He smiled down at me. “So I guess you aren’t going to be joining us for lunch?”
I shook my head. “She doesn’t want me there, and I don’t want to be where I’m not wanted.”
“Come over for dinner tomorrow night then,” he offered. “I promise you’ll definitely be wanted.”
I nodded and forced a smile. With a heavy heart said, “I will.”
“Then I can’t wait,” he told me, ruffling my hair like he had when I was a kid.
I started to walk away and decided at the last minute to say something. “Dad?” I said, looking over my shoulder at him.
“Yes?”
“Take a look at Amy’s neck, would you?”
“Her neck?”
I nodded solemnly, feeling sick at the thought that anyone was hurting my sister and she was letting them.
“Okay,” my dad said, sounding confused.
“See you tomorrow,” I told him, and then I stepped out into the sunlight, feeling defeated.
Chapter Nineteen
Van
“I’m not hungry,” Phillip mumbled, his eyes not leaving the TV on the wall.
“Fine,” I told him, slamming the plate of pizza on the dresser, so it made a loud ‘clunk’ sound.
Phillip shot me a disdainful look.
I threw my hands up in mock surrender. “Sorry to disturb you,” I said sarcastically as I backed out of the room and shut the door behind me.
I was trying to be patient, but it wasn’t easy, considering Phillip’s mood hadn’t improved much in the past three days. He was pissed that we’d dragged him up to the mountains, he was pissed that we were accusing him of having a drinking problem, and he was pissed that he’d gotten in trouble. I wasn’t sure if he knew what a field day the media was having with his slip-up at the Billboards, and if he did, I honestly wondered at this point if he cared.
Taking a deep breath, I headed back downstairs to where Cam and Dillon were eating the pizza we’d ordered. I didn’t really feel like eating, but I was hungry, so I figured I could force down a few slices.
When we’d first told Phillip what we were doing, essentially getting out of town for a few days so we could get away from the media and regroup as a band, I figured he’d be good with that. I assumed, of course, that he’d be embarrassed by the way he’d acted and the fact that he’d missed a performance. I figured he’d appreciate laying low, doing some fishing and hiking, and bonding with his boys, essentially resetting his mindset.
I knew he’d been having a tough time as of late, and I hadn’t been the best of friends to him considering how consumed I’d been with my new, secret relationship. I’d known he was drinking a lot, but I’d given him a pass, telling myself he was fine. But he wasn't, and I hated the fact that I hadn’t stopped him before things got out of hand.
When we’d been in Vegas and he told me he was going to stop drinking, I’d believed him. I really thought he could do it, but after how disconnected he’d been for the past few days, I wasn’t sure what to think. I had no idea where his head was at, and a part of me feared he was going to have a harder time quitting than any of us realized.
When he’d first started acting sullen and disconnected, I assumed it was temporary. I figured he’d get past it, we’d all talk, Cam and Dillon could get shit off their chests, because they were pissed as hell, and we could move forward as a band.
Now I was starting to wonder if that was going to happen at all, considering Phillip hadn’t wanted to come downstairs since we’d gotten to my house. All he seemed to want to do was lie in bed and watch mindless TV. He’d gotten out of bed only to shower and change, and even though I went up a few times a day to check on him, he made it clear that he didn’t want me around. To say I was worried, and a little hurt, was an understatement.
I’d known Phillip for four years. I felt like I knew him better than most people, but in this situation, I had no idea how to help him. I didn’t know what he needed, and everything I tried seemed to fail. I wasn’t sure what there was left to do, and I was afraid he was going to do something drastic. The last thing I wanted was for him to quit the band, but quite honestly, that was the least of my worries. I knew with the state of depression he was possibly in, there was a danger of something much worse.
Phillip had intricate tattoos on the insides of both of his wrists, and I was fairly certain that I was the only person who knew that he’d gotten them to hide the evidence of his suicide attempt. He’d only been fifteen at the time, and he’d never told me what had thrown him toward the edge, but I knew it was something bad. Thankfully he’d been too dumb to know to cut down the length of his veins, and he’d cut across. One of his friends had found him before he could bleed enough to do any real damage, but regardless of the end result, it had definitely been a cry for help.
I didn’t want him to ever be back in that place again. I wanted him to talk to a professional, but I wasn’t sure he’d do it. I knew he’d spoken to his sponsor, Frank, a few times since we’d arrived, and the one time he’d ventured out of the house since we’d gotten there had been when Frank had visited the day before. They’d spent the whole hour he was there on the back porch, and Philip had gone back upstairs after he’d left.
I’d met Frank a few times since he’d started supporting Phillip, and he was a nice guy. He was in his fifties, was married with three teenage daughters, and had battled a drug addiction for close to ten years. He and Phillip didn’t seem to have much in common, and although Phillip complained about him and acted like he didn’t like the guy, I saw him listening to Frank the day he’d come over.
None of us knew what Phillip was feeling or what was going through his mind, but maybe that was why we couldn’t get through to him. Frank knew what it was like to fall off the wagon and lose your grip on your sanity. I think we’d all been hoping he could help Phillip, but if he’d gotten through to him, we couldn’t tell.
But maybe he was just mad at us. Even after everything that happened, I wondered if he was annoyed that we’d essentially staged an intervention and dragged him up to the mountains only to deny him the opportunity to party, which was what we usually did at my house. A PG-rated guys’ week probably wasn’t what he’d been hoping for, but if he was feeling that way, he’d at least had the good sense to keep his mouth shut.
He knew how much trouble he was in and that his place in the band wasn’t being threatened right now, but it could be in the future if he didn’t get his shit together. It was one thing to drink and party and have fun, but he’d crossed a line with how he’d acted at the Billboards.
“You’re coddling him,” Cam told me when I walked into the kitchen.
He and Dillon were standing at the counter, eating their pizza over the open box.
I glared at them. “I am not.”
“You are too,” Cam said pointedly. “He doesn’t need to be babied. He needs to know that he fucked up and it can’t happen again.”
“He knows that,” I said, defending my friend and hoping I was right.
Cam rolled his eyes. “Right.”
“Look,” I snapped at him. “I know you have more experience in this area than I do. I get it, but he’s not your brother. Not everyone is Preston, and just because he’s a giant fuck-up who doesn’t respond to anything but tough love doesn’t mean it’ll work on Phillip. They’re not the same person.”
“They’re both addicts,” Dillon reminded me.
I sighed. “They’re different,” I said, refusing to believe that Cam’s brother who’d only sort of gotten his life together a few months earlier, and who Cam still wasn’t really speaking to because he was still pissed at him, was in the same place as Phillip. They weren’t the same at all. “We don’t know that Phillip has a drinking problem.”
Cam laughed non-humorously, spewing pizza all over the counter. “That’s bullshit, and you know it.”
“Van, he’s been drinking daily,” Dillon said, taking a much softer approach than Cam who just said
what was on his mind. “Even though he knew how important the Billboards were, he chose not to stay sober. That sounds like a problem to me.”
I sighed and leaned back against the counter. “I know. I was just hoping he wasn’t in that place.”
“He’s an addict,” Cam said. “He’s in that place, and he needs to get his shit together. This isn’t just about him. What he does affects the rest of us, and what he pulled the other day, it was shitty and selfish.”
“That doesn’t mean we have to be dicks to him,” I defended. “We’re his friends. Phillip needs to know we care about him and that we’re here for him.”
“Fine. Do things your way,” Cam said, taking his pizza to the couch where he turned on the TV.
“I will,” I told him.
“Guys, don’t fight,” Dillon said, looking between us. “We’re in a bad enough situation as it is. The last thing we need is to have more unrest between the four of us. We have to be in the studio, together, in three days.”
Neither Cam nor I said anything. I wasn’t sure what to say, and I had a feeling all of us were thinking the same thing and wondering if Phillip would be in a better mindset by then. I wasn’t sure what we were going to do if he wasn’t.
Dillon went to watch TV with Cam, so I stood in kitchen and ate two slices of pizza, figuring I’d just go up to my room. I didn’t really want to be around my friends. I wanted to call Elisa. I’d talked to her a few times since we’d gotten to my house, but our conversations had been brief, with her asking me about how Phillip was doing and me asking her what she’d been up to at home.
The day before when we’d talked, she’d seemed distant and distracted. I’d asked her what was wrong, but she acted like she was fine. The pit in my stomach told me she was lying, and it had been on my mind ever since. I didn’t want to go to a dark place where she was concerned, because things had been so good when I’d last seen her, but I couldn’t help it.
A few minutes later my phone rang with someone calling from the gate at the front of my property, a few miles from where my house was. I didn’t get many visitors, especially since I didn’t live there year-round, so it was a surprise to see someone calling so late at night.
“Hello?” I said tentatively, hoping it wasn’t a group of giggling fangirls. That was the last thing we needed.
“Hi Van,” I heard.
I pulled the phone away from my ear to see if I’d read the display wrong. I hadn’t. It was the gate, but the person on the other end of the line was Elisa.
“Van?” I heard from the small speaker in my phone.
I put it back to my ear. “Are you here?” I asked her, lowering my voice so Cam and Dillon couldn’t hear me.
“Um, yes. Is that okay.”
Something akin to relief mixed with joy washed through me. “Hell yes,” I told her. “Is everything alright?”
“Yes, sort of. I needed to see you. I hope that’s okay.”
“It’s definitely okay.”
“Good. Can you buzz me in?” she asked.
“Yeah, sure. Give me a second.”
I hit the code to open the gate, and then I headed toward the front door.
“Where are you going?” Dillon asked me.
“I’m going to run over to my mom’s house,” I lied.
“For what? It’s late.”
“She’s got a drain situation. She needs my help.”
It was piss poor attempt at a reason for leaving, but I’d had to think fast. Fortunately, the guys didn’t know I was probably the last person my mom would have called with a plumbing issue. I felt bad for lying to them, but it wasn’t like I could tell them what I was really doing, which was sneaking out to meet my secret girlfriend who’d shown up unexpectedly. I wasn’t sure why she was there, but I didn’t care. I desperately wanted to see her after the week I’d had.
“Have fun,” Dillon told me.
“Yeah, it’ll be a blast,” I said as I grabbed my keys. “I might be back late. Don’t wait up.”
“Don’t worry. We won’t,” Cam said, and I could hear the snark in his voice.
He was mad at me, but he’d get over it.
“Are you still there?” I asked Elisa as soon as I was out on the porch.
“I’m here.”
“Good. Listen, don’t drive all the way up to the house. Stop at the last turn before you get here. I’ll come meet you.”
Knowing it would be a few minutes before she got near the house, I hopped in my truck, planning to pick her up before her headlights flashed over the front of the house and the guys started asking questions.
Elisa laughed nervously at my request. “Van, it’s really dark outside, and it’s been a few years since I’ve been up here. I’m not sure I know where the last turn before your house is.”
She was so right. I hadn’t even thought about that. I’d owned my house for four years, so I knew the landscape like the back of my hand. I could get from the gate to the house with my eyes closed. I hoped there would be a day when Elisa could say the same thing.
Just the thought of that sent chills through my body. I couldn’t believe I was thinking that. So much had changed in the past few months. Before the tour I would have said my house would never become that familiar to any girl, but I’d been so wrong. I’d also never been happier to be wrong about something in my life.
“Okay, just stop your car where you are,” I told her. “But don’t get out until I get there. I’ll be less than two minutes.”
A few minutes later I saw her rental car parked in the middle of the dirt road, her headlights illuminating the darkness around her. I pulled up, and she opened the door, making my heart start to thump in my chest. Even after a month, she still got to me. I wondered how long I’d continue to feel an elated thrill when I saw her.
A few seconds later she was opening the door and climbing into the cab of my truck.
“Hi,” I said, unable to hide the grin on my face.
“You look really happy,” she said, making me laugh.
“I’m more than happy,” I told her. “This was the best surprise I could have gotten. This trip has kind of been a giant bust. At this point, any excuse to get out of the house and spend time with someone who isn’t mad at me is a welcome one.”
Elisa wrung her hands together “So I’m not being a bad girlfriend by crashing the party?”
“Uh, no. Definitely not,” I said as I backed my truck up and turned around, heading back the way I’d come. “For you to do that, there would have to be a party to crash.”
“I’m sorry you guys are fighting,” she said softly.
I shrugged. “We’ll get through it. We always have.”
It was a hopeful notion, because in truth, I wasn’t sure what would happen if Phillip didn’t come around. We weren’t Westside without him, so I refused to even think of that as an outcome. He had to come around.
Neither Elisa nor I said anything else as I drove until I came to a break in the trees and then shifted my truck into four-wheel drive.
“Where are we going?” Elisa asked, gripping the oh-shit handle above her window as we dipped down into the woods.
I turned my brights on to illuminate the space in front of us and smiled at her. “I’ve taken you out here before,” I reminded her.
Recognition dawned on her, and she smiled. “The clearing by the river. I remember. That was a good night.”
I felt my lips twist into a smirk. “Totally not my intention. I just figured we could go somewhere alone and talk, since I’m assuming you showed up here for a reason.”
“I’d rather not talk,” she said morosely. “I’d rather just be alone with you.”
I looked over at her, catching the slight look of distress on her face. She said she didn’t want to talk, but I could see clearly that something was on her mind. That nervous feeling in my gut came back, and it took everything in me not to beg her to just tell me what was wrong. In her silence, I was imagining too many bad things.
She smiled, but it seemed forced, which did nothing to ease my worried mind.
“I’ll tell you later,” she said, and I could see what looked like pain in her eyes as she stared out at the dark river in front of us.
“You can tell me now,” I told her, never one to like to wait for bad news. I was always better with ripping the bandage off. “Come on.”
I indicated toward the bed of the truck and watched her open her door. I followed suit and walked around to the back, climbing up ahead of her. I laid out the blanket and then reached down and lifted her up so she was standing in front of me.
“Hi,” I said softly as I bent down to kiss her.
As much as I wanted to hear what she had to say, I wanted a few unburdened moments where it was just us and everything in my world was right again. I wanted to hide from the harshness of reality and pretend that life was as good as it had seemed when I’d kissed her goodbye in our hotel room before everything with Phillip had blown up.
Elisa melted into me as I pulled her into my arms, and I relished the feeling of being close to her again. I knew I craved being with her more than was probably healthy, but I couldn’t help it. I was so gone for her.
“God, I missed you,” I said when she broke the kiss.
I pulled her against me, letting her warmth seep into me for a few seconds until she sighed and pulled away. It wasn’t lost on me that she hadn’t returned my sentiment.
She sank down onto the blanket, sitting cross-legged and gave me a forced smile as I sat down across from her.
“Okay, so what’s on your mind?” I asked her, pretty much hating the look on her face.
She sighed. “I don’t really want to tell you this.”
Shit.
“Tell me what?” I asked, trying to sound positive.
Westside Series Box Set Page 67
