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  Lonny let out an uncomfortable laugh. “Seems this is the position that got me into all that trouble to begin with,” he grinned down at me as I gave him a shitty look in response.

  “I’m going to have sharp objects down here with me, and I’m not talking about my teeth, so maybe now isn’t the time for uncomfortable jokes, huh?”

  “You’re right. Sorry, Mel. I’m just… fuck… look at all that blood.” He told me as I watched his eyes start to roll after he examined his blood drenched hands.

  “No, you don’t.” I called out and then reached up and smacked him to shock him out of his impending faint.

  His hands immediately flew out to latch on to my hair and push me away. “What the hell did you do that for?” He yelled at me as the door opened.

  “We’re busy,” Lonny called out.

  “Let go of my hair so I can see what I’m doing,” I told Lonny, completely ignoring the fact that someone had entered the room.

  “Can you just hurry it along, Mel? I need this to be finished before the show is over.”

  It was only then that I realized I wasn’t feeling the vibrations of the music through the floor any longer. “I think it’s already over,” I told him as I pulled a suture kit free from the bag sitting beside me. I dropped the one I really needed and had to lean back down to pick it up. The moment I straightened, Lonny hissed out, “Oh shit,” causing me to glance over at the door.

  Gabe was storming out of the room by the time I looked up and Lonny was staring down at me, wide-eyed, one hand on my shoulder, the other shaking so bad on his thigh that there was no denying what Gabe must have thought was going on. “He thought…” Lonny started to say.

  “Not your problem right now, Lon. Let’s get this taken care of so you can go rest.”

  “I have to help take the stage apart.”

  “I’m about to pop a couple of stitches in your penis, Lonny. There’s no way you can carry more than five pounds tonight, climb, run, or hustle in any way. You got me?”

  “Yes ma’am,” he agreed, disappointment laced his quick answer. “I love my job.”

  “I know you do, Lonny. You just need to stay away from the psycho groupies, kay?”

  “I’ll try,” he offered up with a grin, just before I popped the needle through his flesh and started stitching. He hadn’t even noticed when I numbed him with the lidocaine. It only took three stitches.

  “We’ll try this out for now, but I really think you should see a doctor.” Lonny shook his head. “Okay, well, if you notice redness, excessive pain or swelling, a foul odor, or puss, come see me immediately.” I went over care instructions for him too and moved to stand. A wave of dizziness threatened to plant me on my ass until Lonny stabilized me.

  “You okay, Mel?”

  “Yeah, just crotched down there like that too long is all.” I waved him off. “Go ahead and get back to your bus. Take some ice with you and keep it on your wound. 15 minutes on, 15 off, and don’t let those sutures get wet.”

  “I got it, Mel. Do you want me to go tell Gabe?”

  “No, thank you though. If he drew the wrong conclusions, that’s all on him.”

  “But it really did probably look like…” he stammered and stopped there as I started laughing.

  “I know what it looked like, and that couldn’t be helped. Go on, get out of here, and don’t worry about Gabe. He’s my problem, not yours. Promise.”

  I cleaned up the mess I’d just made of the kit, after throwing out the bloody gloves and used supplies. Then, I added the supplies I’d used to the list of things to replace in the kit. When that was done, I knew I couldn’t stall anymore and to be honest, I expected Gabe to be waiting in the hallway for an explanation from me. Hell, maybe he’d already roused the truth from Lonny on his way out. Either way, I was exhausted after a day’s worth of mentally battling my own demons and deciding that I needed to at least hear Gabe out on what he had been saying to his son. I knew I couldn’t keep holding everyone else I ran into accountable for my ex’s behavior. Besides, it was better to clear the air between Gabe and me if he really did feel that way about Kendra. I wouldn’t play second fiddle to another woman just because she was mostly off limits to him.

  As I turned the corner and locked the door up behind me, I heard voices just off to the right of the room, heading toward the end of the hall. It was darker now than it had been when I first got here. “I came back,” Lonny said beside me. “I didn’t realize the lights went out down here too. They blew a breaker or something. It was then I noticed that only the emergency lights in the hallway were on. The lights in the room behind us must have been on a different one.

  “Thanks, Lonny, but you really need to be off your feet.”

  “I know, it’s just that,” he was wringing his hands nervously and staring off into the dark corner where I could just barely make out the heavy breathing. I moved a step closer. Lonny’s hand on my arm stilled the unconscious movement I’d been making. “Don’t,” he whispered.

  That was when dread filled the pit of my stomach and there would be no stopping me from seeing what was down there. As it turned out though, I didn’t need to move because the lights flicked back on and there he was. Gabe. With some woman’s legs wrapped around his waist as he had her held up against the wall, a hand disappearing under her skirt, and their lips locked together. My gasp must have been loud enough for them to hear because he turned back and offered up a devious grin, but just for a couple of seconds until he noticed something. Lonny was shaking his head beside me and looking down at the floor now. Gabe’s eyes raked narrowed and then raked over the two of us. That was when he dropped the girl and turned to us.

  “What the hell happened?” He roared. It was only then that I glanced down and realized that my brand new, cream-colored, off-the-shoulder shirt had been ruined with Lonny’s blood all over and that my shoulder had some of his blood on it as well, from where he had grabbed me to steady earlier. Gabe’s eyes swung from my shirt to Lonny’s hands, then down further to his still blood-saturated pants.

  “That bitch you were just finger-banging against the wall tried to bite my dick off and Mel here had to fix me up,” Lonny seethed at him. Gabe’s eyes flew wide, then moved to meet my own. The horror that bled out across his features pulled at my heart, but only for a moment. Instead of giving him the opportunity to say anything, I just shrugged my shoulders, turned around, and started to walk away.

  “Mel!” There was a desperate quality to his voice, but I didn’t let it get to me. I shook my head and continued on walking.

  “Don’t worry about her. Why don’t you come finish what we were starting. You didn’t even get past the fact that I wasn’t wearing any panties,” the girl taunted. While that meant he probably hadn’t been finger-banging her as Lonny suggested, he still got close enough to know the girl hadn’t been wearing anything under that skirt of hers, and that was just too much.

  “What were you thinking?” I heard Lonny ask him. “You think a classy lady like Mel would ever lower herself to get on her knees for the likes of me?” His humorless laugh was the last thing I heard before I turned another corner and found my way out to Dusty Rose’s tour bus. If the rumors I’d heard today, when I returned from my shopping excursion, were any indicator, I might not have the girls’ bus to hang out on much longer. Not that I’d be pressed about sharing with the male crew. Ev managed it, and I’d come to know most of the guys pretty well now too. That helped.

  “I hear you learned your lesson in going after rock stars today,” Sky informed me the moment I started digging through my bag to find clean clothes to change into. I stood, holding the clothes far afield of the blood-stained ones I was still wearing.

  “I’m really not in the mood for your attitude tonight, Sky,” I explained in no uncertain terms to her.

  “What happened?”

  “A groupie happened,” I told her. “I was left to clean up the mess she left behind,” understanding seemed to dawn on her as she
took in my appearance and put it together with what she had obviously been told.

  “He thought you were cheating,” she told me. “If he had known…” For the first time since I knew her, Sky’s eyes clouded over in what could only be sympathy. It wasn’t something I wanted from her though.

  “Well, that’s what people get for assuming things, I guess.” The minute the words were out of my mouth, they left a sour taste behind because I had done the same thing. Only, when I had heard what I did, my response had been to go be alone for a while. Gabe had chosen a different route altogether. It was one that I didn’t think I could forgive, for two reasons. One, he assumed I was sucking some guy’s dick backstage, when I felt like he should have known better. Two, his immediate response was to get even.

  That wasn’t a healthy way to cope, in my opinion. Especially not after listening to all the advice that Gabe had given his son about Opal while he was convalescing at home. I remember him warning Chevy about the fact that the press would take tricky photo shots of people and make it look like one thing when it wasn’t. If you jumped to conclusions, before talking it out, that it could be detrimental to the relationship. Yet, he didn’t follow his own advice. Granted, it was a little more damning to think you walked in on something and saw with your own two eyes. But I’m the medical professional on staff, and it didn’t even cross his mind that I was helping someone.

  “Whoever it was you helped tonight,” Sky started as she pointed to the blood on my shirt, shoulder, and in my hair, “are they okay?”

  I nodded my head. “So far, so good. If you don’t mind, I really need to get washed up.”

  “Yeah, sure. I’ll make sure no one disturbs you for a bit, okay?”

  “Thanks,” I offered up, too tired for anything more as I all but crawled my way to the little closet of a shower the bus had to offer. It made me wish I’d gone directly to my hotel room instead, but my clothes were all still here anyway.

  15 - Dizzy

  My head was spinning. This could not be happening. I’d been angry earlier in the day when no one knew where Mel had gone. Once Chevy called and told me she answered his call, and informed him that she was out getting some new clothes, I settled down a bit, knowing that I’d still have some explaining to do. My son had been right. Her hearing that, despite how cool she played things with him on the phone, had to have been tearing her up inside. Hell, it was just the night before when she told me about how she thinks her sister and ex-husband had always been in love with one another. I can’t imagine how she was taking the fact that she heard me tell Chevy his mom was my only love.

  I hadn’t meant that she would continue to be, but it certainly hadn’t come out that way. Then, I walked in on her and Lonny in a back room and thought my heart was going to burst right out of my fucking chest. She was there, on her knees, as he held onto her head, or was it her shoulder? It all looked the same from what I saw. She appeared to have been servicing him. The only thing I could process was that she was doing this to hurt me. It’s something so many of the women in my life over the years had tried in order to trigger jealousy with me. They thought if I got jealous enough, I’d fight to keep them.

  I nearly laughed at the thought. I’d never keep a woman that I thought would have problems remaining faithful. That was one of the things that intrigued me so much about Mel. She didn’t seem the type to ever play games and do something like that, because she had taken the brunt of someone else doing it to her before.

  “Judging by the bullshit flickering across the ugly mug of yours, I’m guessing you’re reliving exactly where you went wrong tonight?” Lonny asked.

  “Don’t you have someone else to go trick into thinking you’re in a band?” The woman I had just used to get back at Mel and Lonny asked him. “Oh wait!” She laughed. “You can’t do that because your dick doesn’t work right now.” She pulled on my arm, “Come on Daddy, let’s go.” That, out of everything else that went wrong tonight was the final straw.

  “What the fuck did you just call me?” I growled the words out. “I’m not your fucking daddy,” I yelled. It was only then that I took in exactly how young she was. Granted, she wasn’t close to being mistaken for underaged, but she probably hadn’t hit thirty yet either.

  “Don’t let the dickless wonder here ruin our night,” she cooed.

  “You need to go home,” I told her as I tipped my head up to Phoenix. He came strolling down the corridor, anger written in every line of his face and the narrowed set of his eyes. At first, I thought it was directed toward the woman beside me.

  “Apparently, she bit Lonny today, might want to see she’s escorted out.”

  “Was that before or after you had a go at her?” Phoenix snapped. He seemed to remember his place here quickly though. “Sorry,” he mumbled and then grabbed hold of the woman’s arm and started gently, but firmly, tugging her away from me.

  “He shouldn’t have apologized to you,” Lonny told me. “Mel’s a good woman. She didn’t deserve what you thought of her today, or how you reacted to just how wrong you were.” He didn’t wait for my answer, and just turned to leave. I watched as he waddled away, obviously too sore to even walk well. He probably should have been laid up in bed with ice somewhere, but he had come back to make Sure Mel had an escort to keep her safe when the lights went out in the hallway.

  “Fucked up big, tonight, huh?” John asked. I wasn’t even sure where he’d come from since I was so lost in thought about what could have happened to Mel if no one had come to see her out to the bus or back to the hotel.

  “John, I haven’t fucked up this big since I got on that plane to LA 19 years ago.”

  “Seems to me, you didn’t fuck up then either. Your mistake was not owning what you did and fighting for everything you wanted. You can fix this,” he told me as he clapped me on the back.

  “How the hell am I supposed to fix this? You don’t understand, she’ll hate me for that,” I pointed to the corner where I had just been making out with some groupie. Hell, I’d kissed the bitch and it turned out she had bitten Lonny’s dick with that mouth. “Fuck, I need some mouthwash,” I told my best friend as I turned to run for a bathroom, knowing damn well I might not make it before I got sick.

  16 – Contractual Obligations

  The one thing I didn’t want to have to do was become that woman that the tour manager, Deacon, had to find a replacement for. I remembered, very clearly, the day that I overheard him speaking to Gabe about Kaylee and needing to replace her with a man so that he wouldn’t have to do that again.

  “What can I help you with, Melanie?” He asked as I stood there, outside of the room I’d watched him walk into earlier. Deacon would be leaving again after this stop and not joining us again until we hit the west coast from what Ev had told me. It was now or never.

  “Honestly, I’m not entirely sure.”

  Deacon blew out a breath and motioned me inside. “Shut the door, please.” He tacked on the ‘please’ to be polite, but his words were an unmistakable order. Once the door was secured and my back to it, the man slid his imposing figure onto a beat-up leather couch. “I’m going to make this simple for the both of us. You’re going to ask what it would take to get out of your contract.” I didn’t respond so he continued. “I’m going to tell you that there’s nothing short of death or severe injury that could make that happen. I made a concession to bring you on, Melanie. We don’t normally have nurses of Nurse Practitioners join us for a full tour. There are emergency responders that get hired on per each venue, for the night, but they never travel with us.”

  That wasn’t news to me, Gabe had told me as much, but he said they were changing things up a bit this time because there were far too many times that they wished they had someone on hand at odd times. I kept quiet about that though and waited.

  “The thing is, you’ve proved that Gabe was right. The tour has gone off far smoother with you here than if you were gone. You’ve helped a bandmate’s son, kept people in better ove
rall shape by sharing Chevy’s physical therapy routine as an exercise plan for everyone who wanted, you’ve confirmed a pregnancy and helped get that person prepared for what’s to come, and just last night you put several stitches in a one of the road crew’s unmentionable places after he got himself bitten. Do you know what the headlines would have looked like this morning if we’d had to take him to the hospital? It’s bad enough that security threw the woman out last night before I could deal with her. I think that’s a problem that will come back to bite the tour in the ass. No pun intended there. So, no, I won’t release you from your contract. You’ve proven yourself invaluable.”

  I nodded my head. “What I will do is have Ev send you a copy of the schedule for certain members of Valhalla Rising. If you know where a certain person is, it will be easier to avoid them, then we can all carry on as one big, happy, touring family. Besides, you need me to sign off at the end of this thing so that I can recommend you to another employer.”

  He sat looking at me while I contemplated every word. “Thank you,” I told him. “The schedule will be plenty helpful.”

  “Good. I didn’t think you looked like the type who would quit just because things weren’t going your way.”

  “I’m not. I simply do not want to make anyone else here uncomfortable.”

  “Mel, I’m going to be honest with you, everyone here is rooting for you. Most people who heard a little about what down last night, have already given Gabe shit for disrespecting you that way. And, if we’re being honest, I think the only person who would be uncomfortable in any way is you, for having to face him after he was a colossal idiot.” His grin told me he was trying to lighten the mood while speaking the truth.