Sloe Ride (15 page)

“It’s because Mum raised them. She always has to poke. And she’s passed that on to them. Each and every single one of them. Double dose for Con,” Quinn muttered at his oblivious and uncaring cat. Nudging Harley again got him a tiny mewl, its sweet rasp almost drowned out by the squeak of the access door opening. “Fuck, it’s like clockwork. Kane just won’t leave—”

The man stepping through the swirling fog definitely wasn’t his older brother. Kane never in his life possessed the liquid grace and feral prowl of the sienna-haired man walking across the warehouse rooftop. No, the slender pour of muscle and sinew coming toward him was Kane’s lover, Miki, a sure sign Quinn’s older brother was stooping to playing dirty to roust him out of his solitude.

But the oddly conflicted expression on Miki’s face turned Quinn’s snarling protest to be left alone to dust in his throat.

Quinn moved over without thinking, opening up a space for Miki. He was ill-dressed for the brisk weather, a thin T-shirt and jeans holier than Quinn’s grandmother, the ex-nun. He lifted up the edge of the blanket and waited for Miki to get settled under in its toasty warmth.

Miki was having none of it.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Do I look like I’m going to crawl under there—”

“It’s freezing, and your lips are turning blue. I have a blanket, hot coffee, and the pillows,” Quinn pointed out. “It’s stupid to stand there to talk to me when you could be warm. And why wouldn’t you want to be warm?”

Miki’s hazel eyes churned gold and flat, but he shucked his shoes off, then climbed in under the blanket. Grumbling under his breath, he shivered against Quinn. “Like some fucking slumber party or something. You guys are so damned weird.”

“Weird but warm.” Quinn felt Harley slither over his ankles, more than likely trying to get away from the shot of cold air he’d let in.

A moment passed, then two, and just when Quinn was about to ask what was wrong, Miki spat out, “Your fucking cousin’s an asshole.”

“Sionn.” It wasn’t a question. More an affirmation and one Quinn generally agreed with. “What’s he done now?”

“I feel like I need to have this conversation someplace I can rage.” Miki shifted under the blanket, sitting up against the pillows. “Fucking lying here is… what the
hell
? Is that your cat?” He peeked under the cover. “She’s got a damned sweater on. Your butt-naked, ugly cat is wearing a damned sweater, Quinn. There’s something wrong there.”

“Harley’s not naked. She has fur. It’s just very short. And the sweater keeps her warm.” Quinn sighed. He liked Miki. He liked Miki for Kane. Mostly because the mercurial singer kept Quinn’s older brother jumping, and despite his deep affection for Kane, there was something satisfying about watching the guy who bossed him when they were kids get his comeuppance. “Again, what’s Sionn done now?”

“Fucker brought Rafe up. Sionn wants Damie—wants us—to let him audition. They’re downstairs going at it.” Miki stiffened when Harley crawled off of Quinn’s legs and went searching for a new place to perch. Quinn guessed she’d found one somewhere on Miki’s body. “Swear to God, that thing bites me, and I’m going to turn it into a wineskin.”

“You don’t even drink wine, Sinjun.” Miki’s bluster was more bristle than fang, and Quinn knew it. He thought on the Rafe he’d once known and compared him to the broken-spirited man he’d seen at Forest’s coffee shop. When they’d been younger, Rafe’d always thrown himself into the troubles he’d caused but never dragged anyone in with him. He’d also never asked anyone for help getting out of them. “Did Rafe ask Sionn to do that? Ask Damie?”

“He says nope.” Miki tensed again as Harley undulated over them, a feline basking shark moving through her warmed lair. “D got all—”

Damien hit the rooftop running. He cleared the access door’s threshold before it’d begun to swing back and was nearly halfway across the long stretch of roof when it clicked shut behind him. If Quinn thought Miki’d gone stiff when Harley touched him, he was practically stone as Damien approached the tucked-away pillow mound.

“Where the fuck did you go?” Damien snarled, his feet pounding away the distance between them. “You don’t fucking walk away from me when there’s shit going down.”

“Fuck you back, dude. That shit downstairs wasn’t even about me. That was between you and your guy.” Miki was gone from under the blanket, sliding out before Quinn could protest the cold. Harley mewled her displeasure, and he flipped the cover back over them, trapping what little warm air was left. “So yeah, I walked. Because it was none of my fucking business.”

“It was about the band. So yeah, it involves you, asshat,” Damie bit back.

The fog was rolling in thicker, refusing to let the sun in, and Quinn wondered if he and Harley could slide past the other two and back downstairs without them noticing. When Damien’s angry gaze spilled over him, he tightened, aware he’d been caught in a trap he couldn’t chew out of.

“Instead you’re up here bitching about me to Quinn? When you should have been down there backing me up?”

“I’m really not a part of this,” Quinn volunteered. It was uncomfortable being caught between the rough sandpaper of a relationship—especially one he didn’t understand at times. Damien and Sinjun were… volatile, sipping fire from a hose volatile, and they were passionate about everything—music, their friendship, their loves, and now, as Quinn was recently made aware, their fighting.

“The band right now is
you
, D,” Miki tossed back at his friend. “And yeah, I came up here to bitch with Quinn ’cause sometimes he’s the only sane one in the house.”

“You’re the reason I want a damned band. We’re—”

“Really. I came up here because I wanted to read. And it was six in the morning. None of you are supposed to be awake this early.” Reaching down under the blanket, Quinn tried to fish a reluctant Harley out so he could beat a hasty retreat. “And… I don’t know if there’s an and. There’s probably a but, because there always seems to be a but. But maybe not. And yes, there it is. The but.”

The cat was definitely not cooperating, and Quinn sat up to peer under the blanket at her smug, wrinkled apricot face.

“You are
not
helping. Come here,” he hissed at her. Harley ignored him, lifting her leg up to chew on her toes as she did every morning when Quinn got up for coffee. It was their routine—and a lost one at that.

He hated
not
having a routine. Or at least knowing where and when he could be without someone else
being
there next to him.

It was one of the things his family never seemed to understand. Just
being
made noise. On some subdermal level, he
heard
them under his skin, itching away and scratching his nerves. It wasn’t as bad with Miki and Damie. Neither one of them felt the need to poke at him until he bled out of his mind—until now.

“Quinn, you know Rafe.” Damie cut Quinn’s wheedling short. “Tell me one good reason why I should let a fucking drug addict into my band.”

“Oh, up here it’s your band, but when you’re screaming at Sionn it’s our band?” Miki scoffed. “Make up your damned mind.”

“You wanna make those calls, Sinjun?” D turned, his chin up. They were nearly the same height, but Damien’s British was out, a strong slap to the face of Miki’s streetwise sneer.

“You want a band so badly, just like the last time. Whatever you want, I’ll be right there fucking beside you, but don’t push me in front of you when Sionn pisses you off.”

Miki didn’t seem that impressed. Not from what Quinn could see. Especially when he stepped into Damie’s space until they stood toe to toe.

“I’m good with you steering the whole band thing, but this whole Rafe mess—”

“Do you think it’s easy with this? Andrade’s a decent player. Good even. Collins loved the fuck out of him, and look what happened to him… to them?” Damie’s voice dropped soft, pleading with his best friend. “I can’t have that happen to you. I can’t risk you. Not again. Not like I did before.”

“Fucker,” Miki grumbled, grabbing at Damie to pull him into a hug. “So we don’t audition Rafe.”

Quinn threw his gaze up to the sky, wishing he could keep his mouth shut and let the two men deal with the ripple of Andrade hitting them as hard as it hit Quinn every time he saw Rafe. But for the remains of Sinner’s Gin, Rafe loomed above them as a specter of death and destruction, not the man Quinn’d seen grow from an angry, confused boy.

“He tries, you know,” Quinn said softly as he extracted himself from under the blanket, then stood up. It was better to speak softly. It drew the ear to follow the sound, forced the listener to pay attention. If he was going to trespass where angels feared to tread, Quinn knew he had to go in carefully. When both men turned to look at him, he continued, “Rafe, I mean. He tries to be better. Well, still is trying. It can’t be easy to live down to everyone’s expectations, even when they believe the worst of you.”

“Q, Rafe’s been with you guys since you were little kids, but shit happens—people change.” Damie pulled himself loose of Miki’s hug, but Quinn noticed Damie slid his best friend behind him, an unconscious protection he probably didn’t even realize he was doing. “He seems like a nice guy. I just can’t risk it. Not the band. Not Miki.”

It made Quinn smile, then hurt because he couldn’t remember ever having someone
not
named Morgan love him enough to stand between him and danger. There was a part of him crying at the emptiness inside of him, and once again, Quinn reminded himself of the cracks in his sidewalk no one wanted to fall into. He had friends—people he knew like Graham and… sadly, his brothers and cousin—but none as fiercely loyal as Damie was with Miki. And his brothers didn’t count. They were more smothering than protective.

Now there seemed to also be a Rafe when he didn’t remember putting one there. Rafe stood in front of him—had before. Had since then. It was definitely time for Quinn to do some standing as well.

“Rafe gave a guy some shit that killed him,” Damien said softly. “And he doesn’t remember a damned thing about it. That’s not the guy I want with me up on stage, and it sure as hell isn’t the one I want in a tour bus with me and the guys. If he even shows up. If we do this band—when we do this band—it’s got to be all in. Everyone needs to be solid.”

“It’s been years since that, Damien,” Quinn reminded them both. “A lot’s happened to all of you. You came back from the dead, and Miki fell in love. You did too. You worked hard to get here—to the coast—because you knew someone was here waiting for you, worrying for you. Rafe had a different struggle, a harder journey. You went looking for Miki. He had to go looking for himself.”

“Dude, you have no idea what shit he’s done. You knew him here. Not out there. Not on the road. And sure as shit not in his band,” Sionn’s lover pointed out.

“Everything you know is what was fed to you… sold to you,” Quinn remarked. “You don’t really know him. Not then when he was dying inside and not now when he’s trying to live.”

“He’s a good bassist. Or was,” Miki interrupted Damien before he could speak. Waving off his friend’s withering look, Miki sneered right back. “Look, sure I liked him, and yeah, he wrote a lot of Rising Black’s bass lines. Either we give him a chance or we don’t. But shit, Damien, we’ve heard or talked to about twenty-five guys already.”

“Just guys?” Quinn frowned. The cold was beginning to creep into his body, leeching away the warmth he’d built up inside of him.

“Figure of speech. About seven were chicks.” Damien scowled back at Quinn. “Women, girls, not male. Shit, one was a girl becoming a guy. I don’t care what bits someone’s got, they’ve just got to fit in with us.”

“And be dedicated to working through difficult times.” Quinn cocked his head, watching the two musicians exchange a look and a shrug. “Kind of like having to go through a bunch of shit, rehab, and then only now coming back to join the living?

“Why do you think you’re only now seeing Rafe, Damien?” Quinn asked. “He’s Sionn’s best friend. As close to Sionn as Miki is to you in a lot of ways, but he’s not really crossed your path, right?”

“Kinda weird,” Miki agreed. “They go out a lot, running or something. Right?”

“Yeah, every morning. Almost. And the gym.” Damien nodded. “I saw him a couple of times down at Finnegan’s before I got my marbles back into the bag, but we never did face time. He’d have known who I was probably if we had. Would have made the whole who-the-fuck-am-I shit go a lot faster.”

“Rafe licks his wounds. He always has.” Quinn rubbed at his arms, jealous of his cat’s burrow under the blanket behind him. “He’s avoided the family since he got released from rehab. Sionn’s been making his excuses, and Mum’s done with that. She’s about ready to go kick down his door and drag him out by his hair. If he talked to Sionn about wanting to audition, it’s because he thinks he’s good enough—strong enough to do it. Rafe wouldn’t waste your time if he thought he couldn’t be what you needed.

“Music’s all he had for the longest time. And even that was kind of yanked away from him.” A flare of unexpected anger kindled inside of Quinn, anger at the friend Jack Collins should have been to his bassist. “Did he crash and burn? Yeah, but we failed him too. All of us. The family, Sionn, and hell, even his friend Jack should have helped him climb back up, but Rafe wouldn’t let us. Well, I don’t know about Jack, but the family? Rafe knows we’d never turn our backs on him.”

Damien eyed Quinn, his stare dosed heavily with skepticism and doubt. “So I’m supposed to just ignore all the shit that’s happened?”

“No, but you can give him a chance. The audition might not work out. But if it does, you should be honest with him. Set lines. Set boundaries. Be a better friend than Jack was to him on the road,” Quinn replied. “Don’t be his babysitter, but be a friend to your lover’s, Miki. Just like he’d be a friend to you because of Sionn. If anything, he’d have more to lose than himself if he fucks up again. He’d be risking our family—his family—and that’s not something Rafe
ever
wants to lose.”