I sucked in a breath. When I began to speak I forced myself to sound casual. "You know, I always wonder how you do it."
"Do what?"
"You're a cocky son of a bitch," I said with a teasing laugh, "But you're also thoughtful, romantic. That's what I like about you, how you can mix it up like that. I never want you to change because I like the whole package."
"That's good."
I paused a moment. "When I was going through my stuff over Connor, it was really hard to accept the good and the bad stuff about myself. I thought it was all bad, unfortunately, and I was having a hard time because of it. I tried to get over it on my own, but I couldn't. I needed help."
He didn't respond, but shifted under my hands. I could feel his muscles tense up a bit.
I chose my next words carefully as I kept my fingers working, dropping down to his lower back. "That's why I went to therapy. I was confused and I needed to hear a new perspective." I swallowed. "It helped me so much. I think it might help you too."
While I was talking my hand had paused to rest on his waist. Jax placed his hand over mine, pressing it to his body. He gave it a tight squeeze. The touch wasn't a yes, or a no, but I knew at least he'd been listening.
I released the breath I'd been holding and squeezed him back.
Jax leaned forward and stubbed out the remains of the joint on the deck floor. Then he sighed, and leaned back, stretching out on the lounge chair next to me. He closed his eyes.
I curled up next to him, and he rolled over onto his side, facing away from me. I put my hand on his thigh and drew him into the curve of my hips, enjoying the smooth warmth we created together.
He sighed again as I cradled his body against mine. I could feel his shallow breathing, but his body was relaxed, and after a few moments he had fallen into an exhausted sleep.
I pressed my cheek into his shoulder, grateful he was getting a momentary respite from his pain. But I knew we had a long road ahead of us. His demons had crept into the Fortress of Solitude during the night, attacking Jax at his most vulnerable. Even though they were gone for now, I knew they'd come back.
Staring up at the sky, I resigned myself to gaze at the unfamiliar stars that dotted the darkness above. Sleep for me would be a long time coming.
Chapter Ten
STORM
When I woke up, stiff and sore from being camped out on the deck chair, Jax was gone.
Confused, I rubbed my eyes and blinked. In the morning daylight, I could see a glimpse of ocean surf through the palm trees that lined Reed's driveway. So this is Malibu.
But I didn't really care about scenery at the moment. What I wanted was to find Jax, and see how he was doing after last night's ordeal. At least I knew he'd gotten a little sleep, up on the deck with me, and that must have helped.
Yawning, I got up and stretched before heading down to the Fortress of Solitude, expecting that Jax had woken up earlier than me as usual and had gone back to the room. But when I opened the door, I found he wasn't there either.
"Jax?" I called out, looking out the window for any sign of him as I started down the stairs. As I got to the bottom, I heard murmured voices. Chewie, Sky, and Kev sat on the black leather couches, talking in hushed, low tones.
Sky's eyes were red and puffy as she said something I couldn't hear. "It's not so bad, sis," Chewie said, his voice more soothing than I'd ever heard it before. "He'll be better in a few hours. You know that. He always is."
I knew with a sinking feeling that they were talking about Jax. Sky's voice trembled, but this time it was loud enough for me to hear from my perch on the stairs. "But what if he's not? He seems so much worse this time . . ."
From the lowest stair, I decided to make my presence known. "What's going on?" I asked, trying to sound more nonchalant than I felt.
The band looked up at me, and I suddenly wondered if I'd said something wrong. Chewie muttered something under his breath, but the only word I could make out was "guitar."
Kev snorted. "Jax thinks none of the guitars sound right."
That's weird. Jax had been a bit of a musical perfectionist, but I'd never heard him complain about his instruments before. "What, like they're tuned wrong or something?"
"Hell if I know," Kev said, a tinge of annoyance creeping into his voice. "They sounded fine to me. But according to him, everything he plays sounds like shit."
My brow furrowed. That doesn't sound like Jax at all. "Where is he now?" I asked.
"Still playing, I think," Sky sniffled. "We just couldn't deal with it any more. I tried to talk to him about it, but . . ."
"But you know how big Jax is on talking," Chewie concluded.
"He's just being a drama queen," Kev said, sounding sure of himself. "He needs to pull himself together. What happened to him on stage could have happened to anyone."
"But it didn't happen to anyone," Sky said, sounding dismayed. "It happened to Jax. And we need to be here for him! But I don't know how, when he's acting like . . . like . . . " She looked like she was about to burst into tears.
I frowned with concern. Nothing the band was saying made any sense—I needed to figure out what was really going on. "I'm going in there," I said, making up my mind as the words came out.
"I wouldn't if I were you," said Kev.
Chewie nodded. "Yeah, leave it to work it out on his own. Why do girls always gotta make guys talk about everything?"
Sky shot him a glare through red eyes. "I think it's a good idea," she said to me. "Just be careful, okay?"
I nodded and opened the bus door, stepping out into a cool morning breeze. Reed's house was a sprawling glass-and-steel mansion in a super-modern style cantilevered from the cliffside—as spectacular, and as gaudy, as the man himself. Last night, I'd been wanting to see the inside, but now I took slow steps, each more nervous than the last. Was the band right? Was talking to Jax just a waste of time? I'd spent last night talking to him, but it hadn't seemed to help at all.
As I approached the door, a flurry of notes came through. I recognized the tune: it was the first guitar solo from "Glass Brick," one of the biggest crowd-pleasers at Hitchcocks shows. I stood just outside the doorway, closing my eyes and taking in the music with a deep breath of salt air.
If this was really about the instruments sounding bad, he'd clearly found a way to fix the problem. The song was one of my favorites from the band's set list, and Jax's guitar sounded better than I'd ever heard it in concert. I couldn't keep visions of Jax out of my head—the way he looked during a solo, the concentration, the sweat, a sexuality and urgency in his playing that no one else could match. The music built to the climactic solo crescendo, the riff growing louder, faster, rougher, harder . . .