Have Mercy: A Loveswept Contemporary Erotic Romance (23 page)

He hadn’t even managed to talk to her about the theft, about Marcos, about why she’d done it. He’d let her derail the conversation, gotten swept into the conflict and the power struggle, lost the thread altogether. Again.

Maybe he should have kept going to the meetings. They’d helped some, though some part of him always felt vaguely disloyal for sitting in a circle of folding chairs and spilling his family’s secrets to nice ladies in embroidered cardigan sweaters.

He wanted to talk to Emme. He wanted to hear what she’d say about the situation, how she’d advise him to handle it. But that wound was raw, too, and picking at it hurt. He’d disappointed her, and let her down, and hurt her, and she had a show to play. He wouldn’t compound his sins against her by demanding her help right now.

The bar wouldn’t open for another two hours. He grabbed his guitar and went out into the backyard.

His lawn was a mess, completely untended. Katie certainly hadn’t mowed and he was surprised the neighbors hadn’t complained about the length of the grass. Then again, the empty liquor bottles in the house implied that maybe they’d had more to complain about than just an unkempt garden. Of course, it wasn’t anything they hadn’t been used to seeing when their dad had been alive, and the neighborhood was no stranger to all-night benders and the coming-and-going of random strangers who turned into buddies when they were intoxicated enough. People like him didn’t live in neighborhoods with painted trim and tidy flower beds.

He’d been stupidly proud of his lawn, though, before a month of neglect had turned it wild, and he’d had a set of wrought-iron patio furniture out back.

It was nowhere to be seen.

Jesus Christ
. He sat down cross-legged on his patio and played. He played the angriest music he could think of, then the most despairing, then the sexiest, and none of it was enough. He couldn’t get lost in it.

After a futile and fumbling hour, he set his guitar aside and stared blankly out over his lawn, hands resting on his knees, wishing to God he still smoked. He pulled out his phone and thought about calling Emme; he even had his finger on her name, before he sighed, hit the back button, and did a search.

The sun had already dropped behind the tree line and his back hurt from leaning against the brick of the house’s exterior when he finally rose and got in his newly damaged car. His brain didn’t remember the route, but apparently some deeply buried muscle memory did, because he wound up at the run-down Presbyterian church without even thinking about where he was going.

He’d meant to go to the bar, meant to talk to Marcos, meant to handle business and take care of the mess Katie had made like he always had. But that wasn’t where he ended up.

The support group still met in the basement. The chairs were still the same, the coffee just as terrible as he remembered. And even a few of the participants were the same faces he’d seen years before. He wasn’t sure if that was a comfort or not, but he was too exhausted to really care.

A silver-haired woman in polyester slacks greeted him, and there was something about her that was so warm, so
motherly
, that he nearly broke down and cried. He swallowed around the golf ball in his throat. “I need help,” he said.

He couldn’t remember ever having said those words before. He could imagine Emme, if he’d said them to her—she’d gotten out of bed, naked, and wrapped her arms around him. “What do you need?” she’d asked, and he hadn’t known, other than her. If he’d asked her, she would have given it to him but he hadn’t known what he needed or how to ask for it.

Help
. He needed help. And if he couldn’t put that burden on her, the least he could do was get what he needed so he could go back to her.

Riding in the back of the van with Andy made Emme miss Tom even more.

There were no secret jokes between them, no heated looks, no touches snuck when Dave and Guillermo weren’t looking. Andy wasn’t speaking to her at all, actually. He spent most of his time texting his wife and studiously avoiding looking at Emme.

She found herself listening over and over to the playlist Tom had made for her, wrapping herself in the sound of the music the way she wrapped herself in his T-shirt at night. She still hadn’t washed it. She didn’t want to wash away his scent.

Stupid. Pathetic. And probably smelly.

They should arrive in Charlotte with enough time before their next show for Emme to make the call she needed to make. She’d checked SoundGap daily after what she had begun to think of as “the incident,” and she had been featured on the site every day. She was supposed to tell all, which she supposed meant she was supposed to deny that she’d ever had any kind of relationship with Tom, and to claim that she would never be that unprofessional ever again.

The thought of saying what she needed to say out loud in public where Tom could hear it, made her feel sick inside. But she had no choice. She didn’t want to spend her entire career defined by who she was sleeping with. She could hear her mother’s voice in her head, see a lifetime of neighbors slamming their doors in her face.

She could justify it all she wanted, but it felt wrong, somehow, and she knew it.

All the same, she couldn’t stand the thought of causing problems for Andy and his wife after he’d saved her ass by flying out at the last minute. Still, it stung, the thought that he didn’t trust her, that his wife didn’t trust her. Was that how bad her reputation really was? That she’d attack any man left alone with her long enough? That she had no morals or standards?

She supposed she’d earned it the hard way.

The lowlands of South Carolina gave way to the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains outside her window, and she watched the world turn greener and leafier. It was better than the oppressive silence inside the van.

They reached the Interstate-adjacent hotel that would be home for the night and Emme could
barely remember what city she was in. This hotel was a little shabbier than the last one, the carpet a little more frayed, the bathroom a little less clean. She stripped the comforter off the bed first thing, since she doubted it had been washed or changed any time recently, and washed her hands with the tiny soap in the bathroom. It smelled exactly the same as every other bar of hotel soap in every other hotel she’d ever stopped in.

That hadn’t bothered her before. Maybe it was just the length of the tour. Maybe it was the phone call she was about to make.

Maybe everything in her life just had a little less color in it now that Tom was gone.

She pulled out her phone. Jed answered on the first ring.

“Emme! I didn’t expect you to call.”

I bet you didn’t
. “I have to say, I was surprised to see myself on the front page of the blog.” She kept her voice light, sweet, imagined it as poisoned Karo syrup. “Such great publicity!”

Jed cleared his throat. “Yeah. Well, you know the saying.”

“I do.” Emme lowered herself to the chair in the corner of her room. It smelled faintly of cigarette smoke, which she shouldn’t like, but it reminded her of Tom, so she did. “You know, sugar, this could be good for both of us. Has the post gotten much traffic?”

“More page views than anything we’ve posted in months.” The discomfort was rapidly leaving his voice, replaced by excitement. “Emme, people are just fascinated by you.”

“What if I offer you an exclusive interview? No questions off-limits: Indelible Lines, my bassists, my tour … hell, even the brand of lipstick I wear. Whatever you want to ask, I’ll answer. Think it would be worth your time?”

When Jed spoke next, Emme could hear the anticipation in his voice, edged with wariness. “What’s the catch?”

“There isn’t one.” Emme sighed. “I’m in this business for good, Jed. And for some reason, the business wants
me
instead of just my music. I can either fight that, or embrace it and the chance it gives me to be heard by a larger audience.”

“So, you’re selling out?” The tone of his voice was teasing, but she could hear the edge behind it, the little smarmy put-down amid the laugh.

“If it gets me signed by a label, honey, you’d better believe it.” Emme didn’t let herself think about how true it would be if she denied her involvement with Tom in public. She shook off the slimy tendrils of shame that crawled through her. “But really. Have you heard our new album? Critics like it.
Audiences like it. Our tour is selling out every stop now.”

“Well.” Jed breathed into the phone, and it felt nauseatingly like he’d breathed in her ear. “I never thought I’d see the day, but I’m glad I have. I’ll talk to Greg, of course, but I’d love it if we could record you for the podcast and feature you on the blog.”

By the time Emme hung up, her heart was pounding like she’d been forced to run laps in gym class.
I can fight it or embrace it
. She repeated the phrase like a mantra, hand on her chest, feeling her heartbeat slow and her breathing re-regulate as she said it again and again.

The rhythm of the phrase was compelling.
I can fight it or embrace it
. She hummed a line, then grabbed the notepad and hotel pen off the table and began to write.

When she finally looked up, the room had grown dark and she had a new song.
I ought to take this to Tom, run through it with him to get the rhythm right before we bring it to Guillermo and Dave
. She hummed through the first verse, tapping her pencil against the tabletop. The room had grown unfamiliar as darkness fell, the world outside her mind hazy and indistinct. For a brief and terrifying moment, she couldn’t remember what city she was in or what time she was supposed to play.

And that Tom wasn’t there.

Well, she’d have to get over that one because she had a show to play in a few hours. She stared at her phone, deliberating. Guilt over her conversation with Jed, her upcoming interview, worry that she’d distract him from whatever was going on with his sister all piled on top of her until lifting the phone to her ear felt impossible.

In the end, she settled for a quick text.

Thinking of you. Hope things are well
.

She waited, knowing that Tom was usually glued to his phone, but no return message came. Not right away, and not an hour later, when she checked after she’d changed her clothes and put on her makeup.

Jed had been right about one thing: it seemed that all publicity was good publicity when it came to audiences.

The venue was small; on the smaller side of some of the divey bars she’d played in on the tour. She hadn’t expected the kind of crowd that spread out before her, turned into black shadowed blurs by the brightness of the stage lights. From the sound at the door, it looked like the bouncers were having to turn people away.

The waitresses working the crowd could barely move through the audience. Above it all, on the
tiny stage framed by bar-themed T-shirts for sale hanging on the wall, Emme felt a strange sense of detachment. She turned back to Guillermo, who she could barely see behind the drum set; glanced over at Andy, who still wouldn’t even look at her; and watched Dave adjust a knob on his amp.

Normally the stage felt like a warm bubble floating over the audience: part of it, but separate, the music both a connection between her and them, and a protective film between them. Tonight she felt like a brick wall stood between her and the audience, and between herself and her band members.

Were all of these people here to hear her sing, or had they come to see if she would break down onstage, or kiss Andy, or throw her microphone into the crowd? The self-doubt she’d been fighting back surged to the surface, and for a minute she forgot how to breathe. Audiences had always been her allies. They were the people who paid to listen to her music. Did it make a difference if that wasn’t why they were there?

I should mess with them
. Some vicious, vindictive part of her was tempted to plant the biggest, sloppiest kiss imaginable on Andy, just to see how everyone would react. It wasn’t a pretty impulse, and she tamped it down quickly—his wife wouldn’t appreciate it, and while she might be willing to use herself to sell albums, she wasn’t willing to use him.

Use me
, Tom had told her. Which was worse—denying what they had, or using it to further her career?

She needed to reconnect with her audience. Find that human thread that ran between them, feeding them energy from her songs and sending it back to her as they listened, sang along, danced. She’d always been most herself onstage.

She turned to Dave. “Set list change,” she said. “Let’s open with ‘Lord Have Mercy.’ ”

He raised an eyebrow but nodded, then told Andy and Guillermo.

“How y’all doing tonight?” Emme spoke into the microphone, and the response from the audience broke through her wall. They were cheering. They were there to hear her, not a version of her that was safe or sheltered or false. She’d let her feelings lead her astray, once, but since then she’d trusted herself so little that she’d let everyone else dictate her actions. It wasn’t working and she wasn’t willing to do it anymore.

She launched into the song and the crowd exploded. The live recording they’d put on their website had been downloaded more than any of her old material, and over half the people in the audience were singing along. That chemical buzz of energy ran between her and them, and there it was, the collapse of that sense of apartness, that frightening, overwhelming feeling of togetherness.

She’d missed it, but she was going to get it back.