Full Tilt (Full Tilt #1)(4)

Are they done with me?

The thought made my heart ache. No, not yet. My mother held on. She needed my phone calls. I knew that. But if I never called her again, she wouldn’t call me. I knew that too. She was still a bystander in her own child’s life.

I slumped against the concrete wall. I could hear the crowd on the other side growing restless. It sounded like a thunderstorm moving closer. If we didn’t take the stage soon…

I needed a smoke.

I pulled a battered soft pack of cigarettes from the top part of my thigh-high boot, and lit it from a matchbook tucked into the cellophane.

I drew in deep, exhaled, and slumped lower against the wall, weighed down by all the tears I didn’t cry over the last four years. They threatened to burst out now in my own thunderstorm. I battled it all back, inhaled it hard, wrapped it in smoke and pressed it into my gut where it sat like a lead weight.

Dad won’t even talk to me.

I exhaled the thought back out. So what? Who cares what he thinks? He’s never given a shit in twenty-two years, why would he start now? Fuck him.

A brave speech, except I would’ve given anything to hear my dad’s voice, and not have it be laced with disappointment or anger. To hear him say he missed me or he loved me. To be told I could come home any time I wanted and the door would be open…

But he’d shut and locked that door, maybe forever, and the foundation on which I’d been built was crumbling to dust.

The crowd roared on the other side of the wall. They were clamoring for us. For me. They loved me.

And as Roxie Hart would say, I loved them for loving me.

I took another pull from my vodka and rose from my crouch just as Jimmy Ray busted through a door on the landing above mine, looking frantic and wound up.

Our manager was in his mid-forties with thinning hair. His suit—always Armani, since a mid-size label signed us three months ago—hung a bit loose over his lanky frame. His wild eyes landed on me and he collapsed against the wall in exaggerated relief, his hand over his heart.

“Jesus, kitten, give me a coronary why don’t you? The gig was supposed to start half an hour ago.”

I ground out the cigarette under the heel of my boot and plastered a smile on my face. “Sorry, Jimmy. I had an important phone call. But I’m good now. Ready to kick ass.”

“Good to hear it. This crowd is going eat us alive if we don’t get out there, a-sap.”

I moved past him but he stopped me, his hand on my chin, studying my face.

“You been crying?”

I sucked in a breath. Jimmy Ray wasn’t anyone’s idea of a father figure, but he’d been good to us. Good to me. I felt myself start to wilt under his kindness, wanting to tell him…

“Because your makeup is smeared,” he said. “Make sure you fix it before you go on, yeah?”

I nodded mutely.

“Thatta girl.”

He smacked my ass lightly, to get me moving, and followed me out of the stairwell, back to the green room where the rest of the band was waiting.





They were all dressed in full concert gear: leather, vinyl and lots of chunky costume jewelry. Violet, our bassist, wore her brown hair pulled tight to one side, revealing the small black raven tattooed in the shaved skin of her scalp above her ear. She gave me a nod, and flashed me the peace sign.

Lola, my best friend, sat in a deep chair, spinning her drumsticks deftly around her fingers. She jumped up and came to me, peered at my face through shocks of black and electric blue hair. Her dark eyes were sharp, observant and full of concern.

“You okay? Where’d you take off to?”

I was spared answering by Jeannie, our lead singer. She’d been doing her vocal warm-ups, but stopped in the middle of a scale.

“What the actual f*ck, Kacey?” Her eyes, lined in kohl as black as her skin-tight leather pants, zeroed in on me. She was a pretty gal, our fearless leader, or would be if not for the perpetual constipated look on her face.

I felt the weight of the room on me, heavy and accusatory. I crossed my arms over my chest, affected a pinched, slightly mid-Western older lady voice. “Hello, Jeannie, who’s bothering you now?”

Lola snickered, and Violet muffled a laugh behind her hand.

“Who’s bothering me? You…” Jeannie’s confusion morphed to irritation. “Wait, are you quoting some stupid movie at me again?”

“Stupid?” I gaped dramatically. “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is nothing short of a classic. A national treasure…”

Jeannie flapped a hand, her bracelets jangling. “Whatever. If you devoted as much time to the band as you do to partying and watching 80’s relics—”

“Come on, Jeannie,” Violet said, with a sigh. “Let’s not start any shit right before the show. She’s here. We’re fashionably late. So what?”

Lola nodded. “Only newbies start a show on time. She’s ready to kick ass, right, Kace?”

“Oh, stop coddling her, for chrissakes,” Jeannie snapped at Lola, and then Jimmy swooped in and pulled her aside, talking soothingly to her in a low voice

Under my breath I said, “Mmm-mmm-mmm, what a little *.”

Violet burst out laughing, but Lola’s eyes flickered to my ‘Evian.’ She was a human Breath-a-lizer, that girl. Quickly, I tossed the bottle in the trash before she got wind of its contents and laid another of her patented lectures on me. The vodka had already started to work anyway, putting me one giant step back from reality, as if I were behind a pane of glass.