Strung Out (Needles and Pins #1) (43 page)

Gage
.

The name on the screen next to a blinking cursor was as near and dear to her heart as it was practically a stranger these days.

Drawing in a breath of courage, she began tapping her thumbs to the keyboard.

At one time, she and her former stepbrother had been as close as blood siblings. Possibly closer, since they’d rarely fought like a real brother and sister. After their parents’ divorce, they’d kept in touch for a few years with texts and calls before contact had dwindled to nothing.

Tossing the phone to the passenger seat, she didn’t wait for a response. The waiting made her too nervous. Was it because he and his band had catapulted to fame and were everywhere on social media? Or was it because last night she had dreamed again of their kiss?

“A
nother?” The bartender flipped a bar towel over his shoulder and paused in front of Gage’s section.

“Please.” Reaching into his back pocket, Gage pulled out his billfold and extracted a twenty. When the young man returned with his longneck, Gage nodded to him to keep the change.

The television over the bar flickered with a muted procession of sports and entertainment news. He experienced a private moment of amusement when a soul-sucking succubus he’d briefly dated starred in one of the scandalous headlines. His inner smile quickly dissipated when the host moved on to the next story and his own face filled the large flat screen. Hunching his shoulders, he lowered the brim of his hat on his forehead. Nonchalantly, his gaze swept the immediate vicinity to gauge if anyone else at the bar was watching this crap.
Of course
. A half dozen eyes were glued to the video clips and scrolling captions.

Gage Remington… voluntary rehab after an incident onstage… left the facility without checking out… will this escape from rehab cause his record label to drop him and his band Fire Flight…

What a bunch of bullshit!
Escape
. Surging to his feet, he swung around a little too clumsily in his anger. His elbow toppled the beer bottle, spilling what remained of the contents onto the bar where it quickly rivered into the lap of the nearest patron.

“Hey, asswipe!” The man had a few silver hairs streaking through his dark cut, but he had the attitude and build of a younger man. “What’re you going to do about that?” Fury dilated the man’s pupils and his jaw worked in anger.

Taking in the other man’s wet jeans with a disdainful appraisal, Gage yielded to the temper he was becoming infamous for in the tabloids. Waving a red flag in front of a bull is what he did well these days. Mouthing off an insult he wouldn’t be proud of later, he skirted the man and the barstool he perched on with the sole intention of eighty sixing himself from the joint. It wasn’t that easy. The man jumped from the stool and swung. Gage swung back, connecting with his chin.

And that’s when the bouncer and his own capable bodyguard ushered him outside.

“How many lawsuits is enough?” His security detail muttered while cramming him into the passenger seat of a very plain SUV.

“One more can’t hurt.” He knew he was being a shit to the person who was on his payroll to save his ass from himself, as well as others. All joking aside, he hoped he hadn’t been recognized. He didn’t need any more trouble coming his way.

Reaching for the radio, he turned it up and whipped his phone from his jacket pocket to text his publicist. The blinking notification however, hurtled him from the present to the past.

The texts flew back and forth. He frowned when she mentioned working in a bar and smiled when she mentioned classes.

And apparently ‘escaped from rehab…’ after said tour.

He paused, looking out the window. The city was getting dark. But it didn’t hide his sins. How much did she know?

The gears in his mind churned with the possible reasons she might have to come to L.A. And were the semesters different in Belize or was she on a spring semester break? What registered and took root was the fact that Scarlette, his little sis and best friend, would be in the same room with him in the near future.

She flipped him off via emoticon for the redneck nickname, and he sent the same emote back for her ‘rockstar bubbah’ ridicule.

“M
y passport!” Raising her voice to be heard in the next room, Scarla frantically sifted through the safe in her mother’s bedroom closet. “The bag isn’t here!” Rifling through the vinyl zipper bags, looking for the red one which contained their birth certificates and a few other important papers including their passports, she began to panic.

Her mother appeared in the doorway, and lifted a wineglass to her lips before sauntering into the room. After scanning the area, her eyes settled on the dresser, and she gestured with the stem. “There.”

“Oh.” Scarla fell back on her heels, relieved. Straightening, she eyed the clock on the nightstand. Three hours before she needed to be rolling up to airport check-in. At the dresser, she fetched the passports from the bag, separated her own, returned her mother’s, and re-zipped the holder. “Why is this out, anyway?”

Her mother downed another swallow. “I laid it out for you.”

Scarla’s bullshit detector registered, but after a quick close scrutiny of her mother’s flushed features, she decided the odd tone was alcohol related. “Thanks.”

“You know, that boy has been in a lot of trouble. Be careful.”

Already in the hallway, she turned, fixing an incredulous look on the other woman. “It’s Gage. I’m sure I’ll be fine.” Hadn’t she addressed the queen of trouble with her endless number of degenerate rock musician serfs as ‘Mom’? She could certainly handle a rock star stepbrother.

Her mother followed her to her bedroom, where she zipped her luggage. “You’ll be back in a week?”

“Two weeks max.” She hugged her mother. “I’ve got to get going.”

“But it’s only a two hour flight. And I thought you were arriving at midnight.”

“I had to do a layover to save money. And it’s a long one.” She bit her tongue on a sarcastic retort about why she had to save money. She’d already had a screaming confrontation with her mother over her bank balance, and her maternal parent had seemed ashamed.

Turbulence vibrated the aircraft,
giving it the feel of a sled gliding over an icy surface, frozen during winds. Her mind roamed to snow tubing with her stepbrother one winter in Washington, where they had lived during the several years their parents had been married. The plane rattled again, and in macabre fashion, her memories dredged up the time she’d been trying to show off and had instead careened her tube airborne, off a hill, and into the trunk of a snow-powdered fir…

“Are you okay?” Gage abandoned his own board and dropped to his knees beside her.

Studying the jagged rip in her favorite gloves, she avoided his striking gaze and brushed aside his concern. “Fine. Just me being stupid, as usual.”

His voice was tender when he admonished, “Told you, Scar. Stop talking shit about yourself like that.”

Her seat bounced again, and she forcefully blocked images of the embarrassing tube incident and the sensation of hurtling through the air before crashing to the ground.

The moment the aircraft stilled, she swept a gaze over the other passengers. Everyone else seemed calm, so she forced her white knuckled grip on the armrests to relax. She’d never been a good flier.

A distraction was in order. Pulling her phone from her wallet, she pressed the side button and waited for it to power up. After connecting to the plane’s Wi-Fi, she checked for new text messages. Ignoring the one from her mother who insisted she call right away, she reread old messages from Ivy—all the way back to the texts in which she had begged backstage passes.

Gage’s father had operated a studio in Seattle until getting a job offer with Capital records in L.A. Access to most any show was a standing offer from him. Scarla had taken him up on it a couple of times, and he always came through. The Rageon passes had come from him, she was counting on him having the connections to help her find Ivy.

She navigated from texts to looking at sexy pictures on Pinterest. The plane bumped again, and this time when she looked around, she found the clean-cut man in the seat next to her with his eyes on her phone. Although her face felt fiery, she darkened the screen and with as much composure as she could muster, slipped it back into the leather pocket of her purse.

“I like your tattoo.” He smiled, and she followed his eyes to her wrist.

“My tattoo?” She blew out a breath. Possibly, he hadn’t been looking at her phone screen.

The design on her wrist was all black. An old-timey stopwatch. The chain was inked all the way around, bracelet style. The clock face on her inner wrist was etched with Roman numerals. The hands extended from a heart made of a treble and bass clef note. Instead of two dots, the bass clef had a dot and comma, making a semi colon. “Thanks.”

Thankfully, he asked no more about it. Not that she told anyone, ever, the special meaning behind the ink.