Rough Rhythm: A Made in Jersey Novella (1001 Dark Nights) (5 page)

He’d left before she could get a handle on her runaway desires, what they meant, how to voice them. If he’d just given her a minute, she would have begged for more. Would have reassured him that the trust between them was still intact and nothing could damage it. Nothing except him leaving. Leaving her to this existence he’d created and managed from behind the scenes, but neglected to leave the instructions behind.

James wasn’t even home, so they couldn’t properly have it out. His old Mustang wasn’t in the driveway of his house in Santa Monica. Hadn’t been for three days. He’d vanished. And part of her worried that starving nineteen-year-old girl had fabricated his existence in the first place. After all, who gave up their own life in exchange for some scrawny, homeless girl’s success? No person she’d met before him, that was for damn sure. Her own parents hadn’t been in the picture since she turned sixteen, having moved down to Mexico with the settlement they’d received when Lita’s mother broke her ankle on a public bus. After that, she’d floated, living with friends until meeting her one and only boyfriend.

Shaking off the uncomfortable memory of how
that
unhealthy relationship came to a close, Lita turned her focus to step one in tracking down James. And she
would
track his sexy backside down, even if it were just to give him hell. But she hoped it would end in more. It had to.

Sarge Purcell was the lead singer of Old News and the closest thing resembling a friend to James. Which is why Lita was stomping up the driveway of his newly purchased beach house at eight o’clock in the morning. If anyone knew where their manager had gone, it would be Sarge. She felt a tad guilty for interrupting his first official week in Los Angeles since returning from New Jersey with his girlfriend, Jasmine, but hey. Desperate times.

Lita rapped on the fogged glass front door and waited. The sound of crashing waves from behind the house should have been soothing, but they only sounded like bombs going off in her ears, exacerbating the headache pumping behind her eyes for days without pause.
Just focus on this one thing.

The lead singer opened the door in a pair of gray boxer briefs, but Lita didn’t even blink. When you’ve lived on a tour bus with someone, modesty goes extinct with a quickness. Sarge’s hair was finger-raked and haphazard as usual, but Lita had a feeling it was Jasmine’s fingers that had been doing the raking. Lita’s theory was confirmed when Jasmine stumbled through the living room behind Sarge, wearing nothing but a white sheet.

“Hey, Jasmine,” Lita called, but her voice came out sounding thready, since she hadn’t spoken since…when? Since James left? “Sorry to have interrupted the sexing.”

Sarge grinned, displaying the reason his face ended up on countless magazine covers. “Ah, it’s fine. You’d be interrupting that no matter when you showed up.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Sargeant, but you’ve turned into a smug bastard.”

He threw a proud look over his shoulder, sending a smiling Jasmine snuggling into the couch cushions. “If a man wasn’t smug over landing that woman, he’d be an idiot.”

An ache formed so quickly in Lita’s chest, she sucked in a breath. “Yeah, well. I’m trying to make my own bastard look smug. You want to help me out with that?”

Sarge’s expression lost its humor. “I don’t know where James is, if that’s why you’re here.” He crossed his arms and leaned on the doorframe. “What happened between you two?”

Lita’s laugh sounded full of liquid. “I wouldn’t even tell you after a bottle of tequila.” She pushed past her bandmate into the house, heading straight for the kitchen. “Speaking of tequila, where is yours?”

“Cabinet above the toaster,” Jasmine said, her voice muffled.

“Thanks.”

Lita busied herself pouring the golden liquor into a coffee cup while Sarge went and put on a T-shirt. When he joined her in the kitchen, she’d already knocked back two shots. Sarge took a seat on a barstool, while watching her with obvious concern. “So it’s true. He’s stepping down as manager. I honestly thought he was screwing with me.”

“So you
have
talked to him.”

Sarge shook his head. “Voicemail. He doesn’t answer when I call back.”

Tears pressed behind Lita’s eyelids, pissing her off. Goddammit. She’d never cried this many days in a row, including the week she’d binged on
Grey’s Anatomy
while driving through Europe on the tour bus. “Do you know where his family lives?”

“I don’t even know if he has any family.”

Lita tossed back another two fingers of tequila. “How do we know exactly nothing about him after
four years
?”

Sarge scrubbed a hand over his face. “Maybe that’s how he wants it, Lita.”

“That’s not how
I
want it.” When her voice broke, she closed her eyes. “Please, you have to help me find his big, dumb face. I can fix this.”

Her bandmate reached out, setting his big hand atop her head. “You know we’ll do everything we can.”

“Thanks,” Lita mumbled, shrugging free of her friend’s comforting gesture. She didn’t want to be comforted or soothed. It would only be temporary until she found James and filled in the massive crater he’d left gaping in her middle.

Jasmine came into the kitchen, walking right into the crook of Sarge’s outstretched arm, as if they’d been apart way too long. “Don’t you have security guards who travel with Old News to shows?” The gorgeous ex-factory worker split a look between them. “A lot of those guys are ex-cops. Maybe they can help?”

For the first time in days, Lita felt the blessed spark of hope. “That might actually work. If someone else does that favor asking.” She plunked the empty coffee mug into the sink. “They all hate me because I’m always ordering the crowd to mosh for their lives. Doesn’t exactly make their job easy.”

“No, I wouldn’t think so,” Jasmine said, obviously fighting laughter. “I can help make the calls. James helped get me to Sarge when I almost lost him. I’d love to return the favor.”

After that, there was no one in the room but Sarge and Jasmine. The lead singer looked like he might organize a sacrifice of himself on an altar to the gods just to thank them for creating his girlfriend. Jasmine couldn’t stop staring at his mouth. And yeah…they were seconds from boning on the kitchen island, so Lita shoved the bottle of tequila into her purse and skirted past them toward the front door. “I’ll be down on the beach getting shit faced when you guys are done.”

Once outside, she took a fortifying breath and slipped the cell phone from her back pocket. She couldn’t sit still and wait for other people to help her anymore. Something had to be done
now
before she went crazy. Maybe just then, buzzed on tequila and emotionally drained wasn’t a good time to start owning up to her mistakes and acting like an adult, but time kept passing, passing, passing without James, and that felt like a horrible travesty. A waste of valuable minutes.

It was time to take control of her own life. Her own fate. No one was responsible for Lita’s happiness but her.

She went down to the beach and started making calls.

* * * *

James sat outside the hospital, hands clasped between his splayed legs. He’d left his cell phone back at his roadside motel in an effort to allay temptation. For so long, he’d had the device holstered like a six-shooter, ready to draw if someone needed him. No, not just
someone
. Lita. He felt naked without news of her right at his fingertips. Several times since driving back to his hometown of Modesto, he’d checked the gossip websites and police blotters, praying nothing about Lita would show. His habits were firmly ingrained and he couldn’t trust himself yet to stay away should she land in hot water.

So far, there had been nothing, apart from news agencies following up on her recent arrest and subsequent release from jail. She hadn’t called or e-mailed, telling him he’d finally succeeded in scaring her off.

Good. He’d always known she was smart.

James breathed through the horror of having scared the one person he’d dedicated his life to saving from pain. Relief would come eventually, along with the conviction he’d done what was right. If it didn’t, at least he’d know Lita was happy. Somewhere without him.

A shadow filled the sunlit walkway in front of the bench where he sat, temporarily lifting him from mental torture. He lifted his head to find his mother running a Kleenex beneath her eyes. “How is he?”

“Better,” she responded with a sigh. “Still no movement on the right side of his body, but he’s communicating with the white board and marker. He won’t try speaking just yet…I think because it feels so unnatural with only half his mouth.”

James gave a tight nod. “Still no desire to see me, I assume?”

His mother’s sympathetic look was unbearable, so James stood and paced away. He’d been home for six days, following the phone call from his mother informing James that his father had a stroke. Over a decade had passed since the last time he’d been face to face with the man—frankly, he’d been content to remain in contact with his mother only, when there was an occasion or major holiday. Unfortunately, the family landscaping business didn’t run without his father, so his mother had begged James—their only child—to step in until the company’s manager returned from a family reunion trip overseas. Regardless of James’s non-relationship with his father, there’d been some solace in being needed after relinquishing his title as manager to Old News. As protector to Lita.

Working with his hands had given James some place to direct the restless energy, so he’d taken a labor role in addition to the managerial responsibilities. The last six mornings, he’d spent digging trenches, planting trees, hauling rubble. And six afternoons in a row, he’d been refused entry to his father’s hospital room.

The sidewalk outside the hospital had begun to fill up, presumably with a shift change, if the amount of personnel was any indication. People rushed up the walkway to take advantage of the final hour of visiting time before the dinner break. An unnamable tug of consciousness pointed out an anomaly among the moving mass of people. A flash of life, of static, that didn’t belong with the rest. Sort of like déjà vu that wouldn’t stop, just looping back and around, keeping him edgy.

Holding up a finger for his mother to pause in the vocal listing of medication the doctor had administered to her husband, James turned in a circle, the pulses in his wrists hammering. When his gaze lit on the cause of his body’s visceral reaction, it took James a moment to believe what his eyes were telling him.

Lita marched up the hospital walkway, all out
war
written on her beautiful face. The way she sometimes looked during a drum solo. Concentrated brilliance. Jesus God, how? How had he made it this long without a glimpse of her? James took an involuntary step in Lita’s direction, his body obeying instinct. And instinct said,
I need to
go get mine
. There was nothing but bone-melting fulfillment upon his first eyeful of the girl who ruled him. Always would—no denying that fact. But when his brain registered the entire picture, his mission stalled out, giving way to an avalanche of
other
. Lust, denial, anger. They whipped around him like a whirlpool, sucking him down into an ocean of chaos.

An all-too-familiar thrift shop outfit covered Lita’s body, cheap material hugging her swaying hips, the crop top’s leather fringe ending at her belly button. The outfit she’d worn the night they met.

When Lita’s Converse scuffed to a stop on the sidewalk in front of him, James’s fists were shaking with the need to get hands around some part of her and
keep
. A roar escaped him instead. “
What are you doing here?
” He barely registered his mother’s startled gasp beside him. “What kind of game are you playing?”

“
Game?
” Green eyes blazing, she turned around to execute a stiff karate-type kick in the air before facing him again with her shirt’s fringe still swinging. “How dare you call this a game when I’ve spent
six days
and four bus transfers tracking you down.”

An invisible hand squeezed his neck. “Why?”

“Why.” Shaking her head, she looked downright disgusted with him. “I’m so mad at you, James, my mad grew a second head and ate the first one.”

James realized two things at once. One, he’d always classified his feelings for Lita as sheer obsession, but the fact was, he was achingly, irrevocably in love with her. Which meant letting her go would be infinitely harder than his fool self had thought. And two, blood soaked clear through the back of her favorite Converse, so much that it left droplets in her wake on the concrete sidewalk. “Why…” He had to take a moment to formulate the question, the sight of injury on her person was so abhorrent to his peace of mind.
Can’t breathe
. “Why the fuck are you bleeding?”

“Is this your mother or something? It
is
, isn’t it? We’re arguing in front of your mother.” Lita threw up her hands and sagged at the same time. “So be it, James. Your family will think I’m crazy and that’s too bad. I
am
crazy. If you want to get rid of me, you better start working on a restraining order.” A passing group of nurses were staring at Lita, bottled drinks in their hands. “Hey. Yeah. I know. The crazy has arrived. Why don’t you just…drink your stupid lemonade, huh?”

Only half of her words had penetrated the graying haze surrounding James, his sole focus on her right ankle. “I can’t have this conversation when you’re bleeding.”

“I’m
always
bleeding when you’re standing in front of me,” she said, chin lifting. “You just can’t see it.”

His hurt lurched. “Lita…”

She stomped the injured foot, nearly spiraling him into a heart attack. “Yeah, I know. I say things like that now. Get used to it.”

The whole situation was getting out of hand. James didn’t know what her goals were in traveling three hundred miles, but she’d wasted her time. He’d finally found the strength to direct his brand of destruction away from Lita and seeing her, hearing her, smelling her, nearly touching her, was fucking with his resolve in a catastrophic way. “Why are you wearing that?” James gritted out.