Page 72 of Shattered Chords

Everyone liked Frank.

It was an unspoken rule of the universe.

He was the golden boy of hard rock. The broken charmer. The one who’d successfully come back from the dead.

And I envied him. I envied the ease with which he strode through my house, Snowflake cradled to his chest. Despite all the plastic surgeries that were rumored to have been performed on him just to get him to look like himself again after his body was dragged across the freeway, his age showed. Small lines fanned out from the corners of his eyes, uneven and asymmetrical and barely there, but they were there, nonetheless, the first sign of his fourth decade coming in hot.

We were both pushing forty and we were both rich yet shattered, but I had a distinctive feeling that he was finally happy. I could read it in the softness of his expression, in the blue gleam of his eyes, in the casual choice of his clothes—a white T-shirt and a pair of faded jeans. He didn’t look like someone who lived in a Malibu mansion with a view of the Pacific, or someone who used to entertain stadiums for a living.

He looked simple.

And then I remembered the thirty-million-dollar lawsuit and my heart did a happy dance.

Yes, I was a bitter motherfucker.

“So what’s his name?” Frank finally asked, rubbing the pup between his flappy ears.

“Snowflake,” I supplied.

“Never pegged you for a dog person.”

“Well, we all have our quirks.” I shrugged, trying to sound impassive, but my pulse raced.

His call had caught me off guard. He wanted to stop by, and I agreed. Now here we were. Both sober. Unsaid words lingering between us in the cool air of my music room.

Frank sunk into a crouch and let Snowflake down on the floor, then petted him gently as if parting with the pup was physically difficult. I could relate since he slept with me every night now. It was the strangest thing—to care for someone so small, to be responsible for another creature.

At times, I even felt like my new purpose was finally shaping up.

“I talked to my lawyer,” I started as I moved a couple of steps to my left, my feet effectively blocking Snowflake’s path toward the bundle of cables he liked the chew on sometimes. The little rascal normally wasn’t allowed in here for that reason alone.

Frank straightened and watched the pup wobble across the room with open fascination. “What are you thinking?” he asked carefully, his voice level.

“Oh, I don’t know.” I stuffed my fists into the pockets of my sweatpants. No way in hell was I dressing up for him, especially in my own home. “I’m thinking it’d be fucking nice to own my masters, Frankie-boy. Don’t you agree?”

He gave me a single nod and slowly spun around and surveyed my guitar collection, his gaze freezing on an older model I used during the filming of one of ourHollow Heart Dreammusic videos. The Red Eye Records era. Before things got complicated.

“Have you talked to Quin?” I asked.

Frank was quiet for a long moment, his eyes finally returning to me. “Through the lawyers.”

“You too big of a celebrity to pick up a phone and call now?”

“I called you, didn’t I?”

“Well, don’t do me any favors.”

The atmosphere suddenly soured. It wasn’t just Heidi and the fact that I’d pretty much kicked him out of his own band. It was all that and much more. Years and years of secret animosity that, for some reason, I couldn’t bear anymore. It weighed on me, pulling me down, dragging me to the very bottom, to the place from where most people didn’t return.

“I don’t want it to be like this between us anymore, Dante,” Frank’s tone softened, and his entire form seemed to shrink visibly, as if he could only maintain this farce of being in control for a limited time.

“It’ll always be like this if you don’t fucking say it, Frankie-boy. If you don’t fucking say what you truly think.”

“Do you really want me to?”

“Yes, I fucking want you to.” I drew my hands from my pockets and threw them in the air. “I fucked your wife and I fucked your career. Now bring it on.”

He was still as a statue for a full minute, something lurking behind his blue gaze.

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