“The fuck is going on here?” Ryder demanded, his face livid.
“Look,” their manager interjected. “This is getting out of control. Let’s everybody cool off and we can reschedule—”
“Fine.” Wyatt interrupted him with a shrug. “If that’s what you want, then I’m out.”
Poppy turned to stare at him in open-mouthed horror. As did the guys in the band. Wyatt couldn’t quit—he just couldn’t. His playing was the backbone of the whole band. He set the rhythm, created the drum fills that had helped make them famous. Their sound would be totally off without him. It would be—
“Fuck you,” Quinn roared. “You aren’t quitting.”
“This is total bullshit.” Jared slammed his fist down on the kitchen table. “And it isn’t happening.”
“If you quit, we all quit,” Ryder told him. “And then Bill will never get his lost revenue back.”
It was exactly what Poppy had expected them to say—she knew this band. Knew how they felt and knew how they operated. They had kicked Micah out because he had betrayed them. But Wyatt’s addiction was something else entirely. They’d stood by him the last three months, and they would stand by him now, no matter what. Her father wasn’t loyal to anything but his bottom line, so he didn’t understand that kind of allegiance. Even after the guys had ponied up fifty percent of the insurance deductible themselves, he still thought strong-arming them was going to work.
Sure enough, her father started blustering as soon as the guys lost their shit, going on about contracts and lawyers and ruining them. Their manager was talking just as fast, threatening legal action against the label if they forced Wyatt to quit.
And Wyatt…Wyatt just stood there, shoulders hunched, hands shoved deep in his pockets. Looking for all the world like a guy who had just lost everything. Like a guy who’d thought he didn’t have anything left to lose.
Taking matters into her own hands, since she and Caleb were the ones who were going to have to fix this mess, she walked over to the laptop and tried to once again catch her brother’s eye. She couldn’t end this farce of a meeting and still keep her cover, but he could. More, he needed to.
He must have seen the look on her face, because he responded with a quick, “Let’s take a few minutes and then reconvene after everyone’s had a chance to cool off a little.” Then he was logging off the call and taking her father with him.
As the teleconference dropped, the sudden silence was overwhelming. At least until Jared turned to Wyatt and demanded, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Chapter Nine
He didn’t know what he was doing. Didn’t have a fucking clue, in fact. He just knew that it felt like what was left of his world had just come crashing down around his ears.
Had he really just quit the band?
Had he really just quit the only thing in his life that made any fucking sense at all?
His gut churned like he’d been on a week-long bender, and for a second he was sure he was going to be sick all over Quinn’s cherry wood floor. But in the end, he managed to swallow the sick down as he stared blankly at his feet and tried to figure out what the fuck he was supposed to do now.
The only problem was, he didn’t even know where to start. He was lost. Completely fucking lost without the band. Without his identity as the drummer of Shaken Dirty. Without these guys who had stood by him through so fucking much.
And so, in the end, he didn’t answer Jared’s question. He didn’t say anything at all, in fact, except for a mumbled “Sorry.” And then he was out the door before he lost it completely.
He walked in a quick, straight line away from the studio, beating a hasty retreat until he’d put some distance between himself and the back of the main house. When he got to the beginning of the large copse of trees that shielded the back acre of Quinn’s property from the dwellings—and the dwellings from curious fans who’d managed to sneak or talk their way onto the island—he leaned against the closest tree and reached for his cigarettes. He needed something—anything—to concentrate on besides the craving crawling through his veins like poison. Or salvation.
He found Poppy’s lollipop instead and that—that was what finally made him lose it. That was what finally put a crack in the composure he’d been trying so fucking hard to hold on to.
He hurled the damn candy away from him as hard as he could, watched as it slammed into a tree about a hundred feet away before falling harmlessly to the forest floor.
It wasn’t enough, wasn’t close to being enough. He whirled around, started to pound his fist into the nearest tree. Only the thought of the damage it would do to his hands—to his ability to play music—had him pulling his punch at the last minute.
But then he remembered that it didn’t matter, that he wasn’t Shaken Dirty’s drummer anymore. And he slammed his fist straight into the tree’s trunk.
Pain reverberated though his hand and up his arm as his knuckles split open under the force of the impact. He didn’t give a shit. In fact he relished the pain because it took the place of the cravings—and the anguish that was slowly ripping him apart. Desperate for the emotional numbness, he pulled his arm back, prepared to hit the tree again.
Except this time, he didn’t get the chance. Because suddenly Poppy was there, her cool hands wrapping around his arm. Staying the punch. Freezing him in place.
“Stop!” she
told him, her voice low, firm, and more compassionate than he deserved. “You’ll destroy your hands if you keep that up.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” he said with a shrug, pulling his arm from her grasp and turning away.