Rough Rhythm: A Made in Jersey Novella (1001 Dark Nights)(30)

“No.” James waited for his father to start shouting, waited for his hands to fist in the bedclothes. To transform into the man of his memory. “I’m going back to Los Angeles tonight. I just needed to know some things before I went.”

After a heavy moment, his father waved a hand. Go ahead.

It took James a while to formulate exactly what he needed to say. He hadn’t walked in with a plan, only knew that he couldn’t let the opportunity to learn more about himself pass. “How did you stop?” He paced to the window without taking his attention from his father. “How did you learn to control the…violence?”

Malcolm’s face twisted. “What is this?”

“Just answer the question.”

His father’s shock faded in degrees. “I stopped feeling sorry for myself.” James hadn’t been expecting that answer at all, but Malcolm pushed on before he could question him. “Not all of us excel at whatever we set our minds to. Look at you, waltzing in here from Los Angeles and increasing my profit margins in the space of a month. Fifteen years ago, I would have hated you for that. Because I couldn’t do it. Still can’t do it.” The older man rubbed at the gray stubble dotting his jaw. “I would’ve felt how…smug you were. Even if you weren’t smug at all. And I would’ve felt the rage build and build at you, at myself. Until it took me over.”

A pushing started behind James’s eyes, someone prodding him with a fork from inside his head. This wasn’t what he’d expected at all. Wasn’t how he’d envisioned this conversation going. He’d expected to relate to his father on some unsettling level, but none of what Malcolm said sounded remotely familiar.

“It always went back to me feeling…less than. And it took me a lot of years to admit that.” He encompassed the room with a sweeping gesture. “I still feel less than once in a while. Why do you think I didn’t want you to see me like this?”

James stared out the window but saw nothing. “I thought you were still upset over all those times I called the police. Or what came after. The fighting.”

“No. You did the right thing.” James turned to his father, saw his face was a mask of shame. “Thank God your mother forgave me or I’d have nothing.”

The fork behind James’s eyes twisted, visions of Lita’s smiling face in the forest dancing in his head. “So the violence…it was always about you. Not the person you focused it on?”

The older man’s swallow was audible. “James, sometimes I forgot who I was even fighting and only saw myself.”

Was it possible that he’d not only underestimated Lita…but himself, too? Never once had his urges been about harming Lita. Jesus. Never. His needs were driven only by giving her pleasure. Satisfying his darker tastes with her. Not using them against her. God, he’d even sensed she needed the same rough satisfaction he did. Perhaps she’d been the very thing that called his baser instincts to the surface.

No, not perhaps. Lita had been the catalyst, all those nights ago in that meat market bar. He’d not only spent the last four years denying his own needs, but hers as well. And that… That was unacceptable.

Every moment that passed without her was a crime. His stomach turned over and pulled, just imagining her miles away, alone, being her brave, irrepressible self without him. She didn’t need him. Her walking away had proven that. But James needed her to live, to breathe, to function. Needed her close.

Could he convince her to trust him again? How?

When the answer came to him, he was already halfway to Los Angeles.





Chapter Ten



Lita adjusted her headphones and closed her eyes, testing the drumsticks’ weight in her hands. Usually, that electric silence coming through the headphones before they started recording was chock-full of anticipation. Excitement. A high that couldn’t be explained to a non-musician. Sarge called it the Magic Minute and it was where he usually turned around and made some goofy face at her, guitar at the ready. He might even be doing it while she sat there, poised on her throne, but she couldn’t check because her eyes were stuck closed. She didn’t want to open them and see a stranger at the engineering desk.

Until now, the day they would begin recording the new album, Lita had been wearing blinders regarding the new manager. He would show up. She’d actually believed James would show up today. That he would be standing there, patient and sturdy, in the studio. That he would give her that classic James nod that meant, right, let’s get the show on the road. But he wasn’t there. He’d let her walk away and now? Now she would record her first album without his level gaze keeping her centered from behind the glass. And her heart was splintering and cracking all over again, sending little pieces of timber dropping into her stomach.

Tears she’d managed to avoid for weeks were poised, hot and ready to fall, so she reached into her back pocket and ripped her sunglasses free, shoving them onto her face. Her bandmates were watching her out of concern—and rightly so. They all needed to be on top of their game when recording. This morning, she’d woken up so sure she could handle this—and she would—she would.

Thirty seconds left until they started.

Lita exhaled slowly toward the ceiling.

“Lita.” Sarge’s voice invaded her ears. “You good to go?”