Hard As Rock (15 page)

“Thank you.”

Ryan grimaced. “I’m sorry about back there. If I’d known that would happen, I would never have taken you.”

I wondered: if I’d known Derek would act like that and say those things, would I have still gone?

It was like an electric jolt when the answer hit me:

No. I’m through with him being a dick to me.

With that, I finally got a hold of myself. Derek had proven himself to be an absolute asshole; he didn’t deserve a single
one
of my tears.

“Why is he
like
that?!” I wondered aloud, my nose stuffy, my voice thick from crying.

Ryan thought about it for a second, then said, “I think he basically sees it as him against the world. And if you’re not for him, then you’re against him.”

“But we’re
not
against him! You’re the best friend he has!”

“Yeah, well… he doesn’t appear to see it that way at the moment.”

“Was he always like this?”

“Yeah… pretty much. Although I’ve never been on the receiving end like this before.”

“He’s been mad at you before?”

“Of course. We fight, we get pissed off at each other, it blows over. We’re best friends, it comes with the territory.” Ryan paused, then sighed. “
…were
best friends.”

My stomach turned when he said that. “You think… this is the end?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

I sat there in silence, remembering what Riley had said:
But if Derek finds out, that’s IT. That’s the end of the fuckin’ band. You know that, right?

“Is the band going to break up over this?” I asked quietly.

“I don’t know. He didn’t say anything about it, so… maybe. Maybe not.”

Ryan sounded so…
philosophical
about it.

I stared at him. “You don’t sound too alarmed.”

He smiled as he stared out at the road. “I love being in Bigger. I love Riley… I guess you could say I love Killian; I definitely love playing with him. I even love Derek, as big a prick as he’s being right now. But being in a famous band can wear you down. The touring, the lack of privacy, the pressure… not to mention a lead singer who thinks the world revolves around him.”

I laughed when he said that. I couldn’t help myself.

“If we broke up,” Ryan continued, “it wouldn’t exactly be the worst thing in the world.”

My mouth dropped open. “You would
quit?!”

“Yeah… probably.”

This was beyond comprehension. “You’d quit playing
music?!”

“What?! No, of course not – I’d quit
Bigger
. I’d never quit
music.
I’d just do my own thing, that’s all. Like the Beatles becoming a studio-only band. That’s what I’d probably do – cut out the touring altogether. Just record. Do my own thing. And I know I could get Riley and Killian to help me out, no question.”

“But… you just talked about the Beatles. When they broke up, people would have given anything for them just to record one more album. Don’t you feel like you’d be cheating all your fans if you broke up now?”

He cocked his head to the side and considered that for a few seconds.

“That’s a pretty good argument. And as somebody who wishes there was another Beatles album… and that Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain had never died… and that John Bonham’s death hadn’t broken up Led Zeppelin… yeah, I can see what you’re saying. And if you’d asked me three years ago, I might have agreed with you. But now I see it from the perspective of the bands who broke up. After a certain point, it’s better just to walk away than beat a dead horse.”

“This horse isn’t dead,” I pointed out. “Not yet.”

“Well, then, better to walk away than to beat it to death.”

I sat there and thought about that. I couldn’t believe that the band might actually break up… and over
me.
That was fucked up.

Not to mention I was going to have to go into hiding from all the Bigger fans who would want to see me dead.

Then I thought about it some more, and realized that if the band broke up, it wasn’t going to be over
me,
but over something even stupider: Derek thinking that Ryan and I were lying.

“Why didn’t he believe us when we said there’s nothing going on?”

Ryan was silent for a moment. Then…

“Because he knows how I feel about you. And he knows that if our situations were reversed, he’d lie, cheat, and steal to get you.”

I knew I should feel uncomfortable about the conversation. Ryan was basically laying out his feelings for me – putting all his cards on the table yet again.

But the scene in the jail had broken Derek’s spell over me. It had shown me how much I had wasted my emotions on someone completely unworthy of them.

But Ryan…

…Ryan was different.

“And why didn’t you?” I asked quietly. “Lie, cheat, and steal, I mean?”

I was expecting something along the lines of,
Because that would be wrong.
Or
He’s my best friend.
Or
I want you to want me back.

Instead, he surprised me – and managed to offend me slightly, too.

“Because you’re still in love with him.”

I looked at him in indignation. “I’m not in love with him anymore.”

It sounded like a declaration. Like I had put
my
cards down on the table.

My heart skipped a beat as soon as I said it.

Ryan looked at me, smiled the tiniest bit, and then looked back at the road. “Good.”

My mind started reeling with scenarios of what might happen. I imagined him stopping the truck, turning to me, taking my face in his hands, leaning in to kiss me –

Suddenly he stopped the truck.

I freaked out.

It was too soon.

I might not be in love with Derek anymore, but I didn’t feel that way about Ryan – not yet –

Or did I?

I didn’t know – this was insane – I had just seen Derek only thirty minutes ago, and now Ryan was going to try to kiss me?!

I didn’t know if I could go through with it –

And then I realized we were at the gate to his property.

Before I could say anything, Ryan jumped out of the truck and pulled open the gate.

When he got back in, the moment had passed. Although there was a feeling of tension that hadn’t been there before.

Sexual tension?

Maybe.

We drove the rest of the way in silence… with a certain amount of relief on my part that nothing had happened.

As soon as we got in, I stumbled off to bed and crashed for a few hours. It was involuntary; I could barely keep my eyes open.

I finally got up around 10AM. I was still dragging, but at least I didn’t feel like a zombie.

Ryan was at the dining room table drinking a cup of coffee. “Sleep any?”

“A little,” I yawned as I poured myself a cup in the kitchen, then came in and sat across from him. “You?”

“A little. While I was in bed, I got a message.”

As he placed his phone on the table and hit ‘Speaker,’ my heart skipped a beat.

Derek.

But no, it wasn’t Derek. It was Riley.

“Oh shit, Ryan, pick up – pick up, fucker, it’s Riley! …oh, yeah, this is a cell… fuck, call me back when you get this. I think I fucked up… I didn’t tell Megan about Blondie and Derek and you and the whole keeping it on the down-low thing, and she talked to Derek while I was asleep. She didn’t know, Ry, don’t be mad at her, it was my fault! Anyway, I think Derek might be coming out there – fuck, Fuck, FUCK – call me back, man, call me back!”

“A day late and a buck short,” I muttered, annoyed.

“Well, at least she tried.”

“I guess.”

“Not to mention you’re witnessing a historic day.”

“What’s that?”

“When Riley was up before either one of us.”

“We were up before she was. We just went back to bed.
And
we’re two time zones behind her.”

“Why do you want to take away her simple victories, Kaitlyn?” Ryan asked me in mock seriousness.

I chuckled. “She’d do the same for me.”

“Probably,” Ryan grinned. “I’m going to call her back. You want to stick around?”

“Sure, why not.”

The day can’t get much worse anyways,
I thought.

Hey, I was exhausted, my ex-boyfriend had been a monster to me, and I was about to get hit on relentlessly by a horny punk-rock lesbian. I was cranky, alright?

Except she didn’t hit on me. Not once.

In fact, she acted ten times more scared than in all the time I’d known her. The ‘I don’t give a fuck’ shtick was gone, replaced by sheer panic.

“Ryan – oh shit – did you get my message?”

“Yeah. Kaitlyn’s here with me – ”

“What?! What’s she doing there?! You gotta get her the fuck out of there, Ryan!”

“Riley – ”

“He’s gonna show up any minute! Oh fuck, oh fuck, I’m so sorry, guys – I didn’t even think to tell Megan – I mean, why would I think she’d even ever TALK to Derek? I mean, yeah, of course, now that I look back and know that he’s a fucking stalker asshole – ”

“Riley, calm down.”

“Megan totally lost her shit – she’s so sorry, she cried when I told her – I’M so sorry – it was all my fault – fuck, what are we doing even talking?! You got to get out of there, he could be there any minute – ”

“He’s already been here, Riley.”

Silence.

Then…

“…oh shit.”

Followed by a long, trembling sigh.

“What happened?”

Ryan told her almost everything, from the time Derek showed up on our front door, to Mr. MacCruder and the gunshot, to the jail cell, to the deal the police chief cut him.

Mercifully he left out Derek’s final comments to me – both the one from last night, and the one in the jail. I appreciated that.

At the end of the briefing, Riley was silent.

“You okay?” Ryan asked.

“…did he say he’s quitting the band?”
she asked in a little mouse voice. She sounded like an eight-year-old girl, and a shy one at that.

“No, he didn’t say anything.”

Another long silence. Then…

“Do YOU think he’s going to quit the band?”

“It’s too early to tell.”

“What are we going to do?”

“We’ll get through it, okay? No matter what, we’re going to get through it.”

“…I got… I got Megan’s medical school to pay for…”

“You’ll be fine, Riley. We’re all going to be fine. We’ll make it through together, okay?”

There was some more chit-chat, but Riley was subdued throughout. Entirely drained of emotion. When she finally hung up, she didn’t even say ‘Goodbye.’

Besides being shocked at how un-Riley-like she had been the entire time, I was also annoyed.

Ryan could sense it. “What’s the matter?”

Again, I was emotionally and physically exhausted, and super-cranky. Just remember that.

“It pisses me off that all this crap is going on, and she was worried about money,” I griped. “She’s a millionaire, but she’s bitching about paying for Megan’s medical degree.”

“Mm,” he mumbled noncommittally.

“What?” I asked, now annoyed with
him.

Ryan shook his head as he got up from the table. “That’s not what’s upsetting her. You want some breakfast?”

Probably because I was irritated and cranky, I decided I didn’t give a shit what was upsetting Riley. Not enough to pursue Ryan’s comment, anyway. I figured
I
had a lot to be upset about, too.
She
wasn’t the one who had had her heart impaled repeatedly in the last 24 hours.

But, as I found out later, Ryan was right.

That wasn’t what she was upset about at all.

This time the texts and voicemails stopped for real.

Not only that, but I found out what a liar I am. To myself, primarily.

That whole thing about
‘I’m not in love with him anymore’?

Yeah. It was all bullshit.

I
thought
it was real when I said it. Then I slowly figured out I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about.

How do I know?

Because for the next two weeks, I got my heart ripped out on the daily, courtesy of TMZ.com and one Mr. Derek Kane.

The first indication was roughly 24 hours later when I got a text from Shanna. I’d never called her back, so she didn’t know anything about my drama with Derek.

Sweetie, I’m so sorry… call me.

‘Sweetie’?

Since when had Shanna ever called me ‘Sweetie’?

It was 8AM and I was drinking my morning coffee. I didn’t want to deal with explaining the whole thing right now – I didn’t have the strength – so I just texted back,
What are you talking about?

Immediately I received,
You should call me.

I was still upset and irritated and cranky about Derek, so I typed back,
Can’t talk right now. Just tell me.

Derek’s all over TMZ.

I frowned and opened the browser on my phone.

It was like all my jealousies from the last six weeks had been immortalized in color pictures and splashed on the internet.

Derek had apparently flown back to LA after South Dakota. Better hunting grounds, I guess, because there was grainy photo after photo of him with women at a club. Women hanging all over him, women grinding him on the dance floor, women sucking face with him.

Then there were the better quality photos of him exiting the club with a supermodel in tow. Out of the low light of the club and under the harsh light of the paparazzi flashes, his skin looked sallow. His eyes were ringed with dark circles. He looked sweaty and vacant-eyed as he and the woman piled into a limo and took off.

I sat there in shock and disbelief and disgust… and pain. Utter, wrenching pain.

And it didn’t stop there.

Every morning there were more pictures. Different clubs, different women, a different companion – sometimes two – getting into a vehicle with him at the end. First it was limos, then on the third night it was his powder-blue Mercedes convertible.