Blame It on the Bass (29 page)

Leaving Levi and Corbin alone with her.

“Jesus, why did this… Why her?” Corbin asked, crossing to her side. He looked up at Levi, his face pale. “I know you’d rather me not go on about it, would rather I shut up and deal with it, but I can’t. I need to know you’re feeling…” he waved his hands in front of his chest, his fingers splayed, “…feeling…this. Pain. Fear. Confusion.” He looked straight into Levi’s eyes, wretched worry swimming in his. “If you are, Levi, I need you to share it with me. Please?”

Levi studied his partner, his throat tight. He swallowed, every fibre in his body charged. On fire. Fighting against the numbing terror. Sliding his gaze to Sonja, he crossed to the bed and, gentle, reverently, slipped his fingers beneath her limp ones. “I…” he began. And stopped, shaking his head. His chest ached, like it was being crushed. His breath choked him.

“Levi, don’t let this destroy us.” The pleading request, uttered with such calm control, flayed Levi’s senses.

He ran his gaze over Sonja’s battered face, numb grief scored by decades of repressed emotions and ingrained fear. “Do you believe in fate, Cor?”

“I do,” his lover answered, his voice a low murmured.

“Do you think Sonny was brought into our lives to save us? When Bella was taken from us, do you think fate gave us Sonny to heal our pain?”

“I think Sonja was born to save us, babe.” Soft joy danced on Corbin’s answer. “She found you first and then, years later, you found her. When you needed her life, her energy, Fate placed her where you would find her. That’s not just a coincidence. That’s destiny.”

Levi closed his eyes, brushing his thumb over Sonja’s fingers. “She saved me more than she ever knew when we were teenagers. She…” He scrunched up his face. “She protected me often without even knowing she was doing so.”

“Protected you from what?”

Letting out a ragged breath, Levi lifted his stare to the man he loved. “My father abused me when I was a child. It started when I was five. It stopped…” He closed his eyes. Squeezed them shut. The roaring in his head had returned. Tore at his sanity. Threatened to unmake him.

He saw his father standing over him. Felt his big fists slam into his stomach. Felt his booted foot smash against his ribs.

Felt his insidious hands push down his jeans and slide into his underpants. Felt his hot, wet breath on the back of his neck as he—

Grinding his teeth, Levi opened his eyes and gazed at Corbin, holding Sonja fingers as he did so. “My father abused me physically and sexually for fourteen years. From when I was five right up until I moved out at nineteen. If I showed him any emotion at all, fear, sadness, anger, he would beat me until I could hardly stand. And then, at night, driven by guilt, he would come into my bedroom and apologise. Except his apologies were as wrong and as sick as his beatings.”

Corbin stared at him. Stunned sorrow filled his eyes.

“I was a shit when Sonny and I dated at school,” Levi went on, ignoring the incensed roar in his mind, focusing instead on the warmth in Sonja’s fingers, the compassion in his lover’s eyes. “But Christ, I needed her. I couldn’t let her see that, was too terrified of letting my emotions out. But whenever I was with her I felt happy. When we were together at home, when she was there with me, making me laugh, I felt safe. There were times when she was there in the living room with me I could see…I could see in Dad’s eyes what he wanted to do…to me. When that happened, when I
knew
what was going to happen when she left, I held onto her like she was the only…”

He paused. Drew a slow breath. “She protected me but I could never tell her from what. I think she suspected. I think that’s why she put up with my shit for so long. Why she defied her parents often to stay at my house way past her curfew. I think she wanted to...to help me. But I never completely let her.” He shook his head and lowered his gaze to her once more. “I kept pushing her away, even as I wanted to hold her forever.”

Raising his head, he looked at Corbin. “Which is what I’ve been doing to you, isn’t it? I love you more than I can say, so much it makes my heart ache, and yet…and yet I push you away. I don’t want to do that ever again.”

Corbin didn’t say anything. Just studied him.

With a wry chuckle, Levi smiled. “I think it’s time I admit to myself how fucked up I am. I think it’s time I stop punishing those I love for what my father did to me and accept I need to see a counselor. Or a shrink. Someone, anyone, who will help me. And I know, here…” he tapped his heart with his free hand, “…that if it wasn’t for you, and Sonja, I’d never be able to admit that. If it wasn’t for how much you love me, and for how much Sonja challenges me, I’d never accept I need help.”

He stopped again. Drew another slow breath. His heart, his very soul ached, flayed and lashed and wounded by emotions he’d long denied. Long feared. But that very fact, the fact he
could
feel his heart ache so much, at
this
point in time, at
this
very moment, told him more than the fading silence in his head ever could.

He was not only acknowledging his emotions, he was sharing them.

Perhaps, after a lifetime of denying he felt anything and refusing to allow anyone into his wounded heart, he was finally letting himself heal.

With Corbin and Sonja’s help.

He shrugged, letting Corbin see—for the first time ever—his hope and fear and anguish. “It’s a start, yes?”

“It’s a perfect start,” Corbin answered with a smile. “Perfect.”

Levi snorted, flicking Sonja a quick look. “Now all we need is for Sonny to wake up so we can convince her to stay with us.”

Corbin’s nostrils flared. “Forever?”

Tight heat wrapped around Levi’s chest. “Is that what you want? A triad relationship? Me, you and her?”

Corbin nodded. “It is. More than I can say. Which is pretty woeful, given I’m a wordsmith, right?”

Levi couldn’t stop his shaky laugh. “There once was a gay man called Corbin.”

“Who…who…” Corbin shook his head. “Nope, can’t think of a single word to rhyme with Corbin.”

Reaching across Sonja, Levi caught Corbin’s hand in his.

They stayed that way for the rest of the day. Jax arrived sometime in the afternoon, his bodyguard trailing behind, glaring at all the nurses. He delivered messages of prayers and well wishes from the rest of the band. Nick called in the early evening, asking what he could do.

Flowers arrived in the room, delivered by the
tsking
, dour-faced nurse who seemed to blame them both for Sonja’s condition if the glares were anything to judge by. Dr. Killen returned often, keeping them both up to date with the situation.

They sat in the room, talking quietly, when Sonja was wheeled away for new scans. They drew comfort from each other in her absence.

When visiting hours ended and they were ordered from the room by the nurse, Corbin took her aside and whispered something in her ear. Levi watched her expression change from surly to irritated. And yet she huffed from the room without another glance at them.

Levi frowned from his chair beside Sonja’s bed. “What did you say to her?”

Corbin grinned. “Said I was writing a new movie set in a hospital and wondered if I could use her name for the nurse who turns out to be a serial killer slowly poisoning her patients.”

Levi raised his eyebrows. “Subtle.”

“Effective.”

Three days later, despite Jax smuggling in sustenance in the form of take-out food and Chivas Regal, and his bodyguard scaring away any paparazzi who gained access to the room via fake flower delivery, Levi found himself awash with bleak despair.

There had been no improvement in Sonja’s condition.

Resting his forehead on the edge of her bed, he held her hand and stared at his feet. “If you don’t wake up soon, Sonny,” he whispered, “I’m going to be pissed at you. I didn’t give you permission to clock out on us, and if this is your fucked-up way of removing the band aid, then your way sucks. Do you hear me? Wake the fuck up, Sonny, so we can take you home. Understand?”

“Do you think she’s going to argue with us?” Corbin asked from the other side of the bed. “About moving in? Living with us? Sharing our bed?”

Levi shook his head against the mattress. “We’ll convince her.” He looked up, giving his lover a small smile. “Even if we have to tie her up and make love to her constantly until she says yes. She belongs with us. Hell, you went bi for her. She’s not getting away from us again.”

“I’ll…make…” a soft, husky rasp whispered from the bed, “…you a deal.”

Levi snapped his stare to Sonja’s face, a rush of joy crashing through him at the sight of her bruised, split lips curling into the smallest, weakest of smiles.

“What’s that?” he asked, forcing his voice to remain calm.

“If you both…” she said, un-bandaged eye still closed, the words little more than a breath, “…promise to…lower the toilet seat lid…” she paused and ran her tongue over her bottom lip with a grimace, “…when you’re finished…in the loo, we’ll…give it a try.”

“Deal.” Corbin laughed.

She squeezed Levi’s fingers with gentle pressure. “And I want orgasms…lots of them. Often. From…you both.”

Levi lifted his gaze to Corbin and smiled. “Deal,” he murmured.

Epilogue

Two weeks in hospital sucked. Big time.

The food sucked, the bed was uncomfortable and, at some point since being slammed into by a car while running from the paparazzi, someone had decided she was a celebrity and every damn media outlet, news program, magazine and gossip website wanted to interview her.

That meant every time Sonja woke up from a doze—some of which were morphine-induced—there were new vases or bunches of flowers scattered around her room, or baskets of gifts or hampers of gourmet food. Why a person who’d barely survived being hit by a SUV, resulting in a ridiculous number of broken bones, major bruising on the brain and a sudden need for the removal of her spleen, was worth all the media attention was beyond Sonja. As was the necessity to send her small jars and packets of expensive food she was never going to eat. But apparently that’s what the media did when they wanted her to talk to them about her experience.

She’d answered every single request with a simple answer. Talk to my agent.

She didn’t have an agent, but she didn’t tell those wanting to interview her that. She’d passed more than one boring, pain-soaked afternoon on the path to recovery imagining the frantic search for her non-existent agent undertaken by said media types desperate for the
big
story.

She’d gritted her teeth through the ongoing treatment on her shattered right knee, thinking about all the Googling and Facebook-hacking carried out in the search for her agent. In the pursuit of her
story
.

She’d endured endless nights of beeping drip machines and prodding nurses, wondering how many of those media-type people would eventually give up the search and invent their own stories about her and Levi and Corbin. After all, in the two weeks since she’d been hit by the SUV, she’d read at least ten articles focused on her and their relationship, all citing “close sources”. All were utter bullshit.

The only truth in any of them was that she and Levi and Corbin were in love. That still blew her away. How the fuck did a rough-around-the-edges erotic romance editor end up being the object of affection for a lusted-after world-famous rock star and his gay, award-winning Hollywood screenwriter boyfriend?

Sonja still really didn’t know. To be honest, there were foggy patches in her memory since the accident. Missing patches of time. The thing was, she was neither worried nor scared by those patches. Because she remembered three things very, very clearly.

She remembered Levi. She remembered Corbin. And she remembered how amazing they all were together.

And every time the two of them walked into her flower-crowded room, she damn near burst with happiness. Every time they kissed her, taking it in turns, their lips soft and gentle on her still-sore ones, she flooded with joy. Every time she watched them look at each other with love in their eyes, she was filled with desire.

Desire to get out of the hospital.

To get home.

Home with them.

Desire to climb into their bed, where she belonged.

And today was that day.

Leg still in a knee-to-toe-cast, she hobbled out of the hospital’s main entry foyer on crutches and let out a relieved sigh. “Thank fucking God.”

On her right, Corbin laughed.

On her left, Levi scowled. “I still say it’s too soon.”

“And I say if I stayed a day longer I would have killed someone,” she grumbled back, climbing gingerly into the passenger seat of Corbin’s waiting Range Rover—engine running—in the parking bay. “Most likely Dr. Killen. Or Nurse Ratchet.”

“Her name was not Nurse Ratchet,” Levi admonished, leaning across her body to snare the buckle of her seat belt. He stole a kiss while there, a soft brushing of his lips on hers she ached to deepen.

“I don’t understand what you had against Nurse Ratchet,” Corbin said, depositing himself behind the steering wheel and clicking in his own seatbelt. “She seemed totally lovely for an irritated automaton.”

Levi rolled his eyes. “Don’t encourage her.”