by Tracy Wolff
It didn’t take long for his arms and pecs to start aching—it had been too long since he’d played the drums on a daily basis—but he played through it, pounding away at the skins with everything he had in him.
Fourth time through the song, he switched to “Closer,” then to “In the A.M.,” then to “Deified.” By the time he’d run through those a couple of times, his biceps were burning, his hands throbbing. And still he didn’t stop.
Instead, he switched on the recorder he always kept next to his drum kit and started wailing away, playing the beat that had been in his head since he’d seen Poppy waiting for him in her doorway last night, arms open and face welcoming. The melody had started then, in the back of his head, and by the time he’d had her up against the wall it had been a towering crescendo of drumbeats that he couldn’t ignore even if he’d wanted to.
Which he hadn’t. It had been too long since music had burned inside him like that.
He played the song through the way he heard it, keeping a fast thirty-two-beat rhythm on the hi-hat while he worked the snare, the bass, and the floor tom in alternating rhythms. It sounded good, really good, and as he banged out a long, elaborate fill on the toms and crash cymbals, he knew he was onto something.
Though all he was doing was laying down the beat, he could hear the song in his head so clearly. Jared coming in with a quiet but pure guitar presence while Quinn took front and center with his keyboards. Bass—whoever the fuck that turned out to be—would hang back with Wyatt, playing low to underscore. And Ryder…fuck, Ryder’s voice would own this song. He would destroy it. Just the thought sent excitement rioting through him.
Usually, Wyatt and Quinn were the music guys, while Ryder and Jared did most of the lyrics. Every once in a while, though, a song would come to him fully formed, like “Seventeen Again” had, an early version of the lyrics tearing through his head even as he pounded away at the drums.
This song was like that, the words running through his brain like a rain-swollen river, pouring out of him as fast and powerfully as the music had. Even knowing they weren’t perfect, he sang them aloud, let the recorder get every syllable.
When it was over, he ran through the song over and over again while everything was still fresh in his mind. Playing and singing, singing and playing, until his shirt was drenched in sweat and his arms felt like they were going to fall off.
And still he played. Still he wailed away at the drums like the demons of hell were after him. Or worse, like the sins of his past had finally caught up to him after all the years he’d run and all the drugs he’d used to keep them at bay.
And maybe they had. Maybe they had.
Since he couldn’t do anything about it, he played instead.
Long after sweat rolled into his eyes and poured down his face.
Long after his shoulders and biceps and pecs cramped up.
Long, long after blisters formed between his fingers.
He played and played and played, like these drums were the only thing standing between him and hell. And like getting this one song right was his only chance at salvation.
At one point, the blister on his right index finger cracked open and started to bleed. He grabbed one of the clean towels he always kept next to the kit, tore a strip off it, and kept playing. When his left index finger followed suit a couple of minutes later, he did the same thing. And then he played through that, too.
The pain was there, his nerve endings sending agonized alerts to his brain, but he ignored them. Compartmentalized them. Put them in a part of his brain he didn’t need to access to play, and then concentrated on the music. On the beat. Right now, it was the only thing that mattered.
The knuckles at the top of his already injured hand went next, busting through the skin and scattering drops of blood on the pure white drum heads with each hit of the stick on the skin. But because he couldn’t do anything about these wounds, he ignored them. Just like he ignored the burn in his middle fingers as the skin and flesh slowly, agonizingly got worn away.
Hours passed, and still he played like his life—and his soul—depended on it. He didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t stop, not when the music just kept coming, just kept pouring through him like it used to in the old days. Like it hadn’t done in way too long. And now that he’d found it again, there was no way he was giving up on it, no way he was just getting up and walking away from it because it made him hurt. Because it made him bleed.
This pain was nothing, less than nothing. Not compared to everything that had come before it. And not compared to what he hoped, prayed, would come after it.
The longer he played, the worse the bleeding got, and he either wiped it away or ignored it as it spattered the hi-hat, the snare, the toms. But then—just as he was working out a huge, ascending drum riff for the end of the new song, it happened. The skin at the edge of his hand, right below his pinkie fingers, gave way, and blood went from splattering to gushing over the drum heads.
Fuck.
He grabbed another couple of towels, wrapped them around his hands, but they were pretty much soaked through in the matter of a couple of minutes. Cursing under his breath because the song wasn’t completely finished—and the muse was still riding him hard—he stumbled out from behind the kit and made his way to the bathroom.
Once there he turned on the faucet and filled the sink. Then he doused his hands in the ice cold water, watching as it turned red in seconds. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He was used to playing ’til he bled—just a hazard of the job that few people ever talked about—but it had been a while since he’d messed up his hands this badly. He couldn’t believe he’d been so in the zone that he hadn’t noticed how bad it had gotten.
Then again, he admitted to himself as he emptied the sink and then refilled it, it wasn’t like he would have stopped even if he had noticed. The music had been too pure, too perfect. It had been a long time since he’d had something that pure in his life.
Poppy came into his mind again then, her bright eyes, rosy cheeks, and Renaissance Madonna face floating before his closed eyelids as he once again plunged his raw hands into the water. He cursed a little, tried to do the trick again where he compartmentalized the pain. But the music was gone, and he couldn’t do it without it. If he could, he never would have needed heroin.
When the bleeding slowed to a gentle ooze, he grabbed a towel off the rack and wrapped it around his most damaged hand, making sure to keep as much pressure on the wounds as he could. Then he crouched to rummage beneath the sink. He always kept a first aid kit in here for occasions just like this.
He found it behind a twelve pack of toilet paper and more soap than any one person could use—which made him wonder just what Jamison was trying to tell him, since she was the one who’d stocked his apartment before he got out of rehab.
Shaking his head in amused exasperation, he fumbled the first aid kit open. And found a lot more than bandages and antibiotic ointment.
One of his small, secondary drug kits fell out at his feet, and for a minute he just stared at it, almost too afraid to touch it. Too afraid, even, to be in the same room with it.
But fuck, it wasn’t like he could just leave it in the middle of the bathroom floor to keep tripping over, either—not if he had any chance of surviving—so eventually he bent down and picked it up. Turned it over in his hands. Ran his thumb over a random burn mark in the bottom left corner of the leather.
Every single brain cell he had shrieked at him to throw it away. To toss it out the window. To do anything, everything, but keep holding it, shifting it this way and that as memory after memory assaulted him.
He didn’t do that, though. Instead, his fingers seemed to move of their own volition as they unzipped the kit. As they pulled the spoon and lighter out of one side and the package of wrapped, unused syringes out of the other. As he did, he sank down onto the floor, rested his back against the wall, and tried not to think about how good it felt to get high. To nod out. To bliss out.
I
t didn’t work.
Suddenly, the heroin he’d been carrying around since he’d met Rollo at the bar last night was burning a major hole in the pocket of his jeans.
He hadn’t used last night, hadn’t had a drink. He’d gone to Poppy’s instead and let his need for her ease away his craving for smack. It had worked better than he’d ever expected it to.
But she wasn’t here right now and the heroin was. And he wanted it. Holy fuck, did he want it. Every cell in his body was practically breakdancing in anticipation.
He reached into his pocket. Pulled out the small bag with the off-white powder in it. Held it up to the light as he squeezed it between his fingers again and again and again.
His hands were shaking with the need to open it up. To put a little on his tongue, just to taste. Just to feel the way the numbness tingled and spread.
It would be so easy. All he had to do was break the little Ziploc seal, then sprinkle some on the spoon, heat it up, pull it into the syringe. Inject it.
And then he’d be flying.
For a little while he wouldn’t care about anything or anyone, past or present or future. He could just float. Could just be.
He turned his arm over, traced his fingers over his tattoo sleeve as he searched for a vein he hadn’t collapsed with years of IV drug use. He found it on the inside of his upper arm, closer to his shoulder than his elbow. He’d only just started injecting it when he’d gone to rehab, so it had a bunch of uses left in it.
He poked at it a little, plumped it up so it’d be easier to slide the needle in. It was all so familiar, watching his bleeding, busted open hands poking at his own skin. So, so familiar, and it took him back, had the endorphins shooting through his body in mere anticipation of the heroin.
But as he poked at the vein, as he imagined how good it would feel, as he told himself he deserved the reward—just once; it didn’t have to be a regular thing—Poppy flashed into his mind again.
Poppy, as she was last night. Her hair spread out like a silken waterfall over the dark luxury of the sheets. Her body draped half over his. Her fingers and lips stroking tenderly over his still fading track marks, her gentle acceptance telling him it was okay. Poppy as she’d been that morning, telling him that he was a good man. Telling him that the past wasn’t his fault. Telling him that who he was now was all that was important.
Fuck. Just fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
He banged the back of his head against the wall, tried not to think about how he had gotten here, right here, to this moment. Tried not to think about every bad choice, every mistake, every fucked up thing he’d ever done.
It was an impossible thing to ask himself, especially considering all that shit was on a never-ending track inside his brain. One that ran twenty-four seven, three hundred sixty-five days a year. One that showed him his father’s face, his bloody, torn up body, over and over and over again.
Fuck!
He threw the bag of heroin across the room, watched as it bounced off the shower curtain and fell to the floor. And still it took every ounce of willpower he had not to crawl across the floor to pick it up.
After all, he’d been doing it for years, doing it so long that going back to it would be almost like going home.
But he was smarter now than he’d been even three months ago, smart enough now to know that no matter what he did, it wasn’t going to last. He could go back to what he’d been doing, drinking twenty hours out of the day, pumping more and more and more heroin into his veins until everything was a blur. Until even being on stage with his friends became nothing but a faded out mockery of itself.
And still it wouldn’t be enough.
Still it wouldn’t last.
Because even at his worst, even when he was injecting more than an ounce of heroin a day, he hadn’t been able to get enough. His body hadn’t been able to tolerate enough to keep him numb, to keep him nodding out and forgetting all the shit from his past he’d spent so long running from.
He’d nearly died once—would be dead, if it wasn’t for Ryder and Jared and Quinn. And how had he repaid them? By ruining their tour and fucking everything up for them as they waited on him for the last three months.
Yet here he was on another bathroom floor, kit in one hand and heroin right there, waiting for him to ruin everything. For his friends, for Poppy, for himself.
Goddammit. No.
He wasn’t going to do it this time, wasn’t going to go there no matter how much he wanted the momentary oblivion that first hit of heroin would give him. And he wanted it. God, did he want it.
But last night, Poppy had told him if he couldn’t stay clean for himself, he should do it for his friends. Because they deserved it. Because he owed it to them. Because they were worth it.
She was right on all counts. They did deserve it. They were worth it. Quinn, Ryder, and Jared had stood by him for years, and this time they’d held out against Micah and the label and the insurance company just to keep him part of the band. They’d visited him every chance rehab gave them, coming in shifts so he’d know he wasn’t alone. They hadn’t judged him, hadn’t given up on him even when he’d given up on himself. Hell, they’d even taken calls from him at three in the morning, when the cravings were so bad it was all he could do not to claw at his skin to get to his veins.
Fuck, yeah, he owed them—more than he could ever repay—and fuck if he was going to shoot this shit into his veins and ruin everything they’d given him. Everything they’d worked so hard for. Micah was a selfish prick who hadn’t cared about anyone but himself. Wyatt would be damned if he went out the same way that bastard had.
Fuck it. Just fuck it. And fuck heroin, too. He was done with it.
He pushed to his feet, walked the few steps across the bathroom until he got to the powder-filled baggie. He shoved it back in his pocket, then zipped up the kit and threw it on the counter while he poured peroxide over his hands. He only cursed a little at how much it hurt when there was no smack in his system to cut the pain.
When he was done, he put the first aid kit away, then picked up his drug kit. He went into the small living room of his apartment and gathered his keys before locking up the place. Then he walked down to the parking lot—and the Dumpster that sat in the corner of it.
He stood there for a second, thinking about what he was doing. Second-guessing himself. But that was just the addiction talking, trying to get inside his head, to weaken his resolve. And he wasn’t going to let it. Not now. Not this time.
Pulling his arm back, he threw the kit into the Dumpster as hard as he could, listening as it banged against the side wall before falling into the heaps of trash. Then he reached into his pocket, pulled out the heroin. Got ready to do the same with it.
But fuck that. Just fuck it. He wasn’t afraid of three grams of powder, wasn’t afraid of this goddamn motherfucking drug. Not anymore. He was done with it. Done. With. It. And he wasn’t going to run from it this time, like a scared little boy who couldn’t take the pressure.
He shoved the baggie back in his pocket, then turned away and headed for his car. He’d spent the last few years running from this drug, so afraid of his weakness that he couldn’t even think about it while he was sober, let alone be anywhere around it.
But that was the problem, wasn’t it? He was a rock star, and this shit was everywhere in his world. It was fucking everywhere. He could get it anytime he wanted with a flick of his hand or a quick, whispered request. Hell, half of the time fans just shoved it into his hands in an effort to get in with the band for a night. And he’d never resisted, because he couldn’t. Because if it was there, he was going to smoke it or snort it or inject it.
Not this time. Not anymore.
Being afraid of heroin, hiding from it, running from it, hadn’t done the trick. So fuck that shit. He was carrying this bag with him from now on. Right there in his fucking pocket as a symbol that he was strong enough.
That he didn’t need to be afra
id of it and that he didn’t need it.
That he wasn’t going to fall back down into that abyss. Not now and not later, when he was on the road. He didn’t know what the future held, didn’t know how many other ways he’d find to fuck up—a lot, probably. But not this way. Not again. He might have a hard fucking head and a past that nightmares were made of, but he’d learned his lesson.
He. Was. Done.
Crossing the parking lot toward his car, he felt lighter than he’d ever been. Felt like he actually had a chance for the first time since he’d tried heroin in the back of that shitty club at seventeen. It wasn’t enough to drown out the shit in the back of his head, wasn’t enough to dampen the self-loathing that rode him with every breath. But it was enough to keep the heroin in his pocket instead of his veins, and for now, that was all he could ask for.
Chapter Eighteen
“So, Shane, I think that’s pretty much all the questions we had for you,” Jared said, shoving a hand through his hair and glancing surreptitiously at his phone.
Poppy knew the feeling—she’d been doing the same thing for the last hour and a half, trying to figure out where the hell Wyatt was. After he’d left her apartment that morning, he’d texted her that he was going home to change and then heading over here, since they were interviewing three bassists today. She’d been planning on snapchatting a bunch of it—something she couldn’t do if Wyatt was missing. The last thing she wanted was to broadcast any problems he had to the world—and her father, especially.
And what was most concerning was that he’d missed the whole day. Shane was the third interviewee—and the first one any of them had actually thought had a chance. He’d been the bassist for a couple of up-and-coming groups she’d had her eye on through the years, but for whatever reason, the bands had always fallen apart before hitting the big time. Which, she admitted, made her a little leery of him—one seemingly solid band falling apart could happen to anybody. Two in less than three years? That was really bad luck—or something else. Still, he was a damned good bassist. Definitely good enough to at least do a quick audition set with the band.
