Out of the Blues (5 page)

Something about a love so beautiful the angels wept. I’d assumed he’d meant Arden, but maybe listening to her daughter sing the song, maybe he’d meant her kids.

Before the second verse ended, her alto was joined by a tenor so beautiful Cody himself would be crying if he’d lived to see this night. Mason Foxworth might look like his father but he’d inherited Cody’s talent and there was no getting around that.

I wasn’t the only person in that bar to sit in stunned silence, the kids who’d been on stage sat at the bar, mouths open as if they’d never heard real music before. Hunter’s face probably mirrored mine, but it was Doug Foxworth that I saw off in the shadows. There was something incredibly sad about the way he watched his children, as if he was on the outside looking in. I felt for him in that moment.

“I’m not going to be your maid of honor, Harpie,” Mason said when the song was over. He fingered the strings, his shoulders swaying with a tune he had in his head.

“That’s okay, Macie, but you’re going to sing for me right?” Oh she was evil. “You’re going to sing for my wedding and I won’t make you wear the chartreuse dress that matches your eyes.”

Mason looked up, fire in his eyes that wasn’t there outside of the bedroom. He plucked out the beginning of a song that stabbed a hole in my heart. “Heartless, cruel woman.”

“That’s a yes?”

“That’s a yes.”

He didn’t wait for the band to catch up, he sang, his voice rich and heartbreaking, asking if I wanted to come over better than Kenny Chesney did it…and I lost my shit.

Chapter Seven

In which Mason gets (senti)mental.

I hadn’t played in years, three or four at least, and my fingers ached from the strings. Harper had asked so what was I supposed to do?

I could see him watching us on the stage. The house lights were up and we were just being kids again. The four of us. Kenny and Tyler had been my best friends the four years Harper and I had a normal life.

I’d known these people most of my life, but those four years of high school had been the longest Harper and I had stayed in one place. Mother was off in Europe doing whatever she wanted and Cody was hiding from the world and writing music. He didn’t tell anyone he had cancer. Not even Harper or me.

We lived in Arden’s house and we drove an old Ford pickup to school. Cody attempted to cook for us. We were normal. Except our rock star stepfather was dying and none of us knew it. Arden filed for divorce our junior year and ran off with some Italian shoe designer. She came home in time to bury Cody.

I left for California a couple of months later. I took Cody’s acoustic guitar and some clothes because that’s all I wanted. Harper went to Harvard and we grieved separately.

I knew grief. I could see it staring back at me from across the room. I forgot about what he’d done to me earlier and watched him struggle to keep his pain from his eyes. His brother seemed oblivious but I saw from my vantage point on the platform that passed as a stage.

I finished the song that I couldn’t get out of my head. ‘Come over, come over, I miss you, come over.’

The song wasn’t that old. We didn’t play it back in the day we sat around my living room smoking Cody’s weed and learning to do more than just pose with a guitar slung over our shoulders thinking we looked cool.

The song came from the year I took off before I went to law school. I didn’t do anything but bum around the islands and listen to music. I was lonely and I don’t know, following in my mother’s footsteps maybe. I think I understood her that summer. I’m not sure I can ever understand Arden. She’s…complicated.

My father wasn’t complicated. I could see him too, over at the bar, he was completely out-of-place but he didn’t seem to know, not that he ever knew when he didn’t belong.

Doug had left Arden, and us. Not the other way around. We were four. I remember the fight like it was yesterday. Her career came first and his career came first and they couldn’t both be there for the kids so he left her as if we didn’t matter at all. Just a couple of kids he hadn’t wanted or even noticed were around until she wanted him to play babysitter so she could go off and film D movies.

We were dragged around to a couple of movie sets and on various shoots. I think she had an affair with our nanny. I can’t remember those years. Not because I was too young but because I don’t want to remember.

Cody stayed the longest. She moved in with him while he was on tour in Australia and we were six. We had him for eleven years. Of all of the adults in our life, Cody was the closest thing to an actual parent we had and he let us smoke his pot and I’m pretty sure he shagged some of our friends.

I hated this place. He used to drag us down here after he’d grown his hair out and the beard was a mess. Nobody recognized him. He’d play a couple of sets to test out new music and Harper and I would drink cokes at the bar.

I owned the rights to Cody’s music. Harper was the only one in my family who knew that he’d left me that much. She wasn’t upset about it. I never did understand why.

I mean he could have left it to both of us equally, but he hadn’t. His family had challenged the will because we weren’t his kids. My lawyers had won and I gave them my cut of my first million dollar check from his record label.

I gave Harper my share of the house. Arden didn’t give a shit about the place. It was ours; Harper and I had bought it from her after Cody died when we were eighteen. Neither of us wanted it but it kept Arden from selling our last link to Cody. Then we both left and I never came home and she was coming back here to settle down and make babies.

We were doing the same thing we did when we were eighteen and our only real parent had died and left us rudderless. Strangely it was like time had come full circle. I was singing in a dive bar with my sister and watching the person I wanted to fuck from the stage.

I closed my eyes on that thought. Because hell. So, we sang another couple of songs Harper chose and I watched a guy who didn’t belong here get up and leave. He didn’t make it through the Dixie Chicks song about cowboys. He left his brother at the table and walked out. My fingers ached from the few songs we’d played and I really didn’t want to spend my night up here playing music and letting my mind wander down memory lane. When we finished I set the guitar back in its stand and dragged my sister into a hug.

“Okay we sang.” I held up my fingers. Just five songs and my left finger was split open from the strings. “Love you, Harpie girl.” I twirled her around and planted a kiss on her forehead. “I’ll see you back at the hotel.”

“Dad’s at the bar,” she said her eyes cutting to that side of the taproom. “He looks upset.”

“Not caring. Smooches, bridezilla, be good.”

I smacked her ass and she kicked mine. We’d done that a million times. God, I hated this feeling of standing outside looking in. But here I was walking through a crowd of people that I used to know and I didn’t know who any of them were now. I waved to Kenny and Tyler and I knew we’d get together sometime over the next couple of days. They knew where to find me. I was here all week.

I cast a glance at my dad leaning over the bar talking to one of the barmaids, I think I might have dated her in high school, fuck if I could remember. But he was like that. He walked out on his first set of kids and his wife and started dating nineteen-year-olds before his current wife came along and ended all of that. They had two little boys, not twins, I think they were around seven and eight. I didn’t know. I’d never actually met them. We didn’t see him for years after he left, and when he did come back into our lives we weren’t invited to mingle with his new family. I guess I was bitter about that. Maybe I had refused to see him. I don’t remember.

Water under the bridge and I didn’t want to wade into it.

I came home to see my sister get married. End of story.

I left my dad there talking up a girl young enough to be his daughter and, shaking my head, I left the bar.

I stepped out into the chilly night air and realized I had no place that I wanted to go.

I mean, I hadn’t been to town yet, but there wasn’t much in town to see anyway. Not much passed for nightlife around these parts. Especially on a Wednesday night. The town wasn’t small, but it wasn’t what anyone would call a small city. And I sure as hell didn’t want to go back to the hotel where I’d left all of the “grownups” to their cocktail party in the dining room. Great-Aunt Ethel pinched my ass. Jesus. And I didn’t even know whose side of the family she was on. She could have been from any of my mother’s marriages. Or my father’s.

I heard voices not far away and recognized the big ass Marine’s low rumble. I know I turned red. I could feel heat racing from various parts of my body then just as quickly back to where it came from. I went dizzy. He’d blown me.

I’d had sex with a dude. Not just any dude. A Marine. And not just any Marine, but one I was about to be almost related to.

Best fucking blow job I’ve ever had
.

I stopped walking and grabbed onto the nearest immovable object I could find. My knees almost buckled.

I let a guy blow me and it was the best damn sex I’d ever had.

I was so fucking fucked right now.

“Kilby, talk to me, okay. You’re starting to scare me.”

Okay, what the fuck could a big fucking Marine be doing to put the panic in my future bro-law’s voice?

Curiosity won out and I pulled my shit together and followed Hunter’s voice.

I found them over by the side of the bar that used to be a gas station. I could see Hunter standing beside a red CUV where he seemed to be speaking to the ground.

“Hey,” I called out, because if that Marine was in the middle of some kind of flashback to his time in whichever theater he’d seen action in, I sure as fuck didn’t want to get caught in the crossfire. “You guys okay?”

“Mason?” Hunter sounded relieved when he called my name.

“Yeah. What’s going on?”

I rounded the car parked beside Hunter’s Mercedes and stopped cold at the sight of the Marine crouched on the ground with his head between his knees. He was breathing heavy.

“Is he drunk?” I asked because I’d been there a couple of times before I realized I was probably heading to the ward at Betty Ford specifically for fucked up celebrity kids.

“Not drunk,” the Marine answered. “Too many people.”

“Okay,” I said, not understanding at all.

“It’s PTSD Mace. The noise and the crowds. Some vets can’t handle it.” Hunter tried to explain.

“It’s a panic attack and I had those before I went into the Marines. Shut up about shit you don’t understand, Hunter,” the Marine growled at his brother. “I’m fine. I just need some air and to get out of here. Too many people that I don’t know. Too much noise.” He looked up at me with clear eyes. “Too many reminders of shit I don’t want to deal with.”

“I know, Kilby, I said I’d take you back to the hotel. Let me go tell Harper and I’ll be right back.” Hunter waved his cellphone at the sky. There was no reception out here, I’d already checked.

“I’m heading back, he can go with me.” What the fuck was I saying? The Marine…Kilby, looked at me with exactly the same thought in his eyes. “It’s been a long time since I went juking, not really dealing with meeting the entire town again at once either. And Harper…I swear she’s crazier than I remember,” I said that with a smile for Hunter’s benefit. Harper had always been like that. I was like that. I used to be like that, anyway. We were always like that. But now… “I’m still suffering from jetlag and too many hours stuck in Denver.” I shrugged away any ulterior motive thoughts…especially my own. I didn’t really want to be stuck in a rental car with a dude who might puke or kill me. Either option was fairly repugnant to me.

“That would be awesome, Mace.” I could hear the relief in Hunter’s voice.

“Gee thanks, little brother; love you
so
much right now.” And so had Kilby. But they seemed to be just like Harper and me when it came to ragging on each other so I just grinned and fished in my pocket for my keys. So what if I had a condom in there. It’s not like I put it there. That girl from somewhere that I didn’t really remember slipped it into my pocket when she kissed me. She’d also slipped her number in but I threw that away. I was not thinking about sex with a dude…shut up.

“Well, okay then, if that’s settled.” I twirled my keys around my finger and watched as the Marine climbed unsteadily to his feet. “Dude you’re not going to vomit on me, are you?” I had to ask. He looked like he was seriously nursing a good projectile variety hurl.

“No,” was all he said as he stared out across the parking lot. There were several black Chargers out there but he picked out mine and headed unerringly toward it. “Later, Hunter, kiss your bride for me.”

“I’ll do that…you go…kiss her brother.”

I turned to my future brother-in-law with a
fuck
you just say
look and watched him wince. “Sorry, Mace. That went too far.”

“Yeah, man, it did,” I said and followed the Marine to my car.

I clicked the locks on the key fob and he was inside before I got there.

“Can you roll the windows down?” Was the only thing he said when I got inside. We didn’t talk. We didn’t even look at each other. I didn’t want to listen to the radio so I turned that off and rolled his window down. “Thanks, man.”

“The controls are on the door if you want to let it back up,” I said. I was usually better at conversation. I mean, that’s what I do. I talk. I’ve always talked. But this guy seriously messed with my head just by being nearby and I did not like that.

I pulled out onto the road and went the wrong way. That’s what I mean right there. I’d driven this route about a hundred times and I went…the way I always did out of the lot. Fuck.

“Isn’t the hotel the other way?” His voice was even deeper in the inky dark of the middle of nowhere. I could just see his outline in the passenger seat.

“Yeah. I used to live this way. I was on automatic pilot. I’ll turn around up the road.”

He grunted at my excuse. “What else is in this direction?”

“Town,” I said, knowing there might be a couple of late night food places open. “Hungry?”

“Not right now.” He paused for a couple of heartbeats while I looked for the road I remembered being up ahead. “Are you in a hurry to get back to the hotel?”

“Not particularly,” I said leaving out the part about the pack of relatives that were haunting the place and that I had a roommate and it was too damned early to go to bed. Besides I was still on west coast time.

“Don’t turn around.”

So I didn’t, I drove the five miles to town.

“You have a good voice. Ever thought about putting that talent to use?”