Rock Bottom (Tristan & Danika #2)(2)

“I love you,” I spoke softly into his ear.

He gripped me harder. “I can’t ever lose you, Danika. I’m not sure I’d survive it.”

“You’ve got me. And I’m not going anywhere. Not ever.”

I meant the words when I said them, but life had other plans for us.

I was, by nature, a fighter, and no one could say I didn’t fight for us.

I’d have given my life for that fight.

In fact, I very nearly did.

Tristan was in the shower when I finally took Kenny’s call. He’d been trying to contact us both for a week, but some strange instinct had kept me from talking to him. I felt bad about it. Kenny was a nice guy, and he had to be hurting about Jared as well, but Tristan and I had been thriving in our own little world, and it was hard for me to let go of that.

“Hello,” I answered, my voice tentative.

“Danika!” Kenny’s voice filled the phone, warm with relief. “I’ve been trying to call you for a week. How are you? And how’s Tristan doing?”

I sighed, filled with guilt. “He’s okay. Sorry I haven’t answered. It’s just been, well…”

“No worries. I understand. You’re taking care of him, and we all appreciate that. Thank you.”

That set me aback. I had been trying to take care of him, but I hadn’t expected his friends to thank me for it. “You’re welcome, Kenny. I just want to be there for him. I’d do anything for Tristan.”

“I’m happy to hear that. I’m glad he had you to help him through all of this. He really needed you.”

I swallowed hard, choked up at his praise. I wasn’t used to hearing things like that.

“I know he won’t want to talk to me yet, but could you give him a message for me?”

“Of course.”

“I have Jared’s guitar. I doubt he’ll want it now, but just let him know that I’m keeping it for him. Jared was teaching him to play. Did you know that?”

“I didn’t.”

“I think it would be good for him to take it up again. It would make him feel closer to Jared, and he needs that.”

“Do you think that will help right now, or make it worse?” I asked. I wasn’t asking because I had the answer. In my opinion, it could go either way.

“I think it will help. They were so close. Forgetting his brother is not an option, and staying close to what made Jared whole is the best way to remember him.”

I could tell by his voice that he believed that.

Later, much later, I would regret telling Tristan about the phone call, about the guitar. Some part of me, the part that liked to wallow in my own misery and dwell on the past, would blame that guitar for everything that went wrong between us, because it brought him back to the band and that lifestyle. But the logical part of me knew that Tristan would have gone back to old habits and old friends, and that whether he sank or swam was, inevitably, in his own hands.

Every misstep that led us down the path to our destruction was our own doing, but to this day, I still hated that guitar.

CHAPTER ONE

DANIKA

When we hit the party scene again, we did it in force. We were people of extremes, to be sure, though I’d never have put myself in Tristan’s league when it came to decadence. After several weeks of seclusion, staying home night after night, we began to go out again.

It was supposed to be one night, one party, but that wasn’t how things worked with Tristan.

It was my firm belief that to properly mourn the loss of a person, you had to deal with the silence in your head and accept what it turned into when life didn’t keep you too busy to think. We had some small bit of that, when we spent time alone together, just the two of us. I didn’t think we had nearly enough of it before we started up again with the party scene, but Tristan didn’t agree. He was determined to escape from the silence in his head, at all costs.

I felt helpless to stop him. His demons were so very different from my own.

We found ourselves at another house party, of another friend of a friend, celebrating something or other. I was thoroughly over it by then. The house parties didn’t even have danceable music most of the time, and Tristan took off to talk to Kenny nearly the second we arrived at this one. Frankly, I’d as soon have been home studying or at the dance studio practicing.

The consolation prize for this party was that Frankie was there. She almost made up for the fact that Dean and Twatalie were in attendance.

Unfortunately, long before I found Frankie, Twatalie found me.

I was just grabbing a drink from some stranger’s kitchen when a voice spoke to me from behind.

I stiffened instantly in recognition.

“Well, you are an exotic little piece of ass, I’ll give you that. But I don’t suppose the yellow fever can last forever. His first love is for blondes, you know.”

I blinked slowly at her random little diatribe, then smiled big. This I could handle. It was the keeping my mouth shut and the claws in that had been a struggle.

“Not all of us can look like Bratz dolls,” I said, my tone idle. “Did your doctor give you a discount when he realized that you’d lost the ability to blink your eyes or close your mouth? If not, you should definitely write a nasty letter. Though, in your case, I guess the more you have in common with a blow-up doll, the better.” I met her furious eyes straight on, making my expression into one of surprise, popping my lips out and slightly open like hers were permanently; my best impression of a blow-up doll.