Collide (a Collision novella) Page 2

  “Docs say it was in other places,” my uncle says with a hint of Southern twang. He and my mother are originally from Texas, but I’ve never met my grandparents. They disowned both their children for running off and following the devil of music.

  “So they just missed it?” I shriek. He shakes his head. He knows more than he’s willing to tell, and even though I hate him for it, at the same time, I love him for trying to protect me. He’s always been there for me, especially when Mother became emotionally distant. She’d go through spells of coddling and then keeping me at arm’s length. Often, those times involved drinking too much and Hank Paige, the drummer of the band.

  “I don’t know the particulars,” he lies, keeping his dark eyes from mine.

  “But it’s bad, isn’t it?”

  “Really bad,” he offers, his voice struggling. At least I have some honesty for once.

  “Where is she?”

  “At the house.”

  I shiver with the thought of the cold, sterile home my mother keeps. It was only a house since we spent most of my life on the road. Tutors educated me. Mother didn’t want me away from her except for the times when she did.

  “What about the tour?” I hate to ask. I don’t care one bit about tours, or audiences, or fans, but it’s the nature of being raised in this business. It’s a business, baby girl, providing us with food on our table and clothes on our back. Be grateful. She exaggerated because we had more than our fair share.

  “We’ll need to cancel.” Mother would never give in, not even to cancer. I’d read the tabloids. The rumors of the band being on shaky ground. Hank Paige and his drinking. Denton Chance’s verbal displeasure. The carousing of Lawson Colt. They were a band led by a female phenom when the concept and profitability were dying out. It was no longer the 80s.

  “How is she doing?”

  “I think she’d like to see you.”

  Then why didn’t she call me? Why wasn’t she the one to tell me?

  “And tonight?” The Theatre is sold out.

  “It’s our last.”

  “Fuck,” I mutter.

  “Don’t talk like that, baby girl.” He’s one to lecture me with his creative language.

  “I’m going to the house,” I state in case he wants to warn her. He doesn’t do much without her permission or his personal decision on what he considers best for her. He has always been like this with all of us. Protective of his family to the core.

  He weakly smiles with a nod, and I turn for the door.

  “Go gentle on her. She loves you.” My eyes close as I reach for the doorknob. Gentle. I hardly knew what the word meant. I kept things rough and unfeeling in order for gentle not to consume me. Love. She did love me—in her own way—and I loved her. Most people confused us for sisters—by our looks, by our laugh, by our closeness—but sometimes, I wanted a parent. Someone to love over me if that makes sense.

  I step into the hallway, and my thoughts instantly recall what I did a half hour ago behind one of these closed doors.

  Gage Everly.

  Hot as sin with deep-set eyes and matching chocolate hair, wavy and long to his chin. Freckles dot his nose and cheeks, something I don’t think I’d know unless I was up close and personal. Heavy scruff graces his jaw, and while I wonder how it would feel between my thighs, I don’t trust myself.

  Gentle.

  He wasn’t rough with me. He was exactly what I needed. A quick in and out. Just the frenetic pace of two bodies causing friction and fulfilling fantasies. No feelings.

  What would I want to feel? Love.

  A brief bumbling in a closet can’t produce the emotion. In fact, it didn’t produce an orgasm either, and my body remains wired. I can still feel him between my thighs. My undies are damp from his release dripping out of me. My lips sting from the hairs on his neck and the pressure of his lips on mine. I’d never been kissed like that before. He was all-consuming, as if he wanted me to curl up against him so he could hold me tight for eternity. A silly notion. Men aren’t like that, Mother would say.

  They can hold your body, but never give them your heart.

  She’s wrong, but I haven’t been able to prove myself right.

  I dismiss all the doors, not risking a glance at any of them. Instead, I exit a steel emergency one and inhale a deep smog-filled breath. I’m going to need to brace my heart in all matters in order to face my dying mother.

  3

  Two years later

  IVY

  We fought on that day just as I knew we would. She wanted me to return to college.

  Don’t worry about me, she said, but she knew I’d worry, and I knew she wanted me to stay with her despite what she said. In the end, she won. I returned to college, calling daily to check on her until the end was near.

  My mother died when I was only twenty.

  The band collapsed. It was the end of an era.

  Now, I was twenty-two and graduating in May with a degree in music therapy.

  I brush away the leaking tears as I stare out at the rolling ocean, recalling my mother’s passing and considering a future without her. Hawaii at Christmas has become a tradition. This was her favorite place, and the only place I remember where she would relax and act like a mother instead of a rock goddess.

  Burying my toes in the sand, I wiggle them through the grains and then allow the gritty pieces to sift through my toes. The move is a metaphor for my life. Things always sifting, drifting, changing.

  Another change is coming.

  How did this happen? Of course, I know the answer. On the pill. With a condom. But still this. And of all people, with a man in a band.

  I was my mother’s daughter.

  “How you doing, baby girl?” I briskly swipe at my cheeks when the Southern drawl of my uncle reaches my ears as he approaches me from behind. He must have known the beach was the place to find me. He squats next to me, his toned body creaking at the knees. He doesn’t touch me, knowing I’d brush him off if he did, even though I long for a comforting hug. I can’t remember the last time I felt the sensation. It’s my own fault for building the wall to keep people out by sealing myself in.

  “I’m fine,” I lie, rubbing my hands up and down my bare thighs. It’s warm in Hawaii, yet a chill consumes me.

  “I know it’s difficult, darlin’.” He lowers his tone as he speaks. Tommy is one of the few who understands losing my mother was one of the hardest things I’ve endured. What he doesn’t know yet is I’m having a baby without my mother to guide me. I can’t keep it hidden for too much longer. We’re in Hawaii, and I haven’t taken off my cover-up yet. The doctors estimate I’m four months along.

  My eyes well with tears again. The comfort of Tommy’s hand resting on my shoulder overwhelms me, and I fall against his chest, almost knocking him over in his crouched position. He shifts to sit in the sand and envelops me in his arms, drawing me against him. I give in and sob, thinking of my mother and the baby. It’s all too much.

  Tommy lets me cry for several minutes, rubbing my back and speaking soothing words as he encourages me to let it all out. Once I do, I take a deep breath, wipe my cheeks, and sit up, releasing him from holding me.

  “Feel better?” he asks. I do, and I don’t.

  “I’m pregnant,” I blurt out as tears well in my eyes again. All the books tell me the first three months are the emotional stage, but I can’t seem to get past the period of crying. Slowly, I turn to look at my uncle whose mouth hangs open. Wide eyes stare back, and then he turns to his head to the side, looking out at the ocean as I did moments before.

  “When?” He swallows, still unable to face me.

  “I’m due in June.”

  “No, I mean when did this happen?” His dark eyes turn on mine filled with a mixture of emotions—disappointment, anger, fear.

  “A few months ago.”

  “Who?” he chokes out. Fear clouds his already dark eyes while burning liquid fills mine once again.

  “It no longer matters
,” I whisper, hinting at the man who fathered my child. Tommy’s eyes widen before his head shakes.

  “It can’t be,” he mutters in a voice so low I don’t think I’m meant to hear the venom in his voice. “He’s…”

  I don’t answer.

  With a lick of his lips, he nods once, leans forward to kiss my temple, and pushes himself up off the sand. I can’t process his reaction. It could be many things. Bitterness. Regret. Rage.

  He’ll never forgive him, but then again, you can’t get an apology from a dead man.

  + + +

  GAGE

  I sit on the rooftop patio of the penthouse suite, drinking a beer under the midday Hawaiian heat. Jared and Petty have already headed to the beachside bar.

  Our band needs this retreat, and I was honored when Lawson Colt offered this place. It’s been three months since our best friend and lead bassist, Cash Bennett, killed himself. Petty, Jared, and I didn’t know what to do with ourselves. While we knew our bandmate battled depression and hit the drugs a little heavy, we didn’t see this coming. Cash was the life of the party. He was the center of our band. A note was never found, but he phoned each of us hours before it happened. There was so much I could’ve said, but I didn’t. Then we received the fateful call.

  The coroner’s voice still haunts me.

  The media coverage afterward was insane.

  Tommy thought we deserved a place to regroup. I am still getting used to calling him by this new name—Thomas Lawson Carrigan, aka Lawson Colt, now Tommy Carrigan. We’d been the opening act for Chrome Teardrops, on our way to our own fame, when Kit Carrigan, his sister, died of breast cancer about eighteen months back. She’d always been cordial to us but kept her distance. Most of our interactions were with her brother. After her death, our career shot off on its own.

  Thinking of Kit reminds me of her daughter. Ivy. I eventually learned her name. I haven’t seen her yet, but I know she’s here with her uncle.

  “The penthouse has plenty of room for all of us,” he said when he extended the invitation for a few weeks’ stay over the winter holidays.

  Ivy. She typically ignores me whenever I’m near. While I’ve never forgotten slipping into her in a backstage closet, she obviously doesn’t want to remember me. We didn’t cross paths until she started dating Cash. My heart crashed when Cash told me about her.

  Man, I’ve met the best piece of ass, and she’s familiar with the business, so she gets me.

  I don’t know how often they saw one another or how long they were together, but I hated when he mentioned her. I hated how I thought he treated her.

  A piece of ass? My ass.

  Ivy appeared sweet as a spring day with her all-American blonde hair, blue-eyed looks. But I knew she ran hot as fuck from our moment in the closet, which I never shared with anyone other than Jared. Gotta keep something in the spank bank for myself. But even thinking of her like that made me angry. She was more than a piece of ass and a fantasy to whack off to. I’d never seen a sadder girl so desperately in need of love.

  I take another pull of my beer, tipping my face up to the glorious midday sun. Jared and Petty went to the pool, but I wasn’t interested. I don’t do random hookups; I learned my lesson after Ivy. Of course, being on the road didn’t allow for a steady relationship with someone, so I didn’t do girlfriends. I tried to keep the one-and-done to a minimum.

  Still, Ivy Carrigan never left my thoughts. She’d one-and-done me, and it never sat well when she walked away. She was so distant, but at the same time, she craved the connection. I saw it in her deep blue eyes and heard it in her pleading. She wanted the opposite of what she asked for. Faster. Harder. Maybe? But she needed slow, tender, gentle. She was a woman you took your time with, and I doubted Cash ever did.

  “Gage.” Tommy’s rough voice startles me, and I sit upright, clutching at the beer in my hand as I prepare to see his niece. He went to the beach to find her, but she isn’t with him. Instead, he glares at me, but I can’t read his expression.

  “Tell me it wasn’t you.” His tone deepens.

  “What?” I ask, my brows pinching as I look up at a man I consider a friend and mentor. I stare at him, not understanding the question but giving him an answer. “It wasn’t me.”

  A sense of relief washes over him, and I’m relieved it wasn’t me, whatever it is. He sinks into the woven outdoor seat beside me and takes my beer from my fist. Finishing the rest of it, he sits forward and rolls the empty bottle back and forth between his thick palms. A master guitarist in his band, I enjoyed playing with him when I had the chance. I could learn so much from a man like him, so I had an ulterior motive for being here.

  “You’re the smartest one in the bunch,” Tommy says, indicating the band. “I didn’t think it was you, but I still had to ask.” He’s actually wrong. Jared is the smartest, book-wise, but I guess when it comes to the business, I want to be the smartest. Tommy shakes his head and sits back against the cushion. He tips his head back, closing his eyes, and pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers.

  “Goddammit.” His fist lowers, and he pounds it against the faux-wicker armrest.

  “Is it Ivy? Is she okay?” I ask, concerned he’s upset with her. A sour lump of fear settles in my gut. I’m protective of her even though she won’t give me the time of day. I worry she’s more distraught than she let on with the passing of Cash. Was their relationship deeper than I thought? The only details Cash ever gave involved their sexual behavior. Does she miss him?

  “She’s fine.” Tommy sighs. “She’s gonna be fine.” He rolls his head on the back of the chair and looks over at me. “I’ve never known a survivor like her. Not even her mother was as strong as that girl.”

  “Uncle Tommy.” The sweet, feminine voice turns both our heads. She’s more beautiful than I remember. The tan on her cheeks brightens her cornstalk-colored hair and eyes that match the sky behind her head. I don’t remember her breasts being quite so large, but then again, we were only together for a matter of minutes.

  I should have taken my time with her.

  You shouldn’t have been in a closet with her, fucker.

  I swallow as I slowly rise to greet her. “Ivy.” Her name chokes in my throat as she looks up at me. Her eyes are red-rimmed as if she’s been crying, and she weakly smiles. If she’s surprised to see me here, she doesn’t give anything away with her sad expression.

  “Gage.” Her voice is tight. “What are you doing here?”

  I lick my lips, glancing down at her uncle. “Tommy invited us.”

  Her mouth pops open as she peers down at him. I’m expecting her to ask him to explain, but she closes those pink lips and nods instead.

  “I’m going to take a nap,” she says and excuses herself. My forehead furrows as I watch her walk away. When she disappears through the living room and down a hall, I throw myself back into my seat. Tommy’s gaze bores into the side of my head.

  “You have a crush on my niece,” Tommy questions, his rough voice a warning.

  Keeping my eyes forward, I squint into the bright sunlight reflecting off the ocean in the distance and purse my lips. “Something like that,” I offer, picking up a fresh beer from a bucket on the low glass table before me.

  “Goddammit,” Tommy mutters and reaches for one himself. Somehow, I sense crushing on his niece isn’t going to win me any favors.

  4

  IVY

  Gage Everly.

  Why does he have to be here? It’s difficult to look at him—that dark, disheveled look of his—and remember what I did with him. My heart aches, and my privates clench with the reminder. I never meant to sleep with his bandmate. Cash Bennett was charismatic and creative, and he was in the wrong place at the worst of times. I’d finished a year of college without my mother, and Tommy thought I should celebrate making it through my junior year clinicals instead of wallow in the one-year anniversary of my mother’s death. He took me to a performance of Collision at a small club named Howl at the Mo
on. Small being relative as the place was packed. Tommy was proud of the boys and how they’d taken off on their own despite losing out after my mother had to cancel a few tour dates.

  Tommy thought a Collision concert would be a good distraction.

  And Cash was. Fast. Hard. Rough. In an alley outside the bar.

  Only Cash didn’t walk away. He pursued me, wearing me down until I agreed to see him again. It was the summer of lust because I can’t remember us doing much else than fucking each other. And each time, I felt empty after it was over. And each time, he grew quieter afterward. We met up at his concerts, but we didn’t interact with one another in public. I don’t think anyone knew we hooked up except maybe his bandmates.

  It’s strange to mourn someone you hardly knew, and I didn’t know Cash Bennett as well as I should have. I wasn’t his girlfriend. I wasn’t even really his friend. We just had sex, so when he took his life, I didn’t know where I fit into his issues. Was I a cause or just a number on the laundry list? He didn’t know I was pregnant, but neither did I until six weeks after his death.

  No mother. No boyfriend. I was going to be alone…with a baby. I couldn’t believe I’d held the secret in as long as I had. Strangely, it felt good to tell Tommy even though I shouldn’t have kept it from him. I have no doubt he knows who the father is, and he isn’t happy, but what can he do about it?

  When I exit my room after a little nap, I’m not surprised to find Gage and Tommy in the living room. A privacy wall hides the front door of the penthouse, but rounding it, you find an expansive kitchen with a long island looking into the living room with a wall of sliding glass doors that open to the rooftop patio. A dining table big enough for sixteen sits against the wall opposite the hallway entrance to the three bedrooms.

  “Let’s grab some dinner,” Tommy suggests. “You need to eat.” On second thought, letting my uncle know I’m pregnant will only turn him into a mother hen. He’s a caretaker by nature. My mother. My brother. Me. He’ll smother this baby and me. I smile, though, because it’s nice to know someone cares.