Revelry (Taint #1) (40 page)

Cooper snaps his head up. “For how long?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“How long are you planning on staying here, Ali?” he sneers. “How long before the temptation of him becomes too much?”

“Okay, stop,” I say. “Can we just for once stop pretending like this is even about me at all?”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I’m not fucking her,” I scream, and cover my face with my hands as I tilt my head back in exasperation. “I’m not Holly. She left you for another man. What you, Levi and I have is different. It was never meant to go this far, but it did. None of us were supposed to get hurt, but no matter where we go from here, one of us does. One of us winds up broken-hearted, Coop. Maybe even all of us. And that’s the bed we get to lie in. That’s the bed we made. But I’m not her. Stop confusing me with her, and stop fucking punishing me every time you get drunk for the things she did to you. I know that’s why this whole thing started—you wanted to get back at her.”

“That’s not true. I wanted you from the moment you came stumbling into that conference room.”

“Yes, but a part of you wanted me because it made it that much easier to pretend. You thought about how sweet it would be to have me on my knees before you, sucking your cock until you came, and you could wrap your fingers in my hair and pretend for a moment that I was the one that got away.”

“Stop talking,” he warns me.

“You told me as much in Vegas, when you called me by her fucking name. You broke my heart that night, Coop.”

“I didn’t know what I was saying.”

“That just makes it so much worse. You could have slept with any woman that night, and pretended that it was her, but you wound up with me, someone who looked like her, but didn’t matter—”

He launches himself at me, pushing me back against the wall and hisses, “Don’t ever say that again. Don’t ever think that you don’t matter to me, Ali. You do, but I’m … I’m fucking terrified of letting you in.”

“Why?” I whisper, gripping his wrists. “How could you possibly be afraid of me?”

“You have no fucking idea what you do to me. You have no idea what seeing the two of you together does to me.”

The sad thing is that I do. I know it hurts him, just like I know it hurts Levi when I’m with Coop. Any choice I make here affects both of them, but it’s so much more than that. It impacts their friendship, and the band.

“Why couldn’t it just be about sex with you? Why did you have to fall in love with him, and me? I already lost one girl to another man—I’ll be fucking dead before I do it again.”

“And there you go again, comparing me to her.”

“I wasn’t—”

“Yes, you were. Levi isn’t the one coming between us here, Cooper. Holly is, because you can’t let her go.”

“That’s not true.” He shakes his head. His gorgeous face twists with pain, his gaze begging me to believe him.

“Coop,” I say, removing his hands from my face. I gently push him back a step, so I’m no longer pressed against the wall, so I can think clearly without his touch clouding my judgement. “I think it’s best for all of us if I just go home. I’ll go back to Vanessa and beg for my old job back. If that doesn’t work, I’ll find something else.”

“This is your dream job.”

“No, managing Kings of the Iron Age is my dream job.” I smile sadly at him. “Right now, I’m just a glorified whore because I’m sleeping with two members of the band, and I get paid for it.”

“It’s not like that. You don’t get paid for fucking us.”

“What would you call it then?”

He doesn’t answer. He just stares at the floor, his expression tight.

“I need to go home,” I whisper. “I can’t be the thing that tears the two of you apart. You’ve been friends for a long time. I couldn’t live with myself if this came between you.”

“You think I give a shit about what Levi wants?”

“That’s exactly why we can’t keep doing this. He’s your friend, Coop—he was a brother before I came along. Now he’s the other guy, and I can’t do that. Jesus, people everywhere hate me enough. Can you imagine the public slut shaming directed towards me if I singlehandedly broke up the band? There’s more at stake here than just us.

“We just—I think we need to take a breather. You have the European leg of the tour left, and then you’ll be home, and we can sort out where to go from there. I can’t be on this bus anymore. I wake up every day wondering whose feelings I’m going to hurt today. Knowing I’m just going to fuck it all up.

“It’s killing me. I feel like I’m being torn right down the middle and you’re both pulling me in opposite directions, and I can’t not break apart. I can’t do this anymore.”

“Can’t do what anymore?” Levi says, and I don’t know how I didn’t hear him come in, but he stands behind Cooper, arms folded across his chest and an angry expression I’ve grown accustomed to these last few weeks on his face.

“Ali’s leaving,” Cooper says, and I don’t miss the painful edge to his voice.

I take a deep breath. “I think it’s best for us, and best for the future of Taint, if I go home to Australia.”

“Bullshit,” Levi says.

“Hey look, Quinn and I finally agree on something. This is bullshit.”

Levi ignores him, looking only at me with a tight-lipped expression. “So you’re just going to run away?”

“I’m not running, Levi. I’m just trying to do the right thing here.”

“So what? You think leaving is just gonna make this all better? Everyone just goes back to fucking normal?”

“No. I don’t,” I whisper. “But I think eventually we’ll all be okay if the problem is removed.”

“The problem?” he asks, with his brows raised, his gaze searching my face. “That’s how you see us? As a fucking problem?”

“Levi—”

“No, you know what?” he says, shaking his head. His body tenses. “I’m out. Problem fucking solved.”

“Don’t—”

“Don’t fucking what?” he shouts, as he backs me into the wall, much the way Cooper had just moments ago. His aggression is so much worse, though. “Don’t walk away? Don’t love you? Don’t tell you that my fucking heart has just been torn in two?”

“Back off, Quinn,” Cooper says, as he grabs for Levi’s arm. Levi pulls back his elbow, connecting squarely with Coop’s jaw.

“Stop it!” I shout.

“Ah fuck!” Cooper cups his jaw, shaking out the dizziness, and then grabs Levi’s shoulder, spinning him and throwing a punch. He misses, though, probably on account of being drunk, and winds up smashing into the wall beside me.

“Jesus Christ, Levi, what the fuck is wrong with you?” I say, crouching down and lifting Cooper’s chin up to the light. His eye is swelling, and a drop of blood trickles down his face from a tiny cut near the corner. “You’re bleeding.”

“I’m fine.” Coop pushes my hands away and staggers to his feet. “You good now? You got it out of your system?”

Levi laughs. “No, I’m just getting started.”

“No, you’re not. This is exactly why I’m leaving,” I say, glancing between them. “Look at us—we’re tearing one another apart. Whatever this is, whatever we have here, isn’t worth it.”

“Nice to see you care so much,” Levi says through gritted teeth.

“God damn it, Levi, would you stop already?” I hiss. “This isn’t going to get any better. We’re just going to continue to hurt one another if I stay.”

“We’re gonna fuckin’ hurt anyway, Red,” Levi shouts, his voice breaking on his nickname for me.

I pull his face down to mine, resting my forehead against his. Tears trail down my cheeks and I glance back at Coop. “I can’t do this anymore. It’s not normal, to feel like this.”

I step out around Levi, tugging my arm free from his grasp when he yanks on it.

“Ali.”

I close the door behind me and lean against it for a moment, and then I retreat to my bunk. In a few more hours we’ll drive through the Charleston city limits. I’ll pack my stuff when they’re in sound check and leave soon after, during the show.

And then I’ll hop a plane back home and put this whole mess to bed, where I shouldn’t have taken the rock stars.

I
sit in the kitchenette, sipping a glass of Jack to calm my nerves as I stare at my bag. I’d planned to leave during their show, but it felt all wrong.
Everything
feels wrong. I know now that I can’t leave without a goodbye; it may be the last time I see either of them, and I can’t have that. They deserve better than that. Looking back, it was foolish of me to believe that no one would become attached. I can’t choose one without hurting the other, without tearing the band apart. I wish this had just been about sex. I wish we’d been able to keep our feelings separate. I wish that the idea of leaving didn’t hurt so bad.
I wish for a lot of things
.

I wipe away the fresh set of tears that spill over my cheeks, and pour myself another drink to steel my nerves. The familiar whoosh of the bus’s front door opening has my hands clenching into fists in anticipation, but when the sounds of the concert infiltrate the bus, I let out a sigh of relief, knowing that I still have another thirty minutes or so before their show ends.

“Hey, Ali,” Leif says as he walks through the curtain-offed driver’s area and into the bus. “You’re missing the show.”

“Yeah. I didn’t feel up to it tonight.”

“I get it. Those groupies are pretty intense, huh?” He grabs a glass from the cabinet and sits opposite me, filling his cup with Jack. He attempts to refill mine, but I shake my head. I’d do plenty of drinking on the way home, I’d drink for all three of us, but I’d had enough for tonight.

“You going somewhere?” Leif asks. I glance at the bag sitting on the seat beside me, and then I give him a half smile and set the bag down at my feet.

“Yeah. I am.”

His eyebrows knit together as he studies my face. “Where?”

“Home.”

“What do the boys have to say about that?”

“It’s not really up to them.”

“You don’t think you owe them for bringing you along on this tour? I mean, they went out on a limb for you. That bitch at the record company was going to fire you—Cooper kept that from happening. He’s paid your airfare and your wages the whole time you’ve been here.”

I still, with my drink halfway to my lips.

“What?” I ask, certain that I didn’t hear that right.

“He told me. Or he told the others, and Zed mentioned it to me.”