Chapter 5 #3
Roy found plastic condiment cups in the cabinet. The plinking sounds of the cereal going into one might work for a song composition. Like U2, who’d thrown silverware down a staircase on one of their songs.
Roy sat the cup next to him so DJ could take a pinch. His mind had cleared enough to recognize a disappointing fact. “That wasn’t him.”
“No. But look on the bright side. It means you get to keep my charming presence for a while longer.”
“Plus your impressive ability to crush my ribs against asphalt.” DJ managed a wry smile. The sweetness of the cereal helped. As well as the memory that went with it.
“We used to beg Marjorie for this stuff, but it was too expensive. She’d get us the knock-off brands, though.”
The guy had fired more than one shot. Three? They’d zinged around DJ like tossed fireworks. But Roy had taken him down. Roy had been the shield between those bullets and DJ.
The thought slammed him fully back into himself, removing the tunnel vision that had kept him from noticing the spattering of blood on his bodyguard’s shirt.
DJ followed it to a fortunately small cut on Roy’s neck. The shirt was ripped, the tie loose at the collar. Two buttons were missing midway down. His hair was mussed, giving the dark and forbidding expression a sexy smolder.
DJ untied the tie, letting the two ends lie against Roy’s chest. He freed the button at Roy’s throat and the one right below it, so the shirt was open to the lowest missing button. He wore his cotton tank beneath. If he removed the shirt, DJ could run his hands over the impressive pecs.
Roy watched him, expression unreadable.
“Just humoring me, huh?” DJ asked, when the silence drew out.
“You know the saying, ‘It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission?’ You better ask for both, because I didn’t say you could touch or undress me.”
The look in Roy’s eyes brought him to a different and far better place in his head. “I’m sorry. Sir. Is it okay if I touch you? I’d like…it would help.”
No bullshit. Fortunately Roy saw it. Roy controlled the decision, gripping DJ’s wrist and bringing his hand back to his chest. Beneath the tank, he could feel Roy’s beating heart. “It’s all right.”
“Yeah. Thanks to you and your team.” Fuck, he was trembling. Roy’s hand covered his and stroked. Soothed.
“He didn’t know how to aim for shit. He could have killed a fan. Is that girl okay? I shoved her.”
“Bruised but not shot. I think her parents will be okay with that.”
Roy shrugged out of his shirt, thank God, and put it around DJ’s shoulders, over the open, short-sleeved shirt he wore. He’d been right about how the tank defined Roy’s upper body. DJ decided it wasn’t just the shirt that could help him get warmer.
“Shock makes you cold,” Roy told him.
“I had your shirt cleaned and returned to your room.”
“Yeah. After pilfering it. You can keep this one. The rips and blood stains don’t meet my company dress code, and I won’t set a bad example for my team.”
“Did my fans do that?” He gestured to the blood on Roy’s shirt.
“One of the girls I pulled off of your assailant had flailing arms and multiple rings. I think it was a pewter dragon holding a ruby that got my neck.” Roy touched the cut and shrugged, dismissing it.
DJ put his arms through the sleeves and surrounded himself with the heat and scent of Roy. “If he’d been standing in the crowd, he could have shot me point blank in the face when I came up to do autographs.”
“Yeah. But he wasn’t. And this kid would have been noticed.
He didn’t blend with your fans.” Roy’s jaw tightened.
“He was approved to be on site, which complicated the issue, but he was emotional and disorganized. Not much planning went into this, which means once he exposed himself, the take down was straightforward. Regardless, we’ll go over how it happened to improve our game. ”
Roy cocked his head, a sign he was listening on his earpiece.
“Got it. Thanks. His girlfriend works for the studio. She told him she’d had sex with you after your rehearsal yesterday.
She wanted to break up with him and thought that would keep him from chasing after her.
Sorry, DJ. I know the tabloids will turn it into the truth. ”
“I don’t worry about that shit any more. It doesn’t mean anything. Moss has become so good at turning their lies to our favor, they’ve also almost given up doing it. We take all the fun out of it.”
DJ stared moodily into space, his jiggling knee against the table leg making the remaining Captain Crunch bounce in the condiment cup. “Keep drinking water, DJ,” Roy said, nudging it toward him.
DJ took an obligatory swig. “You know, in the early days, we played everywhere. Garage parties, weddings, taverns, roadhouses. We picked up core fans who are still with us today. They remember when we were earning less than a hundred bucks a gig. Sometimes all we got was free beer.”
“You miss it sometimes, I’ll bet.”
“Yeah. But…we dreamed of the whole rockstar fantasy, all of us did.” DJ’s expression darkened. “None of us ever imagined someone would kill us because of the impact they think we made on their life.” He lifted his gaze to Roy. “I’m not talking about this messed-up kid.”
“I know. Would you change anything about the road you’ve taken to get here?”
Roy wasn’t going to reassure him, because he knew better than DJ what they were facing. That wasn’t very comforting. However, once he thought it through, his question pointed DJ in a different, better direction.
“No,” DJ admitted. “We’ve made our mistakes and had regrets, but there’s nothing big in our decisions—or lack thereof—that we’d change.
And we’ve been damn lucky with where we ended up.
It’s why we called ourselves Survival with Grace.
That was our original name. We thought it would become SG, you know, like U2.
Moss told us to shorten it to Survival, but because we were stubborn and thought it meant as much to our audience as it did to us—it didn’t—we put the other in parentheses on our first album. Survival (with Grace).”
He sent Roy a self-effacing smile. “The best thing any artist can do for their career is get over their need to be precious.”
“Noted. I plan to become a world-famous author when I retire. Write exposés on all my clients.”
“And lose all your royalties to their lawsuits because you’ve broken their NDAs.” DJ chuckled. Then he started like someone had goosed him with a thousand volts.
His phone was buzzing. Jesus.
Moss had probably picked it up on the news and wanted to touch base.
Or Pete, Steve and Tal wanted to know why the hell they weren’t being allowed into the break room.
He should have told Roy not to block them, but Roy had known what DJ needed, and DJ had let Roy take that lead, keeping the world at bay.
It was a weird but not bad feeling.
He hit the speaker phone function, because whether it was Moss or the band, they’d want Roy’s input to reassure them. “Yeah?”
“I would have protected you.”
A modulator made the voice deep, but the rasp held emotions too strong to be neutralized. “You need to let me protect you, Dorian. They don’t care about you the way I do.”
Roy’s gaze went warrior hard. He cradled DJ’s hand in his so he could see the screen. Private caller. Of course. But he made a swirling finger gesture at DJ that said, “Keep him talking” as he moved away, muttering into the mic that connected him to his team.
“Who is this?”
“You know who this is,” the caller snarled. “Don’t act like you don’t. That hurts my feelings.”
“I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but this isn’t your real voice, right? Have we met before?”
A silence. A measured breath. “Someone is trying to find out more about me. It’s him. You did a piss-poor job, Roy,” he accused. “That crazy motherfucker should never have gotten that close to Dorian.”
Roy turned. The way he stared at the phone would have liquefied the bowels of a charging gorilla, but when he spoke, his tone was eerily mild. Calculating.
“You didn’t come out of your hole to stop him. Is hiding who you are more important than protecting DJ?”
“No. Nothing is more important than protecting him. You deserve to die for failing him. But none of you understand. He’ll eventually understand and come to me. I’ll protect him. He doesn’t want this life. He’s alone in the middle of all of you. He’ll never be alone with me.”
“Why am I this important to you?” DJ asked. “What makes me this special?”
“You sang for me first,” the voice said. “You told me who you were before you told anyone else. It will all make sense, Dorian. Just trust me. I need you to trust me.” The tone implored DJ to understand. “I will never hurt you. No one cares about you the way I do.”
The call ended.
DJ relinquished the phone to Roy and left the chair, moving to the wall, then turning until he reached the other one. Back and forth. Twice. He put his back in the corner and covered his face with his hands, pressing his fingers to his eyes.
“DJ.”
He shook his head to hold Roy off. A guy ran at him with a gun, screaming about a broken heart. Yeah, that shook him up. But this voice. Cold, calculating. As if he already knew everything about DJ, and underneath that was the darkness. Tightly leashed, like a weapon cocked.
“You don’t know me, ass wipe. Because if you did, you’d know I hate to be called Dorian.”
He sunk down onto his heels. Pulled out the notebook and started writing about darkness. Surviving darkness. Survival. His hands were shaking.
“Dory.” Roy squatted in front of him. He waited until he was done writing, but then put his hands over DJ’s. “Look at me.”
No gentleness, but not unkind either. It was simple authority, a requirement that DJ do what he said, because he knew DJ wanted to do that. It pulled DJ’s gaze up to him.
“He scares me.”
“He should. But tell me why.”