“I told you. Not a good time to have a girlfriend. They’re gonna work you to within an inch of your life. You said you wanna be Don Henley famous and this is definitely the label to get you there, but they do not fuck around.”
I dragged a hand down my mouth. Well, it was what I wanted. I’d dreamed of making it since I was five and I’d worked my ass off to get here. Ernie was right, though, the timing sucked. The timing really sucked.
He glanced at his watch. “I gotta get going.” He stood and turned to me. “Hey, I don’t mean to be a downer about the girlfriend thing. I’m sure it’ll all work out and you’ll ride happily into the sunset. I’ve just been around the block a few times and I’ve seen how hard this business is on relationships.” He slapped my back. “But you guys are different. You two are gonna be fine. Just don’t take her on tour.”
I laughed, and Ernie made his way back to the house, his shoes dangling from his fingers. “Don’t take her on tour, Jaxon!” he yelled over his shoulder.
Fuck, I didn’t see how I could even if I wanted to. Fourteen months, minus the little break for the holidays—that was over a year on the road. That was a commitment. A huge commitment. A leave-your-life-behind commitment.
But I was getting ahead of myself. At the moment I couldn’t even get a damn text back.
For the next few hours I just fiddled with my guitar, keeping my phone close in case Sloan called—which she didn’t. Finally at 8:00 I bit the bullet and I just called her, even though she hadn’t responded to my last text.
It went to voicemail.
Now I felt bad for every woman I’d ever left hanging, waiting for a phone call. This shit sucked.
Tucker and I were quite the pair. I was brooding and irritable and he wouldn’t get up except to raise his head occasionally and whine.
When my phone finally rang at 10:30, I jumped for it. It was Sloan. Any thoughts of giving her a hard time for making me wait all day flew out the window. “Hey, you’re alive.” I smiled into my phone.
But there was no reply. Then I heard crying.
I stood. “Sloan? Are you okay?”
“Jason.” She sniffed.
She was drunk. No mistaking the slur in her voice.
“Sloan, where are you?”
“Home.”
I breathed a sigh of relief that she wasn’t driving or somewhere unsafe.
“Jason? I was thinking about you today.”
I felt the weight I’d carried all day in my chest lift. “I was thinking about you today too,” I said gently.
“You don’t want me, okay?”
“What?”
“You don’t. Trust me, you don’t. I’m messy. I’m a mess. I’m in an in-between.”
I smiled softly. “I like your mess.”
She didn’t reply.
“Sloan?”
“Can you come over?”
I was in motion before she finished her sentence. I grabbed a backpack and started throwing things into it, cradling the phone with my shoulder. “I’m on my way. Sloan? You have to unlock the front door. Do it now, while I’m on the phone.”
“Mmmkay,” she said. A few moments later I heard the sound of a bolt lock being turned.
“I’m getting in my truck now. I’ll be there in ten minutes.” Tucker jumped in the cab with an enthusiasm that could only come from knowing where we were headed.
“Jason?” she said as I pulled down the driveway. She was crying again. “You make me want to cook for you.”
I smiled at the compliment. I understood what that meant to her to say that. Then the line went dead.
She didn’t answer when I called back.
Ten minutes later I pulled into her driveway and jogged to the front porch. Tucker had his nose pressed into the crack of the door, and when it opened, he tore into the house like he was retrieving a duck. But I stopped in the doorway with my mouth open.
The living room looked like a tornado had gone through it. Black trash bags everywhere and stacks of men’s clothing strewn all over the floor. A knocked-over lamp and hangers in a pile, men’s shoes scattered on the carpet.
Brandon’s clothes.
A tumbler sat in a small clear spot in the middle of the mess with an empty bottle of tequila and wads of balled-up tissues next to it.
I followed Tucker’s excited noises through a bedroom and into an adjacent bathroom. Sloan lay crumpled by the toilet on a white floor mat, her cell phone next to her. I crouched beside her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Sloan? Can you hear me?”
She groaned, but she didn’t open her eyes. I sighed and scratched my beard. Completely wasted.
I got a damp washcloth and cleaned her face. She’d been sick at least once. I flushed the toilet and wiped the seat with toilet paper.
She’d thrown up in her hair. I lifted her and moved her to rest against the bathtub, pushing her shower curtain aside. A cotton ball was taped to the inside of her elbow like she’d had blood taken. I peeled that off and threw it away. Jesus, what had she been doing today?
I managed to wash her hair with a cup by letting it fall over the lip into the tub. Tucker sat in the bathroom doorway watching the activity. He seemed to know I was helping her. At one point she started to cough, and I turned her to the toilet and held her hair back while she threw up again.
She muttered some apologies, vaguely aware I was there. Then she went back under.
I towel-dried her hair and brushed it back as best I could, pulling it into a messy ponytail and carrying her to bed. She nuzzled her face into my neck and clutched my shirt and my heart pounded. I had to laugh. Even sloppy drunk, this woman had me.
Tucker jumped up and snuggled next to her as I tucked her in. She threw an arm around him and hugged him to her with a soft, “Tucker…”
No wonder he was disappointed to be home with me. If I got to sleep like that every night, I’d be pissed to be back with me too.
I walked through the house and locked up, turning off lights and collecting the empty bottle and tumbler, stepping around piles of her dead fiancé’s personal effects. I got a bucket from the garage and a glass of water for her and left them by the bed. I collected her phone from the bathroom floor to plug into the charger on her nightstand, dropping a few pills next to her water for the morning. She’d need them.
Afterward I went out to my truck and got the parts for her sink. I went about fixing it so I could wash the dishes, checking back in on her when it was done. She slept peacefully.
A large photograph of Sloan hung over her bed. I couldn’t stop looking at it. It was a portrait of her from the side, naked and balancing on the balls of her feet, with her tattooed arm covering her breasts. It looked like a professional photo, one from a tattoo magazine. Maybe she’d done modeling before. God knows she was good-looking enough. It was a fantastic shot.
Pictures lined her dresser. Mostly her and another woman, who I assumed was Kristen. Sloan looked like the colorful one of the two, even though I knew she was more conservative than her friend. One frame showed them at Disneyland wearing Mickey Mouse ears. Another was them outside the Pantages Theatre with a Wicked poster behind them.
There were photos of Brandon too. I recognized him from the picture on The Huntsman’s Wife. He’d been a good-looking guy. He and Sloan had matched.