Lovely Trigger (Tristan & Danika #3)(15)

All of this, and she was the one that comforted me.

“You think this cancer is a match for me?” she asked me archly.  “Come on now, Danika.  You know me better than that.  You have to know I’m too stubborn to die before Jerry.  Would never happen.”

I laughed, and then I cried, because I was so worried about her that it made me weak.

“I should be the one crying,” Bev told me.  “I miss my f**king tits.”

I wiped my eyes.  “You should buy some new ones when all of this is over.”

“Um yeah.  That’s the first thing I’m doing.  Not obnoxious ones, but you can be damn sure they’ll be perky.”

We both laughed long and hard, and that time none of it ended in tears.

Andrew was beyond supportive through it all, sometimes taking the drive with me, or even the flight.  Bev liked him; Bev approved.  She was comforted by my finally moving on from Tristan.

Less than one year after the cancer was discovered, she was cancer free.

I felt like we’d all been given a new lease on life after that and impulsively, agreed to move in with Andrew.

I knew within a month that it was a mistake.  I needed more space.

Good on paper was so suffocating in real life.

TRISTAN

There were only two nights a week where I didn’t have a show, so the guys came to me in Vegas to work on the new album.

There would be no touring.  I set that boundary up right away.  I enjoyed working with them, and some occasional live shows would be fine, but I’d never go on the road again.  Too many triggers for me there.

I made sure they all knew that it had to be a drug free studio, but something, perhaps having two out of five of the original members dying young due to drugs, had gotten us all sober.  Kenny and Cory would have the occasional beer, but other than that, we were making a comeback as four sober grownups.

It was bizarre, but good, because if this whole band thing had turned into a trigger for me, I would have had to drop it like a bad habit.

I found, now that I wasn’t getting high while Kenny did the writing that I enjoyed being involved with the entire process, and I began to write lyrics to some of the songs.

I was shit at composing music, but I was as surprised as anybody to find that I had a way with words.

Adair and Dahlia were still going strong, and she and Jack came to listen to us record more often than not.

It was good medicine.  We all loved that boy, and he was spoiled with attention by every single member of the band.  None of us had failed to see the uncanny resemblance to Dean, and we all felt a bit responsible and saw to it that he had everything he needed.

She and Adair were living together by then, and Jack just adored him.  It was a huge relief, to say the least.

We finished recording our second album in half the time the first one had taken us and that was with me working nearly every night in my magic show.  We’d all grown up, and the result was a much more finely tuned machine.

I couldn’t quite believe when we got our first number one hit out of the record’s first single, and when a second and a third followed, I was completely floored.

None of us could believe it.  It was everything we’d talked about.  Kenny, Cory, and I had been daydreaming about this since we were all fourteen, and it had actually worked out for us.

It was a bittersweet time for me.  Every time we celebrated another hit, all I could think about was who was missing from the revelry.

CHAPTER SIX

FIVE YEARS AFTER THE ACCIDENT

DANIKA

It was in the summer that I met the mysterious artist.

I’d gotten a memo that the boss had himself a girlfriend and that he was insisting on giving her a gallery showing.  This was told to me rather snidely by the New York gallery manager.  I knew she’d had her eye on James for herself, but she’d made an advance on him ages ago, and it couldn’t have been clearer that he just wasn’t interested.  Still, I thought, as she told me over the phone about the new development, she must have been holding onto some idea that he’d change his mind.  She didn’t say it aloud, but she was clearly more upset about the new girlfriend than she was about the fact that James was going to be sponsoring this mystery woman as some kind of an artist.

I was shocked myself about the girlfriend.  I’d known James for years and had never thought I’d see the day he committed to any kind of romantic relationship.  From what I’d observed, he was never serious about any of the legions of women he was seen with.  Shocked was quickly followed by pleased, as I cared about James as a person, and I figured that if he was doing all of this, he must care for the woman.

Even so, I wasn’t thrilled at the idea, at least not the one that was originally presented to me.  A large, lavishly promoted showing, exclusively featuring this woman’s paintings.  I knew only the facts as they were presented to me.  She worked with acrylics and watercolors, and had an indefinite amount of paintings, and she was without training of any kind.

It was obvious that he was in love with his new girlfriend, but that wouldn’t make our jobs any easier.

And then I saw her paintings.

I was leaning casually against my tall work desk, flipping through my day’s workload.

I was meticulous; so I organized my workload and made to-do lists daily and anything that came directly from the boss, which was rare, went straight to the top.