by Heather Long
“Yeah,” he said, his tone almost droll. I must have dozed off ’cause his voice hardened again. “Break his fucking kneecaps.”
“Ow.”
“You okay?” He was all soft and soothing questions again.
“Fine. Broken kneecaps would suck. Can’t dance with broken kneecaps. Be stuck at home.” I shuddered. The last place I wanted to be stuck.
“No one’s touching your kneecaps.”
“Yay.”
“We’re here,” a new voice said, and I tried to peer forward at our driver, but all I could make out was dark hair. I was so tired. Out of the car and under the bright light from the hotel, I peered at the tech. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him.
There were just so many different backstage responsibilities. I tried to be nice to everyone though, so I held out my hand. “Thanks for getting me back here…?”
I waited for a name, but he just wrapped an arm around me and guided me toward the hotel doors. They opened with a whoosh and let a wash of chilly air out, and it felt amazing against my fevered skin.
“Where are we going?”
“I’m making sure you get to your room, and you’re going to deadbolt the door once you’re inside. Clear?”
“Clear.”
I would have argued, but my head had started thumping in time with my heartbeat and my eyes were so heavy. I leaned against him, and the guy was nice enough to keep me up.
“If I don’t remember to thank you now, I won’t remember in the morning,” I told him. “Sorry about that. Never…not even sure why it’s this bad.”
“Well, getting hammered on an empty stomach when you can’t weigh even a hundred pounds wasn’t the brightest idea.”
He had a point.
“Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
Kind of was. “The bartender wanted to impress me.”
A grunt was the only response. It seemed an eternity later, I opened the door and he stood there. I kicked off my shoes and walked over to the bed. I just wanted to fall on it.
“You have to lock the door.”
Oh, he was in my room, and he was setting water next to the bed and there were a couple of small white aspirin packets.
“Right,” I said as I turned around. “Thank you again…?”
“You can thank me by not getting drunk without having someone there to watch your back.”
“Deal.” Mostly ’cause I was never, ever doing this again.
At the door, he frowned at me. “You’re going to be alone?”
“Yeah, it’s just me.” I tried to smile, but all I did was yawn. “I have an early pickup tomorrow, so I’m just gonna sleep.”
“Put your trashcan by the bed in case you need it. Night, little dancer. Sweet dreams.” I swore he said something else, but he muttered it, and then he was out the door and gone.
I managed to brush my teeth and wipe off the last traces of makeup that I hadn’t sweated off and then just collapsed on the bed.
The hangover the next day sucked.
Chapter 20
Emersyn
Jasper wasn’t back the next day. In fact, he wasn’t back the day after that, either. But he answered my texts, and I didn’t want to press him about where he was or what he was doing.
As promised, Doc had picked Freddie and me up at lunch, and we’d swung through a sandwich place he liked. He and Freddie got these enormous subs, but I’d picked out a salad because seriously, the guys never bought vegetables. Not that I’d asked or even participated in the need to put food in the fridge.
Maybe I should start doing that too. At the clinic, I hung out with Doc in between his patients, and Freddie was in and out, though he got super restless at the clinic. I couldn’t figure out why at first, and he wasn’t forthcoming. In fact, by the time Kestrel showed up to pick us up, Freddie was ready to climb the walls.
Doc caught my arm as Freddie and Kestrel headed out the door. “She’ll be with you in a moment,” was all Doc said to Kestrel when he paused to glance back.
“Sorry,” I said as the door closed behind them. “I wanted to talk to you today, but Freddie…”
“Needs all the support he can get, Little Bit. You don’t have to apologize for that. In fact, I really appreciate your patience with him.” Now that we were alone, he let me go, and I tried not to think too closely about it. Doc always seemed to be pretty respectful.
Eyes intent on me, Doc studied me for a long moment. Long enough, I worried about the silence, then worried maybe he’d said something else and I’d missed it.
He’d been in scrubs all day and I had to admit, it was a great look on him, especially the blue against the tattoos decorating his arm, even if it hid everything except the ones that crept up his neck. As much as I wanted to study them, I did my best not to stare.
“What?” I finally asked, because my nerves jangled with awareness of his gaze.
“How are you doing?” A soft smile accompanied the question, but his eyes were lasered onto mine and I couldn’t look anywhere else.
“I’m okay,” I said slowly. “It’s been… Weird isn’t the right word, but it’s been different.”
He nodded once. “But you’re all right?” When I glanced down, he tucked a finger under my chin.
I summoned up a smile for him. “I promise.”
“And you and Vaughn?”
Heat flooded my face. Doc had been there the other night… “You saw Jasper.” It wasn’t really a question, and I wasn’t altogether sure why I was embarrassed.
“Hey, Sparrow,” Kestrel said as he pushed the door open. “We should go. Freddie’s got a hair up his ass, and I’d rather we had him locked back down before he decides he’ll be fine and wander off.”
Crap.
I glanced back up at Doc, and he tapped my chin gently. “Go on, I’ll see you soon.”
“I’ll text you.” I’d confirmed his number in my phone and sent him a text so he’d have mine. I should have done it sooner. At the door, I hesitated and then paused with one hand on the handle, not looking at him. “You’re not mad, are you?”
“No, Little Bit. Long as you’re not being coerced or forced, I’m not mad.”
Tears burned in my eyes, and I released a breath. “I’m definitely not being either of those.” I almost tacked on the words “not there,” but that would open the door to questions I didn’t want to answer. I already had enough of those.
“Then I’m not mad,” he confirmed, and at the sound of the smile in his words, I looked at him as I opened the door. He stood there, hands in his scrubs pockets, a wry smile on his face and a five o’clock shadow on his jaw and everything about him beckoned me to stay, but Freddie needed us around right now and… “Go on, Little Bit. I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”
I blew him a kiss and then hurried out. Kestrel sat in the driver seat of his car, the engine idling like a purring beast. I slid around to the passenger side. Freddie slumped in the backseat and stared off into the distance, his whole expression shut down.
When Kestrel held out his hand to me, I slid my fingers into his after I buckled my seatbelt, and then we were pulling out of the lot with his gaze everywhere but me. The next day, I stuck close to the clubhouse because Freddie locked himself in his room and wouldn’t come out. Vaughn told me to leave him because when he got like this, there was nothing to do about it. They were checking his room daily for drugs.
That might explain his sour expression in the car. When Vaughn left for work, I took one of the new books that had appeared on the dresser in my room and carried it down the hall to Freddie’s door.
Sitting down, I opened to the first page of what said HAVOC at Prescott High on the cover. The spine wasn’t cracked, so I didn’t think Jasper had read it, and it didn’t look like the other books he’d left for me. There was a couple on the cover, and I kind of liked the girl’s hair.
“She’s got this long blonde hair with pink tips, or maybe like pink streaks from ha
lfway up to the tips. It’s kind of neat looking.” I’d knocked before I sat, then told Freddie I could hang out right there and I’d read to him if he liked. Hopefully, his door wasn’t soundproofed or something. I’d look pretty stupid sitting out here. “I wonder if I should dye my hair.” I tugged a lock of my endlessly dead straight brown hair around and stared at it. “Maybe bleach all the color out and then do like blue or purple or something. Food for thought.”
Back to the book, I began on the first page and started reading aloud. I hadn’t even made it a handful of pages in before I grimaced. What a bunch of dicks. I kind of liked Bernie, but the whole thing about her stepfather set off warning bells inside my head. Still, I kept reading along, even when my throat dried and my stomach twisted.
I kept reading even after my butt went numb, my throat scratchy from not crying in a couple of places, and my eyes burned. A shuffle of sound along the hallway pulled me out of that world, abruptly jolting me back to the present. But no one was there when I looked.
My bladder hurt, and I needed to stretch. I’d read about half of the book. “Sorry, Freddie, I need to pee and find lunch. I’ll come back after and read more if you want.” Or if you don’t. ’Cause it wasn’t like I was going anywhere else today.
There was food in the kitchen. I could make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I used to make those at rehearsals in the little kitchen they had at the old theater in Los Angeles. Peanut butter was good protein, and on a heavy dance schedule, I had to eat a lot.
I found water, made up a couple of extra sandwiches for Freddie, and after I ate and washed up, I carried the extra back with me. I covered them and sat them on the floor before letting him know I was there. I was still sitting on the floor reading when Kestrel arrived.
The door thudded down the hall, and I glanced up from the page in time to see Kestrel arrive at the top of the steps. He stared at me and then at the closed door as he approached.
“No sign of him?”
I shook my head. “I don’t even know if he’s in there.” That thought had actually occurred to me a couple of hours earlier. “I might have been sitting out here reading aloud for just myself all day.”
Leaning over, Kestrel hit the door with his fist in a rapid beat. “Freddie, open your fucking mouth and tell Sparrow thank you for spending her whole day sitting on this hard, fucking cold ass floor for you.”
Mouth agape, I stared up at Kestrel as he extended that hand to me. I clasped it and let him pull me to my feet. I ignored the soreness radiating up my butt from where it had gone numb again down my legs, that also protested the absolute lack of movement all day.
A few seconds later, the door opened to the near pitch-dark room. I couldn’t see Freddie, but I could smell him, and the scent of sweat and body odor was a little strong.
“Thanks, Boo-Boo,” he said in a raw voice. “I really liked you reading.”
“There’s a sandwich here for you. A couple of them.”
When I would have picked them up, Kestrel tugged me back from the door. “He’s a big boy, he can get them. You’ve looked after him all day, let’s look after you, shall we?”
I wanted to argue, but Freddie’s lack of objection coupled with the expression on Kestrel’s face had me biting my tongue. He led me to his room and, by default, to where mine was.
Though he wasn’t wearing the overalls from the shop, I could smell the hints of dirt, exhaust, and motor oil on him. There was also the familiar scent of the soap from the garage. It had a kind of lemon tang to it, but it cut through the grease smell.
Inside his room, Kestrel closed the door.
“Did I do something wrong?”
At my question, he blinked, then shook his head as he stretched. It was only when he turned the lights on in his bathroom that I got a good look at the weariness on his face. There were shadows beneath his eyes. His jaw was a lot scruffier than I’d ever seen it. I couldn’t remember if he’d been clean-shaven that morning or not.
He aborted his stretch with a faint grimace before he rubbed his shoulder. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Freddie’s…Freddie’s fallen off the wagon before. We can pick him up, clean him off, and throw him back in the wagon, but the choice to stay on it has to be his.”
There was a hitch to his step as Kestrel reached into the shower and turned it on before turning to face me.
“You did a good thing, sitting out there while he was in his room feeling sorry for himself. But now you have to wait for him to come back out and reach out for help.”
Oh.
The feeling was returning to my butt and the backs of my thighs. The pins and needles weren’t the worst I’d ever felt, but it made me want to stretch out.
“I’m going to shower. Then look into finding food for dinner. You got any preferences?”
Not looking at me, he tugged his shirt off and threw it toward the basket in the corner before he freed his work boots. Every motion he made had him gritting his teeth, and the muscles didn’t quite finish their stretch before they contracted.
“You hurt yourself.”
“I’ll be fine, Sparrow.” He sent me a smile as he straightened. “Nothing to worry about.”
I mouthed, ‘Liar,’ as he undid his belt with one hand and closed the door with the other. I let myself into my room and went into the bathroom, where I ran some hot water into the sink. Kestrel took fast showers, and I was already back in his room when he came out wearing nothing but a towel around his hips. Droplets of water decorated his chest and slid over the pair of guns he had tattooed to his pecs.
“On the bed,” I ordered and ignored the surprise on his face. He moved over to sit on the end and watched me as I walked back into my room. I wrung out one of the hot towels, then came back in. With care, I wrapped it around his neck and did my best to not catalog the other tattoos he had. It wasn’t any of my business, and I wasn’t doing this to ogle him.
“What’s up, Sparrow?” He tracked me with those cool eyes as I reached for the liniment that had been in my bag. At least when they returned some of my stuff, I had some of my basic supplies.
“You’re hurt.” I rubbed it on my hands to warm it, because it would turn my hands to ice at first application, and then moved to his left shoulder. At his swift gasp of air through his teeth despite his stoic expression, I nodded. “I’m not wrong. You can’t stretch the arm all the way up. You did something to your shoulder. Either to a tendon or to the muscles. Hyperextended maybe?”
Not waiting for his answer, I just dug my fingers in as I spread the liniment around. The minty scent soothed me with its familiarity. The heat from the shower had already warmed the muscles, and the hot towel on his neck kept those muscles loose, because too deep a pull could start dragging on the rest.
“Had to shift an engine today, that’s all,” he said almost noncommittally, like it was no big deal. I moved onto the bed behind him and went to work along the scapula, tracing the tautness in the rhomboid as I slid another hand down the back of his biceps. “I’ve had worse.”
I found a scar on the back of his arm. Mottled skin where it had fused. Probably a burn. There was a puckered spot of flesh just below it. At my nudge, he raised his arm, and the rhomboid went taut before he even made it to ninety degrees.
“Tell me about your day if you’re going to poke and prod at me.” Despite the evenness of his voice, he couldn’t hide the fact he gritted his teeth.
“Mostly spent my day reading to Freddie,” I admitted. “No idea where the new book came from.”
“Do you like it?”
There it was, a knot where the muscles interconnected, probably ligaments or tendons. Didn’t matter, I had it now, and I began applying pressure with my knuckles as I braced his biceps to keep his arm where I wanted it. “Don’t let me shove you forward.” At my order, his legs stiffened and so did his back as I leaned all my weight into that knuckle on the knot.
“Right,” he said, then forced a laugh. “A tiny thing like you isn’t
moving me anywhere.”
“Uh huh,” I said, as the knot rebounded again and again. Digging one of these out could be excruciating, but oh so worth it when it let go. “The book was fine. A little…disturbing in places. Lots of violence.”
Easier to focus on that.
“Also, they were real dickbags to her and I’m not sure why she likes them.”
Kestrel let out a laugh that turned into a pained grunt. “Motherfucker…” The knot gave and he half sagged, but his arm raised as the rhomboid relaxed and he could stretch his arm over his head.
I chuckled as I ran my fingers over the line of muscles again. Less pressure, but still firm. It wouldn’t be the first time more than one knot caused the problem.
He caught my hand as he twisted to look at me. “Magic hands.”
“Hardly.” I snorted as I wiggled off the bed and bounced to my feet. “Just years of dance practice and having to help other dancers while they helped me.”
His eyes narrowed.
“Does it hurt anywhere else?”
“No,” he said slowly. “Does it have to hurt to get you to finish the massage?”
Trapped in his gaze, I shook my head slowly. “If you need more, I’m okay at it. My feet are stronger than my hands but…I’ve got a good grip.”
He dragged the wet towel off his neck and then moved to stretch out on his bed. The towel stayed around his hips, narrowly. Though as he sprawled, it had definitely loosened.
“I wouldn’t normally ask,” Kestrel admitted, finally looking away from me and folding his head down to lay against his forearms. “But that felt fucking amazing when you weren’t torturing me and it’s been a long damn week. You give me a massage, Sparrow, and I’ll get you anything you want.”
“Hang on,” I told him, biting back a smile. I swapped the liniment for a little body oil. It would be better if I could warm it, but I kind of liked lazy, all sprawled out Kestrel and it was the first time he’d actually asked me for something for him.
Back in his room, I climbed back on the bed and knelt next to him. “Just let me know if I’m too rough.”
