by L. V. Lewis
“And who am I to you?” I plead to her the same way I did at her D.J. interview, but this time I do so with my heart rather than just my eyes because I desperately need to know where I stand with her before I spill my guts.
“You’re my boyfriend,” she says. “The one who stupidly withheld a major part of his past from me.”
Her declaration guts me, but in a good way. She can’t hate me enough to kick me to the curb if she calls me her boyfriend. Right?
“That being said, I want to understand what put you off music. I want to know more than just the body you share with me. I want to know everything about you—your past and present thoughts, your heart, all of what makes you tick, and possibly a bit of your soul, too. Like I told you once before, I won’t judge.”
Her words register slowly and I am thankful for them. I nod, blow out an exhalation, and wipe my clammy hands on my pajama bottoms. “You have to know I’ve never talked to anyone about this other than my therapist and my surviving band mates. I’m telling you everything now because I should’ve trusted you with it all before we became lovers. That was a dick move on my part if there ever was one, and I’m truly sorry for the way you found out, Sky. Will you forgive me?”
“I forgive you,” she whispers.
“Okay. Well, you know about my parents dying and how my grandparents didn’t approve of me being a rocker. I was already feeling as if I had lost so much, but when my grandparents rejected me, I felt unworthy of every good thing that happened to me afterward.
“Kimberly’s brother, Stephen, was one of the high school band mates who let me couch surf at his home when my grandparents threw me out. Well, Kim stole my cell phone number from Stephen and began to text and e-mail me in California. She had aspirations to sing and I had a band. We’d hit it off, even though she was a couple of years younger than the rest of the band, and when she graduated high school at seventeen, I convinced her to come to LA.”
I swallow hard, and continue, “Everybody who’s anybody uses recreational drugs in Hollywood, from pot to smack to prescription drugs. As my reputation as a guitarist and lead singer grew, everybody wanted a piece of me. Many of them turned out to be the wrong people to hang out with. I just drank a lot at first, but that had side effects that affected my ability to play and sing too much. Then the groupies made themselves available, and I could score a chick right along with the drugs. I don’t know how Kimberly stood me sometimes in the early days because she caught me cheating so many times, but she never gave up on me.”
I glance at Sky, and she’s listening with what looks like rapt attention mixed with appalled horror and genuine concern.
She reaches for my hand and laces her fingers through mine.
My throat is as dry as the Sahara right now, but I have to go on. “In time, I graduated to heroin, but in the beginning, my drugs of choice were pot and coke. Money was no object, and coke was the ultimate party drug. The band’s notoriety grew, and as we got bigger and bigger, Kim and my drug habits grew with it.
“I remember the day I first let Kim try coke. Initially, I limited her to just alcohol and pot, because I didn’t want her to be like me. I loved her, and she loved me, but I also used her. I used Kim as a way to escape the pain of being alone in the world. At some point, Kim wasn’t enough, so I used more drugs to escape the pain, and she did what I did to enter my world. She came from a great home with two supportive parents, but she loved me and she started doing drugs because of me. I did drugs and hurt her, then she would do drugs to hurt me, and it became a never-ending cycle. I hated myself for what I did to her.”
Partly purged, I’m having difficulty sucking air into my lungs to the point of breathlessness.
Sky scoots over to me and rubs my back. My blood rushes loudly in my head as I try to come to terms with what I’ve just shared with the woman I love now more than I ever loved Kim. Admitting this to myself feels like a fucking high, but I can’t share it with Sky now. It would be a disservice to her.
My eyes fill with tears of both sadness and joy, but I keep them cast downward and clear my throat, refusing to cry like a pussy.
“What happened the day Kim died?” Sky asks quietly.
I glance at her briefly to see if she’s disgusted with me or if she’s just curious. All I see is love as she encourages me with a nod to continue my tragic tale.
“We’d just ended a tour, so we did it like always. We threw a lavish party and binged on alcohol, drugs, and more drugs. Kim and I would throw the parties, but most of the time we’d be locked in a back room getting high. By that time, we both had considerable heroin habits. We didn’t care about eating, sleeping, or even fucking. The drug was all we craved.
“That night, I shot up first and nodded off. Sometime later when I woke up, I saw that Kim had shot up, too, but she had nodded off—for good. The tourniquet was still wrapped around her thigh, the needle hanging from an overused, collapsed vein. I rushed to her and tried to revive her, but she was gone. I picked up my guitar, turned the amp as loud as it could go, and played one final time for Kim. The neighbors called the cops. They broke the door down, and that’s how they found us.” I stop just short of telling her all the goriest details.
She gasps. I misconstrue her reaction—thinking that she’s changed her mind about wanting to know all of this—to be with me.
“Why did they arrest you?” she asks. Her words are not harsh, and she doesn’t move away.
I swallow, glad to be wrong about Sky’s intentions. “My fingerprints were all over the paraphernalia and shit. And the cops found me playing my guitar like a fucking maniac. I would’ve arrested me, too. But my prints were only there because we shared needles and shit all the time and I’d made my half-assed attempt to revive her. They also found more drugs in the house, and I was the smoking gun.”
“I hate that you had to go through that,” she says.
“Believe me. I wish I could take it all back. I wish Kim were still alive and with someone who deserved her. She was a beautiful, wonderful girl, and I ruined her life.”
“And your own. Is it guilt from her death that largely keeps you from playing again?”
“No, Sky. It’s not only about guilt. My addiction is always going to be an issue. It’s an ongoing illness from which I can’t be cured. I can only manage it, like…diabetes or some other chronic thing. Performing feeds the darkness in me. It’s like having a cigarette after sex. I’m so keyed up after a concert and only drugs bring me down. Then I need another drug to bring me up, or to balance my wacked out hormones. There is always the possibility that I could relapse. You have to know I will try my best not to, but if I do, I’m going to hurt you the same way I hurt Kim. I don’t mean to scare you, but you have to know that I could go off the rails again.”
I watch her closely for a reaction.
Again she doesn’t shrink away from all I’ve told her. In fact she juts out her chin in defiance. “I’m not a fragile little woman. I’m tougher than you think, and I’ll always be here to support you, and—.”
“And you love me?”
“How did you know?” She says in surprise.
“You told me in the limo the night we met Pit Viper at the restaurant.”
“That was a slip-up, but it’s true. I do love you Brody. With all my heart.”
My heart is beating like one of Snare’s drum solos. I didn’t want to say it in the same conversation, but I can’t not say the words back to her. “I love you too, Sky. I tried very hard not to love again. Working for I.Y.M. was supposed to be a way for me to keep my distance from entanglements, but you melted the ice that surrounded my heart after Kim died.”
Her eyes light up, as a fleeting thought seems to come to her then. “Your tattoo is in Kim’s honor, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Her parents had her cremated and took the urn back to Illinois with them. I got the tattoo in her memory just before I went into rehab.”
“It’s beautiful. A very touching sentiment.”
“And what?”
“You know you want to ask me when I’m going to get inked for you.”
She shrugs. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
Maybe she hasn’t, but I have. Someday, I’m going to get one right on my heart, specifically for her.
“Actually, I was thinking when are you going to finish that song you’re supposedly writing for me?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’ll be done before your domestic tour. Let’s just say I’m working on it.”
“Okay,” she says and winds her arms around my neck. “I think it’s about time I started working on you. It’ll be time to leave for our flight before we know it.”
She kisses me, and we don’t stop. We don’t stop making love, either until it’s time to pack our bags and race to the airport.
THIRTEEN
BRODY
DAY FORTY-EIGHT
It’s the day before Sky’s final concert in Athens. I just received an email from my agent David at I.Y.M. He’s forwarded me the link to an article from the LA Times.
“Sky, check this out,” I call to her in our suite’s bathroom. We stopped giving a fuck about appearances and decided to save the tour some money on booking two suites and have pared down to one.
She comes rushing into the bedroom with some type of cream on her face.
“What?” She asks breathlessly.
“An article about us in the Times. Doesn’t look like one of the news releases we approved, either.”
She looks over my shoulder at the MacBook screen and reads silently along with me:
Skylar’s European tour is set to end with a bang due to the addition of legendary rocker Pit Viper to her band. The pop princess has sold out her final two shows and should return to the states to gear up for her domestic tour riding high.
During the Madrid concert, a video malfunction caused the broadcast of the name of contemporary rock legend Savage Saban while Pit Viper performed on the hit song “Masquerade.”
The engineer believes it was the result of a backstage prank, despite music aficionados and rock historians claiming the solo played by Pit Viper was distinctly Sabanesque in nature.
In news of a more personal nature, Skylar’s love life also seems to be heating up. Sources tell us that she has been dating Brody Kent, her personal assistant, who looks uncannily like the rock guitarist and frontman of the now defunct The Savages rock band. Skylar’s publicist could not be reached for comment.
She eyes me with a sympathetic frown. “Mother had to have done this after I sent her packing from Madrid. I’m so sorry, baby. I know you wanted to keep your identity under wraps.”
I take her hand and pull her into my lap. “I paid a lawyer a small fortune to create that name for me. It served me well when I was hiding my identity from my grandfather in the beginning and then again when I was running away from all the repercussions of Kim’s death. I don’t know if it matters much anyway now, because I’m no longer performing.”
“That’s right, but Mother is going to get a cease and desist letter from my lawyer on your behalf. She really needs to chill.”
I scoop a bit of the face cream off her cheek and plop it onto her nose.
“Remind me not to ever piss you off,” I say with a smirk.
DAY FORTY NINE
I watch from backstage as Sky, Alyssa, and Pit Viper perform a finale that rivals the one that kicked off this European tour. If fans or critics were doubtful, this one is surely going down in the history books as an all-time favorite, especially when I do what I’m about to do.
As Pit Viper strums his final chord for the finale, he begins the intro for the song I’ve written for Sky. Two of the male dancers return to the stage and seat a befuddled Sky on a stool as I walk onto the stage and begin singing my newly penned lyrics for her, letting my Gibson complement Pit Viper’s Stratocaster:
It’s time I said goodbye to you
Like so many living lovers do
Holding on to your memory still
Without the courage in my heart to kill
Yet, our love is gone
Once a girl named Heart had my heart
But now she’s been eclipsed by Sky.
I won’t think of this as our last embrace
Because in my dreams, I still see your face
But I’m too selfish to let you go
More than you know you willed me to live
Now our love is gone
Once a girl named Heart had my heart
But now she’s been eclipsed by Sky
I know you’re smiling from above
Because I’m once again in love
This girl who puts me above all in her life
Someday I’ll make her my wife
So we’ll say our final goodbye
Once a girl named Heart had my heart
But now she’s been eclipsed by Sky
Once a girl named Heart had my heart
But now she’s been eclipsed by Sky.
Sky rushes into my arms and kisses me soundly in front of seventy-five thousand screaming fans, and I kiss her back. I pick her up and carry her off the stage as the lights go down. We can clearly hear some of the fans down front chanting, “Sky and Saban! Sky and Saban!” as we exit the stage, but we ignore it all—and everyone until we’re alone in her dressing room.
Her back is against the door exactly the way it was the first time we kissed. Only then do I notice that tears are streaming down her face.
“Hey…Shhh,” I say in an attempt to soothe her.
“That was so beautiful,” she says through her tears. “Is this the first song you’ve written since you retired?”
I nod. “And it’s the first time I’ve wanted to write a song since Kim died. Sky, your love has revived my passion for music, and helped me to see possibilities that I never considered before.”
She sniffles, scrunching up her tiny, red nose. “Such as?”
“I may not be able to sustain physically performing on a consistent basis, but I can certainly write for you, for other musicians, and I can still do albums in the studio.”
“And manage me,” she says happily.
I chuckle. “I thought this management gig was a temporary assignment?”
She tightens her arms around my waist, squeezing me. “Well, it doesn’t have to be, does it? Besides, what are you going to do? Stay in LA while I’m gallivanting all over creation—months and months on end?”
I pretend to think about that one for a moment, but I don’t really have to. I would follow this woman anywhere. Even to the ends of the earth. “When do I officially start?”
“Eight weeks ago,” she says, grabbing my face in her hands and pulling my mouth down to cover hers.
I bury my hands in her hair, feeling her body pressed against mine as I give myself over to the warmth and sweet ferocity of her kiss. I match it with a hunger of my own that is all-consuming. A need that only grows and refuses to wane, the more I’m with her.
She grins up at me when we come up for air in that way that makes my heart melt. “Ready to face the media?” she asks.
“Yes, but just so we’re on the same page, what are we going to tell them about us?”
“That we met two months ago in LA when you came to work for me as my P.A. and we fell in love. The End.”
“That sounds like an awesome fairy tale.”
“It also sounds like a great title for a song. Let’s collaborate.”
“Okay, but first, let’s go finish up these interviews so we can go back to our hotel.”
“And collaborate?”
I laugh, take her hand and we brace ourselves to head out to face the media gauntlet one final time before we go home.
I have a feeling I’m going to be collaborating with this pop artist for a very long time to come.
THE END
AUTHOR BIO
Growing up, L.V. Lewis wanted to be
an internationally known rock star, but unfortunately, lived in the wrong part of the country to pursue that career (and neither American Idol nor The Voice were available then). An early love for the written word gave her the plan B she sought. Now she pens romance novels that let her live vicariously through rock stars and other fascinating archetypes.
Learn more about L.V. Lewis at www.lvlewis.com .
Subscribe to L.V. Lewis’s newsletter at https://app.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/g4y1z8 to receive notifications about new books.
BACKLIST TITLES BY L.V. LEWIS
Fifty Shades of Jungle Fever © 2012
FIFTY SHADES OF GREY to the second power meets Keisha and Jada from the Block.
If you’ve wondered how an ethnic girl from the hood might’ve handled an arrangement with an experienced white Dominant, this is your book. If you’d like to see the sexiest TWIN DOMS in a contemporary romance series in interracial relationships, this is most definitely your book.
Aspiring recording studio owners, Keisha Beale and Jada Jameson, score a rare meeting with venture capitalist Tristan White and are thrust into a world beyond their wildest imaginations.
Street-wise Keisha is startled to realize she wants this rich white man, despite the certainty that he is out of her league. Unable to resist Keisha’s sassy, irreverent, and fiercely independent spirit, Tristan knew from day one he wanted her, too—as his first African American submissive.
Upper Class Jada of the Springfield Jamesons has traveled in almost the same circles as the White brothers, and has had a secret crush on Nathan White, the point guard for the Chicago Bulls, for quite some time.
Both brothers have succumbed to jungle fever and want a little coffee in their cream.
Lured by Tristan White and his offer of fronting the capital for her business in exchange for kinky sex, Keisha finds herself with no other option. Keisha is also tortured by a demons from her past, and her inability to come to terms with them threatens to undermine the future of her business and her tumultuous, unconventional relationship with Tristan White.