Never Ending (6 page)

Chapter
9

         
I
t took until morning until we could get Kyle
to speak. He spent the night rocking back and forth, his arms crossed in front
of his knees, mewing softly in quiet, kittenish wails. I had never seen him
like this – not since the first day I saw him in my mother's kitchen, that
scared little boy who had seen so much, suffered so deeply, the likes of which
I never would understand. The handsome, jocular athlete with his male-model
good looks and easy air had vanished, leaving in his place a haunted,
frightened child.

          I knew that
Kyle's father was no ordinary killer. I'd eavesdropped on my mother and father
often enough to know the whole story, the story my parents didn't want a young
girl like me to hear. Kyle's father had tortured and killed his mother – shot
her point-blank in the head right in front of him. Was that what Kyle was
seeing now, I wondered, feeling my heart break for him? Were those images going
through his head over and over? My imaginings were horrible enough; I couldn't
even begin to conceive of what Kyle himself was going through.

          And now Kyle's
dad was out of jail. On parole. I shuddered to think at how he'd managed that.
From what I knew, Kyle's dad could be wildly charming – when he wanted to be.
It's how he'd gotten away with abusing his wife and child for so long. Every
time his mother called the police; every time a stranger in the mall had called
Child Services with a worry about the mysterious bruises on Kyle's face or arms
or legs, it had been Kyle's father who answered the door with a cheery
“Morning, officers” and the offer of a cold beer or two. “Kids,” he'd say to
them - “always getting into scrapes.” And, sometimes, when he was especially
drunk, and especially charming, and he thought the good old boys on the police
force would be sympathetic to his cause. “Women,” he'd say. “You can never tell
them anything without telling them twice.”

         
Hysterical,
unstable, untrustworthy, unreliable, hormonal.
All words, I knew, that
Kyle's dad had used to describe the wife he beat day in and day out. Until the
day he shot her.

          But even that
wasn't enough to keep him behind bars for life. I grimaced as I imagined what
the parole hearing would have been like. “It was an accident, your Honor,
honest! She was coming straight at me – she was hysterical – she couldn't
control herself, your Honor, never could! She got it into her head that I was
cheating on her – a good, old fashioned family man like me! And she came at me
with the gun....”

          How easy it must
have been for him, I thought, my stomach sinking with a sickening thud, to lie
to the whole world, to convince everyone that it had been an accident.

          The only person
who could testify otherwise was Kyle, and who would believe a traumatized
little boy?

          But now Kyle's
father was out – and he knew where his son was. And if I knew anything about
abusers, I knew that they didn't like it when their personal property escaped
from under their control. The postcard was a sign – a coded message. It meant
I
know where you live.
It meant
you'll never be safe – not as long as I'm
around.
It meant
I'm coming for you.

         
It was
dawn before I went over to Kyle and wrapped my arms around him, the way I used
to do when he was a child having nightmares. It was how I used to calm him down
when the attacks started. I'd rock back and forth with him, holding him tight,
until the shaking stopped. Until his nightmares stopped – long after he woke.

          “Nobody's going
to let him find you,” I whispered. “Don't worry, Kyle. We're here to keep you
safe.”

          “But don't you
see?” Kyle had gone white when at last he spoke. “He
will
find me. I'm
not safe, Neve. I'm going out there every day, putting myself out there, in
public. We'll be photographed for magazines, newspapers, press releases, you
name it. I'm out there with a big target on my back.” He shivered, growing
whiter still. “He'll come after me, again; I know it. He'll come after me
again, just like the last time, just like he tried to after he....” He couldn't
get the words out. Instead, they devolved into racking, shaking sobs. My heart
ached for him. I wanted to be able to wash away all the pain, all the hurt.
Knowing that I couldn't do anything was a new kind of torture.

          I looked over at
Danny and caught his eye. I didn't have to say anything. He got up silently
and, tapping Luc on the shoulder, gave him a quick and almost imperceptible
nod. The two of them got up and went into the other room of the suite, leaving
me and Kyle alone. Band matters could wait. This was more important.

          The awkwardness
between me and Kyle didn't matter now. All that mattered was that I knew how to
comfort him. I wrapped my arms around him, holding him so tight I was afraid
I'd break him, trying desperately to make things better the only way I know
how. “There, there,” I whispered to him. I stroked his hair and his back with
my fingertips, my voice a low whisper. “He won't find you. I'm sure of it.
We'll help you. We'll find a way. We'll keep you hidden. You're part of this
band, Kyle, and this band is a family. We're your family now. You and I...we
talked about having a band together before we even knew what a real band was.”

          Kyle's smile was
hollow and pale. “Yeah,” he said. “I remember. My seventh birthday party. Your
family gave me the first real party I'd ever had – nicer than any
day
I'd
ever had. And your mom got me that little kid's bass....”

          Kyle's seventh
birthday party. At least five years before we met Steve, Luc, or Geoff. Kyle
had been my first real friend, my first real confidante, like a brother to me.
Now he was in real trouble, and I knew I couldn't let him down. I had to be
there for him. I had to protect him.

          “No matter what,”
I whispered to him. “You're part of the Never Knights. You'll always be part of
the Never Knights. We're your family. No matter what.”

          He turned to me,
and the love in his eyes was so strong, so palpable, that I felt a twinge of
pain. I saw Kyle as a brother – but his love for me would always be so full of
need, so full of desire, that I could never satisfy it. Not even now.

          He was pressing
closer to me, now, holding me tight. It was uncomfortable; he was holding me
too tightly; my ribs were constricted, but I didn't care. I was there for him
and that was what mattered.

          “You were always
there for me, Neve. I knew it then. I know it now. And I'm sorry, so sorry, I
forgot that for a while...” He pressed closer to me, closer still, his lips
clammy against my temple.

          “You can wear a
hoodie,” I laughed at my own weak attempt at humor. “Cover your face with
sunglasses while you're onstage. Nobody will be able to see your face. Or you
can wear full stage makeup like the members of KISS. You'll be unrecognizable.
You can still perform with us, Kyle.”

          “I don't
know....” Kyle's voice was shaking so badly that I could barely make out his
words. “He was a monster...I can't....” He shuddered. “I was just a kid, Neve,
and he killed her right in front of me. And it was my fault, Neve. I was the
one he was attacking. I was the one he wanted. She tried to stop him, tried to
protect me. But she only got in his way. In the way of his gun...” He was
sobbing, now, his voice wracking with deep and hysterical sobs.

          I pulled his face
into my chest, letting him cry it out as he pressed his face into my breasts.
It was the same routine I'd used many times waking Kyle up from his nightmares.
He still had nightmares, now. But now they were real.

          “You'll have to
go into hiding, then,” a deep voice shook Kyle and me out of our reverie. Steve
stood in the doorway, his hand bandaged in gauze, his face still a bit bruised
and wan. “I came as soon as I heard, Neve. Danny called me.” He swallowed.
Hard. “Neve, as much as you and Kyle – as much as all of us, really, want Kyle
to keep going with the band, you know as well as I do that having him perform
live threatens his safety. He's a target – and we can't have him perform at all
these live concerts and gigs with some crazed killer waiting to find him...”

          Danny and Luc
re-entered the room.

          “Neve,” Danny's
voice was low as he put a hand on my shoulder. It was a quiet gesture, intended
more to get my attention than to express any affection, but it was too much for
Kyle. He angrily pushed Danny's hand away, springing to his feet and running
his fingers through his long blonde hair as he pushed through us, storming off
to the terrace.

          I gave Danny a
look of warning, and he looked down sheepishly. “Sorry,” he said. “I wasn't
thinking.”

          I looked out at
Kyle on the terrace, my heart sinking further. Poor Kyle, I thought. His life
was falling apart. His father was on the loose – the boy he couldn't stand was
taking away the girl he loved – the band itself was falling apart. Everything
was coming down about our ears.

          “Neve,” Steve was
struggling to keep his composure. “No matter what happens with me, no matter
what happens with Kyle, you have to carry on, do you understand? Get a
replacement Get a replacement for me, for Kyle, do whatever you have to do to
keep the legacy of the Never Knights going strong. Temporary replacements. For
me – until I'm better. For Kyle – if his dad's as crazy as they say, it's only
a matter of time before he strikes again, and then he'll be back behind bars.”

          “Replace both of
you?” The words were hollow, full of shock and dismay.

          “It's now or never,
Neve, you know that.” Steve said.

          “He's right,”
Danny looked pained. “It's not just about us, either. Slayton, the venue
managers, everyone who put their trust in us – and risked alienating Roni to do
it – we can't let them down. They've put themselves out on the line for us. Now
it's our turn to deliver.”

          “But the CD?”

          “Kyle can still
play on the CD,” Danny said. “Just not in public, right now. And Steve...we’ll
find a way to make it work.”

          “Kyle can't leave
the band,” I said again. Kyle needed the band. We were the only family he had
now, other than his aunt. He needed us.

          “I'll look after
him,” Steve said, trying to sound brave. “He and I will hang out together and
work on writing new songs which you, Luc, Danny, and our
temporary
replacements
can use to kick the butts of all those Dust Bunnies. And Roni herself. She
thinks she can sabotage us – send some cronies to smash my hand in the door? I
wouldn't be surprised if some RRR money found its way to the judge in the
parole hearing, too, knowing her. She's a powerful woman with some friends in
high places. You can't let them kick us down like that, Neve. The Never Knights
have got to continue on.”

          Continue on – but
how? Losing one member of the Never Knights was bad enough – but two in one
night? My heart sank. How could we ever come back from this?

          “We can't let
these setbacks get us down,” Luc insisted, his voice harsh, as if he was
holding back tears. “We can't let anything get us down. We have to carry on –
the Never Knights must carry on, no matter what. Or else everything we've
worked for, everything we've worked so hard to achieve, will be for nothing.”

          Kyle nodded, his
lips trembling. “I understand,” he said. “I understand.”

          Danny's voice was
low and almost preternaturally calm as he walked over to Kyle, keeping his
distance, as careful as if he were approaching a frightened dog. “Then, it's
settled?” Danny looked almost wary as he turned to me, then Kyle. “Kyle? Neve?”
His eyes were wide and full of pain, full of worry.

         
Poor Danny.
In
the midst of all this he was still an outsider, still an interloper. But he'd
given up so much. He'd dropped his whole life, his whole world, his friends and
family, his doctorate, his dreams, to become part of the Never Knights and to
help us achieve our dreams. He'd changed my world, but that paled in comparison
to how I'd changed his. Everything – he'd give up everything .Just for me.

          I swallowed hard.
Kyle nodded again. “Yes,” he whispered. “That's what we'll do. I'll play on the
CD – I won't let the band down like that. But I can't appear in public. Not
yet.”

          “Let's do this.”
I put an arm around Kyle's shoulder and another arm around Steve's. “But I'll
miss messing with you both. I'll miss your smug self, Steve.”

          He hugged me back
in a great bear hung. “Me, too, Neve.” He pulled back and I saw that his eyes
had misted over with tears. “Me too.”

Chapter
10

         
D
anny spent all that morning on the phone with
Slayton, trying to track down a new bassist to join our new drummer on the
earliest flight possible into LA. “Remember, Ricky,” he said, “we're replacing
some pretty serious talent here. Don't get us just anybody,” he laughed softly.
“Kyle and Luc are both irreplaceable.”

          But replace them
we had to do – whether we wanted to or not. And while we told ourselves that
any replacement would be merely temporary, a stopgap measure until Kyle's dad
ended up back in jail, or until Steve's hand healed, the truth was that it felt
much more serious than that. Danny Blue had started out as a replacement, after
all, and now here he was: the band's front-man. How would we be sure that our
replacements didn't end up permanent, somehow? After all, our biggest and most
high-profile gigs would be played by the new band members – what if our fans
decided they wanted the change to stick? I grimaced at the thought of a Never
Knights comprised mostly of strangers. But what else could we do? Kyle and
Steve were united in the conviction that a complete Never Knights lineup was
more important than anything else, including their pride. We had twenty venues
waiting for us to turn up with new songs, high energy, and tons of inspiration.
And we couldn't let any of them down.

          Still, I felt a
twinge of guilt as I watched Danny pace back and forth across the hotel suite floor,
talking to Slayton, vetting potential candidates. “Too metal,” he'd say about
one. “Too folksy” about another. “Too young. Too old.”

          At last, at
twenty past two in the afternoon, I heard him say: “That's just right.”

          He hung up the
phone and turned to me. “We have him,” he said. “Jim Barnes.”

          “Jim Barnes?” I
racked my brains, trying to remember where I'd heard the name. “The blues
singer?”

          “The same one.”

          “But he's so
old
!”
He was someone my father used to talk about – a “young upstart” back when my
dad was close to retirement.

          “He's not forty
yet,” Danny smiled. “And, on the bright side – the fewer hot guys you have
around you, the less worried I am that you'll lose your heart to a handsome
stranger.” He gave a little laugh. “No, but serious – Jimbo is a brilliant
bassist – and he's got quite a good voice to boot. In case I ever get
laryngitis.”

          “Don't even joke
about that!” I cried. “With all that's been happening with the band lately, I
feel like you'll be next. Maybe Roni will stick some germ-ridden handkerchief
in your glove compartment – some petty sabotage like that.” It was a joke, but
it hardly felt like one. The past few hours had been so exhausting that I felt
like I had no energy to laugh.

          Still, by that
evening, I was waiting at the arrivals board at LAX Airport, watching with
Danny and Luc as Roc Ilford and Jim Barnes made their way off the plane.

          Roc I spotted
first. There was no doubt, from the second he staggered towards me, that this
man was a rocker, through and through. From his leather trousers to his long
ponytail, flecked with strands of grey, to the piercings he wore in both ears,
Roc was every inch the stereotype. Slightly aging – I'd put him, too, at around
forty – he was nevertheless magnetically handsome: his charisma, it seemed, had
only grown with age.

          He stopped right
in front of me, looking me up and down. “ 'ello, love,” he drawled. “You're the
little lady what started the band, yeah?”

          Suddenly I felt
nervous. This man was a rock legend, a post-punk icon of the early 90's. And
here I was, a nineteen-year-old girl with dreams of starting a band, standing
in front of him, telling him that for all intents and purposes I was,
effectively, his boss? I hoped he didn't notice that my cheeks were turning
bright red.

          “Yeah,” I said,
trying to sound braver than I felt. “That's me.”

          “Right...” Roc
chuckled softly. “Not half bad a band you started.” He nodded, and his mouth
spread into a toothy smile. “Not bad at all. I listened to your demos on the
plane. Good fun, yeah? I've got a few ideas, don't get me wrong, but this
sounds like it'll be a fine ride.”

          Relief flooded
over me.

          “I'm glad you
think so,” I said.

          “Let's see if I
can't do us proud, yeah?”

          Before I could
answer, a hand tapped me on the shoulder.

          “Excuse me, miss,
are you Neve Knight?”

          I nodded.

          “I'm so sorry
about your friend. I hope they get that dastardly fellow soon.”

          Jim couldn't have
been more different from Roc. A quiet voice, smooth as honey, and large girth
that gave him the air of a particularly friendly bear, Jim was as shy and sweet
as Roc was loud and aggressive. But during the car ride back to the airport,
Danny and I soon found out that they were both utter gentlemen: devoted to
their art, devoted to their craft, consummate professionals. They were also, we
learned, a hell of a lot of fun. Roc told stories about the Manchester
post-punk scene, about the night he spent with Siouxsie Sioux at a festival
when he was a teenager, gossip about every band I'd ever heard of, and a few I
hadn't. Jim's stories were longer and more structured – at first they almost
seemed dull – quiet stories about his life growing up on a farm in Louisiana.
But he had a wickedly dry sense of humor, and his punch lines frequently sent
us into hysterics.

          By the time we started
rehearsals, we had become fast friends.

          It was tough to
say goodbye to Kyle and Steve – they both hung around rehearsals, both to give
notes and to maintain a nominal presence in the band – but to my relief both
Jim and Roc were respectful of their presence, at once aware that they would
never be as close to me or Luc as Kyle or Steve and simultaneously committed to
doing the best job possible.

          They were that
much older, too, and that helped – while both of them were still single (Roc
had gone through about five divorces; Jim was still unmarried, having had his
heart broken by a country western singer when he was eighteen and never quite
gotten over it), and willing to go out with Steve and Luc to meet girls, flirt,
and generally have a good time – they were nevertheless clearly a generation
removed from the rest of the band members, and so they adopted a slightly
fatherly attitude towards the rest of us.

          “You've got to
learn to hold your liquor,” Roc always told us. “Remember – it's not the
quantity or the quality, but the mixture.
Never
blend your spirits.”

          “It's important
to take time out of your day to take a walk in nature,” was Jim's somewhat more
family-friendly advice. “It renews the creative spirit.”

          But it was Luc
that most impressed me. Luc – used to having a big family and taking care of
several siblings – seemed to adopt his new role of host with gusto. Balancing
the various dynamics of the band – old members and new, Danny's tension with
Kyle, my own romantic tensions – couldn't have been easy, but Luc handled it
like he was born to the role. He started conversations that he knew would
interest both Kyle and Steve and Roc and Jim, went out for drinks with all of
them, facilitated jokes, invited them all to his mother's house for dinner, and
otherwise managed to both make the newcomers feel welcome and the old members
feel included. My heart swelled with pride when I looked at him: every time he
made a comment, invited Steve to contribute to a conversation, suggested an
outing, I was reminded just how kind he was, how warm, how clever. A real
family man, my dad had once called him, giving me a look that indicated he
expected me to be part of that particular family. I couldn't deny that I'd
considered it once. But that was before Danny.

          Danny and I had
relaxed our rules about secrecy a little now that Kyle was spending less time
with the band – but we were still subtle, mindful of Luc, who was far too
polite to say anything but who nevertheless, I knew, felt the sting.

          Kyle, meanwhile,
had found a new source of distraction. After discovering that both Jim and Kyle
were Johnny Cash fans, Luc orchestrated an outing for just the two of them,
telling them he just so happened to have two tickets to a Johnny Cash tribute
concert he couldn't make. And so sweet, quiet Jim took Kyle out for the
evening. I don't know what happened, or what was spoken between them, but when
they returned Kyle seemed happier than before: calmer, more relaxed. In Jim, it
seemed, he found a source of fatherly guidance that his own father had never
been – and for Jim, who had never had any children, Kyle became the son he'd
never had.

          “I could never
replace you,” I overheard Jim reassuring Kyle one day. “But I want you to know
that whenever I play, I try to imagine how
you
would play, and capture
some of that spirit. In this way you inspire me, and the spirit of your music
lives on even when you're not playing.”

          By the end of the
week, we were one big happy family – and none too soon. Our first gig as the
new, if not improved, Never Knights, was fast upon us.

          Luckily, we rose
to the occasion. Roc and Jim's skill and discipline had only improved our
numbers, and when we rocked the house, we did so absolutely. Not even the Dusk
Riders, with whom we shared the stage, could take away from us the wild
applause, the adulation, the screams of our fans. They called out our names –
names of band members old and new – and I even spied Kyle and Steve in the
crowd, Kyle somewhat obscured in a hoodie, Steve's bandage newly signed by all
of us, cheering us on.

          Maybe this
wouldn't be so bad after all, I thought.

          After the show,
Danny caught me by the waist and pulled me into a secluded corner of the green
room. “Hey, you,” he whispered. “It's been a while since I've seen you
properly...”

          “I know,” I said.
“But we've all been so busy.”

          He smiled. “Not
tonight you're not.” He kissed me roughly, deeply. “And I've got a special
surprise for you tonight.”