Page 19 of Rock Bottom

“But the perimeter—”

“Isn’t going anywhere. Sit.”

He hesitated, but eventually I won. I always won. Church prepared himself a plate and sat stiffly at the table.

I smiled and lifted a forkful of what would probably be the finest curry I’d ever tasted. “Cheers.”

Church relaxed slightly and did the same. “Cheers,” he said, and we had dinner together for the first time.

I couldn’t sleep.

Maybe it was the curry sitting too heavy in my belly, or the gentle strumming of the guitar over my head, or maybe the bed was just too small. I shifted onto my side and pulled my knees up, but it still felt cramped. Lying on my side only made Dante’s music louder, even with the earplugs in.

I glanced over at the glowing alarm clock. Three thirty in the bloody morning and he was still playing like it was midday. He showed no signs of stopping or slowing down, either.

Bloody hell. If I can’t sleep, I might as well get up and do something useful. Except what was I to do at that ungodly hour? The house needed a good top to bottom clean, but I wasn’t in the mood to scrub floors and sweep. Besides, there was supposed to be a maid starting soon.

I wiped a hand over my face and sat up, pulling the earplugs out as I went. Dante had his amps on high enough that the windows vibrated slightly with some of the lower notes, and the high notes made my teeth hurt. I thought about going upstairs to give him a piece of my mind, but it wouldn’t do any good. For the first time, it seemed like we were finally making some progress, and I didn’t want to undo it.

Instead, I slid into the desk and opened my laptop. Boone had said I should keep an eye on Dante’s social media channels just in case, and I had yet to check on them. While the cabin didn’t have an internet connection, I could piggyback off my phone to work. That was what I meant to do when I logged in, but I got distracted by the song drifting through the floor.

“…I disappear without a trace.

Every empty bottle is a fall from grace.

You numb the pain, but steal the show.

I’ve got nowhere left to go.

You chain me up and drown me in doubts.

I just can’t find a good way out,

So I fall into your familiar embrace

And I disappear in you without a trace.

Caught in the crossfire of this war in my head,

Without the burn, I’m better off dead.”

His voice sounded so raw, so forlorn and honest. Not at all like the overproduced voice I’d heard on the CD. It was enough to make me almost wish I liked music.

Before I knew it, I was typing Dante’s name into the search bar and scrolling through the results with a frown. Most of the links led to articles picking up the story of his coming out. It seemed to have spread through news outlets like wildfire. One of his former hookups was apparently even writing a tell-all book and had a movie deal lined up. Bloody leech. I wondered if Dante even knew. Or if he cared. He seemed resigned to the whole thing, as if people knowing everything about him wasn’t a blatant invasion of privacy.

Halfway down the search page was an older link mentioning leaked photos. I clicked it, expecting another article. What I got instead was a page selling autographed photos of him in the buff.

Good God, put a warning on that! My cursor darted for the X in the corner, but I paused. The photo was blurry in places, and definitely taken in a dark room with a cell phone camera, but it was clearly him. A much thinner, paler version of him. Painfully thin. He’d posed for the camera with his lips pursed and a half empty bottle of vodka in his fist. My chest hurt to see him like that. No wonder his bandmates were concerned if this was how bad it’d gotten.

The music stopped above.

Finally, he’s going to sleep. I closed all the open windows on my laptop and shut it down before climbing back into bed. I was almost out when my phone chirped. Normally, I would’ve ignored any notification coming in at almost four in the morning, but I’d set up an alert to notify me of any unusual activity on any of Dante’s social media accounts. I hadn’t expected to get a notification so soon, and not in the middle of the night. I clicked on the window and it took me to Dante’s Instagram page.

That little shit! He’d posted a bloody video of himself playing in his room an hour ago.

I threw the blanket aside and stormed out of the room, phone in hand, to confront him. I didn’t care if he was asleep. He was going to get up and delete the post he made before a million people saw it and the place was swarming with fans and reporters.

I didn’t think I was quiet coming up the ladder, but Dante must not have heard me. He was still lying naked on top of the duvet, working a fist around his cock. His eyes were closed, his other arm thrown lazily behind his head. The silver cross necklace sitting against his tattooed chest rose and fell with his rapid breaths. With his long, ashen hair falling down around his shoulders, Dante looked like a fallen angel begging to be worshipped.

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