Say it Louder Read online

  I feel my neck heat from the unexpected compliment, an embarrassment that multiplies when the rest of the band—even Jayce—nods in agreement.

  I shrug and try to play it cool. “Whether Kristina deserves it or not, the point is, this makes her go away. It protects you. If she ever breathes a word about us to the press, or ever tries to sell our stories or secrets, the trust my lawyer set up goes poof.”

  “She doesn’t get anything?” Stella asks.

  “She doesn’t get any more.” I glance at Willa but she’s still diligently focused on her food. I wonder how this conversation about my ex affects her, but her face is a smooth, concentrated mask. “Kristina gets a quarterly sum strung out over the next ten years. Assuming she doesn’t talk.”

  The band lets out a collective breath—somewhere between a low whistle of surprise and a sigh of relief. But I’m still haunted by the fact that it can’t be this easy.

  With Kristina, it never is.

  ***

  Second round.

  Someone tweets that Tattoo Thief is in the back of the bar and suddenly there are a lot more drive-by looks as people pretend to search for the john or just flat-out stare.

  We sprawl across two couches and a couple chairs: Stella perched on the arm of a couch with Tyler’s hand on her knee, Beryl nuzzled up next to Gavin, and Violet leaning into Jayce like a cat as he plays with her flame-red hair.

  And then there’s me. And Willa. We’re not even sitting on the same couch, for fuck’s sake. She’s sipping her beer, cutting her eyes around the bar, talking as little as possible despite Stella’s best—and loudest—efforts. Willa might as well have tattooed I don’t belong on her forehead.

  In her jeans and Docs, she’s the butch to Beryl’s femme.

  With her strong biceps and generous curves, she dwarfs pixie Stella.

  And with her ink, she looks a world away from wholesome Violet.

  But Willa anchors me the way no one else has. I lean over to say something—anything—simple and easy to just get her to engage. But her expression is closed, full of mistrust.

  The waitress comes back to clear the food plates and she lingers over Gavin, despite the fact that he’s practically wearing Beryl. I beckon Willa’s attention with a soft touch on her knee.

  She flinches.

  God, what am I doing wrong? “You want to get out of here? You say the word.”

  Willa’s lips purse, but she shakes her head. “No. You wanted to go out. Stay.” I barely catch on to the meaning of her last word when she rises from the chair. “It was great seeing you all,” she offers, struggling for a half-smile to smooth the lie.

  “Willa—” I start, but she turns away from me. She really can’t get away fast enough. So I jump up from my seat and follow her, three long strides to close the distance. I grab her wrist and physically pull her back to me.

  “No, stay, they’re your friends.” She won’t give me eye contact; she’s already glancing around for an escape route.

  “What’s so hard about being here?” I ask, but my words come out harsher than I mean to be, and again, she flinches.

  “Nothing. It’s fine. I guess I’m just not in the mood.” She tries to pull her hand back but I’m not ready to let go.

  “If it’s fine, then why not stay? You said you were starving.” I paste on another goofy grin, aiming for disarming but probably landing somewhere closer to deranged beagle. “Stomach growls are not to be trifled with.”

  Willa rolls her eyes. “There’s a big difference between hungry and starving. Believe me. I know that better than anyone. And there’s a big difference between me and this rock-star life you have going.”

  “You’re worried that my band pays attention to the size of your bank account? Trust me, they’re cool. We all remember ordering plain cheese pizza because we couldn’t scrape enough for the supreme.”

  But instead of placating her, my statement bombs. Big time. Her brows pull down and her shoulders hunch, like she’s folding into herself, pulling away from me. And all I have to keep her from disappearing entirely is my hold on her wrist.

  I pull her hand to my chest, laying it over my heart. Because, damn it, I’m having feelings. The big kind. Like when your brain shrieks with exhaustion but you can’t let the feelings go long enough to drop into the deep water calm of sleep.

  “Please” is all I manage for a long, shivery moment, as I keep pressing her hand against me. I don’t have poetry or reasons to tell her what I need.

  I just need her.

  This.

  I need her to stay with me, as close as she’s willing, for an hour or maybe two while we pretend to be a band that isn’t the biggest fuck-up on the planet.

  A band that’s not going to let our secrets divide and destroy us.

  I see the hesitation in Willa’s eyes, unpredictable like a spring sky. And so I pull her hand up to my lips, planting them softly in the center of her palm.

  She shudders and her eyes lock to mine. I rake my teeth against the pad of her index finger, then pull it into my mouth.

  She gives me the tiniest sigh and I release her finger. “I want you here. With me. Please.” This is the point of no return. It’s where I fling myself off a cliff, flying with the rush of adrenaline as I confess this need, and thrilling from the terror that I might fall. She might not want me back.

  “How can I?” she finally asks, her voice edged in pain.

  “They don’t care where you come from.”

  She huffs. “It’s not that.” Then she shakes her head, as if to clear it. “I mean, yeah, it’s uncomfortable. But I can get over that. But what I can’t get over is that you tell me there are some horrible, unnamable secrets, but you don’t trust me with them.”

  I am ashamed. I assumed it was something inside her, insecurities or a haunted history, but instead it’s me driving us apart.

  My secrets. My walls.

  “You want to know everything?” I challenge her. “Because it’s ugly and awful and I don’t want you to wake up tomorrow and look at me differently. I don’t want to … disappoint you.”

  She pulls her hand from my grasp and I fear the worst, that she’s already made up her mind. But instead she takes a step closer to me. “I want to know.”

  “When?” It’s like I’m setting a date for my own execution, afraid of how she’ll react when she knows what I’ve done.

  “Tell me when you’re ready. Just don’t shut me out.”

  ***

  Third round.

  Or maybe fourth, I’m losing count. We’re back with the band, this time wedged onto a couch with Gavin and Beryl. We’re laughing more, and the band’s reliving some crazy night after a show.

  Violet’s head snaps up from where she’s cozied up against Jayce’s broad chest and her eyes narrow in the purest hatred. I follow her gaze over the back of a couch to see a skinny figure in a sequined party dress weaving through the crowd.

  Fuck my life.

  Kristina’s got her arm coiled like a snake around some muscle-bound guy in a too-tight shirt and expensively ratty jeans. My recognition is blurry but I think it’s some B-grade actor from a canceled sitcom.

  Kristina’s smile is wide and well-lubricated. “Hey guys. We’ve been spotted!” She giggles and flashes her phone. “Twitter’s got us pegged.”

  Gavin rolls his eyes. “Wanna get out of here?” he grumbles to Jayce, but Kristina catches it.

  “Oh, no. Stay. This is just too much fun. What a coincidence, right?” She grins at her date and he gives her a confused look.

  “I thought you said we were—”

  Kristina cuts him off with a wet kiss on the lips. “Just catching up with old friends.”

  “We’re not your friends,” Stella hisses. “Go pollute somewhere else.”

  “We’re best friends,” Kristina says, too bright, too fake, like the rest of her. “I haven’t got a bad word to say about any of you.”

  “It’s pretty crowded in here,” Gavin tries.
“Why not go find another bar?”

  “And miss the funth?” Kristina lisps, betraying the fact that she probably downed more cosmos tonight than her hundred-pound frame can take. “Not in this lifetime.”

  She teeters over to me in her stilettos, bending down to give me a front-row view of her expensive plastic tits. “When you’re done fooling around with this street rat, you know where to find me.”

  She leans in toward me, her sticky pink lips puckering, and my hands react before my brain is fully engaged. I push her away—hard—and she shrieks.

  “Brad!” Kristina lands on Stella, who bellows and shoves her away from their couch, and Kristina’s caught in some weird pushing pinball for a moment until Brad steps in to help her find her footing.

  I see a flash, then another, and I whip my gaze to a corner where two paparazzi are documenting the show in high definition. Fuck.

  “You hit me!” Kristina yells, and I’m out of my seat, so eager to make it true, even though I’m not a guy who ever has—or would—hurt a woman.

  I try to stand but I’m jerked back, falling into the seat of the couch while Willa jumps to her feet. In a flash, Willa is toe-to-toe with Kristina, her deep voice resonant with anger.

  “He did no such thing, you crazy drunk bitch,” Willa hisses. And then she grabs Kristina, a pincer-like grasp on her upper arm and a smile pasted on her face, and marches Kristina right past useless Brad, right past the paparazzi, toward the front door of the bar.

  My brain engages and I race after them, hitting the sidewalk seconds after they do.

  “Don’t touch me!” Kristina is still saying in her whiney-yell. “You hurt my arm. It’s going to bruise. It’ll be purple and I’ll show the pictures to … to …”

  At that, Willa’s mouth curls up into a sinister smile. “Who?” Willa continues, and her voice is low and hard and relentless, like a Mack truck’s engine. “Tell me who exactly you’ll show the pictures to when you’ve promised you won’t go to the media with anything negative on Tattoo Thief?”

  Kristina blinks.

  “You planned this,” I add. “You found the opportunity, you tipped the cameras, and you came here to pick a fight so it wouldn’t be you who’s telling the press something awful. So you’d still get your money.”

  Kristina’s brow lifts, a calculated admission that I’m right but there’s not a damned thing I can do about it.

  She looks from me to Willa and back at me, her expression hardening. “You’re slumming it. The best you can do after me is a slimy street rat? I’m insulted.”

  My lips curl as tight as my fist. “Don’t. Don’t say a word against Willa. You don’t know anything about her.”

  “I know more than you do.”

  She’s taunting me, but this time I won’t take the bait. “You don’t know shit.” I glance over my shoulder and the paparazzi are shouldering out of the bar, cameras raised to capture this scene. I have to end it, and fast.

  So I say the only thing that’s left inside me. “I’m glad you’re gone. So fucking glad.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Dave vibrates with anger, but instead of storming, he gets tighter and more controlled, like a coil wound too tight.

  He didn’t go back in the bar or even text a goodbye to the band. Just hailed a cab and hauled me inside it.

  A strobe of streetlights flash across his face as we cross the Brooklyn Bridge, leaving Manhattan’s pulse behind. I try to read his eyes but they’re shadowed under dark brows. We ride in silence.

  Buildings shrink, trees stand taller, and graffiti is scrubbed away with each block we burrow further into Brooklyn. This is not my New York. It’s the land of hipsters and single-origin coffee. It’s not a place where a street kid can survive, or a street artist can thrive.

  Dave’s movements are angry staccato as he flips the fare through the cab’s window, laced with agitation as he unlocks the door to a brownstone.

  I gape—not at the opulence, but at the emptiness.

  One frayed chair, an orphaned end table, and a leaning bookcase lurk at the edges of the living room. A rectangle of dust sketches in where a couch once sat. There’s nothing in the dining room except an ugly purple laundry basket. The kitchen bar is stacked with takeout containers and junk mail.

  “Why—why did you bring me here?”

  Dave looks up, spell broken, as if he hadn’t realized he was towing me along in his wake.

  “I had to get out of there.”

  “And this is … home?”

  He looks around, lost again, like he’s seeing the place for the first time. “What’s left of it. Yeah.”

  “She cleaned you out.”

  My statement tugs a wry twist on his lips. “Better this way,” he mumbles, and moves on autopilot to the fridge. There’s not much inside, but he wraps his knuckles over two beers and shuffles through a drawer for a bottle opener. “It’s all I got.”

  I take a long drink when he does, my brain still mushy from the bar. His hand trembles and he sets his bottle down too hard on the granite countertop, a harsh clink that echoes off empty walls.

  “I shouldn’t be here.”

  He looks up quickly, panic creasing lines around dark chocolate eyes. “No. Stay.”

  “I shouldn’t have been at the bar, either,” I barrel on. “Your life isn’t mine. You’ve got problems—I get it—but you’re going to get through them. Do a new album, go on another tour.”

  Dave hangs his head. “I wish it were that easy. You don’t understand.”

  I step closer to him, catch his hand before he can reach for the bottle again. “Try me.” I can’t imagine his secrets are any worse than mine.

  I pull him toward a squishy chair, one arm lumpy from where little brass tacks on the front have come loose or disappeared.

  He sits, and since there are no other chairs, I kneel at his feet, nudging my hips between his legs, and I run my hands up the denim on his thighs. Our faces are a few breaths apart but he won’t meet my eyes. I wait.

  “How do you do it?” he finally asks.

  “What?”

  “Live … like you do?”

  I recoil, measuring this million-dollar brownstone against my shitty apartment, his wealthy hipsters and rock star friends against my still-scraping-by neighbors.

  I think Dave senses he’s said something wrong, because he clears his throat and tries again. “I mean, how do you live like there’s always an upside? Like you’re sure life’s gonna get better?”

  “It is.” I don’t say it with Pollyanna-like shiny optimism, but with a conviction that’s hard-earned. “We’re not scraping bottom. Not even close.”

  Dave threads his fingers in my hair, his dark eyes finally locking with mine. “When you say it like that, I want to believe it. I want to believe everything that comes out of your mouth.”

  And just like that, as his fingers trace my cheeks, my lips, and then blaze a trail down my throat, I’m a hopeless puddle of whoa. Like something clicks and we’re two sides of a coin, completely opposite but fully connected.

  A story comes tumbling out, maybe to help him work up the courage to share his. “You want to know why I do street art?”

  Dave nods, his dark lashes heavy. “Tell me.”

  “It’s about wanting to be seen. Like, when I was in foster care, I was invisible unless my foster father was drunk. And living on the street, the only time I felt seen was when I stopped being a person and started being a statistic.”

  I pick at a hangnail and grimace, unable to tip my face up to look at him while it’s so naked with feeling. “Politicians talk about ‘the homeless’ like they’re a problem that needs a policy. A homeless person is homeless first, and a person second. It gnaws at you, like you’re a bone. When you’re picked clean, you’ll be thrown away.”

  Dave wraps his hands over mine, and it gives me fuel to keep going.

  “When you sleep between Dumpsters, it’s not too far to imagine being inside one. After a while
, it was like I didn’t even need a name, because who would care if I actually disappeared?”

  Dave makes a sad sound deep in his throat and pulls me closer, cradling my head just beneath his chin.

  “So I made sure I didn’t. Disappear, I mean. I’d make my mark on the world, either with paint or with ink, so even if I went away, the world couldn’t pretend I never existed.”

  “You wanted to do something permanent.”

  I smile a little, and correct him. “I wanted to be something permanent. And with this show, and the article, it’s like I made it. You helped me see that even if nothing sells, the show proves I made stuff that matters, even if it’s just for fifteen minutes.”

  “You matter to me.” Dave’s voice is husky and raw. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. The chance to see you make your mark. You’re going to set the art world on fire.”

  I pull back from under his chin and run my fingertips over his stubble. “Ditto. That’s why I’m telling you it’s not so bad. You’ve already made your mark on the world—on the freaking Billboard charts. No one can change that.”

  Dave opens his mouth and then closes it, hesitant. “They see through that.”

  “Who?”

  “The band. The music critics. You’re a true talent, Willa, but they know better about me. I’m not some virtuoso like Jayce, and I don’t have Gavin’s magnetism. One critic said I was just ‘a garage-band extra.’ I’m not the kind of drummer who deserves to play in a top band.”

  Now it’s my turn to be speechless. Dave’s a walking contradiction—a lost boy with a pitiful poker face, and a man who channels command and control when his manager’s hat is on.

  And I’m stunned because he’s afraid his art’s not good enough. “Fuck that.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I. Fuck the haters. Haters hate, but creators create. Even if you’re not the world’s greatest drummer, it doesn’t matter. The Beatles weren’t the world’s greatest musicians either, but together they were the world’s greatest band.”