Say it Louder

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Dear Reader

  Skip a Beat

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  I’m shaking as I leave Tyler’s loft. Shaken to my core as I go through the motions: hail a cab, rattle off the address of my Brooklyn brownstone, swipe my credit card. Shaky fingers aim for the door lock and miss; I drop my keys and bite back a curse.

  I’ve had a curse hanging over me for years.

  Her name is Kristina.

  Fuck. Why didn’t I kick her to the curb once I realized the dirt she was collecting on me? On all of us? Why didn’t I man up, take what was coming to me, and get through it?

  Because I’m a fucking coward, that’s why.

  I punch at the lock again and my key connects this time. The door swings wide to music from the stereo and the smell of garlic. Italian? It’s far too early for dinner, and the kitchen has nothing but a half-opened beer on the counter.

  My beer. Since when does Kristina drink my beer?

  I snag the bottle and take a swig. I might as well drown in it. Or kick up my feet, shove headphones on my ears and play the shit out of Call of Duty.

  Right now I want to shoot something, punch something—anything—to feel something other than absolute terror over what I have to do.

  I have to cut her loose or lose the band. Lose the one good and real and true thing in my life. Because everything with Kristina is a lie. Even this house—my house, if you go by who pays the massive mortgage bill—is a lie because it’s not me who decides how to keep it.

  It’s her. I’d given her the reins to my house and pretty much everything else in my life.

  Everything but the band.

  Just as I plant my ass into the familiar dent in my couch, a strange noise from upstairs unsettles me. It’s a moan, low and needful.

  My stomach roils as I listen, the swallow of beer souring in my gut.

  I climb the stairs, first a hesitant step, then faster, until I’m sprinting up the flight as bass from the stereo pounds in my brain. Adrenaline forces me up, and then I see see see see everything through the half-open door.

  A pale, naked ass tilted up, the man’s ball sac pendulous between his legs. The grunting, the slapping of flesh, her moaning, facedown—Kristina’s spray-tanned skinny legs splayed as he bends over her body.

  His back is white with a curling dark hair on his shoulder blades. He grunts and his hand smacks the side of her ass hard, leaving a red welt that blares at me like a stoplight.

  Stop. Stop! Ohgodpleasestopstopstop. But I’m rooted to the spot in the hallway.

  “Yes! Harder!” Kristina begs. I can’t see her face buried in the bedclothes, but her stripey blond-and-brown highlights are unmistakable.

  “Like this?” Smack. His hand connects with her flesh again and I know that voice. I know that voice.

  I hear it every week. It’s that voice and the sound of rutting and slapping flesh and the smell of sex in my bed and my house. It’s the sight of my girlfriend being fucked doggie-style by my manager.

  I snap out of the haze. My foot connects with the door, slamming it open, the knob shattering the plaster wall behind it. The door vibrates on its hinges and for one perfect moment there is silence.

  No smack of flesh, no grunts or moans.

  And then she screams.

  “What the fuck is this?” I roar, and they roll and scramble to disentangle from each other. Chief’s dick bobs away from his body, glistening with her wetness, and he scuttles off the side of the bed opposite me and attempts to shove his legs in pants, wary of what violence comes next.

  Kristina pulls the sheet over her rail-thin frame, hard nipples jutting through the fabric as she narrows her eyes at me defiantly. “What are you doing here?”

  What am I doing in my own damn house?

  Right now, I’m supposed to be at band practice. Perfect timing for her to have the house to herself. My face creases with hatred, but instead of getting louder, my voice gets dangerously soft. “Get the fuck out.”

  Chief’s already got his feet in his shoes, his shirt in his hand, and he’s rounding the bed cautiously, as if I’d give him a push down that steep flight of stairs to our front door. I stand aside, but then turn and spit, “You’re fired.”

  He descends the stairs rapidly, but when he gets to the bottom, he raises his hands as if in surrender, his shirt a white flag. “Hey, Dave, let’s talk about this when you cool off, OK? We’re all adults here.”

  I snarl and he’s gone. I hear the front door open and close, then whip my gaze back to Kristina, who hasn’t moved an inch. I drop my voice lower, almost a whisper, but it seethes with hate.

  “I said: Get. The. Fuck. Out.”

  “Me? You can’t throw me out of my house.” Kristina has the nerve to pout, her lower lip quivering as if she’s about to cry. But I know those eyes—tearless, calculating, all the mercy of a cobra.

  “It’s my house, and I just did.” I yank open a dresser drawer and throw some clothes at her. “You’ve got ten seconds to get dressed before I throw you out on the street naked.”

  “You wouldn’t dare. I’ll call the cops.”

  “And tell them what? That I caught my freeloading bitch of a girlfriend in bed with my fucking backstabbing manager? Go for it, whore.”

  When the last word lands, Kristina’s brittle pout is dismissed, replaced by haughty narrowed eyes. Her chin lifts.

  “I think the police would be very interested to know things about us,” Kristina says, grasping for control. She pulls a shirt over her head, something I’m sure she charged to my platinum card. “Like that night in February.”

  A chill snakes down my spine. “You can’t.”

  “I can do anything I want,” she sneers, throwing more clothes in her massive designer handbag. “Lucky for me, fucking Chief is no crime. Unlucky for you, manslaughter is.”

  ***

  She snags the keys to my Audi and slams the door. The house echoes with emptiness and I trip to the bathroom, just in time to retch into the toilet. I heave until it’s all gone, then heave some more.

  When I’m sure my stomach is as empty as my house, I raise my head, run my face under a full-blast faucet until it throbs, and then grip the sides of the pedestal sink as I search my reflectio
n for an answer.

  It’s not there.

  Haunted eyes stare back at me, bloodshot from the force of vomiting. I look a decade older than my twenty-five years and I have no fucking clue how, when I’m supposed to be on the top of the world with my band and our music, everything has fallen apart.

  I’m one police report away from being a suspect and maybe even a prisoner.

  I walk back to my bedroom and see the rumpled sheets and a bottle of lube on the bedside table. It almost sends me back to the toilet for more dry heaves, so I quickly descend the stairs, aching for an escape from this place.

  But I have nowhere to go.

  Jayce hates me—or at least he isn’t ready to forgive me for how Kristina betrayed his girlfriend Violet by outing her naked pictures to the media.

  Tyler’s on his side, too. He always is, and sometimes it feels like those two gang up on me simply out of solidarity, rather than siding with what’s right for our band and our careers.

  So I call Gavin.

  “Did you do it?” He doesn’t even bother with a hello. He needs to know if I’ve cut Kristina out of my life yet, because she could set off a chain reaction that could go very, very badly for him.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “It’s not. Dump that bitch. We can’t trust her.”

  “You can say that again.” My lips twist with black humor. “I threw her out of my house, but not because of what she knows about us.”

  Gavin’s line blares with traffic noise. “Hang on. I’m just getting back to my place. It gets patchy in the elevator.”

  I pace my kitchen, trying to decide my next move.

  “So start over. Tell me what happened,” Gavin says. He’s calm like I need to be, and so I tell it like a news report, like I’m not invested in this shit at all. When I finish, he lets out a low whistle. “Oh, man. There’s more what-the-fuck in your fucking story than in the history of fucked-up clusterfucks.”

  I bark out a laugh, loving Gavin’s ability to drop the F-bomb in virtually every part of speech. It releases some of the tension from the tight band that’s compressed my chest steadily since Kristina slammed out of here, like I’m rising higher and higher into the atmosphere, where the air’s so thin every movement feels like a marathon.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I confess.

  God, I feel like such a wimp to admit it. I’m the sure one, the sharp one, our band’s first manager and the guy who always knows what to do in a bad situation.

  I knew what to do when Lulu died, even when Gavin panicked and fled. And now I’m just … lost.

  “You know what? Neither do I. But I do know we’re going to fire Chief’s ass—formally—and get you as far away from Kristina as possible.”

  “Then what should I do?” I pound my fist on my kitchen counter in frustration.

  He rattles off an address. “Go see Stella.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Two ridiculous giggling girls bust through the peace of Righteous Ink as I’m cleaning up after my last client. I aim for a stern look, but I can’t help it. Their laughter is contagious and the corners of my mouth tug up.

  “You two are a menace, you know that?” I wipe down the reclining chair and push my rolling tray against the wall.

  The tall redhead, Violet, and the tiny brunette, Stella, look about ready to burst.

  “Ask us what’s awesome about today,” Stella says.

  “Just tell me.” I don’t do giggly. I do wry or sarcastic or ironic, but I’m not a giggler.

  “No, ask us. Say, ‘What’s so awesome about today?’”

  “Come on, play along,” Violet coaxes.

  “Fine. What’s so awesome about today?” I throw a singsong cadence into my question.

  Stella looks at Violet and nods. “You tell her.”

  “Today is the day … they accepted my feature! In Atlantic Arts magazine!” Violet’s voice rises to a squeal and Stella squeals along with her. And even though I’m not a squealer or a giggler, I feel a bolt of excitement race up my spine, the same one that zings through me whenever I complete a tattoo or a painting.

  The story is going to be real.

  Violet’s been following me for the better part of the last year, even though I didn’t realize it until a few weeks ago. She took pictures of my street art—even followed me to Europe—and then she got her friend Stella to interview me and write a story about what I do.

  I knew Violet queried the piece to some magazines, but I never thought she’d actually sell it. Who even cares about what I do with spray paint and stencils well past midnight?

  But this is real: A feature. A photo spread. Concrete proof that I made art.

  And it can’t be erased.

  I squeeze my eyes shut and turn around as my throat constricts, unwilling to show them the raw emotions twisting my face.

  I could pole-vault an Olympic height right now. Leap tall buildings in a single bound. Fly off the Brooklyn Bridge and Never. Look. Back.

  Arms wrap around my shoulders and Stella’s bouncing beside me. “Well? What do you think?”

  I gulp in air and try to steady myself. I feel like a woman who’s just discovered she’s a superhero—excited and scared and so full of possibility that the ground shifts beneath my feet.

  It’s fucking scary. And awesome. And—“Wait. When?”

  “Next issue,” Violet says. “They’re already doing layout! We’re here to figure out a couple of things the editor asked, but mostly we’re here to celebrate!”

  Stella points to a cloth bag she’s carrying. “I’ve got champagne and cupcakes. Since I’m not drinking, that means I get double the sugar, right?”

  “Dibs on red velvet,” Violet says.

  They carry me away with chatter and propel me out of the shop. I lock up a bit early since there are no more appointments on the books and follow the girls several blocks south to Violet’s Lower East Side apartment.

  I’m in a daze listening to them, absorbing it all.

  “This could be your big break, you know,” Stella says. “If the photos are a hit, you might even become a big-deal artist.”

  “Like Banksy,” Violet adds reverently, mentioning one of the world’s most famous street artists, whose identity is still cloaked in mystery.

  Stella doles out the cupcakes and pours champagne while Violet goes over the editor’s notes and a dozen little facts to check.

  But then there are some big facts: Atlantic Arts wants to use my name and photo. They want to tell my story. But I want the art to speak for itself.

  “I don’t want to be the focus,” I say, licking a dab of chocolate frosting off my knuckle. “It’s not like street art is exactly legal. I could actually get busted for vandalism.”

  I don’t add another word: again.

  “We thought of that,” Stella pipes up. “Look at this.” She passes me a file folder with the feature story and prints of each of Violet’s photos. They’re all environmental photos of my art, except one is unmistakably me: pink hair, black V-neck shirt, ink on my arms.

  You’d never recognize me from the picture. My face is a blur because the photo is crisply focused on my hands and sketchpad in the foreground. Violet explains that when Stella was interviewing me, she took some shots of me sketching.

  I thought I’d erased them all from her camera, but apparently I missed a few.

  “I’m hoping we can use this one with the shallow depth of field, since it doesn’t show your face.” Anxiety pinches Violet’s voice. She wants, maybe even needs, to use my photo.

  I look more closely, debating her request. My ragged nails are in sharp focus, and my fingers grip a brush-tipped marker as I sketch my tag—VIIIM, a stylized version of my name, upside-down. I sign all of my work that way.

  I hesitate, but give in to Violet’s pleading emerald eyes. “I—I guess that’s OK.”

  “The editors also want to use your full name,” Stella adds. “What’s your last name?”

  I shake my
head. “No. No way. I don’t need that kind of exposure. You’ve got my tag and my art. I don’t want to share any more.”

  “Why not? For once we’ve got media on something good.” Stella rolls her eyes and I know both she and Violet have been burned by the gossip press for their own indiscretions, made public by their relationships with Tattoo Thief’s band members.

  When your name is public, everything you do and everything you are is public.

  And I don’t want that to be me.

  I want to make a dent in this word, but hell if I’m going down the way they did.

  “Willa is enough,” I tell Stella firmly.

  I don’t want any connection to my past life. Willa Gillespie is gone.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I buzz the intercom on a plain Lower East Side apartment door and Violet’s voice crackles through the speaker. “Who is it?”

  “It’s Dave.”

  There’s no response and I panic—I’m about the last person Violet wants showing up at her door, considering what Kristina just did to her. “Violet—wait! Give me a minute. I’m here to apologize. And I really need to talk to Stella.”

  After a very, very long pause, her disembodied voice comes through: “One flight up, first door on the left.”

  There’s a scrape and click as the intercom disconnects, then a harsh buzz from the unlocked door. By the time I reach the top of the stairs, Violet’s door is already open partway, with an angry little Stella blocking the entrance.

  “She doesn’t want to talk to you.” Stella’s frown accuses me. “Unless you’re here to really apologize—and I mean fucking grovel—you ought to leave now.” Stella places her hand on her hip and sets her jaw. She could give even the most intimidating bouncers a run for their money with that look.

  “I do need to apologize,” I tell her, and try to hold back a sigh. Just add it to the long, long list of shit I’m wading through today. “Let me in. Please?”

  Stella gives me a hard look and nods once, opening the door enough for me to slide into Violet’s apartment. I’m definitely interrupting something—there’s champagne on the table, one bottle empty and another started, plus cupcakes.