water in the pool.

  I know it was stupid and childish to call his dick crusty, but I don’t care. Alistair’s an asshole, and after all this time, it felt good to stop being diplomatic and tell him what I really think.

  I spend a few more minutes out by the pool, then head inside, brush my teeth, and crawl into bed next to Liam. He’s already asleep, but he curls himself around me anyway.

  This is worth it, I think.

  Whatever happens, this moment is worth it.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Liam

  “You should tell them,” Frankie murmurs into my chest. Her naked body is half-splayed over mine and my hand is in her hair, the rest of our limbs tangled together.

  “You’re not leaving until tomorrow, you’ve got time,” she says, her voice half-muffled.

  My whole body feels limp and boneless, sparks still fizzling out in my brain. I hold Frankie a little closer, a little more fiercely, because I’m not going to see her for a week and I think I’m going to miss her.

  I know it’
s only a week. I know I’m coming back after that, and I know Frankie will still be here and will be glad to see me, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

  Because even if my memory of the day she left is blurred and hazy, I remember the day that I discovered what I’d done with total clarity. I remember walking the streets of New York like a hopeless lost dog with crystal clarity.

  I’d prefer that I not have to do that again.

  “I told you why I can’t,” I say.

  “They’re dumb reasons.”

  “Dirk said I’d be fine, the hearings will be over in plenty of time for me to catch the flight back for the show,” I counter, still lazy.

  Six weeks in and every time we fuck it blows my mind again. I really didn’t think that could happen, but it has.

  Frankie sighs, shifts to a more comfortable position.

  “If you tell them, they can at least have a line on a backup,” she points out. “What if your plane’s late? What if there’s weather, and it gets delayed or something, and the hearings don’t end on time and you’re stuck there?”

  I swallow, something tightening around my stomach, because no matter what, Frankie doesn’t quite understand.

  The rest of the band has seen me at my absolute worst. They watched me slide downward, and then they watched me stick there, unable to get myself out of it for years. It’s only now that I feel I can even show them my face.

  They don’t even know that I’ve got a DUI because I drove somewhere while absolutely wasted. I could have easily killed someone, and it’s nothing but a stroke of pure luck that I didn’t.

  I don’t want them to know how badly I’ve fucked up again just before they give me this chance. I’m not stupid. I’ve known Gavin since we were children; I practically lived with Darcy and Trent for years. This isn’t just a show, it’s an audition.

  If there weren’t a chance they’d take me back into the band, they wouldn’t have offered this at all. And there’s no bloody chance I’m wasting it by making them think twice.