by KC Enders
“My coat is up front,” I say, nodding in the general direction of freedom while fishing around in my bag for my phone. I need that Uber to be waiting for me like I need my next breath.
Car ordered, I look up to see both sets of parents grinning happily at us. Us because Brooks has joined me, cupping my elbow in a show on manners that is not a norm for him.
“Don’t wait up for me, Mother,” Brooks insists, smiling smugly. “We might be quite late.”
I pull my arm free, singularly focused on getting away from whatever nightmare this is. “What are you talking about?” I hiss, not wanting to make a scene.
He steps around me and pulls his black cashmere coat on before stepping out into the cold, clear night.
The red Honda that is my Uber salvation pulls up to the curb to the left of the valet stand. Not bothering to put my coat on, I make a beeline for the car, praying that the driver has the heat cranked up against the early December cold.
And, like a nightmare, Brooks slides into the back seat next to me, asking, “Your place or mine?”
Chapter 34
Gavin
Note to self: Come down to the station, so we can sort this out without an audience, should indicate, Keep your mouth shut and call your lawyer.
I’m a fucking idiot.
Running my mouth, like I’m just talking to another dude about the injustice of my weekend plans getting shit on, I gave Officer Matthews exactly what he needed to read me my rights, take my picture, and grope my ass. Fine, it was a very professional pat down, but I’m pretty sure we’re official now. Involved, dating … whatever. Had I thought ahead, I’d have had a prenup drawn up, but again, that would have required a call to my fucking lawyer.
Instead, I’m hanging out on an assault charge, watching the hours ticking away before my preliminary hearing. The whole experience of getting chucked into jail was like an episode of Law & Order, minus the dun-duhn echoing through the building. Nope. I’m just a schmuck sitting in a holding cell, waiting for the magistrate of this little town to answer his fucking phone.
What the hell am I going to do?
My flight leaves in thirty-six hours, and my ass needs to be on that plane. But, in all honesty, the thing that’s pinging through my brain is Gracyn and all that I’m missing out on with her. This was my chance to see her, to be with her, and, God, something before leaving a-fucking-gain. At this rate, we’re not going anywhere with this relationship. Like, give up and put that horse out to pasture. I don’t know.
I hate that we are so stuck in our jobs, that neither of us is flexible enough to pull off the vacation or travel time so that we can spend time together. Having met her dad, experienced his uptight judgment, I can see how Gracyn popping off for a couple of days would be a problem. But the way he stood by while Brooks spouted off about G’s brother? Those homophobic excuses for human beings need to eat shit and piss right the fuck off. It’s not like I’ve met the dude, but from the way G talks about him, Bryan’s a good guy. Stand-up individual who saw his opportunity and took it, leaving a toxic situation.
Gracyn though? She seems stuck. Wedged and held firmly in place between a career she loves and that sense of familial duty. Poor girl. It’s like she’s two entirely different people. The laid-back girl who can dance and party for days, but when she dons her business casual, she loses her swagger, like she’s cloaked in threads of mediocrity. Not that she’s not brilliant or good at her job. She’s just stifled by the demand to conform for the sake of outward appearances.
Maybe, if I hadn’t gotten myself fucking arrested, I could have told her enough times, convinced her that she was as amazing as I thought she was. That being true to herself was far more important than not disappointing someone who wasn’t capable of being happy. Asshole.
Her father so outwardly bashes anything that doesn’t fall into his conservative ideal; he’s probably suppressing some serious shit. Maybe his hook-ups in Manhattan are with men. Maybe Teri is really Terry. Maybe Dani is really Danny. Lauryn is actually Loren.
God, and who the hell cares? Just fucking be who you are. Own it and be the best person you can possibly be.
Lofty thoughts and aspirations for a guy sitting in a jail cell.
Chapter 35
Gracyn
My entire weekend was wasted, hiding out in my apartment, checking my phone. Texting Gavin and getting no reply. He’d told me things would get crazy in the final days before they left on tour, but I’d thought he’d at least hit me back with a, Can’t talk, or something.
I send an SOS and pray.
Me: Drinks tonight? McBride’s?
Kate: I’m in.
Lis: See you there.
Thank God.
Now, if I can somehow make it through the rest of this workday.
My father is on my last fucking nerve after all the shit over the weekend. The calls and nonstop insinuations that Brooks and I would make a “lovely couple” had me hiding under my fluffy covers, contemplating a last-minute trip to LA. Even if Gavin and the band had already left, I could have at least hung out with my brother. Maybe I could have even met his new boyfriend.
I close my office door and power through the rest of the afternoon with earbuds firmly planted and The UnBroken playing on repeat. Really, I’d give anything to just talk with Gavin. It will be a couple of months more until we see each other again. Already, this has been so much harder than I ever imagined.
Finn has a pint poured and on a coaster for me in the short minute it takes me to cross the room and dump my jacket on the back of a barstool.
“Thanks, but it’s a whiskey night after this.” I greet the redheaded bartender with a kiss to the cheek and hug my girls before draining half of the pint. It would be a crime to waste that beer.
“You know it’s only Monday, right? It can’t be considered a rough week until at least Wednesday—unless you get puked on,” Lis says.
“Or pissed on. Why do five-year-olds still pee their pants? I will never understand that shit.” Kate drops her empty glass to the bar top and shakes her head. “Makes me rethink the whole student-of-the-week thing and having them sit on the bench with me during story time.”
“This bad week started early, but I need to escape all things work related. I love what I do, I just hate … forget it. Tell me good things. How’s it going with your mystery man? I feel like I haven’t seen you since you were on your way out to meet him.” I give Kate the side-eye because, now that I think of it, I haven’t seen her much since then.
“Mmm … he’s good. Really fucking good,” she drawls, doing the eyebrow wiggle.
“Yeah? Is he the one to break your bad luck?”
“He might have—oh, you said ‘bad,’ not bed. Because, yeah, there might have been a bed sacrificed in the sake of what that man can do. Lawd have mercy.” Kate dramatically fans herself while Lis turns a ridiculous shade of red.
“Jesus, Katelyn. You’re embarrassing sweet, innocent Lis.” I dish the shit, thankful for the reprieve from my whirling brain. “So, do we get to meet him soon?”
“Finn, we need some fried food over here when you have a minute,” she calls down the bar. “Not gonna happen, darlin’. He’s gone already. He, um … he was here, visitin’ between deployments. He took off this mornin’ for one of the ’Stans— Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan—something like that. But it was lovely while it lasted.”
Lis looks as dumbfounded as I feel.
“How did this happen? Where did you even meet him?” I ask.
Kate chuckles and says, “Y’all know how you were asking about parent conferences? And if I met any hot, divorced dads? Well, you know Jake, right? I’ve told you about that little muffin and how all he talks about is his uncle and how he’s a soldier, protectin’ us all from the bad guys.” She has talked about that little guy tons. She claims not to have favorites, but I think she’s full of shit, and she has a super-special place in her heart for him. “Uncle Jack came and had lunch with Jake, and, Gawd, the
way he squished that big ole body of his into the kindergarten lunch table, y’all just don’t even know. His jeans were doin’ overtime, stretched across his ass and—”
“Here’s your fry-up,” Finn interrupts, but I’m pretty sure we all know what Kate was getting at. “Gracyn, give us the deets on the shite at your office. I couldn’t believe I missed the lead-up.”
“You were there? Hell, you probably know more about it than me. I was schlepping our new clients around before a business dinner.” I heard bits of gossip about a walk-in client getting taken out of the lobby by a cop on Friday, but I hate the drama llamas and stay far away from that noise. “What were you doing over there anyway?”
“Erm, picking up the reports for Francie. I still don’t understand why he doesn’t just have you email them over. He needs to get on board with technology, or he’s going to go the way of the dinosaurs,” Finn grumbles, wiping down the bottles below the bar. “Christ though, that fight. You missed it then? It was spectacular, but the bloody cops arrested the wrong guy. It was bullshit, the whole thing.”
I snag a mozzarella stick off the platter of deep-fried fat and drag it through the vat of ranch. “Yeah? Why is that?”
Finn pulls a pint for a client down at the other end of the bar. When he’s back, he crosses his arms over his chest before answering, “The bougie little prat started the whole thing, going on about some girl or something. Don’t really know. I mean, what girl in her right mind would choose a whiny, uptight knob like him over the guitarist for The UnBroken? Keller never should have been arrested. It was absolutely arsed up.”
The food congeals in the back of my throat, and I have to fight to swallow it down. I couldn’t have heard that right. There’s no way. How did I not know this?
“You’re sure? It was Gavin Keller? The Gavin Keller?”
Lis and Kate scramble for their phones and start the inevitable search through Twitter, theBuzz, and every other entertainment news site. Search is probably too generous a term because the headlines they’re reading, the snippets I manage to process, are scathing and full of sensationalism and speculation. Shocking.
“Holy shit, he missed the first show. Tour musician stands in for Keller. Will this be a permanent change? Oh my Lawd, listen. Gavin Keller was arrested and detained stateside on assault charges. Speculation is that Keller is taking after bandmate Kane Newton and tapping that which can be tapped. Sorry, probably should have stopped before I hit that last part.” Kate shrugs apologetically.
“I need to go. I have to … is he still at the police station? What was he doing here? Why … why didn’t he call me?” The panic is real, coursing through my body. My heart is racing, hands shaking. I feel like I can’t breathe.
Is this a panic attack?
And, like a wave crashing into me, tumbling me face-first against the sand, it hits me. “That fucking bastard! He knew. He sat at that dinner, knowing full and well how pissed I would be. He fucking had his makeup done to hide the beatdown from Gavin. Backstabbing, slimy-ass dick, hiding that shit until after everything was official between our firm and his company. He … he … fuck. I’m gonna have to tell my dad, and—”
“Gracyn, love, your da was there. He called the cops.” Finn shifts uncomfortably.
“Motherfucker. I’m gonna kill him.” I slam back my whiskey and pull out my phone.
Call after call goes straight to voice mail. None of my texts from over the weekend show that they were read.
I don’t even realize I’m shaking until Lis lays her hand over top of mine.
“Sweetie, I … look at this.” She hands me her phone with Instagram pulled up.
It’s the picture Brooks took at the restaurant on Friday night.
“Well, shit. That sure looks bad,” Kate says just before I drop my glass, shards splintering across the floor.
Fuck my life.
Chapter 36
Gavin
That was every bit of the nightmare I thought it would be. So bad in fact that my lovely arresting officer came by a couple of times to check in on me and shoot the shit. I mean, he was a good guy. No hard feelings … none of that. He was just doing his job.
With the word from the judge … magistrate … Santa fucking Claus setting me loose, I get a whole lot of hurry up and wait. I know—I know—I’m not a priority, but I gots to go. I’m working on the assumption that Seth Mulligan, my lawyer, has kept Rand looped into what’s going down with me, but my knee is bouncing, fingers tapping, and I have a serious case of need to get outta here.
The out-processing is pretty anticlimactic, considering just how badly I’m itching to get on my way. I run through my mental to-do list that I have created, scrapped, and refined enough times to have it down to a science. If only I’d had my phone or a piece of paper to make notes. Something tells me that, the minute I’m free, my brain is going to explode, taking my list with it for the ride.
“Keller.” The officer’s voice booms down the hall. “Time’s up, man. Let’s go grab your personal items.”
Thank God.
I stand and wait for the officer to wave his magic wand and grant me my freedom. No way do I want to jump the gun, act in any way other than calm, polite, and thankful to get out. Using all the please and thank-yous my parents instilled in me, I sign the necessary forms and pocket my wallet, palm my keys, and say a small prayer for a half percent of battery life in my phone. But, again, the fates are not on my side. Not in the least.
“Thank you very much, sir. I’m free? I can go now?” I ask, wanting to make absolutely certain that I’m good to leave.
“Yep. You need to call a cab?” the guy asks.
I mean, in my nonexistent experience with being arrested, this has actually been a four-and-a-half-star visit.
“Nah, my car’s in the lot,” I reply. “Shit. Y’all don’t tow, do you? I mean, I assume it’s out there …”
“Yeah, you should be good.”
I haul ass out of the building and thank every god I can think of that my rental is where I left it and hasn’t gotten any busted windows. Perks of parking at the police station.
As soon as I’ve got the engine cranked, I plug my phone in and wait for enough battery to make a call to Rand. Unable to sit still, doing nothing, I pull out of the lot and head toward Gracyn’s office, but my phone lights up like a Christmas tree—texts, missed calls, voice mail alerts. Fucking emails out my ass. Filtering through on the fly, I check Rand’s most recent VM.
“Gav, I got the heads-up from Mulligan and booked you on the next flight out, so you need to haul ass to JFK, but for fuck’s sake, don’t get arrested for reckless driving. I’ll pick you up in Dubai, man. Boarding shit is in your email.”
At the next red light, I pull up the flight confirmation and check the time. Fuck. I have done nothing but sit on my ass for three fucking days, waiting to see Gracyn before I go, and now? Now, I have to pull a U-ey and bust ass to the airport while dialing.
“Rand, it’s gonna be tight, man. I’m not sure I’m going to make that flight.”
“Christ, Gavin. You don’t have a fucking choice. Get your ass to the airport now. You’re in enough shit with the label as it is.” Not sure what time it is for him, but the man sounds cranky. “And that’s the only flight I could get you on today, so don’t fuck this up.”
“I need another day. I can’t—”
“You can. It’s bad enough that you missed the opening show for a piece of ass.”
“Hey now. Don’t talk about her that way—”
“That fight happen before or after the picture, huh?” The more he talks, the more pissed off he gets.
I’m the one who spent days sitting in a jail cell, for fuck’s sake.
“What picture, Rand? What’re you talking about?”
“Check your chick’s Instagram. Looks like her engagement photo. I don’t give a shit, man. Don’t blame you in the least for decking the guy. He looks like a prick, but you fucked over your band. Get your ass to t
he airport and land, ready to kiss ass.”
After all the shit I’ve been through this weekend, I’m trying to be super observant of traffic laws. I grab a peek at Gracyn’s Insta at a red light, and she’s tagged in a shit-tacular photo of her and Brooks looking cozy, laughing and wrapped up in each other. And, gauging by familial resemblances, they’re surrounded by both sets of parents. Artful filter and all the hashtags, like he’s a teenage girl, tagging her first crush.
#forgingnewrelationships #thatsayes #familybusiness #LangstonGeorge #thefuturestartsnow
“You have got to be fucking kidding me with this,” I yell over whatever Rand is still going on about.
All that’s missing is a shiny sparkler on her hand, but then again, it’s the right one resting delicately on his chest while her face is nothing but sunshine and grins, so who knows what’s going on with the left? It’s like the Sarah shit all over again, but Gracyn didn’t even wait for me to leave. Without even bothering to end the call, I chuck my phone at the passenger seat and white-knuckle the steering wheel. Gas pedal to the floorboard.
There’s a reason, there is some kind of excuse for this, but now is not the time. I can’t begin to process this shit.
I’m not a diva, not by any means, but what’s the point in being a fucking rock star if I don’t pull the shit on occasion? After a nerve-racking drive from hell, I slam the car into park in front of the terminal’s valet and grab my shit from the back. I chuck a couple of Benjamins at the valet and ask him to return the rental for me.
Suitcase in one hand, guitar in the other, I run through the terminal, slap my passport down, and get pushed through to security. It’s a mad dash to the gate, but I make it, sweaty and panting just before the doors to the jetway click shut. I didn’t even look at my ticket, never had a chance as I was running like hell, so when the flight attendant takes my guitar case straight from my hand and directs me to the very back of the fucking cabin to a seat squished in the middle of the middle, I remind myself that I am a fortunate bastard to be here.
