Time Out of Mind (Suncoast Society #43)(75)

That maybe he’d bolted, out of fear and shame and a lot of his own festering abandonment issues that weren’t a fraction as well healed as he’d thought them to be?

Then there was the problem that if he did resume a relationship with Mevi—if things were even reparable between them—what kind of relationship would that be with Mevi wanting to stay in the closet and himself needing his anonymity for his job?

And that was without the travel issues both of them faced. Doyle couldn’t give up his job, and Mevi definitely couldn’t give up his. Eventually, someone would start asking questions about who Doyle was. Once his identity was out there, they’d realize he was a counselor, and the rumor mill would kick into turbo.

After giving Pippa another round of treatment with the cupping set, Doyle returned to his room for the evening.

At least she was looking more and more like a success story. Now that she realized there were alternatives to managing her pain—without heavy narcotics—her fear had decreased. Which also helped lower her pain levels.

A good cycle for her to be trapped in, for a change. The more she relaxed, the more it helped her manage her pain, which helped her relax.

And so on.

With a long, hot shower to try to relax him, he lay in bed without bothering to turn his TV on.

Part of him wanted to try to call Clark right then.

Part of him knew trying to sort this out and deal with Pippa could lead to multiple disasters, and that wasn’t fair to her. He still had at least a month’s worth of work with her. Tate had already begged for an open-ended contract extension with a very attractive paycheck attached. Doyle could conceivably make more from working with Pippa than he could for the next five years at The Compound.

She was that hot of a commodity right now, with her reputation still untainted by scandal. An enterprising journo had tracked down her parents and gotten a piss-poor imitation of a human interest story about them, how they were “estranged” from their now-famous daughter. Someone had cleaned them up and stuck them in decent clothes and portrayed them as the wronged and abandoned ones.

Until Tate’s team dug in and dug up multiple mugshots of both parents and spread them far and wide, along with their arrest records for a plethora of drug, theft, and fraud issues.

Tate was every bit as good at his job as Clark was.

I can’t abandon her now.

Not only was it unethical, but personally it ran afoul of his moral code. And had he stuck to that same moral code when dealing with Mevi, he wouldn’t be where he was now.

Heartbroken.

Closing his eyes, he tried to meditate his way to sleep.





Chapter Twenty-Six


Mevi sat in his room and slowly picked chord progressions on his acoustic guitar. He wasn’t looking forward to tomorrow night. He didn’t mind the big concerts, large shows where he wasn’t so much an individual as he was part of Portnoy’s Oyster, seen mostly from a distance. They had VIP gatherings at every concert, but even those were tolerable.

But tomorrow night’s small, private gathering, despite the fact that it was for a charity and helping a worthy cause, filled him with dread.

And he couldn’t have a drink to calm his nerves. He didn’t dare.

He wouldn’t.

The soft knock on his hotel room door startled him, and it took him a moment to set the guitar aside before he got up and pulled the tissue from the viewfinder to look.

Bonnie stood outside.

Oh, great.

Yeah, that was another thing. She had travelled separately from the rest of the band for this part of the tour, agreeing to meet up with them in the UK at the hotel.

Claimed she needed the break to clear her head.

Mevi hadn’t even realized she was at the hotel yet. He’d thought she was arriving later in the day.

He took a deep breath and opened the door. “Hey.”

She stood, shoulders slumped, hands clasped in front of her.

“Hey,” she quietly said. “Can I come in?”

He stepped aside, closing it after her. She walked in and glanced around before finally turning. “I wanted to talk before tomorrow.”

Mevi shoved his hands into his pockets and kept his gaze firmly fixed on the floor. “Okay.”

“We’ve known each other a lot of years, right?”

He nodded but didn’t speak.

“We’ve done a lot together. I’m talking the band. We’ve been friends. You and I have been more. I’ll be the first to defend you artistically. I’m not stupid. Portnoy’s Oyster is here because of you. And…and I’m proud of you for getting and staying sober. You worked hard, and I’m sorry I yelled at you when you came to my house.”

He finally met her gaze. Her blue eyes, a different and more greenish color than his own, looked rimmed with red, as if she’d been crying. And now he noticed her nose was a little pink and puffy.

“Thank you,” he said.

“I did a lot of thinking during the break. I love what we do. I love this ‘family’ we have. We’ve had ups and downs and are f*cked up in our own special ways, but we always come together because we love what we do and we love each other. And I’m sorry you didn’t feel you could come out to me, of all people.”

Now he watched her more carefully, caught off-guard by this conversational turn.