48. Chapter 33
You Broke Me Too
Cohen
History. Our history. It’s repeating itself.
None of us are so foolish as to raise hell while we’re still out here in front of a crowd.
Ten years ago, we probably would have, but now, ready as I am to rip Lou to fucking shreds, I’ll wait and do it when there isn’t a room full of people who can gossip about it or blast it all over the damn internet.
That doesn’t mean we don’t make a break for it the second Lou shouts to the crowd, “My fellow Deviants—enjoy the fucking party!”
I latch on to Rain’s waist, unable to hide my satisfaction at the grumble that elicits from Dutch.
Her candy-coated dress might make her look goddamn edible, but that’s not the reason I’ve grabbed her.
Dax and Dutch follow as I walk her back into the hidden staff corridor just in time for Blue and his revolving door of bandmates-slash-minions to walk by.
His ice-blue eyes roam over Rain, and that crusty mother fucker winks as he passes.
The already weakened tether on my piss poor patience snaps, and I push Rain harder than I intend, sending her spine crashing into the sterile grey walls of the corridor.
I pivot with her and scream, “Did you know?!?!” all while ignoring Dutch’s gruff warnings to, “Watch it.”
My face is pressed right up close to hers so I’ll see the lies forming behind those bewitching eyes.
“Did you know?” I ask again.
This close, my fury makes her hair tangle and twist in her face, and I can make out every twitch, every wince, and the barest flush on her cheeks.
Whether from my question or, maybe, my dick unhelpfully suggests, it’s because I’m pressed right up against her.
A position that, somehow, I keep finding myself in.
Not for long this time, though. She shoves me back a step and juts her chest out. “No!” she answers forcefully. In the empty hallway, it rings loudly. The next time she opens her mouth, her volume is a little lower.
“No, Cohen. I didn’t know! I haven’t seen Blue Grace in person in ten damn years.
” Her tongue runs along her teeth, and it’s as if her next words taste poisonous.
“And if you, any of you, had even bothered to listen back then, you’d know that there’s not a single person on this fucking planet that hates that man the way I do! ”
My eyes roll, or start to, but don’t get far before a palm connects with the side of my face, sending a blinding shock of pain across my skin. The hand is too big and too dark to belong to Rain.
“Fucking listen,” Dutch cusses, “For once in your damn life.”
He points at Rainy before rubbing his thumb across the palm he suckered me with. Guess that slap didn’t just hurt me. Still, the hit has woken me up. To the way Rain’s shaking and the empty look in her eyes, as she says the same words she said all those years ago.
“Blue Grace stole everything from me.” She says it like the man himself has taken a spoon and hollowed out everything about her that makes her Rain.
From behind us, it’s not Dutch, but Dallas who approaches her. He laces his delicate, if calloused, fingers with hers and, in his gravelly Dax way, prompts her, “You can say it, Rainy. Time to face those demons.”
And fuck me, if that doesn’t transform her whole face. Her eyes turn to glass, but she looks up at Dax as if he’s invented a melody that is all for her.
“How long have you known?” she mumbles.
His own expression is so soft as he looks down at her. “I think from day one. I was just too messed up to say as much.”
“It triggered you?” she questions, and he dips his chin to confirm. Their own private conversation passes in that single look. It’s one I’m not a part of, and never have been.
Still, I find myself barking, “Say what?”
Rain breaks her eye contact with Dallas, straightens her spine and closes her eyes. There’s a long, slow breath as she prepares for whatever she is about to say. But there’s no preparing me for the three words that leave her lips.
“I was raped.”
Every note of anger and frustration inside me goes deathly silent.
Her eyes re-open, but she’s not here. She’s trapped in the past. “That night, by Blue Grace. But not just him, I think; it’s all messed up. My memories are a maze of grey, and black and pain, but he wasn’t alone. Blue wasn’t alone. There were at least two others.”
She shudders, and those words, every last one of them, settle on top of me like boulders on my chest, threatening to stop my lungs. In the moments between one aching breath and the next, I, too, am catapulted back in time, to the days after the party.
“B-b-but, I saw the video.”
Rain’s voice cracks as she looks back at me and asks, “Video?”
Our faces mirror each other’s desperation as I’m forced to relive what might now be the second worst moment of my life, because I think tonight is taking the top spot.
“Lou came to my house; he showed me a video,” I almost vomit as I say the next words, “Of you and Blue. It looked…it didn’t look like…”
“I was filmed?”
Her knees wobble, and my heart leaps forward, but I’m not the one to catch her. I don’t deserve to be. The Kelly brothers surround her, each offering their own form of comfort.
“Tell me,” she croaks, “Please, Co, I need to know.”
My own self-loathing has never been stronger, and the words catch inside my mouth, because saying them out loud also means admitting that when given the choice between believing the girl, the woman, I was supposed to love or listening to my manager’s bullshit, I chose the latter.
Like a goddamn chump.
Dutch pins me with a violent look.
“Talk.”
It takes a hard swallow, but I do. The whole story rushes out of me.
So quickly that I’m definitely rambling, wrongly trying to justify my unjustifiable behaviour, all without admitting to my bandmates how fucked up I really am.
Sure, back then I didn’t know or understand what was wrong with me, but there’s no diagnosis that can excuse away the past.
By the time I finish, it feels like the hallway we’re in, like the whole fucking world, has narrowed to no one and nothing but the four of us.
“I-I-I fucked up,” is all I manage to offer them at first. “I never should have trusted Lou Braun. Not then. Not now.”
Unbelievably, it’s Rain who hands me a lifeline.
“None of us should.” She looks up at Dutch, gripping his bicep while giving Dallas’s hand another squeeze.
She doesn’t even have to touch me at all for my heart to squeeze too.
Before it fucking drops through the floor.
“Lou’s been playing us all. From the day he brought us back together.
” Her voice shrinks, but it still echoes unnaturally off the empty walls around us.
“Part of our deal, or my deal, was that I had to keep you distracted.”
“Distracted, Rainy?” Dutch asks, “What does that mean?”
“It means that Lou didn’t want Cohen in contact with his family or his lawyers. He never told me why.”
“Because he’s trying to royally fuck us over, and he hoped I would be too distracted to notice.”
I don’t exactly spell out the details of my afternoon, but I do explain that the Wren and McQuaid lawyers finally got through to me, via my mother, and they didn’t have anything good to say.
“And you helped?”
It wasn’t meant to be another tossed-out accusation, but even I can admit it sure as hell sounds like one. She takes it that way too.
“Fuck you, Cohen! What was I supposed to do?! I was broke, homeless, and just turned thirty! You know, the expiration date that society puts on women! It wasn’t exactly like I had a ton of options.”
“You had the option not to sell me out.”
“Yeah, well, you had the option to believe me in the first place. Guess we both chose wrong.”
Even though I know she’s right, even though I can hear my doctor’s voice in my head telling me to step back, take a breath and get some space before I react, I don’t.
I can’t. My own damn brain betrays me worse than Rainy ever did.
Hell, she never betrayed me at all, and instead of dealing with my guilt and shame, that I so rightly deserve, I toss it back in her face.
“I knew we couldn’t trust you! I knew you’d sell us all out!” I scream. It wasn’t supposed to be a scream. But I’m a slave to my own reactions.
Exasperated, frustrated, and angry, she shouts back, “Trust is a two-way street, Cohen! I tried to tell you multiple times! All of you!”
She’s not just yelling at me anymore; she’s protesting everything that’s happened with the four of us since Lou brought us back together.
“I tried, but there were always groupies, or fights, or Lou, or fucking Trey.”
The mention of Trey sets me off again. “Oh, you mean your fiancé, Trey?” I spit with as much venom as I can muster, because the very idea of him is acidic. “The guy who’s suing me for assault because I was dumb enough to defend you?”
“He’s what?!” all three of my bandmates blurt out.
“Oh, as if you care! As if any of you care!” I rip myself away from all of them until I’m leaning against the opposite wall.
There’s enough space for any of the club staff to easily pass between us.
With all our screaming, it’s a miracle no one’s come to see what’s going on.
Probably thanks to the pulsing beats and the DJ's music. Still, I look both ways, checking to make sure we aren’t being overheard.
Of course it’s Dutch who has to take over. Be mister cool in the face of what is definitely a fucked-up situation. “Cohen, you are being a little bitch again.”
I grunt, because as much as I want to deny it, it’s true.
“So what now?” he asks. “What do we deal with first, Trey or Lou and the contract?”
“We do nothing,” I reply, “I am getting the fuck out of here.”
Dax jolts forward, falling to his knees, and sounds so unusually like his brother, all sensible and shit, that it pisses me off.
“But, Co, we need to sort this out. Lou, Trey, all of it.”
He points to Rain and Dutch. “We can sort it out together.”
Together. Yeah, fucking right. He’s still holding Rain’s hand. She’s still super-glued to Dutch. Those three are a team now. I’m alone and outnumbered.
“Fuck your togetherness. You want me to play happy family with my ex-girlfriend, the girl who’s been lying to all of us for weeks, and my friend who didn’t think twice about fucking her? Yeah, right.”
My voice is hoarse from screaming. My throat aches, and all I want is to disappear down these hallways into the dark of the club. Maybe I’ll find someone to lose myself in. Better that than being alone with the emptiness inside me.
Dax still tries to console me.
“No, Cohen. I want us to be a band. I want us to be…us,” he attests.
And sure, he’s giving me the Dallas Kelly puppy dog eyes while he says it.
The eyes that make me want to brush his hair back so I can see them more clearly.
But he doesn’t mean it. He can’t. Not when he’s still standing so tightly against Rainy.
“What, us?!” I ask, because I’m so done pretending this could ever work. I was fucking kidding myself to think otherwise. “There’s them…” I point to the happy couple. “And then there’s me. It was always going to come down to this.”
My eyes narrow to the spot where Rainy’s shoulder brushes his.
“Pffft, then again, it’s pretty clear whose side you’re choosing. I’ll be upstairs if you change your mind.”
It’s emotional blackmail. And childish. I know, I hear it too.
But I’m in the grips of an emotional roller coaster that I can’t get off.
And the more I look at the three of them huddled together, the more alone I feel.
So I walk away, spinning until they’re no longer in my line of sight and head for the elevator.
Murmurs of a conversation between the three of them reach me.
More whispered secrets. More mumblings that I’m not a part of.
I put my head down and keep my back turned as the elevator doors close behind me.
Though it brings me back upstairs, to our VIP booth, to the party that is supposed to be a celebration in our honour, inside of me I sink deeper into the vacuum of nothing that lives inside my chest. Because that’s what I am without them.