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Have Mercy: A Loveswept Contemporary Erotic Romance

Page 16

by Shelley Ann Clark


  “You can’t honestly think that,” Emme said, her voice full of disbelief. “You think that your sister stealing from you is somehow your own fault?”

  “I’m the one who raised her.”

  Her intake of breath at his side was furious. “You aren’t the one who decided to have a child you couldn’t raise. You were a kid, Tom. A kid. A kid who was trying to do right by his sister with no help from anyone. Don’t you dare talk about yourself that way.” She pushed herself up from his side, all blazing anger. “I’m really mad at you.”

  “I noticed.” Something about her anger made it harder for him to hold onto his. If she was angry at him, he didn’t have to be angry at himself.

  That was probably really messed up.

  He reached for her, got an armful of her warm body, and pulled her closer.

  “I’m still pissed,” she warned, but she came willingly as he kissed her, her mouth soft under his. When she nestled back down by his side, he felt calm again. Safe.

  “I know it doesn’t make sense,” he said. “My dad wasn’t exactly a great father. I’m pretty sure that bar was the only thing he ever loved.” He thought about Emme, hitting herself with his belt to make sure she wouldn’t hurt him, the concern in her eyes when she demanded he name a safe word, made him promise to use it. That unquestioning acceptance and her small hand making circles on his back, asking him what he needed, willing to grant it even when it hurt her career, the most important thing in her life.

  No one had ever given him that kind of love. His family certainly hadn’t and now they were going to take it away from him, too.

  He wanted to weep, but he hadn’t let himself in so long, he thought he’d forgotten how.

  So instead, he held Emme, pulled her close, tucked her head into the side of his shoulder. He let the warmth of her skin sink into his body and kissed the tips of her fingers. He tried to stay awake even as she fell asleep so he could watch her face as she dreamed, memorize it, absorb as much of her love as he could before he threw it all away.

  He’d always known that this couldn’t last, that people like him didn’t get happy endings with the girl and the band and the cheering fans in the audience. People like him got work and frustration and police reports with only a few shining, beautiful moments in between to hold onto in the darkness of their day-to-day lives.

  Tom would never forget the look on Emme’s face when she dropped him off at the Atlanta airport.

  Last-minute flights weren’t cheap, but it was just another cost he’d have to add in with all the others, monetary and not. Andy, thank God, had agreed to fly out to cover him, and Emme had driven the van to the airport.

  Emme had been quiet as she waited for him, but he could sense the energy in the air of the van like the quiet before a thunderstorm erupted—heavy and dark and swirling. He didn’t speak either, watching the midday traffic build and the shiny high-rise hotels fade into the background, sunk deep into a pit of self-recrimination.

  When she finally spoke, it was in a voice devoid of emotion and without taking her eyes off the road. “I’m still angry.”

  “You should be. I’ve let you down.”

  She sighed in response. “Yes but not the way you probably think.”

  Just order me to stay with you. If she did, he’d do it, and he wouldn’t feel bad about abandoning all his other responsibilities. It wouldn’t be his fault then. It would be at her command, and he couldn’t tell her no. “In what way, then?”

  “Whatever you’re telling yourself—that you’re wrecking my tour, that you’re hurting my career, that I’m mad about any of that—you’re wrong. If any of my bandmates had an emergency and had to leave the tour, I’d understand. It sucks, but I’d understand.” Her hands were tight on the steering wheel, he noticed, as she changed lanes. She still didn’t so much as glance at him. “But Tom. You don’t want this. You don’t want to leave the tour, and you don’t want to own that bar, and your sister will never change as long as you keep rescuing her from herself. And what’s worse is that you don’t have to do any of it, but you’ve put yourself in a prison of your own making.”

  “You expect me to let my business run into the ground?”

  “I expect you to see that you have options that don’t keep you trapped and miserable when you have something that makes you happy right here that’s yours to take.”

  That sentence felt like a gut-punch and he lost his breath for a minute. “I can’t.”

  “I’m sorry about your sister.” Emme didn’t look at him, but she reached over and took his hand. “I can’t imagine how you must be feeling.”

  Tom squeezed her hand. “I barely know what I’m feeling.”

  Emme was silent for a long time. When she spoke, she sounded exhausted. “Where do we go from here?”

  He felt the sting at the back of his throat and swallowed against it. “I don’t know.”

  Emme nodded. She pulled up in front of the departures gate and stepped out of the van. Tom unloaded his bags and set them on the curb. He felt sick, filled with grief and fear and loss. Emme looked beautiful as always, but her nose and eyes were pink, like she’d been trying to hold back tears. The wind caught a strand of her hair and pulled it forward, out of her ponytail, toward his face, and he reached up to push it back into place.

  The moment his hand touched her hair, the tears fell, and she smeared at them with her fists and turned away. “Let me know what your plans are,” she said, and her voice wavered.

  “Emme—” He reached for her, but she’d already pulled the van door open and climbed back inside.

  When the plane landed in Louisville, he’d had to have one of his buddies drive him home. Not even the prospect of sleeping in his own bed was a comfort; he’d slept the best he ever had in his life with Emme snuggled tight in his arms, and he suspected that a night wouldn’t pass again for a long time without him wishing she were there again.

  The first thing he noticed when they pulled up in front of his house was the new damage to the bumper of his car in the driveway. He wished he could say he was surprised, but by that point, he’d entered what he thought was a state of calm resignation. He’d given Katie the use of his car. She’d promised to go to her meetings. Quite obviously, she’d stopped going and started drinking, which boded poorly for the state of his vehicle. Though between the missing money, the need to fire his manager, and the fact that he’d called the cops to report his own sister, a scratched bumper seemed the least of his worries.

  Then he unlocked his front door.

  Tom had always been tidy; he’d had to be to function. His father had been too busy working or drinking to keep the house neat and orderly, and Tom had always found satisfaction and comfort in a living space that had a place for everything.

  But when he opened his door, he found utter chaos. There were empty liquor bottles all over the living room, stains on the carpet, overflowing ashtrays on every surface. Even his couch cushions had been tossed off the sofa and onto the floor. The kitchen was piled with dirty dishes and trash; it smelled like Katie hadn’t taken the garbage out in months, though he hadn’t been gone that long. There were more empty liquor bottles, and although Tom wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking at, when he found tiny plastic baggies on the counter, he knew that Katie’s problems were much, much bigger than he’d thought.

  For a moment he didn’t even know where to begin. He sank down into a kitchen chair only to end up on top of a pizza box. There was just so much cleanup to do, he couldn’t process how to start.

  When he’d left for the tour, Katie had seemed like she was doing so well. Not altogether perfect, of course, but better than she had been in ages. Well enough that he could trust her to a degree. Had he caused this downward spiral by leaving? Or was it all manipulation, a way of ensuring that he’d never really leave if there was always an emergency at home when he did?

  He didn’t even like his house that much—it, like the bar, had belonged to their father, and it,
like the bar, had taken him years of work to make functional again. And Katie had managed to put a damn good dent in that functionality in just a month.

  He’d left Emme for this. He’d left a tour where he did what he loved every single night, where he felt electrified every time he made music with his bandmates, where he saw cities he’d never traveled to before, for a wrecked house, a damaged car, and a sister who had slid backward and seemed determined to take him down with her.

  He needed some answers.

  But first, he stood up and grabbed the garbage bags from under the kitchen sink and got to work.

  This was his life. This house was where he lived. It all felt a little unreal like a recurring bad dream; familiar, but not true, after being away for so long. He’d accepted it for so long, it was amazing how little time it took for him to reject it and hope for more.

  Chapter Twelve

  Emme would be happy if she never saw the Atlanta airport again.

  She’d been furious with Tom, at first, when she dropped him off, angry at him for denying himself what he deserved and angry at him for denying them what they both wanted from each other. And then he’d reached for her, a vine-seeking-the-sun movement toward her, and she’d had to hide in the van to keep from sobbing like a wreck in front of everyone in the airport.

  Then she’d had to wait three hours for Andy’s flight to show up since it was delayed. Three hours sitting in the goddamn airport, and she couldn’t even get good and drunk and feel sorry for herself since she had a show to play and a fifteen-passenger van to navigate back to her hotel, and she didn’t particularly want to sit in a room filled with strangers and cry.

  And then, because that was exactly what she needed, her mother called.

  “Donald had the landscapers add a flower bed out front,” she said in greeting. “Do you like petunias?”

  Emme’s brain couldn’t switch gears quickly enough to catch on. “I’m sorry?”

  Her mother sighed. “And we hired a housepainter because the paint on your trim was peeling. The thing is, if you really do succeed, people are going to want to take pictures of your house. You really have to take some pride in it.”

  “Wait—what? You hired painters to paint my house?” Emme sank into a vinyl chair and cupped the phone closer to her ear to hear over the noise of the baggage claim. She could hear herself sounding like an ungrateful teenager and she didn’t like it. “That was—unnecessary, Mom. Very kind of you and Donald but unnecessary.”

  “Well. I don’t want people talking. At least not any more than they already do.”

  Emme heard the telltale inhale through the phone. “Are you sneaking cigarettes again? Do you really think Donald doesn’t know?”

  “I wash my hands afterward. I tell him I’m gardening.”

  Emme almost choked on her laugh. “Mom! Devious. I like it. So does that mean when you go to the Garden Club meetings, you’re all really just sitting around getting trashed on wine and cigarettes?”

  “Emily!” Her mother sounded shocked. “Lower your voice. Someone might hear you.”

  Ah, there it was again, that very real fear that she couldn’t joke away. The disappointment that always crept into their conversations. Combined with her own sadness, it was more than Emme could take.

  “No one in Atlanta cares if you drink and smoke, Mom.”

  “I’d think you of all people would know what can happen when someone isn’t discreet.”

  So much for mother-daughter camaraderie.

  By the time Andy got off the plane, Emme was in an utterly foul mood, but at least he didn’t ask too many questions. He gave her a hug, asked her if she was okay, and when she said she didn’t want to talk about it, he just nodded.

  That night’s show was rough. She didn’t feel like bantering with the audience. She didn’t feel like singing her more triumphant songs. She wanted to croon about her heartbreak and frustration, and, yes, cry. But one hundred strangers hadn’t paid money to hear her complain about the state of her life; they’d come to see a bombshell and hear some good tunes, so she pulled it out, somehow.

  They played the show, then drove all night to get to South Carolina. By the time they’d pulled up to the hotel in Columbia, Emme’s eyes were gritty with lack of sleep and unshed tears. She waved off the guys and locked herself in her room, and fell asleep before she could even work up the energy to cry.

  It felt like she’d just shut her eyes when someone pounded on her hotel room door hard. At first she thought it was just the headache that was pounding behind her forehead, but as she dragged herself out of the dark comfort of sleep, she could hear what sounded like Dave shouting through the door.

  “Emme! Come on, answer the door!”

  Her head was still fuzzed with sleep and despair, and it took her a few moments to pull her body out from under the covers and pad her way over to the door in the oversized T-shirt she wore as pajamas.

  Tom’s T-shirt, actually. She’d lifted it from his suitcase as he packed. It smelled like him. If that made her a little pathetic, so be it.

  When she opened the door, all three of her bandmates practically mowed her down to get inside.

  “We have a problem,” Guillermo said. He sat down on her unmade bed, holding his laptop.

  “Make yourself at home.” Emme meant it to be sarcastic, but none of them seemed to notice.

  Dave was pacing, and Andy—calm, quiet, normally laid-back Andy—had his hands clenched into fists and was biting at his knuckles. She rubbed her eyes and tried to come to consciousness. “Guys? What’s going on?”

  “Have you seen the SoundGap blog today?” Dave spit the words out like they tasted bitter.

  “I’ve been awake for three minutes. No, I haven’t.”

  Guillermo turned the laptop screen to face Emme. “Here.”

  There she was on the blog’s front page, her picture as big and clear as anyone could ever hope.

  But of course it wasn’t a promotion of her tour, or her album, or a concert review, or even an interview.

  No, it was a picture of her with Tom at the Hotel M bar, his mouth near her ear, her turned toward him, no mistaking their position for anything other than intimate. And next to it was a picture of Andy hugging her at the baggage claim in the Atlanta airport.

  Succubus Songstress Strikes Again! The headline read.

  After causing the breakup of indie-rock favorite Indelible Lines five years ago, Emme is at it again with her own band on her own tour. Sources tell us she’d slept with bandmate Tom McKinney, her bassist for this tour. But when she tired of him, she sent him back home to Louisville, only to immediately bang his replacement!

  “God, who writes this crap?” Emme looked up from the screen. “ ‘Succubus songstress’? Really? What decade is this?”

  None of her bandmates were laughing, though. In fact, Andy looked downright pissed.

  “Emme. I’m married. Look, I know I told you that my day job couldn’t spare me for this tour, but I’ve got to be honest. A big part of why I didn’t go is because my wife wasn’t really comfortable with me being on tour with you. And now something like this turns up the first day I’m here?”

  The sick sinking feeling that Emme had felt so often after Indelible Lines broke up was back. She hadn’t missed it, not one little bit. “Andy. Your wife knows you. She trusts you. Right? You wouldn’t do anything to hurt her!”

  His eyes narrowed. “Yeah, but you might.”

  Dave interrupted. “Look, I know I told you guys I was okay with you and Tom. But I said to be careful. What part of this is careful? You’re in the middle of the bar, at a party full of bloggers, and you’re practically kissing! How professional does that look, especially when he leaves so soon after?”

  “We didn’t know he was going to be leaving.” Emme wanted to scream, but she kept her voice low. The last thing she needed now was an accusation of hysteria to go with the accusations about her sex life, her morals, and her judgment. “Andy, I’m sorry that yo
u’re up on that blog. I’m sorry if your wife is feeling threatened. But no offense, man, I am not even remotely interested in any kind of sexual relationship with you. And I’m not the one who took the picture, and I’m not the one who posted it on the Internet.”

  “Dude, if your wife doesn’t trust you, maybe you ought to be talking to her,” Guillermo said. He sighed and shut the laptop. “Emme, I almost didn’t want to tell you about this because I knew it would upset you, and there’s not anything you can do about it now. But these two”—he pointed at Dave and Andy, and his face twisted—“thought it was important.”

  “You want to get signed by a label?” Dave asked. “This is not the way to make it happen, Emme. You’ve got to prove that you’re reliable. Respectable. Professional. This is not professional. No one wants to risk money on a singer whose career falls apart every time she gets a new boyfriend.”

  “Unfair, Dave.” Guillermo shook his head.

  “No, it’s fair.” Emme looked longingly at her bed overtaken by angry band members. She wanted to crawl back inside it for a week, pull the covers over her head, and ignore everything she was feeling. All of it was too big for her. Frustration, fear, anger. Pain. A feeling like mourning, one she hadn’t felt since her grandmother had died.

  “I mean, it’s not fair, but Dave’s right that labels will see it that way.” She looked down at her lap and saw that she was playing scales on her thighs again. She’d made it to e-flat, somehow, before noticing.

  “You’ve got to do some damage control,” Dave said.

  Andy nodded. “Give them an interview. Tell them you were never involved with Tom, that the picture just caught you at a bad moment where it looked that way. Deny it, for God’s sake.”

  No, I wasn’t involved with Tom. Don’t be ridiculous. The camera just caught us at a bad angle. I’ve learned my lesson. She could hear the denials in her own voice as if she’d spoken them aloud.

 

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