Naomi. I hit decline and put it on the coffee table. I wasn’t ready to talk about what had happened. I wasn’t sure I ever would be. There simply weren’t words for this kind of pain. No way to explain the complete and total devastation that came with giving every part of yourself to someone who took that gift and twisted it.
Twenty minutes. That was all it would take for me to get to Nixon’s penthouse. I even had a key. Twenty minutes, and I could fight. I could make him listen. I could use the explosive chemistry between us to solder us together, broken pieces and all. I could break down those walls of his, just like I had so many times before.
But I was just so damned tired—too tired to keep chasing a man who didn’t want to be caught. Didn’t want to be open. Didn’t want to love me.
I fell asleep there on the couch.
I woke the next morning and declined every call that came in. None of them were from him anyway. Jeremiah. Naomi. Mom. Even Ben. I declined them all, wishing I could find a way to do the same to a world that waited outside my door. The world where Nixon wasn’t mine anymore…if he ever had been.
Two days later, someone pounded on my door.
I tried to ignore it, but after ten straight minutes, I hauled myself from the couch and walked to the front door, passing the bags I had yet to unpack.
“I’m not leaving until I see you, Shannon.” Ben’s voice came through the wood.
Shannon.
My heart clenched, but I yanked open the door to see my boss standing there in jeans and a sweater.
“Damn,” he muttered, giving me a quick once-over. “Okay. Get in the shower.” He walked into my apartment and shut the door himself.
“I’m sorry?” I folded my arms across my chest.
“We have an appointment in a little over an hour, so get in the shower.” He lifted his brows.
“No, we don’t.” I shook my head.
“Look.” He hauled out his cell phone and opened it to the office calendar. Sure enough, we had an appointment.
“I’m not even supposed to be here,” I groaned. “I’m still on vacation time.”
“Get. In. The. Shower.” He crossed his arms and stared me down.
“Fine,” I answered, just because it was easier than fighting with Ben. I didn’t have the energy for it.
“And put on something that doesn’t smell like you’ve been wearing it for a week!” he called after me.
“Picky, picky,” I mumbled.
Forty-five minutes later, I emerged from my bedroom, showered, with dried hair, minimal makeup, and dressed in jeans and a silk blouse.
“Feel better?” Ben asked from the kitchen, where he’d loaded the dishwasher.
“Sure. Like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound.” I flashed the fakest smile in the history of fake smiles.
“Uh-huh.” He shook his head. “Let’s go.”
Thirty minutes later, we sat in a private booth in the balcony of a downtown club, both nursing sodas as a crowd milled beneath us, waiting for a show to begin.
“I can’t believe you hauled me out to listen to a band.” I trailed my finger through the condensation on the outside of my glass.
“I can’t believe I had to.” He sipped his drink and looked out over the crowd.
“You know what happened?” Here it came—my downfall.
“Given that stunt Nixon pulled in Houston with that guitar strap, the fact that he’s locked himself inside his penthouse, and your general state of devastation, it’s not too hard to put together.”
“Are you firing me?”
His gaze swung back to mine. “Why would I fire you?”
“For sleeping with a client. Not exactly professional of me, was it?”
“No, it wasn’t, and no, I’m not going to fire you. Remember, as of last week, I’m no longer your boss. You’re a manager in your own right.” His mouth tightened. “Do I think your choice was reckless, foolish, and stupid? Yes.”
“I know,” I said softly.
“I know you do, which is why I didn’t bring it up.” He shrugged.
“Everyone knows.” I rolled the glass between my palms.
“Yep. Nixon Winters wore your name across his chest. You weren’t exactly discreet there, Zoe.”
Zoe. Not Shannon. My gaze rose to meet his.
“You made a choice, and like it or not, you have to deal with the consequences, which, in this case, appear to be a broken heart and some office gossip.” He nodded once. “But I’ll be damned if I watch the young woman I just spent four years training waste her potential because she fell for a guy too damaged to hold on to her.”
I swallowed, trying to dislodge the lump growing in my throat.
“Kelly Rowland, Mary J. Blige, Celine Dion, and Usher,” he said, as the lights flashed and a cheer went up from the crowd.
“I don’t follow.” I shook my head.
“All artists who married their managers.” He shrugged. “You’re not the first to fall for a star. You won’t be the last. Now hold your head up and get back to work.”
“I still love him,” I admitted.
“I figured. Do you see that changing any time soon?” He tilted his head.
I shook mine. Getting over Nixon wasn’t something I saw on the horizon. I wasn’t saying never, but definitely not now.
“Then, again, hold your head up and get back to work. You’ve earned it. Take it.” He nodded toward the stage as a band walked on.
I dragged in a heavy breath. Ben was right. Nixon was gone. I could cry for a week, a month, or the rest of my life. It wouldn’t change anything. All I could do was put one foot in front of the other and wait for the pain to lessen. “I’m not sure where to start.”
Ben grinned as the first notes of a familiar song rang out, and my gaze jerked to the stage.
“You can start by telling them their bass player sucks.”
18
NIXON
I sat at my dining room table, staring down the barrel of a bottle of Crystal Skull, imagining the taste of the vodka on my lips, the slight burn as it would slide down my throat, the blissful stupor that would come next.
Buying it had been easy without Zoe at my side.
That was a lie. It would have been easy to buy it at any point in the last six months. I’d chosen not to. Chosen not to sneak away. Chosen to please her, to make her proud of me…to make me proud of myself.
But the pain of recovery was nothing compared to the utter agony shredding my chest, screaming with the constant reminder that Zoe wasn’t here. I wasn’t enough for her. Wasn’t healed. Didn’t fit into the lines she drew for her life.
My phone rang. Jonas.
Decline.
Quinn.
Decline.
I sat there for the next hour, my focus bouncing back and forth between my phone and the bottle. I could call her. I could fix this. I could beg her to fix me, to love me. But I couldn’t guarantee I’d actually, eventually, be fixed. This was simply who I was.
Facing a life without Zoe felt as impossible as that first day at rehab had been, starting down a path I couldn’t imagine reaching the end of. But the reasoning behind the two were so different I couldn’t compare them.
The alcohol had to go. It was killing my body, my mind, and my friends. It was slowly wiping away every ounce of my talent and led to the shittiest decisions of my life.
But Zoe… She was none of that. She was as clean as freshly fallen snow at our house in Colorado. As honest as a compass. As good for me as a full night’s sleep, even though the last thing I ever thought about was rest when I got into bed with her. Everything I’d written about in that damned song. The only reason I couldn’t have her was my own inability to let go of my past.
And even as pissed as I was that she couldn’t just love me as I was, that she felt like she needed to fix me, I wanted to be whole for her…even if I couldn’t have her.
Standing, I grabbed the bottle, pocketed my phone, then twisted the top of the Crystal S
kull as I started to walk. I lifted the bottle to my nose and inhaled sharply, swinging the door open.
Then I poured the entire thing into the toilet, my chest clenching at the steady glug as it emptied. My phone rang as the last of the liquor left the bottle.
Unknown.
Maybe it’s her.
“Hello?” I answered it, tossing the bottle in the trash.
“Mr. Winters?”
“Yes?” My jaw ticked. Of course it wasn’t her.
“This is Richard Howell. I was hoping I might get you to change your mind about talking at your dad’s hearing.”
“My father murdered my little sister. If you want me to talk at his hearing, that’s all I’ll say.” I hit end and let go, the phone falling into the toilet with the vodka before I flushed.
* * *
A month. Thirty fucking days. Seven hundred and twenty hours.
That’s how long it had been since I’d left Zoe standing in the entry hall of the only place that had ever really felt like home.
Don’t leave me. Don’t do this. Those were the words that haunted my nightmares now. Instead of seeing Kaylee’s curls, it was Zoe’s auburn tresses wrapped in my father’s fists. Zoe’s fingers reaching for the banister. Her broken body at the bottom of the kitchen stairs.
On the worst nights—and there’d been a few—I’d woken from the dream gasping for air, my hands outstretched like I could catch them both. One of them I’d failed, and the other one I’d abandoned.
“Mr. Winters?” the wannabe Shannon asked, snapping me out of my thoughts. She was straight out of college, with that first-year oxymoronic mix of ball-busting confidence and naivete that all interns seemed to be issued when they started at Berkshire.
“What?” I snapped, looking over the Seattle skyline and wishing it was the Rockies.
“Quinn’s here to see you.”
“I’m sorry?” Last time I checked, Quinn was in Bozeman. We weren’t due in the studio until next week.
“She said Quinn is here to see you,” Quinn called out from inside the penthouse, walking right past wannabe Shannon onto my deck.
“So I see.” I lifted my open bottle of orange soda and drank, wishing it were something a little clearer and a little more like vodka.
Quinn plopped down on the chair next to me and gave me a blatant once-over, clearly assessing my sobriety, just like everyone did now that Shannon was gone. But she wasn’t gone, was she? She was working in this very city. Living within a twenty-minute drive. Going on with her life because I’d forced her out of mine.
“Will you need anything?” Wannabe Shannon asked, flashing a smile that implied anything meant anything.
“Go play with your dollhouse, Malibu Barbie.” Quinn waved her off without even looking. “How long are you stuck with the intern?”
I shrugged. “She’s only here during the day. I’m being weaned off supervision. You want something to drink?”
“Not if it’s that orange shit.”
I leaned to the right, opening the mini fridge that was built into the outdoor cook station, and handed Quinn a bottle of water. “WBS keeps it stocked.”
“WBS?” she questioned, twisting the top.
“Wannabe Shannon.”
“You’re unreal.” She rolled her eyes and took a drink. “I saw her, by the way.”
“Oh yeah?” My heart—whatever was left of it—clenched.
“Yep. She signed that band she loved. What are they called…Nine to Five?”
“Seven to One,” I answered. Good. At least her career was moving forward. She’d gotten what she needed out of her deal with Ben. “Did you seriously fly here to tell me that?”
Quinn watched me carefully, taking in the way my knee bounced and my fingers drummed on the soda bottle. “I was already here, which you’d know if you ever checked your damn phone. It’s spring break, and Graham and Colin wanted to spend it in the city. Meanwhile, I stopped into Berkshire to sign something.”
I scoffed. “Bullshit. You stopped into Berkshire to see Zoe.”
“Guilty.” She shrugged. “She looks like shit, and you’re even worse.”
“I’m fine.” I willed my body to stop fidgeting.
“Try saying that to someone who doesn’t know you.” She snorted. “What the hell happened in Colorado? You two were wrapped around each other in Houston. You wore a guitar strap with the woman’s name on it, for crying out loud. Three days later, I find out you’re locked in your penthouse like a hermit and won’t even let the housekeeper in.”
“I let Jonas in,” I argued.
“Because he has a key,” she retorted. “One he had to fly out here from the East Coast to use.”
“Yeah, well. I’ve always been an asshole, but in my defense, I would have opened the door if she’d told me she was running to Jonas to tattle.” I still felt like shit for pulling Jonas away from his family once again.
“Jonas was scared you’d fallen into a bottle.” She leveled me with her stare. “Imagine his surprise when he burst through the door to find the only thing that had fallen was your phone into your toilet.”
“I’m sober. Fucked up, maybe. But sober.” Barely. The first twenty-four hours had been touch and go, but I’d locked myself away up here. “And I apologized to Jonas.”
“It’s not about that. You know you have an open invitation at both our houses. Pretty sure Kira has already stocked three cases of orange soda on the off chance you finally admit that you might need a little support.”
“I’m fine.” I was going to tattoo that shit on my forehead pretty soon.
“What happened to you and Zoe?”
“What did she tell you happened?” I rolled the bottle between my hands and told my chest to simmer down with the whole heartache shit.
“Is this high school?” Quinn shook her head. “I’m not carrying a note to fourth period.”
“Pretty sure everyone just texts now.” Except Zoe. No calls. No texts. No carrier pigeons or emails. My guitars had arrived at the penthouse two days after I left Colorado, along with a bag of things I’d left behind. Leave it to Shannon to keep picking up my shit after I was gone.
“She said what happened between you two was private.” Quinn lifted the bottle of water like she was looking through it.
“Did she?” My hands paused.
“She did.” Quinn put the water bottle down. “She also said I was right, and she should have gone for higher ground.”
My head whipped toward hers. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“My best guess is it means that she got too close, you couldn’t handle your feelings, and then you hit the self-destruct button.” She lifted a brow. “How close am I?”
I looked away.
“That’s what I thought.”
“She thinks she needs to fix me.” I started rolling the bottle again. “I told her to choose between loving me just like I was and fixing me. She chose to fix me, because that’s what she does. Something isn’t perfect? Zoe to the rescue. Someone doesn’t work? Zoe’s on it. She’d rather know she accomplished her mission than stick it out with a mess she can’t manage.”
“No way. If someone walked away, it was you. That woman loves you.”
“She only thinks she does,” I argued.
“Right, because you’re an expert on the way women think? What she thinks?”
“I know enough about women—”
“In bed!” Quinn snapped.
“I’ve never taken you to bed, and I know you pretty damn well.”
“Thank God for that,” she muttered, then sighed. “What did she say exactly?”
“Do we have to do this?” I shoved away from the table and walked to the railing, turning to lean against it the same way I had every morning when Zoe had taken her coffee out here.
“Yes, we do! You broke that woman, Nix, and from what I see, you’re just as shattered. So yeah, we have to do this. What did she say?” She folded her arms across her chest.
“Fine. She said if the choice was between her loving me, or her stepping aside so I could be healthy enough to love someone, she’d choose that. She’d choose to fix me, rather than love me.”
Quinn’s face slackened. “She really said that.”
“Yeah. She tells me she loves me and then less than twenty-four hours later, she’s dropping that shit.”
“Restating that she loves you?” Quinn’s eyes narrowed. “Is that what you mean by dropping that shit?”
I bristled. “She’d rather fix me than take me as I am.”
“Well, let’s ignore for a second that you’re pretty messed up, shall we?” She stood. “Listen to what she said. She loves you so much that she’s willing to break her own heart, if that means you’ll be able to experience love, even if that means she’s not the one you love. That’s some pretty heavy self-sacrifice.”
“That’s not…” I ran my hands over my hair and tried to find the words. “Who the hell does that? I wouldn’t trade her love so she could go love someone else.” Screw that.
“Isn’t that what you’re doing?”
I sagged against the railing. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“At least we can agree on that.”
“What if there’s no fixing me? What if this is just the way I am?”
“You still going to therapy?”
“Every Thursday like clockwork,” I replied, cringing at the sight of Wannabe Shannon’s silhouette crossing the far window. Fuck, I missed Zoe. I missed her smile, and her laugh. I missed her sense of humor and wit. I missed her kisses, and her body, and the smell of her shampoo.
“How is that possible without your phone to keep you on that clockwork?” Quinn challenged.
“I bought a paper planner.” I shrugged. “They’re really quite practical.”
“Wow. I’m not touching that statement with a ten-foot pole.” She slid her phone out of her pocket, checking a message. “Sorry, that’s Graham.”
“She accused me of using her like a fix.” The admission slipped out as a whisper.
“Are you?” Quinn’s eyebrows shot up, and she put her phone back.
MUSES AND MELODIES Page 21