Blessed Fate (27 page)

After the show, Rain and I spent some quality time with her family. Even though we hadn't talked about where things stood between us, the fact that she asked me to stay with her spoke volumes. I wasn't going to push anything this time; she needed to be the one setting the pace.

Despite the fact that we knew fans and autograph seekers would hound us, we relented when Garrett and Mike wanted to head to the beer tent to catch a few smaller bands. It was a blast listening to acts that were where we had been not that long ago, just starting out, trying to carve their own niche in the industry.

As the day wore on, Rain inched closer and closer to me until she was leaning against my chest. Even in the stifling humidity, there was no greater feeling than the heat of her body pressed against mine.

All too soon, it was time for her brothers and Garrett to leave. Matt pulled me aside before getting into his car. "Take good care of her. She might seem tough, but she's our baby," he warned. "We'll be good unless you hurt her. Then, you're going to have a couple of pissed off brothers to deal with."

I nodded, respecting him for looking out for her, regardless of the problems they'd had in recent years. "I'll do my best," I promised him.

As soon as we were back on the bus, Jon called a band meeting to make sure everyone knew exactly what was going on with Tanya. Of course, Rain was the only one who hadn't heard the entire confrontation, but that didn't stop Jon from being the businessman of the group. He looked mildly irritated that Rain kept nodding off to sleep. Every time Jon brought up my name, my body tensed from the guilt I was carrying around. I couldn't help but wonder where we would be right now if I hadn't been the fuck-up of the group. Would Tanya have gone off the deep end if I had never agreed to sleep with her? Would she have caused problems for Rain? I pushed the thoughts out of my head, reminding myself there was no way to know the answers.

I led Rain back to the bedroom after a few shots of Jagermeister, leaving the rest of the guys to their impromptu party. She was nearly asleep on her feet before we reached the bedroom, so I eased her onto the bed and removed her shoes. When I reached for the button on her shorts, she shied away from me.

"Colton, we can't rush back into what we had," she sighed, lying back on the bed, sleep winning the fight.

"Relax; I'm rewinding all the way back to the beginning, before we were a couple. You wouldn't have freaked then if I helped your half passed out ass get ready for bed, would you?"

"No, I guess not," she conceded. She made a sweeping motion with her hand. "As you were." By the time I pulled off her shorts and unclasped her bra, Rain was sound asleep on the bed. I pulled her up to the pillows and gently covered her.

While I had only been trying to calm Rain so she wouldn't knee me in the balls, when I told her I was going back to how we were before we were a couple, that's exactly where we found ourselves through the rest of the tour. Okay, so maybe a bit closer since we were inseparable. We made up for the lack of sex with lots of kissing and caressing, but nowhere near the hot and heavy weeks that we had spent as a couple. When the time was right, I knew we would get back there.

The last week of the tour, I spent more time than usual on my laptop, trying to plan the perfect weekend getaway for us to reconnect as a couple. Yes, I felt my penis slowly being sucked back into my body as it turned into a vagina, but I didn't care.

I wanted Rain to know I wasn't going anywhere, and I hoped she'd agree to move in with me. If we were still toeing the line between friends and lovers, there wasn't much of a chance she would agree. I didn't feel comfortable with her going back to her dingy apartment building without security locks, especially given the amount of attention we had garnered over the summer.

As the days ticked closer to us getting on a plane to head home, Rain grew more agitated, withdrawing from everyone. She spent almost every spare minute sequestering herself from the world. I wanted her to trust me enough to talk to me but didn't know how to draw out of her what was going on. It was a helpless feeling, even more so than when her mom died. At least then, I knew what was going on.

When our plane landed, I tried to load Rain's luggage into the rental car I was using until our gear and my bike made it back to the west coast. She insisted she would be fine and told Jared and me to head back to my place. Not wanting to cause a scene, I kissed her and told her I would call later.

Jared and I stopped by the hardware store to make him a set of keys to my condo since he would be staying there until he could find a place of his own. After seeing how the fans reacted to his innocent, pretty boy looks and magic fingers, we had asked him to join us fulltime. This meant he was going to have to find a place to live because we couldn't have one member in Illinois while the rest of us were in Oregon.

I was within a block of my favorite leather recliner when my cellphone started playing
I Miss the Misery
, the ringtone I had set for Rain.

Rain: Can you come over?

I was mildly irritated by the request, seeing as she had told me to go home without her less than forty minutes earlier.

Me: Miss me already?

Rain: Yes, but that's not the point. Please, get over here.

Something was very, very wrong. I don't know how I knew that, but I knew from those ten words that she was in some sort of trouble.

Me: You're freaking me out. Everything okay?

Rain: Not by a long shot. You'll see soon enough.

I whipped the car around at the intersection, speeding down the road to Rain's apartment. It took us less than five minutes from her last text until we were racing up the stairs to her top floor apartment. Finding the door cracked open, I pushed my way inside.

Seeing everything in disarray, I cracked my neck to either side trying to relieve the building anger. "Rain, what in the hell happened in here?"
She didn't answer right away. With every step I took inside, the panic built. Had someone been waiting for her when she got home? Why wasn't she answering? "Rain, where are you?" I called down the hall.

"Bedroom," she shouted back. I ran to the last door on the right, finding her curled in a ball in the middle of her bed.

"It's okay, baby." I pulled her onto my lap, gently caressing her hair. "What happened?"

With her face buried deep into my chest, her response was nearly unintelligible. "I have no clue. This is what I came home to."

"You're not staying here anymore, Rain. I told you before that I didn't think this was a good place for you and this proves it." I pulled back on Rain's shoulders when she shook her head against my body. Before I could tell her it wasn't open for debate, she rendered me speechless.

"No. Whoever did this wasn't trying to rob me," she sobbed. I didn't understand how she could think it was anything else. Why else would someone break in while she was gone and tear the place apart? With every passing minute, I had more questions than answers.

"What do you mean?" She started sobbing again, and I pulled her close, gently rocking her, trying to get her to settle down.

Her hands trembled as she pointed to the top of her dresser. "Look, my grandma's jewelry is still up there. The computer and TV are still out there. This wasn't someone looking to make a buck, at least not from selling my stuff."

Fuck.
I didn't know how she would have done it, but I couldn't help but think we both knew who did this. "You don't think..."

"Who else? Seriously, I may not have made many friends in my life, but there's only one person I can think of who knows where I live and has a reason to do something like this."

There was nothing else to say to that. I needed to let Jon know what was going on, this was just that fucked up. I told Jared to keep an eye on Rain and not let her touch anything until the police arrived. They came in while I was on the phone, relaying what little I knew to Jon and Travis, who were both hanging out in Jon's basement.

I heard one of the officers call Rain back to her bedroom as I sat on the couch talking to Jon about what we could do to get Rain into a different place immediately if she wouldn't stay with one of us. I stood to follow, but she motioned for me to wait in the living room. I had a bad feeling, but did as she asked.

"...exactly what I'm telling you! Why can't you people understand that someone's trying to screw with my life? They obviously left that where you'd find it. Do you think I'm stupid enough that I wouldn't have gotten rid of something like that if it was mine?" Rain's voice grew louder until she was in a full-blown freak out. I hung up on Jon and ran down the hall.

"What's going on in here?"

"Sir, can you please wait in the other room?" The older of the two officers crossed his arms over his chest in a show of authority. I took one step towards Rain, and he pressed his thick hand against my chest, holding me back from her. "Sir, we need to talk to Miss Neumann alone."

"Maddie, are you going to be okay?" I didn't want to leave her alone, but I didn't need an obstructing justice, or whatever the hell else Barney Fife could come up with, charge. That wouldn't help either of us.

"Call Jon, tell him to get in touch with Cal. I think this is going to get much worse before it gets better." Her entire body shook as she sobbed. She wouldn't turn to look at me, which only served to raise my suspicions.

"What the fuck? Your home was broken into and you need a lawyer? Someone better tell me what's going on here." Something on the bed caught my eye, and I moved to look around the officer's rotund body. I really hoped I wasn't seeing what I clearly was seeing. There, on her bed, was a box containing three bags with what I could only assume was cocaine. Her former drug of choice. Was that why she'd been so edgy?

"You've been with me every single day. Do you really think I could have hidden something like this from you?" She was pleading with me, begging me to believe her. I wanted that more than anything, but I just didn't know. Since I couldn't say anything that would help her case, I said nothing. "Colt." I felt like I was in a fog, trying to will myself to wake up because this had to be the world's shittiest dream: walking into your girlfriend's apartment and finding out that not only had she experienced a break-in, but she was also using again after almost six years clean. "Baby, you know that's not mine. Tell them!"

"Maddie, I want to believe you. Dammit, I hope you're right because that's some serious shit there." I brushed against her as I walked out of the room. "I'll make the call. Don't say anything."

I felt like the biggest sack of shit in the world as I walked out of Rain's apartment. She would be walking out of there in cuffs, under arrest for possession of cocaine. Even after the front door closed, I could hear her screaming for me, begging me to tell the officers the baggies weren't hers.

There was nothing I wanted to do more than tell them exactly that. The problem was, as I stood there staring at the drugs on her bed, I couldn't help but question if she had been using again. Her mood had been more than slightly irritable for a while, she'd withdrawn from everyone, and she'd mentioned a few times how weak she felt, like she needed something to numb the pain she was dealing with from her mom's death.

I threw the keys to the rental car at Jared as we reached the street. My shaking hands made it difficult to scroll through my phone for Jon's number. This was the last thing any of us needed to be dealing with right now. I felt sick to my stomach as I realized how easily I was pushing to the background what was going on for Rain personally, because of how this scandal would impact the band. Maybe she had finally gotten it through to me that the welfare of the band always needed to be first. After all, she had been preaching that to me for five years.

"Talk to me." Jon answered on the first ring. From the slur in his words, he had been passing the time waiting for me with his buddies Jim and Jack.