Ever After (Dirtshine Book 3)

by Roxie Noir

  “The fuck?” she hisses at Trent.

  “—But you hurt me the least, so I think I should start. We’re friends, and we’re bandmates, and you might be an asshole, but dammit, you’re my asshole.”

  Darcy nearly spits her drink across the table.

  “I could have phrased that better,” Trent says, his voice still perfectly calm.

  Liam sighs, his eyes on the keys, dinner totally forgotten as he wrestles with something I can’t see.

  “All right,” he finally says, taking and pocketing them. “Thanks, mate.”

  “Okay,” I say, once we’re safely back in my shitty car where no one can hear us. “What was that?”

  He buckles his seatbelt and looks out the window, his voice vague, his eyes distant.

  “That was Trent being far nicer to me than I deserve,” he mutters.

  “Because of... drugs?” I ask, backing out of my parking spot.

  “Just say no,” he says, sarcastically, still looking out the window.

  I wait. When Liam talks about his past, sometimes it takes him a moment to collect himself, get started. I brace myself, because despite everything, I’m deeply aware that the Liam I know isn’t the same Liam who’s been here in the past.

  Well, he is. I know he is. Even when I met on the bridge, my one brief glimpse of this Former Liam, I know I recognized something about him, but it was buried deep underneath layers of that other guy, the one he’s worked so hard to change.

  “I already told you about how I set my condominium on fire,” he starts.

  I pull up to a freeway on-ramp, blinker flashing, and look at him again.

  “I actually don’t remember why I decided to set my condominium on fire, to tell the truth,” he muses. “I’m sure it was a rather good reason, but I can’t bring it to mind just now.”

  “I can’t imagine it was anything but well-thought-through and carefully planned,” I say, and Liam just laughs.

  “It’s like you know me,” he says.

  “You’re afraid you’ll set Trent’s house on fire?”

  “It’s a bit more complicated,” he says. “After that, Gavin was already pissed off at me for unrelated reasons, you can imagine I’m sure, but I was out of money and I stayed with a few other friends, but I managed to piss them all off in short order, with my sparkling personality and charming drug habit.”

  “Right.”

  “I showed up at Gavin’s house, begged him to let me stay there, and he did. He absolutely shouldn’t have, but he did, and he let me stay even after I broke a glass door with my fist because I’d locked myself out and got blood all over his furniture—”

  “Ugh.”

  “He let me stay even though I was coming back home drunk and high, all hours of the night, this while he was doing his best to stay sober. And eventually I tried to break him and Marisol up, she left, and then I cured him of his sadness with a two-day binge. All because he tried to be nice to me and give me a place to stay.”

  Even though it’s fairly late, there’s still traffic, and I brake as the red lights in front of me form a wall.

  “Trent’s not Gavin,” I point out. “He won’t even be there.”

  “He’s still being much nicer than I deserve.”

  “Well, are you gonna fuck his house up?”

  He looks out the passenger window again, at a big black SUV, its bass so loud it makes my windows buzz.

  “This is the thing about me, Frankie. I never mean to fuck anything up. I’ve got the same intentions as the next person, to live right, to be happy, to, I don’t fucking know, be a good citizen and all that shit. But then I let myself choose what feels easy and good just then over what I know I ought to do, and next thing I know, I’ve burned a condo or broken a window or nearly ruined my best friend’s life or torched a phone number.”

  We’re stopped on the 101, and he looks over at me, his green eyes boring into mine.

  Slowly, I reach out and put my hand over his, curling our fingers together. I swallow hard, tears forming in my eyes, and I bite down hard on the inside of my cheek because I am not going to fucking cry right now.

  He squeezes my hand, half-smiling, and I bite the inside of my cheek a little harder. It’s not working.

  “You don’t have to be who you think you are,” I finally whisper.

  He doesn’t say anything, just runs his eyes over my face like he’s trying to memorize it.

  “And if you don’t think you can trust yourself, fuck it. Don’t. Trust me. Trust Trent, trust Darcy, trust the people who know what you’re really like.”

  Liam raises my hand to his lips, presses them against my fingers slowly, one by one. A tear escapes my left eye, tracking down my cheek, and I do my damnedest to pretend nothing just happened.

  “I’ll never understand why you’re here but I’m glad you are,” he murmurs. “You’re the fucking moon in my night sky, Frankie.”

  I almost say it. It’s right there, because I think I love you, crawling up my throat and trying to get out of my mouth, but I bite it back. Not here, stuck in traffic, not now. Not after two weeks, not when I spent years telling that to Alistair only to break off an engagement.

  “This moon says take the keys and stop hating yourself for who you used to be,” I say. “You won’t get better that way, you’ll just get stuck.”

  He leans over the center console and we kiss, quickly, my foot firm on the brake.

  “Since when the fuck do you dispense self-help advice?” he murmurs.

  “As long as I’m not the one asking, I’m excellent at it,” I murmur back. “Give me anyone else’s problems and I can solve them in minutes. Give me my own and it takes years.”

  Now his hand is on my face, his thumb right below my lip.

  “I think this problem could last a long, long time,” he whispers. “Years, maybe. It might never get solved.”

  “What problem is that?” I whisper.

  “The problem of us.”

  My heart seizes in my chest, nearly stopping, thumping erratically.

  “Are we a problem?”

  “We’re a puzzle at least, Frankie. Nice girl meets degenerate, sparks fly. Degenerate falls hard. Tale older than time.”

  We kiss again. I don’t know what to say, I only know that right now I want to crawl into him, breathless, curl up together somewhere secret that’s only the two of us, away from the world.

  He swipes his tongue along my lower lip, and I turn my head slightly, opening my mouth, letting him in because I want this, I want him.

  All the fucking time, even when I shouldn’t, I want him.

  Behind me, a car honks.

  I jerk backward and realize that the red lights in front of me are further away, so I give the guy behind me a sheepish wave and creep forward as Liam laughs.

  “You’ll cause an accident,” he teases.

  “It would be your fault,” I say, now going at least ten miles per hour on the freeway.

  “You’re the driver,” he says, my hand still in his.

  He raises it to his lips again, kisses my knuckles.

  “Frankie,” he says. “Thank you.”

  One more time, I manage not to cry.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Liam

  Trent’s house is beautiful, a huge Spanish colonial in the hills. I’m a little surprised that he lives here, given that he clearly only ever spent time in three rooms, but when I ask him why he bought this whole mansion he just shrugs and says he liked having the space.

  I’ve never really pried into Trent’s past life, and he’s never particularly pried into mine, even though he was one of my closest friends. But Gavin was practically my brother, and Darcy was the glue that held us all together for so long. I always knew Trent the least.

  I set myself up in the biggest guest room, which has a balcony overlooking a small back yard, complete with hot tub. It’s nice, and far, far better than I deserve.

  Days go by. Frankie comes over the first night, an
d we sit in the hot tub together, looking at the view, and before I know it she’s straddling me with that wicked look in her eye, and she becomes the view.

  It’s a better view, anyway.

  I stay four days, five, a week. I don’t ruin anything. The worst thing I do is accidentally tear the shower curtain as I’m fucking Frankie in the shower, and it’s quite replaceable.

  Two weeks after I move into Trent’s house, a month after Gavin’s wedding, Frankie and I are slurping noodles at a Thai hole in the wall when my phone rings and Gavin’s name pops up. We’ve talked a few times since I left the motel, but he’s never asked me something I thought I needed to say yes to.

  “Take it,” Frankie says around a mouthful of boat noodles.

  I swallow, wipe my mouth off, answer my phone.

  “Listen, mate,” Gavin’s voice says. “I need a favor.”

  “All right.”

  There’s a bit of silence, and it stretches out until I begin to wonder if he’s still on the line.

  “Have you been playing?”

  “Only a bit,” I say. “I sold my kit a year ago.”

  Frankie raises one eyebrow at me, and I poke at my noodles with one chopstick, left-handed.

  “I see,” Gavin says, his voice guarded.

  “I needed a security deposit for the cottage where I lived in Shelton,” I explain. “And I absolutely had to get out of Mountford Wye, so I did it.”

  “Oh,” Gavin says, his voice surprised and relieved.

  “I did get far too little money for it.”

  “How long do you think it would take you to get back into proper practice?”

  Frankie reaches across the table and sneaks a shrimp out of my bowl.

  “Stop pussyfooting around and ask me whatever you’re trying to ask me,” I say. “It’ll take me as long as I’ve got is how long it’ll take, if you’d just speak the fuck up.”

  Frankie’s trying not to laugh, and on the other end of the phone line, Gavin chuckles.

  “I’ve half a mind to enroll you in charm school,” he teases.

  “I’m sure it would do me a world of good.”

  “Dirtshine is playing a show in two weeks at the Troubadour and we haven’t got a drummer.”

  I stop poking at my soup with my chopstick and look up at Frankie. Her mouth’s full of noodles, and she raises her eyebrows at me, my heart just about stopped in my chest.

  “I’m sure you’ve already asked everyone I could suggest,” I say.

  “I’m not asking for suggestions, I’m asking you if you’ll play the show, you sodding imbecile,” Gavin says.

  “Well, if you’re asking like that, I don’t see how I could possibly—”

  “All right. Please? We need a drummer, and even if you haven’t played in a year you’re likely to be miles better than anyone else we could find.”

  “You mean you can’t find anyone else.”

  “Liam, for fuck’s sake.”

  I grin across the table at Frankie, unable to hold my excitement back any longer. Her eyes go wide as she mouths WHAT, gesturing with her chopsticks.

  “All right, if you insist,” I finally say.

  Gavin sighs with relief. I can practically see him, pacing back and forth in his living room.

  “Thanks, mate,” he says. “Listen, I’ll have Nigel find out a way to get some playing in before next Friday, probably in a practice studio or something...”

  After another moment, we hang up, and I slide my phone back into my pocket.

  “What?!” Frankie nearly yells, alarming the people at the next table.

  “I’m playing a show with the band,” I say, trying to keep my voice quiet.

  I don’t think it’s working, though. It feels like bees are buzzing through my veins, like I need to go outside and run ten miles with all the pent-up energy I’ve got.

  I’m playing with the band again. I’m playing with the band again.

  “Holy shit!” she whisper-shouts. “With Dirtshine?”

  “Yes, bloody of course with Dirtshine,” I tease her.

  “You know other bands!”

  “And none of them would touch me with a ten-foot pole, as well they shouldn’t.”

  Frankie stops, chopsticks mid-air, and looks at me a little funny.

  “This is good, right?” she says, her voice suddenly lowered.

  “Of course it’s good.”

  “Because you’re not acting like it’s all that good,” she says. “This isn’t more of your self-castigating I’m Liam, I’m not worth it bullshit, is it?”

  “This is me trying not get my hopes up,” I tell her. “Because—”

  I stop short, leaning on one elbow, noodle soup steaming into my face. Sitting here, eating Thai food with my girlfriend in a cozy little hole-in-the wall that’s jam-packed with people talking and laughing and slurping, it’s easy to feel like life is wonderful and can only get better.

  But I’m here temporarily, on a three-month tourist visa, getting paid under the table for drumming gigs here and there. I’ve got a DUI on my record, and once my court date passes and I’m absent, I’ll owe a boatload more money.

  Not to mention that I punched Alistair. Not to mention that having a DUI on my record is likely to make it that much harder to actually stay in the United States, because when I fuck myself over I like to do it for years and years.

  “Because doing that is dangerous,” I admit. “Because being back in the band is what I want nearly more than anything else, but after the shit I put them through, I’m well aware that they’d be better off with just about any other drummer they can find.”

  Frankie reaches across the table and pokes my raven tattoo with her chopsticks. They’re slightly sticky, and I make a face at her.

  “Then don’t get your hopes up,” she says. “Be happy that this good thing is happening and make the best of it that you can, and for fuck’s sake don’t be such a downer.”

  “Don’t poke me with a utensil,” I say, pretending to be offended.

  “Celebrate your damn successes,” she says, poking me again, her hazel eyes dancing.

  I don’t deserve any of this and I know it. I don’t deserve to ever get on stage with Dirtshine again, I don’t deserve to live in Trent’s house, and more than anything I don’t deserve to eat Thai food with a rapturously beautiful girl while she teases me.

  But I’m here. I’m eating the Thai food, and she’s teasing me, and I’d claw my way blind through miles of flaming wreckage before I gave this up.

  “All right, all right,” I say, and twirl one finger in the air, grinning at her. “See? Celebration.”

  Frankie just wrinkles her nose, obviously trying not to laugh, and pokes me a little harder.

  The next day, Nigel calls me and tells me to expect a large delivery that afternoon. When I ask what it is, he just chuckles, but I know it’s a drum kit and Nigel’s just being his usual weird, awkward self.

  Not that I don’t love Nigel. I do. Without him, undoubtedly Dirtshine would be playing dirty clubs in London still, but must he wear windbreakers and khakis everywhere?

  When there’s a knock on the door, I practically skip to answer it. I’ve probably got sunshine and flowers coming out my arse as I open it, excited like a child on Christmas morning.

  There’s a man in a khaki uniform, waiting with a box and an envelope.

  “Sign here,” he says, holding out a clipboard.

  “If you can’t fit it through the front there’s a much larger sliding glass door on the lower level, though the pool can be a bit tricky,” I say, scrawling my name and practically shoving the clipboard back at the man.

  He doesn’t say anything, just holds out the envelope and the box. I take them, probably some sort of packing slip and God knows what in the box, sticks maybe?

  “Right,” I say, wondering if he heard me. “So you can’t pull all the way down, but you should be able to get a good bit further in the driveway—”

  I poke my head out,
looking for the delivery truck so I can direct them properly.

  But there’s no truck, only a nondescript, mid-size sedan.

  How the fuck did he get a drum kit into that?

  The guy unclips the clipboard, tears a sheet of paper off. One of those pink carbon copies that you can barely ever read for shit. He hands it to me, still not saying a word, and now I’m puzzled.

  “Is it coming later, or...”

  I finally look at what I signed, and I realize there’s a seal on it, a lion and a unicorn around a crown and it stops me in the middle of my sentence, particularly because the heading just below it says HM Courts and Tribunals.

  “The fuck is this?” I ask, but the guy’s already taken a step away.

  “Have a good day!” he says, a bloody American thing to say when you’ve just handed someone some shite paperwork.

  Then he drives away in his mid-size sedan, leaving me standing there in Trent’s doorway, barefoot and drumless.

  Fucking fuck me bloody, I think, staring down at what I’ve taken.

  The letter’s got the return address of a barrister’s office in Manchester on it, the ink thick and raised, the envelope made of some fucking fancy paper.

  And suddenly, I know who it’s from, because as many people as I’ve pissed off and fucked over in my life, there’s only one who’d respond like this. I grab a knife and slice the envelope open, nearly nicking myself in the process, and scan the letter inside.

  I’m right, of course. I fucking hate that I’m right and I’d give anything to be wrong, but I’m not.

  Alistair Davenport Brockton Winstead is suing me for a hundred thousand pounds, and I’ve got a court date in under two weeks, only a few days before I’m set to play with Dirtshine.

  I just stare at the letter for long minutes, wondering how the fuck he knew. I want to know how the fuck he knew I was here, staying in Trent’s house. How the fuck he knew that I’m with Frankie, because I’m nearly certain that she’s what this is about.