Page 3 of Rock On

We’d been partners in music and mischief, in life and in love, our personal and professional lives so intertwined it was hard to tell where one left off and the other began. I’d eventually figured out that he had a hard-on for me, but we didn’t talk about it since he knew and respected the fact that I was straight. It had never affected our friendship.

Except for that one night.

I took a deep pull from the bottle of Corona in my hand, wondering if the past would ever let go of its hold on me. Since the day Harley had served me with those divorce papers, my life had been a never-ending spiral of self-loathing, confusion, and regret. So much damn regret.

I’d lost the woman I loved and then my brother.

Losing him had been inevitable.

Losing her was something else altogether.

It hadn’t made sense back then and only made slightly more sense now.

Now I knew they’d betrayed me.

It had been over a year since I’d found out that Carter and Harley had a kid together, and it still hurt as much today as it had the day I’d found out. At least now I knew why she’d left.

I downed the rest of my beer and tossed the bottle into the recycling bin.

The plan for today had been to get shitfaced, but I’d nursed that one beer for a couple of hours. Now I was restless and desperately needed to get out of here. The four walls of my condo felt suffocating, and I knew if I didn’t do something to distract myself, I would do something stupid instead.

Like call her.

I grabbed my keys and jumped on my bike, the Harley-Davidson motorcycle I’d jokingly named Harley after she bought it for me as a wedding gift. It was a constant reminder of her, and it fueled the ever-present pain and regret.

Jesus, I was a philosophical mess tonight.

As I pulled onto the dark, mostly empty roads of Mulholland Drive, the tightness in my chest started to let up, and I picked up speed. Harley—the ex-wife, not the bike—had been insistent we both take lessons to become as safe as possible when operating any motorcycle, so I was a good driver. Nursing one beer over the course of several hours wouldn’t impair me in any way, either, and somehow, I found myself heading toward the cemetery.

Fans often camped out at Carter’s grave during the day, to the point where police were called in to manage the occasionally overwhelming crowds. It was after two in the morning, though, so I figured they’d all gone home by now. He was dead, after all, and the cemetery had closed hours ago. Not that it being closed would stop me. I’d been there so many times in the last year, in between rehearsing, recording, and touring, I knew the place inside out.

The wind felt cool against my overheated skin and I momentarily closed my eyes, letting my body become one with the rumbling engine between my legs. A self-driving bike would be heaven, but technology wasn’t there yet, and I forced my eyes back open. The cemetery was ahead on the right, and I parked my bike on the side of the road, just outside the entrance.

I left my helmet on the handlebars and slowly headed toward the gate. I shimmied under it and took off down the main road at a brisk clip. Carter’s grave site was all the way in the back of the cemetery, about half a mile away from the entrance if you stuck to the road, so it was a bit of a trek to get there. It was nice, though. There was a huge oak tree that provided shade during the day. Sitting outside under a tree with a book and his bass had been one of his favorite things, so his final resting place was painfully appropriate.

As I rounded the bend, I slowed my pace, focused on my surroundings. It was late, but I wasn’t stupid. I was here alone, and I couldn’t be the only person who knew you could sneak under the gate after hours. In addition, as a member of the platinum-selling rock band Onyx Knight, I was easily recognizable. Anyone there to see Carter’s grave site would instantly know who I was.

Luckily, the place seemed deserted, and I stopped walking a few feet away from where Carter was buried. It was dark and eerily quiet, as if I was the only person left alive in the whole world.

I knew how ridiculous that sounded, but in the moment, it was accurate.

This sucked so much.

Despite the success of my band and all the money in the world, I was lonely. I still had my bandmates, of course, and I loved them, but it wasn’t the same. My bond with Kingston, Z, and Kellan wasn’t like the one I’d had with Carter. Devyn, who’d replaced Carter in the band, was still relatively new, so it was too soon to compare my friendship with her to the bond I had with the others. And nothing was comparable to what I’d had with Harley.

She was my heart, my soul, my other half.

But she didn’t love me anymore.

She’d loved Carter.

And the fucker had abandoned us both.

I was miserable that he was gone and pissed off at him at the same time.

And that pissed me off even more.

“What the hell were you thinking?” I demanded, sinking down on the ground and glaring in the direction of the tombstone. “You can’t just die to get away from your problems, you asshole.”

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