Fall: a ROCK SOLID romance

by Karina Bliss

  Hadn’t her childhood trained her not to rely on anyone? Taught her that the cost of investing in relationships was too high for her?

  And now she’d gone and done the same thing in her career, except using Zander as the stand-in for her parents. How dumb was that? Yet, even understanding this was a textbook case of transference, she still couldn’t smother the need, the yearning, the hope that this time it would work out different. That someone would appreciate her over and above what she could do for them.

  As for all her worrying about the Rage family…every member of it was probably more capable of moving on than she was.

  Her chest ached so much she had to hug herself for comfort. Turns out I’m the needy one.

  Even wanting Helena to disappear, it still hurt that she’d left Dimity so easily. It drove Dimity crazy that she kept wanting nurturing. She was a grown woman, for God’s sake.

  Carrying her binoculars, Elizabeth appeared, closing the shed door behind her, her hair an orange marigold color against the forest green paint. She took one look at Dimity and blanched. “You hated it. I can tell by your expression.”

  “No, it’s—” Zee I hate. “Let’s wait until we get to the beach to talk about it. I need to walk.” She wasn’t ready to re-examine her feelings about the book. Abruptly, she headed toward the cliff path, away from the scene of her crime. No, not your crime. It had been Zee’s idea to phone Max.

  They hiked in silence for a while, each lost in her own thoughts. At least Elizabeth probably was. Glancing at her, Dimity saw that she had the intent, inward focus of a writer working out a story problem. While Dimity was trying not to think at all. Numbness replaced anger, as blanketing as a fog, and she welcomed it. Why care about anything?

  Elizabeth moved ahead to push aside a branch overhanging the track, holding it until Dimity had passed. “Are you okay to hike so far? You’re looking tired.”

  An understatement. She could barely manage to put one foot in front of the other. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.” Too late, she remembered her dramatic exit with Seth.

  Elizabeth said nothing.

  “I know you disapprove. But I have no intention of hurting him, just so you know.”

  “Why on earth would I disapprove?”

  “Remember the middle-of-the-night phone call I made to Zee when my mother remarried? When he told me to go flirt with Luther, you hit him. I figured it was because he’s a nice guy and I’m the tough bitch.” She shrugged as if it didn’t matter. Not just tough, but mean. Setting Zander up for a fall. Even now he was probably dialing Max’s—

  “I wasn’t worried about Luther’s feelings; I was worried about yours. He’s a tough nut and I don’t want you hurt.”

  “Me?” Dimity stopped dead. “Sensitive? That is fucking ridiculous.”

  Elizabeth gave her an assessing look. “Okay.”

  Dimity started walking again. “Let’s just look at the damn birds.”

  “Sure.”

  This time when they saw one dragging its wing, she didn’t immediately try and rush to the rescue. As they backed off to give the nest protector some space, she said awkwardly to Elizabeth. “I sounded harsh earlier. I didn’t mean to imply I have no feelings. I do.” Too many I don’t know how to manage, which is why I keep them under lock and key.

  Elizabeth squeezed her arm. “Forget it, we all have our bad days. You don’t need to apologize.”

  God, how had Dimity ended up having nice people in her life? She seemed to be attracting them like flies to honey. An image of Seth pierced her numbness. Honey B. “I wasn’t apologizing.”

  Elizabeth handed her the binoculars. “My mistake.”

  As they walked along the foreshore, passing the binoculars between them to look at the birds, Elizabeth’s tolerance felt like a debt she had to repay. “Your book made me intensely uncomfortable,” she offered reluctantly, “which means it had all the feels.”

  The biographer’s face fell.

  “That’s a good thing,” Dimity clarified. “You want to move people. But whether the publisher will accept it? I don’t know.” I don’t know anything anymore. “My radar for what works is unreliable right now.” Hearing the defeat in her voice, she attempted a weak joke. “Maybe because we’re nearer the south magnetic pole or something.”

  The other woman was studying her in a way Dimity wasn’t comfortable with, so she lifted her hand to her eyes and pretended to shield them against the sun’s glare. “The last chapters were missing.”

  “I’m still writing them, only I can’t decide the best way to end it.”

  “Make sure there’s a happy-ever-after,” she advised. “Isn’t that what happens in love stories?” Except there wouldn’t be a happy-ever-after because she’d just encouraged Zee to go above Elizabeth’s head and screw with her career.

  All because you want to punish him for hurting you. He’s not the selfish one here. You are.

  Just like your mother.

  Her body jerked, and she gasped as the full extent of her actions shocked her out of apathy. She was undermining a love that was good and real because she wasn’t getting her way? What the hell was wrong with her? She felt as though she’d been flat-lining and a medic had just applied the defibrillator. “Oh, God. What have I done?”

  “What’s the matter?”

  She thrust the binoculars at a startled Elizabeth. “I loved it. Don’t change a word. We’ll fight for it with the publishers.” Only it won’t be published if Zander makes his phone call. “I have to fix this.” She started inland.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Stay there,” she flung over her shoulder, “and make sure that bird isn’t hurt. Please.”

  “Okay,” Elizabeth sounded bewildered.

  Dimity jogged backward. “And if I’m too late, it’s my fault. Everything. Don’t blame Zander.”

  “What’s your fault?” Elizabeth hollered.

  Dimity didn’t answer, turning and running along the path, shoving foliage aside. She was a destructive bitch who didn’t deserve any nice people in her life. A twig scratched her cheek and she ignored it. Zander would have made his call, but the sooner she got there the faster she could hit redial, explain to Max that it was a joke, a mistake… She’d think of something.

  From the moment she’d arrived on Waiheke, Zee had told her the truth, but she hadn’t believed it because she couldn’t go through giving everything again, and ending up with nothing. Oh no, you had to keep working out your fucked-up childhood issues through him.

  How could she blame him for not noticing her pain when she’d trained him only to see his fearless, emotionless PA? It wasn’t Zee’s job to make up for her lousy childhood by being her best bud forever, her mentor, her big brother.

  She got the stitch halfway up the hill, and dug fingers into her side, so she didn’t have to stop. Reached the summit gasping, she had to walk the last fifty yards.

  Seth was sitting on the steps to the deck, wearing an expression more commonly seen on someone nursing a shotgun in a spaghetti western. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Dimity tried to hobble past him. “I can’t talk right now.”

  He barred her way. “Yes. You can. I went to get my watch and—”

  “Seth, this is urgent. Can’t we talk later?” She ducked to the other side, he countered.

  “No, we can’t.”

  She got impatient. “If this is about not telling you about Zee’s decision to leave the band—”

  “No.” He ground the word out. “It’s about this.” He held up the paper airplane she’d hurtled across her bedroom.

  * * *

  Dimity stopped, her expression first guilt-stricken, then defiant.

  Seth’s heart sank. So the list wasn’t a joke. “You’re under a mountain of pressure right now, so I’m prepared to chalk this one up to temporary insanity if you’ll explain to me what the hell you’re doing.”

  “Trying to save our jobs is what I’ve been doing. Try
ing to stop Zander from making a terrible mistake is what I’ve been doing.” She swallowed an angry sob. “I’ve gone too far and I need to fix it, so stand aside. You can call me an unscrupulous bitch later.”

  And just like that, his outrage left him. Seth opened his arms. “Come here, Honey B…nothing is that bad.”

  “Isn’t it?” She backed away from his comfort. “Zander’s voice will be fine, Seth.”

  He lowered his arms. “What?”

  “His vocals will heal. He’s quitting Rage to become a better man for Elizabeth or some other woolly-headed bullshit. As though someone with Zee’s genius could ever be a regular guy. He’ll regret it and she’ll regret it and we’ll all regret it so I’ve been trying to stop him. Only…I wasn’t strong enough to go through with it. And then he took away my job, which is probably your fault,” she added cryptically. “And I got mad and I encouraged him to—”

  “His singing voice will be okay?” He had to repeat it to make it real. And yet he still couldn’t process it.

  Dimity put a hand over her mouth. “I shouldn’t have told you. It was a secret.”

  “Come with me.” Needing answers, he caught her arm and steered her inside. She shook free when she saw their direction. “No. You need to stay out of this and let me fix—Seth!”

  Ignoring her, he opened the door to the office. He deserved answers. Feet up on the desk, Zander was on the landline. He glanced up. “Can this wait?”

  “No. It can’t. We need to have a full and frank discussion.” Still holding the door, Seth glanced over his shoulder at Dimity, who was hanging back. If it was anyone else, he would have said she was scared. “You, too.”

  Reluctantly she moved forward, glimpsed Zander on the phone, and sprang to snatch it from his hand. “Max?”

  “What the hell?” said Zander.

  Her anxious expression eased as she listened. “It’s only your mother.” Returning the phone to him, she said urgently, “Did you call the publisher yet?”

  “I left a message for him to call me on my—”

  His cell chimed on the desk and Dimity dived for it, spinning Zander’s chair away as she did so.

  “Are you crazy? No, not you, Mum. Listen, I’ll phone you later.” His pale blue gaze returned to Seth, who folded his arms and waited. “Looks like all hell’s about to break loose here…yeah, nothing’s changed. Bye.”

  “Hi, Max,” Dimity said brightly. “No, Zee’s not here, but I can tell you what he wanted to check. Did you get the release form he signed for Elizabeth’s book, okay? That’s great. Nope, that’s it. You take care now.”

  “You have some serious explaining to do,” Zander told Dimity as she dropped the cell onto his desk, her face a study in relief.

  “Funny,” said Seth. “That’s exactly what I was going to say to you.”

  “Zee, you must never interfere in Elizabeth’s work without her permission,” Dimity said earnestly. “Ever. She’d never forgive you. And I’m sorry I encouraged you to think otherwise. I wanted to break you two up to punish you for disbanding Rage.”

  Zander’s expression darkened. “What?”

  “Will the pair of you shut up for a minute!” Seth yelled, and they turned to stare at him. “I’m getting answers first. Got that?”

  He took their mute astonishment as consent. “I have only one question,” he said to Zander. “You didn’t tell your manager, your family, your band the real truth because…?

  “The fewer people who know the truth,” Dimity answered hotly, “the less opposition he’ll get.”

  Seth glared at her, and she subsided.

  “Well?” he said to Zander.

  “That’s partly true,” his mentor conceded. “People will perceive it as me giving up—”

  “And they’d be right!” Dimity muttered.

  “Let the man talk.”

  “I’m not coming back,” Zander said. “For a shitload of reasons that can be summed up by one simple sentence. ‘For what profit a man if he gains the world and loses his soul.’”

  He looked at Seth, who nodded. He’d been a witness after all these past months to the extraordinary pressures on Rage’s lead singer.

  So had Dimity. Except having worked with Zander since the start of his meteoric comeback, she’d come to believe in miracles. But even Zander’s prodigious energy wasn’t inexhaustible. If his voice had held, if he hadn’t lip-synced, if his bad-boy history hadn’t predisposed the world to question his motives… All this passed across Seth’s mind, and must have colored his expression, because Zander sighed. “Yeah.”

  “Go on,” Seth invited.

  “The decision’s non-negotiable, so I’m left with trying to mitigate the damage. Publicly announcing that I’m leaving by choice will only give the haters and the press more ammunition. They’ll say it’s a tacit admission of guilt—he’s quitting because every accusation was true; because he knows he can’t come back from this. That could have fallout on the rest of you. So as much as it kills me to play the victim card, for the first time in my life I’m going for the pity vote. If the press think I can’t sing—as opposed to won’t—then the resulting sympathy will create goodwill for the rest of you when you set up a new band.”

  “Fair enough,” Seth said. “That all makes sense. But I’m still furious at you—both of you—for missing the fucking obvious here. Tell the truth to the people who love you. Stop going it alone. You both spend so much time machinating that you forget you have backup.” Jesus, he was so sick of people he cared about hiding the truth from him for his own good. The more secrets a family kept from one another, the more dysfunctional they were. It was Psych 101 stuff.

  “I wanted to protect—”

  “And that’s bullshit, too, Zee. I don’t see your choice as desertion like Dimity does. In fact I probably understand it better than anybody.” The irony would be funny if it wasn’t so gut-wrenchingly painful. “You’re leaving Rage for the things I gave up to join the band—love, family, stability.”

  “In the interests of full disclosure,” Zander said heavily. “Cowardice is partly behind my decision to keep this quiet. I didn’t want to lose your respect.” He included Dimity in the comment but she’d retreated to the window, where she stood looking out, not seeing anything, Seth suspected.

  He knew he’d fallen for a woman who refused to lean on anyone, need anyone, because her parents had never done their fucking job and given her security. He’d hoped he might slowly earn her trust over time. But faced with the magnitude of everything she’d been withholding, he realized it had been a fool’s hope.

  He returned his attention to Zander. “I’m not blaming you,” he clarified. “You took me on in good faith, when you had no thought of leaving. I chose to join Rage, and only a candy-assed wimp would delegate responsibility for future consequences. I’m pissed because you think the rest of us will fall apart without your protection. We won’t. The trouble with you—and Dimity—is that you’re so good at directing and managing that you think you always know better. You don’t. You have my respect. If you want to keep my respect, start asking for support when you need it. And tell Moss and Jared the truth so we’re all making informed choices.”

  “Okay,” Zander said quietly. “But in person, when I’m in LA in December. Clearly, this isn’t news that can be broken remotely. Meantime, progress Plan B.”

  “Deal.” Seth thrust out a hand and they shook on it. Seth held on. “It’s okay to change your life. I did, and no matter how tough it gets, I’ll never regret it.” He held his mentor’s gaze, transmitting the reassurance he suspected Zander needed. “Neither will you.”

  Zander cleared his throat. “Thank you.”

  Seth faced Dimity. “After you two have talked, come find me.”

  “Assuming I haven’t killed her.”

  He nodded. “Assuming that.”

  “What, so you can finish the job?” But her defiance was all show and no substance, and they all knew it.

  Crumbling
her paper airplane into a ball, he threw it to her. “Find me,” he said again.

  He walked out of the house to the cliff’s edge, where he could suck in enough oxygen to dissolve the residue of anger. At Zander, at Dimity, at his own expectation that people would never disappoint him. That way lay madness. I chose this life, he reminded himself. I chose this love. I chose to live big and no matter how devastating this feels I will keep doing that. The mantra helped…a little. Just because he was a team player didn’t mean he lacked ambition. With Rage, he’d played for one of the best damn teams in the world.

  The new band would smash its way into the Big League, he promised himself that.

  Elizabeth appeared around the corner of the hill, concern on her face. “Where’s Dimity? She ran home yelling some wild words about everything being her fault.”

  “Forgive her,” he said, “she knows not what she does.”

  “That sounds ominous, and at the same time, quite promising. I thought you two would be a good match.”

  “I must be insane.”

  “Let me upgrade that to an excellent match. What’s going on?”

  “She had some crazy idea of breaking you and Zander up, but thought better of it.”

  “Good, because it wouldn’t have worked anyway.” She looked at him more closely. “Are you okay?”

  “No. I found out he’s choosing you over the band.”

  “There have been comparisons made to Yoko,” she murmured.

  “They’re as bad as each other,” he burst out. “They just need to let people in.”

  “Yeah.”

  He sighed. “Dimity won’t do it, of course. Zander’s stubborn but at least he’s improving, thanks to you.”

  “Want a hug from a normal person?”

  “God, yes.”

  She hugged him. “I’m trying to think of something encouraging to say.”

  “You can’t,” he said. “Dimity isn’t interested in a relationship long term. And it’s my own damn fault that I keep choosing impossible mountains to climb. I’ll keep trying, but I already know how this is going to play.”

  She’s going to dump me.