Blessed Fate (23 page)

"So, there's really nothing there?" I asked, needing her reassurance. Hell, I didn't know if there was anything between us after everything I had done, but I needed to know it wasn't a competition for her heart.

"There's friendship. We've been friends since kindergarten, and I'd be lying if I said it doesn't feel good to have him back in my life. But as a friend. That's all he'll ever be."

I walked over to where she had started to make a pot of coffee and tried to give her a hug. She pulled away from me, still guarding herself. "I'm sorry I was an ass. I should have waited." I needed water and something to silence the marching band pounding in my head. "Fuck, maybe I should have talked to you sooner. I feel like I went a few rounds with Rocky last night."

"No, just Jon, but I'm sure he'll like the comparison." She laughed when I looked at her, confused.

"What in the hell are you talking about?" Another piece of the puzzle dropped, me saying something to Jon about sleeping with Rain and him hitting me.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

"Seriously?" She shook her head.

"Yeah, I'm serious. Look, apparently I had more than I thought last night. I remember heading over while you and Jon were wherever you disappeared to, and I remember waking up and seeing a note from Travis that you guys were at the hotel. The rest is fuzzy."

She poured two cups of coffee and sat me down at the table to recount every hideous detail of my tirade. I really was lucky she was willing to talk to me. Not only had I gotten into it with Jon, apparently I had also made a fool of myself in front of every single person hanging out in the band area. People I admired. People I respected.
Fuck.

"Wow, I fucked up." I buried my head in my hands, rubbing hard, trying to figure out
if
there was a way I could ever make up for the pain I had caused her. "Damn, baby. I'm sorry. Tanya told me someone sent her—"

She spun around to look at me. "Wait a minute... Did Tanya send you those pictures?"

"She said someone emailed them to her, and she thought I should know. And when I had no clue when she tried talking to me about it, yeah, she emailed the pics to me."
Because I'm a fucking idiot. I know better than to trust Tanya. She's already pulled shit once, why would this time be any different?

"And you believed her? Seriously? That's fucked up." She started for the front of the bus, and I followed her, grabbing her arm to stop her as she turned to the stairs.

"What was I supposed to think?"

"Maybe you should have thought to talk to me about it. About the fact that
you
were the one who told me she's waiting for me to fuck up." She put on her sunglasses to hide the tears I had already seen pooling in her eyes. "Now, it looks like she won."

I watched her walk away, unable to follow her since I was standing there in nothing but my boxer shorts. I thought about getting dressed and going to find her, but I knew that was the wrong thing to do. She would calm down and come back. She always came back. Instead, I sat down with my journal and started pouring everything I was feeling onto the paper.

After a few hours, I started to worry. I sent her a text message asking her at least to let me know she was okay. It sat there, unread. A while later, I tried calling her and it went straight to voicemail. I thought about heading to the hotel, but I needed to wait for her. I couldn't let her think I had left without working things out if there was a chance of that happening.

When another hour passed, I worried even more. I picked up my phone to call Jon, hoping like hell she had gone back to the hotel. "Hey, asshat," Jon answered, his tone letting me know I was still in the shit house with him too.

"Hey. Is Rain there?" I asked, avoiding the long talk I knew Jon and I were going to have to have sooner or later.

"No, last I knew she was with you."

"She's not. She left over four hours ago to cool down, and I haven't seen her since." Yeah, I was a fucking pussy for worrying about her, but she usually calmed down enough to deal with the issues after an hour, maybe two.

The last words she said to me were on a loop in my head.
Now it looks like she's won.
Had Rain left? "Jon, you guys need to come back. I think I fucked up bad this time." I would take whatever they had to dish out, but we needed to figure out where Rain was first.

"What'd you fucking do?" Jon asked, his voice saturated in disgust towards me.

"I'll explain when you get here. Try calling her. It's going to voicemail for me."

Every time I heard anyone near the buses, I bolted out of my seat to see if it was Rain. It never was. Call it melodramatic, but I couldn't tamp the feeling that this time when she had walked off the bus, she had walked out of my life for good. I had finally screwed up to the point that I wouldn't be able to get her back.

I sat on the bus for hours in nothing but a pair of unbuttoned Levi's, guitar in my lap mindlessly strumming chords. When the bus door finally swung open, I made the mistake of allowing hope back into my heart. That glimmer extinguished quickly when I saw the guys barreling up the stairs.

"I find it really hard to believe you could have made things worse than they were last night when she left," Jon growled before he had even hit the top step.

This was not the type of thing guys were supposed to do. We were the sex that kept everything bottled up inside and refused to talk about relationships with buddies. Unfortunately, I couldn't avoid that since there was a chance that I had not only screwed things up for myself, but also for the guys and the fate of Blessed Tragedy.

"You'd be amazed at what I can do with the help of alcohol," I mumbled, unable to look at them.

Travis flopped down on the couch across from me, running his hands through his light brown hair that looked more boy band than hard rock. "How bad is it?" He glanced up at me, obviously holding back what he really wanted to say to me.

"Bad," I admitted. "I thought we were making progress for a bit. She actually sat down and talked to me. We weren't all good by any means, but we were talking without screaming..."

"Okay, so then what?" Jon prodded. He pulled three beers from the fridge handing one to Travis and one to Jared before taking a draw off his own. It was a subtle message, but I got it loud and clear. He didn't think I needed to be drinking since that's what started this entire mess to begin with.

"I told her who sent the pictures." I looked up to see Jon staring at me as if I had just grown a third eye in the middle of my head.

"You really are fucking stupid, you know that?" Jon's jaw clenched almost as tightly as the fists balled at his sides. For a moment, I worried I was going to get a rematch of last night's fight, this time with me lucid enough that I'd remember every blow I had coming to me. Part of me hoped he would hit me, not so I could fight him back but because I had fucked up that bad this time.

"Yeah, not my best move..." My chest tightened as I thought about the last moments of this morning's fight.
What was I supposed to think?
Yeah, that probably wasn't the right thing to ask her. I was
supposed
to think that Tanya is a bitter woman who considers it her mission to drive a wedge between me and the woman I love, so I will go running back into her gangly arms. I'm
supposed
to think that my girlfriend grew up in a small town, and therefore knew just about everyone, including the band director that I had met when we were there. I was
supposed
to think back and realize there hadn't been a spark between them when we were all standing together, but no. The green-eyed monster took over, and I jumped to her sleeping with him.

Jon snapped his fingers in front of my face to get my attention. "Hey, Earth to Colton."

"Sorry, just thinking."

Jared cocked his head as if he was trying to take in everything that was being said. As the new kid in the group, and only a part-time member of the band, he rarely had anything to say. "So, she got all pissed that Tanya sent you pictures? That seems pretty extreme for Rain."

My shoulders slumped forward on a long sigh. If he realized that, there was no way I would be able to leave this subject at that. "No, I totally fucked up after that."

Travis, who had been going to find something to eat stopped in his tracks and whipped around to look at me. "Dude, I thought you'd already hit that point. I
can't wait
to hear this one." He leaned against the small divider wall. My eyes darted from him to Jon, whose posture was much the same.

My throat felt thick as I tried to push out the words that were running through my head. The words I couldn't take back. "I asked her what I was supposed to think when I saw the pictures."

Without warning, Jon took one step towards me and slapped the back of my head. "You're a fucking idiot." Okay, so I deserved that, but fuck it hurt. Between the stress and a lingering hangover, my head felt like a jackhammer was pounding at my brain. "We need to figure out where she's hiding. She didn't go far; the truck is still out back."

The door opened again, and a sunburned Rain slowly walked up the stairs. Jon let out a long, slow breath. "Where the hell did you go?"

"I was trying to enjoy the day, not that it worked. What's going on?" She asked sharply. Somehow, I knew then that I was going to catch hell for worrying about her. Rain didn't deal well with knowing people were concerned about her welfare; she saw it as people hovering over her and trying to dictate what she should do.

"Colt called us, freaking out that he couldn't get a hold of you." Jared didn't look up from his journal as he spoke. In a strange way, I was glad he was the one talking. Rain had a soft spot for Jared and might not go ballistic on him. It wasn't the type of soft spot I worried about; it was more like a big sister/little brother vibe. "Said you stormed out. None of us could reach you; your phone was going straight to voicemail."

"Yeah, I needed some space, sorry. Not like I'd gone far. If he'd bothered to check, he would have seen that the Silverado is still parked." Her eyes narrowed on me and I actually worried she was preparing to hit me. "I can't believe you called them." She pushed her way past Travis, knocking him slightly off balance before slamming the bedroom door shut behind her. This. Was. Bad.

"Idiot," Jon mumbled as he forced his way to the front of the bus. "You need to figure out how to fix this shit. It's gonna be a long summer if she stays pissed at you." He smacked his hand on the side of the bus as he walked away.

Before I could plan how to make things right with Rain, Jon returned to the bus, his eyes narrowed as he stalked toward me. This was a side of Jon I very rarely saw; one I had never seen aimed at me. I didn't like this side of him. It was usually followed by someone winding up bloody.

"You need to get your shit straight, Colt." The muscles in his neck corded as he swallowed hard. "I get that she means a fuck of a lot to you, I do. Now, you're going so far overboard that we'll be lucky if she doesn't get on the first plane back to Portland. She's beyond hot." Somewhere in the middle of Jon's hovering tirade, I noticed Travis slink off into the late afternoon heat. Poor Jared stayed in his seat trying to ignore the world around him since he would have to ask Jon to move in order to go anywhere.

"I know—" My heartbeat raced as I listened to him fighting the urge to scream. While my mind had jumped to the thought of her leaving the band, I was mortified by my actions when I heard he was also worried that was a possibility.

"No, you fucking don't," he interrupted. "If you had
any
fucking clue, you wouldn't pull this shit. I can't fucking believe that you told her yesterday that you thought Tanya was waiting for her to screw up, which was probably a good assumption, and then last night, you got so shit-faced drunk that you believed Tanya." Jon finally backed away from me, slumping into the bench across the table from me.

"Fuck, you really screwed everything this time. Tanya's done a lot for us..." Jon pinched the bridge of his nose. "I can't afford to have those two going at it." I sat there listening to Jon as he tried to work through how to handle the situation I had created. My only hope was that Rain was sleeping back in the bedroom and not able to hear what was being said as he railed on me for being stupid enough to sleep with Tanya.

Jared's head snapped to attention at this revelation. "That's fucked up, man." With that, his head was once again down and he was writing away. The way my day was going, he was going to be some sort of savant when it came to poetry as well, and I would no longer be needed for my lyrical talents either. His pen hovered just above the paper, and he appeared deep in thought. "Look out, I'm going back to talk to her."

Jon let out a bark of laughter as he moved to the side. "Could be your funeral, but more power to ya, buddy." He patted Jared on the back, and he sheepishly got up from his seat.

"Can't do any worse than him, can I? At least I can make sure she's good to go on stage tomorrow." Jon and Jared shared a laugh over the remark, and I hung my head a bit lower.

"You'd better hope she listens to him," Jon said, sucking air in through his teeth. "If she leaves, I swear, no one's getting to your ass before me."