Page 31 of Revive
Shit!She shot Spook a quick text, not expecting a reply, and not getting one. Then scrolled between her other contacts deliberating if she should ask someone else to check on him. The problem was she only had numbers for Paul, Luthor, and Ronnie, when in her guts she knew the person she ought to ask was Xane. Would it be okay to reach out to him via Luthor?
Did she even want to send him over to see Spook? What did that say about her and Spook’s relationship? Nothing good, for sure. Can’t manage a crisis!
Not that this was… she didn’t think. Then again, the way her stomach was churning suggested otherwise.
“Probably the lack of breakfast,” she muttered.
“Did you say something?” Ash asked into the mic.
She pressed the button to open the channel so that he’d hear her. “No. Be two ticks. I need to grab a brew.” His expression told her exactly what he thought of that. “Okay, I’ll wait on the brew. Let’s get started. I’m ready whenever you are.”
Alle checked the time and her messages on her phone approximately every thirty seconds. It still took her far too long to register that Ash wasn’t playing anymore, and she had the recording still chugging along. He’d left his spot in the isolation booth and stood in the doorway between the two rooms, guitar still looped around him. Head ever so slightly bowed, so that he was observing her from beneath the swoop of his hair. When their gazes met, he removed the pick from between his lips and hit her with a doleful look.
“Either I’m really shitting awful, completely incomprehensibly stupendous, or there’s something monumental crushing your brain into mush, so which is it? Please tell me this isn’t just a lack of tea.”
“Shit! Sorry, I’m all over this morning. We can go again.”
Instead of heading back towards the mics, Ash sauntered over and rested his arse against the edge of the soundboard. “You guys fallen out?” he asked. He picked out a chord on the guitar, then flattened his hand over the strings to deaden the noise. “You can tell me it’s none of my business, but you’re clearly upset, and he said he was going to be here, so the absence is noted.”
“I tried to say…” She hadn’t tried that hard. “I left him in bed,” she mumbled unable to make herself meet his gaze. “But, no…no, we haven’t argued.” They’d gone to bed happy. She’d fallen asleep with a cat that got the cream grin plastered across her face. “He didn’t want to get up.”
Ash gave a grunt. “He said that?”
Conscious that misrepresentation could cause undue problems, Alle shook her head. “He didn’t actually say anything.”
She risked a peep up at him and noted his eyes had narrowed. He seemed to get what she was saying, and thank God for it, because she didn’t want to elaborate.
Ash lifted his guitar strap from around his neck and lay the instrument across the sofa. Then, he shocked her by taking hold of her hand. “Come with me.”
“To where?”
He dragged her out into the green room, where they encountered Rock Giant restringing his bass. “Something up?” he asked, attention snap-focused on their clasped hands.
“Yeah, where’s the Angel of Doom?”
“Over at Ric’s, I think. Need him fetching?”
“Sending,” Ash responded.
“On it,” Paul strode off, pulling his phone from his pocket. He had it pressed to his ear and was already talking by the time he reached the door. Ash tugged her in the same direction.
“Wait, where are we going?”
“I’m taking you to Gin.”
“But the recording.”
“Your head’s not in the right space, and I’m not playing my little heart out for us to need to re-record it all again tomorrow because your focus is subpar.”
“In which case, I’m going to head back—”
“No,” he insisted. “No, you’re not. You’re going to stay out of the way and let Xane handle it.”
“And if I don’t want to let Xane handle it? What’s to say I can’t handle it?”
Ash swung her round so that they were facing and clasped both of her arms just below the elbows. “I get it. I understand why you maybe think you can, and why you want to. But, let’s face it, we both know you’re already frustrated, and you don’t know what to do. Hence, you’re here. And maybe Xane doesn’t either, but there’s at least a couple of barriers that he won’t have to deal with that you definitely would.”
“Fuck you!” she snapped, attempting to shake off his hold, but his grip only tightened.
