Page 47 of Revived

“No, you don’t.” I called out and then reached up and smacked him to shock him out of his impending faint.

His hands immediately flew out to latch on to my hair and push me away. “What the hell did you do that for?” He yelled at me as the door opened.

“We’re busy,” Lonny called out.

“Let go of my hair so I can see what I’m doing,” I told Lonny, completely ignoring the fact that someone had entered the room.

“Can you just hurry it along, Mel? I need this to be finished before the show is over.”

It was only then that I realized I wasn’t feeling the vibrations of the music through the floor any longer. “I think it’s already over,” I told him as I pulled a suture kit free from the bag sitting beside me. I dropped the one I really needed and had to lean back down to pick it up. The moment I straightened, Lonny hissed out, “Oh shit,” causing me to glance over at the door.

Gabe was storming out of the room by the time I looked up and Lonny was staring down at me, wide-eyed, one hand on my shoulder, the other shaking so bad on his thigh that there was no denying what Gabe must have thought was going on. “He thought…” Lonny started to say.

“Not your problem right now, Lon. Let’s get this taken care of so you can go rest.”

“I have to help take the stage apart.”

“I’m about to pop a couple of stitches in your penis, Lonny. There’s no way you can carry more than five pounds tonight, climb, run, or hustle in any way. You got me?”

“Yes ma’am,” he agreed, disappointment laced his quick answer. “I love my job.”

“I know you do, Lonny. You just need to stay away from the psycho groupies, kay?”

“I’ll try,” he offered up with a grin, just before I popped the needle through his flesh and started stitching. He hadn’t even noticed when I numbed him with the lidocaine. It only took three stitches.

“We’ll try this out for now, but I really think you should see a doctor.” Lonny shook his head. “Okay, well, if you notice redness, excessive pain or swelling, a foul odor, or puss, come see me immediately.” I went over care instructions for him too and moved to stand. A wave of dizziness threatened to plant me on my ass until Lonny stabilized me.

“You okay, Mel?”

“Yeah, just crotched down there like that too long is all.” I waved him off. “Go ahead and get back to your bus. Take some ice with you and keep it on your wound. 15 minutes on, 15 off, and don’t let those sutures get wet.”

“I got it, Mel. Do you want me to go tell Gabe?”

“No, thank you though. If he drew the wrong conclusions, that’s all on him.”

“But it really did probably look like…” he stammered and stopped there as I started laughing.

“I know what it looked like, and that couldn’t be helped. Go on, get out of here, and don’t worry about Gabe. He’s my problem, not yours. Promise.”

I cleaned up the mess I’d just made of the kit, after throwing out the bloody gloves and used supplies. Then, I added the supplies I’d used to the list of things to replace in the kit. When that was done, I knew I couldn’t stall anymore and to be honest, I expected Gabe to be waiting in the hallway for an explanation from me. Hell, maybe he’d already roused the truth from Lonny on his way out. Either way, I was exhausted after a day’s worth of mentally battling my own demons and deciding that I needed to at least hear Gabe out on what he had been saying to his son. I knew I couldn’t keep holding everyone else I ran into accountable for my ex’s behavior. Besides, it was better to clear the air between Gabe and me if he really did feel that way about Kendra. I wouldn’t play second fiddle to another woman just because she was mostly off limits to him.

As I turned the corner and locked the door up behind me, I heard voices just off to the right of the room, heading toward the end of the hall. It was darker now than it had been when I first got here. “I came back,” Lonny said beside me. “I didn’t realize the lights went out down here too. They blew a breaker or something. It was then I noticed that only the emergency lights in the hallway were on. The lights in the room behind us must have been on a different one.

“Thanks, Lonny, but you really need to be off your feet.”

“I know, it’s just that,” he was wringing his hands nervously and staring off into the dark corner where I could just barely make out the heavy breathing. I moved a step closer. Lonny’s hand on my arm stilled the unconscious movement I’d been making. “Don’t,” he whispered.

That was when dread filled the pit of my stomach and there would be no stopping me from seeing what was down there. As it turned out though, I didn’t need to move because the lights flicked back on and there he was. Gabe. With some woman’s legs wrapped around his waist as he had her held up against the wall, a hand disappearing under her skirt, and their lips locked together. My gasp must have been loud enough for them to hear because he turned back and offered up a devious grin, but just for a couple of seconds until he noticed something. Lonny was shaking his head beside me and looking down at the floor now. Gabe’s eyes raked narrowed and then raked over the two of us. That was when he dropped the girl and turned to us.

“What the hell happened?” He roared. It was only then that I glanced down and realized that my brand new, cream-colored, off-the-shoulder shirt had been ruined with Lonny’s blood all over and that my shoulder had some of his blood on it as well, from where he had grabbed me to steady earlier. Gabe’s eyes swung from my shirt to Lonny’s hands, then down further to his still blood-saturated pants.

“That bitch you were just finger-banging against the wall tried to bite my dick off and Mel here had to fix me up,” Lonny seethed at him. Gabe’s eyes flew wide, then moved to meet my own. The horror that bled out across his features pulled at my heart, but only for a moment. Instead of giving him the opportunity to say anything, I just shrugged my shoulders, turned around, and started to walk away.

“Mel!” There was a desperate quality to his voice, but I didn’t let it get to me. I shook my head and continued on walking.

“Don’t worry about her. Why don’t you come finish what we were starting. You didn’t even get past the fact that I wasn’t wearing any panties,” the girl taunted. While that meant he probably hadn’t been finger-banging her as Lonny suggested, he still got close enough to know the girl hadn’t been wearing anything under that skirt of hers, and that was just too much.

“What were you thinking?” I heard Lonny ask him. “You think a classy lady like Mel would ever lower herself to get on her knees for the likes of me?” His humorless laugh was the last thing I heard before I turned another corner and found my way out to Dusty Rose’s tour bus. If the rumors I’d heard today, when I returned from my shopping excursion, were any indicator, I might not have the girls’ bus to hang out on much longer. Not that I’d be pressed about sharing with the male crew. Ev managed it, and I’d come to know most of the guys pretty well now too. That helped.

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