Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
CALLUM/CASH
Now
Stolen Stars & Hidden Storms
Some nights feel borrowed before they even begin.
Jaxon gives me a worried look as we stand in Mayhem’s new practice space. “What I would suggest you do is let me help you. Tell me what you know so Livianna doesn’t get caught up in all of this.”
I’ll die before I tell Jaxon, or anyone for that matter, what I’ve gone through. “I don’t know what you think I do.”
“Cash, I’ve been where I suspect you are, and if that’s the case, you need to understand none of it was your fault.”
I huff. “Jaxon?—”
“No, Cash. It’s time to quit running from your past and handle it before you get hurt.”
The bass amp hums behind me like it’s daring me to fill the silence. I should break out in a melodramatic song, singing of the devil who does his work under the veil of Floating V, but I won’t.
“Jaxon, what should I handle?” I pace a short line across the floor, three steps forward and back. “You keep saying all this shit like there’s something to handle. Like I’ve got some issue I’m walking around with.”
Jaxon doesn’t answer. His gaze stays level, and his posture unmoved.
“Fine. Let’s play it your way.” I ball my fists at my side. “Hypothetically, if a guy spent years carrying around a weight he was ashamed of. Not weak. Just ashamed. What would you tell him?”
“I’d tell him shame belongs to the person who caused it.” Jaxon’s arms cross at his chest. “Not the one who survived it.”
“Yeah, well. A hypothetical guy might disagree.”
“Then he’d be wrong.”
That certainty hits me in the sternum before I can brace for it. Jaxon delivers it the way he delivers everything, like the matter has already been settled and everyone around him is simply catching up.
I drag a hand through my hair and turn away from him. The drum kit sits in the corner like a cathedral built for people who scream for a living, and right now, I’d give anything to be behind it.
“You said you’ve been where you think I am.” I turn back around and face him. “What does that mean for you? What happened to you?”
Jaxon goes still for a beat. Not because he doesn’t have an answer. Because he’s probably deciding how much of it belongs in this room.
“Whatever way my abuser needed to control me.” He holds my gaze without a flicker of anything crossing his face. “That’s the way he chose, and that’s all I’ll say about it.”
“Fucking hell.” I thought I had it bad.
The heaviness of that settles between us and stays. The man in front of me wears his tailored jacket, carrying the quiet authority that clears rooms without a raised voice. Buried underneath all of that polish is a boy who got through the same kind of darkness I refuse to name out loud.
“And you’re good now?” I scrub my palm over the back of my neck. “Like, you handled it?”
“Not completely.” Jaxon’s eyes grow dark. “But when I find him, then it will be taken care of.”
That lands harder than anything else he’s said. Because I know that feeling of revenge.
“This is all hypothetical.” I sit on a stool we have down here. “What if the guy let it go on longer than he should’ve because he convinced himself it was the only way to get through it?”
“Then he made the best decision he could with what he had. Given his position and the information available to him at the time, he made the right choice. That’s all any of us survivors have.”
My throat closes tight. I press my hands into my thighs. “That’s a generous read.”
“It’s an accurate one. You were surviving, Cash. Whatever it looked like. Whatever it cost.” He takes a deep breath. “I imagine that’s why you let Livianna go in the first place.”
The room holds that. The low vibration of the equipment surrounds us. The space between two men who love the same woman and are still working out what that makes them to each other.
I don’t answer him, and I don’t have to.
Jaxon straightens his jacket. “Think about what I said, Cash. And consider upping your security. Especially since your wedding is front-page news.”
He takes the stairs, footsteps swallowed by the construction noise rolling through the floor above us.
Bren joins me once Jaxon has left. “Coop and Hawke went to catch that new band in Silver Lake. You wanna get some air?”
I push up off the stool. “Yeah.”
As we make our way to the backyard, I spin in my thoughts. First, my strange memory lapse the other evening, and now Jaxon’s warning me that someone’s following me.
Are they connected?
The pool sits still and blue, the one corner of this property the renovation crew hasn’t touched. Bren drops into the chair beside mine and waits. He’s always been good at that, filling the quiet with presence instead of noise.
“What was that about?” His forearms settle on his knees. “With Jaxon.”
“Investor stuff.” I lean back and let the sun warm my face. “Checking in on the studio build.”
“Fuck off, bro.” Bren gives me the look. The one he’s been aiming at my bullshit since we were sixteen.
“For what?”
He huffs out a fake laugh. “Investor stuff, my ass.”
I let that sit, and then lean forward in the chair. “Guns, can I ask you a weird question?”
“The weird ones are usually the good ones.”
“Have you ever noticed me zone out?”
“Yeah, but I don’t think much about it. I just figured you’re working out a song or whatever goes on in your head.”
I shift to face him more. “For how long have you noticed this?”
“Since we’ve known each other.” He slips on the sunglasses hanging from his collar.
“Wait. I think you’re misunderstanding me.”
“How so?”
“I’m talking like… Have I done something with you or anyone and then never brought it up? Like it never happened?”
“What are you getting at, Cash?” He pulls his glasses down and peers into my eyes.”
“You know. Have I ever done something and then claimed not to remember it?”
“Um, yeah. Like every day you were high or wasted.” He slides his shades back on. “Why?”
“But what about now?” I turn and gaze out toward the pool.
Bren tips his head back toward the sky. “How would I know?”
“You’re around me all the time.”
“Well, then I’d say there have been a few times that I’ve mentioned something we did or talked about, and you just stared at me like I had seven heads.”
My stomach spins. “How many times?”
“Enough that I stopped counting.” He leans over, picks up a pebble, and throws it off to the side of the fence. “And then I started paying attention to what came before instead.”
“What do you mean, what came before?”
“There’s usually a trigger.” Bren turns and faces me. “It reminds me a lot of when you used to have nightmares and I’d have to come wake you up so you’d quit screaming.”
“Hmm. That’s disturbing.”
“I’d say, but you’ve been like this for years, Cash. Why are you worried about it now?”
I don’t wanna tell him I experienced a non-drug-induced blackout. He’d be on my ass about seeing a doctor.
I drag my teeth over my lower lip. “Has anyone else noticed?”
“No, but I’m your best friend, so I see more than most.”
“What about Cooper and Hawke?”
“If they’ve experienced something like that with you, they’ve never mentioned it to me.” He sits back and relaxes. “But they don’t know the things I know about Leon blackmailing you.”
Just hearing the bastard's name and I wanna throw up. Jaxon has his shit together now, but he said he’d “take care” of his abuser if he ever finds him. And I have a feeling I know exactly what he means. Maybe it’s time Leon pays.
Livianna’s already at the house when I get home, standing at the kitchen counter wearing only my favorite T-shirt, flipping through something on her phone. The sight of her after the day I’ve had makes my chest fill with warmth.
She peeks up when I enter the room. “Hey, you. How was your day?”
“Hey, vixen.” I cross to her and press my lips to her temple, breathing her in for a beat longer than usual. “Why did you go back to your brown hair?”
“I want our wedding pictures to reflect who we are most days. When I dye my hair purple or blue or any other color, I’m usually doing it to make a statement about something.”
“Makes sense.” I take her into an embrace. “I see you’re wearing my shirt.”
“Yeah. It’s really comfortable, and it smells like you.”
“It smells like me? Does that mean your senses are coming back?” I gaze down at her.
She shrugs with a half-smile. “I caught a whiff like I did at the club, but it’s gone now.”
“But it’s happened twice, so maybe you’re recovering.”
“Maybe.”
“I still think you’re sexy as hell, even if you’re swimming in it.”
“I’m using it as a dress.” She giggles, but I don’t.
These little moments are what I’ve missed the most. Just her and me, enjoying the simplicity of lives that don’t normally allow for that.
I squeeze her tight. “Don’t let me go. Ever.”
“Never. And that goes for you, too.” She pulls her head back and studies my face. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” I break apart and lace my fingers through hers. “Let’s take a drive.”
“Okay, but I need to change.”
“No, you don’t.” I take her by the hand and guide us out to my Porsche.
“Where are you taking me?”
“A special spot.”
We get into the car, and I speed away. The silver speedster cuts up through the Palisades and climbs toward Mulholland as the sun begins its slow bleed across the horizon.
The city falls away beneath us, replaced by canyon brush. The open sky makes problems feel both smaller and more impossible all at once.
I keep my hand on the wheel and my eyes on the road ahead, but Livianna’s presence beside me fills the car with a warmth I don’t feel I deserve.
She shifts in the seat and turns toward me. “Where’s your head tonight, Callum?”
“Just thinking about you.” I flex my grip around the steering wheel. “I just wanna drive, and find a place to sit on top of my car and stargaze.”
“That sounds wonderful.”
“And you’ll be so beautiful in the moonlight.”
“You’re trying to butter me up.”
“No, I just need to get away from everything for a while.”
“Did the session go badly?”