Rock Angel (Rock Angel Series Book 1)

by Bogino, Jeanne

  He hesitated, then nodded slowly. “All right. I don’t know how much you know.”

  “Not much,” she said, using the sleeve of her T-shirt to swipe her eyes and nose. “And that doesn’t matter, anyway. I want to hear your story from you.”

  “Okay.” He sat up straighter, clasping his arms around his knees. “I’ve told you how I got into my first real band when I was sixteen. The Accidental Evils. I was the youngest member.”

  “Just like me,” Shan murmured, still wiping her eyes.

  “Yes. I started out as a roadie, but pretty soon they figured out that I could play anything. They loved having me around, because I could fill in whenever one of them got too wasted to go onstage. Eventually the bass player got busted, so I started playing bass. A few months later, Gil, the keyboard player, ODed on smack and wound up in a coma. Then I was the keyboard player.”

  Go ahead and dope yourself into a coma, he’d snarled at her earlier. She sniffled.

  “The drugs were everywhere. All kinds, too. Everybody had their own thing they were into. The candyman would come to our gigs with a briefcase full of little brown lunch bags, one for every band member. I was in the Evils for a year and a half and, during that time, I did just about every drug there is, except for smack.” He shot a sideways glance at her. “Watching Gil turn into a brussels sprout kept me off the horse. Blow, though, that was a different story.”

  He sounded like he was reading a script and Shan realized he probably was. He must have recited his story a hundred times. She certainly had, at all those meetings.

  “There were times it was weird, being the youngest. I could play as well or better than the best of them, but it didn’t change the fact that the others were eight, ten years older than me. When I was coked up I felt like one of them, instead of the junior roadie turned keyboard player.

  “Then I got really sucked into the whole scene. Having people come out, pay for a ticket to see us play, then getting the crowd high on that energy—there’s nothing like it. You know. And the women…” he paused, shot a sideways look at her, then shrugged. “The women were everywhere, too. I was only sixteen years old, remember. I’d been having sex for a couple of years, but it was my first experience with groupies. I had so many women that I can’t remember most of them,” he continued. “If I met one of them on the street, I wouldn’t even recognize her.”

  She knew that was still true today, but she tried to picture him at sixteen. Slighter, more willowy than he was now, and flawless as a young god, with his fair hair and ethereal eyes. The groupies would have eaten him alive, consumed him. “What about your parents?”

  “I’d always been in one band or another, so they were used to my not being home much. My grades were still good, good enough to get me accepted at Stanford, so my folks didn’t worry. I held it together, at least until that last summer when we went on tour.”

  “Your mother let you go on the road?” That didn’t sound to Shan like the mother he’d described. Not at all. “What about school?”

  “I was done, by then. I graduated high school early because I skipped the third grade. I was starting at Stanford for the fall and the tour was planned for summer, so my folks gave me the go-ahead. They trusted me, you see. I’d never given them any reason not to, as far as they knew.

  “So off we went and it was open season, for me. I buried myself in blow—snorting all day, snorting to play, snorting and fucking all night. Fucking so much, sometimes, I rubbed the skin right off my…well. I don’t have to tell you. You know, don’t you, about crazy coke sex?”

  He shot a sideways glance at her and she nodded hastily.

  “I don’t remember much about that summer,” he confessed, “because I was fucked up one hundred percent of the time. And I barely remember anything at all about the night things came to a head. We’d played Jazz Alley in Seattle and I wound up in the bathroom with two chicks, snorting blow off their tits. I guess I finally hit my limit, or maybe it was some kind of extrastrength, pharmaceutical-grade shit. Or maybe it was cut with fucking Borax. Anyway I went down, smashing my head on the sink along the way. I woke up in the hospital with IVs in both arms, a tube up my dick, and a fractured skull. I still don’t know much about how I got there. Dave can tell you more about that than I can.”

  “Dave?” she asked, puzzled, and Quinn looked nonplussed.

  “Wow, he really didn’t say much, did he?” She shook her head. “Dave was the one who found me,” he explained. “He’d hooked up with us a few months earlier, after one of our guitar players went into rehab. The girls must have taken off when I passed out and, by the time Dave came into the bathroom, I’d gone totally code blue. He called 911 and did CPR until the paramedics got there. It’s very likely that I would not be alive today, if not for Dazzlin’ Dave Ross. He’s the one who called my mother, too,” he added, his face falling at the memory. “She was there when I woke up, her and George and my brother, all of them crying their eyes out.

  “They kept me in the ICU for a week, to make sure I didn’t have some kind of permanent brain damage, then they shipped me off to a treatment center. I was there for almost six months. When I came out, I was clean. I’ve stayed that way ever since.”

  He looked exhausted and Shan felt that way, too, overwhelmed by the enormity of what he’d told her. “My god, Q. Do the others know about this? Dan and Ty, I mean.”

  Quinn shook his head. “No. Dan moved to New York while I was on the road with the Evils. He knows something went down, because he knew me in my hardcore days, but he’s never asked for details. All Ty knows is that I’m a holier-than-thou fuck about drugs. I know he and Dan both like a line every now and then, and that’s fine, so long as they keep it away from the band and out of my face. Because I can’t slip. It’ll kill me. It almost did.”

  “Why can’t you just tell them, then? They’d understand. They understand about me.”

  He shook his head again, more vehemently. “I don’t like to talk about those days to begin with, and…well. It was hardly my finest hour. I wish nobody had to know.”

  He was worn out, obviously finished, but she had one more question for him. “Is that why you didn’t tell me?” she asked softly. “Because you were ashamed?”

  He was silent for a long time. When he finally spoke, his voice was low. “Yes.” His arms were still clasped around his knees and he dropped his head against them. “You love me so much, angel,” he went on, his voice muffled. “Nobody’s ever loved me like you do. The way you look up to me, the way you look at me…it’s everything, to me. I was afraid that, if you knew, you’d never look at me that way again.”

  She was crying again, her eyes so awash with tears that she could hardly see him. “But it just makes me love you more, knowing you made it back from something like that. I can understand better than anybody, don’t you see?”

  He didn’t reply, but reached out with his good hand and laid it against her cheek, gently removing her tears with his thumb. She pressed her face against his hand as her tears came faster.

  He sighed. “I really wish you’d stop crying.”

  “I can’t,” she sobbed. “It’s a jag, or something.”

  He took her face between his hands. She closed her eyes and leaned into him, murmuring when she felt his mouth on her eyelid. He kissed one, then the other, absorbing her tears with his lips. “I love you, too,” he whispered. “You know that, don’t you? I don’t say it, but…”

  She nodded, still crying, her eyes squeezed shut. She no longer felt his lips against her eyes, but then she felt them against her mouth, soft and warm and moist with her tears.

  Oh…

  Quinn was kissing her, she noted with a sense of wonder, deeply, sweetly, in a way he’d never kissed her before.

  Had she thought Dave was a good kisser? He wasn’t. Nobody was, not like this, and she realized that she’d never really been kissed before. Not with this intimacy, or this yearning, or this tenderness, and she knew with complete certain
ty that she’d been waiting all her life for this kiss.

  He kissed her over and over, then kissed her all over: her cheek, her throat, her forehead. Then he was lifting her T-shirt, kissing her breasts, burying his face between them, nuzzling the flesh over her heart.

  She held his head, trembling, and then his hand was at her waist.

  Time seemed to stand still as he pulled open the snap on her jeans, unzipped them, pushed them down, pulled them off. He reached for her panties, stripped those off, too, then pushed her thighs apart and kissed her between her legs.

  She was flooded by a wave of heat more intense than anything she’d ever felt. She couldn’t see his expression, he was bowed over her body with his back to her face, but she gripped his shoulder to pull him away, irrationally afraid that the raw forces swelling inside her would explode out of that opening. She felt thermonuclear and she could imagine it, her built-up longings erupting in a beam of white-hot heat that would incinerate him if he touched her there again.

  But he didn’t and instead she felt his lips against the inside of her leg. They moved gently, lovingly, and she realized that he was kissing the road map of scars on her thigh.

  She started to cry again, softly, and when he turned to face her his expression was rapt, reverential. She reached for his pants but he already had them off, and she caught her breath when her hand encountered the firm, velvety head of his cock.

  He moved between her legs, and his cock glided into her, and then was deep inside of her. Her body arched up and then he was moving, pushing and sliding and driving inside of her.

  Shan already felt about to detonate and now she was building to an even higher, more unbearable pitch. She couldn’t breathe; something inside was growing and it felt too big for her body, too big for the world, the universe.

  When she came she cried out, her legs and arms constricting around him, and began to sob again, overcome by the sheer power and beauty and perfection of their fusion. He was plunging into her and almost immediately she felt the pressure building again, again, and she cried out once more before his body tensed and he threw his head back with a groan. “Angel,” he gasped.

  “Q,” she whispered and they were kissing again, his body sinking into hers until they melded together.

  She held him cradled in her arms, his face buried against her throat, until his breathing returned to normal. Tears were still trickling from her eyes.

  Eventually he pressed a kiss against her breast and hoisted himself off of her. Shan made a small sound of distress when he slipped out of her, leaving her empty, spent. When he rolled over to lie at her side, he reached between her legs, gently cupping her vagina with his hand.

  They lay together in silence for a very long time. Eventually Quinn pulled his hand away and Shan murmured, bereft without his warmth. She turned her head to tell him that, but her words died when she saw the look on his face.

  He was gazing up at the sky, too, looking stunned, chagrined, and, increasingly, horrified.

  She stared at him silently, a cold, hard knot beginning to form in the pit of her stomach, displacing the sweet warmth that had filled her moments before. “Son of a bitch,” she whispered and rolled away, tugging her T-shirt over her breasts.

  Quinn looked at her, startled. “What…what’s wrong?” His pants were still down around his knees and his eyes were as round as a deer in the headlights.

  “Nothing, Quinn.” She brushed the pine needles off her ass and pulled on her jeans. “Not a fucking thing.” She jerked on her sneakers and stood up. Her panties were lying on the ground and she snatched them, stuffing them into her pocket.

  Quinn had gotten to his feet and pulled up his pants. “Ready to go?” he asked, avoiding her eyes. His clothes still bore stains where she’d bathed him in her tears.

  “Yup,” she replied and he headed back down the trail toward the house. After a couple of steps, he became aware that Shan was trudging in the opposite direction. “Where are you going?”

  She stopped and looked over her shoulder. “For a walk. I’m not ready to go home yet.”

  “Oh.” He frowned, hesitating. “Do you want me to go with you?”

  “No.” She was regarding him coldly and, for the first time all day, her eyes were dry. “Don’t worry, Quinn. I get it. It was a slip. Nothing more.”

  She turned away and set off up the trail. This time Quinn didn’t follow, just stood still and watched until she disappeared.

  chapter 26

  “I brought you one of those cupcakes that you like,” Quinn said, “from the bakery in Sunland.”

  “Hold on,” Shan said into the phone and turned to face him.

  Since The Act, as she thought of their slip on the mountain, Quinn had become almost her slave. He couldn’t do enough for her, couldn’t be more attentive, couldn’t look more guilty. It made her want to kill him.

  As a rule Shan rejected his overtures, taking an evil satisfaction in spurning him. His wretchedness pleased her, a counteraction for her own hurt and embarrassment, but the cupcake was blueberry buttercream, her favorite.

  She took it, sniffed her thanks, then stepped into the hall closet and shut the door in his face. “Another offering from Quinn?” Oda asked from the other end of the phone.

  “Serves him right,” Shan said. The location of the telephone afforded no privacy, so she often took the handset into this closet where she had to crouch among everyone’s coats, Denise’s tripods, and Quinn’s spare helmet. “He should feel guilty, after the way he took advantage of me.” Oda was the only person she’d told about The Act.

  “Is that what you think he did?” Oda asked. “You don’t think he just got carried away?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Shan insisted, taking a bite of the cupcake. “He should have had more self-control.”

  “Mmm-hmm. He sure should have.” As usual, Oda made her opinion clear with a minimum of words.

  There was a knock on the closet door. “Are you nearly finished?” Quinn’s voice again, sounding sheepish and contrite like it always did now. “It’s almost seven. We have to leave for the gig soon.”

  It was a Thursday in December, a few weeks after The Act, and they were playing the Troubadour in West Hollywood. They’d performed there twice, once as a Monday-night opener for a past-their-prime rock band and again on a Tuesday, number three of a six-band line up. Quinn had been lobbying hard for a better slot. “The Troub is part of the rock ’n’ roll landscape in LA,” he informed them. “A good Friday or Saturday night there is an indication of true star potential.” Tonight they were opening for Roomful of Blues, one step closer to the coveted headlining slot. When they arrived to set up, the line down Santa Monica Boulevard was already forming.

  They were supercharged onstage, buoyed up by the mystique of the club. Shan always found the energy of the place to be overwhelming. Dylan had played here. So had Bonnie Raitt. Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, Guns N’ Roses—all Troubadour alumni. It made her feel triumphant, like she’d made it, and, at the same time, like she never would, that her star could never shine as brightly as the legends that had graced this stage before her. When she learned it had been the site of Joni Mitchell’s Los Angeles debut, Shan got misty, thinking of her mother.

  The place was packed and by the end of their set they’d acquired a whole new group of fans, but there was no time to give them the encore they shouted for because Quinntessence had to break down and make way for the legendary blues band. “We blew them away,” Quinn proclaimed as they loaded out. “And you kicked ass,” he told Shan, who shrugged. Inside she glowed, since his recent obsequiousness had not extended to musical matters. It was remarkable, his skill at compartmentalizing.

  Quinn had ridden his bike to the gig, as he often did, and wasn’t yet home by the time Shan went to bed. Around three-thirty she got up to pee and encountered him in the hallway, obviously engaged in a walk of shame. He stopped when he saw her, his eyes wide with guilty consternation.

  “W
as it good?” she inquired before slamming her door in his face. She hadn’t been entirely sure whether he’d continued with his frequent flyers since The Act. Now she knew.

  Shan tossed and turned, then overslept the next morning. She woke cranky and jonesing, so she immediately went downstairs for her methadone.

  She discovered Quinn in the kitchen. He was making a sandwich. “Hi,” he said.

  She ignored him and went to the refrigerator.

  “You slept late,” he observed. “I’ve been waiting for you to get up.”

  She didn’t reply, just swallowed the ’done and poured a glass of water.

  “I was thinking maybe we could spend the day together,” he continued. “if you can stand to, that is.”

  At that, she turned around and looked at him. “Why?”

  “Because things are weird between us. I thought we’d get over it, but…” He shrugged. “I don’t like it. I miss you, angel.”

  Despite her mood, his words made her thaw, just a little. She knew what he meant. She missed him, too. Or, rather, she missed them—their easy affection and camaraderie. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Nothing heavy. I thought we could just…have some fun.” He gestured toward the sandwich. “A bike ride, then a picnic.”

  She regarded him dubiously, but the earnest, hopeful look on his face won her over. “Well, all right. I’d rather take the van, though.”

  “Can’t,” Quinn replied. “Dan’s out somewhere. I don’t know when he’s coming home.”

  “Maybe we can borrow Ty’s car.”

  “Nope,” he said firmly. “This ride requires the bike.”

  “But…” she began, then paused.

  “I know you think you don’t like it, but you will. Just give it a chance.” She still looked doubtful. “Come on. Don’t you trust me?”