Page 1 of Closer

PROLOGUE

THEN

LEVI

How does that songgo again? One tequila, two tequila, three ... oh yeah—floor. I take another swig from the bottle and lean back against the headrest. I wish I had tequila, but I’m drinking vodka. Straight.

It’s how I know I truly hate myself at this moment.

I stare at the four walls of the tour bus bedroom. This isn’t the same one we toured the States with, and yet the interior isn’t all that different. The double bed is just as uncomfortable as all tour bus beds, because it’s a pull-out fucking sofa. I push my skull against the squeaky vinyl bedhead and resist the urge to chuck up my guts. My head spins, but it isn’t from the alcohol. It’s from what I’ve just done. I never thought myself capable of a truly selfless act, but I guess you do learn something new every motherfucking day.

“Hey.” Ash fills the doorway. Dwarfs it, actually. If he weren’t such a health nut these days, I’d be asking him where the hell he got his fucking ’roids from.

“Hey.” I raise my bottle of vodka to him.

“Can I come in?”

“I’m not gonna blow you, man.” I half smile, and Ash shakes his head. “Just ’cause I tag-teamed Red with Coop, doesn’t mean shit.”

He chuckles and pulls his knit cap further down on his head. “Well ... good. Where is Coop, anyway? Dave was asking for him.”

“He’s not coming.”

“What?” His face gets all pinched and screwed up, like he smelled something bad. “We have an eighteen-hour drive to Bucharest. We do another show in two days.”

“He went back.”

He enters the room and takes a seat on the bed beside me. “Went back where?”

“To her.”

“To Ali?” His brows knit together. He looks as confused as I feel. “Coop went back to Sydney?”

“Yep.” I take another swig of the shitty liquor. Times like this I wish Leif was still around so I could truly get fucked up, but then I remember the way he roofied and took naked pictures of my girl and sold them to the paparazzi. And now I want to beat the ever-living fuck out of him all over again.Shit. My girl. She’s not my girl. She never was.

The tortured musician in me can see what a boon this is. Having your heart broken means another hit record. It’s fucked up, but that’s how we are. That’s why Coop has been writing ever since the day Ali walked off the tour bus. Because we love to torture ourselves. Musos aren’t happy unless we’re suffering from internal bleeding—the kind that won’t show up on a CAT scan. It’s our lot in life for being fucking awesome. Regular people watch sad movies and cry it out; they go out drinking with their friends and fuck shit up. Rock stars? We open up a vein and watch the blood pour over our instruments. And then we sell it to the record company along with what’s left of our souls and make another million. Weusethe shit normal people try to avoid. Only, some of us haven’t written in months. Some of us can’t because our fucking muse ran out on us and took our ability to create with her. Not naming any names.Fucking Red.

“Is he ... is he coming back?”

“Yep.”

“What did he say?”

“Jesus, Ash. Enough of the fucking questions.” My agitation cuts through the air around us. A minor chord.Dissonance and teeth. “He went to her, okay?”

“I thought you made a—”

“I told him to go.”

He blinks at me. I roll my eyes. “There’s no sense in both of them being alone. She loves him. She always did. I was just ... I don’t know what I was, but I know she doesn’t love me. It didn’t destroy her to leave me. Not in the way it destroyed me to watch her go.” I take another swig of my vodka, wincing as it burns its way down my oesophagus and settles in my gut like acid. I offer it to Ash. He glances at the bottle and shakes his head. There’s judgement in his eyes. “She wants him, he wants her. There’s no reason they shouldn’t be together.”

After a long beat, Ash leans back, his head thudding against padded vinyl. “Dude, that takes some pretty big balls to just let her go like that.”

“Well, you know what they say. If you love something set it free.” I laugh without humour. “And if it doesn’t come back to you, find it, and lock it in the fucking basement until it learns its lesson.”

He chuckles and grabs the bottle of vodka from me, pulling a hearty swig. This is the first time in months I’ve seen Ash drink. So I stare at him, because it’s weird to see a bottle in his hands after the world’s longest health kick. He’s super buff these days, like Captain America, and about as fucking good too. I should quit drinking and join his little fitness cult, but beefcake has never been my thing. I prefer to remain lean. Mostly because I’m too drunk and too fucking lazy to work out on the bus since Ali left. The only exercise I’m interested in is the one with ansin front of it. Ash wheezes and smacks his chest. I laugh at the bastard because once upon a time, he used to put away a lot more liquor than me.

“Jesus fuck, that tastes like shit.”

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