One Forever Kiss (Affair Without End Book 4)

by Susan Ward

  “Can you explain something to me? What’s his appeal to you two?”

  “Are you joking?” Rene asked, her expression exactly something I would have seen on Patty’s face.

  “No, not joking,” I told her.

  “Well, he’s like the most beautiful guy ever, for one thing,” Rene said intently.

  “That’s it? That’s the entire fascination? You think he’s hot?”

  Chrissie made a face at me for using the word hot, and then her bright blue eyes went wide, serious and heated. “Jeez, Daddy, if anyone should understand how important he is to music I would have thought it was you. What his music is. What he is to my generation.”

  I didn’t get it.

  I’d only met Alan once, before he was star, when Linda had first started working for him and he had been trying to seduce her. I knew the broad strokes of his career, but nothing improved my opinion of him.

  He was part of what fucked up my life with Linda eight years ago. Nope, didn’t need to know more about him than that. And both Linda’s affection and fierce loyalty to him definitely bothered me. The kid was brilliant, no doubt about that, he was fast becoming an indelible mark on the history of music, but—nope, Linda’s relationship with him would never make sense to me.

  Neither would these girls’ infatuation with him.

  “Explain it to me, Chrissie. What do you think makes him so extraordinary?”

  She turned to face me. “Well, he’s like the voice of my generation. He feels everything we feel. Like there isn’t a point because there isn’t anything to love in the world anymore, but he’s hopeful in a dark way, because all he wants is someone to love him.”

  Keeping my expression carefully stripped of reaction, I studied her face. Jesus, she was serious, but then Chrissie was immature for her age and complicated and, fuck, a whole lot of things I didn’t understand. She was so intense about this it made me uncomfortable.

  I shifted my gaze to Rene. “Why don’t you try to explain it to me?”

  She bounced to sit on her knees.

  “You’ve read Anne Rice, haven’t you? He’s like the vampire Lestat, only you want him to bite you. You want him to drag you into the darkness because he’ll fill you so completely there won’t be emptiness in you ever again. You want to love him and for him to love you.”

  I wanted the fuck out of this conversation.

  I sprang to my feet and looked around for the remote—it was clutched fiercely in Rene’s hand in a way that said I wouldn’t get it without a fight—so I moved to shut off the TV.

  “That’s it. No more videos today. You can tell your mother to thank me later, Rene.”

  “Daddy!” Chrissie said like I was torturing her or something.

  “Jack!” Rene said, equally in pain.

  I hit the button on the cable box.

  “You can’t do that,” Chrissie said fiercely.

  “Ah, I can. Get out of here. You are not spending the entire winter break glued to the set to get the latest breaking news on Alan Manzone.”

  “I can’t believe you did that,” Rene exclaimed. “It’s like you’ve become a fascist or something.”

  I narrowed my eyes and shook my head at her. “Nice try. Turning off the TV after ten hours doesn’t make you a fascist. Go to the mall. Go shopping. Just go be normal teenage girls for a change.”

  Chrissie gave me a heavily exasperated look. “We are being normal girls, Daddy.”

  Rene crossed her arms instantly. “Would you insist on censoring the news if it were Dylan?”

  Just like her father. I dropped a silly kiss on her head. “I would if you wanted Dylan to bite you on the neck, drag you into the darkness, and love you.”

  “Gross, Daddy. That’s not the least bit funny.”

  “Sort of funny.” I grinned at Chrissie before I walked from the room. I called back at them, “I don’t want to hear that TV again. Not today. Maybe not ever.”

  Groaning came from the family room followed by stomping feet, jingling car keys, and the front door slamming.

  Perfect.

  I was lying in my bed, reading, waiting for the girls to get home. It was after ten before I heard the front door slam, a knock on my door and a fast “Night, Daddy,” then Chrissie’s door shut.

  I tossed my book on the nightstand, turned out my light, and stretched out in bed. It was well past 2:00 a.m. and nothing was going to get me sleeping this night. Whether I wanted to or not, the news of the day dragged me through things I didn’t want to relive.

  My failings with my son.

  My regrets.

  I was staring at the ceiling when the phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, Jack. Sorry to call so late.”

  It was my manager.

  “No, that’s fine. What’s going on?”

  “I didn’t know who else to call,” he said, and then I knew why he’d called. My manager was Alan Manzone’s, too.

  I switched on the light. Brian Craig sounded distraught.

  “What’s happened?”

  “Alan Manzone OD’d tonight. Len Rowan was with him. A suicide attempt. It hasn’t hit print and I’ve got him tucked away in a hospital in Chicago. Some place no one can get at him until I can do something—”

  “Is he going to make it?” I asked.

  “This time. But I don’t know how to pull him back from the edge. He just can’t accept that his daughter is dead.”

  “Daughter? What are you taking about?”

  “He had a little girl. Molly. He was crazy about that little girl. She was everything to him. She died a year ago, and he’s been out of his mind ever since.”

  Fuck.

  For the first time there was something about Alan Manzone I understood. I knew what it felt like to lose a child.

  “Where is he, Brian?”

  “Mercy Hospital. On a seventy-two-hour psych hold. He’s checked in under his real name. Alan Wells.”

  “Don’t tell anyone, Brian. Not even Linda. I’m flying to Chicago. Maybe there is something I can do.”

  Click.

  I cut out on the girls the next morning after telling them I had a thing out of town that I needed to take care of for a few days.

  Thing.

  Chrissie hated that term.

  But thing was a euphemism for stuff she resented—the demands of my career. And stuff she didn’t know—Linda.

  I found Alan Manzone, unconscious, restrained, and handcuffed to the bed when I got to Mercy Hospital, but all I could see when he finally opened his eyes was grief. He was angry and ungrateful when he noticed me sitting next to his bed, but the hostility made me more certain than ever that I wasn’t going to give up on him.

  He had too much fight and anger in him. This kid didn’t want to die. He just wanted help finding his way out of the darkness.

  I chased Alan down when he bolted from the hospital.

  I took him back to detox.

  I flew with him to California and checked him into rehab.

  Chrissie was back at school, so after Alan’s thirty-day program I brought him home for one of my four-month recovering-addict stays in my pool house.

  All the things I’d done for Vincent Delmo and a dozen others before Alan.

  I didn’t tell Chrissie or Linda what I was doing, not at the time. In hindsight, with how it worked out, I’m still not sure if the smarter move would have been to tell them or whether I was right that I hadn’t.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  After four months with Alan Manzone, my opinion of the kid was—somewhat—altered. There was a lot more to this young man than I first suspected or had ever bothered to get to know. Some things I learned surprised me and others didn’t.

  Not a surprise—he came by being fucked up honestly. Life had taught me most people did. His background, for different reasons, was like Linda’s. Everyone he’d ever known had been pretty much a disappointment and using him for something.

  A pleasant surprise—he al
l but idolized Linda. Not because of how beautiful she was. Not in a romantic, sexual or otherwise prowling kind of way. He was a man who could spot the remarkable in other people and respected it.

  He was also more than just brilliant musically; he was the first real genius I’d ever met. He knew every minute detail about everything, down to how things worked, in that every-fact-about-everything way Georgie had, except from Alan it wasn’t annoying.

  Both his mind and his heart he hid behind his powerful dark looks and his at times posh manners—the kind you don’t see anywhere else but from an upper-crust Brit—that could disappear in a blink of an eye into someone you’d think was a criminal or a gangbanger.

  Some afternoons with him were liked being trapped in the family room with Rene having the TV control. Switching channels. Over and over again. Flashes of one show and then another. Yep, that’s what being with Alan was like. A never-ending shift into the different men he wanted to be in any given moment.

  I could see why Linda cared about him, the similarities between them, even if—as Rene said—he was the most beautiful guy ever. Seeing him in real life instead of in print, you couldn’t deny that, in spite of the fact he had turned his body into practically an ink factory.

  Even the endless tattoos were both camouflage and revealing of who Alan was. They weren’t part of a hard rock image he was trying to sell, though they didn’t hurt, but were in fact a mural of things significant to him. Like the star surrounded by turbulent waves I’d spotted on his lower left abdomen while he was sunning by the pool.

  Lena liked researching baby names, their history, and meaning. A star surrounded by a sea was the Irish meaning for the name Molly. And it rested above the coiled snakes that ran down his hip, their heads pointing to his groin.

  Hate for himself; unending love for his child.

  At least that’s what I thought it meant.

  I didn’t ask.

  Fuck, what did it matter? The guy was a mess. A remarkable, complex, and—yes—interesting mess. A little steadier than he’d been when I first brought him home, but a long way from being in control and ready to go it alone in the New York circus again.

  His mysteries, the many I hadn’t figured out yet, would leave with him because it was his last day in Santa Barbara, and I was sending him away.

  Just like I’d done to Vincent Delmo after four months.

  But I wasn’t quite sure it was the right move for Alan.

  It didn’t matter.

  He wanted to leave, get back to New York and finish the album he’d started here with me, and that was how this worked. The guys in recovery called their own shots and one by one I watched musician after musician leave Hope Ranch to return back to their lives.

  Some made it.

  Some didn’t.

  I wasn’t sure which Alan Manzone would be, but I wouldn’t have bet money on him being in the first category.

  It was dusk. I was sitting alone with Alan by the pool. Liam and the band had come up a few weeks ago, and we’d all just hung out, my twelvers club, jamming in the studio with the kid when the kid wasn’t working on the album he’d started after his thirty-day program.

  Everyone had taken off for dinner but us. I was scheduled at Chrissie’s school to watch her spring recital, and Alan was still shaky about being with people without me.

  “You’re going to be all right, Alan,” I said, clutching my coffee and staring out at the ocean. “Keep working the steps. It never goes away. Remember that. And that I’m here for you. Any time you need to call, pick up the phone.”

  “Thanks, Jack,” he said quietly. “I truly appreciate everything you’ve done for me.”

  I studied him covertly—nope, he wasn’t ready to leave.

  I checked my watch, set down my coffee, and stood up. “I’ve got to hit it. I don’t want to be late to the school tonight. My daughter hates it when I’m late.”

  He laughed in a sad, remembering kind of way.

  Then he stood up. “I have something for you. Or rather Chrissie. I thought she might like it tonight. Performing and all.”

  I frowned but followed him to the pool house anyway.

  He crossed the room and opened a cello case.

  Oh fuck—was that what I thought it was?

  A Domenico Montagnana.

  “You said Chrissie was a cellist, right? That she’s auditioning at Juilliard next week. I thought an apology gift was in order seeing as how I ruined her Christmas.”

  Jesus Christ, with everything going on, that he remembered even so minute a detail as something I said in passing was nearly as touching as it was unsettling what he thought was an appropriate apology gift.

  “No, Alan. I can’t give her that. She’s only eighteen. It must have cost some kind of bucks. And a gift; not necessary.”

  “Why?”

  He looked confused, and it made my heart clench. Life had taught this kid that when people cared it meant they wanted something. Worse, he used money to buy his way out of feeling guilty over the things he did badly. It was better for him in the long run not to be let off on whatever he was feeling with an extravagant gift, if that’s what he was trying to do here.

  “Listen, Alan, you’re here because I want you here. No apologies. No gifts. Not ever. Open door. Always. That’s how it works with me.”

  He nodded, but I could see he was choked up.

  “What time do you head out in the morning?” I asked, changing the subject.

  He smiled, amused. “When I’m ready. My pilot waits on me. I only travel commercial with you.”

  I laughed. “Rehab is not supposed to be a luxury experience.”

  “It feels pretty luxurious here to me.”

  I was almost out the door when he said, “Since you won’t accept the cello for Chrissie, why don’t you let her travel back to New York with me? I’d like to do that for you, Jack.”

  I pointed at him. “But I wouldn’t do that to you. She’s traveling with a girlfriend, and I think Rene would be more than you bargained for.”

  He laughed, and I hurried off before he could try to give me something else. As for the traveling with him, inside my head had screamed hell no.

  Rene had said the drivel about Alan making a girl want him to bite her on the neck and drag her into the darkness, but I wasn’t counting on Chrissie not feeling that way, too.

  Hell no.

  Fucking hell no would I let my daughter travel with him.

  In the car, I tried to call Linda. No answer. We’d been hit and miss for five months. I told myself it was better that way, since I hadn’t let anyone know except my manager that Alan was with me, and Linda had her own mess to deal with in Len Rowan. He was all fucked up after having found Alan lying on the floor dead after deliberately snorting a life-ending-sized speedball.

  Still, not seeing her for six months was making me a mess. An edgy, horny, somewhat miserable mess.

  It was good we were both dealing with our own shit separately—Linda was right that sometimes a couple needed space for their own lives—but Chrissie was off for spring break the next day, Alan was out of my pool house, and I was ready to be in a bed with Linda somewhere.

  Fuck, right now I didn’t even care where.

  I tried to call her once again after I parked the car. Still no answer. I switched off the phone and headed for the school performing arts center

  I slipped quietly down the side aisle of the theater and sank into the last seat in the far left corner. My usual spot. If I was lucky tonight people wouldn’t notice me here until the program was over and by then it would be too late to corner me.

  God, Chrissie hated when I caused a commotion at her school, and I didn’t want anything fueling her volatile emotions tonight since I was pretty sure she’s was going to be upset when I told her at dinner that I wasn’t traveling with her to New York.

  I didn’t like disappointing my girl, but fuck, my life had been in segmented parts for too long. Linda deserved my full focus now, es
pecially since she was going to blow when I told her that Alan had been with me the entire time she’d been in New York frantic for news about him.

  Better to deliver that news bulletin face-to-face in case she didn’t understand why I felt it necessary to keep everyone—even her—from knowing where Alan was.

  I gave artists time to catch their breath.

  Free from pressure.

  And often the people who loved them the most were the most pressure. Sitting six months in a jail cell had taught me that. I don’t know if I could have seen the process through the way I needed if I’d believed Lena had been on the outside needing me.

  Nope, I would have called Georgie and begged him to get me out.

  When the concert ended I slipped out of the theater before the applause was over and headed off for Chrissie’s dorm room to wait for her.

  After a few tense moments as the girls changed out of their performance clothes, we went to dinner and that’s when everything fell apart for the evening.

  Yep, she wasn’t happy I wasn’t going to spring break in New York with them or be at the Juilliard audition.

  Being charming and fun Dad didn’t help. Fuck, I’d said something lame like “who wants their dad along on spring break?”

  Rene thought that a reasonable sentiment—that should have been my first clue that sending them off alone was a mistake—but Chrissie melted down, like she does; overly sensitive, overly dramatic out of nowhere, and totally beyond my comprehension.

  Back home, I ordered them to stay clear of the pool house since I was pretty sure Alan was holed up alone in there like he preferred to spend most of his hours, and I was definitely sure I didn’t ever want these two parts of my life—the girls and my fucked-up British superstar—to collide.

  He didn’t need the stress of their teenage, lovestruck adoration, and they sure as hell didn’t need him.

  Nope, Venus and Mars not colliding on my watch.

  In the kitchen, I looked through the wall of glass to find the patio as I expected: Liam and the guys around the pool and Alan Manzone in his cave.

  Chrissie and Rene took off for the night to do whatever they did, probably for Chrissie to complain about me since she was pissed off about me not doing the New York trip.