A Rocker's Melody (Dust and Bones) (25 page)

“I’ll make some calls to a few friends who are still around those parts,” Grace offered. “But please, Mel, let me know as soon as you find him.”

“I promise,” Melody said, though deep in her heart, a terrible, nagging fear was growing—a fear that she might not be able to find him in time.

She dialed Jesper’s number as soon as she hung up with Grace. In an attempt to make herself sound normal, she sniffled and wiped her face with a napkin she’d found in her purse. However, it was all for naught—the phone rang a few times before transferring her to his voice mail. She left a brief, horribly garbled message that ended up sounding something like, “Help Dylan gone fucking Oklahoma kill his dad.”

Next, she called Tank. His phone didn’t even go to voice mail. She got an automated message that told her the mailbox of the cellular customer she was trying to reach was full. Frustrated tears filled her eyes as she scrolled through her phone and glared at the only number she had left to try.

Rip answered on the third ring.

“Well, if it isn’t Yoko,” he drawled.

“We’ve got an emergency,” Melody said, steeling herself for the ensuing conversation.

“What happened?” he asked, now sounding tense.

“Dylan…something happened with his father. I don’t know what.”

“Why don’t you know?” Rip asked.

Again, guilt gnawed at Melody. She had fled from an awkward situation, and Dylan had paid the price for it.

“I was at the store,” she muttered. “His dad didn’t have any food in the house. I don’t know what they said to each other, but when I got back, Dylan was…
not
Dylan.”

“What the hell does that even mean?” Rip asked.

He didn’t care about me anymore.
It was such a pathetic thing to say that Melody couldn’t bring herself to do it. She held the words and the feelings inside, fending off the fresh wave of tears that threatened to overwhelm her.

“All he wanted to do was drink and screw—” she started, but Rip cut her off.

“Only a woman would think that was strange.”

“It wasn’t just that,” she snapped. “He was insensible. Lost. He kept muttering about how he was a disease and how he ruined everything he touched.”

“It’s just the liquor talking,” Rip said, but his voice was beginning to sound worried again.

“He threw himself out of our rental car on the highway as we were heading for the airport,” Melody continued. “I tried to find him, but…he’s just gone. And I don’t know
where
he’s gone. I’m so terrified he might…that he might…”

She couldn’t bring herself to say the words out loud. It was a childish belief that saying them would give them power.

Rip let out an impressive string of curse words. “I was afraid this would happen. You ended up pushing him too far, and now look what happened,” he accused.

“I didn’t,” Melody started to protest, but again, Rip interrupted her.

“Go make things right with your dad,” he mimicked in a falsetto. “Quit your drinking, which is the only coping mechanism you’ve ever had for your bullshit,” he mocked.

“That’s enough,” Melody seethed, the tears in her eyes now burned with anger. “Everything I’ve done for Dylan has been with his best interests in mind. He wasn’t okay before, Rip. He was drowning, and if you couldn’t see that, it’s only because you didn’t
want
to see it.”

“Don’t you dare tell me I don’t know him,” Rip shot back. “I know him a hell of a lot better than you ever will.”

“That’s why I’m calling you!” she screamed, unable to contain herself anymore. “He’s lost and alone, and I can’t help him, but maybe you can. I don’t care which one of us knows him better. I don’t care who’s right and who’s wrong. I just care about him being safe. I love him so much that I’m having this pointless fucking conversation with you.”

Rip was silent for a minute. “I don’t know where he’d go in Oklahoma,” he confessed quietly. “Jesper might.”

“I already called Jesper,” she said heavily.

“Yeah, he’s been Skyping with his girl,” Rip said. “I’ll talk to him. Just…stay calm all right? We’ll find Dylan and he’ll be okay, and we’ll all give him shit for pulling that stupid stunt. In the meantime, if you can think of somewhere else to look, do it. And if you
do
find him, try not to piss him off again.”

“Fine,” Melody said stiffly, because she was about to start crying again and her tear ducts were exhausted. “Call me when you know something. Please.” The ‘please’ almost killed her, but being left in the dark because Rip was an asshole would have been much worse.

Rip hung up without another word. Melody stared down at the phone for a minute. Then her gaze moved to the glove compartment. It had fallen open in the chaos of the car spinning out of control. The map they’d been given at the airport was laying face-up on the passenger seat. There, glaring at her, was the big black circle around the shithole town where everything had gone so drastically wrong. Within the circle was another dot, indicating his childhood home.

It looked like Melody was going to get tangled up with Blue all over again.

The bag of groceries was still hanging on the doorknob. The air was crisp, dry, and unforgiving. The cold and the impending confrontation caused Melody’s bones to shiver with every step she took as she approached the house.

She rapped her knuckles against the front door. No answer. She tried again, harder this time. Still nothing.

“I know you’re in there,” she muttered, and began pounding on the door with her fist.

“Just a goddamn minute,” said a disgruntled voice from inside the small house. There was a pause, and the sound of shuffling footsteps. Then the door was thrown open wide, revealing Blue. He had obviously been drinking.
I guess that’s where Dylan got his coping mechanism from.

“What the hell did you say to him?”

Okay, that hadn’t been how Melody had intended to open the conversation, but her fear and outrage had conspired to do away with her brain-to-mouth filter. She was not prone to violence, but she found that she wanted to hurt Blue in that moment—hurt him as much as he’d hurt his son.

“You again,” Blue muttered, turning away from the door without closing it or inviting her inside. Melody grabbed the bag of groceries from the knob—it was cold enough that nothing had spoiled—and stalked in after Dylan’s father. She followed him into the kitchen and tossed the bag onto the dirty table...then she froze. She saw what it had landed next to, and her anger began to seep away.

Pictures of young Dylan and Grace were scattered across the surface of the table. An empty bottle of tequila sat beside one dog-eared shot of Dylan holding a small ukulele in front of a Christmas tree. His two front teeth were missing, but a mischievous twinkle was already shining in his blue eyes, the twinkle that millions of screaming fans had grown to love. It was a single moment of happiness, frozen forever in a photograph. And Blue had kept it—it, and many others.

Melody stared up at the man standing before her, a man who she realized was more complicated than she’d initially thought. It had been unfair of her to think otherwise; people weren’t archetypes. They didn’t fit into neat, easily categorized boxes. They were more like songs—no villains, no heroes, just a whirlwind of emotion.

“What did you say to him?” Melody asked again, her voice strained from the stress of the past couple of hours.

“Nothing he hasn’t said to himself a thousand times before, I’m sure,” Blue mumbled. “Course, I doubt he needed to hear it from me, too.” He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. What I said didn’t make a difference. He was looking for a reason to run, sweetheart. It’s just what we do.”

Melody barely restrained herself from screaming at him. “Do you know where he might go?” was what she asked aloud.

“I haven’t known a goddamn thing about that boy since that picture was taken,” Blue said, gesturing at the picture of Dylan and the ukulele. So, that had been the last Christmas he’d spent with his father, and he’d gotten a musical instrument. Blue couldn’t have programmed him better if he had tried.

So much of Dylan was still that little boy, clutching a ukulele, yearning for someone who loved him enough to stay with him. Part of her had seen that the moment they had met in person. Part of her had sensed how damaged he was. That was why she’d guarded her heart and her body as long as she had. She’d pushed him away until she hadn’t had the strength to push anymore.

She stared at Blue now, so similar to his son in so many ways, both physical and otherwise...yet to Melody, they couldn’t be more different. Unlike Blue, Dylan wanted help. He had reached out to her, opened up to her. When he’d told her he had wanted something real, she had believed him completely. She wouldn’t have been able to take the chance with him if she hadn’t trusted him one-hundred-percent. Melody didn’t believe Dylan had run from her for purely selfish reasons, the way Blue had run from his family. She knew there was a reason behind it; he was out there, and he needed her help now more than ever.

Please let him be okay. Please, God, I don’t know how I’ll survive if he isn’t.

“Why did you leave, then?” she asked Blue. With Dylan missing, and possibly hurt, there was no time for tact.

“What goddamn business is that of yours?” Blue snapped.

“He’s my business,” she said, pointing to the picture of Dylan. “I can see you miss them, yet you’re just sitting here feeling sorry for yourself, single-handedly keeping the county’s tequila industry afloat, instead of trying to help him.”

“Get the hell out of my house,” he yelled.

“What did you say to your son?” she yelled back.

“I don’t know.” He slammed his hand down on the table. “I don’t know, all right? I…” He actually looked ashamed. “I asked him for money. He gave it to me.” He motioned towards the table where the check was. Melody reached for it. Dylan’s signature was shaky. She felt sick, and she pushed it away, unable to bring herself to look at it any longer.

“I can’t believe I did this to him,” she murmured, guilt gripping her heart. Why had she been so sure that some kind of happy ending awaited him here? She had pushed him to reconnect with his father so that he could find some closure, but she’d just ended up pushing him down the rabbit hole—hard.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Melody didn’t answer Blue’s question, because she felt her phone vibrating in her pocket. She fumbled around, trying to extricate it, and saw that Jesper’s number was on the screen. She picked up at once.

“Is he okay?” she asked, her eyes once again brimming with tears.

“He’s fine,” Jesper said. “Boarded a flight to L.A. ten minutes ago, the one just before the flight you guys were scheduled for. Can you make it to the airport in an hour?”

“Just barely,” Melody confirmed. Blue said something else to her, but she was done talking to him. That man had destroyed Dylan’s psyche not once, but twice—first when he’d been a little boy, then again just a few hours ago. He was toxic.

“He’s going to be okay, Mel,” Jesper reassured her, though he didn’t sound confident himself.

“He has to be,” she agreed.

**

She made the flight. They held the doors for her. Jesper had dropped the Dust and Bones name in order to get her a little preferential treatment. She called Grace right before takeoff to update her on the situation, but an overly-polite stewardess arrived to tell her to turn off all her portable electronics. Though she had been loath to do so, Melody knew that arguing would only delay their departure, and she needed to get to L.A. as quickly as she could.

That plane ride was the longest of her life. Without access to her phone, she had no idea if the guys had managed to track Dylan down, or if his exact whereabouts were still unknown. She imagined him sleeping things off at Tank’s loft; she imagined him drinking himself sick at the bar where they had first met; she even imagined him fucking some nameless, faceless girl, her heart withering every time she thought of it.

Even if he were doing that, at least he’d be alive.

This level of worry wasn’t rational; Dylan was a grown man who could take care of himself, irresponsible and immature though he might sometimes be. But still...there was something about this time, about
this
hit, that felt like it had been one blow too many for him. Melody kept remembering the way he’d flung the car door open, the total disregard he’d had for his own safety. If he was still in that dangerous mindset, he might get himself into the kind of trouble she couldn’t save him from.

Melody turned her phone on as soon as the plane touched down. Jesper had sent her a text fifteen minutes prior. Her heart sank as she read it:
No update.

The next text, which was from her father, caused her heart to plummet:
You okay? Call soon, we need to talk. It would be nice to know you aren’t dead in a ditch somewhere.

Her father still didn’t know about the situation with Dylan, but she couldn’t avoid him forever. Melody took a deep breath for strength and mentally composed a letter:

Dear God,

Enough already.

No love,

Melody

She practically ran off the plane and through the terminal. She skidded to a halt when she reached the baggage claim area and saw a chauffeur holding up a sign that read, in big, bold letters, “Ms. Hopkins.” Obviously Jesper had arranged a car service for her while she’d been in the air.

She ran over to the driver, who escorted her outside to where a black sedan was waiting. She settled down into the backseat and took a moment to try to compose herself; then she decided that her top priority at the moment should be handling her father. Feeling apprehension writhing in her gut, she dialed his number.

As usual, Hop picked up on the second ring. “You’re not dead, I see,” he said dryly.

“Sorry, Dad,” she said. “It’s been a crazy few days.”

“Am I going to have to hurt someone?” he wondered.

“Of course not,” she lied. “Dylan and I just took a little break after the last gig. It’s been rough.”

Hop’s voice softened. “I know, Mel. I’m proud of you kids. Not everyone would have been able to keep the commitment.”