Page 68 of Pistol Whipped

“Shhhhh,” a too-familiar voice whispers. My body is jostled side to side until I’m tossed down on a soft surface. I long to snuggle into it, even though I’m not sure how I got here. Or where here is.

“Shhhhh, Ray,-Ray,” the voice says again, and my reflex is to kick out at it.

“None of that now. Maybe this’ll teach you to show me a little more gratitude.”

The statement sounds more like a threat than a comfort.

End Interlude

Interlude 13

Screaming Infidelities

Cohen – aged 21, ten years ago.

Lou has led me around the whole fucking house in search of Dallas, but either he’s already left, or he is doing such a good job of hiding that not even a scent hound could find him.

Lou gave up the search pretty quickly, but after a while, even I am forced to abandon it. I’m ready to track down my girl and get the hell out of here because even though this party is supposed to be about us and our album, this place, these people just don’t feel like us at all.

“Seen Rainy?” I ask as I race past Dutch. He immediately abandons his conversation and trails after me.

“No. Where is she? You lost her?”

Fuck him and his accusatory tone.

I spin back to him and force a finger into his chest with an accusation of my own. “I didn’t lose her; I was busy trying to find Dallas. Any idea where your brother is, big man?”

He doesn’t say shit, and I’m too busy worrying about Rain to give a single fuck. Together we trace our way back through each and every room in this giant house. There’s no sign of her. The last place I saw her was by the bar in the ballroom, so that’s where we head.

The shitheads behind the bar don’t know much, but after I grill a couple of them, they admit to seeing her head deeper into the house with Blue Grace. That alone makes my blood pressure spike. Rain’s not the type of girl to judge anyone by what the media says about them, because God knows, they say some horrendous and misogynistic shit about her, but I am. And Blue Grace is a widely reported man-whore.

“She wouldn’t,” Dutch repeats as we wind our way through award-lined hallways. The current hallway we’re searching through is lined with doors. Between Dutch and me, we’ve opened every last one. Some rooms were empty. One or two were occupied by couples obviously mid-fuck.

So far, though, there’s been no sign of Rain. As I close the door on the most recent of those rooms, the only door we haven’t checked, the one at the far end of this narrow hall, opens and out walks Blue Grace.

With a fucking smirk. A fucking golden grin.

“Boys.” He laughs as he passes us. “That’s quite the girl you’ve got there.”

My lungs stop. My vision falters. Or maybe I just see red. Before I know it, I’m running towards the door he’s just exited. I’m not alone either. I don’t need to see him to know that Dutch is at my back. Together, we blow the door off its hinges and are greeted by a sight that makes my stomach lurch.

Not just lurch. Spoil. I actively vomit on the carpet. Beside me, I have only the vaguest sense of Dutch cursing: “What the fuck?”

The room we’ve just walked into reeks of sex. It fucking stinks. And there, in the middle of a king-size bed, naked, so, so, so, naked, so, so, so…fucked out, is Rain. She rolls towards us both. Her eyes are open, but I’m not sure she even sees me. It’s so obvious what’s happened here; I can’t even bring myself to say it, to say anything. For a long time, Rain’s dropped hints or made comments that tell me I’m not enough for her. The very idea of that makes me sick. Sick enough that we’ve fought about it more than once. Every single time, our fights eventually end when she promises that she would never, ever be unfaithful.

A bullshit promise, apparently.

“You fucked him?!” My voice is stretched to the point of breaking. Yet the girl I love barely registers the fact that my heart is actively breaking in front of her.

Her head lolls towards me, and she asks, “Cohen?”

That’s all I can take. I spin on my heels, and I am fucking gone. Knowing Dutch, he’ll stay with her when really he should—we should—I should have been looking for his brother this whole time instead of wasting my breath searching for that slut.

I leave the party alone.

I go back to my parents’ house in The Neck.

I break up with Rain the next day. She cries through the whole thing. First, she blames the alcohol, then she claims she was drugged and that what happened between her, and Blue was an assault.