No Quarter (NOLA's Own #2) (39 page)

“I need to talk to you,” Devon rasped.

“There ain’t nothin’ you have to say that I wanna hear,” snarled Phil. “Next time you come near my woman, or any person I give a shit about, I will beat you to within an inch of your fuckin’ life.”

“Please, Phil—” Devon pleaded.

Ignoring him, Phil turned to me. The fact that I knew shit he never wanted me to know was between us, erecting like a massive wall. I was fucking furious. And he was terrified.

“I think there are a few things you need to explain to me,” I told him, keeping my voice low and soft, but it just came out menacing.

“What did he tell you?”

“You really want to discuss this here?”

He shook his head. “No. Can we get out of here then?”

I nodded and looked down at Devon, who was watching the exchange between us. His eyes shifted to mine, begging me to forgive him for saying anything, begging me to forgive Phil for whatever I might hear.

“Are you okay, Devon?” I crouched down.

Phil tried to stop me by clamping his hand on my shoulder. I slapped it away.

“Kenna—”

“I’m a fucking doctor, Phil! I have to make sure he’s all right before we leave, got it?”

“I’m fine,” Devon’s voice croaked.

“Are you having difficulty breathing? Does your throat feel swollen?”

“No. I’m okay, I promise.”

“Is it sore at all?”

He shook his head. “Just…go.” His eyes shifted to Phil. “I’m sorry.”

“Fuck you. Come on, Kenna.”

The eyes I looked into were not the eyes of a dangerous man. They were the eyes of a man who was desperate to set things right, and he had reached out to me to heal a rift. If it were possible for me to do so, I would try. I stood and allowed Phil to pull me from the room. Everyone was staring at us with Mike Stacy at the front of the group. It took me a second to realize that the music had stopped.

“Is everything okay, man?” Mike asked, a little on the twitchy side.

“It’s cool. Kenna and I are headin’ out.”

Mike nodded. “Yeah, all right—”

“Sorry about all that,” said Phil, not really sounding sorry at all.

“No worries, man. It’s all good.”

Phil nodded, and we headed out with everyone just…watching us. I had the feeling Lili had run off to find Alys and let her know what was going on. Normally, I would be wondering if they would be all right, and I would be finding ways to reassure them that I was okay. But all I could think was Devon’s voice asking me, over and over again,
“Has he punished you for breaking his heart at all?”

Phil used to rough women up for me hurting his fucking feelings. That made me ill to my stomach because there was no way I could really equate the man I knew to someone who would want to hurt a woman.
Had he actually beat them? Or was it what he did with me—just a bit of roughhousing?

Phil held the door to the limo open for me, and I got in without sparing him a glance. I slid all the way over to the opposite side and crossed my arms over my chest. I couldn’t make it any more plain. He was not welcome to touch me. I crossed my legs, too, just for good measure.

When he sat down and closed the door, the limo pulled forward, and I stared out the window. I could feel his eyes on me, felt them begging me to look at him, to just please,
please
look at him.

I ignored it.

The silence was thick enough in here to use as a blanket. I wanted to hide in it, wanted to sink into myself and figure out what in the hell I was supposed to do now.

The whole weekend was shot to shit!
We were supposed to be here, having a fun time, having a break from our routines. This was supposed to be our chance to just…I didn’t know. I had imagined we would just be glamorous and have a blast. But everything so far had crashed and burned. And now there was the very real possibility that Phil and I would, too.

“Kenna…” He had sensed my thoughts, and the fear in his voice broke my heart.

The silence that had enshrouded Phil and me on our way back to the hotel followed us through the lobby, into the elevator, and finally settled around us as we walked into our room.

No matter what he had done in his past, I knew Phil loved me. I knew that there was nothing on the planet that I loved more than him
. Was I about to hear something that would change that?
I was terrified that it just might.

Phil moved around me, taking care not to touch me, afraid that I would reject him. At that moment, he was so fragile that he would crumble if he had to suffer something like that from me. He had gone from the highest he had ever felt, bringing me up on stage to share his view of the world and then to facing the possibility that it might have been our last glorious moment together.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, his elbows on his knees, he dropped his head to his hands.

He couldn’t look at me. He didn’t have the courage for this. Phil was a man who could meet anything head-on. For the most part, he was fearless. But not when it came to this.

“What did he tell you?” he asked, sounding so lost.

“I don’t think that what he told me is going to help us with the situation, Phil. You need to just tell me everything, and if it all adds up, I’ll let you know.”

He nodded and was silent. I decided to take a seat in the armchair in the corner of the room and wait him out.

“I don’t know where to start,” he confessed miserably.

“How about the beginning?” I suggested lightly.

He swallowed loudly, his eyes fixed on something right before him yet not in this room. Taking a deep breath, he raised his head but not to look at me. He stared straight ahead.

“I met Devon not long after we arrived in Amsterdam…”

Phil

“Our first European tour kicked off there,” I said, wondering how the hell I should tell her.

Kenna deserved the truth—all of it—and deep down, I had known this day was coming. I hadn’t fuckin’ counted on it being today though. I wasn’t prepared for this. I felt ill from just thinking about her knowing what I had done with my life before she’d come back into it.

But she needs to know.

So, I did what she’d suggested, and I started at the beginning—in Amsterdam.

We were so fuckin’ psyched, and we were so in over our heads. Practically from the moment we stepped off the fuckin’ plane, we were rolling in sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll.

Fan-fuckin’-tastic!

There was everything there to make me forget about seeing my Baby Girl’s face at our last show.

That had been a low fuckin’ blow.

We were scheduled to tour with Cornered Cannibal, a band way heavier and with a shit-ton more experience than we had. We were pretty fuckin’ nervous at first, but those guys took us in, showed us the ropes, and rubbed off on us in ways that really helped our performances.

After the third gig, X had finally stopped puking right before going on stage.

I wasn’t sure what it was about Devon that drew me in. He was fuckin’ hilarious, for one, in a really dark and twisted kind of way. I liked that about him because I had been feeling pretty dark and fuckin’ twisted in my own head. In that state of mind, I really identified with him.

I was depressed, hurt, and angry. My Baby Girl…she had let me go, and it had fucked with my head.

I thought she felt the same. I thought she would move mountains to find me, but in the end…

In the end, it seemed I was the only one willing to move any fuckin’ mountains.

Devon appealed to me in a way that my brothers couldn’t. They knew I was hurting, but they didn’t understand it. X tried his best to cheer me up, but he was so fuckin’ happy, living the dream that was lost on me. He and Flipper got real tight then. And Jason and Sheri…
who the fuck knew what was up with those two?
I liked Sheri. She was good people.
A little fucked up, but then which of us could say otherwise?
In some way or another, we all had a bit of the fucked up in us.

So, I ended up spending a lot of time with Devon. We would pass the hours and days just drinking and doing other shit, and I ended up spilling my guts to him about everything, especially about Kenna.

After touring with them for six weeks, the venue split. Cornered Cannibal headed east, and we joined Train Wrecked and Lucifer’s Fall and went south. Devon and I kept in touch. We talked a few times a week for, like, an entire year. They were recording in Japan, and we were playing club circuits in Scandinavia.

Finnish people were fuckin’ nuts, by the way.

About two months before we were scheduled to start recording
Moniker Mayhem
in Switzerland, we had a six-week tour on the continent—Germany, France, Austria, and Northern Italy—with none other than Cornered Cannibal.

I was so happy to see Devon again. He was my best fuckin’ friend. X was sorta pissy, and I knew it was because he was jealous. He and I had always been so tight, but with the constant touring, it kinda wore down on all of us.

A couple of nights after we’d all joined up, Devon and I were hanging out in Jason’s room with Sheri, fuckin’ drunk and coked up. Sheri mentioned she had always wanted to take on three guys at once, and there we were, three guys, horny as fuck. I had never wanted Sheri like that. Plus, she was always around, so if I banged her, there would be no escaping her. To top it off, she was Jason’s. Since Jason never let anyone else up her cunt, Devon got her ass, and she sucked me off.

That was the night that got the ball rolling for Devon and I to go off and find girls on our own.

Devon…he knew places where to find chicks who liked some hardcore shit. Sometimes, Jason and Sheri would come with us, but most times, it was just Devon and me. We’d go find some chicks and bring them back to our hotel room. By this time, we just bunked together. Since we were on tour, it didn’t really matter where we slept.

At first, it was just rough sex. But he…he kept taking it to the next level. I told myself it was okay because these girls were looking for a bit of pain, maybe even a moderate amount, and I wanted to inflict mine on them. They were always consenting. I made sure of that. I already had enough guilt and heartache. I didn’t need to add more shit to my already steaming pile.

It was a high for me. And like any other high, I felt like garbage afterward. But it didn’t matter to me back then. I was already filthy. Baby Girl had let me go, and the girls I picked all reminded me of her in some way. Their hair was what usually drew me to them. Blondes and redheads, and sometimes—once in a great while—I’d see one with that fucking gorgeous copper hue. I was apeshit for that.

But the worst was that I knew I was picking ’em because I wanted to give all my pain and rage and hate to Kenna. It was because of
her
I wasn’t the man I was supposed to be. It was because of
her
, I wasn’t whole. I needed her to find myself, and she’d just let me go as if it was nothing, like
I
was nothing.

That made me hate myself more than anything. I wanted to hurt her, to punish her for making me feel this way. On the one hand, she was so precious and perfect, wholesome and clean. I just wanted to spend my life worshiping the beautiful soul I knew was inside that fuckin’ perfect body. On the other, I wanted to just tie her up and abuse the fuck out of her for the pain and fury she had unknowingly unleashed in me.

Instead, I inflicted it on willing oddballs who were just as fucked up as I was. With Devon’s help, I got introduced to bondage and learned how to tie up and fuck a bitch without so much as leaving a mark. I liked that a lot. Seeing these women bound by my hand did something to me. Looking at them like that…it was like looking at exactly how I felt on the inside. It was perfection in insanity, wrapped up in bonds for bows.

The last night of the six-week tour, just two days before we were headed to Switzerland, Devon and I blew everyone off, like we always did, and went out to look for something cute. And we found her, a ginger-headed little thing, and we decided to share her. She wore a lot of makeup, which wasn’t my style, but in the end, I wasn’t gonna be looking at her face, so what did it matter?

Devon let me have first crack at her while she sucked him off. It was going as it usually went—ass-smacking, a little bit of biting, some rough hair-pulling. She was really enjoying it, even when Devon started slapping her face.