Chapter 25
(Johnny)
“You were phenomenal up there tonight.”
Grinning, I looked up when the sound of Draven’s device reached my ears as he stepped out onto the balcony beside me.
“I used to think that it was the only place I could find a true measure of joy and peace,” I replied, snuggling against his side as he wrapped an arm around me.
“Used to? What’s changed?”
He was having to type everything tonight, but I hardly noticed the pauses anymore, it was just a soft lull that provided me with a break in sound when my head was still buzzing from the stage.
“Nothing about being up there has changed,” I explained as I tipped my head back and drew in a long breath.
The mountains in the distance were large, looming shadows, rugged and flat across the tops in places, unlike the jagged peaks covered in evergreens back east. Beautiful to look at, but something about them always felt a little bit menacing, like they could send a wall of rock crashing down on us at any given moment, leaving us buried beneath the stony silence. Like, what even held all of that together? Not the scrubby shrubs and patchy grass, that’s for damn sure.
“But something has,” Draven conveyed.
“You,” I explained, turning to meet his gaze. “The peace, the joy, it’s the same when I’m with you as it is when I’m up there. I’m as at home with you as I am up there, too, and it’s because you’re my home now, as much as the stage is.”
“I’m sorry I waited so long to see how truly special you were, and how much I needed you in my life.”
“Sometimes the timing’s just wrong, or there are lessons we still need to learn before we can appreciate what’s right in front of us. I’m yours now, though, isn’t that what really matters?”
“Always.”
That one word whispered along my skin made me shiver more than the cold that was trying to creep through my jacket.
Holy shit, the show we’d played was still echoing through my head, electric currents of energy racing along my skin like there was a live wire inside of me.
Even hours later, after signing a bunch of autographs and a long, hot shower, there was no measure of calm in sight. Sometimes, I was keyed up until three or four in the morning, especially when there wasn’t an after party or other festivities to attend. My brain was just always filled with a whirlwind of music, but with Draven I never had to explain that, because he knew what it was like, and how hard the crash was when it finally closed in around me.
As always his touch was grounding, as was the scent of leather that clung to him from the duster he was wearing. We’d driven to San Diego right after we’d left Ozzy and Claude at the airport. Surprisingly, the man had taken the rejection well and shaken all of our hands, thanking us for an amazing weekend before heading into the terminal with Ozzy. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about that, if he’d truly been genuine or if he was biding his time, hoping Kit choked. Either way, it no longer mattered in the grand scheme of things. Kit would be playing his first show with us in two days and I had faith that he’d be amazing.
Nuzzling my head beneath Draven’s chin, I pressed against his chest, my cheek right over his heart, the steady beat as rhythmic as Ozzy’s drums.
“You looking for hugs, or trying to steal my body heat?”
“Both,” I murmured, rubbing my cheek against the soft cloth of his t-shirt while sliding my hand up over his peck.
The pool had been nice when we’d arrived after the show, but my hair still hadn’t dried yet, and the thin t-shirt I wore did little to keep the breeze from sending a chill through me. If it picked up anymore we’d have to go back in, which could prove fun in a lot of different ways.
The way he sucked in a breath and planted a hand on my ass gave me a feeling of power, until he rocked me against him and I was reminded of who really had all the control. I wanted him to throw me over his shoulder, carry me back in, toss me down on the bed and have his way with me, but I knew he wouldn’t until he’d tormented the hell out of us both, he was just that kind of wicked.
Marvelously wicked.
Deviously wicked.
Dazzlingly, decadently wicked.
I could write a power ballad expounding upon his level of wickedness and might, but not tonight. Tonight I just wanted to be in the moment with him.
“Tell me something you’ve always dreamed about,” he murmured, lips brushing the shell of my ear as he spoke.
“Besides you?”
“Besides me and beyond music. Something you’ve dreamed about that has nothing to do with anyone or anything else, just you. ”
That was easy.
“The Northern Lights,” I said. “And comets. I’ve seen meteor showers and solar and lunar eclipses. I’ve seen a blood moon and a blue moon and the reflection of a bright, silver full moon glistening on a perfectly still lake. Rolling waves and the sky at night have always held a special appeal for me and not just creatively. I’ve always been curious about what lay beyond and below. Science can only reach so far, and that’s where my imagination takes over. I get to pick out a star, and daydream about what might be on it. Like, I get to picture who might live on a frozen star, and if they live in ice castles or deep in caves they warm with something that isn’t fire. Is warm even a concept for them, or are they beings who formed of ice the way the creatures here were birthed in the depths of the ocean?”
“And what do you daydream about, when you sit imagining life in the deepest parts of the ocean?”
“Atlantis,” I admitted. “And other undersea kingdoms so far down that the pressure turns anything foreign into a crumpled lump, like tin foil, that the anglerfish bat around with their dangly antenna. If light doesn’t reach down there, does that mean that they don’t recognize the concept of light? Would it scare them, or would they be fascinated by it if they did see it and be drawn to it like moths? ”
“If they are born in darkness, their eyes might not function the way our eyes do. They might have them, because evolution gave them eyes during a time in history when they still lived closer to the surface, but I’d also be willing to bet that there are some that don’t have them at all.”
Now that gave me something to think about. That there were eyeless creatures who used a form of navigation that was even more sensitive than sonar and echo location.
Turning in his embrace, I stood facing the night sky and the half-moon over the mountains, wondering how many more stars had been in the night sky at the beginning of time. Maybe it was silly, but my thoughts had always drifted in directions like those, frustrating my teachers who mistook my daydreams and doodles for an interest in science only to be crushed when they discovered that I only cared enough to get a passing grade. I’d felt bad sometimes, too, when they tried to encourage me to take certain classes or look into pursuing particular careers, but I had never wanted to know the truth of what was or wasn’t there. To me that would completely ruin the fantasy.
"You should tell me something you dreamed about. You always get me to talk, and that’s okay because I love talking to you, but sometimes it feels like you want me to fill the silences, because you don’t want to take the time to type long stories, but that’s not okay. I can wait and daydream a little bit more while you’re typing. I want to hear your stories, too. I want to know what you’d have been doing if you hadn’t followed where the music pulled you and I’d love it if you told me the first song you ever fell wholly and completely in love with.”
I knew, when I’d asked all of those questions, that he’d have to let go of me to answer them, but I needed him to know that was okay, too. It would be no different than if he had to sign me the words, I’d still want to hear them, however he was able to convey them to me.
The scrape of metal on stone told me that he’d moved one of the chairs so he could get comfortable while I imagined what being holed up in an ice cave with him would be like, or even an igloo. There were places with ice hotels, out where the skies were unspoiled by pollution and the Northern Lights shimmered with brilliant purples, greens and blues. The whimsical part of me believed they’d been created by the fae, as a roadmap of how to find the hidden worlds they lived in.
It dawned on me, somewhere in the crisp winds and soft tapping of his fingers on the keypad of his device, that he’d given me back that piece of my childhood that I’d buried under my party boy motif. My aunt had always said that she’d known that wasn’t me when she saw the dirt rags and the articles on the internet, and I was sure I’d broken her heart a little when I’d proclaimed that it had indeed been me that they’d been writing about. Only, as I stood there, hoping to see meteor streaks and the glowing light of a comet’s tail racing across the heavens, I realized that she was right.
What other explanation was there for how easy it had been for me to give all of that up the moment I had someone who wanted to give me his full and undivided attention, just for being me?
Draven didn’t love Johnny Amaral the rock star. I mean, he did, but that wasn’t the only part he loved. In fact, I was coming to suspect that part was the smallest of all the things he loved about me.
Funny how knowing that had made it easier to just be me.
Looking back, I thought of all the shenanigans and hookups he’d seen me engage in, as well as the mischief he’d gotten up to. Like two planets sharing the same orbit, we’d been destined to collide. I was just glad that the explosion had produced sparks of love instead of fury or rivalry, because I don’t think my heart could have handled being in competition with him.
“The first song I soul-deep fell in love with was ‘Unforgiven.’ Everything about it, from the haunting melody to the gut wrenching words, and man did those words pack a punch in my teen years. It felt like I was always making mistakes, always falling short of the goals I’d set, and always catching shit from the ‘rents and my teachers for not living up to my potential or finding a way to fuck up even the simplest tasks. Oh my gods, that used to piss my old man off. He’d stand there, furiously scowling, reading whatever report had been sent home, or listening to my step-mom ramble on about whatever the hell it was that I’d broken or screwed up, like her kid didn’t fuck up all the time, too. I think that’s why Billy and I have never gotten along, despite spending most of our lives being raised together. I resented the way she always defended him when he fucked up, while never hesitating to throw me under the bus. It always felt like she wanted my old man to love Billy more than he loved me, but the old man wasn’t really capable of loving that way. Like, he was present in our lives and he gave a shit, but he had exacting standards and when I screwed up, and I was always screwing up, I never felt like I could fully erase that in his eyes. Even now, I get this sort of judgy disappointed vibe from him since he can no longer brag that his son is a rock star. Yeah, he’s just managing rock stars now . Like I had a choice. Sometimes, he makes me feel like I failed and got demoted, and that’s why ‘ Unforgiven’ still resonates so strongly for me. Because he still looks at me like I’m the sum of all my previous fuckups.”
“What’s he like with Billy?” I asked, because I sensed that there was more to his bitterness and I wanted him to know that I could handle him sharing all his pain and trauma, whatever that might be.
“They’re in the same bowling league, for fuck’s sake. Pops was the one to get Billy his job, and since Billy, his wife and their kids share the duplex with Pops and Billy’s mom, they ride to and from work together, go fishing damn near every weekend, including ice fishing, which I always wanted to try but he’d never do so I had to learn on my own.”
“I’ll go ice fishing with you,” I said, casting a glance over his shoulder to see him smiling at me. “I love ice fishing and I’ve never had the chance to do it in Maine. It would be cool to spend some time cozied up in a fishing shack with you, trying to keep one another warm while we wait for the bait to drown.”
“You know that the point of fishing isn’t to actually drown the bait, right?” he replied. “You’re supposed to rescue the fish.”
“Rescue the fish?”
“Yeah, from growing old and bored swimming around in the same old lake,” he pointed out. “Think about it. By the time they are big enough to be caught and kept instead of released, they’ve already been in their habitat for long enough to see it all. When I relocate them to the chopping block and then the hibachi, they’re getting a whole new experience.”
“Not sure they are experiencing anything once you chop off their heads,” I pointed out. “Now, if you wanted to get a little pint-sized aquarium so you could carry the first around with you all day without it expiring from lack of oxygen, then yeah, that would be an experience.”
Laughing, he reached for my hand and I let him tug me into his lap, where he brushed a stray lock of hair back from my cheek so he could caress it.
“One of the many, many reasons I love you is that quick, sarcastic whit and the way you just made me feel better without even trying. Promise you’ll never change.”
“I won’t,” I said, but when I tried to cuddle closer he kept me at arm’s length.
“I know that all of our band brothers as well as security and the crew know we’re together, but I got you something that I hope you’ll be okay with wearing, because I want the whole damned world to know you’re mine.”
My heart started tapping out a staccato beat when he reached into his pocket to pull out a long, rectangular-shaped box. What I saw when he took the lid off was an iridescent blue and silver metal collar that, holy shit, he turned it so that a moonbeam hit it and slowly I got to watch the elvish language come to life in fancy glowing script along its surface.
“Holy shit,” I breathed, “What does it say?”
“I’d crawl five hundred miles through the fiery pit, just for five more minutes with you.”
I lost it then, a choked sob spilling from between my lips as I trembled, trying not to shake too much as he leaned in and brushed a kiss over my lips.
“Please say you’ll wear my collar,” he murmured.
“As long as you promise one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“That once you lock it in place, you’ll never take it off me except to replace it with a new one?”
“Ohh, that is an easy promise to make.”
“Then I’ll wear it, in this life and the next one.”
“Works for me,” he murmured as he lowered his lips to mine again. “As long as this one lasts for a very long, long, long ass time.”
“Draven?”
“Huh?”
“Shuddup and kiss me.”