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TWENTY-FOUR
Axel
In Cleveland, Raine joined the tour for a week. She’d dropped off the daughter she had with Neal at summer camp back home and decided to come hang out with a rock band for a while. Neal tried to act chill about it, but I’d known him for a long time, and he was practically jumping out of his skin the day her flight was set to arrive. Raine had just gotten a divorce, and the fact that she was coming all this way to see him gave him hope.
I used to call Neal the Silent Ninja back in the day, because he was our laid-back, good-guy bassist, but he could score women whenever he chose to. I’m not kidding—he had some serious mojo I never figured out. But those days were behind him, and Raine was different. Raine had always been different than any other woman for him, and now that she was single, he had a shot. All he had to do was refrain from screwing it up.
Through my increasing haze of exhaustion, I was happy for him. I was happy to see Raine, who I liked. I was happy that there would be another woman for Brit to hang out with for a week instead of spending her days waist-deep in rancid rock star testosterone.
But fuck, I was tired, and the shows were getting harder, and the band was getting sick of each other, the way you do when you’ve spent eight weeks on a bus together. Worse, I was starting to feel the cravings nip at my heels in a way I hadn’t felt in years. I needed to find a meeting, then somehow find an hour off to go to it. And then the weather got bad.
We were to play two back-to-back shows in Detroit. During the first show, it rained so hard it felt like we were playing in the jungle. My shirt was soaked through at sound check and never dried. The crowd was moody, so was the band, and I couldn’t get the sound from my kit exactly right. Denver and Stone bickered about something to do with the setlist, and for the first time on this tour, I checked out. I didn’t pay attention. My focus changed to getting through this night.
But we did it. We played until we turned the crowd around and gave them a night to remember. By the time I walked offstage, I was shaking a little and my head was light, as if I had the flu.
Brit was there. Backstage, sitting on a musty old sofa with Raine next to her, the two of them talking like old friends. She hadn’t been to a show since L.A. But she’d come tonight.
Tonight, on the worst fucking night. The night we had a hard time getting in sync, when the crowd was sour, the cops were here, and the weather was bad. It wasn’t a bad show—there wouldn’t be a bad show on this tour, not on my watch—but it wasn’t our best, either. She couldn’t have come any other night? A night when we were killing it?
I grabbed a bottle of water and walked past her, too tired to overthink it. As I left the green room for the dark, damp hallway, Brit followed me.
“Where are you going, Axel?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied, swigging water. “Probably to piss.”
“I’ll come with you, then.”
I shot her a look. Wait a minute—I knew what this was. She hadn’t come to the show because she wanted to see it. Of course she hadn’t. She was here because she’d somehow been tipped off to my mood, and she was scared I would score.
Axel the addict. He wouldn’t quite fucking die, would he? He’d always be lurking in the shadows, ready to derail my relationships.
“Which one of them was it?” I asked Brit, still walking down the corridor. “Who called you? It wasn’t Stone, because Stone is being an asshole tonight. There’s a fifty-fifty chance it was Denver. But I’m placing my bets on Neal.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Brit was walking at my elbow, brisk and businesslike. Her hair was tied up off her neck and was curling in the humidity. She was wearing a black sundress—they made sundresses in black?—with a snug bodice and thin straps. There were beads of sweat in the hollow of her neck, which distracted me in the worst possible way. We hadn’t fooled around since Charlotte—her decision. I hadn’t even touched her since Chicago. Also her call.
Which was fine. What woman would want me to touch her, anyway? But I did not need to see those beads of sweat, or the soft line of her mouth, or the way the black dress clung in all the right spots. I just didn’t.
“Would you rather I not be here?” she asked, challenging me. “Because it’s too bad. I’m not leaving.”
I nodded at a passing security guard, then drained the water and tossed the empty bottle in a nearby trashcan. I turned a corner into a different corridor, and when she followed me, I surprised her by pinning her against the wall. But even as I did it, I watched where I put my hands. Brit didn’t always like hands on her.
She gave a surprised intake of breath, and her eyes went wide. But she didn’t push me off.
I leveled my gaze straight into hers. “I am in a very bad mood,” I said in a tight voice.
Anger flared over her expression. “No shit, Sherlock.”
I placed my hands on either side of her shoulders, my body pressing hers against the wall. We were so close that my breath touched her cheek. “My mood is not your problem,” I explained. “I don’t have anything on me. You can strip search me if you want. You can just let me take a piss, we go back to the hotel, and you can leave me alone. This has nothing to do with you.”
Her breath hitched, and for a second my chest tried to crack open, because all I wanted was this woman, right here. I wanted her to look at me like I mattered. I wanted her to put her arms around my neck and tell me she believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. I wanted her to make me believe she was here, just here. For me.
Then she said the words that crushed me instead.
“Axel, I’m just doing my job.”
I tensed, trying not to flinch from the blow.
This was a job. A well-paid one. That was what she was here for.
