2. Chapter Two
Chapter Two
Mac
“Are you sure this is a good idea?”
Swiping the back of my hand along my nose, I flag over the bartender and order another drink.
I’m raw.
Split open and sitting next to the one person that somehow makes me need the therapy sessions where I feel like I’m cutting out my heart to show the doc all my scars, and yet …
“Mac.”
My jaw clenches at the way my bodyguard says my name. It’s somehow like a plea, and a demand all at once.
And just one time … I want to know what it would be like to hear that tone in a different manner. Maybe lost somewhere between the sheets of the hotel bed Jordan most often chooses to share with me, the gay guy, even though he’s straight.
Sighing, I turn to my bodyguard with the fresh drink in my hand. “Drinking is a Toby problem. Not me.”
Jordan’s dark brow wings up behind his backwards hat. “It’s his coming home party. From rehab .”
He emphasizes the words like I don’t know where the bassist in my band has been for the last several months, only available via short in-person visits and a phone he managed to commandeer.
It’s the longest I’ve ever gone without talking to him .
Growing up, Toby was always around. Him and Leo all but grew up at the house with Rex and me, my Ma as their second guardian. And then when we all found ourselves in the barely-there garage with instruments in hand, it was like the universe dropping the sign right in front of us.
Form a band.
Music has been my lifeblood for as long as I can remember. It’s what controls my limbs when I play, calms my mind when it’s too loud, feeds my soul when it gets dark.
It frees me.
I don’t know how to not play. Which probably just feeds into the constant movement I find myself making whether I’m in front of my kit or not.
“It’s just to chill. Have some fucking fun,” I mumble into the rim of the glass just before the taste of bitter cranberry bursts on my tongue, followed by the slight burn of not-enough alcohol.
Jordan sighs something deep at my elbow, then knocks on the bar, signaling for the check.
“Sure, I’m done now,” I spit and throw back the rest of what was supposed to be a vodka and cranberry.
“It was that bad, huh?” Jordan asks me, his words pulling a glance from me that I throw over my shoulder and instantly regret.
Because of course there’s a flash of concern riding the navy blue of his irises.
I sigh and let my eyes slide close for just a moment, hoping for a reprieve.
It didn’t work.
I’m still jittery, nervous, and wondering how in the fuck I managed to tell the doc about the one night I swore I’d never bring up again.
I was over it. Had stuffed it so far down that not even my twin could feel the shit rotting along inside my chest anymore.
I’d almost convinced myself.
It’s been years. Literally years since I confessed to my twin that I fell in love with the straight man sitting next to me.
Hundreds of days that Jordan has shared my sleeping space, with no objection from me, without a third thought since it started.
Countless nights of feeling him watching me, protecting me. Guarding me, even from myself.
And I had to just go and fucking let it slip on my second mandatory visit with the doc that not only is my bodyguard sharing my bed— platonically —but I’ve also been harboring feelings for the man or some shit, while my brother seethes about it from afar. Mandatory because apparently we all need to keeps our heads right for tour.
As if any of it was Jordan’s fault.
I’ve been out of whack since and it’s had my bodyguard hovering around the edge of my vision, watching me and waiting for me to spill my guts like I normally would.
I mean, since I’m the one that demands he be my best friend and all.
Which, in hindsight, seems like the least logical decision I’ve ever made.
The dynamic has changed in my mind, yet again, and I don’t know that I can shake it off as easily as I have in the past with him up my fucking ass. Toby out of the loop. My twin so far gone for the family that he started that I have no one to run to.
I don’t want to burden them.
Even as a kid, loneliness had threatened me. That ever-present knowledge that I was different than most burrowing down in my gut as a constant reminder to keep people at a distance. But then my twin would burst in, punch anyone that looked like a problem, and sit with me in the dark.
Now?
Now … I have a man I want who in no way reciprocates the feeling, who is paid to spend his time with me, as my only defense in keeping the emptiness at bay.
And I’m having a deal biting back the void’s demands.
It’s demanding its debt be paid and I’m all out of cash.
“ Since when is this how we do shit ?” I snap as Jordan’s fist lands on the release bar of the exit, and he rushes out first.
“Since you’re in your head and not paying attention,” he growls right back, grabbing a fistful of my shirt and tugging me through the threshold I’d stopped in.
He always lets me go first …
The gravel grinds beneath the soles of my Chucks as we walk, just as my jaw grinds my teeth to near dust, but as much as I want to crawl into a hole somewhere far away from all of this, I know that I can’t.
Because Toby’s home .