Page 2 of Full Tilt
Theo knew whom I meant. “She left for Paris yesterday morning.”
“You talked to her? What did she say?”
He pulled his chair closer. “Some fucking sob story. How she had a plan for her life and this…” His gaze swept the room.
“This wasn’t it,” I said.
“She couldn’t hack it…” He tore his hand through his hair. “Fuck, I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head a little. “I’m glad you told me. I needed to hear it.”
“I’m sorry, bro. Three years. Three years you gave her, and she just…”
“It’s okay. It’s better.”
“Better? How the hell is it better?”
Already, my eyes felt heavy and wanted to close, to drop the curtain and let me sink back into oblivion for a little while. I didn’t have the strength to tell him that I didn’t hate Audrey for leaving me. I had seen it coming. Even sick with a rapidly failing heart, I could see how she twitched and jumped, eyes darting to the door, plotting an escape route from my illness and the life it would leave me.
It hurt—I felt every one of those three years we’d been together like a knife driven into my new heart. But I didn’t hateher. I didn’t hate her because I didn’t love her. Not in the way I wanted to love a woman—with everything I had.
Audrey was gone. Theo could hate her for me. My parents could marvel at her cruelty on my behalf. But I let her go, because at that moment, I didn’t know she’d be the last…
CHAPTER
ONE
July, a Saturday night
I was drunk.
Why else would I have my cell phone in my hand, my thumb hovering over my parents’ house number in San Diego?
Drunk dialing,I thought.Not just for ex-boyfriends anymore.
I snorted a laugh. It came out more like a sob and echoed around the stairwell. I sat in the dark, narrow space, knees pulled up, trying to make myself small. Invisible. On the other side of the cement wall, I could hear the muffled shouts and whistles of three thousand people waiting for Rapid Confession to take the stage. Our manager, Jimmy Ray, had given us the ten-minute cue a good twenty minutes ago and my bandmates were probably looking for me.
I took a sip from my Evian water bottle, three-quarters filled with vodka—because I’m clever like that—and contemplated my phone. I dared myself to call. I warned myself not to; to just put it away and join the band in the green room. We’d hit the stage, play for yet another sold-out show. I’d get hell famous, make some serious money and continue to screw a different guy every night.
Because, rock and roll.
What a joke. I wasn’t rock and roll. I looked the part, especially tonight in my miniskirt, thigh-high boots and bustier. My hair—bleached to almost white—curled around my shoulders in pin-up girl perfection. My lips painted red and my eyes lined in black. Tattoos decorated my skin, adding to the impression of a grunge rock chick, but they weren’t part of the costume. They were mine.
I looked the part, but I felt like a piece of glass, shattered and scattered all over. I didn’t know who or what I was anymore, but I glittered prettily in the spotlight.
I took another sip of vodka and nearly dropped my phone. I fumbled to catch it and when I lifted it up, I saw I’d hit that big green call button.
“Shit...”
Slowly, I put the phone to my ear. My mother answered on the third ring.
“Hello, Dawson residence.”
My heart dropped into my stomach. My jaw worked but I couldn’t make any sound come out.
“Hello?”
“I…”
