Page 16 of Filthy Beautiful
But really, it kinda depended on a few things.
Cary, mainly.
And what I was gonna do about my band situation, now that I was officially home from tour.
I’d been with my band, Steel Trap, for almost four years. Every time we came home from tour, I’d either stayed at my condo downtown or came to stay here for a while. Or I went back and forth. But the last four years, I’d been away much more than I’d been home.
This time, I really couldn’t say when I’d be leaving town again.
Steel Trap had had some success as a band, though not nearly as much as I would’ve liked. And I wasn’t even gonna bother pretending that I was happy with them anymore, especially on our most recent album and tour. Our two guitarists basically ran the show, and on this album I’d definitely felt stifled, creatively. Disrespected, personally.
Unappreciated.
Not at all the way I wanted to feel in my band. Straight up, I was way too fucking talented to put up with that shit, and if my bandmates didn’t know it by now? Fuck them. They’d learn.
When I left them in the fucking dust.
Now that the tour was over, I really didn’t know what was next for me. I knew, though, that I had to make a clean break from Steel Trap; the timing was right. All my friends outside the band had told me to do just that. Including Cary.
Didn’t mean it would be easy.
Or fun.
Plus, it meant I’d now have to find a new band.
I’d happily form a band with Cary again, in a hot fucking minute, if he had any interest in that. But I was pretty sure that was never happening. I couldn’t get him out of the house for a beer, much less to form another band. The guy was pretty much a fucking recluse these days.
Ever since the accident.
Four years ago now.
I reached to tap the photo before I’d even realized I was doing it. Fucking instinct. But my knuckle brushed air.
It wasn’t there.
I looked around. The framed photo of me and Cary and Gabe that was always on the dresser… Where the fuck was it?
I dug through the garbage bags, quickly, as my pulse started thrumming in my skull. But I didn’t find it. I didn’t often lose my cool, butfuck this bullshit. I was pretty fucking close to losing it with her.
I went back into the house and straight up to Courteney’s room. I burst right in without knocking. And yes, the thought—What if she’s changing or something?—flitted by. I just didn’t give a fuck.
She wasn’t changing. She was lying on her stomach on the bed, fully clothed, looking through a big photo album. But the neck of her shirt gaped down and I saw the swell of her tits.
The flash of her honey-lava-pit eyes, when she looked up, went directly to my dick.
Her jaw dropped as she gaped at me. “What thefuck, Xander?”
“Where’s the photo?”
She snapped out of her shock and scrambled off the bed, standing in front of me with her fists clenched. “What photo?”
“The one that was on my dresser,” I gritted out.
“I don’t know. I put all your shit in the garbage. I didn’t notice any stupid photo.”
“You didn’t notice a photo of Gabe on my dresser,” I said, fucking slowly.
She paled.
