Blessed Fate (28 page)

My mouth went dry, making it hard to form words, still trying to come to terms with the fact I had to make this call. "We have a big, big problem, buddy." No point skirting around the subject.

I heard Jon tell someone he needed privacy before a door slammed shut. "What's going on, man? Is she tweaking or something?"

"No. That, I would be able to take care of. This, I can't," I sighed. My head lolled back on the headrest as I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Rain's getting arrested right about now."

"What. The. Fuck." Jon shouted. I heard glass shattering in the background as he lost control of his temper. Once this was all sorted out, Rain owed me big for dealing with this shit. "You better start talking, and you better do it fast."

I scrubbed my face in my hands, looking over to see Jared trying to pay attention to his driving while listening to what I was saying at the same time. "Someone tossed her apartment while we were on the road."

"You already told me that," Jon interrupted. "But how the fuck does that lead to her getting arrested?"

My mind wandered back to the first months we had known Rain. It hadn't taken long to see that, even though she'd had a problem at one point, she was one of the strongest women I knew. There were times she thought about using again, but she had always come to Travis or me to help her through it, and when she had slipped, she quickly realized her mistake. The cocaine sitting on her bed wasn't a quick slip. What happened to that girl? How did she fall back into the trap?

I blamed myself for being the straw that broke the camel's back. She was dealing with her mom being gone. She was getting used to the fact that her family didn't hate her the way she thought they did for so long. The pressure of life on the road and our songs climbing the charts was heavy, but she was even dealing with that. The first signs that it was all too much didn't come until after I had doubted her.

"Hey, asshole, you still there?" Jon yelled into the phone, pulling me out of my haze.

"Yeah, sorry." I took a deep breath, trying to think of any way to explain what I saw for something other than what it was. "So, the cops came, and they were taking her report, going through the house, and they found some shit in her bedroom."

"What
kind
of shit are we talking here?" Jon growled.

"Three bags of coke in the bedroom closet. She says it's not hers, but the cops hear that shit every day," I said, trying to convince myself that she was telling the truth. Even though my mind jumped to her using again, I couldn't wholly believe that. I would have seen something if she was using, right?

"What. The. Fuck." Jon shouted again. "I'll have to call Cal. You believe her?" There was no right answer here. Telling him I had doubts would condemn her in Jon's eyes. Telling him I believed her would be a lie, and Jon had always known when I had lied in the past.

"I don't know," I admitted, my shoulders slumping forward in the seat. "I really, really fucking wanna believe her..."

"But?"

"But she hasn't been herself lately, and after her mom died, she made a comment a couple times about feeling weak and being tempted. And being out there on the road, you know as well as I do that that shit's all over the place." The more I talked to Jon, the more likely it seemed plausible that she had fallen off the wagon.

"If she's jacked up, she goes to rehab, Colt. No two ways about it." Jon's anger seemed to be subsiding, and he was in business mode again. Sometimes I really fucking hated the way we all put our personal lives to the side for the good of the fucking band. Yes, I understood that it was necessary, but that didn't make it right. "No rehab, she's out. I'm not dealing with that shit when we go back out."

"Tell her. She's probably done with me after I left her up there." I debated telling Jared to turn around, but what was the point? She was probably on her way to booking, and there was nothing I could do until the cops finished up. "Look, you call Cal; I'm going to call Mark. She needs family helping her through this."

The next morning, I woke up early, so I could head over to Rain's apartment to clean up a bit. Cal was fairly certain she would get out on a signature bond, and if not, he had authorization to access funds to get her out. When that happened, the last thing she needed was to come home to a huge mess.

"You want some help?" Jared asked as I poured a cup of coffee. By looking at him, I figured he got about as much sleep as I did, only an hour or two when exhaustion finally took over.

"Yeah, if you wanna, but you don't have to," I said, reaching for a cup for him. We sat at the breakfast bar, both of us looking out over the Portland skyline trying to figure out what in the hell happened in the past twenty-four hours.

Before noon, Rain walked through the door of her apartment. She looked tired as hell and in need of a long, hot shower, but she was still beautiful. Looking at her then, I wondered how to approach her. "Hey. I take it today went okay?" I didn't move from the stack of papers I was trying to sort on the living room floor. Every paper had been thrown out of all of her desk drawers.

"Not really, but better than it could have, so I guess I'll take it." She kept eying me skeptically, as if she was trying to figure out whose side I was on. That seemed to be the question of the hour since I was wrestling my head against my heart over and over.

I tried several times to talk to her, the words never coming to me. How do you tell the woman you love that you're worried she's using heavy drugs when the only proof you have is seeing cocaine in her bedroom? It seemed to be both incredibly circumstantial and yet very powerful evidence.

"If you have something to say, just fucking say it." She slammed a stack of papers onto the coffee table and glared at me.

"Babe, I love you and you know that, but this is serious. They're talking about giving you prison time this time around because of how much you had in there." I felt sick to my stomach as soon as I said the words out loud. Seeing the pain on her face before she buried her head in her hands felt like I was being stabbed repeatedly.

"Jesus, Colt! I didn't have
anything
in there. What will it take for you to believe me? You want me to go pee in a cup? How about if I chop off my hair, and they can test the entire strand to see if there's anything anywhere in my recent past?" Her breath was shallow and fast as she paced around the room. I wanted to calm her down, make her see I was concerned for her, not accusing her, before she went into a full-blown panic attack. "You were there. You've been with me the entire time, except when I was at my dad's house. When did you see anything that would make you think I'm using?"

"Baby, I really do want to believe you. But I know you've had one hell of a rough patch, and I know this is what happened to you the last time..." I had been over both sides of this argument most of the night. Even if it turned out that the coke wasn't hers, there was no denying she was dangerously close to the edge of an emotional cliff. Maybe going back to treatment would be a good way to make sure that, if she was still clean, she stayed clean.

"You have no clue what happened to me before. Why would I turn to that shit when things in my life are turning around for the better? Do you see how little sense that makes?" Could
she
really think her life was turning around for the better? It seemed liked she was completely ignoring all the crap that had come tumbling down around her since May? "You know what. Fuck you! Nothing I can say is going to make you change your mind about me. It's easier to believe that I'm using again instead of looking at the facts."

She stormed into the kitchen, throwing the fridge door open with such force that it bounced back off the counter, hitting Rain in the legs. Not finding what she was looking for, Rain slammed the door shut and came back to the living room with fire blazing in her eyes. "You were the one who told me that bitch was looking for a way to get me out of the way. Don't you think it's just a little bit interesting that after she's fired, I come home and my house has been ransacked, and there are three baggies of coke hiding in plain view?"

"Yeah, I get that, but I really don't see her going to that much trouble or spending that much money just to get back at you for whatever fucked up reason." Even with everything I knew about Tanya, I didn't want to believe she would stoop to this level. It
was
a ton of money for someone without a job to spend, especially when they weren't using. I needed to be next to her, wrap my arms around her and calm her down but she wouldn't let me. She gripped my wrist, removing it from her body as if I had a contagious disease.

"I think you need to go." She wouldn't look at me. I knew I wasn't going to get anywhere with her while she was in this mood, but I hoped she would think about what I said. I called for Jared and then walked away from Rain for the second time in twenty-four hours. It didn't hurt any less this time around.

I tried calling Rain later that night, repeatedly the next day and every day after that but never got through. If not for the fact that my calls didn't go directly to voice mail but were most definitely ignored, I would have been even more concerned about her. As it was, the only reason I didn't lose my mind or allow myself to be completely convinced she was using again was because her brother, Mark, kept in touch with me almost daily.

He called about a week after her arrest to tell me that he and his partner were taking Rain home with them for a much-needed vacation. The tabloids had been using their over-active imaginations, and she was about ready to snap.

"Have you thought about talking to her?" I asked Mark, still thinking rehab would be a good place for her. If nothing else, she would have mandatory therapy, something everyone in her life agreed she needed since she refused to talk about anything that bothered her, and she would be in a place where they restricted her access to the media.

"I tried a couple times, but it caused huge fights." Mark let out a long, low sigh. "She says she's clean so there's no reason to go."

"And what do you think?" I prodded. If I could get him on my side, maybe we could get her some help for whatever was going on.

"I don't think she's on drugs, if that's what you're asking," Mark said cautiously. It was obvious he was trying to maintain a balance between open communication and allegiance to his sister. I couldn't blame him, knowing how screwed up their family was.

"But do you think it'd help her?" I asked tentatively. There was a time in my life when I felt confident about what I thought and felt. That had started slipping away from me the day Rain walked through the door and seemed to be nothing more than a distant memory now.

Mark sighed again. I was starting to understand the non-verbal cues he gave and knew he didn't want to answer the question. Most likely, because he knew it wasn't the answer his sister would agree with. "Yeah, I do. But I worry that if we push her to that, she's going to pull away from me and Dale, and right now she feels like we're all she has."

I understood that feeling all too well. After all, I had pushed her and was now relying on information from her brother to know what was going on. "Okay, well you guys do what you have to do," I sighed. "And Mark... take care of her for me."

It was a request I didn't need to make, but I made it anyway. I needed to know that he knew I still cared.

Later that week, Jon tried calling Rain when we took a quick break from recording. Everything we did would be half-finished until she came back and that wasn't sitting well with him. He wanted her to grow up, get help and get healthy. I'm not sure who was more shocked when she answered, him or me.

Their conversation was short. From what I gathered, she told him she was doing as well as could be expected. It was a civil call at first, him telling her about some of the new tracks and her telling him about life in a town even smaller than where she grew up. When he brought up her talking to someone, even if it was outpatient therapy, Rain could be heard screeching through the phone from across the room. And that was the end of their call.