Summer (Four Seasons #2) (31 page)

I firmly believe Lucas is on the road to recovery. If he employs the calming techniques we have discussed, and if he continues to discuss the trauma he suffered as a child with me, then I foresee him being much changed in a short number of weeks.
 

Michael Rafferty.

TWENTY-NINE

AVERY

New York doesn’t feel like the same city anymore. It feels weird, disjointed…like I don’t belong here. Since Dad died, New York has been the only place I’ve felt rooted and secure, and to lose that now feels like the world is ending.
 

In less than a week’s time, D.M.F. are playing at what is easily the biggest musical event of the year, and I’ve been walking around the city with two VIP tickets in my purse, trying to decide whether or not I should go. I feel like I’m being torn in two different directions.
 

I’m on my way back from seeing Morgan and Sam when Noah calls. Then it feels like I’m being pulled in a
third
direction, and my head is fucking spinning. I feel guilty about talking to Noah again, which is crazy since nothing is going on between us, but still… Luke still feels like he’s with me every turn I make. Before, that felt like a burden, something I couldn’t escape no matter how hard I tried, and now, since I saw him, since he explained himself and he placed that goddamn kiss on my goddamn forehead, I don’t know. Fuck. Everything is just so fucked up again. I answer the phone, taking a deep breath.

“Hey.”

“Hey, stranger. Just thought I’d better call and see if you were alive. Haven’t heard from you since you got back.”

“I know, I’m the worst. I’m sorry. I’m just…processing.”

“Processing is good.”

“Processing is
hard
.”

He makes a
hmm
ing sound. “Yeah, it’s that, too.”

I dodge people in the street, doing my best to avoid hitting anyone as I walk back toward my apartment. Across the other side of the road, a guy steps out onto the blacktop and the cacophony of screaming car horns that follows is almost deafening.
 

“Where the hell are you, Patterson? Beirut?”

“Oh, y’know. Just navigating Brooklyn Heights. It’s a jungle out here.”

“Brooklyn Heights is
not
a jungle. Come visit me in TriBeCa and we’ll talk.”

“Okay, sounds like a plan.”

“Great. Neve was beginning to think you’d forgotten all about her.”

I suddenly feel seriously guilty for neglecting Neve. She’s not at an age when she can appreciate that people’s lives take them off on paths they don’t want to go down, and there’s nothing they can even do about it. “Oh, god, Noah, I’m sorry. I should have called her or something.”

“It’s cool, Patterson. My daughter is a prodigy, wise before her time. I told her you had a few personal problems and she asked if it was about boys. I told her, no, not this time. I don’t think she believed me, though. Easier to let her think that than tell her someone tried to murder you last year and you had to make sure they didn’t get released from prison.”

“Yeah. Good idea. How does she know about boy problems anyway?”

“Because she knows I have girl problems, so…”

“
Fuck
.”

Noah laughs. “It’s all good. Not as bad as you think. Hey, guess what?”

I wince, bracing myself for whatever’s going to come out of his mouth next.
 

“I have a date tonight.”

“You
do
?” Surprise floods me. I didn’t see that one coming at all.

“I do. Her name is Tuesday.
Literally
.”

“Dude, I am so pleased that you have a date with a girl named Tuesday,” I tell him. And I am. I really am. I haven’t consciously realized until now that I’ve been avoiding Noah a little. Avoiding calling him at least. Now that I know he’s out there and taking a mystery girl on a date, I’m brimming over with relief.
 

“Yeah, well. It was time. And she’s really pretty. Like, a ten. Brunette. Big tits. I’m feeling very good about it,” he says, laughing. He sounds crass, but I can tell he’s just trying to ease the frisson of tension that lies between us.
 

“Nice. Big tits are a must.”

“It’s strangely hot to hear you say that, Patterson. You’d better watch yourself.”

“Noted.”

“Anyway, I wanted to make sure you were doing okay. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t too hard seeing, well, seeing Luke.”

Noah hates saying Luke’s name. He never really does it. He always manages to somehow find a way to avoid it. That he’s saying his name now is kind of interesting. “It was horrible,” I say, sighing. “And then it was just hard. And then it was good. And then it was sad. It was everything all at once.”

“Sounds intense.”

“He told me a few things that kind of put a few things in perspective. And he gave me these tickets to see him play at the Staples Center on the eighteenth. I have no clue if I should go or not.”

Noah is quiet for a while. Eventually, he says, “When you look at him, can you see anything else, Patterson? Does your heart still try and skip right out of your chest?”

I don’t need to think about the question to figure out my answer. It just feels cruel to tell Noah the truth. I do it anyway, because he already knows how I feel and I don’t want to lie to him. “I don’t see anything or anyone else,” I say. “And my heart feels like it’s on the brink of exploding when I look at him.”

“Then you should go to the concert. You should go, and you should forgive him. Life’s precious and often cut unexpectedly short. Don’t waste love. Especially not that kind of love. It’s very hard to come by.”

“I know. I know it is,” I say quietly. “But I just don’t know if I can do it.”

THIRTY

LUKE

I’ve never been afraid of death. When I joined the NYPD, they kept me out on street patrol for a year longer than they should have because I was always running when there was any danger. I wasn’t running away from it, of course. I was running
toward
it, to see if anyone was hurt. To see if anyone needed my help. I wasn’t afraid or fearful for my life. I just did what I had to do. Turns out that’s not a trait you’ll find in all police officers. They’re only human after all, and human beings have this overwhelming desire to preserve their own lives in the face of potential gunshot wounds, stabbings and a variety of other fucked up things that can easily occur during the course of your average working day on the streets of New York.
 

So, yeah. I’m not afraid of being attacked or going head-to-head with a gang of criminals. Not concerned in the slightest. I am, however, shitting my pants as we go through rehearsal for our Fallen Saints gig.

The space is massive. There are so many seats—literally thousands of them—and they are all going to be full in less than eight hours’ time, because every single ticket for the concert sold out in the space of twenty-three minutes. I’m totally awed by the whole thing. Mostly because I can see seats B23 and B24—they’re on the second row, for shit’s sake—and that’s where Avery is going to be sitting. If she turns up, that is. She shouldn’t. She should stay away. I’m doing so much better now, but I’m not miraculously fixed. I still have crappy days where I want to punch my fist through a wall. I just know exactly where that gets me now—a broken wrist and a new guitarist muscling in on the band—so I’m less likely to follow through. Still. It’s not as though I’m perfect. Avery deserves perfect. She needs stability in her life, and I’m hardly that. She shouldn’t come.
 

But I’m fucked if I don’t want her to. Badly.
 

“All right, boys. That’s it. You sound phenomenal. I’ll see you tonight. Go and get some rest. No drinking between now and call time. And no drugs, either. I’ll be able to tell. There’ll be plenty of pussy and coke to go around once the show’s over.” Butler’s happier than a pig in shit right now. He’s grinning from ear to ear like someone recently gave him a Chelsea smile. Cole gives him a disgusted look at the mention of drugs.
 

“You really are a prick, man,” he says. I’m glad the asshole finally appears to be wearing on my band mate as badly as he wears on me. Cole rips his t-shirt off over his head and mops the sweat off his face with it. He throws it at Butler, baring his teeth. “We don’t need you to hook us up with anything, okay? We’re having our own celebration back at my place once we’re finished here.”

First I’ve heard of it, but I’m pleased to find out about it now. I respect their work but Fallen Saints are notorious for their alcohol and drug abuse. That will never be my scene. I’ve found too many people down dark, disgusting back alleys, foaming at the mouth, mid-grand mal seizure as they overdose and die on a cocktail of chemicals that had no business being inside their body. Maybe in the music industry refusing to take drugs might make me uncool, but I’m not here to make friends. I’m here to make music. I can’t do that if I’m fucking dead.

Butler runs his tongue over his teeth, nodding slowly as he digests this information. “Okay. No problem. I may have already laid out for a few things but a change of venue isn’t the end of the world. I guess we’ll have more privacy at your place.”

“It’s just for the band, man,” Pete says. “We’re not partying with a bunch of strangers.”

Butler blinks a couple of times and then starts laughing in a very weird, very awkward way. “Of course, of course. That’s how is should be. Just you guys. Just the band.” He gives Marika a bizarre look, and I fight the urge to smile. He thinks he has a friend on the inside with us, but I know my boys. When they say just the band, they mean just the band. Butler couldn’t get any of us to sign the contract he had drawn up for us, which tied Marika to D.M.F. for a period no shorter than three years. Each and every one of us lawyered up and sent the contract over to our respective representatives, and boy if they haven’t been dragging their feet on getting back to us all.
 

Marika smiles back at Butler like she knows something we don’t. I can’t be fucked dealing with mind games or secrets right now, though, so I pick up my song list and my bottle of water and I get the fuck out of there. Feels weird not carrying a guitar off stage. It’s going to feel even weirder tonight, when there are twenty thousand people out there in the stands and I won’t have anything between them and me. My guitar’s been a shield for a long time, it seems. I never really knew until it was taken away from me that I treated it that way.
 

Cole catches up with me in the parking lot, throwing his arm over my shoulder. “This is it,” he says. “This is the moment we’ve been waiting for. After tonight, we’ll be unstoppable. Nothing will be able to hold us back. I have something for you, by the way. Something that’s going to make you very happy.”

I throw my leather jacket onto the backseat of my Fastback, pulling a stupid face at him. “Don’t you start again. I don’t want to fuck any girls you met on Tinder.”

“Psssh. Like I need Tinder. Besides, dickhead, it’s not that kind of present. It’s something far more practical. Something you’ve been craving for a long time.”

“I’m still worried.”

“Don’t be. You’re gonna propose to me when you see this shit, later, I swear to you. I’ll see you in a couple of hours, right?”

Cole leaves and I try not to think about whatever he has up his sleeve now. He may think his surprise is the best thing since sliced bread, but there’s every chance he’s wrong. He usually
is
wrong.
 

I head back to my apartment to relax a little before the show. The other boys are hitting the gym but I don’t need any more adrenalin charging around my body right now. I need quiet and calm. I’ve almost attained something that looks like calm by the time five o’clock rolls around and I have to make my way back to the venue. Butler gave us all passes for the underground VIP parking lot. I wasn’t going to use it but as soon as I arrive I find the normal parking lot packed full of girls, and there are people everywhere. A group of girls standing in a circle spot me doing a U-turn and I can hear them chattering through my wound down window.
 

“Oh my god, that’s him! That’s him, the lead singer!”

“Lucas Reid? Holy shit, where?”

“I can’t believe he’s driving his own car. What the hell? Shouldn’t he be arriving in a Lincoln town car or something?”

“Fuck, he is so hot. Do you think we should try and talk to him?”

I do not want to talk to these girls. Not one iota. I can’t turn around properly without driving right past them so I throw the car into reverse and back the hell out of there as quickly as I can. At the entrance to the VIP parking, the security guard doesn’t even ask to see my pass. He holds out his fist, waiting for me to bump it, and then he buzzes open the heavy gates. “Welcome, man. Love your work. I got tickets to the show tonight because of you guys.”

It’s one thing having a bunch of women throwing themselves at you left, right and center, but it’s kind of weird to have guys recognizing me now. Gives me a sense of credibility, I guess. Most of the time guys don’t want to come and see a band play because they have a crush on one of the musicians. They come because they’re into the music.
 

“Thanks, man, we appreciate it.”

I find the other guys sitting in the green room backstage, running over the set list and talking excitedly. We strum through most of our songs, making sure we know exactly where we need to be and when, and I’m feeling pretty confident by the time Butler shows up thirty minutes before we’re due to go on stage. He fetches us and leads us down a rabbit warren of corridors until we reach another green room, where the entire lineup of Fallen Saints are already in the process of getting fucked up. Brad Kershaw, the band’s bass player, has a girl perched on the edge of his lap. She looks highly coked up as Brad runs his hands up and down her long, bare, and very tanned legs.
 

 
Marika’s uncle, also the band’s drummer, Harvey Bruce Sung, is asleep on a chaise lounge, snoring loudly, and Reece Fitzpatrick, lead vocals, is chugging Jack Daniels straight from the bottle. Sam Perry, Fallen Saint’s legendary guitarist is nowhere to be seen, though.