Page 52 of Rock Strong

Wielding the bass high in the air, I slammed it down with such force, the guitar cracked down the middle, but it wasn’t enough. I picked it up again and slammed it into the wall, splitting it in half, pieces of wood splintering through the strings.

“Fuck!” Corbin shouted. “That’s my best Gibson. Liam, you asswipe, bro!”

“Nice one, Abster!” Tucker cried, lifting his hand to high-five Corbin only to meet with empty silence. “Yeah, baby!”

“Shut up, fucktard,” Corbin muttered.

“Sorry, bro.”

Throwing the guitar on the ground, I fought the urge to care, to apologize, righted my purse on my shoulder, and strolled back down the hallway in the direction from which I’d come. What I should have done from the beginning.

Chapter 16

Liam

I tried not to think about it, but of course I did. So when I did, I tried focusing not on how devastated Abby had looked when she’d seen me with Giselle, but on how fierce she’d looked when she’d smashed Corbin’s guitar.

Abby’s grand exit had been kickass. I had to give her mad props for going all Pete Townsend. Acted like a true rock star…fuck yeah, bitches!

But I could never stay focused on that moment more than a few seconds before I pictured the hurt on her face again. And felt the pain of my own actions like a dozen Ginsu knives penetrating my chest.

What I didn’t do was talk about what happened. If I talked about it, if I demanded that Tucker and the guys tell me why they’d felt the need to trap me in a room with Giselle like that, I would wail on them, then someone would end up hurt. How great would it have been for publicity and ticket sales to not have one or more of the band onstage because I’d beaten them to a bloody pulp?

No bueno. No bueno at all.

Plus, it was my own damned fault I was caught in a lip-lock with the very person Abby feared most. God, I was a fucking moron.

Immediately after it had happened, I took Robbie’s advice and cooled the fuck down. Only talked to Tucker and Corbin when needed, did my thing onstage, and chilled the rest of the time. In fact, I took the time to work on a song that had started brewing in my head. The lyrics haunted me daily and nightly: a vision flowing in red, she’ll demand respect, bring you to your knees, boy, she’ll make you bleed…

Where it was going, I had no idea.

Same as my life.

The hardest part about the last several days was missing Abby onstage in Denver and Salt Lake City. Her auditory absence was like a sinkhole in my heart. Robbie hired some cello dude as a stand-in, but he didn’t play with the same finesse and soul as Abby did. He butchered the solo—literally chopping it to death with his bow, which he wielded like a fucking samurai sword.

I wouldn’t sit here and say, Poor me, Giselle jumped on top of me and forced me to make out with her—what was I supposed to do? That was a bullshit excuse, and I knew it. Abby would never put up with that. The honest-to-God truth was I’d needed to see what I felt. It was an experiment. Giselle’s body was the Garden of Eden and the snake and heaven and hell all rolled into one, but I could have resisted her. I didn’t, though. In part, because of Abby’s text to Rosemary—I admitted that had thrown my confidence off a bit—but mostly because I needed to see. After years of sleeping with demons, could an angel save my life?

Hell, yeah, an angel could save my life. But I’d just fucked her over in one of the shittiest ways possible.

Someone knocked on my hotel room suite door. I went to open it and found Tucker standing there, holding out a vanilla cupcake. “I come in peace.”

“Shove it up your ass.” I left the door open and walked back to the sofa. Lounging around was becoming my favorite hobby next to Googling Abby Chan and reading her Juilliard bio over and over again. That is, when I wasn’t staring at the pictures and video I’d taken of her. The selfie we’d taken together in Seattle before we’d left my grandparents’ house—fuck, I felt like I was dying every time I looked at it. Dying, with my only chance of being saved by a woman who’d probably spit on me before she’d raise a finger to help me. And rightly so.

“I did, which is why it tastes so damn good.” Tucker spoke with his mouth full, clearly having taken a bite of his peace offering. “I’m sorry I threw you into the lion’s cage,” he said.

“You knew I was with Abby,” I grumbled.

“You didn’t exactly resist her,” he countered, talking about Giselle.

“Did you call her? Or did she come on her own?”

“Helen told her to come.” Tucker sat on the edge of the sofa to peer down at me like a sick man in a hospital bed. I guess that wasn’t too far from the truth. “Giselle was planning on staying away, but Helen told her that you missed her and really wanted to see her.”

I sat up halfway. “Wha…? Why would she do that?” Lying back down, I covered my face with a cushion. “I’m sick and tired of women and their stupid head games.”

“And yet you want a new one to complicate matters further.” He inspected his cuticles, happy to give me a dose of his reality.

“Abby would never play games like that,” I said. It was true. She was way too mature, and suddenly, I missed her more than ever. She made me want to be a better man. She made me want to get off of the crazy train. She didn’t tame the wild man in me. She made me want to tame myself.

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