Pleasure in the Rain

♪

NASHVILLE

Part Four

Pleasure in the Rain

Inglath
Cooper

Published by Fence Free Entertainment, LLC

Copyright © Inglath Cooper, 2013

Cover © Sarah Hansen

Nashville – Part Four – Pleasure in the Rain - Inglath Cooper. – 1
^st
ed.

ISBN -
978-0-9891106-6-2

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed - “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

Fence Free Entertainment, LLC

[email protected]

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Novels

by

Inglath
Cooper

Jane Austen Girl

Good Guys Love Dogs

Truths and Roses

A Gift of Grace

RITA® Award Winner John Riley’s Girl

A Woman With Secrets

Unfinished Business

A Woman Like Annie

The Lost Daughter of Pigeon Hollow

A Year and a Day

Novellas

Nashville: Part Four - Pleasure in the Rain

Nashville: Part Three - What We Feel

Nashville: Part Two
Hammer and a Song

Nashville: Part One - Ready to Reach

On Angel’s Wings

Pleasure in the Rain. . .

Just as Barefoot Outlook begins to hit the big time, tragedy strikes when a rage-filled Nashville musician who hasn’t found the success he’s hoped for crashes an after-concert party and starts shooting. Among the victims are band members CeCe MacKenzie, Holden Ashford, Thomas Franklin, Beck Phillips and his country music star dad, Case.

With each of them gravely injured, one will not survive, forever changing the lives of everyone involved. Will one man’s hatred and contempt demolish all of their dreams, or will they eventually reach a place where they can once again take pleasure in the rain?

CHAPTER FORTY

Holden

I can’t wrap my brain around the pain in my left side.

I can’t think beyond it. Speak beyond it. Feel beyond it. It’s as if my entire body is on fire with it.

I don’t know if I am actually drowning in it or suspended above it, looking down at myself, connected only by this tether of savage pain.

I decide I must be above it because I can see the blood pooled on the ground next to me. Bright red soaking into the white of my shirt.

I hear the noise of sirens and screaming and crying. I just can’t see where any of it is coming from. I only see me. I know this can’t be right. I feel this indescribable pull toward awareness of what else I am missing. It’s like I’m at the edges of a dream, but not able to push myself up from the ether of sleep.

I try. Even though there is an enormous weight on my brain, pressing down on the very spot that controls my ability to wake up.

I’m not sure how long it takes. Seconds. Hours. Maybe days. I push against it until I begin to surface. Up, up, up. Breaking through the wall suppressing me.

Then it rushes in. All of it. The screams. The cries. The sirens. Around me, I see people. Some bleeding like me. Standing, bent over, falling.

I feel something on my chest then. Manage to direct my gaze downward and realize that it’s an arm.

Thomas’s arm. Football player bicep and shoulder unmistakable. He’s bleeding, too, his blood spilling onto my chest.

I want to raise up and see how bad it is. But I can’t. I can only look from the corner of my eye. My heart starts to pound because something else is trying to press through.

I struggle to latch onto it. And then her name.

CeCe.

Oh, dear God.

Where is CeCe?

I will myself to get up. But my brain and my body are somehow not connected. I can do nothing but lie here, flat, with Thomas’s arm draped across me.

I start to pray. Pieces of verses float up from the place where they have been stored in my heart so long that I had forgotten they were there. They’re delivered on the voice of a Sunday school teacher who had told our class to memorize such scripture because there would come a day when we might need to call on its comfort. I realize now I doubted the truth of what she'd said. And I had been wrong.

I hear footsteps, heavy booted feet running at me. Two EMTs in rescue worker-clothing dropping down beside me. One directing his attention to me, the other to Thomas.

Their hands are quick and adept, checking my pulse, shining a light into my eyes. I try to form the question, and it takes me several seconds to force it out.

“CeCe? My-”

“Hey, man, don’t try to talk. We’re gonna get you out of here, okay?”

“I need. . .to know where. . . she is.”

“You need to let us take care of you, son. Right now that’s the only thing that matters.”

“It’s not,” I say. Tears start to slide from the corners of my eyes. I see her face as she had looked. . .had it just been this morning? I swear I think I can feel her touch on my skin.

I have to find her.

But my protests to the EMT come out jumbled, and I’m not sure whether I’m speaking them or thinking them. I can’t see through the tears that won’t stop. I feel helpless. And I just pray. Every word a plea that if a life has to be taken here tonight, it will be mine and not hers.

♪

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CeCe

When I was a little girl, Mama used to tell me about the bomb shelter drills they had when she was in elementary school. I would listen with a kind of half-disbelief. I don’t think I really believed then that anything that bad could ever actually happen.

A bomb dropping on a school full of children?

The world, in my mind at that age, couldn’t be that terrible a place. That kind of thing was limited to scary books and movies that I never had any desire to see because I couldn’t understand why anybody actually wanted to feel fear. Or for that matter, wanted to cause someone else to feel fear.

I see his eyes in my mind now, the look that had been there right before he pulled the trigger. I know that fear is exactly what he wanted me to feel. Wanted everyone in the room to feel.

My heart pounds against the wall of my chest, and the force of it fills my ears with a pressure so intense I think my temples might explode beneath it. This is all I can feel. I have no idea whether I am alive or dead or dreaming or awake.

I try to scream, but no sound comes up from within me. I’m trapped in this bubble of semi-awareness.

I was the only one, wasn’t I?

No, that’s not right. There’s something else. Something more.

More shots. There had been more shots.

Holden. Thomas.

This time, the scream breaks through, piercing my own ears with its wail. The protective bubble of denial surrounding me shatters beneath its jagged edges.

And now, I’m crying. With terror. With grief. I’m not sure which one will tear me apart first.

 I feel hands on me, a woman’s voice attempting to offer comfort. “Shh, honey,” she says. "Hold on. Everything is going to be okay."

A needle pierces my arm, and in what seems like an instant, a soft blanket folds in around me, my vision seeping to nothing more than a pinpoint of light until blackness envelops even that.

And my crying stops.

♪

I RECOGNIZE THE
smell, but I can’t place it. It is clipped to a memory that nudges at me without effect.

My eyes are closed. I can’t make myself open them. They are weighted with something too heavy for me to push aside. I hear voices, one abrupt and authoritative.

“Has anyone found an ID for her yet?” the voice asks. “She looks like she’s probably over eighteen, but we need to know next of kin.”

My brain processes the words with foggy edges. And then the source of the smell comes to me. My granny’s long stay in the hospital.

Hospital.

I’m in a hospital.

And next of kin. Why do they need to find my next of kin?

“Blood pressure’s dropping.” This voice belongs to a woman, and she sounds worried.

“What’s taking so long with the blood?” It’s the man’s voice again.

I hear and feel the snipping of scissors simultaneously and realize my clothes are being cut from my body. Heavy footsteps retreat from the room at a quick urgent pace.

The woman’s voice, lower this time. “I guess nothing should really be a surprise in this world anymore. But can you imagine? They were just shot down like-”

“I know,” another woman says, and I can tell she’s on the other side of me. I feel her take my hand and lace her fingers through mine. “My brother was at the concert. He called a few minutes ago to ask if we were getting the victims. He’s sixteen, and he couldn’t stop crying.”

“It’s insane,” the other woman says. “Case Phillips. I’ve been in love with him since I was sixteen. It sounds like he might not make it.” Her words break at the edges.

“Don’t you just feel fury at how senseless these things are? These people never did anything to deserve this, and one person destroying so many lives.”

They’re silent for a moment. “I don’t understand," one of them says.

“There is no understanding. It’s just hate, and a person feeling like they’ve been cheated. I know I shouldn’t say it, but at least he’s dead.”

The heavy footsteps return, the pace conveying urgency. I hear motions around me but feel nothing. The women are no longer talking.

The man says, “They’re waiting for her in the O.R. Let’s get her up there stat.”

I try to make words come out of my mouth. To ask where the others are. Holden. Thomas. Beck. But the fog again descends. And I am gone.

♪

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Holden

I’m in a field. The grass is the color of a spring pasture in Kentucky, a deep, almost blue-green. It picks up the hue of the cloudless sky above. I’m walking with purpose as if I know exactly where I’m going, but there’s nothing visible ahead except for the same rich grass reaching toward the horizon. I have no idea how long I walk, but it’s effortless. I’m aware that I’m watching myself and at the same time walking. Searching, but not with any kind of urgency, just a peaceful sort of expectation.

And then I see her, so far away that at first I think it might be my imagination. I walk faster. Closer now, I know that I’m right. I realize that the distance must be farther than I initially thought because it seems to take a very long time for the gap to begin to close between us. My legs feel heavy beneath the desire to run. It feels like I’m fighting gravity with every step, pushing through some unidentifiable force that I can’t see but know is there.

I feel infused with love for her. It’s as if my entire being was created with the intent that this love would be my life source. We’re close enough now that I can see its reflection in her eyes. I realize with a wash of happiness that she has been created in exactly the same way.

The distance between us dissolves, and we walk into each other’s arms. It’s as if I have just completed a lifelong journey to a point where I was supposed to be all along.

We don’t say anything. We don’t need to. She rests her cheek against my chest, and I feel the exhaustion leave her. I am her safe haven, and like a boat that’s been chased to shore by waves that should have overcome it, she anchors herself to me.

I vow that I will never let her know the threat of harm again.