by Grace James
My ploy worked, too. Mel flushed scarlet as Hayley let out a crow of scandalized delight. “Oh, wow! You have a thing for one of your patients?! Holy shit! Did he murder someone?! Is he in a gang? Do you wanna bang a banger?!”
You had to love her phrasing.
“No!” Mel whisper-yelled, leaning close to the screen. “It was just armed robbery!”
“Oh, my God.” I laughed for the second time in a minute, it must have been a record. “That’s okay then!”
Mel winced and then covered her face with her hands. “You guys are the WORST.”
“Oh, no,” Hayley waggled her finger at the screen. “Don’t you be like that, you’re the moral deviant here…how does it feel?”
We were all giggling when Harvey came into my office, looking anxious.
Here we go again, I thought wryly.
He’d been looking at me that way since I told him that I was leaving Las Vegas for a while and going to stay with my parents.
I’d said that I would only be gone for a week, but my friends knew me well and I think they all realized that it might be longer.
I was going for an interview at Alcamuse, the music venue that had contacted me and asked me to go check them out with the strong possibility of a job being offered to me if I did. I wasn’t completely convinced I’d take it if they seriously put it on the table, but still…it sounded pretty inviting. And, if I’m honest, even though I didn’t want to leave The Academy and my friends, I just didn’t think I could stand living in Las Vegas anymore.
Everything reminded me of Blake, and it was slowly killing me.
“What’s up, Harvey?” I asked.
“I need you to go over those booking contracts with me one more time before you leave. I just don’t think I understand how they work.”
“You don’t really need to,” I assured him. “I barely ever hand them out.” When he stroked a hand over his beard and continued to look unsure, I let out a little sigh before I explained the ‘booking contract routine’ to him for what felt like the fiftieth time. “Okay, only use them if you book a band that have flaked before. If you give one to a band and they don’t hand it back, then it’s your prerogative to cancel the booking if you want – and, if a band sign one and then still flake, just call me and I’ll help you out.”
Apparently, that wasn’t enough to relieve his troubled expression.
“Harvey,” I said patiently. “I’m taking my laptop with me – so everything I can do, I will do, but you are perfectly capable of handling the rest on your own. I know you are. You’re great at the day to day running of this place.”
I meant that sincerely. I had taken more time off in the last few months than ever before – and although he’d messed up hugely at first, he’d learned from it. When I’d gone to Hayley and Derren’s wedding…and then to LA…he hadn’t made a single error. Knowing that took away some of the guilt I felt about walking out of there in a few minutes and possibly never going back.
God, can I really deal with not coming back here?
Shit, I don’t know…
“Could you just write down all the codes for me?” Harvey persisted, pulling me out of my own head. “The safe and the –”
“Already done,” I told him, pointing to a pink Post-it that I had stuck on my desk.
“Oh…”
“Look, I should go. I still have to pack and I want to get on the road while there’s still plenty of light left.”
We said goodbye to Mel, amidst more teasing from Hayley about her ‘convict crush’, and then I shut my laptop and shoved it inside the case along with some paperwork.
Hayley and Harvey walked me out of the almost empty venue, only stopping at the bar to say goodbye to Lance and Candice, who were restocking after a delivery.
When we got into the parking lot, I turned back to Harvey. The look in his eyes was sad, mirroring my own. “Come back whenever you want,” he said. “I mean it. Whenever.”
I felt my bottom lip wobble as I stepped forwards and pulled him into a hug. “Thank you so much for trusting me to run this place. It’s what I always wanted to do.”
I heard him pull in a breath next to my ear. “Thank you for saving my dream.”
It was all starting to feel too final. I let go of him before I lost it completely and looked at Hayley. Tears were shining in her eyes, too. God, they were killing me. “Call me when you get there, okay?” she instructed.
I nodded before I practically threw myself against her and hugged her tight.
She held me back just as tightly. “I hate Blake,” she murmured, her voice wavering.
I let out a little humorless chuckle. “Me too,” I replied.
The bitch of it was, I also still loved him.
And I knew I always would.
101
A little over a week later, I stood in the center of a vast, black room. The speaker rigs on either side of the huge stage were silent and dead, but I could imagine that when music was blasting from them, the acoustics in the space would be incredible. Alcamuse was an awesome venue, of that there was no doubt.
I’d spent the last hour with the owner, an attractive woman in her early forties called Adrianna, who’d shown me around and talked non-stop about the merits of the place. I had to hand it to her, everything she’d said was true. But it didn’t have the one thing The Academy had in spades: soul.
However, it did have a distinct lack of memories of HIM. So that was a huge plus.
“So, Amy, what do you think?” Adrianna asked me.
“It’s a dream venue,” I told her honestly.
She smiled and tossed her dark ringlets back over one shoulder. “I’m so glad you like it.”
I really did. Despite it being unfamiliar and not having the same feel as The Academy, I knew that running a place like Alcamuse was my dream job on steroids.
But something was bothering me…and maybe I was looking for an ‘out’ for some reason, too.
Either way, I had to be honest.
“Look, Adrianna, I have to tell you that the show at The Academy – with Sons of Sinners? Well, that was a fluke. Sons won’t play for me, if that’s what you’re hoping. I mean, if that’s the reason you invited me to consider this job, I can’t come through, so…” I shrugged, letting my words hang in the air.
When I’d first gotten the email about the job, it had been right after THAT show – so it stood to reason that it was the only reason I was there. That, and the fact that my face had been plastered all over magazines for weeks next to his face…
Ugh. Don’t go there. Don’t think about him.
Adrianna’s smile got wider. “I didn’t assume that at all,” she said, shocking me. “I actually decided to try poach you before that. A friend of mine plays for Band of Blues – you know them?”
My brow furrowed as I thought maybe I did recognize the name. “Possibly,” I hedged.
“Well, Carl – that’s my friend – he mentioned this great little venue that they’d played a show at in Vegas. They told me about how it’d been revived and that the manager was excellent and had turned the place around in a matter of months. When our last manager gave notice, I called Carl up and made enquiries, then did some research into you and The Academy, and thought I’d get in touch.”
Wow. So, she actually wanted me? Not Blake Maxwell’s girlfriend?
EX-girlfriend, I reminded myself, feeling that familiar drop in my gut.
“So,” Adrianna prompted, “what are you thinking?”
102
I set the Contract of Employment on the kitchen table in front of my dad, who was shoveling what looked like my mom’s homemade lasagna into his mouth.
His grey eyes, that were just a shade darker than mine, swiped over it as a slow smile spread across his face. “They offered you the job.”
“They did.”
He pushed himself up from his seat to give me a congratulatory hug before swiping the contract and starting to flick through it, nodding hi
s head every now and then. When he was done, he grinned at me again. “They doubled your pay.”
I smiled back, just a little. “They did.”
“So…? Are you going to sign it?!”
I bit my lip and looked down at the hardwood floor of my parent’s country style kitchen. Everything about Alcamuse had been perfect…but it’d just felt wrong to be there. It wasn’t home. It wasn’t where I wanted to be.
But it’s where you NEED to be, I told myself. Staying in Vegas will kill you.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “She gave me a few days to think about it.”
My dad opened his mouth as if he was going to say something, and then clearly thought better of it and shut it again.
“Where’s mom?” I asked.
“Yoga class, followed by drinks with the girls she thinks I don’t know about.”
I snorted. “Typical mom.”
“Yep. I know Yoga class doesn’t run for five hours. It’s a little insulting.”
I laughed. I could tell he wasn’t really mad.
“She cooked a mean lasagna before she left, though,” he continued. “It’s still warm in the oven if you want some?”
“Yeah, thanks,” I said, mainly to appease him. My appetite had been long gone for weeks.
Dad scooped some onto a plate for me as I plopped down at the table, tired from the long day of an interview, plus driving almost two hours each way between my parent’s house just outside Sacramento and the venue in San Francisco.
After our meal, my dad poured us each a glass of wine and we went out onto the back deck and listened to some Bob Dylan – my dad’s choice, but one I was fully on board with.
We didn’t say much, we never did. But it was nice to just hang out.
The sound of a car engine from the front of the house had my dad up out of his seat. “Your mom’s early. That’s not like her,” he commented as he turned to follow the deck around the corner of the house.
I sipped my wine and bobbed my foot to Shelter from the Storm.
When my dad came back a couple of minutes later, without my mom, his expression was weird.
“What’s up?” I asked, suddenly concerned. “Is mom okay?”
“Yeah – as far as I know. That wasn’t her…there’s someone to see you.”
“Oh,” I said, immediately starting to think about which of my high school friends knew that I was back home right now and drawing a blank. I’d hardly been in contact with Hayley, Mel, and Harvey, let alone anyone else. “Who is it?”
“It’s Blake.”
My breath whooshed out. When my hand started to tremble around the stem of my wine glass, I leant over to set it on the floor, next to my chair.
“I told him to wait out front. Do you want me to send him away?”
Even though I knew I should probably say HELL YES to that, I just couldn’t. If he’d come all that way, then I figured whatever he had to say must be important…
It’s closure, I warned myself. Don’t you dare think it’s anything more.
But right then, closure was better than nothing. At least it was an ending.
“Uh…no, it’s okay. I’ll talk to him.”
103
My hands were still shaking as I followed the wooden, whitewashed deck around the perimeter of my parents’ house.
My heart hit the inside of my ribs with the force of a sledgehammer when I saw Blake.
He was standing in the driveway in the gathering darkness, leaning against the front of his old, blue Chevy pickup – which was now minus the rust and had clearly had a new paint job – looking completely foreign in the white-picket-fence neighborhood I had grown up in.
He was wearing his usual worn jeans, this time with a white t-shirt that was just fitted enough to highlight the solid muscles underneath. Maybe it was because I hadn’t seen him for almost a month, but he looked bigger than I remembered, more cut.
That was so totally unfair, how he could somehow look even hotter whereas I knew I looked like hell. I was definitely skinnier, and not in a good way, with dark circles under my eyes that I had tried to cover with makeup that morning before I went to San Francisco.
As soon as he saw me, Blake pushed forward off of his car and took a few steps forward. “Hey,” he said softly, his eyes skimming over every part of me.
I reached the top of the porch steps and stopped, reaching out a hand to grasp the wooden railing and steady myself.
“You brought your Chevy,” I murmured – and I still have no idea why the first thing I mentioned was his car, but it just seemed important somehow.
The corners of his mouth twitched up at my observation. “Yeah. Finally fixed her up again. I missed having her with me all the time.”
I nodded dumbly; I knew he didn’t just mean the truck.
“Shit, Princess, you look beautiful.” His brows drew together as he spoke, like it pained him to say it.
I let out a little snort because no, I definitely didn’t.
“It’s true,” he maintained, reading me correctly. “You were always so fucking beautiful. Even when you used to sleep over in your clothes on the couch in my old house, the next morning you were always stunning.” He offered me a little smile, which made the words sound less hostile when he added, “Used to piss me the fuck off ‘cause Con would sit there with you all over him and I couldn’t fucking touch you.”
It took me a second to realize why that sentence had sounded so strange, then I realized it was because he was talking about his cousin without me somehow forcing him into it.
That was new.
“You said his name…Connor’s, I mean. You hardly ever do that.”
He glanced away, down at the ground, and blew out a breath before looking back up at me. “Got stuff to tell you. Will you come talk to me?”
When I didn’t respond, he backed away to the Chevy and sat up on the hood, bracing his feet on the bumper as he tapped the metal next to him and raised his eyebrows at me in question.
I walked down the steps and approached him. As I got closer I saw that his eyes looked a little darker underneath, too, but it was just harder to see because of his tan. So maybe it wasn’t just me that hadn’t been sleeping.
When I reached the truck, he offered his hand and helped me up next to him, but he didn’t release my hand when I was settled. He kept it firmly in his.
It wasn’t lost on me that we were sitting in the exact same positions as we had been years ago, when we’d sat under the moonlight together out back of Filthy Joe’s.
“What do you want to talk about?” I asked, when he did nothing other than hold my hand and look at me.
“Everything you said when you came to my place was right,” he started after a moment. “Every damn thing. And I’m so fucking sorry I put you through that shit again. You need to believe I’m sorry.”
I nodded because I did believe him. But I bit my lip because Yeah, I’ve heard THAT before.
“I fucked up,” he tagged on. When I still didn’t say anything, he spoke again. “I wanted to come for you sooner, but I knew I had to get my shit together first.”
Wait – come for me sooner?
“I know I come with a fuckload of baggage,” he continued, “but I promise I’m gonna deal with it. I am dealing with it. I started seeing this therapist –”
“What? You did?” I interrupted, beyond shocked that he would talk to anyone, even a professional, about his problems.
“I did – I am.”
“…wow.”
“And I went to see my dad yesterday. Actually talked to him properly and told him where I’m at – which at this point isn’t anywhere close to forgiving him, or even really being sure I wanna forgive him – but I told him I wanna be a part of Lucas’s life and he’s good with that.” One side of his mouth slid into the ghost of a smile. “Even played ball with Lucas in the back yard for a while. Kid’s got a hell of a kick.”
I could only imagine how cute the two of them playing toge
ther had been. Womb-dippingly cute, I’d bet.
I offered him a small smile in return. “That’s good. I’m proud of you.”
“Not telling you this to make you proud, Princess, I’m telling you this to show you I’m serious.” The rest of his words came out in a rush, like he was worried I’d stop him. “I want you to know I’m confronting shit now – not just running away like you said. I contacted Jace as well and I’m gonna go watch his next gig in a few weeks. And I need to go to Con’s grave sometime, too. That’s the next goal I set with Liam – that’s my shrink. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but I’m trying, I swear.”
“No, it’s a lot,” I assured him, finding it hard to believe that this was the same man who’d shut me – and everyone else – out for so long. “I really am proud of you,” I repeated because it was true. I couldn’t imagine suffering all the loss Blake had in his life, and I was glad that he was confronting it – but that didn’t mean I’d keep putting myself through the wringer for him. “Thank you for trusting me with all of this,” I said as I squeezed his hand once before pulling out of his grasp and pushing myself off of the Chevy to the ground. “I’ll always be here for you if you want to talk.”
Blake moved quickly – suddenly he was in front of me, his hands braced either side of me on the hood of the truck, caging me in. He dipped his head to snag my eyes with his, and I saw that they were glinting darkly. “No. Don’t you fucking dare do that. Don’t act all distant like we’re just friends. I know you’re mad, and you’ve got every right to tear me a new one, but –”
“I’m not mad.”
He paused, his eyes narrowing. “…you’re not?”
“No. I mean, I was at first, but now…I guess I’m just tired,” I confessed haltingly.
“Tired?”
“Yeah. I’m tired of hurting.”
He closed his eyes as his brows knit together, simultaneously exhaling heavily through his nose. But then his big hands came up to cup my face, his fingers resting on the back of my neck as he pinned me with his piercing blue eyes again. “I’m gonna make this right.”
