Color Me Crazy (15 page)

She squinted to get a better look, then her eyes flew open wide, and the spacious closet seemed to shrink until she couldn’t breathe. She steadied herself, dragged the poster out, and plopped it on the bed for a better look. He was younger and looked completely different—long, matted hair and pale, thin face—but it was Julian!

She was such an idiot. Did everybody know but her? Did everybody know that Julian Wheaton was actually Julian
Lazros
of Slice?

He must be having a good laugh at her expense. She’d worked at
Rock ’n’ Spin
—the hub of the rock-and-roll world—and hadn’t recognized a guitar legend when she was freaking living with him. She smacked her hand over her eyes and threw herself on the bed next to the poster. He and Addie shared the same last name but had different fathers. That was a clue that had flown right past her. Along with a million others.

Had this been a game to see how long it took for her to figure it out? Or was she just that insignificant to him?

She sat up and looked at the poster again, pressing her fingers against the cool glass. No tattoos adorned his outstretched arms.
His arms.
The rumor was the magazine had airbrushed over the track marks. Julian Lazros had been a heroin addict. She shivered.

Maybe this was a weird coincidence. She looked closer. Nope. Low on his hips hung that nasty guitar, the same banged-up Les Paul she’d just placed in the closet.

She hadn’t been a Slice fan, but everyone had heard of Julian. He’d been a tabloid favorite, a young English virtuoso who’d rocketed an American band to the top of the charts, and a hellion to boot. There’d been fights, arrests, and infamous court-ordered stints in rehab before the band finally kicked him out for good.

She’d never once wondered what happened to Julian Lazros.

After quickly checking on Ian, she sat at the studio’s desk and got online. The live concert video of “Trap Me” was the first one she watched. Julian would have been sixteen, a child compared to his bandmates. Fans screamed, cried, and chanted his name. He was drenched in sweat, wailing on the Les Paul while Mitch Landrum competed for volume with a rough, jagged voice. Mitch Landrum—she’d mentioned meeting him, and Julian had said nothing!

She spent the rest of the evening babysitting the Dolls, watching Slice videos, and digging up dirt on the ghost of a boy she didn’t know. In some performances, he was a brilliant young musician; in others, he was staggering, incoherent, and obscene. She watched and read some things that made her blush and some that made her laugh. But one piece in the
L.A. Times
made her cry.

“…was found by his sister, Adelaide Wheaton, with wrists slit…twenty years old…”

On top of the shock, she felt a tremendous amount of guilt, as if she’d read his diary. Her stomach grumbled and lurched, its usual reaction to stress and turmoil. She leaned over the desk and rested her head on her arms.

“Cleo,” Ian said as he came out of the studio. “You feeling okay?”

“Not really, no.”

“We’re almost done. Why don’t you go on upstairs? I’ll buzz the intercom if we need you, but the guys are about to start packing up.”

It was almost three o’clock in the morning, and Julian should be back from Austin soon. Her stomach flip-flopped at the thought.

“If you’re sure you don’t mind?”

“Not at all. Collin gave up the fight about an hour ago—he’s asleep in the lounge. Thanks for getting that guitar down for him.”

“He’s a big Slice fan?”

She hoped Ian would be confused and say,
Slice? Julian was never in Slice.

“He sure is. He thinks it’s classic rock. Makes me feel old,” Ian said with a shake of his head.

Chapter Nine

Cleo awoke to the smell of coffee and the realization she’d never made it to her own bed. She’d fallen asleep on Julian’s couch, listening for the guys to buzz her. They hadn’t, and she’d slept like the dead, or like someone in shock after finding out a friend wasn’t who he claimed to be. A soft blanket covered her, although she had no recollection of Julian coming home, much less tucking her in.

Someone clanked around in the kitchen. She really wanted some coffee, but she’d slept in her clothes, her breath was horrid, and that was a stranger in there. Not the Julian Wheaton she’d thought she knew.

Sitting up, she peered over the back of the couch. He stood at the stove with his back to her, cracking eggs into a bowl. His hair was caught up in a short, stubby ponytail, but a good bit of it had escaped the hair band and bounced against his neck as he worked.

“I feel someone staring at me,” he said. He turned and tossed her a smile too dazzling for anybody who’d come in so late the previous night.

Now that she knew, she couldn’t miss it.
He was Julian Lazros.

And he was shirtless. Her eyes drifted to his white linen pajama bottoms, the ones with the elastic waistband so worn and tired it was rendered practically useless.

“Late night, right?” he said. “Sorry about that. I was trying to help out a friend—shouldn’t have. But at least Ian rode in to rescue my damsel in distress.”

Blushing, she stood and pulled her attention from his slipping waistband. Avoiding his eyes, she homed in on the coffeepot. Julian followed her gaze and reached behind to grab a mug off the counter.

“I’m making you an omelet to express my gratitude,” he said. “I’m talking eggs, cheese, and other animal-based contaminants from your side of the fridge.” He held out the mug. “I touched it with my bare fingers.” He shivered dramatically, and Cleo almost laughed as she padded toward him.

“Did something happen?” he asked, as she took the mug and filled it. “I mean, the guys didn’t hurt your feelings or anything, did they? You’re being awful quiet.”

“No, nothing happened. I’m just tired.”

Julian hesitated, as if he were about to say something and then thought better of it. He went back to work, whisking the eggs with a fork. The muscles in his tattooed arms and upper back flexed, and his pajama bottoms slipped lower with every whisk.

“You want to tell me what you were doing in my closet?”

She burned her mouth and throat with a huge swallow of coffee. “Huh?”

He lifted and rotated the pan, coating it with eggs before placing it back on the burner, and turned down the flame. “I mean, not that I care all that much,” he said, turning to face her, “but you messed up my T-shirts. And you left a poster on my bed. One of the reasons I like things where they belong is so I don’t sit on them in the dark and break them with my ass. I have glass shards embedded in my skin.”

She set her mug down. “Sorry. I was putting your guitar away and—”

“What were you doing with my guitar?”

“A kid wanted to see it, and—”

“A kid wanted to see my guitar? Which guitar? Where is it now?”

“Good grief, Julian! The ugly white one, but that’s hardly the point. The point is—”

“Hardly the point? You think you can just blatantly walk around getting into my shit and hauling it out for kids to look at? And then you don’t even put it back where it belongs?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was that special to you. It looks like any other guitar—worse, actually—and you have plenty.”

His jaw clenched, and she knew she’d said something terribly wrong. “That ugly guitar was the only thing that kept me alive once. It means everything to me.”

Was that how this was going to go? He was going to be pissy over a stupid guitar and pretend she hadn’t made the biggest discovery of a lifetime? “I didn’t even know who you were,” she yelled.

“What are you talking about?” he yelled back.

“Oh my God, are you kidding me? The poster? Hello! You’re Julian Lazros.”

“Oh, that.” He turned back around. “Fuck. Your stupid omelet is ruined.”

“That’s all you have to say? You can’t possibly tell me it’s not a big deal that you’re not who you’ve been pretending to be. You can’t possibly tell me your precious guitar being looked at, and,
oh my God
, touched, and,
oh, dear
, not put back in its proper place, is a bigger deal than me being intentionally misled and lied to.”

He spun back so quickly she flinched. “It’s my favorite guitar!”

His pajama bottoms had fallen alarmingly low, exposing the delicious
V
that led straight to the goods. It made it hard to concentrate.

“Got nothing to say for yourself, have you?”

She forced herself back on track. “How would you feel if I had been lying to you about who I was?”

“My God, Cleo. We’re talking about more than a decade ago. I have no idea who you were or what you were doing fifteen years ago. Nor do I care…oh, wait a minute.” He held a finger up and looked into the distance as if he were thinking. “Actually, fifteen years ago, you were a teenage girl trying to fuck rock stars.” He reached behind him and grabbed the skillet, tossing it into the sink with a horrible clatter. “So, I guess you haven’t changed all that much.”

It was like a punch to the stomach. All the air escaped her lungs, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get it back. He walked past her, adding, “As your mum would say, close your mouth, dear. It’s unattractive.”

...

Julian plugged in a guitar and sat on his bed. If he didn’t play, he would burst into a million pieces. He’d been a total shit for talking to Cleo like that, but she didn’t seem to care or understand how important his guitar was to him. And he didn’t like having his past thrown in his face. It was none of her business. He
had
kind of deceived her, or at least kept quiet about his past, and she had every right to be surprised. But to be so hysterical about it? And so seemingly
hurt
by it? Women were fucking insane.

He’d opened up to her in ways he never had with anyone else. And yet, the depth of their friendship was measured by how much of his lame-ass rock star past he’d revealed or not revealed. She was hurt?
He
was hurt.

He tried to play a few licks but couldn’t focus. The perfect storm was brewing. He’d had little sleep, and he’d experienced more emotional upset in the past twenty-four hours than he’d suffered in the previous six months. He sat on the bed and held his head.

The buzzing began.

Shit.
Could it happen twice in as many days? The colors quickly ran together, forming a wall of brown sludge. The sense of dread he always associated with a synesthesia episode washed over him.

The sludge would drown him. It would pour down his throat, into his lungs, and he’d die.

Logically, he knew it wasn’t possible. But logic didn’t play into this. He held his breath. If only he could call Addie. She always kept him from sliding into the darkest depths of it. But she’d chosen Mitch over him.

He took a breath and choked.

This was all Cleo’s fault. Cleo and her snooping and silky hair and soft breasts. He took another breath…and smelled tangerines.
At just the thought of her.
The colors separated like a drop of water hitting the surface of an oily puddle.

He grabbed his phone and texted: H
ELP ME.

Cleo burst into the room less than a minute later. “What’s wrong?”

The sound of her voice was orange—angry, so it had red hues, but still a brilliant orange. He focused on it, letting all the other colors fade into the background. He could breathe when he did that. He held out a shaking hand. “Come here.”

“You’re scaring me,” she said.

“Hold me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Please,” he whispered. “I need you.”

She climbed on the bed and wrapped her arms around him.

“Now sing,” he said. “Or hum.”

“I’m not going to do that.”

“I need your voice.”

She started a childish tune…
this old man, he played one
…and Julian clung to the color of it for all he was worth.

Minutes later, Julian sipped water while Cleo bitched. She’d pulled him out so easily. And she had no idea what she’d done.

“And for your information,” she rattled on, “I didn’t even know you
were
a rock star, which is what we were fighting about.”

“We were fighting over you carelessly dragging my guitar around,” he reminded her. He tried to hide his smile as her curls trembled with a wave of rage.

“As I was saying,” she continued, barely moving her luscious lips and glaring at him. “I didn’t even know you were a rock star, so it was completely stupid of you to say I’m just out to”—she glanced away, and her cheeks flushed brilliantly—“pardon me,
fuck rock stars
.”

Ah. It killed her to say the word “fuck.” He loved it. “I wasn’t talking about me,” he said, grinning.

“Then who?”

“Lou Michaels.”

“Lou?” she stammered. “What are you talking about?”

“Please, love. I saw the picture.”

It was a huge mistake, and he knew it as soon as he’d said it.

“Are you talking about the one in my nightstand drawer?”

Her eyebrows were arched to ridiculous heights. He tried changing the subject. “I’m feeling better now. I’d like to take a nap.”

“I don’t think so, buddy. You were rummaging in my drawer.”

“It was more like poking. I was poking in your drawer.” He was tempted to tell her to shut her mouth again but figured he’d better not risk it.

She made several idiotic attempts at speech before sputtering, “Do you know what I think?”

He had no clue, so he shook his head.

“I think we’re even. At least, we should be in your twisted mind. I was in your closet, and you were in my nightstand drawer. So, let’s put that part of this to rest. But the other part…”

“Look, Red,” he said. “I wasn’t keeping anything from you that I felt was important. That’s the truth.” Taking her hands in his, he looked into her eyes. “I’ve shared everything with you. Don’t tell me you don’t know who I am because of a dumb poster that represents the smallest, worst parts of me. I’ve trusted you with who I am.”

Nobody had ever been able to hold on to him the way she’d done. She’d reached into the deepest part of him, grabbed a handful of his soul, and saved him. She knew him better than anyone ever had.