"Jesus, are you going to ride?" he demands. Sam’s back straightens and she turns slowly, staring the kid down with a dark look that doesn’t seem to affect him. He’s, at the most, ten or eleven, and I start to pull her off before she can cuss him out and get herself arrested. She dodges my hand, stepping aside.
She sweeps her thin arm out in the direction of the amusement park attendant, and my gaze zeroes in on the bruises in the crooks of her elbow. Fucking track marks.
"Go for it, you little shit," she growls.
Once the kid has slipped between us, Sam refocuses her attention back to me, granting me a withering look. I break eye contact first by walking away. I'm done with her games, and that's all this is. More of Sam's bullshit. And like always, she’s not done yet. She catches up to me quickly, out of breath with strands of her hair blowing into her gray eyes.
"Don't you want to know if I'm planning on seeing her or not?" she demands, and I release a low laugh that sounds more like a growl.
"You're not.” And I feel like an ass for letting what she said a few minutes ago affect me. “You wanted to meet me to play games. Fuck you."
She stops and grabs my wrist, digging her long, fake fingernails into the star tattoos there. It doesn’t hurt—not the way she wants it to. "You love her." It's not a question, but a statement, and it automatically sends a warning siren blaring through my skull.
"About as much as I love you,” I tell her, enunciating each word to drive the point home. “And you’re quick to tell me how little that was.”
She does a shitty job hiding the way she flinches. I watch her carefully—the way she brings her hand up to cover her mouth as if she's stifling a giggle, the way her chest rises and falls heavily—and I know I’ve given her the right answer. The type of answer that hurts. The type of answer that will keep her from Sienna.
"You make me sick," she finally says, and I cock my head to one side.
"You forgot to tell me you love me first. Isn't that how it usually goes? You tell me you still want me and then tell me to go eat a dick."
Grabbing the front of my shirt, she brings herself to her toes and gets her face as close to mine as she can. "I could ruin you."
I pull her off me, untangling her fingers from my shirt. I force a smile that nearly breaks my goddamn face. The last thing I need is to find my picture on the front of some tabloid for getting into it with her in public. "You already have.”
“Already what?” she demands.
“Ruined me.” I touch the inside of her elbow, and she winces. “And yourself.”
When I turn to leave her standing in front of a family bathroom, she lets out a strangled noise from the back of her throat. "You're going?"
I turn around to face her, but continue to walk backwards towards the exit. Away from this woman who’s made the last few years of my life a bigger nightmare than I'd already made for myself. "There's not shit else to say to you."
"But you need me," she says, and though she doesn't say anything else, the rest of her words linger in the air.
You need me if you want to be happy. You need me to let you go before you do.
I turn my back to her in time to maneuver around a family that's making their way toward the park attractions. As I leave, I say in a quiet voice, "When you figure out how we'll make that happen, when you're done playing games—you fucking let me know."
I know she’s close enough to hear me.
***
Keeping with tradition, Sam doesn't call or text me for the next five days, a few of those probably spent with her dealer and a needle in her arm. By the weekend, I start the mental countdown because I know it's only a matter of days before I hear from her. I busy myself with music—mostly my solo project but stuff for the band, too.
Which is a disaster since Sinjin, our drummer, is still in rehab.
"Can you at least pretend this isn’t a waste of your time?" Wyatt asks me. It's Saturday night, and we’ve been sampling material for our new album with Cal, our lead guitarist, since mid-afternoon inside the small studio in my house. Cal’s been outside for the last 30 minutes taking a call, leaving me in here with Wyatt who wants to talk about nothing but the tour that’s coming up this summe????r.
This is the first time since we formed the damn band over a decade ago that I don’t want to go on tour. Somehow I’ve managed to undo all that motivation that had driven me for years.
Wyatt shakes his head. “I swear, you’re in a daz—”
"I want to be here," I say, and he gives me a skeptical look. "Just upstairs in my bed."
"Pathetic." He starts to add something else to his insult, but I cut him off ahead of time.
"This is coming from the same mother fucker who called me crying his ass off about my sister for two weeks." Which would still be the case if Kylie hadn't contacted him to work things out a few days ago. Being able to call her bullshit when she’s said she's done with him has always been an extra talent of mine, but this time when she said she was done, I believed her.
Guess my bullshit detection skills have gone to hell along with my ability to make music and give a fuck.
"There's no shame in picking up the phone and calling Sienna, Wolfe."
"Did Kylie put you up to this?"
There's a look of surprise on his face, but then he sets the guitar he’s been strumming to the side and stretches his arms out on the back of the couch. "We haven't had time to talk about your problems."
I don't know if he's implying that he's been too busy screwing my sister or fighting with her, but it's not something I want to hear. "I still want to fuck you up for what you did to her."
"We're working it out. But your problems . . ."
Again with that shit. I start to tell him to get the fuck out of my house but then my phone vibrates from the piano bench. I turn it over and scan the screen, reading the text Cal sent. “Cal already left. Something came up.”
“A woman. Sounds like him.” Wyatt’s on his feet before I can say anything, heading toward the door. When he turns around to face me again, he releases a long breath and scratches his head. “Fuck, don’t look at me like that. Go out. Get her out of your system if you’re not going to see her. But don’t sit around doing this. It’s not you.”
I put my phone back down on the bench and pick up the half-empty beer that’s sitting on the corner. I’ve been “drinking” it for the past hour. “Tell Kylie to call me tomorrow.”
He leaves then, muttering something under his breath that I don’t manage to make out. For a long time, I stay in the music room, nursing the same Sam Adams. Fucking pathetic. Just like Wyatt said.
When I finally get up long after both Cal and Wyatt leave, I don’t go upstairs to my bed like I originally planned.
Chapter Four
Lucas Wolfe
Tonight, I drive my Jeep, which I’ve had since the “Sam Days,” because it’s low-key. I don’t drive to Sienna’s place, even though it’s the place where I know I’d find the most happiness. I go out to one of the local bars that I frequent when I’m home in Los Angeles, taking a break from the other bar I’ve been frequenting. Located downtown, its a little shithole that’s nestled between a larger bar and a nightclub. The beer is cheap; the music is good; and the crowd, a bunch of regulars, doesn’t give two shits about whether or not I’m Lucas Wolfe or a bum with a few dollars to spend.
It’s busy tonight, so it takes me a few laps around the area to find a decent parking space. When I finally do park the Jeep—two blocks from the bar—I feed about twenty dollars in change that I find in my center console and cup holders into the meter. Sleeping in too late is a constant curse of mine when it comes to late night drinking, and I’ve had my car towed before after failing to pick it up on time. The hassle of getting it back always pisses Kylie off and things are strained enough with my little sister thanks to what I did to Sienna.