Page 117 of Anthem of Love and Loathing

She doesn’t stir. She hasn’t woken to me since the first night I took vigil. Kodiak of course does. He opens one eye. Draws her tightly into the cocoon of his body. “Any movement?”

He’s stopped telling me it’s creepy for me to watch them sleep. He knows I’m not going anywhere. I won’t rest if I can’t see her when I wake up multiple times a night in a panic.

Maybe we’re past the touch and go stage of her depression, but it’s a beast that can rear its ugly head at any time. And I won’t risk missing it if she gets to that point again. “No. Nothing.”

“Good.” He keeps his voice low, so she doesn’t rouse. “At least that’s something.”

“Yeah.” I toe off my Converse and lean back.

He tosses a pillow at me.

I catch it and punch it a couple of times before putting it behind my head. “I’m going to get her back.”

“You tell me that every night,” he says.

“I want to make sure you understand where we stand.”

“You’ve made it loud and clear,” he says. “But I need you to understand that I can wait for you to fail. I can wait for her to be ready to move on. If she ever gives me a shot, I am going to take it.”

“You won’t get one.”

“Figured that’s what you would say,” he says, relaxing into the bed with her. He grows silent for a few minutes before he frowns. “What are you going to do about Sonatina? She’s been up your ass all week. How many times did she call you today?”

“Twenty.” And getting Bronx to take her calls isn’t helping. “She means to join the tour.”

She wants more opportunity to build buzz around the idea that we’re back together. She wants to make sure that the rumors about Kelsey being with us aren’t true.

“You can’t let that happen,” he says.

“I don’t plan to.” There’s no way that I could ever be convinced to let that psycho, her lies, and her GHB on this bus.

41

Kelsey

I’m curled up on the couch in the back room of the stadium in Vegas while Riot’s voice floats through the air. The guys are playing their song ‘Pandemonium’ for sound check while I have my session with Dr. Applegate. My toes bounce on the buttery leather cushions.

While I will never be able to listen to ‘Chokehold’ without feeling Riot’s betrayal, ‘Pandemonium’ reminds me of summertime in L.A. Of skateboards and ice cream and a boy with fluffy dark hair and gray eyes that made my heart flutter.

“He’s taken to sleeping next to the bed,” I tell Dr. Applegate. I don’t know when Riot started doing it, or if he’s been watching over me since he kicked down the bathroom door and found me with a handful of pills.

“How does that make you feel?” she asks.

I don’t know how I feel about him being there when I wake up in the middle of the night, my heart beating out of my chest after a nightmare where Marco is chasing me. Or with tears flowing down my face as everything I’ve lost hits me afresh.

“I crawled out of Kodiak’s arms and onto Riot’s lap last night while I sobbed my heart out,” I confess. “He didn’t say one word to try and fix me or distract me.”

He’d held me to his chest and let me soak his shirt with my tears. He’d been wearing his cross around his neck again. I’d felt it through his shirt.

Dr. Applegate says that grief comes out eventually whether we want it to or not. I’d delayed it with my need to survive. Skipped the part where I cried and put all my drive into anger and hate.

She might be right.

“It doesn’t change that he and I are broken beyond repair. It doesn’t mean I can ever get past the betrayal and the hurt.”

“Of course. You’ve been through a lot. He’s been a big part of that.” She rests her chin on her twined hands. “It’s okay to not want to continue a relationship after what happened. But it’s also okay if you are conflicted. Do you think maybe the reason you want to hate him is because of that?”

“Maybe.” Why else would I have wanted him jealous? Want him to fight for me? Am I really that vindictive? Or is it something less easy to name, and far more devastating to acknowledge?