Chapter 62: Drummer Boys Choose A Future To Fight For

The song--Shallow-- is for the conversation Bodie and Marley have at the very end of the chapter...

Bodie

Marley answers her phone at once. "What happened? Is everyone safe?"

"No Marley, everyone is not safe. Dev got shot."

"What!?!?!?"

"Did you know that Mac had a gun?"

"No! I...I thought she had a taser. I gave them all a taser. What?!?!? Dev got shot? Is he ok?"

"No. He's going into emergency surgery."

"Who? Who shot him?"

"Mac pulled the gun on Slade. He took it from her and shot Dev. Matt was almost shot too."

"Oh my god. Oh my god. I...I didn't mean for this to happen...oh fuck..." she bursts into tears.

My fury with her is warring with my pity.

"This whole thing...your idea?"

"Mine...and Ashlynn's..."

My chest is tight with too many emotions as she sobs.

"Marley, calm down. Listen to me. It's gonna be okay. Dev is strong. He's gonna make it. Where are you?"

"We're still in the limo...a few blocks away. We couldn't leave..."

There is only one place Marley can be right now and keep it together.

"I need you to go to the hospital. I need you to be there with Matt. Dev took a bullet for him. He's..."

"Yes, of course," Marley is immediately drawing in on herself, going into counselor mode. Good. That's good.

It's a very strange and long night, in the surgery waiting room of that hospital. All of us dressed in our Grammy finery. The grimmest bunch of celebrities you've ever seen.

I don't know if it's tragic or beautiful but Matt spends the night with Bridge huddled beside him. Someimes he sings soflty to her like I bet he did when she was a little girl.

I watch and I realize, she is stronger than probably both Matt and Dev think. She is not sobbing or incoherent. Her devastation is the quiet kind but the kind that doesn't incapacitate. Honestly? I think she lets Matt hold her like that for his sake, not hers.

I am worried for awhile, about more than Dev. I watch Trace, pacing, shooting both Kat and Marley angry looks. I try to run as much interference between Marley and Trace as possible, following her down the hall to the bathroom.

I'm not wrong about where Trace's head is. While I lurk around by the vending machine, he follows, confronting her as she exits.

"Hey, I need to talk to you," he says tersely.

She wraps her arms around herself and then looking down, conscious of her own body language, she unfolds and gestures toward some chairs.

I duck away, because they nearly saw me eaves-dropping. I want them to work it out, but I will intervene is he gets too hostile.

"I don't wanna sit, Marley. I don't want a fucking session. I want to know what the hell is wrong with you. How could let Kat do that? Or Ashlynn? It could be them in that OR right now. It could be them in the fucking morgue right now! And it would be your fault!" he hisses at her. "You are supposed to be the sane person that stops us all from doing crazy shit!"

"I know," she says. "I know that's...what you think. That I'm the person with all the answers. I'm not. I'm just the person that sometimes asks insightful questions."

He stares at her. "That's all you got?"

She shrugs. "Do you know why I became a counselor?"

He waits, too angry to make supposition.

She takes a deep breath. "I became a counselor because...I was trying to...fix myself. After I got out of jail...I...I didn't trust men. Any men."

"I had been brutalized and violated by Daemon—Bodie's old gang leader. Then I spent three years in a women's prison where the guards...well, let's just say I was a standout, for a few of them. I was very young. Pretty. And especially after I was no longer pregnant—I was a target for a couple of corrupt ones. I was constantly harassed. They stopped short of rape, because a crime like that is hard to hide if an inmate gets pregnant, but a few times, I was coerced into doing things I did not want to do."

I lean against the vending machine, feeling sick. The guards in a women's prison. I didn't think of that. The guards were the least of my worries in juvi. Fuck, Jaz...why am I just now hearing this?

"So you can imagine," she continues, "the girl that emerged from jail had an opinion of men as sick predators. Kind of like the view you sometimes have of any other men interact with your women as abusers?"

Trace's only response is a huff, but he lets her continue.

"But then there was TJ in my life, and he wasn't not like that, and I knew in my mind not all men were, and I knew I needed to...heal. To alter my wrong perception.

"But I'm stubborn and prideful, so I tried to heal myself with books and learning and a degree, instead of doing the emotional work like you are. I had to gone to some mandatory counseling in jail, but after that, I became my own counselor."

Trace is having a hard time with this. "Fuck. I...I didn't know that about you. I'm...I'm so sorry."

"Me too. Especially since...it didn't work."

"What?"

"Becoming a counselor. It didn't fix me. I have...damage I haven't healed. I see that now. It's like...I closed my own wounds but left the bullet in there. Kind of like...Riley, you know? He's like me— very smart, very self-aware, and very insulated—to the point where nothing can trigger him. Well, until Row came along and made him want to fully heal. That's where he is right now, digging in the middle of an old wound, trying to cut out the rage that's still worming around, causing damage. He knows he needs a clean heal this time. It's a messy self surgery he's performing. Row is his catalyst. He wants to be...healthy for her. Like I want to be healthy now too."

"And to be honest, it was actually Adam that was my catalyst, not Bodie. When Bodie didn't recognize me in the parking lot of the Lunar Lounge, all my old anger came rushing back. I lumped him with the despicable men who had hurt me, even though it wasn't true. Something in me wouldn't let me walk away from the slim hope of Bodie, but I wasn't ready to confront Bodie, so I latched on to Adam.

"That was a lucky accident. Or maybe it wasn't an accident at all. Maybe God puts Adam in the path of people that need him. Because during our counseling sessions that turned into friends giving two-way advice? He forced to me to confront so much of my own neurosis. Without Adam's observations and his encouragement to self-examine my past relationships,  I might not have had the courage to force a confrontation with Bodie, to open that door of our past. I'm still a work in progress, but Bodie and I? We understand each other. We are the same kind of damage and the same kind of good.

"I trust Bodie completely, but I am still very angry about what happened to me at the hands of other men. I am angry for all women who are brutalized at the hands of despicable men. Trace—do you realize that everyone one of the women attached to Soundcrush has suffered violation at the hands of a man? Even Kat told a boy no and he didn't listen, and her trauma would probably be a lot greater if you hadn't been there to intervene."

Damn. I get it now. Why the girls did this. Why Marley led them in this. Why they didn't ask for our help. They were all taking their own power back.

Marley is talking again.

"So when Ashlynn told me about what she had been through...the advice I gave her? It did not come from Dr. Watkins," she whispers.

"I was the girl whose first boyfriend hit her, turned her into a trap queen, and sabotaged her birth control. I was the girl in prison who did everything she could to avoid harassment, but could never fully escape it, because she was a prisoner at the complete mercy of captors. I was the girl on the pavement in front of the club targeted in a drive-by the abusive man she is still chained to by circumstance.

"I helped Ashlynn do this because I wanted for her what I can't have. I want her to be free of her tormentor. So badly that I didn't stop to fully consider the risk. And you're right. It was an insane plan. A plan I'm not sure Ashlynn would have attempted without my help. I did this, as much as she did. Maybe more. And if Dev dies...it's my fault..."

Her voice cuts off in a sob.

Trace says nothing for a long time. He just stands there watching her cry. Fuck, he's not the best with intense displays of emotion, especially from women. It takes everything in me to stay still, not go to her.

But I don't, because if Trace holds a grudge for what Marley has done, our new band dynamic with her as road manager will be a poison that we will all drink and die from.

These two? They've got to work this shit out here and now. Either he's going to forgive her, or he's going to walk away, and then...she and I will both have to walk away from Soundcrush.

I can't see her from around the corner, but I can picture her, her hands over her mouth, holding back sobs.

Finally he says, "Okay. Okay. I totally fucking get it. It was a fucking crazy thing to do, but when you explain it like that, it makes total sense to me. I've been where you are...powerless. Powerless to stop what happened to me, powerless to stop what happened to Ashlynn, when she got between me and my dad. So what did I do to try to fix that?

"I married a girl I didn't love and risked the one real love I could ever have...because of my rage and my guilt. And over and over, I risked Ashlynn's life at the same time I was trying to save it, because I was too fucking stubborn to accept I couldn't be the one to help her.

"I did something just as fucking stupid as what you four did here tonight. The way I handled Ashlynn ended with her in emergency surgery, too. And I stood in a different hospital corridor, but just like this, crying in front of her parents, feeling just like you do now: responsible for more harm than good."

"I get it. I really do..." he sighs heavily... "Okay...I'll summon my inner Adam for a minute. What do you always tell me? We have to accept our actions sometimes have unintended circumstances. All we can do is try to see our mistakes clearly in hindsight, try not to make the same mistakes again. We make amends where possible. And the hardest part of all? We forgive ourselves."

The sobs finally break free. Marley's regret and relief pour out in sloppy chokes and snuffles. I'm practically itching to go to her now. Still, I hold back. She needs to know his forgiveness is more than words.

"Hey," he says, in that voice he usually reserves for Kat or Ash—for his women, "Come on now, girl... don't...do that...I hate that...you want me to get Bodie?...or Adam?...fuck, Marley...just...come here."

Her sobs sound muffled now.

I turn the corner to see Trace hugging her as her shoulders shake and her hands scrub her face. He looks over her shoulder and meets my gaze. He shrugs helplessly. I'm sorry, he mouths.

I shake my head and point at him. You did good. Thank you.

He bites his lips, shrugs, and then opens his hands as if to say, please...come take her.

I chuckle and approach slowly. "Hey, Sweetheart. You can't cry on this one. Lady tears do something serious to him. Burn him like acid or something. He'll be howling with you any second now."

Trace laughs. Marley pivots, latching onto me, burying her face in my chest.

"Yeah, that's better...come on over here..."

Trace leaves us, and we sit alone in the alcove of chairs, without speaking, until Marley quiets. Finally she says, "You were there all along? Listening?"

"Of course. I always have your back. But you and Trace needed to get right."

I buy her a Sprite from the vending machine and she sips it slowly.

"I'm sorry...I never told you about the guards..."

I shake my head, using my thumbs to clean up her mascara. "We can talk about it later. Whenever you are ready. There's stuff about jail I didn't tell you either. I didn't want to bring more hurt between us. I get it, baby."

She nods. "Thank you."

It takes her a long time to drink the Sprite, but when she's done, she's in control again. She goes back to the restroom and washes the ruined makeup from her face. We rejoin the others.

We wait. All fucking night we wait.

Finally, we understand the long dirth of news. Dev had to be taken back to surgery from recovery, because they missed a bleeder.

The minute the doctor finally comes to explain? Bridge del Marco moves to her mother and grab Marianne's hand. When the doctor says that Dev is in serious but stable condition and asks if there is any immediate family, because only they were allowed back to see him, Bridge holds up her left hand, with Marianne's wedding rings and said, "Yes, I'm his wife."

She slides coolly out of that waiting room, brushing past the doctor and giving him a regal look like she expects him take her to her famous "husband" right the fuck now. He scurried after her, never questioning the validity of her claim.

"Fuck me." Matt throws himself back down the couch. He slings a hand at his wife. "He took a fucking bullet for me, Annie. How the fuck am I supposed to fight that now?"

The look on Matt's face as Marianne snuggles up next to him, raking through his hair indulgently as he watches Bridge make away alone to Dev's side?

Disgusted resignation.

So funny that we all erupted in abrupt laughter.

It's dawn when the limo makes it's way to my front door. My house is the farthest out from LA; Marley and I are the last "partiers" to stumble across their threshold.

I follow Marley up the stairs and into our bathroom. She groggily turns on the shower, but I turn it off and run a bath in the massive tub. As it fills, I slowly peel away her beaded gown. It falls to the floor with a tinkle and a swoosh and she's left in a beautiful nude piece of shapeware that will soon follow the gown to the floor. But not yet.

"So much for our sexy plans," she says hoarsely.

I hold her against me, kissing down the back of her neck, just like the first morning a few months ago that I got her naked.

"When you run crimes, plans change, Jasmine."

She doesn't laugh, she just looks at me in the mirror. She looks...uncertain.

She's surprised when I lead her over to the vanity bench and push her gently down on it. I pick up her hair brush and begin slowly brushing the stiff product from her locks.

I love her hair. She hates it.

Everything is about perspective, I guess.

Marley grew up not even realizing she was biracial. So instead of her hair feeling like a blessing—the way my mom or Tam value theirs because they know they could just as easily be struggling with alopecia—in Marley's mind her hair just looks like frizzy white girl curls. As a kid, she admired the flat, lifeless locks of so many of her friends.

The tortoise shell array of colors fascinates me, and I like to play with it, watching the streaks fall from my fingers in a rush.

She pushes like a cat into my hands. "That's nice."

"Your hair is beautiful."

She snorts. "Tonight, after two hours of styling, yes. It won't look like this in the morning."

"Well, it's because you don't put it up when you sleep."

"I never thought of that. Like Pat,  you mean..."

"Yeah."

Inspired, I step into our closet and finger her scarves. No silk. Of course not. Marley is far too money conscious for that. I grab a dumb silk shirt that Tamara made me wear for a club promotion and rip the back out. I return, and twine Marley's hair up in it, tying the cloth at the back of her neck like I watched my mom do every night of my life until I went to juvi.

"Pro-tip for girls of all shades with curly hair," I smile at her. "Even Mac wraps her hair in silk if we are doing a multi-day shoot and she is trying to preserve a blow-out..."

She fingers the frayed ends of the silk and stares at me in the mirror. "Why are you being so...sweet?"

I smile at her. "Because I love you. Because you've had a helluva night. Because it's my job to take care of you when you need it, just like you take care of me."

"You...you aren't...angry with me? Like Trace?"

"I want to be," I tell her reflection. "I want to be furious with you for risking yourself and all those girls I love. But the thug in me is...proud of you, I guess. That's kind of fucked up, isn't it?"

"Yes," she admits.

"Does that bother you? Would it make you feel less guilty if I were angry with you like Trace?"

I put my hands on her shoulders. Her gaze falls to them and her eyes widen. She picks up my hand, tracing around the my fingernails, which are still caked with Dev's blood.

"No. I don't want you to be angry. I just...I want us to wash it away. Like before."

She means when she washed Cain's blood and grave dirt from my body. It didn't work, but that's the last thing I will tell her right now.

Instead, I strip, and I take her lingerie off, and I cradle her in the tub. I bathe her like a child and she spends a very long time, meticulously scrubbing my fingernails.

When our bodies are finally clean, I lift her dripping wet from the tub and carry her to our bed. I make love to her so slowly, so deliberately, that we get completely lost in each other.

There never was, before this. There is only me inside her and her all around me and me sheltering her and her, as my home.

After, the bed is too wet for us to sleep in, so I carry her across the hall. As we drift in the glow of the day behind shades, I ask her, "Jasmine, do you want more kids one day?"

"At least one more, if my biological clock allows," she admits. "Why do you ask me that...now?"

"Because... I realize...I've been thinking wrong. Our future is so unpredictable that I keep thinking of it like it doesn't exist. But it does exist, if we create it."

She snorts. "Okay Leed."

I pull her tight. "I'm serious. We should talk about it. Bring it to life. I can't guarantee you it will happen like we plan, but I can promise you I want it, and I'm working for it, one crazy fucking crime at a time. So here's my vision: I want to marry you someday. I want to give Darius a tribe. I want more than one more child with you. We might have to negotiate that..."

She starts crying again, but this time it's happy tears.

"I love you. And of course  I want to marry you. So much. And  maybe...two more babies, God willing?"

"Three?"

She snorts. "I'm not making any promises. I'm almost thirty, Bodie...we're kind of working on a time frame..."

That's not true, really. Women have babies well into their forties now. Marianne del Marco had a second round pushing up on fifty, but I don't say that. Instead, I say what I know Marley needs to hear.

"All the more reason for me to put Daemon out of lives as soon as possible. I swear, I'm doing all I can to free you from him forever."

"I know. Thank you..." she starts. "I want to call Darius," she snuffles. "I need to...check on him..."

"Right now?" We talk to him every day, but it's 4am on the east coast right now. "Baby, he's fine...you know he's fine...and he's asleep.  Let's call him after we catch a few zzz's ourself. He's going to be here in three days...are you excited? I'm excited..."

She smiles and murmurs her happy anticipation and finally, finally, she is relaxed enough to sleep. I hold her until we both drift into future-filled dreams.

Time jump to the middle of tour next!