All Right Now

by Madelynne Ellis

  “Why not let them get on with things the way they’ve always done, and concentrate on making sure you’re ready to rock with them when the time comes? Have you actually played anything recently?” Ash often reassured her that he was trying hard when she asked him about his guitar skills, but Spook’s assertion that he hadn’t even picked up a guitar since July worried her. The way Ash’s gaze scuttled away from her confirmed her worst fears. He wasn’t practicing. “When was the last time you did any finger exercises?”

  His shoulders curled giving him a defensive hunch.

  Never, that’s when. She knew perfectly well the envelope containing the exercises from the physio was still in their room unopened. She’d let it go because she thought he was working his fingers by practicing his guitar skills. “Ash, you have to try. You promised when you stopped taking your pills.”

  “I am trying,” he snapped.

  “Are you?”

  Was he?

  “I’m doing my best. You’ve seen the hours I’ve been putting in with Xane and Spook on the new album.”

  She had, but that wasn’t what she’d asked, and he knew it.

  “Maybe the album shouldn’t be your priority. Maybe—”

  “I should leave the song writing to the experts?” he cut in.

  That was not what she was about to say. “Just because they have a certain way of working that produces the goods doesn’t mean you can’t write songs for the album too.”

  Ash cawed like she’d told a particularly funny joke. “Like they’d be interested in anything I wrote.”

  Jeezus, he was determined to see the gloomy side of everything. “I’m sure they would, actually.” And they were getting side-tracked from the important stuff here.

  “No one is interested in me.”

  No, no one at all. Besides her and a few thousand fangirls, some of whom wrote to him every single day, and sent him Danger Mouse socks and crocheted willy warmers and other unmentionables. However, Ash was too blinded by his own negativity to see that affection.

  “I’m a dead weight. A waste of space.”

  “Stop it,” she snapped. “You are not.”

  “I should probably go and live amongst the rhubarb and eat worms.”

  Okay, enough. Drastic measures were in order. Ginny gave him a shove that tipped him into the water. Yes, it was mean of her, but sometimes you had to be cruel in order to be kind, and he desperately needed shaking out of his self-pitying stupor. He wasn’t the only person with issues. Everybody had them. His problem was his refusal to deal with them.

  Ash surfaced, spluttering water, and glared at her. “What the hell did you do that for?”

  “I thought I’d give you a genuine reason to moan. Honestly, Ash, I know life sucks, but you need to move past all this woe is me stuff. Compared to millions out there, you’ve got it made. Okay, so you’ve work to do to fix yourself, but at least there’s the possibility that will happen. You’re not looking at a lifetime of endless therapies that are as likely to kill you as cure you. You have family, you have friends, and you have me. No cancer, no crippling debts, no non-verbal kid with special needs for whom you’re a punching bag. No one is determined to drag you through the courts as some kind of fuck you for wanting to love and be loved. Not to mention you’re still a member of an internationally best-selling band.”

  “For now,” he grumbled, wading towards her.

  She splashed him again. For heaven’s sake, why wasn’t he listening? “There you go again, bemoaning things that won’t even happen if you just listen to what they’re saying to you.” She slipped into the water beside him, and rested her hands on the tops of his arms. The water beaded on his skin, made him extra pretty, and the way his wet T-shirt clung to him, highlighted how sculpted he’d become thanks to a diet supplied by Spook and the limit on his alcohol consumption. “You’re pushing them away.”

  “They’re flying to Australia without me.”

  “What?”

  Ash climbed out of the water, and shook himself like a wet dog. “You reckon they’re not trying to push me out, but the flights are booked to take them to the other side of the world for a promo push and I’m staying put.”

  Okay, that did put a different spin on things.

  “I don’t understand. When was this agreed? How come no one has said anything? Have they given any justification for leaving you behind?”

  Ash offered her a hand out of the water. “There is none,” he said through clenched teeth. “I’m fit to fly. I’m just not wanted. Seriously, they’re one step from sacking me.”

  Ginny hooked her hands behind his neck and drew him close. “I’m sorry, Ash.” No wonder he was being so snippy. Although, “I’m sure it doesn’t mean what you fear. Maybe they thought you’d benefit from the additional rest. You’ve not really had many days off, what with all the stress of Elspeth’s departure from the band and all the hours you’ve put into the new album.”

  “Gin, don’t pretend this is some sort of holiday concession. It’s not.”

  Fearfully, she had to agree with him.

  “I know you’re trying to make things better.” He pressed his lips briefly to her cheek. “But, it’s all going to shit, Gin. You’re right, I know I’ve got it a lot better than many people, but right now I wake up every morning and wonder what new piece of crap I’m going to have to face.” He buried his head in the crook of her neck. “At least I can rely on you.”

  His faith in her made her feel like an absolute snake, but as she’d been telling herself for weeks now, today wasn’t a good day to open up. Shaking the foundations of their relationship might send him into a full-blown depression.

  No, she’d just have to work through the legal process on her own and hope that the right time would come around eventually.

  “Shall we go in,” she said. “It’s looking as though it might rain.”

  “And do what? Hide in our room.”

  “We could take a bath together. I could shave all this fuzz off your face.”

  Ash scratched at what he pretended was designer stubble but was definitely a beard. “I’m not in the mood.”

  “Or you could give me a trim.”

  For a moment, a gleam of interest shone in his eyes only for it to blink out of existence a moment after its birth. “Sorry, I’m not feeling very…” He turned away from her with his head bowed, and began walking back along the jetty.

  It was understandable, of course it was, considering everything that was on his mind that his libido would suffer. Their sex life wasn’t entirely barren. They still got intimate sometimes, maybe a couple of times a week…fortnight… Maybe it was actually closer to a month since they’d gone all the way. Him falling asleep on her with his mouth wrapped around one of her nipples didn’t really fulfil her expectations of sex. Maybe if there was a bonus to learning that the guys were going away and leaving them behind, it was that they’d have time to spend together uninterrupted by all things Black Halo.

  That was it—her plan, for once they were gone, fishnets, corset, and a set of handcuffs so she could secure him to a chair. She knew his triggers. She could make him smile, and maybe once she had him smiling, she might persuade him to put some effort into some other vital activities too, like exercising his stiff joints, or sexercising them.

  Hell, anything to make it the way things had been.

  “Do you want me to talk to them? Maybe it would help to get them to see your side.”

  “No! Leave it, Ginny. I mean it. Just leave it be.”

  She raised her hands in surrender. Very well, she wouldn’t interfere directly, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to ask Spook what the ever loving heck was going on.

  Ash gave another exasperated harrumph, and cast some serious side-eye at a nearby tree.

  Ginny pulled her wet dress away from her skin. Wet was only fun while you were in the water. “I’ll bet it wasn’t even Xane or Spook who made the decision to go without you. It’ll have been your manager,
or the label. Therefore, it’s pointless being pissed at them about it.”

  “Whatever,” he drawled dismissively.

  She balanced on her tiptoes to press a kiss to his lips. Sure, he was in a foul mood and he’d already brushed her off once, but lip to lip contact was different. And in any case, she meant the kiss to be assuring, not sexual. She kept it light, and gentle. He had tears in his eyes when they pulled apart, which he cursed over, blaming the pollen count, while he rubbed the moisture away. “Let’s go and dry off.”

  He gave his head an emphatic shake. “You go. I just want to be left alone for a while.”

  Ginny let him pull free of her hold, and didn’t attempt to stop him when he climbed over the low chain fence and crossed the lawn. Maybe a little solitude and a chance to walk off his mood were what he needed in order to process everything and figure out a path forward. After he’d vanished from view, despite her wet clothing, Ginny headed back towards the studio. Ash might not want her to interfere, but she wanted answers. Xane still hadn’t returned. Chances were, he was busy working off his anger with Dani and Luthor somewhere, and that could take a while. Spook opened the door to the sound booth in order to talk to her.

  “Ash isn’t with you?”

  She shook her head.

  “What happened to you?” He inclined his head towards her dripping wet figure, then went into the little kitchen area at the back and returned with a hand towel.

  “I thought an impromptu swim might help Ash to cool off.”

  He smirked despite his grim demeanour. “Did it?”

  “Ish. He wants some alone time.”

  “Need a hug?” Spook asked, having instantly grasped the nuts and bolts of the situation.

  Ginny waved him away. “I’ll just get you wet.”

  Spook swaddled her in an embrace. “Better?”

  “Yeah,” she sighed, resting her head against his shoulder. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on, Spook? Ash says you’re all off to Australia without him. Is that true?”

  Spook led her over to the leather sofa in the main studio space. He made sure she was sitting comfortably, while he stayed on his feet. “It is.”

  “Why?”

  “For the same reason Xane and I have been pulling all-nighters for the last week.” He busied himself righting the toppled furniture, and returning discarded instruments to their rightful places.

  They’d been pulling… Now that she looked closely at him, Spook definitely looked grey around the eyes, and the weary set of his jaw couldn’t entirely be attributed to the recent spat.

  “You are trying to cut him out.”

  “No.” He spun towards her quickly. “No. We’re just trying to get things done. We’re already way behind schedule. We were supposed to have the album recorded by now, not still be working on composing the tracks. Several of the people we had booked to work with us, we’ve had to cancel, because they’re booked solid with no wiggle room and we missed our deadlines. I’m not blaming Ash exclusively for that, but his current attitude really isn’t helping matters.”

  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.”

  Spook gave a scoffing little laugh that turned into a belly-aching howl when she assured him she was deadly serious. “He’s brought it up several times.”

  Spook fell back onto the sofa. “That’s a good joke. Seriously, he’s worried about us? You’re living under the same roof as a sex addict and a man mountain who hasn’t got laid in weeks and he’s worried about us being intimate. Did he forget who I am?”

  “I guess he figure
s that Luthor and Dani are keeping Xane busy, and Rock Giant hasn’t actually been around all that much.”

  “Ginny, has Ash actually accused us of something?”

  “Not outright.”

  “He’s off his rocker.”

  Yeah, yeah, he was, and it seemed it was down to her to change that. Ginny sucked her lower lip. She needed a plan, something a little outside the box, something that would pry Ash out of his rut and get him focussed when all else had failed. Too bad she didn’t have a single idea.

  Okay, so the biggest priority was getting him to play guitar. That meant she needed him to do the physiotherapy exercises. How could she make those more palatable to him?

  The answer came to her surprisingly quickly. Ash had been advocating the idea himself when they’d first arrived here. She needed to encourage him to do things with his fingers he took pride and pleasure in.

  “How soon do you fly?” she asked Spook.

  “Thursday.”

  “Thursday, as in the day after tomorrow, or next week?”

  “This week.”

  That didn’t give her a whole lot of time to come up with a workable action plan.

  “Do you have any paper?”

  “Got an idea?”

  “Maybe.” She bit her lip.

  “There’s pens and paper in the top drawer to the right of the door.” He pointed through the internal window to where he meant. “Use whatever you want. I’m going to take a nap as Xane’s not showing any signs of reappearing. If he turns up, would you let him know it’s fine to come and wake me.”

  “Sure,” she muttered, no longer really focussed on the handsome blond. If she was going to ensure Ash retained his position as Black Halo’s lead guitarist, then she had some serious planning to do.

  -10-

  Four laps of the island did little to soothe Ash’s mood. Nor could the shower rinse away his hurt. Ash slumped on the bed, wishing the duvet would eat him up. He’d been in the same position for almost half an hour when Ginny returned carrying a wad of paper, which she slapped down on top of the sideboard. Ash raised his head, only marginally interested in the documents. That interest evaporated the moment he clocked her attire.