Page 112 of Sycopation
He pulled back and gripped Dom’s shoulders. “Yeah, but it’s today, and I’m here and fine. And I’ve just spent god knows how long talking to a lawyer to get all this shit figured out.”
Dom blinked. “You—found a lawyer?”
Ray flopped into the chair Dom had vacated, and filled his bandmates in on what he’d been up to, leaving out the whole meditating-while-naked part. They didn’t need to know that.
He’d tell Zav later.
“So, now what?” Dom chewed on his nail.
Ray shrugged. “We wait. Lawyer said she’d call back tomorrow.” His gaze drifted to Mish’s tablet. “I also kinda want to see how this is all being spun.”
She grunted. “What I want is dinner.”
That would probably be a good idea. “I’m guessing that heading down to the hotel restaurant or going out would be a very bad plan.”
Dom’s laugh was bitter. “Oh yeah. I went down just to see what was up, and the place is crawling with paparazzi. I hightailed it out of there, just in case someone did recognize me.”
“The label hired some security. I think mainly to appease the hotel, since this shit is hitting them, too. Though I bet their bar receipts will be good,” Mish said.
“Fuck their receipts. And the label.” Ray sighed. “Guess it’s room service, then.”
She pushed a menu over. “We were waiting for you.”
He had to laugh. Then he had to keep from crying. Everything was so out of hand, but they’d get through it. “You guys are the best.”
Dom fidgeted. “What about Zav?”
Oh. Ray’s heart flipped at the thought of Zavier. His voice. Filling him in on all that had happened. Hearing what was in Zavier’s head, because he was damn well gonna pry that out. If nothing else, Zavier owed Raythat. “I’ll give him a call after dinner.”
“You’re not mad?” There was confusion in Dom’s voice.
He wasn’t. God, he missed Zavier so fucking much...but he was kind of glad for his absence, because it had proved something to Ray. He could be in control of himself and solve his own problems.
“He’s done so much for me. If he needs space to figure shit out, it’s the least I can give him.”
When you’re ready.
He was. All he needed was some food in his stomach.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
Zavier boughta small roll of antacids, a toothbrush, and some toothpaste from the truck stop across the street from a motel somewhere outside of someplace. He had no idea where he was, only that he might need to stop eating hot dogs from disreputable establishments and maybe he should have had the forethought to take a bag with him when he’d gone for a “walk.”
He jogged back across the road and to his room. Place looked like a shithole, but the rooms were clean enough. Not even bed bugs, thank goodness.
He should have anticipated that he’d do this, wander far and wide. He’d left that note for Ray, after all, knowing that there’d be a decent possibility he’d not be back right away.
But it was easier to think that he was just going out to clear his head. To ponder. Not that he would hunt down a rental place, plunk down money for a compact car, and hit the highway. He wasn’t about to admit to himself that he’d gotten in over his head and that large questions about what exactly he was doing loomed over him.
It was—as Nadia had once said when he’d first realized he liked tying people up, beating them, and then fucking them—existential crisis time.
He wasn’t running from Ray. He was running fromhimself, which was a futile and foolish exercise. And yet here he was, in a tiny concrete room off some state route, who knew how far from the posh hotel Ray was holed up in.
He missed Ray with every fiber of his being. They hadn’t been out of each other’s orbit since that first practice. They’d eked out a friendship and a kinky relationship and now they had something—something Zavier didn’t want to name and didn’t want to face and nevereverwanted to let go of.
He stripped the comforter off the bed and lay down. It wasn’t the most comfortable bed, but no worse than the bunks in the tour bus.
