Playing At Love: A Rogue Series Novel

by Lara Ward Cosio

  Hours later, Celia gave Felicity a hug and apologized for leaving as she wanted to be home to get the kids to bed. Felicity thanked her for her help and sent her on her way. Soon, Jessica sensed it would be wise for her to leave as well, and before long the only people left were the band members.

  “Who wants a drink?” Felicity asked with exhaustion.

  “I’ll take care of that,” Martin said and jumped up to play bartender.

  “Sit. Relax,” Conor told her, patting the mustard yellow cushion of the sofa where he sat.

  She sat down heavily and the plastic wrapped cushion made a loud crunching sound. After a moment, she started laughing.

  The others looked at her with tentative smiles before joining her.

  “I’ve always hated these fucking plastic sofas!” she said. And then her laughter turned into tears and a painful crying jag.

  Conor wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her to him.

  As she fell into him, the plastic crunched again, and she wavered between laughing and crying for a couple minutes.

  “For what ails you,” Martin said, handing her a glass.

  “Thanks, Marty,” she said, wiping at her eyes. She looked down at the glass. “Is this?”

  “Gin and tonic, in honor of your Ma,” he replied.

  Felicity didn’t bother to stop the fresh round of tears now, simply letting them run down her cheeks.

  Gavin squeezed her hand as he passed her a tissue and the gesture only sent the tears flowing more forcefully.

  “Oh fuck,” she said hoarsely. “Please talk to me about something other than . . . this.”

  “Em,” Shay said, scrambling for something helpful to say.

  “Tell me about the wedding,” she said, pulling away from Conor and facing him.

  Conor rolled his eyes. “I wouldn’t know what to say about it other than it’s being planned for me.”

  “Oh come on, what’s it going to be like? Here in Dublin? In a church? What?” she asked, warming to the subject.

  “All I know is that it’s supposed to happen before we go on tour.”

  “That soon?” Gavin asked.

  Conor sighed. “It’s what she wants.”

  Felicity laughed. “Don’t you sound delighted.”

  “No, it’s fine. It’s getting a bit beyond me with us in studio and now we’re house-hunting.”

  “Your place isn’t good enough for her, yeah?” Gavin asked.

  Conor had long lived in a detached three-bedroom home in an affluent part of Blackrock, a quiet town about eight miles south of Dublin City. Though upscale and very near the coast, it did not have the extravagant sea views Gavin’s house had.

  “Probably time for an upgrade, anyway,” Shay said quickly.

  “She spends my money well, that’s for sure,” Conor said, shaking his head.

  “Well maybe you can sell me your place—at a loss, of course,” Felicity said with a smile. She looked around the living area and saw her mother in everything. She wondered at the way a person could leave their imprint so forcefully upon inanimate objects. “Because I can’t stay here.”

  Conor patted her hand where it had been naturally resting on his thigh, neither one of them aware of how easily they had come together.

  “So, Gavin,” she said, pulling herself out of her reverie. “I really want to reconnect with Sophie. Can you give me her number?”

  Gavin hesitated.

  “Oh, sorry. Is it awkward of me to say that since you’re not together anymore?”

  “No, it’s fine,” he said.

  “Good. So you’ll let me know?”

  “Well, funny thing is that I don’t exactly have her contact info at the moment,” Gavin said and took a hard pull on his drink.

  Conor looked at him then, incredulous. “How is that possible?”

  “I tried to get in touch but her number is changed,” he said meekly.

  “I’m sure Colette can track it down for you,” Conor offered.

  Gavin gave him a hard look of warning, a look so severe that no one in the room could mistake it. “Do not do that.” His voice was thick with contempt.

  Felicity looked from one man to the other, feeling the tension suffocate the room. “Well, I, em, can’t thank you enough for being here, guys,” she said, standing up.

  “You’ll be okay, yeah?” Martin asked as he gave her a hug.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Conor lingered until the others had said their goodbyes and headed out. Instead of following them, he closed the front door and nodded back toward the living room.

  “Let’s have another drink, Fee.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “So, tell me what’s going on with you and Gavin,” Felicity said once they had settled back onto the couch with a refreshed drink.

  “How do you mean?” he asked, feigning ignorance.

  “Come now, that tension between you just then was electric.”

  “No, it was nothing.”

  “Ah, I see. Well, if you don’t want to say, can you tell me why he and Sophie split? I never would have thought those two wouldn’t make it.”

  “Em, I guess there may be a chance for them if he’s trying to get in touch with her.”

  Conor kept his eyes away from her, the heat of her open examination of him too much to bear now that Sophie had entered his thoughts.

  After a lengthy moment, she said, “You didn’t.”

  “What?”

  “Did you have an affair with Sophie?”

  Conor considered what to say. She hadn’t asked with any kind of judgment in her voice, just a burning curiosity. His instinct had long been to try to twist things to make himself come off as well as possible. That instinct dissolved in Felicity’s presence.

  “I fucked up. I fucked it all up, Felicity.”

  “Oh, Con,” she said. “What happened?”

  He found himself being brutally honest. More honest, in fact, than he had been with anyone, including Colette. He told her then about the feelings he had harbored—and fought—for Sophie for so long. How at first he had amused himself by flirting with her and playing games to see how far he could take it. Over time it became something real, and he lost himself to her even as he convinced himself it was hopeless. He admitted he had kept his feelings for her alive knowing it would never work, that she’d never leave Gavin for him and that even if she did there would be no band. He told her he knew he had never given anyone else a real chance because his heart had been tangled up in wanting Sophie.

  But then Gavin’s depression over his mother and his descent into drug use had created a real window into Sophie’s life, and Conor admitted that he had been incapable of saying no when she finally reached for him.

  “So, it wasn’t an affair, but it was enough to fuck up the greatest friendship I’ll ever have,” he said.

  “She’s your ‘Layla’, yeah?”

  Conor groaned. “Clapton actually got the girl, though, didn’t he?”

  The story behind “Layla” was well known in the music world and beyond. Pattie Boyd was married to George Harrison when his good friend Eric Clapton fell in love with her. She didn’t return the sentiment at first and he was inspired to write “Layla.” She eventually left Harrison for Clapton, though that marriage didn’t last either.

  Felicity was quiet, taking it all in. “Makes for some good inspiration in the studio, I bet,” she said.

  Conor sighed, both with relief that she hadn’t condemned him and with the exhaustion that had come from their emotionally charged efforts in the studio. “It’s been intense.”

  “No, I was thinking that over all these years, this little love triangle has probably been responsible for quite a lot of the best work you’ve done.”

  His heart felt slow to beat for a moment. This observation hit closer to home than she could have known.

  “Em, yeah, I suppose it’s played a part.”

  She watched him silently.

  “Jesus,” h
e said in a rush, suddenly anxious to unburden himself in a way he never had before. “It’s been the thing that has brought us over the top. The songs Gavin and I have written, each of us with Sophie in mind—we just wouldn’t be what we are if it weren’t for her. If I didn’t feel the way I did, Gav and I wouldn’t have had that magic together.”

  “But what about the first album? That did well. She wasn’t in the picture then, right?”

  “True. But we wrote ‘You’re My One’ after they got back together.”

  “That was ten years ago.”

  He nodded, though it was just over eleven years ago. He wouldn’t argue the point.

  “What else?”

  “Hmm?”

  “If you think she was so important to your success, what else proves that?”

  “Of course it’s not just her,” he said. He wanted to stop at that but he couldn’t. “But, for our third album, we wrote ‘Slip Away.’ Then, ‘The Truest Thing’ on the last album.”

  Those songs were the leading singles off each of the albums. They were also hits that cemented Rogue’s status as both a critical and popular success. “Slip Away” was written after Sophie began modeling and spending less time with Gavin. It was his plea to not let the connection they had slip away, but also confessed his jealousy and anxiety over having to share her with the world. Conor’s contribution had come from a different angle. He suggested that the “characters” in the song find moments to slip away to be together and foster the intensity of their love. He had been guilty of orchestrating his own such moments with Sophie.

  With “The Truest Thing,” Gavin’s numbness over the band’s success was beginning to overwhelm him. The enormous shows they played, the solid fan base they earned, and the wealth they accumulated had been thrilling. But it wasn’t everything he wanted. His mother was still the big hole in his life and her lack of contact with him was getting harder to bear. He turned even more to Sophie to fill the void, and this song claimed she was the only true thing in his life, while everything else was artifice. Conor had kept the song from being maudlin by composing guitar riffs that were aggressively raw. His inspiration came from the ache he felt in wanting her so much himself.

  “Are you saying,” Felicity said, “you’ve kept this obsession with her alive for all these years just so as not to tamper with any musical inspiration?”

  Why was he going down this road with her? He had never verbalized this theory of his. He had never shared it with anyone before, had been too scared and ashamed to. It made no sense, now that everything with Sophie was, at last, over, to admit to any of this. But she was asking, and not with any stake in the matter. She simply seemed deeply interested. Concerned, even.

  “Have you been running scared this long? As if your success is completely tied to her?” Felicity continued when he was silent.

  “In a way. I mean, it’s complicated. I truly was mad about her. But a part of me also felt sort of superstitious about the dynamic we had created. I didn’t want to lose it.”

  The way her eyes scanned over him, as if trying to make sense of the person he was, made him uncomfortable.

  “Or, I could have just been trying to prove your man Bono’s theory that the age you become famous is the age you stay frozen.”

  He had said this to lighten the mood, not because he believed it. But he could see that it resonated with her. Had he learned nothing in all these years? Had he not grown at all? All for the sake of musical inspiration? So, what did that make him—an overgrown nineteen-year-old?

  That struck him as hilarious and he burst out into laughter. After a moment she joined him. The cathartic laughter shook them both, each releasing the pent up emotions for their own reasons.

  “And what does Colette know of all this?” she asked after regaining her composure.

  “She knows . . . that I slept with Sophie. Shay knows too. Gavin told him as soon as he found out. I’m pretty sure Marty knows, but we haven’t talked about it. Feels like the whole fucking world knows.”

  “But does she know how you’ve tortured yourself with thinking Sophie’s been the key to your success?”

  Conor shook his head. He hadn’t told Colette anything of the kind. Not only to spare her feelings but because she wouldn’t have understood his twisted logic. She would have thought him ridiculous. At least Felicity let him have his delusions of artistic intentions.

  She nodded and took a sip of her drink.

  “What must you think of me, honey?” he asked.

  “Hmm?”

  “Do you hate me now?”

  “No, of course not. I was thinking it was sad that she’s been the defining relationship of your life. To have been in love with someone you can’t have for that long is tragic.”

  “Can it be tragic if it’s self-inflicted?” he asked with a soft laugh.

  “Conor, neither of us is naïve enough to believe what you felt was all your doing. Sophie played a part in this, too. Especially in the actual . . . consummation of things.”

  He couldn’t stop from smiling as an image flashed in his mind of Sophie finally taking the lead and seducing him. Not that he had needed convincing once she had made it clear she wanted to go to bed with him. She had been passionate and giving and completely in the moment. He had wished it would never end.

  “Well, yes, she was definitely there,” he murmured.

  “Do you still love her?” she asked.

  “I’m with Colette.”

  “Oh, what a good non-answer,” she said with an amused laugh. “I bet you’ve had a lot of practice at parsing your words over the years.”

  “What can I say, Felicity? How long did it take you to fall out of love with your husband? What’s that process like? I’m moving on, is all I meant.”

  She nodded. “It’s definitely a process,” she conceded.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. He reached for her hand but she slipped from his grasp as she stood up.

  “It’s late,” she said.

  He stood up with her, searching her eyes. “Have I ruined our friendship now as well?”

  “No, no. I’m just . . . tired.”

  “You’ll break my heart if this does us in,” he said with a charming smile.

  “You’ve had a bit much to drink now, haven’t you? Don’t start chatting me up,” she said wearily. “Go home to your fiancée.”

  “She’s not here, remember? I’m free to do as I please.”

  She scoffed. “You’re not free to do me, if that’s what you’re thinking. Go. I’ll be fine.”

  He grabbed her hand and pulled her into his arms, just with warmth now and no other ulterior motive. “I’m sorry I put all that on you, tonight of all nights.”

  She relaxed and hugged him back. “I asked you, didn’t I? But you should remember with this Sophie stuff . . . we’ve all of us made mistakes, Conor. It’s part of life.”

  “Ah, you’ve always been such an old soul,” he mused.

  She pulled away then and waited for him to ready himself to leave.

  “I’ll stay if you want,” he told her. “Here,” he gestured to the couch. “Or . . . wherever suits you.”

  “You are exhausting,” she said, and he laughed.

  As he was about to make a suggestive response, his phone rang.

  “See, bet your girlfriend is looking for you!” she said, wagging her finger at him.

  He checked his phone and saw that he had three missed calls from Colette. But the present caller was Gavin.

  “Let me take this,” he said. “It’s Gav.”

  Taking a step away, he answered with a soft hello.

  “You busy?” Gavin asked.

  “What’s up?”

  “I’ve got a lead on something and I don’t want to wait to work on it. I think this could be something good for the both of us to explore.”

  “You got a name for it yet?”

  “Yeah. ‘I Can’t Stay Here,’” Gavin replied.

  “I’ll be right over.” Co
nor felt his blood pumping in that way it did when the rush of creative adrenaline got going.

  “You are so cute,” Felicity said when he turned to her.

  “Thanks, honey. You’re pretty cute, too,” he said with a grin.

  “No, I mean, it’s cute how you react to Gavin. It’s almost like you’re in love with him.”

  “Well that’s a little creepy,” he said and laughed.

  “You should have seen your eyes when you saw it was him calling.”

  “I can’t tell you what it means that he’s trying to move forward, Fee. A call like this hasn’t come in a very long time.”

  “Well, then go. Go and make it good,” she said.

  “You really are the best,” he said, kissing her cheek. “I’ll check on you tomorrow.”

  After closing and locking the door, Felicity leaned up against it and took a deep breath. It had been a tumultuous day, to say the least. But what lingered in her thoughts was Conor. She knew it was probably a method of self-protection to focus on him at this very moment rather than fully deal with her loss, but she didn’t care. She suspected that Conor had designed his flirting to distract her from her troubles. And though she knew he would never act upon his playful

  innuendos, it still felt good to have his attention.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “It’s about recognizing that the space you’re in isn’t viable,” Gavin said. “It’s looking at where you are and knowing you have to do something to change it. Because if you don’t, you’re only sabotaging yourself.”

  Conor wasn’t sure he was following. He had just let himself into Gavin’s house and grabbed a bottle of beer from the refrigerator when the explanation started coming.

  “I can’t stay here,” Gavin sang, “in this space I made. There’s no room to breathe, I can’t stay here.”

  “Yes, well . . . .” Conor didn’t understand how he could connect to it.

  “Look,” Gavin said abruptly, “just as I can’t stay angry with you and Sophie, you can’t stay in love with her. You can’t stay in that space.”