“You settle down with her and you’re going to destroy this band. You know that, don’t you?”
Something fierce bristled inside me. The feeling I was being torn in two directions, ripped and shredded and scored.
God, there was no wiping out the desperate desire to play, to create, that feeling of complete freedom I felt on stage when surrounded by my crew. By the crowd. Energy that roared with a reckless peace.
All of it was at war with Shea.
Shea.
Shea.
Shea.
Her energy brighter.
Bolder.
A rending force.
I pushed the rest of the way out of the room and stalked down the hall.
I cursed when my cell started ringing from my pocket. I dug it out, then nearly crushed it in my hold when I saw who it was.
Another fucking leech.
My piece-of-shit father who no doubt was calling to take a little more.
A parasite no different than Karl Fitzgerald.
No different than the slew of assholes presently taking up my house.
Everyone wanted a piece of Sebastian Stone.
I was sick of it.
Silencing the call, I charged down the hall—cutting along the edge of the living room and bypassing as many people as I could—ignoring the rest who shot me titillated looks. I drove through the huge kitchen inhabited by more insipid faces who thought they saw me, but didn’t know me at all.
Surface.
That’s what they wanted.
The desire for the superficial.
The fake.
A brand.
Fuck that.
I flew out the side door that landed me on the terrace at the side of the house. Here, the vegetation was lush and thick. Instant isolation. Hidden behind bushes was a narrow, winding wrought-iron staircase. I went straight for it, ascended two stories of exterior stucco wall, and climbed onto the soaring roof.
Noise filtered up from the party below. But up here it felt as if I were in another world.
An escape.
Guess I shouldn’t have been all that surprised to find Austin hiding away here, too, dark hoodie over his head where he sat close to the edge of the roof, staring over the vast city. A haze billowed around him as he expelled the smoke from his lungs, joint poised between pinched fingers as he prepared to take another drag.
Fuck.
I rubbed a hand over my face to calm myself before I cautioned my feet as I eased toward him. His back stiffened as I approached. Neither of us said anything when I settled down at his side.
Lights stretched on forever, a beautiful mess of city and a stunning mass of souls.
Austin pressed the joint to his lips, pulled it in, held fast before he turned his head to the sky and slowly let it out. He trained his attention back over the urban sea.
“Was wondering where you were,” I finally said.
For the longest time my introduction remained unanswered. I felt the hesitation before he allowed the words to bleed free. “You ever wonder if there’s anyone out there as fucked up as we are?”
Air puffed from my nose, my tone subdued. “Don’t know, Austin. Sometimes it seems like that would be impossible, but I’ve got to figure there’s a ton of people out there so much worse off. People completely alone. Rejected. Not sure there’s a lot of people out there who’ve got what we do.”
I wasn’t talking material shit.
Knew well enough none of that mattered.
“You know,” he said, voice pensive and rough, “you set me up with all of this.”
He waved the hand holding the joint in the air. “Give me everything I could possibly want. And none of it’s ever enough because I have no clue what it is I really want.”
He drove out an incredulous laugh. “All those people down there? And I’ve never felt more alone.”
“That’s because you don’t belong here.”
He laughed again, an acidic sound before he was sucking in another lungful in an effort to soothe all the shit that’d been haunting him his whole life. Anytime we were in L.A., it was always amplified. Always waiting to drag him under in its seedy grips.
“And just where is it I belong?”
“Austin.” It was a plea.