Page 25 of Wicked Angel
I could hear his conviction on this. I could see it.
I’d never seen him like this before.
Over fucking Brianna, of all things.Christ.
“I’m not gonna crash and burn,” I told him cooly. “Just because you’re giving up, don’t put that on me.”
“Giving up?” He laughed bitterly. “If I gave up, it would’ve been years ago.”
“Then what do you call this? Because it isn’t fucking commitment.”
“Commitment? Are you fucking kidding me?” He took a step out into the night, his eyes glittering as he lit up a cigarette. One of the man’s many crutches; he always chain smoked when he was worked up about shit. “Do you want me to say it?” He blew smoke into the night air. “You actually want to hear me say the words.”
“What words?”
“Thetruth. The fucking truth, Johnny. You’re disloyal. You’re untrustworthy. You’re selfish as fuck. And whatever the fuck is eating at you—”
“Eating at me? Nothing’s eating at me.”
“I’m talking about whatever the fuck is in your head”—he made a jabbing motion toward my skull with his cigarette—“and wakes you up choking in the middle of the night—”
I turned on my heel and started back to my car. Fuck if I was standing there, listening to this shit.
“You think I don’t see it? We all see it.” He followed me down the driveway. “Something iswrongwith you, man. Why do you think you have all those nightmares? Guilt, shame, regret, I don’t know what the fuck it is, but you can’t even trustyourselfwhen you close your eyes. How do you expect anyone else to?”
I reached for the car door as my heart thudded, a sledgehammer in my chest. On the other side of the car, Lamar’s door opened and he stepped out, eying JC.
“A guy turns his back,” JC hissed behind me, “and you’re right up his ass with a knife.”
I turned to face him. “You always were melodramatic as shit, JC. Half the reason we had to pay a fucking lyricist on the last album, to fix all the sappy bullshit you wrote.”
“Right. You’re the rock star and I’m the fuck-up.”
“You think that’s what I did?” I asked him, half-curious. “I pulled a knife on her? That’s how I got her naked?” Then I added, just to dig the knife in a little deeper, “That’s how I made her moan my name?”
JC’s eyes went flat and dead. I’d lost him. Whatever chance we had to negotiate this situation amicably, no matter the outcome, that was done for him.
Well, good. Good fucking riddance.
It was done for me the second he threw my nightmares in my face. Fucking disturbed me, that he knew that much. That he’d seen… whatever he saw.
So what the fuck more was there to say?
He just stood there, looking at me with those cold, dead-to-me eyes. But neither of us backed down.
What, was he waiting for me to describe it? Howsheinstigated it? How she dropped to her knees and sucked me off, first chance she got?
Don’t fucking tempt me.
Finally, he broke the standoff. “You sure it was your name she was moaning? ’Cause that’s another thing I gave up for you. My fucking name. Couldn’t have more than one Johnny in the band, so Johnny O it is, and Johnny Colton can go fuck himself. And now it’s JC for the rest of my career, just to placate your fucking ego.”
“So that’s what it comes down to. Nicknames, and some girl you want to marry who gave it up to me the second your back was turned?”
His jaw twitched and he took a moment before answering. “You’re right. It has nothing to do with her. It’s about us. I don’t care if she’s Mother Fucking Teresa or the Whore of Babylon. You saw her with me. That should’ve been enough.” He took a step toward me. “You gonna go fuck Dane Davenport’s wife now? Or Lex’s?” His eyes narrowed into slits. “Or did you already do that?”
I said nothing. Why was he even bothering? Throwing my married friends in my face, like I’d ever touch their wives? As if he’d ever been a friend to me like Lex or Dane were. Or like Noah or Shane, or any of my other actual friends. I tended to keep friends I trusted, and that went both ways.
The fact was there’d been a disturbing lack of trust, and respect, in my relationship with my lead singer for years, in both directions.
