Strung Out (Needles and Pins #1) (70 page)

“Right this way.” They fit their gloves on as they followed their hostess into the bar kept at a perfect twenty-eight degrees.

Scarla was tagging along to a meeting Gage had scheduled with a musician who was interested in collaborating with him on an upcoming project. He had practically insisted she come after bribing her, saying afterward they would grab fish tacos, which had become one of her favorite L.A. cuisines, and she knew it was because he was worried about her.

The man was already seated at the bar, and he politely stood as they approached. He and Gage bumped fists and then shook hands at the end of the ritual.

“Scarlette Conterra, Beau Jax.” Gage introduced her for the second time by her birth name.

A pleasant surprised expression crossed the other man’s face, and she was sure her expression mirrored the feeling. The musician was well respected in the industry; his successful career was two decades old. She wanted to kick Gage for staying silent in the car—for not giving her the heads up when she was about to stand before a rock god of two decades.

"An honor to meet you."

"The honor is mine, Mr. Jax."

"Just Jax." He shook her hand and held it in his warm grasp a moment, and she braced herself for the norm. Only something strange happened. The inward cringe she normally experienced while waiting for the inevitable reference of her father didn’t happen. She found herself almost welcoming the mention by someone who had clearly known him. Jax’s eyes sank into hers, and he only repeated almost reverently, “A real honor.”

“You too.” She flashed a smile and tried not to reveal how starstruck she was.

“You two are stepsiblings if I’m recalling right?” Jax seemed to be waiting until she was seated before he sat, and she dutifully slid onto a stool. Gage reeled with an almost invisible wince at those words. Possibly she did too because Jax’s eyes narrowed with understanding for the barest moment before he looked away and indicated the shelves of vodka bottles before them. “I’ve never seen some of these in the States. I couldn’t wait for you.” Using his fingers on the rim, he twirled his empty glass.

When after the first round of vodka shots, Gage ordered pomegranate juice—the recommendation by their bartender as a nonalcoholic drink—Jax curiously inquired and Gage admitted he was in detox, which included as little alcohol as possible.

“I’m sorry, man. I didn’t know. We can go somewhere else.”

“It’s fine.” Gage insisted. “Drink up. Not bothering me. In fact, I’ll be back when I come out on the other side. I never knew this place was here.”

They settled in, and shot after shot of exotic vodkas were sampled by Jax and Scarla while Gage and Jax had their heads together deep in artistic discussion. Every once in a while, they would pause and courteously draw her into the conversation with a “How was that Russian?” or a “What did you think of that last one?” But for the most part, for over a half hour, they seemed passionately distracted with the project on the table. So distracted that it was only after the third time she requested a repeat sample of the most recent vintage from their server that Gage paused the discussion to eye her. She only smiled and downed the most recent shot.

He kept a steadying arm around her as they made their way to the exit.

“Can I drop you somewhere?” Jax asked, once they were divested of their thick furs.

“Thanks, but that’s us right behind you,” Gage replied, with a look at the idling Viper and driver. The Escalade they’d arrived in, driven by Gage’s assistant who was acting as chauffeur today, was directly behind it. “Is that your son?”

“Ah, yeah. He’s living here now.”

Scarlette tripped on the sidewalk, and Gage grabbed her tighter. Her head was spinning a bit as the conversation went on around her. The heat after the cool interior of the bar baked her skin and further mushed her mind. Waves seemed to hover above the traffic, and she jerked her gaze from the disorienting sight. She’d had too much to drink.

Did one hallucinate from rare vodka?

In her vision, a lime green cab stopped in the street. Traffic honked as one of the back doors swung open… And her mother alighted. The cab began to flow with the traffic, and her mother headed straight toward her.

“Noo…” She managed the word although her tongue felt numb and jerked from Gage’s grasp with one agenda on her mind. The safety of the Escalade. Unfortunately, the sidewalk buckled, tripping her yet again, and this time Jax caught her and handed her off to Gage.

By the time she was oriented once more, she was face to face with her very angry parent.

“Scarlette Rose! Did you drop your phone in a toilet, or are you ignoring my calls?”

“You came all the way to L.A. to ask me that?” Oblivious to the onlookers around her, Scarla’s stance widened as she challenged her mother. Part of her was curious to see if she would own up as to why she was stateside. Part of her wanted to shove the woman aside, get into the car, and escape this drama.

“We need to talk. Now.”

A long, manicured nail waved in the air an inch from her nose, and this time, Scarla did shoulder her mother aside. Possibly anger sobered her some, because she made it the six steps to the waiting car and ripped open the door. Gage in all of his chivalrous glory was right behind her, helping her into the seat. But when he began to swing the door closed, her mother intercepted.

“I’m serious, Scarlette Rose.”

“Stop calling me that, and get out of my face. We’ve nothing to talk about.” Up until now in this confrontation, Scarla had managed to remain impassive. But the self-righteous fury in her mother’s eyes triggered a dark and ugly venom. It spread, saturating and staining every cell. “I know what you’re doing here! You’re pathetic. You whore whatever you can for money. Even the memory of a man who hated you, and his right to rest in peace!”

Henni Smythe drew herself upright, ramrod straight. “Oh, darling. Did I not explain the birds and the bees good enough? You are not a product of hate, my sweet daughter.”

“When it came to birds and bees, you were more of a ‘show’ than a ‘tell’ type of mother, actually. Remember? I was eight when I walked in from school to you and ‘rocker with the green Mohawk’ doggy style over the freaking coffee table. And then what was I? Fifteen? When the one with the piercings on his cock asked me if I knew why they were there? And sixteen. Was I even sixteen when Anaconda Ronda asked if I wanted to join the two of you? So don’t even pretend to be a soccer mom who had meaningful adolescent talks!”

Her mother’s fingers rising to settle in a chokehold-like clutch to her own throat told Scarla she had taken things too far with her screaming tantrum. The woman appeared fragile as she staggered back a step, and Gage took the opportunity to slam the vehicle door. If he worried about the chalky pallor of Henni’s face, he didn’t show it when he turned his back.

Scarla’s eyes ached, but they remained dry. Through the glass, she watched Gage and Jax, and a younger version of Jax who was now on the sidewalk. They all spoke for a moment, shook hands, and parted. Gage was intercepted by her parent, who seemed to have gained her second wind. She appeared to be arguing fiercely. Instead of reopening the back door to slide in beside her as he normally did, he folded into the passenger seat.

“To the house,” he instructed his assistant-slash-driver, and then turned to her. “You okay?”

Her mother pacing in place had been holding her attention, but as the car pulled away and the figure grew distant, she let her head loll back to the seat. “I feel sick.”

“It’s going to be okay, Scar.”

“No. I really feel sick. Can we stop?” The moment she uttered the words, she knew the burning in the back of her throat and the roll of her stomach wasn’t going to wait.

Her fingers stabbed at the door, searching frantically for the window lever. Even as she did, a vision of hurling in traffic, vomit flying onto the side of the car and onto other cars, had her questioning her intent. The point was moot when the window didn’t slide down.

“Oh God. I’m so sorry.” She’d leaned forward enough so hopefully the contents of her stomach landed mostly on the floor mat. The smell assaulted her senses and she heaved again. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

Was it a bad thing when she hadn’t cried over the confrontation with her mother, but she was crying over the humiliation of puking in Gage’s car in front of him and his employee?

Dusk fell while they were parked on the jammed up freeway, and the skies darkened completely about the time Gage’s assistant parked the vehicle on the driveway. Understanding the outside location was so he and Gage could clean her mess, she stopped short of the open garage. When she lost the argument to take care of it herself, she went into the house, feeling like shit, mentally and physically.

With no purpose, she ambled to Gage’s studio, picked up the Taylor she’d been practicing on lately, automatically ran her practice drill, and then dropped the instrument like a hot potato.

Since when? The guitar. Really?

She exited to the pool area through the little door, since the glass was closed.

The water was a rectangle square of light, casting a blue glow into the night. She kicked off her shoes, and let herself free-fall. The water closed around her, shutting the world out. She sank to the bottom with her eyes closed, reveling in the blissful otherworldly silence. For all of five seconds.

The deepest part of the pool was no more than five feet. She was in no danger of drowning as all she had to do was push to her feet and her head would be above the surface. But Gage apparently didn’t see it that way.

A splash confirmed she wasn’t alone in the pool. Opening her eyes, she found his blurred face before hers, little air bubbles rising around him.

“What the hell? Did you fall in?” He demanded, the moment their heads were both above the surface. When she didn’t answer, he furthered the interrogation. “How drunk are you?”

“Not drunk enough to forget my best friend has gone so mental she doesn’t give a fuck she’s worrying me and her family. Or drunk enough that my crazy mother can’t still make me lose it on a public street!” Rubbing her hair from her face, she peered at him. “And not drunk enough to be ignorant of the fact that you’ve dodged every question I’ve asked and have been very weird since the meeting with your lawyers.”

“I can’t talk about it right now.”

There it was. That shimmery second of desperation she’d glimpsed mere hours after the appointment when she’d plied him for information.

Relaxing her knees into jelly, she once more welcomed the water enveloping her. Oblivion was obtainable, but only in lungs full of oxygen increments. Her legs floated in front of her as her butt cheeks hit the pool bottom.

Then Gage’s hand covered hers. She found him sitting beside her, and he seemed to be staring at her feet. Her gaze drifted past her knees to the licorice and pink pinstriped toenails that matched her fingernails.

“How in the hell did she
find me?” Bored with her underwater reclusiveness and slightly sobered, she began to question the coincidence of her mother happening on her in a city the size of L.A.

They were still neck deep in the water. Both were reluctant to exit the pool because of the canyon breeze gusting over the glass partition, chilling their wet heads and the thought of it chilling their entire bodies.

“That’s kind of my fault.” He explained taking a selfie with Jax and tweeting it in the secret hope his band and label would see it and recognize he had options. He wanted them to know he could and would move on with his music if they cut him.

“So she saw it? Like she’s stalking your account?”

“That’s my guess. Since my dad told you she wanted my phone number and address, and he wouldn’t give it to her. She knows you’re staying with me, right?”

“You weren’t afraid of a fan craze by giving out your location?”

“It was tweeted ten minutes or so before we left the bar. She must have been close by.”

“They’ve put her up at the Crescent hotel.” She remembered the information Gage’s father had given her.

“Of course they did. It’s right down the block. And with the shitty run of luck we both seem to be having, it fucking figures.” He ran a finger down her cheekbone. “You’re freezing.”

“Just my head. The water’s warm.”

“Your teeth are chattering. Stay right here.”

He hopped the side and went into the bathhouse. Right away, he returned with a towel over his shoulders, an extra towel hanging in the crook of his elbow, and held a thick white terry robe.

She climbed out and wrapped snugly into the robe before sinking down onto the outdoor couch. Heat radiated from the electric fire pit Gage had clicked on, and she edged closer to it. “I can’t believe I drank that much. I made such an idiot of myself.”

“It’s not the first time one of my cars has been puked in. I promise.”

“I’m not talking about that. Well I am. But worse than that… the things I said to her… and on a public street… and in front of a man you’re doing business with…”

“Again. I promise you. Jax’s been in the business long enough to see way worse. And as for the public, this is L.A. They’ve seen worse too. But it’s probably time for you find a publicist.”