“Is that where you got that scar?” he asked.
Her big eyes, so soft before, were two cold points boring into him now.
“Sarah,” he said gently. “Nobody in this band will hurt you. There are a lot of things wrong with us, but that isn’t one of them. You’re safe here.”
“I feel safe here,” she said.
“Good.”
After a pause, he felt her tugging on his upper arm. “Well, I said I’d help you,” she murmured, “and I will, like I would help a sumo wrestler.”
“Sorry. I’ll help you help me.” He stood, braced himself against the piano with a smashing of the lowest octave, and held out his hand for the door to the control room. He reached the handle and pulled. The door didn’t budge.
“Fuck,” he exclaimed. “I love Owen. I love him like a brother. I do not want to murder him.”
“Problem?” Sarah asked.
“It’s a mantra I repeat to myself in the hope it will come true someday,” he said. “Owen broke my door. We’re locked in.”
“Oh.” Sarah stepped forward and pulled the handle herself. He didn’t blame her for not believing him, after he’d tried to seduce her repeatedly. “Isn’t there an intercom to the control room?” she asked.
“Yes.” He hit the button. “MAAAAAAARTIIIIIIIN,” he hollered, but he knew it was futile. “The speaker’s turned off out there, though. And Martin’s gone to bed”—or was shooting up—“in a guest room on the ground floor on the other side of the house, so I doubt he’d hear us even if the speaker was on.” Quentin turned to her with an apologetic grimace. “What a shitty welcome to Birmingham.”
“Oh, hush, it’s fine,” she said with such grace that he almost believed her. He wondered again whether she was Southern, and tried in vain to remember what had given him this impression in the first place. She was moving around the room, gathering the pads that draped over the stands and drum set and piano while the band was away on tour. She made a pallet in the corner and held out both hands to him. “Here.”
He stumbled immediately, but Sarah had him, and somehow maneuvered him until he was lying in softness and squeezing his eyes shut against the bright light overhead. He heard her whisper, “Hold on.” He felt rather than saw the lights go out. A cymbal crashed as she tripped in the darkness. Then she was stretching out beside him. He inhaled the sweet smell of her hair and spread his hands across her skin.
3
Sarah started awake.
At least, she thought she did. Her eyes felt wide open, but the room was black. Her nightmares hadn’t been dreams after all. Nine Lives had locked her up where she’d never be found—
And then she remembered where she was as Quentin sighed behind her. His hand, which had settled inside the waistband of her pants and electrified her as she dozed off, now moved lower. His fingertips stopped at the edge of her mound.
She took a deep breath through her nose, careful not to move enough to wake him, and exhaled, relaxing into his arms. The heat from his bare chest burned her skin where her shirt parted in the back. She’d told him a few hours ago that she felt safe with him, and she did. He’d assured her he wouldn’t hurt her, and she believed him.
But that didn’t mean her heart was safe. His song for her—a song rendered sad not by their missed hookup, but his depression about Erin, she was sure—was regardless the sweetest thing a man had ever said to her. Which didn’t say much for her seven years of marriage to Harold, she realized. The tingling in her lips from his expert kisses earlier in the night hadn’t faded, either. As she listened to his deep, even breathing behind her, she half wished, perhaps three-fourths wished, that everything were different, and that they had made love.
He was good-looking. He was funny. He was vibrant, emanating a life force that had penetrated her and made her feel more alive, too, as she sat next to him getting drunk. Or maybe that was the alcohol. No, she’d never felt the life force while drinking vodka with Nine Lives.
She would have enjoyed hanging out with a good-looking, funny, vibrant man in any case. But it was Quentin’s gentle control that reached inside her and pushed her buttons. He’d tried to hide it from her, but she’d understood the group dynamic by the end of the night. Owen, Erin, and Martin looked to Quentin before making a move. He didn’t return their looks, but everything pointed to him as the group’s leader.
Which must have made the betrayal hurt that much more when Erin cheated on him with Owen.
He was accustomed to controlling them. And he controlled himself. Sarah thought back to the near fight, when he turned over the table. He’d clearly gotten drunker than he was used to—he’d told her later it was “his turn.” He’d been in a rage, understandably jealous as Erin and Owen flaunted their new love in front of him. And he still had the wherewithal and the courtesy to say to her, “Move, please,” before he threw the table into the pool.
Move, please. Maybe he was worried about more than her physical safety. Maybe he could tell how far gone she already was. In his direction.
Or toward the Alabama coastal town where she’d grown up. He reminded her of the high school boys who wore cheap cologne and long bangs and ironed jeans with their shirts tucked in when they dressed up special for dates. Not that Quentin had long bangs. His haircut was such an unstudied mess of brown waves that it couldn’t technically be considered a haircut.
It was more the Southern drawl that was familiar, and the insolence with which he eyed her. She’d seen that look many times, but it had never been directed at her, and she’d wanted it. She’d wanted one of those cheap cologne dates and had never had one. She’d smelled the boys when they played basketball with her, smelled their hot sweat. Then, on Saturday night, she would go to the movies with her friends. The boys would be there with their dates, wearing their cologne, eyeing those other, luckier girls lustfully. The scent would stab through her.
No, she told herself. Sex with Quentin would be a disaster. She was trying to stabilize him, not wreck the band. The Erin situation was precarious. And Sarah was beginning to believe the band’s problems ran even deeper than she’d been told. The only reason she could think of that Martin would hold on to a long-sleeved shirt from hot night to strip poker to pool was that he needed to hide his track marks. Tomorrow morning she would have a talk with Quentin about Martin’s drug use. And Erin. And every lie he’d told her.