Full Tilt (Full Tilt #1)(49)

“Yeah, I rested up,” I said. “Now I’m ready.”

“Good,” Jeannie replied. As I pushed past her, she threw out the empty threat she’d been using on me since I joined the band: “Because there are a hundred guitarists who would kill to have your job.”

I muttered under my breath, “Promise?”





Friday was the first concert in Denver and I did the show sober.

To say it was a disaster was being kind.

I f*cked up my solo on “Talk Me Down,” I came in late on three different songs, and I riffed the opening chords for “Taste This” at the end of the set, forgetting we’d played it already. Jeannie had to stop the show and make a joke about an early encore while shooting me a death glare.

“What the actual f*ck, Kacey?” She screeched at me in the green room. “You go and take a leave of absence for four days, supposedly to get your shit together, and then come back more flaky than before. Are you trying to ruin us?”

Violet and even Lola were waiting for an answer.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was out of it tonight. I’ll be fine tomorrow, I promise.”

But I wasn’t. Not on the inside, anyway. I managed to get through the next night’s concert without f*cking up, but the second it was over, I hit the green room liquor stash hard.

The first burning taste of whiskey nearly made me puke. The second was better. By the fifth, the ache in my heart wasn’t entirely gone, but it was bearable.

We partied back at our hotel, with the band—and fifty of our closest friends—crowded into the suites Jimmy rented. I’d never been claustrophobic, but I felt it that night. Too many bodies, talking too loudly and drinking too much. Smoke—from pot and cigarettes—hung in the air like a gray haze, and the music was so loud I could hardly hear the guy hanging off my shoulder. He was tall, handsome in a slick kind of way. Like a mobster. His stubble grazed my cheek as he leaned in. Not a roadie or part of the crew. A friend of the record execs, maybe. Or not. I didn’t know who he was and I was too drunk to find out. Did it matter?

He could be anyone, and I could be anyone to him.

“Anyone plus anyone equals no one,” I slurred.

“You’re wasted,” he laughed. He leaned in, his breath wet with vodka on my ear. “You want to get out of here?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I really do. I really f*cking want to get out of here.”

He smiled with hooded eyes and started to walk me out. I resisted and stepped away from him, staggering a little.

“Let me powder my nose,” I said.

That perked him up even more. “You got some blow?”

“I have to take a piss,” I said loudly.

I passed Jimmy and Violet and Lola, all talking and laughing. I ducked and weaved to avoid being spotted. Bypassing the bathroom, I hurried out of the suite, down the hall to my own room. The swirling pattern on the carpet made me dizzy. I expected the mobster to appear any moment behind me, as if this were a bad horror movie I’d already seen and knew what was going to happen.

I fumbled the key card into the lock and practically fell inside. I slammed the door, locked it and threw the deadbolt. The strength ebbed from me and I slid down the door, tears streaming down my cheeks. I swiped my eyes and my mascara left streaks on the back of my hands.

Even two rooms away, I could still hear the party. I covered my ears, staring down at the purse in my lap, my cell phone sliding out. I picked it up, went to my contacts and found Jonah’s number. My thumb hovered over the call button but wouldn’t touch it. I couldn’t call him drunk and hysterical. It would worry him to the core and what could he do about it anyway?

It was too f*cking humiliating. We’d been separated as many days as we’d been together, and I’d already fallen apart. He’d probably finished eight more pieces of his installation. His legacy. I was drunk on a hotel room floor.

I kicked off my black stilettos and struggled to my feet, my sights on the mini-bar. I threw it open, grabbed a tiny bottle of something brown and started to twist the top, ready to turn the night into oblivion.

Then my bleary gaze landed on the perfume bottle. The beautiful, perfect vessel with its delicate ribbons of purple spiraling around the middle. I stared. It was no accident my sober self had set it on top of the little cabinet above the mini bar, instead of leaving it in the bathroom with the rest of my perfume.

I set the booze down but didn’t pick up the perfume bottle. Jonah made it for me. If I broke it, I’d have nothing left of him.

I sucked in a deep breath, took a bottle of water from the cabinet and shut the door tight.

Then I went to bed.

Behind my closed eyelids, my thoughts swam together in a blurry infusion: dancing water and lights, fire and glass, and an ugly green and orange afghan around my shoulders. I wrapped myself in the colors and finally slept.





“Hey. Jonah.”

I lifted my gaze from the bubbles fluttering to the surface of my nonalcoholic beer. Oscar peered at me.

“You still with us?” he asked.

“Sorry?”

“You okay, man?”

“Sure. Great.” I took a sip and pretended to be interested in the people moving and talking around us. Theo had had to work late at Vegas Ink, so it was just Oscar and Dena sitting across from me at a tall table in the Lift bar at the Aria Hotel, one of the few that didn’t allow smoking anywhere on premises.