CHAPTER TWO
Kace Rymer
There’s a pounding on my door, followed by a shouted, “Kace!”
I groan as consciousness returns after several blissful hours of complete nothingness. I drank myself into oblivion on purpose, but nothing comes without a cost. As I crack a single eye open, I’m getting ready to pay that price right now.
Pressing my hands into my temples, I feel for the iron spike that must be jutting out of my head. Nope. It’s just my stupidity. My lack of discipline. Whatever.
Licking my dry lips, my mouth tastes like some wild animal has taken a shit directly on my tongue. And it stinks in here… wherever the hell here is.
Alcohol practically leaks from my pores, and with it, I register the scent of sweat and puke.
What the total fuck? After four and a half years of sobriety, I got trashed. Good and trashed from the look of it.
And, dammit, it’s her fault I got drunk.
Closing my eyes again, I hear my therapist telling me… stop blaming… be accountable. So yeah, it’s not her fault. It’s mine. It’s shit like this that pushed her away.
It’s also why I’ve been sober for one thousand, six hundred and forty-one days… until last night.
Damn.
All because of an anniversary that shouldn’t have meant shit anymore. All because of that damn song.
I pretty much started drinking the moment it caught me by surprise on the radio yesterday. So close to what should have been our anniversary weekend. My one hit wonder. The song that still keeps me rolling in dough to this day. Even if I never work another day in my life, “Lie With Me” will pay the bills for the lavish lifestyle I don’t give a damn about.
Sitting up, I look around the hotel room. The penthouse. “Nothing but the best for Kace Rymer,” my manager said yesterday, thinking he was doing me a favor.
I can’t even remember which city I’m in. Then it hits me… Memphis. One stop of many of my “comeback tour.”
Another reason I got drunk last night.
I’m in Tennessee. Her state. Our state.
I’m in the city that was home to Elvis Presley, the man Elisa Collins named her only child after.
Presley.
Even though I’m nearly four hundred miles from her, just being here takes me down the road I swore I’d never again travel. Not because I don’t want to. Not just because the memories bring me pain. But Presley deserves better than that… better than a washed up bastard like me.
The pounding on the door continues, and I push myself to my feet, pull the sheet around my hips, and stagger to the door.
“What?”
It’s Stephen, my manager. And the moment he sees me, a damn shitload of emotions cross over his features. Disbelief. Anger. Disappointment.
“What in the total hell, Kace?”
Turning away from the door, I leave it open as I head to the bathroom to take a piss. After I relieve myself of surely a gallon of fluid, I wash my face with cold water then scrub the vile taste from my mouth with a few jabs of my toothbrush.
Damn.
How did I live like this for so long?
Back in the day, I got drunk or coked up every night. Fucked Presley for hours, then bounced out of bed the next day and did it again.
Am I really that old now?
Planting my hands on the bathroom counter, I peer into my reflection.
Yep. I’m that damn old.
Thirty-four doesn’t look good today, even though I’m normally told I look good, especially for someone who has partied as much as I have. After I quit the drugs and drinking over four years ago, I started working out, making my muscles burn louder than the ache in my belly. The ache in my heart.
I hit the gym with a personal trainer who didn’t care how much it hurt. Then I began to crave the outdoors and found ways to work out in nature. With the sun on my face, I don’t crave the coke so intently. When I’m climbing a mountain, liquor is the last thing on my mind.
I’m ripped now. I have a totally different body from the drugged-out husk I was ten years ago.
Fuck.
Has it really been that long?
Turning on the shower, I step into it while the water is still cold. It hits me like a blade, and I let out a stream of curses, but I don’t warm it up. I need to suffer for last night. I wash quickly, getting the stink off while simultaneously trying not to remember every single moment with Presley.
Furious with myself for allowing her name to continue to circle my brain, I step out of the shower and dry off, shrugging into one of the complementary robes hanging on the door.
With my fingers, I force my hair into some semblance of order, but there’s not a damn thing I can do for my eyes. They look like Satan himself has climbed into my body and is peering out through the slits.
Fine. Sunglasses it is.
Being a rock star does come with a few perks. Wearing sunglasses any time I want, day or night, with people thinking I’m cool instead of a douche is just one of them. Good thing I have a couple dozen pair on my tour bus.
By the time I’m finished, I feel cleaner but not better. Digging through my toiletry kit, I find and toss back a couple ibuprofen, chasing them down with a full glass of water straight from the tap. Hydration will help. Hair of the dog would help too, but I’m not going there. Can’t go there again. Besides, I’m pretty sure I cleaned out the mini bar last night.
When I’m ready to face Stephen, I open the bathroom door.
He’s glaring at me. At least he isn’t screaming and crying like Presley was the last time I saw her. I close my eyes. Why is everything coming back to her? Why is she practically enveloping every part of my brain? One song. One state. One date on the calendar. And everything comes rushing back to me.
The need for a drink comes rushing back too. My eyes flick toward the bar, and yeah… it’s totally empty. It’s one of the reasons I normally avoid hotels, preferring to stay on my bus. Some people kiddy-proof their space. I have to do something similar. If I don’t have booze and harder shit around, I’m not tempted. I learned long ago that, in the battle of addiction, willpower will get its ass kicked nearly every time.
I’m walking proof right now.
And I hate myself.
“What the fuck, Kace?”
Heading straight to the coffee service Stephen had apparently ordered, I pour a cup, burning my lip on the first taste. “Don’t start,” I say to him. “I think I’ve ‘what the fucked’ myself quite enough this morning.”
Turning to look out the window so I don’t have to witness his disgust and disappointment another moment, I blow on the coffee, glad to have something to do with my hands.
“Bus is fixed.”
“Good.”
Stephen exhales a frustrated breath. “Do I need to call Dr. Gibson?”
I stiffen. One setback in over four years, and he’s ready to call my shrink?
“No. It’s done.”
Another frustrated exhale. “Okay. But the reason I’m here isn’t just about the bus. Something’s come up.”
I turn to face him, taking another sip of my coffee. It hits my stomach hard, and I set the cup down. “What’s that?”
“The dude who’s supposed to sing the national anthem before the UT football game is sick and—”
“No.”
Stephen gives me a funny look. “What the fuck, man? It’s one song. A song you already know because I’ve heard you sing it plenty of times. It’ll be good publicity for the tour and—”
I turn back to the window. “No.”
“Why the fuck not?”
I’ve only known Stephen less than a year now, years after I cleaned house and got rid of everyone who’d enabled or contributed to my addiction. My cousin and former manager had been one of them. He’d thought that all press was good press and having pictures of me puking up my guts was just part of the rock star experience.
Of all the times I tried to quit, it was James who’d slowly pull me back into the ditch. “One sip,” he’d say. “One snort,” he’d offer. “One time won’t hurt you,” he’d promise, dangling a bag of whatever in front of me.
The bastard had been best friend, my damn cousin, and I’d made him a rich man as my manager. He’d nearly killed me in return. He’d nearly cost me everything.
No. He did cost me everything. He’d cost me Presley.
Ten years ago this weekend. The weekend we were supposed to become husband and wife.
“Kace, man. Talk to me.”
I shake my head. “Just have some memories in Knoxville, man. Bad memories.”
I also have some good ones. Many, many good ones.
Red hair twisting between my fingers anytime she was near. Talk about addiction, I’d been addicted to her fucking hair and always had to have my hands in those wild curls whenever she was in my presence.
Her laugh. It was as big as the Smoky Mountains, and you could just tell it came from her very core. Her entire face smiled when she smiled. The universe seemed to light up with just one of her grins.
Her eyes. Green as grass with speckles of gold near the pupils. So guileless and trusting, so soft when she looked at me. The concern that had begun to live in them the last year we were together.
Then the horror in their depths when she found me passed out naked with those two women that terrible morning. The morning I lost her for good.
“Running from memories don’t make them go away,” Stephen says behind me.
I snort and press a hand to my stomach, hoping to control the gurgling there. “Ah, have you been sitting on Dr. Gibson’s couch too?”
I can see his reflection in the window. I can see the concern. The uncertainty of knowing what to do. I fucked up last night, and I need to assure him that it won’t happen again. That I’m serious about my job and I’ll do whatever it takes to be, if nothing else, a two-hit wonder.
It’s that lost look that turns me around. “One song?”
Hope brightens his eyes. “Yes. A few pictures, a couple of waves, probably some press questions, then we head on down to Atlanta.”
Will the city be the same? The campus?
Face the past.
Last night is clear evidence that I haven’t faced it. Haven’t put it behind me. And I need to. Life has gone on. She has gone on. I’ve been stuck in a rut for years now.
Face it, then move on.
“Okay, I’ll do it.”
Stephen smiles and rubs his hands together, relief clear in his every gesture. Not because of this one gig, I know that. He’s relieved that he’s got some sort of control again, and he thinks I’m back on my come-back trail.
“Good. Let’s get this place cleaned up so housekeeping can’t take photos and sell them to the tabloids.”
I look around at my shame. Bottles everywhere. Sheets a mess.
Stephen’s right… I don’t need that kind of press.
It doesn’t take long, and it’s time to go. Time to get on my bus and head to Knoxville.
To my past.