Page 31 of Sweet Ache (Driven 6)
Because broken drywall means a hurt hand. And a hurt hand means I can’t play the guitar.
But muscles screaming from the workout does nothing to abate the goddamn ache in my balls from wanting her.
I hit the last drum, sweat trickling down my forehead, and open my eyes, expecting to see Vince there but not sure if I would after we got into it earlier. He’s a moody fucker and likes to dwell on things when we fight, so I’m surprised he’s sitting at the soundboard, beer in one hand, feet up on an opposing chair and indifference in his expression.
“You get it all out? Feel better, now?” He lifts the bottle to his lips but keeps his eyes fixed on mine. The silent fuck you relayed in his unrelenting stare.
I grab my shirt that’s lying on the floor beside me and scrub it over my sweat-drenched face. I hold it there for a minute as I catch my breath, waiting for him to start in on me but when silence remains, I look up.
“Rough day?”
I can’t help but laugh at his accurate assessment of today’s events. “Fucking stellar.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
He knows I don’t—I never want to—but I appreciate the offer. I rise from the drums without answering and toss the sticks in a case Gizmo has for them. I grab a handful of Sugar Babies from my tray and toss them into my mouth. For some reason I think of Quin, of her fruit to my loop comment and think sugar to your daddy would be a good one.
What the fuck is wrong with me? Oh my God, I have issues if that’s the shit that I’m thinking of. But at the same time, I did find it so damn adorable when she said that, even when the only reason I should want her is the quick fuck to shut Vince up.
“I’m surprised your teeth aren’t rotted out yet,” Vince says as he plops down on the recliner we have in the pseudo-studio we’ve created here at the rental house.
Something’s rotten in me, all right, but it’s not my teeth. I flop down onto the couch adjacent to the recliner and lie across the seat of it with my feet crossed over the armrest. Out of habit, I put my hands behind my head and stare up at the ceiling for a bit, the thought angering me. “Do you ever miss our old life when it was strictly music and chicks and ramen? When we had like five groupies and we thought we were the shit?”
He snorts. “You mean you had five groupies and we were just the assholes they had to get through to get to you.”
“Those were the days.” It all seems so long ago. The funny thing is I had all the same shit in my life back then—Hunter’s antics, figuring out how to help my mom, trying to keep my promise to my dad—just on a much different scale, but it still seemed simpler back then somehow. Less stress, less pressure, less bullshit.
“Living the dream, man,” Vince says.
“Yeah, living the dream.” I fall silent, my mind running over the day and what exactly I’m going to do about it.
“Dude, the guys and I talked and we’re willing to push back the start of the tour if we need to so you can take care of all of your shit.” I hear the sincerity in his voice and it pisses me off. The guys have to keep adjusting and reprioritizing because of me and the shitstorm currently surrounding me. “We’re just worried about you.”
“Thanks, man … appreciate it, but I can’t do that to you guys. I’ll get it figured out, leave it all behind by the time we kick it off. Besides, man, I need this—to get the fuck away for a bit.”
“New women, new faces, more just for the nights,” he muses.
I grunt in response because normally that sounds more than appealing to me. An escape from the pressure here although I still worry about it all when we’re on the road. I push away the thought that the only new face I see in my mind is Quinlan’s tonight as I basically kicked her off the porch. I shake the image away.
“Offer stands,” he reasserts as I sit up and rest my elbows on my knees so I can meet his eyes. “We can pull out of the benefit if need be as well. Might raise some eyebrows but you can have a nodule on your chords again and have to rest your vocals or some shit like that.”
“You’ve got this all planned out, don’t you?”
He shrugs. “Well …”
And as much as I’d love to blow off the upcoming fund-raiser, take a weekend for myself and get lost in a cabin in the High Sierras to clear my head, I can’t be that hypocritical by abandoning the cause so near and dear to my heart.
“Family comes first, Hawkin. Always.”
And it’s the way he says it that causes the pang in my chest. Family. “Well that depends who you’re talking about since you guys are more my family than …” I let my voice trail off and pause a moment before I continue. “I know with where my priorities are right now it doesn’t seem like it, but you are….” That’s all I can say because it’s been a shit day and fuck if I want to think about how someday I know Hunt will be in jail and my mom will be gone but the guys—Vince, Rocket, and Gizmo—will still be here.
Life and reality suck sometimes. I learned that the hard way a long-ass time ago and it still kicks me in the teeth on a regular basis regardless of how much success comes my way.
“I know. We know.” The resignation in his tone is an echo of how I feel.
“Hunter has to get help, see a therapist, something. I made that a stipulation to all of this.” That’s as close to a confession that I’m going to make in regard to taking the blame for my brother’s stupidity the night I was arrested.
“Uh-huh.” And that inherent part of me that’s always ready to defend my brother bubbles up before I rein it in. Yet Vince deserves to be skeptical after the numerous fallouts he’s had to deal with over the years. “Dude, if kicking him out of the band didn’t sober him up, nothing’s going to. Shit, it’s almost worse now. Him being high, missing a rehearsal, being too coked out to perform is one thing … but now, it’s like he has a vendetta against you to fucking take you down too, except he knows he can’t get to us, so he goes after everything else he can,” he says.
