Relent Read online

  And there’s also the fact that they had been his best friends.

  “I don’t get it,” I finally say, studying his face. “You haven’t talked to Lennon?”

  His face seems to constrict a little, as if his closest friend’s name causes him pain. “I…haven’t really returned his calls.”

  “In more than a year?”

  He looks away, the guilt more pronounced. “It’s been…a rough time.”

  I sigh, running my hands through my hair. Lennon, the band’s bassist, is one of the most truly decent people I’ve ever met. What does it say about Levi’s current state of mind that he can’t bring himself to return Lennon’s calls? “You wanna talk about it?”

  His eyes meet mine, and he finally smiles again, making me feel more at ease. There’s something almost unnatural about Levi looking so unhappy for any amount of time. “I’d rather have another drink.”

  “I can deal with that.”

  I wave at the bartender and order us both fresh shots of straight Jack Daniels, holding the Coke for now.

  “How’s school?” he asks, running his fingers along the edge of the glass. “How’s Paige?”

  I roll my eyes to cover the pang at her name. “Exactly the same. Crazy and fun and maddening all at the same time.”

  “Paige and Reed, huh?” His held tilts to one side and he squints into the distance. “I can’t see it.”

  “It works better than I would have imagined.” I hear a touch of bitterness in my own voice, and from the look he shoots me, I think he heard it too.

  “She happy?”

  “Blissful.”

  “Then I’m happy for her. For them.”

  I’m immediately plagued by familiar guilt, the same feeling I get whenever my thoughts about Paige encroach on jealousy. I am happy for her, of course I am. It just sucks that her life seems to be taking her on such a divergent path from my own. She’s been my best friend forever. When we graduate and she goes off to be a rock star’s full-time girlfriend, what’s going to happen to me?

  “Shit,” Levi mutters, bumping my shoulder with his own. “I think you and I have more in common than I thought, Karen.”

  “What do you mean?”

  When his eyes meet mine, there’s deep understanding there. “I’ve had the outsider thing down pat for a few years. I’m guessing it’s a newer emotion for you.”

  I scowl, but stop short before opening my mouth to argue. Is that what we are, Levi and me? Outsiders? Perpetually beyond the circle of fame and excitement that the Ransome brothers share. Close enough to peer into the spotlight from time to time, but not really a part of it. That would have been enough for me, once. Just to get close. But now that Paige seems to have disappeared into that circle…

  “Oh, screw this,” I mutter, straightening on my stool and turning to face him square on. “I don’t know about you, Levi, but I’m beyond tired of feeling sorry for myself.”

  “Yeah?” The hardness seems to have left his eyes now, his face more like I remember it, clear and open. “What should we do about that?”

  I look out at my friends on the dance floor, now joined by the guys I assume Levi came in with earlier. “We should dance.”

  “We should?”

  I meet his familiar brown eyes, twinkling at me across the bar, and reach for his hand. “We definitely should.”

  Chapter Two

  Levi

  I can’t believe Karen Simpson is actually here. Out of all the people who could have walked into this bar tonight, I don’t know if anyone would have shocked me more. I hadn’t given her much thought since the night I walked off the tour a year and a half ago. She was from the past, part of a life that no longer existed for me. Seeing her sitting at the bar, here, of all places, had brought up all these memories that I didn’t want to think about. The memories I usually managed to keep buried with a steady diet of long hours at work and too much beer. That summer with Daisy and the Ransome boys. A last perfect few months with my friends, everything the way I had always wanted it, before I went and messed it all up by making a move on Daisy.

  I’d been hiding from those memories for a long time. Hiding from any thoughts of the life I was supposed to have. This is what I had now, this place and these friends. What was the point of getting lost in the past?

  But then I saw Karen, and that past came crashing right back in.

  I hadn’t expected to feel so embarrassed. I thought I had made peace with where I was a long time ago. Though I suppose I could admit to some remaining bitterness, I thought I was mostly okay. But something about seeing this place through Karen’s eyes made me realize exactly what I had settled for. And it suddenly didn’t seem like all that much.

  I’d been ready to ditch her, to say my goodbyes and slink back into hiding, like I’d been doing for months. But then I’d asked her about Paige, and it hit me—I wasn’t the only person in this bar feeling left behind. When she asked me to dance, I could hardly say no. Not when she seemed so determined to look on the bright side. What had she said? I’m beyond tired of feeling sorry for myself. Yeah. She wasn’t the only one.

  We’ve been dancing with our friends for about a half hour before I realize that I’m not really thinking about Ransom at all. It’s hard to focus on those memories—happy and sad—when Karen is demonstrating such perfect reactions to her friends antics. To put it simply, she’s cracking me the hell up.

  The girls have apparently been drinking for quite a while. Either that or they’re serious lightweights. Regardless, they’re stumbling around the dance floor, alternating between giggling and shrieking, silliness and intense, eyes-closed swaying sessions. Karen, on the other hand, is alternating between snickering at them and staring at them with an expression of incredulous horror.

  “I don’t know these people,” she mutters to me when Stace and Jess decide to sit in the middle of the floor to take a break.

  “Your friends are really good at dancing.”

  She makes a face at me and reaches down for Jess’s arm, attempting to haul her friend back to her feet. “You can’t sit there,” Karen hisses. “Have you seen how dirty this place is? You’re going to get hepatitis.”

  “Let’s go outside,” Jess says, allowing Karen to pull her into a standing position. “Ooh, we should go sledding!”

  “It’s pitch dark outside,” my friend Curtis, one of the waiters at the lodge, points out. She leans into him, running a finger down his chest.

  “All the better,” she purrs in what I’m assuming she thinks is a sexy voice.

  Not to be outdone, Stace turns to Logan, one of our ski instructors. “What about you?” she asks, her voice sultry—the effect dampened somewhat by a loud hiccup.

  Karen rolls her eyes so hard I’m afraid she’s going to strain something, but Curtis doesn’t seem to be complaining. “I could go sledding,” he says, gaping down at Jess like he can’t believe his good luck, voice distinctly high-pitched.

  “You’ll all fall off the mountain,” Karen says. “And then I’ll have to call your parents.”

  “Oh, come on, Karen,” Jess whines, pulling on her arm. “Please? Please can we go?”

  “You can do whatever you want,” Karen says. “You’re a grown ass woman. But I’m staying in here where it’s warm.”

  “Boo!” Jess cries. “You’re so boring without Paige.”

  Karen stiffens next to me, her eyes narrowing. Jess doesn’t seem to realize that she’s offended her. “Come on,” she continues. “How often do you get to go sledding in the middle of the night?”

  I poke Karen’s arm gently, and she jumps, her narrowed eyes turning to me. “It might be fun,” I tell her. “I could probably score a bottle of something to keep us warm.”

  “Awesome,” she mutters. “Because they totally need more alcohol in their systems.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t planning on sharing. I just meant, you know, if we need to keep an eye on them out there, we might as well have fun doing it.”

 
“Yeah, come on Karen,” Stace pleads. “It will be fun.”

  With a massive sigh, Karen relents. “Oh, fine.”

  “Yay!”

  The girls stumble toward the coatroom for their things, my friends following, and Karen and I take up the rear. “You seem to have a lot of experience with this,” I tell her, nodding ahead at her friends.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Taking care of people. I remember you doing that a lot with Paige.”

  She shrugs. “Paige and I took care of each other.” She bumps my shoulder. “And you’re one to talk. You used to spend every waking minute taking care of those boys.”

  I try to keep from scowling at her accurate assessment. A hell of a lot of good had come from my attempts to take care of my old friends. She looks like she wants to say more, so I quicken my pace to catch up to the others.

  Outside, the night is cold and clear. There’s a thick carpet of snow on the ground, reflecting the moonlight, taking the edge off the darkness. Curtis and Logan lead the girls to a supply shed near the motionless ski lift.

  “We’ll keep a lookout,” Mellie says in a loud stage whisper that sends Jess and Stace into inexplicable peals of laughter.

  A moment later, Curtis and Logan reappear with several sleds. “Shh,” Logan tells the still-giggling girls, looking around. “Do you want to get us fired?”

  “Sorry,” Stace says, her laughter unabated.

  “Let’s get out of here before someone sees us,” Curtis says, smiling when Jess takes his arm.

  We tramp off along a narrow path through the wooded area along the side of the bar, heading away from the lodge and the main ski trails. The girls have finally stopped giggling, though I notice Mellie and Stace are holding hands. I wonder if maybe they’re afraid. It is awfully dark out here. At the far tree line, we emerge into a clearing. “Ooh,” Mellie murmurs. “This is perfect.”

  I can’t argue with her. The clearing tilts off into a small hill that’s the perfect size for sledding—just steep enough to give us some good momentum without risking our necks in the dark. I’ve been up here a few times but never at night. The entire clearing is completely still and silent in the moonlight. An owl hoots loudly from the trees to our left and I jump, making Karen laugh.

  “You gonna be okay?”

  “Shut up,” I mutter, giving her a sheepish grin.

  “Let’s do this,” Curtis says, grinning down at Jess. “You want to go first?”

  “I’m too scared,” she cries, releasing his arm so she can throw her hands over her face. “I didn’t know it would be so dark!”

  “It’s nearly midnight,” Karen mutters. “You didn’t guess it might be dark out?”

  “I’m not scared,” Stace says, straightening her shoulders and shooting a flirty glance at Logan from under her knit cap. “Why be scared when we have such big strong men to protect us?”

  Logan grins, looking somewhat bewildered by her advances, and Karen mimes puking behind her friend’s back.

  “I’ll make sure you don’t fall off,” Logan says, puffing out his chest a little bit. He sets one of the sleds down just before the crest of the hill. “Here, you sit in front.”

  They waste no time getting settled in the sled together, Logan wrapping an arm around Stace. She giggles loudly, the sound suddenly replaced by a shriek as he uses the other arm to push them off. They go sliding down the hill, picking up speed as they descend, Logan letting out a loud whoop while Stace’s shrieks continue unabated. At the bottom, he stretches out a gloved hand into the snow to slow their speed; instead, they tilt crazily to the side, both toppling out into the snow.

  “Shit,” Karen says, peering down the hill at them. “I told them they were going to fall off the mountain.”

  But the pair at the bottom is already standing, their laughter carrying across the snowy hill. “That was awesome!” Stace calls out. “You have to try it!”

  The others waste no time pairing up and climbing into their sleds. I glance at Karen. “You feel like hurtling down a hill in the dark?”

  She smirks, grabbing the bottle of Jack Daniels I have clutched in my hand. “I think I need to warm up a little bit before I tackle hurtling of any kind.”

  There’s a long, fallen log closer to the tree line, and I follow her, helping to brush the snow from the bark so we have a place to sit. Even so, I can feel the remaining snow and ice transfer a layer of cold and wet straight through my jeans.

  “You can sled if you want to,” Karen says, plopping down onto the makeshift seat at my side. “I don’t want you to miss out just because I’m being a party pooper.”

  “I’m not really excited about the thought of getting my jeans soaking wet in negative temperatures. This log is plenty cold enough.”

  She raises the whiskey bottle in a salute in my direction before she takes a gulp. She barely winces as she wipes her mouth, passing the bottle back to me. “The Jack was a good call.”

  We sit in silence for a few minutes, passing the bottle back and forth. The sounds of our friends shrieking and laughing carries over the hill, but the rest of the woods are as quiet as the two of us.

  “I guess I can see why you picked this place,” she finally says, her voice soft as her eyes travel the distance of the clearing. She glances over at me. “For a fresh start, I mean. It’s pretty beautiful up here in the mountains…once you get out of that god-awful lodge.”

  I don’t immediately respond. The truth is, I didn’t pick this place. Not consciously, anyhow. I ended up here simply because it was a place to go at a time when I was desperate to go anywhere. Anywhere that had absolutely nothing to do with the Ransome brothers, anyhow. “The lodge isn’t so bad,” I eventually say, trying to keep my voice light. “You just haven’t tried the pot roast in the restaurant yet.”

  She scrunches up her nose before taking another long pull of whiskey. “Your parents were okay with this? With you moving way the hell out here on your own?”

  I shrug. “We’re not really close. I doubt they care very much.” I remember the fight that had ensued when I told them I was going off to work on the road crew for Ransom all those years ago when Grey Skies came calling. “They pretty much wrote me off when I decided to go on tour instead of going to college.”

  I can see from the corner of my eye that she’s watching me, so I stare straight ahead, not in any hurry to find out what she can read in my face when I talk about my parents.

  “You were, what? Eighteen?” she asks. “When they toured with Grey Skies?”

  “Nineteen.” I take a long pull from the bottle, annoyed at myself for mentioning the tour and bringing the conversation back to Ransom. Should be used to it by now, I think, feeling bitter. All roads lead to that damn band.

  “That’s right,” she murmurs, still watching me. “You’re Lennon’s age. Daltrey was eighteen.”

  “I thought we were done feeling sorry for ourselves tonight.”

  “Talking about Daltrey makes you feel sorry for yourself?”

  I let out a sharp gust of air. “Come on, Karen.”

  “I’m just worried about you,” she persists. “You seem so…different.”

  My head snaps in her direction. “Different how?”

  She watches me for a long moment. “I don’t think I ever saw a frown on your face for longer than five minutes put together. Before tonight.”

  “So I’m not the same happy-go-lucky idiot I used to be.” Like that’s a bad thing, I think. People like that don’t come out on top. Not ever. “I grew up, Karen.”

  “You seem sad.” I stare at her, but before I can respond, she shakes her head a little and looks away. “And bitter.”

  “What in the hell would I have to be bitter about?” I snap. “I tell a girl I love her and she picks my friend instead—a friend, I might add, who had made a long practice of treating her like crap. And on top of all that, that same friend, a person who up until a few years ago I would have done anything for, decides he’s too pis
sed at me to work with me. So the career I had spent years developing was gone, just like that.” I thrust the bottle of Jack Daniels at her, suddenly afraid I might throw it. “No, Karen. I have no reason to be bitter.”

  “He fired you?” she asks, her voice low and angry. “Daltrey fired you?”

  I wave my hands dismissively. “He made it perfectly clear he didn’t want me around.”

  She frowns. “I’m confused. Did you quit or did he fire you?”

  “Of course I quit!” I realize that my voice has risen to a yell, but I can’t find it within me to lower it. “What the hell else was I supposed to do? We couldn’t be in the same room together.”

  “What about the other guys? Did they have anything to say about all of this?”

  I feel a familiar pang of guilt. “They asked me to stay,” I mutter. “But I just… I couldn’t. How could I?”

  For a brief moment, I allow myself to think of the other guys, of Daltrey’s older brothers. After the all-consuming anger had died down to a dull roar, I had realized that I missed them—the feeling a sharp ache in my chest. Those guys had been more like family to me than my own parents ever had been. But that only made me more pissed at Dalt—one more thing he had taken from me. So I tried not to think of Reed, Cash, or Lennon at all.

  Lennon. I wince as his face flashes through my mind. He had tried, much longer and more vigorously, to get me to come back to work. But in the end, he told me he understood. “You should do whatever you need to do,” he’d said the last time we spoke, in that calm, quiet way of his. “You’ve been taking care of us for a long time. Take care of you now.”

  More than anyone else, thinking about Lennon makes my guilt intensify. I knew that the others would be okay, without me there. So maybe Cash and Reed got in a few more fights. Maybe punches got thrown on a more regular basis, without good old Levi there to break them up. The boys could deal with that. But Lennon…