One Night with Sole Regret 04 Touch Me (2 page)

“A
little
? Dude, your balls are so
blue, you should start your own Blue Man Group.”

Kelly laughed. “And you know that how?”

“Gabe was checking you out in the shower. He
told me you’re suffering from a colorful condition.”

Owen had noticed their drummer standing in
the shadows—you couldn’t miss that eight-inch-high, red and black
mohawk of his—but didn’t know if Gabe was listening in or not. Hard
to tell with Gabe—the dude was often lost in thought. A person
could carry on an entire one-sided conversation with him, and he
didn’t hear a word. He was, however, paying attention tonight.

“They were a little blue,” Gabe said. “I
don’t think they’re quite up to Blue Man standards. Better luck
next time, Kellen.”

“Hopes, dreams, and aspirations dashed
again,” Kelly said. “One day they’ll be blue enough, you wait and
see.”

Gabe chuckled and shook his head.

“Hey,” Owen said, grabbing Kelly’s arm and
leaning close, trying to look earnest, “you’re not allowed to leave
the band for the Vegas spotlight. I don’t care how blue they
get.”

“I thought
you
, of all people, would
be supportive of my desire to attain permanent blue balls. Surely
you recognize my need to find others of my kind.” Kelly said this
with such conviction that anyone who didn’t know him would have
thought he was serious and offered him a cash donation for his
cause.

Owen tried to keep a straight face, but
snorted as a laugh escaped him.

“God, will you two knock it off?” Adam said.
His ever-expanding collection of chains rattled in the
semi-darkness to Owen’s left. “You act like a couple of
prepubescent boys when you’re together. If I wanted kids, I
wouldn’t have made an appointment to get a vasectomy.”

“As much as I joke about my balls,” Kelly
said, “I’d never let anyone come at ’em with a scalpel. Ever.”

“And that’s why you’ll end up paying child
support someday.” Adam crossed his arms to rest on the body of his
guitar and lifted a dark eyebrow at Kelly. “Some gold-digger will
poke pinholes in your condoms and whoops, there’s a
two-million-dollar mistake.”

“Does your girlfriend know you’re getting
snipped?” Owen asked. “She seems like the type who’d want
kids.”

“That’s why I’m getting them snipped.”

“You don’t trust her?”

“Of course I trust her. I just lose my head
around her. She’d say the word and I’d be doing my damnedest to
knock her up. I don’t have any business fathering a child. Look at
the example I had to follow.”

Adam’s father was the poster child for bad
parenting, but that didn’t mean Adam would follow in the old man’s
footsteps. Still, Owen understood his hesitation over kids. Just
the thought of having a kid made him break out in hives. He might
consider it in twenty or thirty years. Or never.

“Kelly’s not getting any, so he doesn’t have
to worry about it.” Owen said. “But I strictly adhere to the BYOC
rule. No kids for me.”

“With that monstrosity in your junk, you
probably poke holes in your own condoms by accident,” Adam
said.

Another reason Owen always brought his own;
certain brands were more durable than others. A man had to be
careful to use the right protection if he had adornments in certain
body parts.

“You guys don’t know what you’re missing,”
Shade said. “Kids are awesome.” The band’s lead singer had sported
a stupid grin of one degree or another all day. Sure, Shade smiled
now
, but if his ex-wife ever found out why he looked like
he’d been huffing nitrous oxide, he wouldn’t be smiling then. Tina
would rip his lips right off his face. His ex wouldn’t take kindly
to Shade dating her sister. Tina hated Shade’s fucking guts and
wanted him miserable for all eternity. So far, fate had been
working in her favor.

“Not all kids are awesome,” Adam said. “Some
are the spawn of Satan. But yeah, Jules is pretty awesome. Even if
she
is
related to you.”

Shade laughed and punched Adam in the
arm.

Owen exchanged glances with Kelly. They both
stiffened in preparation for an inevitable fight—Shade and Adam had
gotten into one in the limo after their last concert—but it seemed
the two over-inflated egos really were just goofing off and no one
was at risk for an ER visit. Good thing. Adam would have been
pissed if he’d had to room with his father. Apparently, his dear
old dad had gotten his hands on bad drugs and landed himself in the
emergency room the night before. Owen had been surprised that Adam
had even taken him to the hospital. Adam resented the old man,
whether they shared DNA or not. Owen couldn’t quite wrap his head
around the idea of hating one’s own father, no matter what he’d
done. Owen would be devastated if anything happened to any member
of his family—including any of his seventy-one third cousins.

“Have you heard from your dad?” Owen asked
Adam.

“Yeah. He bitched me out on the phone less
than an hour ago.”

“Still in the hospital?”

Adam nodded. “And apparently they don’t
subscribe to his favorite TV channel.”

“Well, fuck, Adam, you don’t expect him to
watch the Disney Channel, do you?” Owen said.

“That’s the channel he was bitching about.
Can’t miss
Hannah Montana
.”

Owen jerked back in surprise. “No shit?”

“Shit no,” Adam said. “I swear,
Owen
Mitchell
is a synonym for gullible.”

“
Adam Taylor
is a synonym for
asshole,” Owen countered.

“
Gabriel Banner
is a synonym for let’s
get the fuck on the stage,” Gabe said. “Isn’t it already after
nine?”

Owen turned to watch the crew standing around
a bank of amplifiers on the stage. The head of their road crew,
Jack, was squeezed behind the sound equipment, wiggling wires and
garbling swear words around the penlight he held between his teeth.
Owen moved closer and waved down one of the onlookers.

“What’s the hold-up?” he asked.

“One of the new guys caught a cord with his
foot and loosened some cables. Jack is fixing it.”

“And he needs an audience? None of you has
anything better to do five minutes
after
the show was
supposed to start?”

The group scattered. In his earpiece, Owen
heard Cash, their soundboard operator, say, “That’s got it, Jack.
Owen, we’re ready when you are.”

Owen was always ready to be on stage. He
loved that he got to start every show—a few precious seconds to
have twelve thousand screaming fans all to himself. Not many
bassists got to stand in the limelight.

He gave the rest of the band the thumbs-up to
let them know he was starting and took the steps up to the edge of
the stage. In the near darkness, Gabe hurried to settle behind his
massive drum kit, careful not to make a sound by bumping a cymbal
with those long limbs of his. As soon as he collected his sticks,
Owen began his bass riff. The crowd roared and whistled as the
first sound thrummed. The curtain dropped and a blinding white
light lit Owen from above as he sauntered across the stage playing
the repetitive bass line of “Darker.” He gave no indication that a
surge of adrenaline had his heart galloping a mile a minute as he
slowly made his way toward center stage. Owen lived for this shit.
He couldn’t believe this was his job. For the rest of his life,
Owen would worship at the altar of rock god Kellen Jamison for
sending him down the path of wickedness. Kelly had been the one
who’d forced Owen to learn to play guitar in an effort to get him
laid in high school. It hadn’t worked then—chubby bassists didn’t
get the girls—but it worked like a charm now.

The crowd got louder and louder as Owen
pretended to ignore them. When he reached his target—a white X
taped at the exact center of the stage floor—Gabe entered the song
with a wickedly rapid drum progression. Owen pivoted, beamed a
smile at the crowd, and dashed toward the audience as the rest of
the band entered the stage and the song.

The entire band was pumped tonight, which
guaranteed an amazing performance. Shade was in a great mood and
joked around with the audience and with Adam. The pair had talked
out some of their problems that morning, but Owen had had no idea
that a simple conversation would make such a noticeable difference
in the feel of the show. Owen and Kelly always had a great time
onstage; they were completely relaxed in each other’s company and
loved hamming it up for the crowd. Shade and Adam, on the other
hand, had spent the last couple of years acting as if they were at
war with one another both onstage and off. Owen couldn’t believe
how much the atmosphere had changed overnight.

Between “Going Down” and “Heaven to Pay,”
Owen slipped into the wings and grabbed a bottle of water from a
roadie. He chugged the cool fluid while Shade told the crowd a
story about their lead guitarist falling off the stage in New
Jersey.

“Face planted right on the cement,” Shade
said, slapping one palm against the other. “Wham!”

“It wasn’t funny,” Adam said. “I almost broke
my neck.” But he didn’t sound angry about Shade’s teasing.

Owen was grateful Adam had regained his sense
of humor. His short fuse was a liability.

“Luckily, I was drunk enough that I didn’t
feel a thing,” Adam said.

“Until the next morning,” Shade said.

“I can’t believe how well they’re getting
along,” Kelly said to Owen as he sipped from his water bottle.
“Calm before the storm?”

“Maybe. I keep waiting for one or the other
to explode.”

“Shade’s been acting happy all day,” Jack
said. “It’s just not right.” He took the empty water bottles from
Owen and Kelly.

“You can blame that on his bedmate last
night,” Owen said, grinning. “She must have a magic vagina.”

“I don’t care if it shoots glitter and
rainbows,” Kelly said. “That relationship can only end in disaster.
We’d better enjoy this while it lasts.”

As the pair returned to the front of the
stage, Shade asked, “Did you have a nice break?”

“No,” Owen said. Shade’s microphone was close
enough that it picked up his words and they were broadcast through
the stadium. “I was hoping the clear stuff in my bottle was vodka,
but it was only water.”

“Mine had vodka,” Kelly said. “The crew has
seen you drunk, Tags. Not something they want to see again.”

“I’m a fun drunk,” Owen said. “Everyone loves
to hang around when I’m drunk.”

“Yeah,” Kelly said, “everyone who wears a
skirt and wants it up around their waist while you go down
loves
to hang around when you’re drunk.” He rolled his
eyes.

Feminine approval roared from the crowd.

“If it bothers you so much, stop wearing
skirts, Cuff,” Owen said.

The crowd’s laughter egged them on.

“It’s called a kilt. And how else am I
supposed to show off my legs?” Kelly asked.

“Kilts don’t come in floral patterns.”

“Okay,” Shade said, “that’s enough out of you
two. This isn’t open mic night.”

“These people came to hear music, not your
lame jokes,” Adam said.

Since Gabe didn’t have a live mic, he played
a mini drum solo to enter his opinion on the matter. Owen and Kelly
kept their jokes to themselves for the remainder of the show, but
they still managed to have fun.

And the crowd responded, stomping on the
floor and thrusting their fists into the air.

“I’m heading for the shower,” Owen said after
the encore. He handed off his bass to one of the road crew and
looked at Kelly expectantly.

“I’ll join you,” Kelly said. “I’m
drenched.”

“Last chance for you pussy-whipped disgraces
to join us tonight at Tony’s new club,” Owen said, looking to his
other three band mates.

“Not happening, Owen,” Shade said. “Have a
good time.”

“I’ll have a good enough time for the three
of you,” Owen said. He glanced at Kelly, knowing he probably
wouldn’t utilize the club to its fullest capabilities. “For all
five of us,” he said under his breath. He vowed never to fall hard
for a woman.
Monogamy.
Where was the fun in that?

A pair of hands appeared over Shade’s
sunglasses. “Guess who,” a soft, sultry voice said from behind
him.

Shade’s hands reached back and began to
explore the feminine body at his back. “I know these tits,” he
said, a huge smile stretching across his face.

“Are you sure?”

Owen cocked his head to the side, and his
suspicions were validated. What in the fuck was she doing here?
Amanda made Shade happy—hell, that was obvious. But she was trouble
for him. Big trouble.

“Yeah,” Shade said. “It’s been ages, Pamela.
Are you ready for another musician to rock your bed?”

Amanda grabbed his nose and twisted.

“Ow! Amanda, I was only joking.”

“You knew it was me?”

“Of course I knew it was you. Pamela’s tits
are enormous, and yours are massive, at best.”

She scowled at her ample bust. “Maybe I’ll
get them enlarged,” she said.

“Don’t go messing with perfection, babe.”

She looked up at him. “You’re not surprised I
came?”

“You came already? Geez, all I did was fondle
your tits a little.”

Owen chuckled. God, he’d missed this
Shade—the guy who smiled and joked and didn’t look as if a
perpetual doom cloud was tailing him.

Amanda slapped Shade, but was unable to hide
her grin. This sister was so much easier to get along with than the
one Shade had married the first go round. But, yep, still
trouble.

“Or,” Shade said, “do you mean I’m not
surprised that you couldn’t wait until Saturday to see me again? Or
that you’d drive almost five hours just to get in my pants? Nope.
Not surprised.”

“Ugh,” she groaned. “I forgot how big your
ego gets after a show.”

“It’s not the only thing that gets big.”