"I think of him as a brother," Fox said, his voice quiet and his expression solemn, "but I also know he's not good for a woman who wants an actual relationship. We might not have partied the past few nights, but Noah was fucking a groupie or some other woman--probably women--he picked up." It was a nonjudgmental statement of fact. "I don't know if anything or anyone is capable of fixing what's broken inside him."
Saddened, Molly laid her head against his shoulder and didn't ask further questions. As she wouldn't betray Charlotte's secrets, she didn't expect Fox to betray Noah's. "The streets are so quiet and pretty this time of night." Rain had fallen not long ago, and everything shimmered, the lights reflecting off the tarmac. "Let's do this in other cities."
Fox ran his fingers lightly over the side of her face where she lay tucked up against him. "Just don't tell anyone I'm doing romantic bullshit."
"Tough guy." Snuggling into him, she said, "Can we ride around for a while?"
"Long as you want."
They stayed out almost to dawn, stopping to play barefoot in a deserted fountain and dance under the moonlight in an otherwise empty plaza. Held in Fox's arms, his cheek against her hair and the only sound that of their breaths, Molly drew in the scent of him and felt her heart overflow with love.
"Sorry 'bout the ropes," she said sleepily much, much later, cuddling up to him in bed.
"Nothing to be sorry about--I've never had a better night out." Fox stroked his hand down her spine, the callused pads of his fingers a delicious, familiar roughness, his words a gift against her skin. "I've decided to save the ropes for when we have hours to play. I wouldn't want to rush." A kiss to her shoulder as goose bumps broke out over her skin. "Good night, Molly Webster."
"Good night, Zachary Fox." I love you.
Fox was the one who found Abe the next afternoon when the big keyboard player didn't meet the rest of them for a late lunch in Fox and Molly's suite. "I'll go wake him," he said with a grin. "Maybe I'll use this ice cube to do it." Plucking the cube from his otherwise empty orange juice glass, he wrapped it in a thick napkin.
Noah and David grinned, but with restraint. Both their heads had to be throbbing since it turned out that after Noah showed his women the door last night, he'd woken David up and talked him into another drink or five.
"The rock-and-roll life," Molly said sweetly, "is not healthy for your livers."
David groaned. "Fucking tequila. Never again."
"You said that last time."
"Shut up, you minion of evil."
Noah splurted his coffee. "Minion of evil? Last night you were declaring your undying love."
"I'm going to stab you in a second."
"For the record, Molly," Noah said, turning his attention to her, "we've been saints since we returned home. Saints. We didn't want Fox's girl to get the wrong impression about us."
Rolling her eyes, Molly took pity on the two males and was pouring them fresh coffee when her cell phone rang. It was Fox. "Get in here, bring the others." He hung up after that terse instruction, and she saw why when they reached Abe's room.
The keyboardist was sprawled in his bed, reeking of alcohol, bottles strewn around him and the brunette from the club nowhere in evidence. This, Molly knew at once, was more than a few too many drinks. "He needs medical attention." She'd seen her mother like this, the memory an ugliness under her skin.
"It's on its way." Fox's jaw was a brutal line. "I called 911."
Thinking past her instinctive anger, the rage an old one, and back to the first-aid course she'd attended during university, she said, "We have to turn him to his side, make sure he has a clear airway." Abe had thrown up at some stage, that much was apparent, but he'd survived. They had to keep him that way until the paramedics arrived.
The men rolled Abe into the correct position while she checked to make sure his airway wasn't obstructed. His breathing did seem to steady after the change in position, but it remained shallow, the normally rich mahogany of his skin pallid. "Has he done this before?"
"No. He drinks, but nothing more than the rest of us." Noah's fists were so tight his skin had gone bone white. "Cocaine was his problem, but he kicked the habit. He made it."
Except it was clear to all of them that Abe had only switched addictions.
Five hours later, the keyboardist was conscious but in no state to get out of bed. "It was just a binge," he said when the others confronted him in his private hospital room.
Molly had stayed outside the room, knowing this was something the four men needed to discuss alone, but she remained within earshot. Noah's temper, from what she'd seen, was as hot as Fox's. Abe wasn't far behind. David was calmer, but he was furious today, white lines bracketing his mouth. If needed, she'd step in to defuse the situation before it got violent. None of the men were the type to raise a hand against a woman.
"A binge?" Noah shouted. "You were almost in a coma!"
"Shit, lower your voice." It was a groan.
"What the hell are you doing, Abe?" Fox asked through what sounded like clenched teeth. "You stopped snorting coke, so you'll kill yourself this way instead?"
"What I do in my own fucking time is my own fucking business."
"You want to go there?" David said, and he didn't sound like the calm one at all. "You really want to say that when we might have to go onstage tomorrow without you?"
"I'll be fine by then."
"Have you looked at yourself?" Noah demanded. "Your hands are shaking and you can't even get out of bed."
"Get back in," Fox said, then swore as there was a small crash. "Satisfied now? You can't do anything but destroy cheap vases."
Abe's response was too low for Molly to hear, but she could guess what it had been from Fox's response. "You don't get to pick and choose when we're your friends. We won't let you do this to yourself or to us again. Choose, Abe."
"What?"
"The band or the booze, the drugs, whatever shit you want to shovel into yourself."
A stunned silence.
Abe was the first to find his voice and it was a roar. "You can't kick me out!"
"You're kicking yourself out! How many times do you expect us to do this? Wait to see if you wake up? Get ready to call your mom to tell her in case you don't?" Fox's voice vibrated with unhidden fury. "Enough, Abe. You either want to live or you don't."
"I'm not trying to commit suicide for Christ's sake!"
"You think she'd want this?" came Noah's voice. "For you to wallow in a pool of self-pity because boo-hoo-hoo it's too damn hard to be alive? She fucking idolized you, man."
A charged silence, secrets hovering in the air.
"Enough," David said quietly. "We all need to cool off before we say things that can't be forgiven. I will not lose who we are together because of this." A grim silence. "Any objections?"
There were none, and the three men walked out a few minutes later. Noah strode past without spotting her. David nodded and was gone. Wrapping his arm around her, Fox called up the two bodyguards he'd told to wait downstairs. "Stay here," he ordered them when they arrived. "Watch him--and check everything that goes in and out. I find out he had any booze or drugs in that room, I'll have your heads."
Nodding, the two muscle-bound men took up position on either side of the door.
Molly kept her silence as she and Fox left the hospital via a loading dock not covered by the media. Everyone was whispering drug overdose, and the band had decided to let that stand. Abe's problem with cocaine was old news, would soon fade from the screens and papers if they didn't feed the story.
Given Fox's mood, Molly didn't think anything of it when he ignored a smartly dressed woman in the hotel lobby who said "Zachary" and made as if to walk toward him, her expression faintly supercilious. The elevator arrived before she reached them, and Fox nudged Molly inside.
"She didn't look like a groupie," Molly said, simply to break the strained quiet.
Fox's lips twisted in a humorless smile. "They all want something." He
didn't speak again until they were back in their room. "You okay?" Knees slightly bent, he brought himself down to her eye level.
It startled her that he'd remembered her past even in his current frame of mind. "I had a couple of flashbacks," she admitted. "I guess it's something I need to learn to handle. This environment--"
"No." Fox's voice was harsh. "You do not need to get used to this shit because it will not happen again. And never with me. Got it?"
Molly nodded. "I wouldn't have fallen for you if I didn't believe that." Not after seeing up close and personal the damage substance abuse could do, emotional and physical.
"Good." A hard kiss before he spun away and grabbed his acoustic guitar.
She left him alone by the windows, having learned he worked out his emotions through music. It was over an hour later, when the music went silent, that she took him a cup of coffee. "You'd never really walk away from Abe, would you?" Molly was fighting her instinctive revulsion to addiction to be a friend to Abe and she'd only known him a short time; Fox had known him years. "He needs you more now than ever."
"I'm so angry with him, Molly. We worked so hard to get him clean--we never let him down. Not once." He set the guitar aside, the coffee forgotten on a side table. "Every time he called, day or night, we were there. Noah's the one who rode to the hospital with him last time, and David drove his mother there when the doctors weren't sure if he'd ever wake up."
Fox's voice was jagged as he continued. "She's this tiny, fragile thing, and she cried until I had to carry her out of the room, away from the sight of her son lying motionless on the bed." He shook his head. "Abe's sister died as a child, and that day, it was like she was reliving every instant of the agony."
A deep breath. "No mother, she said, should have to watch both her children die." Hands fisted, his eyes stormy. "After that, after the detox and the rehab, he promised her he'd stay clean. Then he goes and does this?" Pain combined with the fury. "I can't watch him go down this road again."
Molly understood in a way no one who hadn't lived with an addict could. At some point, the emotional drain snapped something inside you. "The third time I found my mother in a pool of her own vomit," she said, confessing a secret not even Charlotte knew, "I hesitated before calling an ambulance." It had only been a matter of seconds, but Molly would never forget who she'd almost become as a result of her mother's addiction.
The hesitation shamed her, but Molly had long since forgiven the worn-out and scared teenage girl who'd had to act the responsible adult at far too young an age. "I just couldn't take the cycle of remorse and promises, the one or two days of normality before the inevitable slide back into the bottle."
"Ah, baby." Fox stood to wrap her in his arms, his cheek pressed against her temple. "It wears you down until you start to ask, what's the fucking point?"
Molly nodded, tears choking up her throat. "With Abe, he can't have been drinking all this time," she said, soothing him with slow strokes of her hand down the rigid line of his spine. "Close as we have to travel together, we'd have noticed. You'd have noticed."
"I hope to hell you're right." Exhaling a ragged breath, he tightened his hold and they just stood there, taking strength from one another in a brutal world.
Chapter 35
Discharged after a night in the hospital, Abe was back onstage the next night. Tension lingered in the air, but the band stuck together as the shows continued to go by. When--out of nowhere--David was hit with news that threatened to tear down the foundations of his world, there was no doubt in anyone's mind that Fox, Noah, and Abe had his back.
The laughter took longer to return, but it came in time, with Abe going cold turkey on the booze. "I don't know if I'd be able to stop," he said one night to Fox while Molly was in the room. "So better I don't start."
Molly was hopeful he was telling the truth--that the descent into alcohol had been a one-off thing and not the sign of a new addiction. Determined to help in a way she hadn't been able to help her mother, she cornered Abe before the Manhattan concert. "Want to go shopping?"
He rolled his beautiful dark brown eyes at her, ridiculously gorgeous lashes throwing shadows on his cheeks. "Don't you have Fox for that?"
"Yes, but I want to buy something for Fox." He'd worn the leather cuff at several concerts, a silent symbol of his pleasure, and she wanted to find other small surprises. "You're his friend, you know what he likes."
"Take Noah. Fashion plate likes shopping."
"You're the fashion plate, not Noah," Molly pointed out. "Anyway, he's keeping Fox distracted while I go shopping. And David," she said, cutting off his next excuse, "is with Thea." Her sister had flown in this morning and disappeared into David's room; the two had gone through a tough time over the past week, needed alone time.
"What's up with David and Thea?" Abe narrowed his eyes. "They sort out the BS over that ridiculous claim?"
"Come with me and maybe I'll share what I know."
He still looked surly as he hauled himself out of the armchair he'd been sprawled in. "Now I have to put on my disguise."
Curious, Molly watched as the usually sleekly dressed male disappeared into his room and returned wearing an honest-to-God one-piece jumpsuit in black fleece with yellow smiley faces. He'd paired the monstrosity with sheepskin boots and donned a wig with knotted dreads that hung about his face. Each dread was capped off with a tiny pink barrette shaped like a butterfly.
Her jaw fell open. "No, seriously? You're going to walk out on the street in that?"
"People run when they see me coming. It's a repeller disguise." Grinning, he slipped his hands into the pockets of the one-piece no one should've ever made for a grown man. "Where's your disguise?"
"I don't need one." Thankfully, her elevator-photo notoriety had faded quickly, especially with the gossip sites and magazines focusing on the "secret" Carina-Fox relationship. Grr... "Ponytail, sunglasses, cap, and I'm set."
"Then I dare you to walk with me." Abe crooked his arm.
"I'm no chicken." Sliding her arm into his, she headed out into the noise and color and vibrancy that was Manhattan.
Abe was the band member she'd spent the least amount of time with, but he proved good company, even when a bus full of international tourists swarmed him for photos. Posing patiently, he told them he was a clown on his day off, his expression deadpan, while Molly attempted not to collapse in a fit of giggles. The photos she took were priceless.
It was on the way back to the hotel that he said, "You trying to become my friend, Molly?" A laid-back comment with a steely undertone.
"Yes." He was too smart for anything but honesty. "I know the band is tight, but you're guys. You'd rather shoot yourselves in the family jewels than talk about feelings, and sometimes even big, tough guys have feelings." As with her mother, Abe's problems seemed to result from an attempt to drown emotional pain.
"You got balls. No wonder Fox likes you." Slinging an arm around her shoulders, he held her to his side. "I had a shrink at the rehab center. Didn't talk to him. What makes you think I'll talk to you?"
"You don't have to talk to me, Abe. I just wanted you to know I'm here if you ever decide to acknowledge that you do in fact experience these mysterious things called feelings."
"You think that'll stop me ending up in the hospital?"
"Only you can do that," she said bluntly. "If you manage to mess up in spite of a rock-solid support network, then you're a self-destructive idiot."
"Don't hold back now." A hard-eyed comment as they snuck into the hotel through a back entrance.
"Lies don't help anyone."
He walked with her to the suite she shared with Fox. "I'll try not to be an idiot," he said at the door, no humor on his face. "Hey, Moll."
She stopped with the door partly open. "Yes?"
"Why bother?"
"Because you're my family now." She'd lost one already, couldn't bear to see this one fall apart too. Last time, she'd been young and scared and alone. This time, she was
an adult who was learning her own strength--and she had Fox.
A month into the tour and three weeks after Abe's binge, all the tension had dissipated and Molly felt at home with the entire group. The crew teased her good-naturedly now and then about being an "intern" but said they'd have her back anytime. She did still pitch in around her own work--which was gathering steam, word of her skills spreading through the recommendations of satisfied clients.
It felt as if all was right with her world as she and Fox walked to their suite after the Chicago concert. She didn't think she'd ever get used to the feel of thousands of people singing along to the music, the thundering power of it indescribable. No wonder Fox remained wired up afterward, sometimes for hours.
"I want you naked the instant after we walk through the door," he said, his body heat kissing her skin. "On your hands and knees."
Her face flushed. Sex was always hard and fast the first time when he got like this. Then he'd go slow, every ounce of that untamed energy focused only on her as they explored one another and their fantasies. There'd been scarves involved last time, and he was playfully threatening to buy fur-lined handcuffs. But he was generous with his own body, too, letting her kiss and caress and pet to her heart's content--just not at the start. Wired as he was, he didn't have the patience.
Smiling hello at the private security guard assigned to monitor this floor, the other members of the band in suites just down from theirs, Molly walked inside. Fox paused for a second to say something to the guard.
Her fingers were on the hooks of her pretty, fitted black jacket embellished with lace panels on either side when she froze, the hairs standing up on the back of her neck. Having shut the door, Fox, his body primed as it pushed into her backside, went to reach for the button on the back of her skirt when he, too, went motionless.
"That's not your perfume," he said, pinpointing what had set her off.
It was too sweet for her, too opulent in its sensuality. "Maybe a housekeeper made a mistake?" The band had a standing order in all the hotels they used that no one was to enter their suites without a specific request.
"She'd have had to get past the guard." Stepping in front of her, he headed to the bedroom. "Stay here."
Molly followed at his heels, got a scowl, but he didn't order her back. A second later, they were at the open bedroom door.