Rock Chick Redemption
Kristen Ashley
Published by Kristen Ashley
Copyright 2011 Kristen Ashley
Discover other titles by Kristen Ashley:
Rock Chick
Rock Chick Rescue
This book is available in print from online booksellers.
www.kristenashley.net
Kindle Edition, License Notes
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* * * * *
This book is dedicated to
Kathleen “Danae” Den Bachlet
My “Annette”
I thank the goddess for bringing to me a friend…
who lets me be just who I am.
Acknowledgements
When your dream is to write books and dreams are meant to be shared with the ones you love and your best friend for over twenty years lives half a world away (literally) but also edits your books, there is nothing better than to have the words “Kelly Brown edited” popping up all over your edited manuscript. Thanks for being with me, Kel, every word of the way.
And to my Rock Chicks and Ninja Queen Sisters, Lily-Flower and Lotus Blossom, I love you guys. Thanks for Sturgis, the time of my life. JAKE!
And to my Rock Guru, Will… you know how I feel.
And to my new Rock Queen, latest cheerleader and my friend since forever, Stephanie Redman Smith, thanks for reading, loving it and rooting me on. I love you, Steph, but you still can’t have Luke. He’s mine.
And to my sister, Erika “Rikki” Wynne and my brother, Gib Moutaw… we lost our anchor but our bond will never weaken. I would not be who I am if I didn’t have you. You are so embedded in my heart, you have become my heart. I miss you every day.
And to my family, friends and readers… welcome back, thanks for coming and hang on tight, the ride is about to begin!
Rock on…
Part One
Chapter One
Love at First Sight
It’s happened to me twice, love at first sight.
The first time was Billy Flynn. The second was Hank Nightingale.
Billy didn’t take and he broke my heart.
Hank, well Hank’s a heartbreaker, to be certain, but I wasn’t going to stick around long enough for him to do it to me. It wouldn’t be my choice, not sticking around, but that’s what was going to happen all the same and probably for the best. At least for Hank.
* * * * *
Billy and Hank are night and day, dark and light, bad and good.
Billy’s the former of all those. Hank’s the latter.
See, Billy’s a criminal, Hank’s a cop.
Billy looks like a young Robert Redford but instead of boy next-door charm, he has a bit (okay, a lot) of James Dean’s Rebel without a Cause drifting through him.
I knew Billy well; I’d been with him for seven years (the last three of which I tried to break up with him and that didn’t take either).
Hank looks like no one I’d ever seen before. To put it simply, he’s beautiful. He’s tall with thick dark hair, whisky-colored eyes and the lean, well-muscled body of a linebacker.
Hank has a cause: Hank’s about justice.
And Hank has more cool in his pinkie finger at any given moment than Billy would have in a lifetime.
Don’t ask me how I know this because I only knew Hank for a few days. Though, it started when I learned he liked Springsteen. Anyone who likes Springsteen, well, enough said.
* * * * *
A little about me.
For some bizarre reason my Mom named me Roxanne Giselle Logan and everyone calls me Roxie. I have an older brother named Gilbert (we call him Gil because Gilbert is a shit name) and a younger sister named Esmerelda (we call her Mimi because Esmerelda is a shit name too). Needless to say, I lucked out in the sibling name stakes.
Dad let Mom name us. I think he did this so he could give her a hard time for the rest of her life. Dad and Mom love each other, a lot, and show it, a lot (too much if you ask me). Growing up with your parent’s constant public displays of affection was kind of embarrassing. Regardless of this, they were always ribbing each other and arguing… but in a nice way.
* * * * *
I didn’t grow up thinking I was going to live essentially on the run (even though at first I didn’t know that) with a criminal boyfriend, no matter how cute he was.
I grew up thinking I’d have a great job where I could wear designer clothes, I’d make a shitload of money and I’d have dozens of peons kowtowing to my every whim.
Before I met Billy, I was on my way.
Don’t take that as me being screaming ambitious or anything; I partied through high school and college. I studied enough to make A’s and B’s (mostly B’s) but it was really all about beer, the occasional bottle of tequila and rock ’n’ roll. Dad said I was lucky I was a smart girl or I’d be fucked. Mom warned if I didn’t get smarter, I’d end up fucked (though Mom didn’t use the f-word, I knew what she meant).
They were both right, in their own way, though Mom was more right.
Lucky for me, both my Mom and Dad—and Mom’s father and her grandfather—all graduated from Purdue University (my great-granddad even had his name up on a plaque in the student union because he died in World War I). I was grandfathered into Purdue: in other words, my family had such a history, and so many members in the Alumni Association, they couldn’t say no. I got my degree no matter how much time I spent at Harry’s Chocolate Shop (the bar at Purdue that I’m pretty sure my Mom, Dad, Gramps and great-granddad all spent a lot of time in as well).
* * * * *
I met Billy after I graduated from Purdue. I had a good job. I’d managed to get a couple of summer internships at website developing firms and one in Indianapolis hired me at graduation. I think this had more to do with the fact that I was office entertainment than anything else. I could be a little bit crazy (okay, maybe a lot crazy) and the two guys who owned the joint were hilarious, came to work in slogan t-shirts and ripped jeans and had to own stock in the local coffee chain, they drank so much coffee.
My colleague, Annette, also told me I got the job because of the way I looked. I knew I wasn’t anything to sneeze at because I’d won the Teen Miss Hendricks County Pageant (I didn’t go on to the State Finals because of a bout with mono and because beauty pageants kinda sucked).
I look like my Mom’s side of the family; tall, built like what my Dad called a “brick shithouse” (I think this means all boobs and butt but I never really got the comparison) with dark blonde hair and dark blue eyes. In fact, all of us kids looked like the MacMillan side of the family, all tall, all dark blond, all blue-eyed and my brother had a russet beard like Grizzly Adams and like my Mom’s brother, Tex.
* * * * *
I didn’t know Uncle Tex; I’d never met him. He was in Vietnam and he checked out (seriously checked out) when he got back. None of the family ever talked to him again, except me. Though, I didn’t really talk to him, just wrote to him and he wrote back.
I started writing letters when I was young, don’t ask me how I started, I just did. I wrote to anyone whose address I could get my hands on. I loved putting stamps on letters and I loved getting mail through the post. I wrote so many letters, Mom started to buy me monogrammed stationery when I was twelve and she still buys me two boxes every birthday; deep lilac with an embossed RGL at the top a
nd on the envelope flap.
Mom told me not to write Uncle Tex. She told me it was a waste of time, he’d never write back.
Talking about Uncle Tex made Mom’s face get sad, which didn’t happen very often. Usually only when she talked about Uncle Tex and sometimes when she saw me with Billy and thought I wasn’t paying attention.
Mom and Uncle Tex were super close growing up, but he went into the army on his eighteenth birthday and went to Vietnam close to the end of the war and that was all she’d heard from him.
Uncle Tex wrote back to me though, surprising everyone. He wouldn’t write back to Mom or Grams or Mom’s two sisters, but he wrote back to me. Even when he was in prison for messing up a drug dealer, he wrote back to me.
Once, when I was fourteen, I caught Mom going through my stash, reading Uncle Tex’s letters and crying. I didn’t let her know I caught her and I had the feeling it wasn’t the first time she did it either.
From his letters, I could tell Uncle Tex was a hilarious guy, crazy, like me (maybe a wee bit crazier). I’d never met him, but I knew why Mom loved him so much and, through our letters, I knew I loved him too.
* * * * *
I met Billy when I was twenty-four. I fell for him immediately and I fell for him hard.
He was good-looking; he had more energy than anyone I’d ever met; he made me laugh; he treated me like a princess; and he was really, really good with his mouth (in a fast-talking kind of way and other kinds of ways besides).
Everyone hated him, Mom, Dad, Gil, Mimi and all my friends. I played them the Cowboy Junkies song, “Misguided Angel” and told them to get over it.
A year into it, Billy was living with me in my apartment and we were having the time of our lives… good sex, lots of laughs, tons of partying. I had no idea what Billy did to make his money and I was so lost in him, I didn’t care.
Then one day, he said he had an opportunity in St. Louis that he couldn’t pass up. He said, in six months, we’d retire and live in St. Tropez and I’d spend my days sunbathing topless and he’d pour me champagne before our gourmet dinners every night. He told me he’d give me the life I deserved, the life I was meant to have: designer clothes, diamonds and pearls, champagne breakfasts, the lot.
I believed him (yes, I was twenty-five and yes, I was stupid). Even though everyone told me not to do it (even Uncle Tex), I quit my job, gave up my apartment and moved to St. Louis. I moved my shit there, got a job there and started over.
Six months later, Billy told me he had an even better opportunity and we moved to Pensacola.
Then to Charleston.
Then to Atlanta.
I should have seen this coming. Before he met me, Billy had gone from Boston (where he grew up), to Philly, to Cincinnati, to Louisville, to Indianapolis. I should have been pleased he spent a year in Indy with me.
By the time we made it to Chicago, three years into our travels, I was fed up. I had a blast in St. Louis, Pensacola, Charleston and Atlanta. I had good jobs in all those places and made friends. I hated leaving, I hated being on the road, packing, moving. Sometimes I had only a week to do it (and in that week, Billy was long gone, telling me he was “scouting” our locations for the move). I was spending more and more time writing letters to all the people I left behind and was going to miss and I was done with being a nomad.
Furthermore, I was beginning to figure out why Billy was so cagey about how he spent his days and where he got his cash. It was always cash. He never brought home a paycheck. Sometimes it was a lot of cash, most of the time it was none.
At first, I believed in him, believed in his dreams and his fast-talk convinced me that the life I “deserved” was just around the corner. Then I wanted to believe, so I didn’t ask too many questions. Then I couldn’t believe how stupid I was for believing in the first place and set myself firmly in denial, which was a good place to be… for a while.
“To hell with him, darlin’,” Uncle Tex wrote with his usual brutal honesty, “He sounds no good. Cut him loose and find yourself a real man.”
* * * * *
Chicago would have lasted less time than all the rest if Billy had had his way. He was ready to roll after three months. I’d started my own web designing business, Annette had moved up from Indianapolis so I had a ready-made friend base and I found a couple of good clients. We’d rented a loft that I loved. I was close to Wrigley Field (what can I say, I’m a Cubs fan) and I was only four hours away from family.
No way was I going anywhere.
So, I told Billy he could go but I was staying.
We got in a big, old fight that ended in tears; my tears, I was a crier, I cried all the time. I’d cry at a card with a picture of a cute, little kitty on it and I didn’t even have to look at what the card said, and we stayed.
This happened a lot. Billy would want to go, I’d want to stay, we’d have a rip roarin’ fight, I’d cry, and then we’d stay.
Then Billy came home late one night and said we had to go. I could tell by the way he was acting that things I didn’t understand, things I’d closed my eyes to all those years, were bad as in really bad.
I didn’t care. I dug in my heels. It hadn’t been the same between us since the first time I refused to go. We’d been in a slow decline and I hated it. I wanted Billy to be a good guy and do right by me (and himself) but I was beginning to realize this wasn’t going to happen. It broke my heart because we’d had good times, no, great times, and I’d miss him. But there was only so much a girl could take. I hated it that everyone was right about Billy but when you fuck up, you have to admit it, deal with it and move on.
I was ready to take Uncle Tex’s advice and cut him loose.
When I told him this, Billy backed me up against a wall, his forearm against my throat, his pretty-boy face contorted and ugly with a rage I’d never seen before. He hissed at me, “Where I go, you go. You belong to me. We’re never going to be apart, you’re fuckin’ mine… forever.”
Needless to say, this scared me. Billy had never acted like this. I didn’t like to be scared. I never watched horror movies, ever. I didn’t do scared.
I knew at that point it was over. Any residual hope I had for Billy and me was gone in a blink. Firstly, I didn’t like his arm at my throat, it hurt. Secondly, I didn’t like the look on his face; it freaked me out. Lastly, I wasn’t anyone’s, but my own.
In other words, fuck… that.
Somehow, we stayed in Chicago and whatever it was that had Billy in a panic calmed down.
I didn’t. I packed his shit, put it in the hall and changed the locks.
This did not go over well. He broke down the door with a sledgehammer.
This did not go over well either. I had a conniption fit.
We had another rip roarin’ fight and he talked me into taking him back.
Don’t think I was stupid or weak. I had no intention of really taking him back. I had long since realized that Billy was exactly what Billy was and I didn’t want any part of it. I’d loved him, yes, it was true, but he wasn’t what I thought he was (or what I tried to convince myself he was). I was beginning to fear the stink I sensed on him would start to transfer itself to me.
But a sledgehammer was serious business.
I was going to have to be smart (finally).
Therefore, I was building what I liked to call my Sleeping with the Enemy Plan.
I started to save money in a new account Billy didn’t know about. I stashed newly purchased clothes Billy had never seen and would never miss at Annette’s place and I left.
First, I went to my folks’ house.
Billy came and brought me back.
I expected this. I was still stashing money and clothes at Annette’s, biding my time.
Then I went to a girlfriend’s in Atlanta.
Billy found me and brought me back.
Again, I waited.
Then I went to a hotel in Dallas.
Billy found me and brought me back.
This plan
took a long time and this was unusual for me. I wasn’t the most patient of people and I felt, acutely, that my life was ebbing away day-by-day, month-by-month, year-by-year. I had to see it through though, and I’m kind of stubborn so I kept at it.
It was the last time to leave Billy, a two-part end of the plan. I was going to go to the last place he thought I thought he wouldn’t look, knowing (like all the others, when I’d left breadcrumbs) he’d eventually look. Then, after he brought me back, I’d go there again, having set up the plan beforehand and getting help (I hoped) while I was at it.
Though things got kind of fucked up, mainly because Billy’s stink had settled on me, just like I’d feared.
See, it was then that I went to Denver.
I went to Uncle Tex
And, unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you looked at it, I looked at it both ways; fortunately, because I’d remember it with bittersweet clarity for the rest of my life and unfortunately, because it would never last) it was then that I met Hank and my plan got totally fucked.
* * * * *
Now I’m sitting on a stinking bathroom floor in a sleazy motel, cuffed to a sink and, if I can help it, Hank Nightingale will be a memory.
He deserves better than me.
I just hope I can figure out a way to make Hank agree.
Chapter Two
Whisky
This is how it began.
* * * * *
A few months ago Uncle Tex wrote to me about some folks he met, one of whom gave him his first job since Vietnam. He’d had it rough, readjusting when he got back from ‘Nam. He spent some time doing time and was living meagerly off a small inheritance (including a house) he got from a childless uncle who’d taken a liking to him, supplementing the inheritance by cat sitting. If you could believe it (I couldn’t when I read it), Uncle Tex was now making espresso drinks at a used bookstore and coffee house called Fortnum’s.
My Uncle Tex had been incarcerated for hunting down and then nearly beating a drug dealer to death. Now, several decades later, he was making fancy schmancy coffee.