The Other Side of Wrong

by Christi Barth

  Knowing that he wanted her again made her still racing pulse beat even faster. Business first, though. His desire gave her leverage. “We can do this again at the first concert of our joint tour.”

  Jake shoved one leg back into his shorts. Without meeting her eyes, he said, “No. I’m still not doing a full tour, with Riptide or with you.” Before Cassidy could begin to splutter out an argument, or any of her long list of reasons why it’d be smart and savvy and right, Jake held up a hand to stop her. “I agreed to show up and do the next three shows, then we're on hiatus anyway, waiting to see if a label backs us.”

  There it was. Her in. Because whatever unexplained weirdness was going on between Jake and his bandmates, Cassidy knew one thing for sure. He wanted them to succeed. They’d risked everything on this latest compilation of songs. Used their own money for the demo and to pay for the entire mini-tour. Everything was on the line for Riptide. They were at a do or die turning point.

  Cassidy flashed him the same smile she flashed the crowd at the start of every concert. The stick with me and you’ll have the time of your life smile. If she could make fifty thousand people bend to her will, she could damn well convince Jake McQuinn to make music with her.

  “Team up with me and I guarantee you that they will.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Jake banged his head lightly against the stall door. He was hiding in a bathroom. That had to be an all-time life low. He and Riptide had played the Superbowl and done multiple sold-out world tours. His own personal best-of list included hook ups with four supermodels, seven superstar actresses, and even some sort of princess on the balcony of the Royal Casino in Monaco. He was not a hide-in-the-bathroom dude.

  But on the other side of that door were his bandmates. Guys he hadn’t spoken to at all in two months. Before the last two months? He couldn’t think of a day he hadn’t talked or texted with them, even when on vacation. They were a unit. More than friends. Brothers. And family-by-choice was a hell of a lot better than the random DNA thing.

  Because his blood family was the cause of his current fucked-up life situation. The reason, indirectly, at least, that he was hiding in a damn bathroom of a D.C. club.

  He turned, catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror over the metal sinks. Damn it. Every time Jake looked in a mirror, he didn’t see his reflection. No, for the past four days, he’d seen flashbacks of everywhere Cassidy had touched him. Thinking about her, for even a second, made him hard.

  Walking around in a near-constant state of half-wood was painful. Annoying. Frustrating. Jake couldn’t even place all the blame on her. He was a grown man capable of making his own bad decisions. As fantastic as it was, he was pretty sure that hooking up with her had been one hell of a bad decision. Not that he could tell Cam and Jones that. Not that he could tell them anything about her.

  Not that he’d told them anything, period, for way too long.

  Fuck. Jake yanked open the door. And as much as he dreaded their reaction, he had to admit that it felt fucking terrific to see his best friends again. It was the first jolt of sheer happiness he’d had in months—aside from off-the-charts satisfaction of two hours naked with Cassidy a couple of days ago.

  Which could never, ever happen again.

  The three of them eyed each other in a triangle pattern long enough to look like stupid sitcom characters waiting for the laugh track to cut off. Were they mad at him? Furious that he hadn’t just blown off the band, but cut them off?

  Finally, Jones squinted at him real hard. “I can’t tell. Is your nose different? Or was it a tummy tuck?”

  Huh? “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I figured the only reason you would’ve fallen so damn far off the radar was that you were too embarrassed to admit you were getting plastic surgery.”

  “Christ, Jones, that’s your first guess? Not even the rock-n-roll standard of drug rehab?”

  “Please. None of us touch that poison.” He came closer to thumb at the skin by Jake’s right eye. “Brow lift?”

  “You’re an idiot.” He threw his arms around Jones in a bear hug. “I’ve missed the shit out of you, you numbnut.”

  “Right back at you.”

  And it wasn’t the standard, two back-slap guy hug. It was longer. It was real. More so when Cam wrapped his arms around both of them. “Missed you, too. Enough to overlook the obvious Botox.”

  They all laughed. Probably a little too hard for such a small joke, but it was too much fun to laugh with them again to just cut it off.

  It was like being home again.

  Not the condo in Los Angeles that Jake rented out most of the year while they toured. Not that oversized, McMansion in the Jersey suburbs where he’d been entombed.

  No, this was his real home. Here with his best friends. Here, on the black and white checkerboard tiles of the Black Cat club, sticky with last night’s booze. Here, where he could see the stage with his keyboard set up next to Cam’s three guitars and Jones’s shiny red drum kit.

  His adrenaline pumped just thinking about what it’d be like tonight, hot and crowded with fans and playing full-out with sweat streaming down his face.

  Just like it had when he’d been inside Cassidy…

  No. He couldn’t think about her and risk getting hard while goddamned hugging his friends. Jake broke out of the three-pronged embrace and cleared his throat. “Well? Ready to make some music?”

  Cam cocked his head to the side. Scratched his neck below the tight razor cut of his dark brown hair. “Are you kidding?”

  “No. We’re here to rehearse.” There was zero chance they’d let him steamroll past the million and two questions hanging in the air thicker than Tokyo smog. But Jake tried, anyway, playing it cool as he strode toward the keyboard. “I’ve been practicing, but if you guys tweaked anything while Dylan subbed in for me, I need to work it through.”

  Cam planted himself at the edge of the stage. Legs braced wide, arms crossed over a faded Riptide shirt from three tours ago. “We’re not doing anything until you tell us where you’ve been, and what you’ve been doing that’s more important than the tour to resurrect our careers.”

  “Is that the new title?” Jake jerked his chin at Cam’s chest where it read Riptide - Drown in the Sound. “Did you print it up on new tee-shirts?”

  “Don’t be a jackass.”

  “Don’t underestimate the value of good swag. It accounts for thirty percent of our tour profits on a bad day.”

  Jones stepped forward, standing in crossed-arm solidarity with Cam. To see Jones in serious mode was rare. And never a good thing. Somberly, he declared, “We deserve to know, Jake.”

  Yeah. He’d known that from the moment he chickened out and asked Tony Saviola, their tour manager, to break the news to the guys while he slunk off their tour bus in the middle of the night.

  “Look, I know you do. I was too embarrassed to say anything when it all went down. I had to wrap my head around it. Come up with a plan, some answers. But here we are, two months later, and…” Jake spread his arms wide, palms up. “I’ve got nothing.”

  “You’ve got us.”

  God. Those three words were so simple. So true. It was like a boulder rolled off of him, the lightness was such a stark contrast to how he’d lived the past few months.

  He hitched himself up to sit on the stage. Rubbed his hands up and down his thighs until it seemed a fair assumption that his leg hairs were about to spontaneously combust from the friction. “Here’s the deal. You can laugh all you want. But you’ve gotta let me get this all out in one straight shot.”

  “Okay? But I think the chances are slimmer that we’d laugh at your family emergency than that teenybopper punk Tysa Milliano winning a Grammy.”

  “Don’t bet on it.” Jake swallowed hard. “My dad got caught cross-dressing.”

  “Whoa.” Jones clapped a hand over his mouth. From behind his fingers, he muttered, “Is that allowed?”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake. I’m
not trying to mute you. Just hold all questions till the end so I don’t get sidetracked by something stupid like you—” he pinned Jones the Joker with a meaningful glare, “—asking me what size bra my dad wears.”

  “C’mon. Either you wondered that, or if he prefers lace over satin. Don’t tell me your mind didn’t go into a deep dive into the inappropriate pool.”

  Cam gave him a hard, straight-armed shove. “Go on, Jake. Did you know? Or did you get blindsided?”

  “You think this is the face of a guy who knew that about his father hiding a secret closet full of dresses in his home office behind a shelf of Micheners? Hell, no.” Jake shook his head, waved his hands to erase those last two words. “I mean, do whatever makes you happy, right? I can’t fault him for that. I won’t.”

  “Of course not. But…” Cam left a whole lot unsaid, except for a wiggle of his eyebrow.

  Jake, though, knew exactly what he was thinking and not-saying. If this was cards on the table time, he might as well say everything that had been festering in him. “But Dad’s been the straight-arrow, freakishly narrow-minded head of McQuinn Pharmaceuticals my whole life. He added a company dress code when I was ten, after he read about the one Disneyworld uses. Only one ring per hand. No facial hair. No visible tattoos.”

  That got an eye roll from Jones, who generally covered more of his skin with ink than with clothes.

  “He’s the one who cut off my uncle when he ditched the sham company job to go and help out on the campaign of what my dad called the ‘wrong’ Senator. He’s been a judgmental jerk his whole life.”

  Cam shook his head, one side of his mouth turned down in disgust. “While hiding this whole second life from you.”

  “Yeah.” Jake supposed he should feel sad that his father hid a side of himself for so long. But the ship had sailed, years ago, on wishing that their relationship was different. That it was based on love and understanding, when all Peter McQuinn wanted from his kids was bodies with his last name to head up the divisions in MCQ Pharma. To carry on the business, the name, the line.

  Image and reputation. Those were the only thing that had ever mattered to his father. Which was why this reveal had come as such a shock to all of them.

  “How’d it go down?” Jones picked up a drum stick and started tapping on his thigh. If he went more than five minutes without beating out a rhythm on something, the man practically imploded. “Did your mom wonder why the seams were split on her favorite little black dress?”

  Jake snickered. It caught him off-guard. He hadn’t managed to laugh even once about this clusterfuck. “A board member saw him. At a…uh…gathering up in freaking Canada, of all places. Bert Smolsnik was there to scope out a hotel ballroom for his daughter’s wedding. Instead, he got an eyeful of my dad prancing down a catwalk in high heels and a dress. In front of an audience of hundreds of other cross-dressers and transvestites, apparently.”

  Cam rubbed a hand across his mouth. “I...Jesus, I’m sorry, but can we laugh now?”

  “You bet.”

  “Is it wrong that I want to know what song was playing?” Jones started tapping out a familiar rhythm. “Fat Bottomed Girl?”

  Then they all snorted, together, and it helped.

  Jake cracked his neck as he got up to pace in a wide circle. “All hell broke loose. This Smolsnik douchebag was one of Dad’s closest buddies. He felt betrayed. Repulsed. But first and foremost, worried how Dad’s secret life would affect the share price of MCQ Pharma if word got it.”

  “Jesus Motherfucking Christ. With friends like that, who needs syphilis?”

  “Word didn’t spread, at least not publicly. When Smolsnik told the rest of the Board, though, they all told their cronies and now it’s a widely whispered secret all over Jersey and Manhattan. The only saving grace is that the media and the rest of the pharmaceutical industry still seem to be in the dark.”

  Cam grabbed a bottle of water from the top of a speaker. His sneakers squeaked on the black and white tiles. “This is why you left our tour.”

  “Yes.”

  He tapped the lid of the bottle a bunch of times with one finger. Jake knew that didn’t bode well. Especially when Jones let the silence gather heavily, too. Finally, Cam cracked the seal and asked, “To do what, exactly?”

  Hell. This was where it got tricky. It was also why Jake hadn’t filled them in at all until today. Because as much as Cam and Jones supported him unconditionally as a friend? This disappearing act of his had weakened Riptide as a whole. It was a safe bet they weren’t going to be cool with that.

  “To, ah, not be on tour. To not be in the media at all as a rock star. To lay low and not be famous, but be a stable, visible extension of the McQuinn family at MCQ Pharma. I’ve gone in every day, sat in his office.” And then gone straight home, to not attract attention, good or bad. To not do anything to remind people that he was a wild rocker. “I’m a chair-filler while Dad’s off at some rehab in Utah.”

  “Rehab for what?” Jones’s eyes bugged out. “You mean that messed-up shit where they try to brainwash the cross-dresser out of him?”

  Jake’s stomach had turned when his mom told him the plan. When she and Victor, their family lawyer as opposed to the company lawyer, had set out their expectations of him as the “heir” to the empire. Which was bullshit on so many levels. Especially since his mom the therapist knew better than anyone this wasn’t something to be “fixed.”

  But when his mom let tears slide down her cheeks in front of him for the first time ever, how could he do anything but agree to every damn thing they asked?

  He grabbed his own bottle of water. “Not my idea, I promise you. It was a condition laid out by the Board. He goes away, and I step in. It’s supposed to make people think that he’s letting me test the waters. That there’s no lack of leadership at all.”

  “Then what? How long are you supposed to fake this?”

  “That’s, uh, hazy right now. We’re taking it day by day until we can be certain that our stock won’t nose dive. There’s a huge new drug that is about to get FDA approval. Until that happens, I’m definitely stuck there.”

  Cam squished his empty bottle in a squeal of plastic before throwing it at a trash can so hard that it bounced off the wall. Then he stalked back to Jake and planted himself right in front of him. “Let’s recap. You ditched Riptide to cover for your father. Your dear old dad who kicked you out and cut you off when you announced you were leaving college to cut a record with us. Your dad who never once came to a single concert. Who said your 'hard drinking, lascivious lifestyle reflected badly on his company' and likes to strut around in stilettos and slips? And you’re fucking trying to protect him?”

  No. No way. This was bigger than that. Calmly, Jake explained, “I'm trying to save the whole damned company. That’s more than 1,700 people whose jobs are at stake because my dad slipped up. If the stock tanks, we’d have to do massive layoffs. If my going in and staring at the walls for eight hours every day prevents that, it’s the least I can do.”

  “Why is it up to you?” Cam demanded, jabbing a finger at Jake’s sternum. “Just because you share the same last name?”

  “Well, yeah.” He didn’t like it either. Not one fucking bit. He hated desk life. He hated not making music. Hated abandoning the guys. But what if a custodian, or researcher, or chemist lost his job and couldn’t buy groceries? Or pay the mortgage? It’d be selfish to not do everything in his power to prevent that. “I'm trying to do the right thing.”

  “Being right's no fun. You've made a pretty sweet career out of being wrong.”

  “That’s a problem in and of itself. My reputation isn’t exactly a secret. It apparently isn’t easy convincing people I’m a tie and wingtips kind of executive who will uphold generations of staunch morals.”

  “Gee, what’s the problem?” Jones said with fake, wide-eyed innocence. “Was it the time we base-jumped off that temple in Thailand? Or our drink-of-the-day posts for a month straight when we all invested
in that rum company in Barbados?”

  That, and a million other things that mostly centered around his being a rock star for more than a decade. Which Jake couldn’t change. Couldn’t wipe clean his lifestyle or his reputation. All he could do was keep it spotless moving forward. “Look, everyone needs to be on their best behavior for these last three concerts. Jones—no threesomes.”

  Jones chucked his sticks in a low underhand across the stage. “Dude, why am I being punished?”

  Ignoring him, Jake turned back to Cam, wanting to get to the good part of the day. The uncomplicated part of the day.

  The music.

  “I read online about that raffle you did at every concert to win a night with Dylan.”

  “It was a great idea.” Suddenly beaming, Cam added, “My sister came up with it. The kid wanted to rough up his image, come off as a sex god—”

  Breaking in, Jones muttered, “All my influence.”

  “—and we made a shit ton of cash. Win-win.”

  “Agreed. It worked for him. I’m just saying don’t think it’ll continue now that I’m back. I have to be as interesting as tap water. Oh, and I'm doing zero press. You two can handle whatever needs to happen to pimp our joint concerts with Cassidy.”

  Because of course he’d agreed to do them. Teaming up with her could be the boost that finally got Riptide that shot they needed with a new label. It was everything they’d worked toward for the past year. Jake hated that he’d left them in the lurch, no matter how great Dylan Royce had covered his spot at the keyboards. He wouldn’t deprive of them of this.

  Squinting, Cam asked, “What about Cassidy? She might have promo plans of her own.”

  Jake put a hand on the stage and jumped onto it. He’d shared enough. It was time to rehearse before Cam tried to nail him down on the exact nature and timing of his future with the band. Which he had exactly zero clue about.

  “I'm not talking to her, either.” Not because he was mad at her. But because Cassidy was too damned tempting. Because she was something he violently craved.