Page 33 of All Right No

She understood that. Absolutely, she did. “I don’t understand why that makes it necessary to cut him out of this promo thing.”

“It wasn’t exactly our decision. The suits at the label aren’t happy.”

“Do they want you to fire him?”

Spook paced, the soles of his baseball boots making soft whispers as he wore grooves in the carpet.

“You have to understand that none of us want that, but the aggression we’re seeing is making things really difficult. Ginny, I want him to stay involved. I want to hear him playing on this album and to be with us when we hit the road again, but in order for that to happen he has to be able to play. Have you heard him practise? ’Cause I haven’t.”

She bowed her head. She hadn’t, and Ash had more or less confessed to not doing anything to strengthen his fingers.

Spook’s tired gaze locked on hers. “That’s what I thought. Ginny, unless he does something really soon, he’s not going to play again. He has to stop mooching around, petting his guitar like there’s a healing genie inside it and knuckle down to some intensive practice, or he’s going to leave us with no alternative but to replace him. Let me make this clear, none of us want to replace him, but pushing the tour dates back again isn’t an option.”

“December is still a couple of months away.”

“Yes, but we need to make a decision on the line-up by mid-October. If Ash isn’t fit and well by then, we’ll have to put a contingency plan into place.”

“Meaning you’ll bring in someone else?”

His anguish wore grooves into his face. “We’re already down a keyboard player. We can’t tour without a lead guitarist.”

“Can’t Xane—”

“Xane can only do so much. I’m sure he’ll willingly double up for some of the set, if say Ash needed to ease himself back in slowly, but he can’t sing and play lead for the whole show. It’s too much. And he hates playing guitar on stage.”

God—did Ash know all of this. He had to, but then what did that say about his state of mind, that it apparently hadn’t sunk in? Actually, she wasn’t sure how much of anything had sunk in since his visit to Dr. Noren back in July.

“He’s frustrated, Spook. I think he’s having trouble coming to terms with what happened. He considered Iain to be his friend.”

Spook finally came over and sat beside her. “You don’t have to explain it to me, Ginny. I get it. I realise how chewed up he is, but he won’t consider counselling, he won’t do his exercises, he won’t even attempt to play guitar. None of that bodes well for him making a recovery.”

And he’s not taking his meds, she added silently.

“What’s that?”

Ginny shivered. Apparently, her thoughts were too loud, or Spook was psychic. “Do you have any ideas?”

“I’ve tried every damn thing I can think of to incentivise him. We all have. I don’t know what’s left to try. Maybe he needs the dosages of his medicines adjusting.”

Ginny covered her mouth. The guys still didn’t know. “Yeah, maybe,” she murmured, turning away and making a show out of pulling her wet dress away from her skin. Spook didn’t miss a thing. She was pretty certain he was looking at her now with those knowing eyes of his, slotting pieces of a puzzle together in his head. She hadn’t a clue whether he’d be furious or not.

“You know, you’d dry a lot quicker if you just took the wet things off,” he said surprising her with the change of topic.

“Yeah, but that would involve me having this conversation naked.”

Ginny snatched a look at him over her shoulder. “Are you trying to get me naked, Mr. Mortensen?”

“Pfft! It’s not as if I haven’t seen it all before. Lose the dress, Ginny. I’m not enjoying watching you shiver, or listening to your teeth chatter. I’m sure there’s a T-shirt or something around here you can put on. There’s Black Halo everything else.”

He made a sweep of the place, but returned empty-handed, while Ginny was shivering in her undies. “Here.” He stripped off his own tee and gave it to her.

Ginny gratefully pulled the warm cotton over her head. It smelled of him. Spook was a good bit taller than her, so the shirt fell to mid-thigh level.

“If Ash saw us now, he’d flip.”

Spook reeled back on his heels. “Seriously?”

More serious than she’d like. She hung her dress over the top of one of the stools. “He gets ideas stuck in his head sometimes. One of those is about us.”