Q, you know you’re the best thing I’ve got in my life, right?
I was always here, Rafe… okay not always, because you’re older than me, so there were a couple of years when I didn’t exist. And if you want to be technical, you didn’t meet me until you were—
Babe, just come here so I can kiss you. Doesn’t matter when you came into my life. Now is all that matters.
—Bathroom Conversation After a Show
TENNESSEE WAS a blurry memory after another two weeks and four more shows. They’d eaten at nearly every dive diner along the way, and everyone except Miki sported some kind of scruff on their faces, a morning shave being a luxury as they dragged themselves from gig to gig. Showers were mostly cold, and the beds were hard. Coffee ran from weak to bitter, all of it soured and ripe with acid, but every gas station packed enough cold drinks and Cheetos to keep them fueled until the next motel.
There was always a next motel. A next gig. With no end in sight.
And Rafe loved every fucking minute of it.
“It’s going to be on our right. After we cross East Austin Street.” Miki was slung over the passenger captain’s chair, one leg up over the arm and his back against the window. “It’s next to a store or something. Sells candy and sundries. What the hell are sundries?”
“I have no fucking idea.” While Damien and Forest slept noisily in the van’s backseats, Rafe took a good look at the stretch of the bleached-out road and black-barked trees around them. Every few feet, a line of straggly bushes fought for its miserable existence alongside the highway. He counted yet another house of worship, reaching a full twenty since they’d turned off onto North Llano. “There’s a shit ton of churches. Have you noticed that?”
“Yeah, kind of feels like we’re running a gauntlet or something.” Miki scratched at his knee, poking out of a rip in his jeans. “We get to the end, and we’ll have to fight a boss or something. Too early for Jesus. Maybe one of the saints? You’re Catholic. Is there a Saint Frederick?”
“If there is, I wasn’t paying attention.” Rafe smirked, remembering the long days in Religious Studies he’d spent trying to work out the bass lines on sheet music he’d shoved between his books. “I remember the big ones, like Michael and Gabriel. But after that… oh wait, Saint Cecilia is the patron saint for musicians, but no Frederick.”
“I know Christopher. Kane gave me a medal with him on it. For traveling, he said.” Miki stared out of the window, his gaze drifting across the road. He held up his arm, his wrist cluttered with black and silver bracelets. A familiar oval dangled from one, its jump ring thick and closed tight. “To keep me safe.
Rafe slowed down when a cement truck pulled out into the lane next to them, and Miki grabbed at the dashboard, his body rigid with tension, but his expression remained placid. Or as placid as Miki St. John got.
It was hard to read Miki’s expressions. Most of the time, Rafe didn’t have to. St. John’s emotions were always on the tip of his tongue, and he shared them, laced with profanity or wisdom, depending on his mood. He was always Damien’s lanky, pretty-faced shadow, a long-legged, chestnut-maned quiet man who poured his heart and soul out into dark words and turned into liquid sex once his boots hit the stage.
It was odd knowing the actual man. They were certainly older now, considering he’d first met Miki when they’d both been teens, but Miki’s world-weary eyes never changed. He’d seen it all, rolled in the shadows and came up with its stink long before Rafe ever picked up a bass, but Damien’s Sinjun had never been afraid before.
Not like he was right then when a cement truck eased in beside them.
Fear rolled off of Miki in waves so strong Rafe could taste it in the air. A moment later, it was gone, dissipating quickly amid the snores coming from the two sleeping behind them. All that was left to show of Miki’s tenseness was the white across his knuckles and the softening divots in his chair’s leather armrest.
“You doing okay there, Sin?” Rafe had nothing to lose in tossing a drop of water on the hot oil of Miki’s personality. They’d worked into each other’s dips and dives, finding common ground in music and Quinn, but trespassing into Miki’s personal hells was always risky, especially when the singer didn’t feel like talking.
Today was apparently a talking day.
“Yeah, it’s just… I really fucking hate being in a car sometimes,” he said softly. “Kane thinks it’s a lack-of-control thing. Says I don’t like not having control over my environment so I get all… wonky.”
“I think he’s got you confused with Damie.” Rafe risked a quick glance behind him, assuring himself that their band’s leader was still passed out. “Love him, but your boy D either has to have a stranglehold on things, or he lets them run wild like Dude right after he’s had a bath.”
“I can see that.”
Miki went silent again, and Rafe wondered if he’d lost the man to the music constantly rolling through his head.
A few minutes later, he murmured, “I hate being on the road. I like the stage and the music, but getting there? Fucking hate it. It’s worth it…. I know it’s worth it, but I still fucking hate getting there.”
“Right now I’m right there with you, man.”
A flatbed zoomed by them, burdened with a dark green tractor, but this time Miki remained a boneless sprawl.
“But you’ve got to admit, it’s been a hell of a lot of fun.”
“It’s always fun.” Miki looked up, his hazel eyes hooded and shadowed. “Until it’s not.”
“WOW, I didn’t think you could find any place shittier than the last one but….” Rafe took a good look at the broken-down theater he’d pulled up in front of. “Just… fucking wow.”
“Anyone ever tell you you’re kind of a dick, Andrade?” Damien slanted a disgusted look his way, but Rafe ignored it. The guy wasn’t telling him anything new, and truth be told, there was no denying they’d pulled up in front of an aging crap hole.
“It’s not so bad.” Forest shoved his hands into his jeans and rocked back on his heels. “There’s no graffiti on the walls, and there’s a lot of parking.”
“It’s like I’m traveling with one glass half-full and the other one half-empty,” Damien replied, then exchanged glances with Miki. “Don’t give me that look. Your glass is cracked.”
“Love you too, fuckhead,” Miki replied. “How about if we go pound on the door, dump our stuff on the stage, and go find our hotel? Because if it doesn’t have AC, I’m sleeping in the van.”
The Box was a wooden building, old enough to have grandchildren who voted and drove motorcycles down the wrong way of a one-way street. Sitting on the corner of Fredericksburg’s two thoroughfares, the building wore a thick patina of dust and grime like an aging showgirl wore her false eyelashes to go shopping for support hose. Once a cornerstone of Southern rock and hard blues, the Box slumped into its foundation, waiting for yet another band to come hammer away on its bones.
Still, there was something magical about the place, even standing in the white-hot sun and the sweltering heat. Miki’d stripped down to a tank top and jeans, his black leather boots nearly as old as the theater, while Forest and Damien seemed unaffected by the clotted air, thick with dust and humidity.
A knock on the front door yielded no results, but a walk around to the back did. Damien found Jasper, the Box’s owner, leaning against the wall near a propped-open fire door. A time-worn, sun-weathered man in jeans and an old Iron Maiden shirt, his beard was yellow from nicotine, and he spat a line of tobacco juice out when they came around the corner, but he grinned broadly when they introduced themselves, shuttling them inside to get out of the oppressive heat.
“Okay, screw the van,” Miki said once they got inside and the Box’s chilly interior gripped them tight. “I’m sleeping backstage. Naked floor’s gotta be better than a motel mattress.”
“You haven’t even seen the place,” Damien protested. “And you’re not sleeping backstage for three nights.”
“If you’re staying down at the Traveling Gypsy Inn, then you’re in a good place. Beds are soft, and Doris puts down a good breakfast spread.” Jasper trailed after them as they walked out onto the stage from the back. “’Course, she’s been my girlfriend for the past twenty years, so maybe I’ve just gotten used to her cooking.”
“Could be. I’ve gotten used to Sionn’s.” Forest turned, then nudged Rafe in the ribs with his elbow. “Man, look at that space, Andrade.”
The struggle to get from the small stage to arenas had been a glorious rise of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Rafe’d climbed those stairs and danced on the highest peak of his personal rock-star mountain, simply to leap off armed only with the wax wings of his ego. While he didn’t remember much of the last few steps he’d climbed, he clearly remembered his flaming descent, and his soul still bore the bruises and scars he earned on the way down.
If there was one good thing about Damien’s low-rent, guys-in-a-van tour, it was Rafe remembering why he’d picked a bass up to begin with.
In the beginning, there hadn’t been fame. Even less fortune. He’d cut his fingers apart learning chords while his friends tried out for sports teams. When the others began dating, Rafe’d been begging bands for a chance, covering for sick musicians, and playing everything just for the experience. He was decent on the guitar, okay on the drums, but when he settled a bass around his neck, he’d known he’d found his first love.
After Quinn, his heart whispered, there was no other love before Quinn.
He’d hitched himself to Jack Collins, and they’d played every sleazy bar and club willing to let them hit the stage. The stages grew bigger. So did the audiences. And, Rafe admitted freely, so did his ego, but nothing had ever dimmed the tingling, magical feeling of a stage beneath his feet.
The Box’s stage was no different. Like all of the venues they’d played at since they left San Francisco, there was a silent magic there, an anticipation, as if the building was merely holding its breath, waiting to exhale at the sound of the first buzzing thrum of a pickup or the rattle of a cymbal. Rafe could feel the history of the place in its walls, murmuring old stories of blues men and long-haired Southern boys bending a guitar to their will. Ripe with the scent of stale alcohol and lemon wax, the Box’s stage sang back as Rafe walked over it, his footsteps rolling mellow thumps across the vast empty space.
“Tell me you can’t feel the music in this place’s bones, Andrade.” Damien came up behind him, his voice dropped to a low whisper. “Fucking legends played here.”
“We’re playing here,” Rafe replied, giving Damie a wicked grin. “And we’re going to bring this place to its knees.”
“Not without our shit.” Miki snorted. “Fore, want to help me get the van unloaded while these two jack off together?”
“Yeah, I got the spare set of keys.” Forest headed across the canted floor toward the entrance. “Jasper says we can use the front door. Just have to prop it open ’cause it’ll lock behind us.”
A rectangular block of light cut into the interior’s shadows when Forest opened the front door, burning out Rafe’s eyes with its intensity. Blinking away the echoes of lines and blotches dancing across his vision, he looked away, hoping to regain some sight before schlepping their gear in.
“You know, next time you want to do this backwater tour shit, bring a roadie along with us, Mitchell.” Rafe wiped at the tears forming on his lashes. “This bonding shit could still work with a few minions, you know.”
“See, it’s all about teamwork, Andrade,” Damien said, following Miki down the short flight of stairs to the left of the stage. “Roadies would just get in the way of that. And besides, it’s about time you put in an honest day’s work.”
“Says the fucker who slept his way across Texas,” he shot back. Rafe was about ready to jump off the stage when Forest’s silhouette cut into the light coming from the open door.
“Hey, guys?” Their drummer’s voice sounded strained. “Um… someone took the van.”
“LOOKS LIKE they popped the driver’s side door lock and got in that way. We’ve got a witness who was drawing cash out at the ATM across the street. Said the alarm went off for a few seconds but then stopped. She assumed the guy climbing in was the driver and just forgot to disable it.” A thick mustache dominated the cop’s face, a bristle of salt-and-pepper under his long nose. Tapping the van’s hood with his pen, he nodded curtly at the band. “Good thing you had that lockdown switch activated, or they’d have stripped this thing down to the bone before you hung up with dispatch. We’ve already got as many prints as we can off of it. We’ll want you boys to get printed so we can exclude you, but we’re pretty much done with it. You can have it back.”
A call to the car service hooked up to the van, and it’d come to a shuddering stop about a mile away from the Box. The cops beat them to the spot, scrambling to catch the thieves, but they were gone before the first police car pulled up to find the van’s rear doors left wide open and its storage space nearly empty. They’d taken turns pacing the sidewalk, waiting while the cops went over the van. In the meantime the day cooled off quickly, and a curtain of dark clouds threatened the clear sky, lingering at the edge of the town.
Rafe’s heart started pounding when he saw the van’s ravaged storage racks. Forest’s drum kits were still locked down in place, but the guitars were gone, their bindings cut loose and dangling from their struts. A few amps remained, bolted in with heavy straps, but the guitars—the empty slots for their cases dug holes into Rafe’s belly.
“Oh fuck no.” A sour bite of bile burned Rafe’s throat, and his soul twisted in his core, a spiraling black thread of fear. He approached the back slowly, unable to believe what he was seeing. “My bass… Donal gave me… oh fucking hell no.”
Forest clasped his shoulder, squeezing tightly. “Shit, we can get it back—”
“Hey!” Miki called out from inside the main cabin. “Fuckers didn’t take it. Or Damie’s Phenix. I put those behind the backseat and locked them down. They’re still here.”
“Jesus fucking Christ.” Rafe exhaled hard.
The rest of his equipment he could part with, but he’d cut off his left nut rather than lose the bass Donal bought him when he’d first decided to throw his life out onto the road and play. Rafe’s lungs unclenched when Miki extracted the bass’s flat rectangular case from behind the far backseat.
“God, Sinjun, I am never going to mock your fucked-up squirreling away of shit ever again,” Damien said, taking the case from Miki as he unbent from leaning over the seat back. “God love your fucking paranoia, Sin. God just fucking love it.”
“Remember Johnny always saying hide your stash and prime shit? And since I left my really good guitars at home, I stashed yours.” Miki shrugged, curling over the seat for another case. “Back here can hold two cases. So I shoved them there.”
“Boy’s not wrong. Those looked like they were just part of the wall. I’ll tear my crime guy a new asshole for missing them. Let me call someone back to grab prints. Just to cover asses all around.” The cop’s chest rumbled with laughter. “We’ll get back to you with what we find. Got your numbers. They can’t have gone far. Not many places to hide out here, and you boys will be here for a few days, right?”
“Yeah, but we’ve got a gig here in a couple of days,” Damien replied.
They all caught the cop’s rueful expression.
“And yeah, we know you can’t promise anything, but we can’t play a gig with only one guitar and bass. Don’t suppose this place has a music store?”
“If we did, that’d be the first place I’d look for someone to dump your gear.” The cop’s mustache twitched. “Austin’s an hour and a half out. You boys probably want to head there. Might want to have a locksmith look at those doors first. Know a guy who’ll come out and swap them out pretty cheap and fast.”
“Hey, so long as he wasn’t the one who popped them to begin with, I’m good with anyone.” Damien grinned. “Especially since it looks like we’re heading to Austin.”
IT WAS cold, a bone-biting, spine-cracking cold, sharp enough to slice a man’s skin open with its dry razor’s edge, but Rafe felt nothing other than the music pouring out of the band and slamming into the loading bay’s cinder-block walls. The back of the guitar store faced an empty field, long grasses dancing in a furious breeze, their seed-heavy tops slashing at a chain-link fence separating the building’s back parking lot from the grassy sprawl. Once the manager’d pulled the rolling steel door open, the stuffiness eased out of the boxy cement bay. The large space was never meant to be used for anything other than intakes for a now defunct warehouse store, and the staff at the store had turned it into a lounge of sorts, setting up amps and spare equipment to play during breaks and after work.
Which made it the perfect spot for Crossroads Gin to whip themselves into a frenzy and play their hearts out for no one but themselves.
There were other people, shadows really, lurking at the edges of the dank space, but Rafe didn’t see them, didn’t hear them. He and Damie’d worked through four or five instruments each, pulling guitars off the walls and stringing them up with Ernie Balls. Miki’d fallen in love with a semihollow Gibson Memphis, and Forest merely walked behind them, laughing softly at their crooning and random strumming.
When the store manager offered them the space to test out their finds, it seemed like the perfect excuse to fuck around and let off steam.
Little did Rafe know, it would be the exact thing he needed to fall in love all over again.
The mic setup was a good one, enough for each of them to have one, and despite its humble beginnings as an intake room, the store’s lounge had fantastic acoustics, a clean, pure sound with only the slightest bit of bounce back. With the amps set up and everyone wired to go, they’d hit their first chord and took off running.
“Bled onto my hand, shoved his fist into mine. Stood tall against anyone who’d break through our line.” Miki slithered over his lyrics, punching in a bluesy rasp through the melodic stack of Damie’s wailing six-string. “No matter what they do, no matter what they say, Death’s already tried to part us, and we’ve already made him pay.”
A half skip later, and Rafe took a breath, adding his voice to the chorus. “So lift a glass to the Sinners. Lift a glass of cheap-ass gin. Put your lips on the Gates of Heaven, ’cause we’re taking you to sin.”
His skin hummed with the power of their connection, the rightness of how Miki fit into the weave between his bass and Damien’s guitar. Beneath them, Forest laid out a heavy beat, forcing them to keep time and not to wander, driving the band forward. In the pop and crackle of beat-ass amps and torn nails on new strings, Rafe felt the others on him… in him… and a snarling refrain from Miki’s hot, sensual growls led them on.
Miki and Damien played around each other, throwing themselves into the sheer sound of the music. It lifted Rafe’s blood, stretching his spine and grabbing at his balls when Damien leaned against him, playing through a riff slick enough to tear off anyone’s pants.
The music was raw, a searing mouth-fuck of a sound as coarse and bawdy as any overpainted whore with a heart of gold. Outside of the bay door there were more shadows, lengthening, then spilling over one another until the day dropped off of the horizon. At some point Rafe’s fingers began to hurt, and Miki pulled off the mic and changed gears, throwing them into a slow song to wind them down.
“The prophets and the wicked both wear black. How do I tell one from the other?” Miki rasped into the mic, his fingers slick and nimble on the Memphis while Damien reached for the upper licks of the song. “When both want to kiss me, and ask for my soul.”
When the song was over, they all took a breath and stilled the music, letting it seep back into the cinder blocks and wisp away into their blood. Rafe laid his palm over his bass’s pickups, taking one last slide of his skin over the coiled strings before he flipped off the power.
There weren’t any words for what they had. Nothing could explain the orgasmic roller-coaster rush of a tight play and a synced-in band. He’d almost had that with Jack Collins, but they’d never reached the stratosphere of emotions he’d run through with Crossroads. It filled Rafe with a peace, one he normally felt only with Quinn, a stilling of the frenzy in his soul and quieting the world’s chaos until he could hear the sky turning slowly above him.
“Fuck,” Forest whispered behind them.
And Miki broke out in a full-bellied laugh.
“Shit, we’ve still got to break stuff down and get it into the van.” Damien glanced at his watch. “And it’s almost ten.”
“Better yet, we’ve got to pay for this shit.” Miki sounded hoarse, reaching for one of the bottled waters lined up on an amp. “I’ve got to get some lemon drops or something.”
“I don’t think I can walk.” Forest steadied himself with a hand against the wall as he extracted himself from behind the store’s drum kit. “I’m for getting a few rooms here and heading back in the morning.”
“Sounds good,” Rafe choked out. He’d have to steal some of Miki’s lemon drops. His throat was a little raw, and his hands hurt like fucking hell, but the burbling simmer in his belly was calm. Dead tired and worn out, he slung the bass off, then tried to shake the feeling back into his fingers.
The bubble popped, and the space quickly filled with people. The bass he’d been playing was being wiped down and packed up before Rafe could blink, and someone was helping Forest take a few tentative steps out of the hole he’d been in, his legs wobbly from hitting the pedals for hours on end. It was suddenly loud, everyone talking at once and on top of each other. One of the guys chattered on about recording the session and offering it up for Damien to take with him. There was the standard scurry and weave of Miki avoiding someone’s hands on his newly acquired guitar, and then Damien stepped in to herd the crowd.
“Kind of weird seeing you with these guys.”
A voice pricked through the chaotic jumble, and Rafe turned to find a skinny-faced blond man coiling up the cord Rafe’d unplugged from his bass. Rafe stared back at the guy, who shrugged at Rafe’s blank look.
“You probably don’t remember me, but we hooked up the last time you came through Austin… when you were with your own band.”
“Sorry.” Rafe gave him a small, tight smile. Of course he didn’t remember the guy. He’d been too lit to remember his own name back then. It was no wonder Jack left him at the curb like the trash and every miracle Miki, Damien, and Forest picked him up out of the garbage pile. “It was kind of a crazy time back then. Shit’s gotten to my brain.”
“Yeah, I didn’t think you remembered, but we had a really good fucking time.” The blond looked around, then dug something out of his pants’ pocket. Turning so his back was to the rest of the room, he opened his hand, flashing Rafe a glimpse of embossed green pills. “Got some clovers. What’cha say we split, and I show you what a really good fucking time you had when you were here?”