Rock Angel (Rock Angel Series Book 1) (28 page)

Since Quinn’s hand was stiff and Dave was in considerable discomfort, the band shelved practice for that day. Dave went home, Ty went out somewhere, and Dan left, as well, intending to drop Denise at work, then shop for a new splash cymbal at a drum store in Hollywood. After everyone departed, Shan came downstairs in search of Quinn.

She could hear him in the music room, experimenting with a different mix on a song they’d recorded the week before. He was at the mixing board, using only his left hand. The right, swathed in a bag of ice, was resting on his leg. She waited for a pause in the music. “Hey, Q,” she said.

“Hey,” he replied without looking up.

“Can we talk?”

“I’m kinda busy.” His tone was cool and he still didn’t look up.

She sat down next to him anyway. “I hate it when we don’t speak.”

He ignored her, fiddling with the sliders. “I know you’re still mad at me,” she said.

“I told you I wasn’t mad,” he said, beginning to sound testy.

“You are, though,” she corrected him gently, “and I know it’s about the thing with Dave.”

He didn’t reply, but he stopped moving the sliders. “I…I didn’t know you were at home, Q. It wouldn’t have happened, if I’d known.”

“So you’ll wait until I’m out of the house next time? How considerate of you.”

“I meant that I wouldn’t have been so…well, obvious,” she said nervously. “I mean, I know it was kind of…um…loud. It must have made you feel uncomfortable, listening to that.”

“Uncomfortable. Yup. That’s how it made me feel, all right.” He sniggered. “Just let me know in advance the next time you’re planning a sex binge. I’ll put on some punk ska to drown out your shrieks of ecstasy.”

She stiffened. “You don’t have to be so mean.”

“
Leave me alone, then.
I told you I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“But I want to make sure you understand.” She touched his arm.

He jerked away as if she’d burnt him. The ice slipped off his hand as he turned and she found herself looking directly into his eyes for the first time in days. His tone might be cold, but his eyes weren’t. They were blistering, ablaze with barely suppressed fury. “Understand what?” he inquired. “Understand why you decided to rehearse a porno practically right in front of me? Or why you thought it was a good idea to get down and dirty with one of my oldest friends? Just what the fuck am I supposed to understand, exactly?”

“I…I don’t know,” she said miserably. “I’m just sorry, because I know that I hurt you. That’s the last thing I want to do, ever.”

He let out a snort of laughter at that. “It’s true,” she declared. “You’re the most important person in the world to me. The thing with Dave…it was nothing.”

He looked skeptical. “It sure sounded like something to me, Shan. It sounded like a whole lot of hot, sweaty something.”

“It wasn’t,” she insisted, but he turned back to the mixer in a clear dismissal. She put her head in her hands, a sick, anxious jitter in the pit of her stomach. He was starting to scare her, beginning to make her afraid that permanent damage had been done.

She raised her head. “We did some coke,” she said, after a moment.

He froze. “What?”

“We snorted some coke and wound up in bed together. That’s all it was—crazy coke sex.”

“What the fuck are you doing with coke?”

“Dave had it. I was in a lousy mood, and it was there and I slipped. Just a slip, Q.”

“So you’re down, and here’s some guy with blow, and then you’re vacuuming Bolivia’s finest up your fucking nose?” His face was flushing with rage. “
Bad decision,
Shan.
Really
bad.”

“It wasn’t a big deal. It’s not like it was H.”

“I can’t believe you could be so fucking stupid! And Dave—I’ll kill that douche bag!”

“It’s not his fault,” she said. “I made my own choice. I’m a big girl, remember?”

“Right. A big, stupid girl making big, stupid choices. And you don’t
have
to suck dick just because some guy offers you dope,” he added viciously. “You have a choice about
that
, too!”

She blanched with a swift intake of breath. Her face went dead white.

He regarded her with disgust for another moment, then, “You know what? I’m done. I went through this shit with you once and I’m not going there again.”

She gaped at him, eyes like saucers, then hastily cast them down.

“You can take care of yourself,” he said. “That’s what you always say. Do it, then. Find yourself a new band, and a new place to live, and dope yourself into a coma if you want. We’d both be better off if you moved out. You remember, don’t you, that I told you a long time ago that I don’t want an attachment? That I don’t want a girlfriend?
That I don’t want to be tied down?
”

The mere sight of her seemed to be making him madder and he turned away to direct his tirade at the mixing board. “But what do you care? You don’t give a shit what I want. I haven’t been able to get away from you from the first minute I set eyes on you. ‘Take care of me, Q,’” he mimicked. “‘Be my family, Q.’ ‘Make up for everything bad that’s ever happened to me, Q.’ If you stay here I’ll have an attachment whether I want one or not, and a junkie one at that, because I’ll have you hanging around my neck like a fucking lead weight for the rest of my life.”

He reached for the sliders in a fury, forgetting his injured hand. He winced in pain and shot an angry look at Shan, who hadn’t responded. Hadn’t spoken. Hadn’t even raised her head to look at him. Her knuckles had gone white from the force of her grip on the hem of her shirt.

His anger seemed to ebb as he stared at those white knuckles. “Hey…” he began.

Shan leapt to her feet and bolted, heading for the back door. Just as she pulled it open, he landed against it with all of his weight. She ducked her head. “Open the fucking door,” she said.

“No.” He grasped her chin and pulled her face around.

It was ashen and her eyes were huge. “
Get off of me, you
—” but the words caught in her throat. Her eyes brightened and he gasped as tears cascaded down her cheeks.

“Jesus, don’t cry! You never cry. You never,
ever
cry. Don’t. Don’t.
Don’t!
” He pulled her into his arms and she wrenched away, but he held fast until she collapsed.

He sank to the floor, holding her. “I didn’t mean it, angel. You know I didn’t.” He rocked her like she was a child, but she covered her head with both arms, weeping as if she’d never stop.

She sobbed and sobbed. It was as if a dam had burst and she cried on and on, unable to quench the flow. Her muscles convulsed with each sob and he held her for nearly ten minutes before she showed any sign of slowing.

Eventually the sobs diminished to hiccups. “Are you finished?” he asked when she raised her head. She opened her mouth to answer, but was seized with a fresh onslaught of weeping. “Shan, please stop,” Quinn begged. “You’re breaking my heart.”

But she couldn’t, sobbing and choking for several minutes more. Eventually she swabbed her eyes. “Look at that,” she said. Her voice shook like a maraca. “I got your shirt all wet.”

His face was stricken. “I didn’t mean it, angel.”

She swiped her eyes again. “Oh, I think you meant it just a little bit.” She climbed off his lap, opened the back door, and went outside.

Quinn scrambled to his feet and followed. Shan was picking her way across the creek. When she got to the other side she disappeared over a hill, never once looking back.

He set out after her and, when he crested the hill, saw her trudging up ahead. She obviously needed space so he kept some distance between them, but he was careful to keep her in his sights.

She trekked for a good, long time, easily a mile, probably closer to two. Eventually he caught up with her, after she’d flopped down on the mountainside. The view was stunning, a sweeping panorama of the canyon they lived in. “Is this where you come when you go out walking?” he asked when he reached her.

“Sometimes,” she said, wiping her cheeks. There were still tears trickling from the corners of her eyes. “I like to sit here and play.”

“You’d better be careful,” he said, frowning. “I don’t like the idea of you this deep in the woods by yourself.”

Her lips pursed. “I can take care of myself, like you pointed out.”

He sat down beside her and they were silent for a few minutes. Eventually Quinn spoke. “I’m sorry for what I said, about you being a burden. It was a shitty thing to say and it isn’t true.”

Her slight shoulders began to shake and he saw that she was crying again. “I’ve never felt that way about you,” he persisted. “You…you’re a joy to me, angel. An absolute joy.”

She began to sob, pressing her fingers against her eyes as if to force the tears back into their ducts. He gave up talking and took her in his arms again. She was limp and slid through his hands until she was lying in his lap, her cheek against his thigh. He smoothed the hair off her face and let her cry. Eventually his leg was wet from her tears soaking through the fabric of his jeans.

After a while she pulled away and glared at him. “I’d better stay away from that area,” she said. “You’ll think I’m trying to suck you off for drugs.”

He winced. “You know I didn’t mean that, either. I think you’re awesome, angel. Bright, talented, beautiful…” he paused, unable to come up with enough superlatives. “There’s nobody I respect more than you.”

She was watching him now, her face raw, painful. “You’ll never let me in, though, will you?” He stared at her, a faint frown creasing his brow. “Sometimes I feel like I don’t even know you, Quinn. Not in any real way.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked, perplexed. “You know me better than anyone. I tell you everything.”

“Tell me about the coke, then.” He stared at her, clearly mystified. “
Your
coke, I mean. Your coke problem.”

When he comprehended what she was saying, Quinn’s eyes widened. “
What?
How did you…” He paused, and then, “Dave?” He looked utterly gobsmacked.

“Yes, but don’t you dare get mad at him,” she said, sniffling. “He didn’t rat you out. I told him about
my
drug problem, how you helped me get clean, and he brought up yours. He figured I knew. It’s a reasonable assumption, I think.”

Quinn was silent for a long time, still looking stunned. Eventually he spoke. “I always planned on telling you,” he whispered. “A dozen times I almost did.”

“You
should
have told me. I can’t believe you’d keep a secret like that from me.” Her tears, which had never completely stopped, began to flow faster. “I’d like you to tell me now, please.”

He hesitated, then nodded slowly. “All right. I don’t know how much you know.”

“Not much,” she said, using the sleeve of her T-shirt to swipe her eyes and nose. “And that doesn’t matter, anyway. I want to hear your story from you.”

“Okay.” He sat up straighter, clasping his arms around his knees. “I’ve told you how I got into my first real band when I was sixteen. The Accidental Evils. I was the youngest member.”

“Just like me,” Shan murmured, still wiping her eyes.

“Yes. I started out as a roadie, but pretty soon they figured out that I could play anything. They loved having me around, because I could fill in whenever one of them got too wasted to go onstage. Eventually the bass player got busted, so I started playing bass. A few months later, Gil, the keyboard player, ODed on smack and wound up in a coma. Then I was the keyboard player.”

Go ahead and dope yourself into a coma,
he’d snarled at her earlier. She sniffled.

“The drugs were everywhere. All kinds, too. Everybody had their own thing they were into. The candyman would come to our gigs with a briefcase full of little brown lunch bags, one for every band member. I was in the Evils for a year and a half and, during that time, I did just about every drug there is, except for smack.” He shot a sideways glance at her. “Watching Gil turn into a brussels sprout kept me off the horse. Blow, though, that was a different story.”

He sounded like he was reading a script and Shan realized he probably was. He must have recited his story a hundred times. She certainly had, at all those meetings.

“There were times it was weird, being the youngest. I could play as well or better than the best of them, but it didn’t change the fact that the others were eight, ten years older than me. When I was coked up I felt like one of them, instead of the junior roadie turned keyboard player.

“Then I got really sucked into the whole scene. Having people come out, pay for a ticket to see us play, then getting the crowd high on that energy—there’s nothing like it.
You
know. And the women…” he paused, shot a sideways look at her, then shrugged. “The women were everywhere, too. I was only sixteen years old, remember. I’d been having sex for a couple of years, but it was my first experience with groupies. I had so many women that I can’t remember most of them,” he continued. “If I met one of them on the street, I wouldn’t even recognize her.”

She knew that was still true today, but she tried to picture him at sixteen. Slighter, more willowy than he was now, and flawless as a young god, with his fair hair and ethereal eyes. The groupies would have eaten him alive, consumed him. “What about your parents?”

“I’d always been in one band or another, so they were used to my not being home much. My grades were still good, good enough to get me accepted at Stanford, so my folks didn’t worry. I held it together, at least until that last summer when we went on tour.”

“Your mother let you go on the road?” That didn’t sound to Shan like the mother he’d described. Not at all. “What about school?”

“I was done, by then. I graduated high school early because I skipped the third grade. I was starting at Stanford for the fall and the tour was planned for summer, so my folks gave me the go-ahead. They trusted me, you see. I’d never given them any reason not to, as far as they knew.

“So off we went and it was open season, for me. I buried myself in blow—snorting all day, snorting to play, snorting and fucking all night. Fucking so much, sometimes, I rubbed the skin right off my…well. I don’t have to tell
you.
You know, don’t you, about crazy coke sex?”