Page 45 of Dedicated

Chapter 28

Icouldn’t stop thinking about wrecked bands. The Civil Wars, the White Stripes, No Doubt, Sonny & Cher, Oasis—and countless other musicians who churned out hits and soared on the charts and then went up in flames. Music was tricky that way. And worse when there were feelings involved. It wasn’t like an office romance where you could switch departments or do your best to ignore someone. When you made music with another person, you were giving them a piece of your soul and stitching it to theirs. It was a vulnerable process that was both primal and carnal, which was exactly why the best songs resonated with people and took on a life of their own. It was procreation absent of biology, and that was why it was a phenomenally bad idea to go fucking with the dynamics if you could help it. Apparently I couldn’t.

I could still smell Les on my skin as I stood in the front yard and waited for him. Still taste him while I watched him walk across the grass toward me wearing a dark scowl, his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his shorts. Still feel his body against mine, the warmth of him, the give as I buried myself in him. It was like nothing I’d had before and everything I wanted again. And I fucking hated that.

We said goodbye to Maize, then Les stalked ahead of me to the car. Five miles of silence became seven down a road of my own making. I had plenty of time to look for things to blame. The beers, the shots of Jager. But it wasn’t the alcohol’s fault for loosening me up enough to do the thing I’d been denying I wanted to do. It’d just been a primer.

“You need to fucking say something,” Les said, cutting a look across at me that might as well have had teeth the way it gnashed at me.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Something that makes up for you just tossing my shorts at me and dismissing me like a goddamn groupie.” His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “I don’t mind being used. I know the score. I do it plenty, so it’s only fair, but I don’t go out of my way to remind someone of their status.”

“Why don’t you mind being used, though?” That wasn’t the question I should have been asking, but it was what came out.

“My body is just a fucking body, Porter. It has various holes that like to be filled and an appendage that likes to fill other holes. I don’t get why it’s a problem to enjoy that, to enjoy getting off and not make a fucking federal case out of it. There’s zero reason that if we enjoy doing that together during this stupid mission impossible, that we shouldn’t do it. But I don’t want to anymore if you’re going to go catatonic afterward. That’s not hot. That’s not sexy. It makes me feel like shit.”

“Then we should stop.” I made it sound so simple, and what was more, I said it as if it was, when it was anything but. Inside, my thoughts were festering, growing tentacles and suffocating me. Because while Les could be cavalier about sex, I’d tried and I wasn’t good at it. And I’d rather have Les pissed at me over being a dick than me be heartbroken when this stupid ruse reached its expiration date and Les went back to his old ways on tour. But fuck, the way I felt right then, it was already too late.

“Done.” Les clipped. He yanked the keys from the ignition once we stopped outside the cabin, then stomped inside.

I woke hours later,a glance at the clock showing three in the morning. My temples throbbed with a headache that pulled me out of bed and toward the kitchen in search of ibuprofen. Les’s bedroom door was cracked, the room dark. I tossed a couple of pills in my mouth and chased them with two full glasses of water to clear the desert off my tongue.

I set my empty glass beside the sink and listened to the twang of guitar rising from the stairwell, then followed the sound to the basement quietly.

Ever have a flash where, for just a second, you see someone you’re used to seeing daily as if they’re new, like it’s the very first time you’ve stumbled across them? Devoid of the little quirks and habits you pick up on over time, devoid of personal history. Just a stranger you glimpse from across a room. Just possibility. At the bottom of the steps, I turned, looking through the open door of the music room, and I saw Les just like that. It made my breath catch in my throat and my heart thunder in my chest.

He sat on the floor with his back to me, bare legs crossed as he softly strummed his guitar and hummed. His notebook lay open beside him, the white pages glowing beneath his dark scribbles, and the sliding door a few feet from me was open, letting in the sound of crickets to accompany the low croon of his voice. I’d never heard the song before. His naked back was slightly hunched, ink and imagery moving and shifting over muscle. I knew which of his tattoos had stories, and the stories behind them, and I knew which ones he’d gotten just for the hell of it. And now, I knew what it felt like to be inside him, to have his body in my thrall at the same time I was undeniably under his spell. It was addictive and intoxicating to a frightening degree. I’d always felt close to him; even when we were arguing, there was a bond that was almost brotherly. Now there was something new, something different. A place I wasn’t sure I’d be able to return from. Deep-seated, overwhelming desire.

I stood in the doorway listening until his back straightened, as if he sensed my presence, and he turned a look over his shoulder to find me.

“It’s good. New?”

He gave me a muted nod. “Came to me the other night. Been working on it ever since.”

“When were you going to share it with me?” I rested my head against the doorframe, my gaze pinned to the back of his neck where a tendril of ink disappeared into his hairline.

He seemed noncommittal and wary of my presence, one shoulder hitching up as he set his guitar down and replied, “Maybe tomorrow.”

I wandered deeper into the room and dropped down to the floor across from him with my back against the bottom of the couch. “So you’re just having what, an impromptu practice session at three in the morning?”

“I do this almost every night. Why do you think I sleep so late?”

I had no idea, other than guessing alcohol was involved. He laughed softly at my expression. My teeth sawed at my lower lip, and he kept watching me like he was waiting for me to tell him why I’d interrupted him.

“I’m jealous of you, you know,” I confessed.

He barked out a short, doubting laugh. “Why?

“Because you’re not afraid of anything.” He’d never seemed to care what people thought of him, wasn’t afraid to bomb an interview, or of getting too attached to anyone. Wasn’t afraid to fail.

“Jesus. You have no clue.” He sighed and bent his knees up, resting his forearms over them. “I practice everything before I show it to you to make sure it’s not complete garbage.”

“I don’t think you’re capable of writing garbage.”

“Oh, I am. You just never see it.”

“Why not? You hear my garbage all the time.”