34. Riot #2
“But you do, Candy Head.” My old nickname for her tumbles from my lips as I press my forehead to hers.
“So let me reassure you. I don’t want her.
I never have. That video... it’s fucking make believe.
Something the record label insists on. It’s not what I want.
What I want is you. What I’ve always wanted is you.
I don’t want to. I try not to, but I can’t stop. ”
“But you did want her.” There’s a world of pain in her eyes. “Back then. You wanted her.”
“No, I...” My throat thickens and the words don’t come.
It doesn’t matter that I don’t remember how we got to that place where I destroyed us.
Only that it happened. “I hate myself over it. I regret that I hurt you so fucking much. I can’t move on from you.
When you’re not here, I don’t want to be either. Existing without you is torture.”
“You can’t say that to me.”
“The hell I can’t.” I devour her desperately, like a drowning man fighting his way back to the surface. Needing her like I need oxygen.
She kisses me back frantically, clinging to me. Pressing up against me like we’re two halves of a magnet that will keep colliding for eternity. I taste the salt of her emotion mixed with the sweetness of the alcohol she’s been drinking. “I need you, Candy Head. Come back to me.”
Something shifts. She stops kissing me. She puts space between us before I even let her go.
“Don’t call me that. I’m not her anymore.” There’s so much sadness in her when she shakes her head. “I told you... I can’t.”
I keep hold of her. It doesn’t matter how much we hate each other, or how angry we are. Or that I’m still not over her after all this time. It only matters that she belongs to me. I can’t let her go. “Kels—”
She rips herself away from me. “Don’t ask me to trust you. Or forgive you. I won’t. You might as well go ahead and date Sonatina.”
“I’m not.”
“Fine, fake dating, or whatever you’re doing.” She wraps her arms around her torso and puts the whole room between us.
“I’m not with Sonatina.” I scrape a hand through my hair. She’s infuriating. “And if I didn’t have to fix your fucking mess I wouldn’t be in this fake relationship either. Hell, Carmine would never have forced her on us as our manager.”
“What?” She spreads her hand across the base of her throat. “She’s your...How could you?”
“You didn’t leave me any other choice.” I sit heavily on the desk. Why does she keep acting like she has no idea how badly she screwed us all?
“You could have hired anyone but her.”
“No, I couldn’t.” I hide my fists in the pits of my leather jacket. “After what you did, we’re lucky L.A. Riot didn’t get blacklisted and sued out of existence.”
“What I did?” Her eyes grow round, horrified. “Are you freaking kidding me?”
“Where’s the money you took, Kelsey?”
“What money?! I already told you. I didn’t take any money.”
“Why are you still lying to me? You wrote about it in your diary.” I read it with my own fucking eyes. “You were even considering confessing. Why didn’t you come to me if you needed money. I would have looked after you.”
“The way you did when Carmine blacklisted me?!”
“You stole from the label!” I shout. “From the band! There’s evidence. And all I am asking for is the truth.”
She gapes at me.
“My relationship with Sonatina is the only thing that’s kept your ass out of jail.”
She’s still staring at me like I’m speaking a different language.
“Was it to deal with Marco? Did he...” What exactly am I trying to ask? I thought she knew she could confide in me about anything. Obviously, I was wrong. “Did you have no choice but to take the money and run?”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” she says coolly. “And whatever you thought you read in my journal about it... you’re wrong. I didn’t steal anything.”
“You’re going to keep pretending like there isn’t evidence that could have you on a felony charge?”
“It doesn’t matter what I say, does it?” she asks, soft, quiet, followed by a pained chuckle. “You don’t want to be the only one who broke us. You’re not going to believe me.”
I wince. I caused her a lot of pain. But she can’t negate her part in it. How are we ever going to find our way through if she can’t take responsibility for the damage she did. “You literally confessed in your diary. I’ve seen the account statements. So no, I don’t believe you.”
“There’s no point in me trying to get you to believe me then, is there?” She throws her hands up. “If you had a fucking clue what I was actually writing about...”
She turns silent. Like she’s said too much. Pure agony flickers across her face, I almost miss it. She scratches the top of her head. “You know what... it doesn’t matter.”
But it does matter to me. “If it wasn’t about that, then what were you wanting to confess to me?”
Her facial muscles twitch. She licks her lips. And then her eyes turn harder than I’ve ever seen them. Her lips become a thin slash. “You have my journal. Why don’t you figure it out for yourself?”
She storms out of the room, barely squeezing past Rook who fills bunk alley. He doesn’t seem to notice the state she’s in. “I need to borrow you for a minute.”
“Can it wait?” I need a minute to reread that part of her journal I thought I had it figured out.
“Now,” he states.
“Fine.” I take out my tin and snag a joint before following him out of the bus. “What’s going on?”
“You remember the issue you were having two years ago with the stalker?” He leads the way through the parking garage.
“Yeah.” I’d been stressed as hell by the end of it.
Worried sick about Kelsey. And then concerned for Sonatina when she seemed to have ended up in my stalker’s sights.
That last attack had been the catalyst for my entire relationship with Sonatina but not actually related to my stalker.
Who it turned out had gone quiet a few weeks earlier.
“It looks like they’ve started up again,” he says as the trucks come into sight. Coffey climbs out of the back of one of them, a grim expression on his face.
Catching sight of us, he waits for us to join him. “Nothing’s been touched since we saw it.”
I stride around the back of the truck. Please don’t be a dead bird like last time.
I let out a sudden breath. No poor dead animal, no damaged instruments this time. No photo of a woman who I shared one miserable moment with, her eyes scratched out. Just a letter written on the inside wall in deep, red paint.
I’ve waited for you. We’ll be together soon. No one is going to come between us ever again.
“Fucking hell.” I scrub a hand over my face. This is the last thing I need.