Chapter 29: Rock Stars Speak in Metaphor

Trace

As soon as Kat and Tamara leave, Riley is all business. He turns a chair around and straddles, gesturing for me to sit. I take this as a good sign and plop down, leaning forward eagerly.

"Tell me."

"The PI in Atlanta has a hit. Ashlynn rented a car."

"Fuck," I groan. "She does not need to be driving around Atlanta, out of her mind high."

"He wants to know where you think she might go."

"Away from Atlanta," I say. She hates it there. I can't believe hasn't hopped the first plane to anywhere.

"He's got a monitor on her cards, and he's looking into bribing someone at the car rental place for info on the car's GPS location. That's a delicate situation. He says it has to be approached with care—may take a couple of days. While he's working on that, he wants to check around with her old friends, just in case she's reached out..."

I leap up and pace around, trying to recall names and faces from my old high school days. Riley takes a list of of some girls she used to hang around. Finally, I consider the one reason she might be hanging around Atlanta—the one person that might help her not feel for me. "She had a boyfriend, too. Real serious. Cameron Martin. He should be easy to track down. Big high school football star, went to Duke with Ashlynn. He's in med school somewhere. Emory, I think. Tell the PI to check with him first."

"Got it," Riley says, adjusting his glasses and texting frantically. When he's finished, he crosses his arms and looks up at me. "He'll find her. If he doesn't, we've got investigators scanning for her in New York, Chicago, Miami, LA, Denver, everywhere she's been known to frequent."

"Add Raleigh. And maybe..." I wrack my brain for anywhere else she might go. "DC...she likes museums."

I remember last spring, the only thing she wanted for her twenty third birthday was an incognito trip to the Getty in LA. She didn't want to spend her birthday alone, or stuck in the house. Ashlynn and I never went anywhere in public together, but it was her birthday and she was working so hard at staying healthy—I really wanted to celebrate with her. We did it up right. Hide-in-plain-sight. Tamara did a great job of making us both unrecognizable. We went totally Scene. Ashlynn looked surprisingly cute with peacock blue hair and a prison striped skater skirt and purple tights. I looked like an absolute douche with jet black hair hiding half of my face, but Tamara is good—no way did it look like the wig it was. I actually liked the make-up that completely obscured my identity—I told Tams to take pics and we would pitch it for some future video.

Riley is looking at me oddly. "Trace, have you given much thought to what happens when we find her?"

"I just have to find a way to make her see...she needs to come home to LA and get better. I'll beg, I'll wheedle. I'll talk her into it. I know I can. I did it before."

"I know it's none of my business, but I think you need a different approach, mate."

"Now is not the time for tough love, Riley," I run my hands through my hair, "She is...in a vulnerable place right now. Much more so than before. She's confused. She thinks she has feelings for me. Like, all of the sudden."

Riley sighs and leans his chin on the chair back. "Blimey, you're such a prat, Trace. She's been in love with you for ages. Since last spring. And it's all your fault."

"What the fuck do you mean, it's all my fault?" I'm indignant. "I didn't do anything but try to help a friend."

"Just like I said. It's all your fault." He waves his hand at me with a look of distaste. "You and your charming Lancelot in Leather mojo. You picked up her up out of the gutter. You saved her. You fixed her. You made coffee and dinner and music with her. And the way you fucking looked at her when you thought she wasn't aware..."

"I do not have feelings—like that—for Ashlynn."

"No, you don't," he agrees. "I can see that now. You have feelings for Kat, and you were feeling them when you were looking at her blonde doppleganger of a sister. But it's no wonder you made Ashlynn fall in love with you."

"Fuck." I fling myself down on the couch and cover my face with my hands. "What am I going to do, Riley?"

"You should tag out. Let me talk to her" the Lion says. I look up to find Leed standing in the doorway of the suite, and for once he's not exuding his smarmy front-man sexuality. He looks...uncomfortable as he stands there with his hands shoved the front of his hoodie. Well, he fucking should look uncomfortable. He's eavesdropping.

"Why?" I look at him suspiciously. Apparently one syllable is all it takes to invite Leed to the Ashlynn intervention team. He grins, lopes into the suite, snatches up a Perrier, and flings himself down beside me on the couch.

"She likes me. And I like her. We had some good chats, back in LA. We get each other."

"You do? How's that?" I ask, utterly confused. I hadn't noticed any chats, and Ashlynn and Leed are complete opposites.

Leed sips the Perrier. "Ashlynn is like...a sunflower. She's vibrant and showy and purposeful, but her beauty is fragile. She's likely to topple over under all that mass in her big beautiful golden crown." He makes a vague gesture at his own head. "She needs the sunlight to stay strong. She can't thrive in the shade...she wilts."

He gives me his huge cocky grin and as throws an arm around me and taps his chest. "Obviously in this metaphor, I bring the sunshine, and you're the shady motherfucker."

I sigh. Leed is like this. His mother is a hippie. She lives on a commune in Tennessee. He grew up with in Atlanta with his dad and step-mom, like I did, but he spent his summers on the commune, farming organically and doing yoga and visualizing and shit. He's...eccentric, to say the least. But I get what he's saying. I'm poetic, too, just in a different, angsty, not-so-childish-way. I try to speak his flower language.

"You don't know anything about Ashlynn. Ashlynn is not a sunflower. Ashlynn is more like..." I reach for the right analogy, "...an orchid. She is quiet and understated and delicate and hard to care for."

Leed rakes his fiery hair back, and flips it to the side to give me a cock-headed shake of disagreement. "I think you are the one that doesn't know her."

"I know her. I've known her since we were six years old, Leed. Sunflower Ashlynn is drug-induced. Possibly brain-damaged, but it's really hard to tell for sure, until she's consistently clean."

"No, Trace, I don't think so. I don't think she's brain damaged; I just think she's brain-changed.I think orchid Ashlynn didn't survive the hospital, and a great big beautiful flower regrew in the same soil. She's just on the wrong fertilizer."

"Ok...I was with you until fertilizer," Riley says. "In this metaphor, is the fertilizer Trace or the drugs?"

"Drugs are the wrong fertilizer," Leed says. "Trace is the shade, remember?"

Riley snaps his fingers. "Right! Forgot that part."

Suddenly I am extremely weary of this conversation. "This isn't a joke or a metaphor. We are talking about a person, here. A person I care about. Leed, despite all the shit we give each other, I know you're my boy, and I know you are trying to help. But this isn't something you can take on, just cause you think you have had a few nice chats with Ashlynn on a good day and you think she's...sunny and kind-hearted and pretty. I get it. Ashlynn is all that, but there are a lot more dark days than sunny ones. And she's my responsibility. She's my...you know..." I throw my hand up in the air. I can't ever bring myself to call her my wife to the guys. Surprisingly they never give me much shit about it.

"Ooohhh, are we talking about The Situation?" Bodie comes barreling into the room, beating out a quick rhythm on the counter as he passes the kitchen and snatches up a piece of courtesy fruit.

"Does everybody have a key to my room?" I glare at Riley.

"You never minded before. We always use your suite for meetings," Riley responds.

"Yeah, well now I have a girlfriend staying with. Somebody else needs to be the Green Suite," I say loudly as the band piles in.

"Fine. We'll all get keys to Leed's suite from now on. His fangirls aren't usually shy," Mac glides past him, wearing a hotel robe and her sunglasses, with a towel over her shoulder. Adam brings up the rear, dressed for a work out, his blue eyes looking surprisingly calm, considering the shit going down with Mac. Bodie plops down on the floor and bites into his pear, looking eagerly between me, Leed and Riley.

Adam gestures at Mac to sit on the other couch, but she shakes her head. "I'm on my way to the spa, I just dropped by for the two minute skim." Adam refuses to sit while Mac stands, and she makes an exasperated sound and plops down, hugging one end of the sofa. Adam arranges himself excessively in the center, crowding her. She shoves at him.

"Personal space, Adam," she mutters.

He leans closer to her ear, rubbing her jaw with his stubbly chin. She doesn't move away, she just stares straight forward as he says, where everyone can here, "Sorry. I never know how close you want me. Sometimes you like me all up in your pu—" he pops the P suggestively, then amends too... "-ersonal space."

"I wanted you in my private space, but you couldn't keep things between us. So you can go get dicked now, for all I care," she snaps, whipping her long strawberry locks with the rainbow undercarriage in his face as she turns away from him.

"No can do, Shortcake, you've got me by the balls. You know that." He is scraping her hair out of his face and coiling it with his hand. She tenses away from him. His expression doesn't change as he continues to twirl her hair and arrange it on her shoulder. He's acting...weird. Even weirder than usual, when it comes to Mac. He really needs to chill before Leed loses his shit again.

"Can you guys...just, not, right now?" Leed says to Adam and Mac, with a look of surprising tolerance, grabbing me around the shoulders with his giant paw. "We're here for Trace. He's got a much bigger problem than your inability to keep your ugly bits from bumping together, ok?"

I pray for patience. God doesn't answer. I still want to punch something. Leed would do. Bodie, in a pinch.

"Leed, this is not a problem with a team solution. Really. I'm good."

Bodie shakes his head, dreads swinging. "Naw man, you gotta help a brother out. I'm terrified to even speak to Kat. I don't know what the fuck she knows, doesn't know." He looks at Mac, "Tell him, girl."

"Trace, you're doing that thing you do," Mac says dryly.

"What thing?" I say.

"That not-let-anyone-in thing."

I laugh at my ginger song-writing partner. "Hypocrite much?"

"Fine, Adam and I will let you all in," she grabs Adam by the collar. "Do you want to tell them the whole story or should I?"

Adam's got his expression on lockdown. "I think that should stay between us, Shortcake."

"Well, you should have thought of that before your in-flight confession, Adam. What you did was next-level betrayal. You thought you could bully me into a relationship, by outing us to the guys. You were so fucking wrong. I told you I'm not ready for that, and now I'm really pissed at you, too."

He puts his hand over hers, gently untangling it from his shirt, rubbing her clenched fist. "I'm sorry that I embarrassed you, but you were acting like...some kind of vampire, Mac. On me at night, cold as ice during the day. I can't do this hot and cold thing, like last tour. I can't act like it doesn't mean anything. You can't be in my bed one night and fuck some fanboy in the greenroom the next, and expect me to be okay with that. Not after...not considering...fuck, not right now, ok?"

She wipes a tear and makes a frustrated sound. "I can't be what you want. It's been less than a week we've been back together, and already you keep circling back to the last tour and the fanboy in the green room. That was one time, Adam. It was over two years ago. God, we were kids. Get over it."

"I am over it." he growls, his blonde hair falling in his face as he leans forward into her ear. " I should have never have said anything about him. But Mac, you know I only meant...you know what I want. For fuck's sake I want to—"

"I know what you want," she cuts him off. "And I'm sorry, but it makes me feel like shit—thinking you are just waiting for me to let you down. This is all too...intense for me right now. We just need to...chill. Go back to being friends."

Adam looks very sad, but he nods and adjusts his gaze into the distance. "Okay. You let me know if things change, Mac. I'm not going anywhere. At least not right now."

MacKenna doesn't say anything more to Adam, she just nods. He ruffles her hair and kisses her temple. "Don't worry. We are family, either way," he murmurs.

"Yeah," she manages, but I can tell she is more upset by the exchange than she lets on. I suppress a bitter smile, wondering if Adam and Mac are just me and Kat, a year down the road. Will Kat decide I'm too intense for her, too?

Truth to be told, I'm nowhere near Adam on the commitment scale of hardness. Mac is all Adam sees. It's been like that from the day Leed brought his little sister to band practice, just to see what it would be like to add some synthesizers to our grungy sound. Of all of us guys, Adam is the least likely to take a fangirl back to his room. He does occasionally, he is a twenty-three year old dude, but most of the time, he's following Mac around, trying to keep other guys off her. And she doesn't mind. She would rather spend time with Adam, but she can't take the commitment pressure he's putting on her. And he can't take the idea that thousands of fans and not a few celebrities will leap at a smile from her and try to fuck her five ways to Sunday. It wouldn't surprise me at all if he's packing a four-carat diamond ring in his suitcase, just waiting for one right vibe from Mac.

I feel like I've already learned my lesson with the ring thing.

Leed is gripping my shoulder, trying to get my reaction. "Well, I think that's real progress for Adam and Mac, don't you, Trace? I'm all for any direction that keeps Adam cockblocked from my little sister. Speaking of Little Sisters..."

"And that's how we circle back," Riley smiles, twirling his finger.

"Fuck yeah. Spill. What the hell have you told Kat about Ashlynn?" Bodie asks bluntly.

I sigh. "I told her everything except Vegas."

Mac frowns. "So she knows that Ashlynn was living with you, and that you've been supporting her drug habit for the last year?"

I nod.

"And she's okay with that?"

"Ok? Not exactly, no. Who would be ok with that? But does Kat understand how it evolved and how we got to where we are? Yeah, I think so."

"I don't think that's true, Trace," Mac objects slowly, "You left out a big chunk—that you married her sister."

"It's a piece of a paper that gives Ashlynn legal protection from her parents' intervention. It helps me keep her off their radar, and gives her peace of mind that they can't make her do stuff against her will. That's all. All of you know, there's never been anything romantic between me and Ashlynn, right?" I stare each one of them down.

They all nod, except Mac.

Mac shrugs. "If you say it's not like that, fine. But I can't believe you would marry somebody without some kind of...affection."

"I do feel for her, Mac. Christ, I grew up with her. But I should never have married her. I'm not in love with her. I never have been."

Mac nods, but her reaction makes me dread that Kat is going to feel the same.

"I like Ashlynn," Mac adds softly.

"Me too. But I love Kat," I admit. Fuck. I said it. I guess there's no reason in trying to walk it back, since it's true.

Bodie sighs. "You have to tell Kat, man. I mean, none of us will, but you have to, the sooner the better."

"I will. I just want to find Ashlynn and have a plan of action first." I explain to them recent events with Ashlynn. Not the part about her feelings for me. I say she wants to go forward with the annulment but that I don't want to do that until she's stable.

Adam clears his throat. "It's a tough situation. I think you've done right. Only you and Kat know how much pressure your relationship can take at one time. Just...trust your instincts, brother. Cause it clearly doesn't work when you push," he mumbles cutting his eyes at Mac.

Mac rises abruptly. "I'm late for my massage." She practically stumbles over Adam's feet to get away from him, and she abruptly flips her hair, wraps her rainbows locks in the towel, shoves on her sunglasses and hurries out the door. Leed rises like he's going to go after her, but she wards him off with a hand, and he lets her walk out without following.

That's when Adam breaks, leaning forward into his hands. "Well, I totally fucked that up," he groans.

"I thought you played it perfect," Leed slaps him on the back.

Adam rises angrily and gets in Leed's face, their blond and red heads close together. "You know what, Leed? Fuck you, man. We've been like brothers for five years. You really think I'm no good for Mac? That I don't care about her? That I wouldn't...take care of her?"

Leed presses back into Adam's face with a grimace, but his voice is totally calm. "I never said that. Look, if you want to know the truth, I'd rather she's bedding down with you than some random. But the way you can't be chill with her...you just stress her out and make her do crazy shit. And I don't like walking in on my sister in the green room and finding some piece of filth taking pics while he's choke-fucking her. And security right outside the door, Adam. She let him treat her like that—and take those pictures. If I hadn't broken his goddamn phone before he posted, they would have gone viral. She would be known as the Soundcrush Sub right now—and forever. I don't know everything that went down that night, because she wouldn't tell me, but I know she was trying to make a point to you. Trying to push you away, because you were holding on too tight and you wouldn't let her go any other way. That shit was on you, brother. So just...fucking chill with Mac, alright? This lifestyle is wild enough. We all get along better, without you making the hard play for her when she's not ready."

Adam is pale with anger—or maybe with the recognition of the truth.

Problem is, it's not as simple as Leed thinks.

I try not to think about Adam's tortured, sloppy confession from last night. It's not my business, and from the way he's hardly made eye contact with me since he walked in, I think he regrets spilling his guts, big time--if he even remembers.

Bodie bounces to his feet and slings an arm around Adam, pushing Leed out of Adam's personal space.

"Fuck this seriousness. Come on, guys. That was a one time low for our girl; we've all done stupid shit. Mac's grown up a lot since the last tour. She's older now, and helluh fierce. She ain't gonna to let herself get messed up again—not by our boy here, not by some high-as-fuck snap-happy random, either. Let's push past this. What we need is to pound each other. I booked us some private time in a gym down the street. Come on," he shakes Adam roughly by the shoulder. "Let's go spar."

I could definitely throw some punches and relieve some tension. Adam and I both sound off in agreement. Leed shrugs. Bodie raises an eye at Riley and he laughs in high amusement. "I'd rather do yoga like Leed."

Leed frowns as he rubs his tight abdomen. "I can't tell, Riley— was that a serious statement or a roast?"

"It's a graceful exit, Lawson," Riley chirps as he walks out.

As I go into the bedroom for gym shoes, Leed follows me. "Think about what I said, about Ashlynn. Maybe if you were in love with her, you could do the whole white knight thing, but the way things are, Trace...honestly, you're just another one of her problems."

I blink. "That's not true."

Leed tips his mane forward, staring at the floor. "You can't see it because you are too close, but that's exactly what you are. You can't be her hero, Trace. She's gotta be her own hero. She could probably use some friends that aren't you, though." He stuffs his hands in the front of his hoodie, "Tell her to give me or Mac a call, if she wants to talk."

The lion walks out, never having roared once, and leaves me speechless. What the hell? When did Leed become...a leader?

So, do you like this chapter? I kinda like the band relationships as much as the romance. I have stories in mind for all the Soundcrush guys. I'd love to hear what story you want next...Leed's? Mac's? Adam's? Or should I say Madam's...cause there's alot going on with them, already. I haven't pinned down all the details for Bodie's story, he's a bit of a mystery even to me.

Don't forget to vote, please. I mean, if you're feelin' it. Thanks!