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But tonight, he was just an asshole sitting alone at the bar. Nobody would miss him if he went back and found a place to crash.
He grabbed the bottle of Jack and went to hunt up a bed.
CHAPTER TEN
Backstage at Cain’s, Marcella sat near the snack table and watched Joe, Kenny, and Dawn work the room. All three were inveterate flirts whose entire romantic life revolved around groupies and people they picked up at the bars they played in.
In her pre-mother days, she’d been the same—and she still hooked up occasionally. But she tried to be choosier now. She didn’t have any intention of bringing a guy home and into Ajax’s life, but she wanted to make sure she herself made it home whole. Before she had her son, she didn’t necessarily care too much about that.
Risk had been exciting. Now it was just risk, and she was responsible for someone other than herself.
So she sat cross-legged in an armchair that had been through the wars, drinking wine and snacking on mixed nuts and Chex Mix, trying not to be too obvious about picking out the little toast rounds, which were gross.
There was a guy across the room, talking with Dash, who had her attention a little. He was tall, with good broad shoulders and slim hips, dark-skinned, his hair in mid-length twists. His jeans were so tight it was obvious he was packing serious heat.
She didn’t know him, but she thought he was with The Wes Brown Sound, the headliners tonight, who were onstage now. Wes didn’t travel with an opening act; he liked to showcase a local band at each venue. The Lowdowners had been invited to open in Tulsa. It was a big deal.
Considering Dash’s laser focus on this guy, he was probably somebody with some pull. Dash was constantly working an angle, trying to get the band up the ladder.
The video was a good step up, Marcella thought. They’d posted about it on their Patreon—‘they’ being Dawn, who managed all their social media—and added a new tier, hoping they’d be able to fund the video that way.
Preliminary estimates suggested that they would need pretty much every one of their patrons to step up to get it funded. Even with Darrin’s daughter and her friends helping out.
They hadn’t voted again, but in the usual way of the Lowdowners, they probably wouldn’t. They’d just go on ahead until somebody got pissed off and pointed out that they hadn’t actually officially agreed to shoot a real video. Procedure was not their strong suit.
Maybe Dash was talking to this guy about the vid. As she decided to untie her legs and go over there, find out what they were talking about and meet that hot Black stud, her phone buzzed in her pocket.
It was almost midnight, so adrenaline shot through her blood. The only call she could imagine at this late hour, while she was with the band, was from Yvonne. Ajax was with her and Chase tonight.
She straightened out in the chair and fished the phone from the very tight leather pants she wore onstage. After sweating through a fifty-minute set, during which she was almost never still, these pants adhered to her skin five minutes off-stage.
Finally she had the buzzing menace in her hands, and she girded herself to be calm when she answered.
But it wasn’t Yvonne. The screen showed the name 8B—what she’d added to the contact when Eight Ball had put his number in.
Eight was calling her? At midnight on a Friday night? What the actual fuck?
The impulse to swipe him to voice mail was strong, but so was her curiosity. Curiosity won out, and she answered, standing and leaving the crowded party room as she did.
“Hello?”
“Marcellaaaa … hey, beautiful.” The words stretched out and ran together.
Ah. He was drunk. Well, this could be interesting, at least.
“Why are you calling, Edgar?” It was bitchy to use the name he hated, but he was an asshole in general, so it all evened out.
“Why do you do that?”
Marcella found a quiet little room, a dressing room given over to overflow storage, and closed herself in. “Do what? Call you by your name? Because it’s your name.”
A pause so long she thought the call dropped—or he’d ended it—before he mumbled, “You really hate me, huh?”
“I don’t hate you.” That was true. She didn’t like him, she was pissed as fuck at him, but she reserved true hate for evil. Eight wasn’t evil. He was just a fucked-up bad boy.
“The people who raised me called me that name. You say it like they did, all nasty, like you want it to hurt. They used to beat the shit outta me, you know that?”
Marcella tensed. That right there was the first look into himself the man had ever given her. She’d known it was true; she’d seen the scars. But he’d never confirmed it until now.
