Coming May 2015
Chapter One
Griffin gritted his teeth as the cell phone on the passenger seat rang for the third time, the incessant buzz buzz buzz of the vibrate making him grip the steering wheel tight enough to turn his knuckles white.
Jerking the wheel, the tyres spun on the loose gravel that covered the parking lot of the dive bar where Spike had said to meet. The neon lights of the sign over the door of Holey Moley’s blinked on and off as Griffin let the car roll to a halt outside the main door.
Peering out through the windshield he noted the cracked glass of the front window that sat behind warped iron bars and the general run down appearance of the building and let out a sigh. Trust Spike to find the grungiest place on earth to lay low from the reporters.
Reaching over to the passenger seat, Griffin scooped up phone and swiped his thumb across the screen. It instantly came to life in his hand, the list of missed calls almost enough to make him feel special and important. But if there was one thing Griffin didn’t want it was to feel in demand. Especially not by his brothers.
Scrolling down through the list he quickly counted up the number of missed calls from his older brothers Riley and Stuart.
Twenty-eight… Griffin let out a low whistle a bittersweet smile twisting his lips.
Whatever was going on in Breaker’s Point, they were clearly desperate if it meant they had to contact him. Staring down at the screen he contemplated pressing the call button. It would be so easy to just return their calls and a part of him knew he should at least listen to the numerous voicemail messages they had left for him.
Griffin swiped his thumb to the left, quickly deleting the missed call listings in his cell history. The moment he did it a knot of tension seemed to loosen in his gut.
It served them right anyway. He’d asked them for help first and they’d both been only too happy to turn him down. And now they had the cheek to come to him asking for help? They’d clearly come off their meds.
The phone started to buzz once more and Griffin jumped, the phone dropping from his hand and slamming against the steering wheel as it bounced towards the floor of the car.
Shit! He muttered beneath his breath as he scrambled beneath the steering column for the ringing cell phone. Glancing at the screen as he grabbed it, Griffin quickly answered the call putting it on speaker.
“Griffin, are you there?” The familiar sound of his managers voice filled the car.
“Hey, Steve!” Griffin said, forcing a note of cheerfulness into his voice.
He had after all agreed with Spike not to let Steve know that there was anything wrong.
“Don’t hey Steve me, where the hell are you? You haven’t been answering your phone for days. In fact I can’t reach any of the guys. It’s like you’ve all just dropped off the face of the earth.”
“Something came up, that’s all.”
“Something can’t just come up, Griffin, not when you’ve got the rest of the tour to finish, with all the tickets that have been sold, this isn’t something you can just flake out on!” There was an edge to his voice that Griffin wasn’t used to hearing and he couldn’t help but wonder if Steve knew more about what was going on than he was letting on.
“I want you and the rest of the guys to come into the office, there’s something we need to talk about, something important…”
“Listen, Steve, I’m not sure what you think you know but whatever it is will just have to wait. You need to trust us, we’ve never not done a gig and we’re not going to start now but…”
“Griffin, I’m not playing around, I mean it, you need to come in, this is not something we can allow to carry on and…”
Griffin caught sight of Spike stepping out through the front swing doors of the bar, cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth as he stared down at his cell phone.
“Steve, I gotta go. Try not to worry so much, it’ll only make you prematurely grey.” Griffin ended the call as the other man started to protest, his voice cut off as Griffin’s thumb came down hard on the red button.
Sitting in the car he watched Spike for a minute, the concerned look on his bandmate’s face turning his stomach.
Spike was supposed to be the calm one, the man with the plan and it had been his idea that had sent Griffin back to Breaker’s Point.
It had been a stupid plan.
Pulling the keys from the ignition Griffin pushed the car door open and stepped out onto the loose gravel of the parking lot, his heavy black boots crunching over the stones as he crossed to the door.
“What took you so long? You were supposed to be here hours ago!” Spike said, his voice low and irritated as he took a drag of the cigarette in his mouth and spoke out through the side of his lips.
“I was held up, the traffic wasn’t exactly a peach you know and it’s a long ass drive down from Breaker’s.” Griffin felt himself bristle at the tone Spike seemed to be taking with him.
He wasn’t the one who’d had to go to his family cap in hand only to be humiliated when they turned him down.
Griffin couldn’t shake the look of shock Riley had worn when he’d told him how much he wanted to borrow. A quarter of a million was peanuts to a man like Riley Reynolds, it wouldn’t have cost him a thought to hand out that kind of money. It was part of the reason Griffin felt so utterly betrayed by his own family.
He knew without a doubt that if it had been precious Stuart asking for the money, that Riley would have given it to him without a moment’s hesitation. But because he was the one asking for the money, Riley had turned him down.
It stung and the confrontation with his brothers had left a bitter taste in his mouth.
You could always go to Dyson, he’s still family after all and he more than anyone else would understand feeling betrayed by those who were supposed to be there for you no matter what.
Griffin dismissed the thought the second it popped into his head. It was by far one of the worst things he could possibly do. Dyson had made his choice all those years ago and Griffin wasn’t in the mood to beg even if Dyson was his twin and owed him big time.
“Fine, whatever, man, did you get it?”
“I told you on the phone there was a problem with the money…”
“Christ, Griffin, I ask you to do one thing and you can’t help but screw it up. These people aren’t playing, they mean business and if we don’t pay them back…” Spike trailed off, his blue eyes a little too wide, his pupils a little too big.
“You’re high again aren’t you? You said you were done with all of that, Spike, you made a promise to me, to the guys!” Griffin sighed and pushed his hands back through his hair as he stalked into the bar, the door slamming back against the grotty wall with the force of his entrance.
He scanned the dimly lit room, his eyes picking out the rest of the band huddled around a small table at the back of the bar. His gaze moved on and fell on the curvy beauty standing behind the bar.
Her red hair fell around her shoulders in waves and Griffin felt a prickle of desire roll down through his body as he watched her lean across the bar, her breasts straining against the overly large check shirt she wore.
He couldn’t help but grin as she lifted her gaze to his, a flash of annoyance passing behind her bright green eyes as she caught him staring at her.
Griffin sauntered towards her, relaxing into his role as sex god extraordinaire, a title he had more than earned the right to. There wasn’t a woman on earth who could resist him and for good reason.
He caught sight of his reflection in the speckled mirror behind the bar and his smile wilted.
You look like shit! The small voice in the back of his mind loved to state the obvious and now was no exception.
Griffin tried to shrug it off, he needed a distraction from everything that was going wrong in his life and the stunner who was eyeing him suspiciously was the perfect balm for his battered soul.
It wasn’t something he was particularly proud of, attempting to solve all of life’s problems by screwing the brains out of whatever woman he happened to sweet talk into bed wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
Hook-ups were meaningless and they only ever seemed to be a temporary escape from the painful memories that plagued him whenever he closed his eyes. But it was better than the alternative and although they were meaningless they were at least enjoyable.
“Hey, beautiful, I’m Griffin, you’ve probably seen me on the t.v…”
“Hi, Griffin, my name is I couldn’t give a damn who you are, so you can keep on walking with that sweet talker act because I ain’t buying the shit you’re selling.”
Griffin couldn’t help but grin a little wider as he slid onto one of the tattered barstools. Anticipation curled in the pit of his stomach, it was always nice to meet a challenge and from the looks of the woman who stood glaring at him from the other side of the bar, she would be worth the effort.
“Do you greet all your customers with such award winning charm?”
Her expression darkened and Griffin couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like to suck her cherry ripe bottom lip between his teeth as he kissed the hostility out of her.
“Only the ones I know are assholes.” She quipped back before beginning to turn away.
“I’ll have a double whiskey,” He said, halting her in her tracks before she had the chance to stalk away.
Griffin smiled as he watched her shoulders sag before reaching up to the shelves above her head and grabbing a shot glass. She slammed it on the counter in front of him and took a bottle of cheap looking whiskey from beneath the bar.
“Got anything that won’t rot my stomach?” Griffin said, wrinkling his nose his tastebuds withering in anticipation of what was coming.
The red head grinned but it wasn’t a friendly look as she half filled the glass and pushed it towards him.
“Nope, I’m afraid on this side of town this is as good as it gets.”
He knew she was lying, but Griffin also knew when he was beat and so he scooped up the glass and knocked the contents back in one foul mouthful.
He fought to keep his expression from twisting in disgust, he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of knowing just how brutal it had been. But he knew he’d failed the moment her smile widened and she topped up his glass before walking away. The sound of her laughter burning in his ears.
“She’s nothing more than a frigid bitch, I wouldn’t bother with her if I were you.” Spike said as he climbed onto the barstool next to Griffin.
“Piss off, Spike, when I want to learn how to become a junkie I’ll give you a call.”
“Oh come on, don’t give me that holier than thou crap, Griffin, it really doesn’t suit you. We’ve all made mistakes, it’s the stress of the situation. A shit storm we’re buried up to our necks in because of you. I just needed a little help in clearing my head.”
“Don’t blame this on me, I was trying to pull us out of the mire, I was trying to get us back on our feet. How was I supposed to know this would happen?” Griffin said, his grip tightening on the tumbler in front of him.
Spike’s words bit home, it was Griffin’s fault, he’d caused the mess and it was his job to drag them back out of it. But it didn’t make any sense and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t wrap his head around how it had all gone down the drain so quickly. The money should have lasted longer, should have stretched further…
“Come on, you know what these guys are like, nice when you’re asking for the money but the friendliness disappears just as soon as they have you where they want you.”
“But the money shouldn’t be gone, I made sure we had enough to see us on this tour and then some. I don’t understand how it could have just been frittered away.”
Spike shrugged and reached over, his hand grabbing the tumbler of whiskey away from Griffin. He downed it in one go, his face twisting and a shudder rippling through his skinny frame as he dropped the glass back onto the bar.
“I don’t know what happened to it, maybe Steve screwed up? He hasn’t ever been the best manager in the world, maybe it’s time for a change?”
Griffin stared down at his hands, his fingers sliding over the callouses caused by years of playing guitar. Spike was probably right but that didn’t change the fact that they were in trouble up to their necks and Griffin didn’t know how to fix it.
“Cami, get your dumpy ass over here and pour me another drink.” Spike shouted down towards the bartender.
Griffin watched as his cruel barb hit home and the pretty bartender’s shoulders tensed in response. But she kept her back to him, ignoring his shouts that were gradually becoming more and more aggressive.
“Shut up, Spike, you’re making a fool out of yourself.” Griffin said, gritting the words out from between his clenched teeth.
If there was one thing that made him uncomfortable it was Spike’s mistreatment of women. Griffin knew he was no angel but he actually liked women, loved the feel of their bodies, the taste of their lips, the sound of their laughter when they were truly happy. There was one thing on this earth that he enjoyed more and it was a genuine smile but since making it big with his band Black Special, Griffin had found it practically impossible to find a woman who could look past the celebrity status he enjoyed and so every smile he was privy to was tainted and lacked the genuine emotion he sought.
Unlike Spike whose soul mission on earth seemed to be to make women as miserable as he pretended to be. Griffin had often wondered if Spike was in fact a misogynist and if he was, then what had driven him to such an extreme?
“I’m making a fool of myself? I’m not the lazy whore behind the bar pretending not to hear her thirsty customers calling her name.”
Griffin started to turn in Spike’s direction a smart response on the tip of his tongue but it was already too late. His mouth dropped open as Spike hopped over the bar and started pulling bottles out from underneath the counter.
“I knew there had to be something better back here than the piss water she’s been serving us.” Spike said, bending down to pull another bottle out.
“What the hell are you doing?” The shout from Cami drew Griffin’s attention and he couldn’t help but admire her as she strode down the floor towards Spike.
She reached him quickly and grabbed the bottle of vodka he had just cracked open and was taking a long swig from out of his hands. Alcohol poured down the front of him and Griffin fought to keep the smile from his face.
“I’ve tolerated you in here all day but this is too much, I want you all out.” Cami said, her voice firm as she started to put away the bottles he’d pulled out.
“We’re not going anywhere, we like it in here, if you want us gone then you know what you need to do, you can call the cops.” Spike said, a grim smile on his face as he reached out to take back the bottle.
She swatted away his hand with the dishrag she held and bent to put the bottles back beneath the counter.
Griffin saw it coming, the look on Spike’s face changing, the smile disappearing as he made a grab at her.
“Look out!” Griffin shouted, but his voice was lost in the sound of bottles crashing to the floor as Spike grabbed her by the neck and slammed her back into the shelves behind the bar.
Griffin hopped over the counter and dived towards Spike as he raised his fist and made to slam it into the cute bartender’s face.
Griffin wrapped his arms around his bandmate’s torso, dragging him backwards away from the stunned woman he’d just attacked. He watched her drop to her knees as Spike released her, her legs buckling beneath her as she crumpled onto the glass covered floor.
Griffin had a moment to wonder how badly she was hurt before Spike spun in his arms and drove his fist up into Griffin’s jaw.
Pain bloomed in his face, his head snapping back with the force of the blow. It never ceased to amaze him just how strong Spike truly was. He looked weedy and weak but Griffin knew he was wiry and fast.
Spike was on him before he even had the opportunity to properly react, his blows raining down on his body as Griffin fought to push him off.
Balling his hands into fists, Griffin lashed out, his punch catching Spike square in the face. Blood exploded from the cut that appeared above Spike’s nose and the telltale crunch of bone told Griffin that he’d broken the other man’s nose.
Spike growled and made a dive towards Griffin, blood dripping down the front of his face. Griffin caught him as he barrelled into chest, the momentum carrying them both to the ground, the blow temporarily knocking the air out of Griffin's lungs.
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