Sloe Ride (Sinners, #4)

Quinn saw the minute shift of something dark and terrified in Damien’s expressive features, a quivering fear he stilled nearly as quickly as it rose up. Something lurked behind the guitarist’s arrogant amicability, something Quinn wanted to scrape at and expose to the surface to heal.

“Damie, you asked me what I thought about Rafe? I don’t think Rafe’s the issue here. Either he’ll be good for the band or he won’t.” He paused, catching Damien’s frown. “I think the question you need answered is if you really even want to form a band. Maybe the reason you don’t want to hear Rafe isn’t because you’re scared of what he might do, but because if you actually do choose a bassist, you’re starting something new. Something without the other two. Without Johnny and Dave. A bassist—actually choosing one—will be the final nail in Sinner’s Gin’s coffin, and maybe, just maybe, neither one of you are ready for that yet.

“Hell, you might never be ready for that,” Quinn continued gently. “But that’s something you have to figure out for yourself.”

They were silent as Quinn gathered up his reluctant cat, his blanket, and the thermos he’d brought up with him. He smiled at the friends, ducking around them as he made his way back downstairs. “Now if you’ll excuse me. I’m going to go see if my brother’s found out who is trying to kill or scare me, feed my cat her breakfast, and then get ready to go to my parents’ house so they can flay the skin off my back with their prying into my life. I’ll see you both when you get there.”

Quinn got to the door and had his hand on the knob before Damien finally said something. Oddly enough, it wasn’t the tongue-lashing he’d been anticipating.

“Okay, is it me, Sinjun?” Damien’s words chased Quinn inside. “Or is that cat wearing a sweater?”





Chapter 8





Splash of wine, sip of gin

Twisted metal ’round my heart

And nobody wins

Fire coming down hard

Coming hard from above

Skin torched clean off my bones

And my soul’s done scarred.

—Fire and Bones



RAFE CAUGHT himself checking his hair in his rearview mirror, fluffing back a few blond strands from his face. Showing up a few hours early would help him settle his nerves, and if he was lucky, he could get Donal to talk him off the ledge he felt he was on. He’d already spent half an hour trying on clothes, wondering if he should dress up or dress down. What he personally knew about Damie and Miki could have fit between his fingers. Sinner’s Gin had been a fortress of personalities and friendships, impossible to break into but with glimpses of golden promise other musicians envied.

Or at least he’d envied them.

Back then, Rafe thought he had what Damie and Miki had. He and Jack, plus or minus the sex, they’d been tight. Next to Sionn, Rafe would have bet his life Jack would have stood by him no matter what.

“Shit, you’ve got no one to blame but yourself, Andrade,” Rafe reminded himself as he turned onto the street. “You’re the one who set everything on fire. Jack would have been a fucking idiot to tie himself to a loser headed to hell. Now you’ve got to convince these guys to give you a chance. Good fucking luck.”

The Morgans’ house looked the same, a gut-punching, heart-twisting same. Rafe caught one glimpse of flowers and yellow paint on a rambling Victorian perched on a hilly corner, and he knew he was home again. Brigid’s green thumb was in full force, although Rafe was halfway convinced she merely stood on the front lawn and shouted at the landscaping to produce what she wanted. His back still ached from weekends of pulling weeds for extra money. Then his eyes stung when he thought of all the halfhearted arguments he’d fought with Brigid or Donal about the extra cash they’d shoved into his hand.

His world then had been made up of Morgan hand-me-downs and leftovers in plastic containers for him to take back to the tiny one-room apartment his mom found above a dry cleaner’s. There’d been times when his heart hurt at his mom’s grateful expression when he’d come home with a new pair of sneakers and clothes Brigid bought but said didn’t quite fit any of the boys and the guilt he’d felt when Donal convinced his mother Rafe wouldn’t be a bother on their trips to Disneyland or even the three times he’d gone with them to Ireland.

He’d grown tanned from afternoons in their pool and learned how to drink from stolen whiskey bottles right before he’d perfected the fine art of throwing up in the toilet bowl. He’d been caught smoking cigarettes with Kane behind the garage, and neither one of them expected to see twelve when Donal’d found them coughing their lungs up. Rafe’d stupidly eaten his cigarette, burning his tongue, then threw up on Donal’s shoes immediately afterward.

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