Always Read online

  “I know you did all the heavy lifting on your albums. I know they sounded the way they did because of you. I want your sound. I want you.”

  “Your label will never go for it.”

  “Already taken care of.”

  “How?”

  “I pitched the first truly epic diva fit of my career. It was awesome. You should have seen it. I made a guy cry. I'm unhappy, they're freaked out. No one wants to mess with the hormonal, pregnant rock star.”

  “So you got your way, huh?”

  “It wasn’t quite that easy. You should know, Jon went to bat for you.”

  “Jon Verlaine?”

  “Yep. When I said I knew you could do it, he backed me up. I think it’s what made the label finally back down. Now I get what I want, and that's you. So get down here. We have a ton of work to do.”

  Dillon was silent for a long time. “I don't want to be your charity case, Justine.”

  “Jesus, Dillon, after all we've been through, you think that's what this is about? You know— you know— how I feel about these songs. Because it’s how you feel. I wouldn’t mess with that to do somebody a favor. Even you. I need you to do this with me. Will you?”

  He sighed and scrubbed a hand over his eyes. He was too overwhelmed to know what he wanted. Terrified. Nervous. Afraid of failing. Afraid of proving himself to be a fraud. And also, undeniably, a little excited. More than a little. The whole time he’d worked up those songs with Justine, he felt only partially satisfied. He’d heard promise in every one, but he didn’t trust someone else would see the potential for greatness or know how to make it happen. He wasn’t entirely sure he could either, but he really wanted to try.

  In the end, the excitement won out.

  “I can be there in an hour.”

  New Year’s Eve, 2011

  Dillon stayed in his car for nearly fifteen minutes, gearing himself up for what he was about to do. He’d been over it ad nauseum with Keith, how he’d handle things, what he’d do, what he wouldn’t do. He was very clear on all of it. But there was nothing he could do about the emotions. Those were his to confront on his own.

  Justine had invited the team working on her album to spend New Year’s Eve with her and Ian. Her house was lit up, every window glowing brightly. The outside was still liberally draped with multi-colored Christmas lights. He smiled faintly as he made his way up the walk, past the plastic reindeer marching across the lawn. Who knew Justine was a sentimental sap for Christmas?

  A giant wreath decorated the door. He had to reach through the center to find the knocker, although of course she must know it was him since he’d had to be buzzed in at the gate. There was a security guard on duty down there with a guest list on a clipboard. Another one in a dark suit answered the door. Dillon recognized Art from work. He was Justine’s regular guy and was often hanging around the house. He shook Dillon’s hand with a smile and waved him in.

  A moment later, a server dressed all in black approached him with a smile. “Can I take your coat for you, sir?”

  Dillon smirked in amusement, but dutifully shrugged out of his worn leather jacket and handed it over. The server looked as if she was just as comfortable handling his decades-old motorcycle jacket as she was with cashmere and fur.

  “The guests are this way—” she began, but Justine cut her off.

  “Dillon?”

  She rounded the corner, absolutely stunning in a green satin dress. Her dark hair had been curled and fell in long tousled waves down her back. She finally looked pregnant, her stomach swelling against her dress. The rest of her was a little more lush and rounded than usual and she had a glorious flush to her skin. She took his breath away.

  “I figured you and I could split this one.” He raised a bottle of sparkling cider and she laughed.

  “Sounds good.”

  When she reached him, she hugged him and kissed his cheek. The moment in the spring when he’d kissed her hadn’t killed the easy intimacy between them the way he’d feared it might. She was gone for a while shortly after it happened, and all they did was talk on the phone, which helped ease any potential awkwardness. By the time they saw each other again regularly, it had been months and she was married. Ian changed everything. Dillon had been working in the studio in her house for several weeks now and he was always around. He managed to show up in the studio often, so Dillon never had a moment to forget he existed. He told himself all the time it was probably for the best even though he rarely believed it.

  “You look beautiful,” he said, careful to keep his voice even and his eyes on her face.

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m swelling everywhere, but thank you. Come on back.”

  Everyone else was there already. Not surprising after his fifteen-minute panic attack in the car. His eyes skimmed the room automatically for Ian. When he’d finally met Ian again last month— as Justine’s husband— he’d been surprised at how much the guy had changed. His memories from back then were pretty hazy, but he’d been picturing a scruffy blond unassuming English guy. All that was gone now. He was sharply dressed, even hanging around the house. Tonight, he was in a dark suit and tie, the only guy in the room full of rockers who was. The guy who’d interviewed him years ago had been easy-going and casual. Now Ian was driven, intellectual and ambitious. He had to admit, Ian cut an impressive figure. He looked at home and at ease in Justine’s huge stylish house.

  When Ian saw Justine and Dillon enter the room, he detached himself from his conversation with a word and a smooth smile before crossing the room to greet them. He slid an arm around Justine’s waist and leaned down to kiss her cheek. It set off a burn of jealousy square in Dillon’s chest he hated to acknowledge. Even worse were the memories suddenly crowding his brain, memories of his time with Justine on tour. Except not with Justine. Never with Justine. She was always there, feeling about him the way he now knew she did, and what was he doing? Getting a blow job from one of a million groupies he could no longer remember. What a fucking waste. And what a crime. How much must it have hurt her? How did she ever get past it and forgive him? He was sick with guilt thinking about it, but denying it would have been worse. Quit lying to yourself.

  “Dillon , thanks for coming tonight. ” Ian said, holding a hand out to him.

  “Thanks for having me,” Dillon answered, gripping firmly and shaking decisively. He’d save the shame spiral for Keith. It wasn’t helpful tonight, especially when he needed to keep his head on straight.

  “Well, I know how important you are to Justine.”

  If he wasn’t crazy, there was something slightly icy in Ian’s tone, and there was certainly a glint in his eye which had nothing to do with friendship. Of course, it instantly put Dillon on the defensive. Usually, he tacitly avoided Ian. They certainly never hung out and socialized together. Dillon had no desire to.

  “I wouldn’t miss it,” Dillon said, forcing a casual smile. “She’s important to me, too.”

  “Well, just remember, tonight’s for celebrating. No stealing my wife away for work.” Ian said it with a smile, but now there was a definite edge to his voice.

  Justine glanced back and forth between them. “Okay, I’m going to go open this. Dillon, you want a glass?”

  “I’ll help you,” Dillon said quickly, not looking away from Ian. Ian held his gaze for another moment before his face relaxed into a smile like the weirdness had never happened.

  He followed Justine when she turned towards the kitchen.

  “The place looks great.”

  “Thanks. I love Christmas.” She flashed an excited smile over her shoulder.

  “I can tell.”

  She peeled the foil off the bottle of sparkling cider and wrapped a dishtowel over it. “You’d better stand back and let me handle this,” she said with a smirk. “I recall you couldn’t manage it last time.”

  “Hey, you can’t judge me for stuff I couldn’t manage when I was hung-over. Or still drunk.”

  She laughed as the cork released with a
pop. After pouring two flutes of sparkling cider, she raised hers to Dillon. “To the new year and new beginnings.”

  “New beginnings.”

  “We have a lot of them, huh? And for once, they’re mostly good.”

  Dillon watched her for a beat before raising his glass and taking a sip. “Mostly good,” he agreed.

  Justine was called away to talk to the servers, so Dillon wandered off to hang with the session musicians for the album. They were a pretty good group of guys and it was fun to hang out with them outside the studio. It was his first real social event with alcohol present since he’d gotten sober. Justine had asked him well ahead of time how he felt about it, and after a session with Keith, he felt okay. After all, musicians were a hard-drinking bunch. If he was going to keep working in this industry, he was going to have to get comfortable being around alcohol without actually drinking it.

  He couldn’t lie—he missed the feeling of a beer in his hand. He missed the social crutch and the way it would rub the hard edges off everything around him. His glass of sparkling cider would never scratch the itch. But like Keith told him all the time, no hiding from the truth, whatever you use to do it.

  The thought sent his gaze seeking out Justine across the room, his hardest truth. She and Ian were talking to a couple of Ian’s reporter friends and she was looking a little bored. When the two reporters left to refill drinks, he made his way over to them.

  “Great party,” he told them.

  “Thanks,” Ian said, sounding like he actually meant it. If he was being honest with himself, which was the watchword of the day, he didn’t really like Ian. He’d tried for Justine’s sake, but it wasn’t happening. But Justine liked him. She loved him. He was in her life in a huge and permanent way, which meant he’d be in Dillon’s, too. So he kept making the effort to deal with him.

  “How’s the writing going, Ian?”

  “Very well, actually. I have a piece on Salon this week on political activism in rock. It’s quite exciting.”

  “I didn’t know you wrote that kind of stuff.”

  “He doesn’t, usually,” Justine chimed in. She ran a hand down Ian’s arm with an easy familiarity. “This is special.”

  “And only the start, I hope. I’m working some contacts and I hope to do a profile on Senator Chambers from Wisconsin.”

  “Politics?”

  Ian smiled easily. “You can’t do rock and roll forever.”

  Dillon raised an eyebrow in response, since he was fully intending to do just that, and so was Ian’s wife. “Seems like you’re in a perfect situation to do rock and roll forever,” Dillon observed, throwing a smile at Justine.

  Ian scowled slightly. “I’m not interested in drafting off my wife.”

  “That’s not what you’d be doing,” Justine murmured, touching his hand, but Ian didn’t seem to notice. It sounded like a piece of an argument they’d had before.

  “I’ve loved writing about rock and it’s been an invaluable experience,” he went on, “but I’m really looking to transition to covering politics. It’s much meatier stuff, and better exposure. I’ll never really be taken seriously as a journalist as long as I’m writing about pop stars.”

  “Huh,” Dillon murmured non-committally. It was an odd thing to say when he was standing next to his wife, one of the world’s biggest pop stars. Dillon felt offended on her behalf.

  But Justine didn’t seem bothered. “Ian’s political writing is great,” she chimed in. As she smiled up at Ian, he could see her love for him all over her face. For her sake, he’d do his dead level best to like the guy, even though right now it wasn’t easy.

  How could her ankles be swelling already? She was barely six months pregnant. But as she sat on the edge of the bed massaging her foot after kicking off her heels, her ankles looked decidedly puffy. She was also exhausted. It was only 2 a.m., not very late, relatively speaking, and she was stone-cold sober. If this was a sign of things to come, she’d be in bed by eight by the time she was done with this pregnancy.

  Ian returned to the bedroom after checking the locks and setting the alarm system, pulling off his tie as he headed towards the closet.

  “It was a nice party, Justine.”

  She gave a weary smile. “Thanks. I wanted to show the team a good time. Everybody’s been working so hard on the record.”

  “You did. Looked like everyone enjoyed themselves. Even Dillon.”

  Her eyes flicked up to him. “What’s that mean?”

  Ian shrugged, his back still to her. “He’s fresh out of rehab. I thought it would be tough for him to be in a situation like this.”

  “He’s been out of rehab since March. He’s fine.”

  Ian didn’t respond. He was silent as he shrugged out of his dress shirt and changed his suit pants for sweats. Justine had wiggled out of her pretty but uncomfortable dress and into one of Ian’s t-shirts when he finally spoke.

  “Can I ask you something?” He sounded far away and slightly curious.

  “Sure. Anything.”

  “You and Dillon. Did you ever…”

  He didn’t finish the sentence, but Justine felt a flash of panic anyway, remembering the kiss last spring. She hadn’t instigated it, or even responded, really. But she’d gotten too close, in an intimate situation that fairly sparked with sexual tension. On some level she knew it and instead of backing off, she stayed too close. And got burned. She’d done her best since then to forget it ever happened. Dillon had, too. They were together all day every day working on the album and it was never weird or awkward. And now Ian was the one to make her finally feel guilty about it.

  “No, never.” It was mostly true. True in spirit. Ian watched her, his face inscrutable as he turned her answer over. He wasn’t accusing. It didn’t feel like an interrogation. He sounded simply curious.

  “Because I always get this feeling when you two are together. It’s like there’s nobody else in the world.”

  “We’re friends, Ian. Really close friends. He’s my best friend. That’s all.”

  Ian looked down as he took off his watch and shrugged. “It’s just funny, you two have been so close for all this time and nothing’s ever happened. I would have thought, back when you were on tour together, he would have tried, at least.”

  She sat up in bed, her hands fisting in the sheets, desperate to end the discussion. “Nothing ever happened,” she insisted. “Trust me, he had plenty of opportunity and I was more than willing—”

  “What?” Ian looked up, finally sounding engaged. Alarmed, in fact. She wanted to shoot herself. What a stupid thing to blurt out. If she was looking to reassure Ian, it was the last thing she should have said.

  “Nothing. Just… back when I first met him, I had a huge crush on him,” she said, trying to sound as dismissive as possible. Hopelessly, totally in love with him was more like it. But she pressed on. “It was probably more hero-worship than anything else. I was already a huge fan of the band and his songwriting. I idolized him before I ever met him. It’s not surprising it turned into a crush.”

  Maybe if she repeated the word “crush” enough, she’d succeed in making it true. Nothing but a simple childish infatuation she outgrew. It was true she’d gotten over Dillon, but there was nothing simple or childish about it.

  “Did he know?”

  “No. Not entirely, anyway.” But then I told him all about it when he kissed me. “But like I said, in spite of months on the road and the close quarters and the drinking and the drugs, he never touched me. Okay? And when I came off the road, I moved on. End of story.”

  “But— when we first met? That night? Did you feel that way about him then?”

  She sighed. “Ian, why are you doing this? It doesn’t matter. I love you. I married you.”

  “It’s just… he’s this huge part of your life and I had no idea there are all these other feelings at work—”

  “Were,” she said firmly. “Were other feelings. Over and done with by the time we met again. I s
wear it.”

  He stood uncertainly in the closet door and she could see on his face how much the information had rocked him. It seemed like such a silly guy reaction to her. How could something so far in the past, something that had never even happened, matter so much to him? But she knew it would be a mistake to laugh it off or ignore it. He needed reassurance and all she could do was give it to him.

  She held out her hand. “Come here.”

  Ian didn’t hesitate, crossing to the bed and standing beside her, holding her hand in his. Justine looked up at him and ran her free hand over his stomach up to his chest.

  “Only you, Ian.”

  He finally gave her a small smile. “I believe you, sweetheart.”

  “Come down here and let me prove it.”

  He broke into a full-blown grin before lowering himself down next to her.

  February, 2012

  It was all about finding the right goal. Close enough so it felt within reach but far enough that it pushed you past where you thought you could go.

  As Dillon tried to think of anything but the burn in his legs, he focused on the next elusive goal, a tree at the crest of the next hill. He cranked the pedals over, one after another, certain he could feel each individual synapse in his thigh muscles firing and protesting. Sweat sheeted down his face. His breath burned in his throat and lungs. His hair and t-shirt were soaked. He couldn’t tell anymore where the bike ended and he began.

  In those pain-fueled moments on his mountain bike, the world fell away. There was no failed career, no dead Ash, no married, pregnant Justine, no endless void of a future to deal with. There was only him and the bike and his dogged determination to make it up the next hill. The bike was turning out to be the best therapy anyone could have devised.

  He’d started biking when the hikes became too predictable. There were only so many times he could walk the same trails before he felt he’d memorized every rock and bit of scrub brush. And at the end of the day, he was just walking. One of the guys he’d met in group at Vistas had turned him on to mountain biking. He’d found a store, bought the bike the salesman pointed him to, and set off towards the hills. The morning after his first ride, he could barely get out of bed. It would have reminded him of the bad old days, waking up unable to tell if he was hungover or still drunk, except his head had been remarkably clear, even as his body protested sitting upright.