Page 74 of Pistol Whipped

Rain’s voice cracks as she looks back at me and asks, “Video?”

Our faces mirror each other’s desperation as I’m forced to relive what might now be the second worst moment of my life, because I think tonight is taking the top spot.

“Lou came to my house; he showed me a video,” I almost vomit as I say the next words, “Of you and Blue. It looked…it didn’t look like…”

“I was filmed?”

Her knees wobble, and my heart leaps forward, but I’m not the one to catch her. I don’t deserve to be. The Kelly brothers surround her, each offering their own form of comfort.

“Tell me,” she croaks, “Please, Co, I need to know.”

My own self-loathing has never been stronger, and the words catch inside my mouth, because saying them out loud also means admitting that when given the choice between believing the girl, the woman, I was supposed to love or listening to my manager’s bullshit, I chose the latter.

Like a goddamn chump.

Dutch pins me with a violent look.

“Talk.”

It takes a hard swallow, but I do. The whole story rushes out of me. So quickly that I’m definitely rambling, wrongly trying to justify my unjustifiable behaviour, all without admitting to my bandmates how fucked up I really am. Sure, back then I didn’t know or understand what was wrong with me, but there’s no diagnosis that can excuse away the past.

By the time I finish, it feels like the hallway we’re in, like the whole fucking world, has narrowed to no one and nothing but the four of us.

“I-I-I fucked up,” is all I manage to offer them at first. “I never should have trusted Lou Braun. Not then. Not now.”

Unbelievably, it’s Rain who hands me a lifeline.

“None of us should.” She looks up at Dutch, gripping his bicep while giving Dallas’s hand another squeeze. She doesn’t even have to touch me at all for my heart to squeeze too. Before it fucking drops through the floor. “Lou’s been playing us all. From the day he brought us back together.” Her voice shrinks, but it still echoes unnaturally off the empty walls around us. “Part of our deal, or my deal, was that I had to keep you distracted.”

“Distracted, Rainy?” Dutch asks, “What does that mean?”

“It means that Lou didn’t want Cohen in contact with his family or his lawyers. He never told me why.”

“Because he’s trying to royally fuck us over, and he hoped I would be too distracted to notice.”

I don’t exactly spell out the details of my afternoon, but I do explain that the Wren and McQuaid lawyers finally got through to me, via my mother, and they didn’t have anything good to say.

“And you helped?”

It wasn’t meant to be another tossed-out accusation, but even I can admit it sure as hell sounds like one. She takes it that way too.

“Fuck you, Cohen! What was I supposed to do?! I was broke, homeless, and just turned thirty! You know, the expiration date that society puts on women! It wasn’t exactly like I had a ton of options.”

“You had the option not to sell me out.”

“Yeah, well, you had the option to believe me in the first place. Guess we both chose wrong.”

Even though I know she’s right, even though I can hear my doctor’s voice in my head telling me to step back, take a breath and get some space before I react, I don’t. I can’t. My own damn brain betrays me worse than Rainy ever did. Hell, she never betrayed me at all, and instead of dealing with my guilt and shame, that I so rightly deserve, I toss it back in her face.

“I knew we couldn’t trust you! I knew you’d sell us all out!” I scream. It wasn’t supposed to be a scream. But I’m a slave to my own reactions.

Exasperated, frustrated, and angry, she shouts back, “Trust is a two-way street, Cohen! I tried to tell you multiple times! All of you!”

She’s not just yelling at me anymore; she’s protesting everything that’s happened with the four of us since Lou brought us back together.

“I tried, but there were always groupies, or fights, or Lou, or fucking Trey.”

The mention of Trey sets me off again. “Oh, you mean your fiancé, Trey?” I spit with as much venom as I can muster, because the very idea of him is acidic. “The guy who’s suing me for assault because I was dumb enough to defend you?”