The Song Remains the Same (61 page)

Looking alarmed now, he asked, “What fucking bus accident?”

The bartender came over, and Alys sniffled, ordering us shots of Jäger. Devon declined. He didn’t drink hard liquor.

“Kenna,” he insisted in a warning tone.

We told him about Flipper’s broken arm and ribs and Jason’s mangled face, which had healed beautifully. He was still a knockout, maybe even more so now. Then, I told him about Phil’s busted body.

“X didn’t make it.” My voice shook.

Next to me, Alys whimpered softly, covering her face with her hands.

“What?” Devon breathed.

“There’s more,” I said.

I explained what Phil had done to himself afterward.

“Where is he?” Devon asked quietly.

“Gentle Oak Rehab Center in Colorado,” I whispered, not wanting anyone else in the lounge to hear.

Devon nodded.

“The guys are there with him. I’ve been banished. I wasn’t able to fix him, so we’re being punished with forced separation,” I complained bitterly.

“I’m guessing he didn’t take that well.”

“No. But…he really needs to do this, and I would have just been in the way.” I sighed. “I know it’s for the best.”

“It’s not forever,” he said in an attempt to console me.

“I hope not.”

Devon gave me a hug, and then he got up and pulled Alys into his arms. Unable to hold back any longer, she broke down into sobs, and he rocked her back and forth.

“It’s going to be all right, Alys,” he murmured to her.

The look in his eyes spoke of knowing such a thing firsthand. While he did have a powerful aura about him, a spiritual-awakening sort of glow, his eyes still lingered with the pain of losing someone he’d loved. Brigid had damaged him.

“Where are you ladies headed?” he asked me, not releasing Alys.

I couldn’t tell him. He was under no obligation to keep it from Phil. The only people who knew where we were going were our parents and Connor.

“Somewhere we can try to pull our lives out of this mess we’re in,” said Alys.

Devon nodded. “I know the feeling.”

“Where are
you
headed?” I asked.

“I
was
going home to Ireland to see my parents.”

Warmth blossomed in my chest. I had the feeling his plans had changed, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

“We should head to our gate, Alys,” I said.

We finished our drinks, and then Alys and I hugged Devon good-bye and went our separate ways.

“He’s not going to Ireland now, is he?” Alys whispered.

“I think he’s booking a flight to Colorado,” I replied.

“After this last flight, I’m going to need ten weeks just to recover from flying,” groaned Alys.

Phil

After the first uneventful evening of hanging with my new paid friends, the real work began. Tatiana woke me up before the damn sunrise and had me doing floor stretches and shit like that, working out my range of motion. Doing it made me think of my Baby Girl, how I used to watch her, amazed by the shit her body could do.

Kenna had tried to get me to do yoga, wanting to add it to the routine she’d worked out to help me, but I’d been an ass and said it was for pussies. Thinking about that caused a tidal wave of shame to crash through me. A pussy was the
last
thing my Baby Girl was. She had to be the strongest, bravest person I knew.

While on my back with my legs in the air, I remembered that Connor did yoga every day, and that cat was fuckin’ buff. He had to be as strong as I’d been before the accident. He had amazing control, and his energy levels were off the charts.

It’s time I seriously start doin’ this shit. When I get my Baby Girl back, I’ll do it with her.

Tatiana decided it would be a good idea to stretch out my lower back, so she made me do this move where my waist got twisted to the side and my knee shoved across my body, pinching my junk between my thighs.

“Augh!” I cried out.

“Your pelvis?” she asked, cool as a cucumber.

“My nuts!”

Her lips twitched, and she eased back, so I could adjust myself. Then, she pulled the move again, practically spreading herself out over me. Her tits were on my ribs, her hand holding on to my shoulder. It was a bit of unnecessary contact.

“My fiancée is a doctor of therapeutic medicine,” I mentioned in an offhanded sort of way.

“Really?”

“Uh-huh. I’ve gotten some awesome treatments from her. She does acupuncture, too. She had her own clinic before it got blown up. After that, she worked with drug addicts, detoxing and doing pain-relief treatments without using more drugs. Mostly heroin junkies who shouldn’t be on shit like morphine.”

Tatiana sat back and switched to the other side. This time, she kept her tits to herself. “It must upset her greatly to have you here for something she worked so hard with.”

“I ain’t an addict,” I snapped. “I went off on a bender after my best friend was killed. There’s a fuckin’ difference.”

“So, why isn’t she helping you now?”

“Because…I wouldn’t listen to her,” I admitted.

She loved me enough to let me go. Again. All I want is to be with her, and all she wants…is for me to be well. Healthy.

Fuck! I’m such a selfish douche bag!

“So, she just gave up on you?”

This woman was seriously starting to piss me right the fuck off
.

And there she goes with the
tits again!

Kenna had stretched the fuck outta me on several occasions, doing these exact moves, and she had always been professional even though I’d always had a raging hard-on whenever she touched me. Suddenly, my respect for my woman magnified a hundred-fold. She respected herself and her profession too much to taint her practice, even with the man she’d fuck like a freak after-hours.

When our session ended and Tatiana’s boobs were finally out of my face, I had a shrinking session with David. Gustav had made me a strawberry smoothie to take with me.

“How was the physio this morning?” David asked.

I sat down and set my crutches aside. “I want someone else—a dude who won’t take every opportunity to push his tits on me and ask mean questions about my fiancée,” I said, just throwing it out there.

Giving me a surprised look, he nodded. “All right. Were you sexually harassed by Tatiana?”

“I felt uncomfortable. I thought I was here to get help, not felt up.”

“Do you want to file a complaint?”

“No. I just want someone else, someone who will really help me learn yoga. My brother-in-law does it, and he’s in amazin’ shape. Connor—the giant fuckin’ ginger?”

David nodded again. “Would you want him to join you in your yoga sessions?”

“Dirty fuckin’ hippie would love that.”

“What about you? Would
you
want that?”

“Yeah, sure. I want someone who’s as good at it as he and my fiancée are.”

“What’s your fiancée’s name?”

“Kenna.”

“Would her presence here be helpful to you?”

I was the surprised one now. “You could get her here?”

“If it would help you stay focused on getting well, I could look into it.”

This was it. I could make a huge fuckin’ stink and get my Baby Girl. Connor would call her and tell her, and she’d be back from wherever the hell they’d shipped her off to, and…

“No,” I told him. “I want her here more than anythin’, but I would probably lose sight of why I’m here at all. She doesn’t want that. She needs time for herself now anyway.”

Wow.
I’d fuckin’ done the unselfish thing, the thing Kenna would have done for me if she were in this position. I still ached for her, probably more now, but I felt a huge sense of accomplishment in that.

“How long have you been with Kenna?” David asked.

My whole fuckin’ life.
“Almost two years.”

“Do you think you have a healthy relationship?”

“Probably not. At least on my end anyway.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because she’s my obsession. My reason to exist.”

“Not your music? Your band?”

“They’re secondary.”

“Is that wise?”

I shrugged. “Don’t know. Don’t really care.”

“What do
they
think?”

“About Kenna?”

“And your relationship with her.”

“They’re all for it. She makes me a better person, a better man. They respect that.”

“What about your friend who was killed? How did he feel about it?”

I took a deep breath, feeling the sting of X’s death. “He adored Kenna,” I said quietly. “He thought she was badass. He even married her best friend. And that woman is pretty badass, too.”

“You feel Kenna supports you then? Emotionally, professionally?”

“She’s our number one fan.
My
number one fan. We met before we hit it big…”

I told him the whole story of my Baby Girl and me. Hell, it was what I was paying him a small fortune for. I’d promised I would do whatever it took, and
not
working with the people here wouldn’t get me very far. But, hell yeah, I bragged about my woman to David. I had diarrhea of the mouth about her for at least a solid hour.

“The thing is,” I said, wrapping all this up, “she doesn’t want me here so that we can be together. She wants me here so that I can get through this shit for myself. It fuckin’ sucks because I
am
doin’ this so that we can be together again, and I don’t see why it can’t be both ways.”

“I think that you
are
doing this for both those reasons. She’s right though. You should be doing this for you, so when you leave here, you’re in a good place within yourself.”

“Then, how is that not selfish? That’s somethin’ that fucks with me. I know I’m selfish a lot of the time. I want to be more like her, thinkin’ beyond myself and what I want, you know?”

“By being in a good place inside
yourself
, Phil, you can bring that to other people. The people in your life will benefit from having you happy and sound of mind. Just like all the negative things that landed you here in the first place, the good things will bring joy to you and your loved ones.”

Yeah, that’s one way to look at it, I guess.

The daily schedule was pretty much mapped out. After Gustav’s rabbit-food lunch special, I had two hours to hang with the guys. They brought over a few guitars and a small drum kit.

And a bass.

Before I could say anything about that, Jason held up a small black case. “Talked to Granny this mornin’.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, man.
She
called
me
. Well, she called Sheri, who called the main office, who gave me my phone back to call Granny—you get the idea. Said her spirit guides told her to tell me to tell you that you have to shed the old, reveal what you’ve forgotten, and begin again.”

“And how’s the box gonna help me with that?”

Flipper did a decent impression of Brad Pitt’s
Seven
performance. “
What’s in the bahx
?”

Snappin’ the tabs, Jason busted out a buzzer and barber shears.

To shave.

My fuckin’
head.

“Hell no!” I said.

“Dude, it’s time,” said Jason. “Granny ain’t ever led us astray before.”

“Did she tell you I had to shave my fuckin’ head?”

“Yeah. She said the dreamcatchers need to be seen.”

“Do it!” said Flipper. “You’ve been lettin’ that shit grow for more than five years now.”

I looked at Connor, whose hair was pretty fuckin’ long, and Jason, who had his hair pulled back into a knot. I glared at his scarred face and good looks, wondering if he just wanted to have the prettiest hair in the band. But, in my opinion, Connor did. It was dreamy.

“You guys gonna shave your heads, too?”

“Fuck no,” said Jason. “Sheri would nut-chuck me.”

“And Kenna would nut-chuck me!”

Connor’s eyes dropped to the floor, but he said nothing.

“What do you think, Little Brother?” I asked.

“I think…I think it could be good for you. But it’s your hair.”

Eyeballing the buzzer, I then looked up at Jason again. “All right.”