Chapter 85: Rock Stars Got Dem Bones

Just a short chapter to transition to our last little drama in this book.  Without further ado, everybody's favorite rock star and what he's feeling...poor Trace is struggling with several demons right now, as he always does when he's back home in Atlanta. I think Unsteady by X Ambassadors is probably the theme song of Trace's childhood...

Trace

"Remind me again why you are here?" I toss over to Leed, who is shotgun in the rental Lambo. It's the exact same one I rented to impress Kat before I stole her away to New Orleans, the trip that was the start of the grown-up us...all the love and all the disaster. She smiled to see the green speed machine waiting for us when we touched down in Atlanta.

Leed was not as enthused, because it's a two-seater. Not that he minds having Kat in his lap. He just doesn't like me growling at him about it.

"You are responsible for the life you save," Leed croaks with a wink, bouncing Kat up and down on his lap as she curls her one good hand against the headliner in an effort to prevent crashing against it repeatedly.

She laughs at him. "You are so fucking dramatic, Lawson. You did not save my life."

He rubs his throat. "That's what you think. Trace's whole physical being probably would have combusted before he allowed himself to make violent contact with your pretty little face, but Little Brother? He was blind with fury. And he packs a fucking wallop." He takes another swallow of the water bottle full of herbal tea and winces.

"Do us all a favor and shut-up, okay?" I mutter. I mean it for a lot of reasons. Because Leed really does need to rest his voice—I'm actually kind of worried about his cords. And because I'm so fucking over Leed's newly adopted nickname for Street—which is Leed's goofball-guru way of reminding me that I can't simply ignore Street's fucking existence for the rest of our lives because we do in fact share blood and apparently, an alarmingly similar respect and admiration for our father.

But mostly I want Leed to shut up because any mention of the fight causes Kat to start crying again.

I slow down while I look at Kat, even though I'm already going embarrassingly slow considering the car—but there's no way I can push this Lambo with Kat on Leed's lap and not wearing a seatbelt. I shoot her two quick glances and yep...just as I suspected...she's looking out the window and blinking back tears.

She started crying the second she saw me at the hospital. I was frantic for a second, thinking her tears were about her physical pain. My frantic turned to mild moroseness when I realized her tears were a different kind of pain...regret over the tats and guilt over my injuries. She sobbed incoherent "sorries" and "my faults" for fifteen minutes, while I took her in my arms and told her over and over that the fight wasn't her fault. That the fight was on me. That I lost control. That I wasn't angry with her about the tats. That I understood.

Goddamn, I'm trying to feel all those things I said.

"Hey," I say, reaching for her thigh, since I can't hold her bandaged left hand. She doesn't look at me. "Hey," I repeat more forcefully, catching her eye. "Kitty, it's okay. I told you, it's okay. Please don't. It's all good. It's nothing." I wave to indicate all recent events.

Actually, I'm lying through my teeth. Not much of it's good at all, and none of it's nothing.

My face hurts like a motherfucker. The heat and ache seeping into my cheek bone and jaw makes me worried I'm getting an infection from the split across my cheekbone that needs stitches, despite Kade's disinfection. That's definitely not good.

But Street and I? We could be all good, if we were nothing at all, as far as I'm concerned. Except Matt is determined to make us brothers, and I'm learning my father is not a man who gives up easily.

And me and Kat? We are something in between. Not all good, but we will never be nothing, no matter how bad it gets. I meant everything I said to her backstage before the Call-Out, and I mean it still. Nothing is ever going to change who we are to each other. I still believe in us, I still want to grow with her, andwalk into a future together.

Butever since she told me about the henna, I keep thinking I was right when I told her that I didn't want her to regret only being with me-that I didn't want being seriously committed too young to curtail her experiences. I know Kat. I watched her grow up from a little girl. She craves thrills. She pushes boundaries. She has a need to explore.

I get that. She's eighteen and she's got the whole world opening up before her. I knew LA was going to test us. I knew she'd drink too much, maybe drug a little, and possibly do things under those influences she would regret. Just like I did when I was her age, and for several years beyond.

But goddamn. Did she have to push through all the limits with my brother and end up naked under his paint brush?

It's a little fucking hard to swallow, no matter how many times I hear myself tell her it's all good.

Leed sees the tears welling in Kat's eyes, too. He blurts out a dirty joke. It does the job, making Kat laugh and keeping her tears at bay. I smile as I pull off the interstate, musing that despite Leed's zen-like demeanor, he would make a terrible monk, Buddhist or otherwise. He can't keep a vow of silence for shit and sex is always on his mind.

I gun the Lambo through the suburbs to Kat's neighborhood.

I'm prepared to see my old house next to hers. Prepared for the dread I always still feel, approaching the house, the anxiety built into me long ago--the pit of dark possibility. Never knowing what I might find on the other side of the front door.

I never knew what to expect, coming home from school, or coming home from kicking around the neighborhood, or later on, coming home from my summer job out at the marina or from a night out with Kat or other friends.

Would my mom and dad be cooking dinner and smiling at each other in the kitchen? Would my dad wave at me mildly from his first floor home office while my mom hummed out back in her herb garden?

Or would the coffee table be littered with bottles and the air littered with curses? Would my mom be shakily cleaning up a pile of something shattered just like her composure?

Or would I open the door to the worst—the dead calm aftermath of a physical fight I wasn't there to jump in on? Would Dad be passed out in the basement, where he seemed to retreat to drink himself free from the regrets of his violence? Would my mom be upstairs behind a bedroom locked door, begging me to  go to my room and leave Ross alone?

There were other times I came home at just the right time.

Sometimes, I wouldn't walk into a calm, or into curses, or even into the aftermath.

Sometimes I would walk right into the fray.

To be honest, I was always glad for those times. I wore through fury in a few minutes of fighting and cleaned up my own cuts with a clear conscious, but the guilt of coming in too late to take Ross' wrath from my mom always lingered for days.

So yeah. I'm prepared for all that—the memories, the feelings.

I'm not prepared to see a realtor's sign in the front yard. The house looks lifeless, like the family is already gone.

I pull up into Kat's drive, and stare at that sign. Not sure why it makes me feel...angry. I guess because another family is moving on from there, and most days I feel like I never will.

We all get out of the car.

"That it?" Leed asks mildly, looking at my old house.

"Yeah." My response is as grim as my soul.

Kat tears up again and I put an arm around her, but we are all still staring at that fucking house. Leed turns his back on it and blocks my view.

"Bones." The Lion growls.

The gravity in his voice makes me look at him. "What?"

He gestures at the house. "Bones. That's all it is. Bones are heavy as fuck to carry, but they can't hurt you anymore. All the life has gone out of them. One day, you'll be ready to lay 'em down. You'll bury those bones, yeah?"

He gives me a confident nod and pulls Kat from me, tucking her arm in his. "Come on, Little Sister. Something tells me your parents aren't going to be happy with the rock stars you've been keeping company with. You let me take the heat on that one."

"Shit," I mutter, turning to follow them. He's right. I ain't got no time for this fucking childhood baggage bullshit. Right now, I have to take care of Kat. Despite what she says, the tears let me know, she's a little in over her head in LA. She's feeling guilty, lost, unsure of herself. She needs to come home, heal up, reconnect. I can not be there in LA for her right now. I know Marianne tries, but she's got her own family and philanthropy machine to run.

Kat needs more in her life than just me and my del Marco family. Certainly more than Street and that fucking art teacher of hers that she seems to get regularly drunk and stupid with.

She needs her family, and they aren't exactly happy with either of us right now. Mike and Ellen played nice about Kat being in LA during the summer, but now that Kat has truly missed her Duke start deadline, they are growing impatient with her "LA phase" as they call it. They made her defer instead of backing out altogether, and they are pressuring her to commit to coming back South and attending Duke next year. Essentially trying to enforce a one year deadline in LA, even though Kat is a legal adult and can do what she wants.

It's crazy that yesterday I wanted to ask Kat to move in me, and now I'm wondering if her parents actually do know what's best for her. I am so fucking scared for Kat to follow in Ashlynn's footsteps, and even more terrified to be the cause of it. I keep looking at Kat's bandaged hand, remembering the same white gauze that wrapped Ashlynn's head.

Two sisters. Two accidents. One cause, one reason they both happened. The rage inside me that was raised in the empty house next door. What if Leed's wrong? What if the things that happened there aren't bones I can bury? What if the rage is bred into my bone?

Leed and Kat are arguing because Leed just pressed the doorbell and Kat is saying she doesn't have to ring the doorbell in her own house. He's holding her back, and whispering, "You wouldn't call and give them the heads up, so you shouldn't just walk in. They are empty-nesters now. What if they are making some middle-aged lovin'? Did you think of that?"

"Oh my god, Leed! First...gross. Second... is sex all you think about?" Kat hisses.

"Funny how you think about it a lot more when you aren't having it," he mutters.

Kat laughs. "You can have sex any day you want it, Lion."

"Yeah, kinda over the meaningless easy-bake-and-fuck-a-fangirl.  I'm looking for a new friend to have casual but meaningful, perhaps even non-stoned, sexy times with."

"Leed, that's so stupid," Kat argues. "Sex can't be casual and meaningful at the same time. The very definition of casual sex is that it's meaningless."

"I disagree," Leed says. "Look I'm not  anti-feelings like Mac...I mean, Mac before Adam's spawn rewired her brain. Keeping it casual doesn't mean you have to pretend you hate somebody unless you are in the act of fucking them. But at the same time, the feels-fucks don't necessarily have anything to do with commitment. In fact, I would argue that commitment kills the feels."

"It does not!" She retorts. She looks at me for confirmation.

"Little Sister, you are frickin' adorable but you are practically still a virgin," Leed scoffs affectionately. "You and Trace got that brand new summer luvin'. Of course your banging is banging."

"That's not the reason," she frowns, but she looks at me again.

"Love makes sex next-level," I assure her with a soft smile.

She crosses her arms gingerly considering her bandage. "See? Rock star with a body count as big as yours says you are wrong."

Leed snickers. "His body count is half mine, and he also never had a steady-bed-buddy. I'm telling you, what Tam and I had was good for eight years. Bed buddies like each other. Like sexing each other. And if you quit liking each other, or quit liking to sex each other, you quit doing it and just go back to being friends. Simple. Easy. Out. Just like me and Tam."

"Guys," I interject, "Really? What the fuck? Are we actually talking about Tam or Ashlynn right now? Is that what's happening?" I tag Leed in the shoulder, forcing him to look at me. "Tell me the truth: are you working up to fuck-buddy Ash?"

"What if he is? Isn't that his business and Ashlynn's business?" Kat hisses at me. "She's your ex-wife remember?"

"Oh my god, Kat!" I growl at her. "Of course I remember. I remember going through hell trying to get her clean! She's your sister and she was my...responsibility and I care about her well-being, and I know that you do too. And you—" I glare at Leed, "You should care about that, too. You do not need to be fucking with her emotions or her sobriety, man."

"I told you nothing was going on," Leed growls.

"Sounds to me like you are working up to it," I shoot back.

He looks away. "Nothing's going on," he repeats.

"Can we just drop this whole subject? You guys made me come here, I'd rather deal with the urgent matter. Which is convincing my parents I'm not living amidst a continual risky rock star brawl—{" she waves her bandaged hand at my face and Leed's busted lip, "You know—despite appearances?"

"And anyway, Ash is hundreds of miles away and thankfully none of us really have to worry about her right now..." Kat peers through the glass sidelight, and seeing no one, she punches in the key code on the door and the keyless entry mechanism flashes red. "I can't believe it! They changed the damn code!"

"You can't go home again, Little Sister," Leed says mournfully, grasping his throat and coughing.

"Of course she can," I snap, but his words make me look sideways at my old house. Some people can, I qualify in my mind. I hop off the stately front stoop and look in the window to Michael Ballard's study, hoping to catch him there. No such luck.

"I don't think they are home," I mutter, "But there's always the B&E option, KitKat. What do you say? Is your window still unlocked for me?" I grin up at her from the shrubbery where I stand, but Kat is still peering through the sidelight.

"No fucking way," she mutters, straightening up and looking down at me like...fuck, I don't what her expression means. She looks like a deer caught in headlights. Is she really that afraid of facing her parents? She bolts back down the steps, but I intercept her before she can move away to the car.

The front door flings open and a happy voice says, "Wow, you weren't kidding when you said you would come in twenty minutes—"

A more healthy-looking Ashlynn than I can even remember is staring the Lion in the face. The friendly smile she had pasted on for whomever she was expecting widens into a disbelief that looks...joyful? The fifty dollar bill she is holding floats to the ground at Leed's feet. He picks it up, hands it back to her and wraps her in a hug as he laughs wickedly—I think he laughs at the sheer serendipity of her.

It's like he fucking conjured her. Or maybe her being here called him to her.

"You don't have to pay me, Sunshine," his raspy voice is low, but I can still hear it in the quiet dusk. "For you, I come for free."

Fuck me. This is getting out of control fast.

Surprise! Wow, this is about to get interesting! I kind of wish Street was here, too--but it's probably good he isn't. Trace is a little too "unsteady" right now for another confrontation with Street...

Thoughts on how Trace-Kat-Ashlynn-Leed-and-the-Ballards are going to interact? Will Kat stay in Atlanta? Has Ashlynn left rehab early and if so, why? What's going on? Where will everybody be as we start Tantric?