Booker (Courting Chaos Book 3) Read online

  “No thanks,” Paige answered. “I think I’m going to go hop in the shower.” She gave me a little grin, then walked away.

  “I’ll get us some,” I told my mom. First, I grabbed bowls and spoons, then the ice cream from the freezer. I brought it all to the table and began scooping. As a grown man I didn’t have to have dinner before dessert.

  “You and Paige went for a walk tonight?” she asked.

  “Yup.” I slid her bowl toward her.

  “Looks like it did you some good. You’re looking a little happier.” She took a spoonful into her mouth.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Mom shrugged. “You’ve looked kind of… sad since you’ve been here.”

  “I love seeing you,” I countered.

  “I know.” She took another bite. “But all this isn’t you. You’re happier when you’re playing or on tour. Plus, I’m fine.”

  I couldn’t argue with her on that. Over the days I’d been home, my dad and I had barely spoken, which was pretty normal.

  “I love seeing you and I’d like for it to happen more regularly.” I tried not to notice the words that she slurred and just let the sweet creamy goodness melt in my mouth. “But you should go back. Your break is probably already over.”

  She wasn’t wrong. I’d been home a while and the guys were about to go back out on tour. I probably should’ve already left but something was pulling at me to stay. Could’ve been my uneasiness over my mother. Though she insisted she was on the mend, something tired in her eyes that kept me slightly suspicious. But it also could’ve been me not wanting to leave Paige just yet. Though that shouldn’t have been a factor. We hadn’t known each other long so leaving her shouldn’t matter to me. Yet it did.

  I spoke with Lawson a few times and he insisted that they could do a few shows without me if they needed to. I just had to say the word. Lots of band managed without one of their members for a few shows. Hell, I knew of at least one band that did without their lead guitar player for their entire European tour. The guilt of potentially not being there right away, earning my spot, carrying my weight, hung heavily around my neck.

  “I’m still fine on time, Mom.”

  “You should go,” Mom said again, pulling me from the memory of what Lawson said. “Go live your dream.”

  Chapter Eight

  Paige

  I should’ve trusted my first decision to skip the ice cream and take a shower. But no. Instead, I got halfway to my room and changed my mind, turning around to go back and have a bowl of ice cream with Booker and Marina.

  My second bad decision was to not run away when I heard them having what was obviously a private conversation. Yet I stayed and eavesdropped as Marina told Booker how sad he looked about not being on tour. How he should get back out there.

  Which… yeah. I supposed he should’ve, but I wasn’t really ready to let him go. He wasn’t mine to keep and we weren’t at a point I could ask or even wanted to ask him to stay. That would’ve been ridiculous. He was in a band. They were on tour. He should be on tour. That logical thinking did nothing to tamper down me wanting him around.

  The other day I’d noticed him reading something about Courting Chaos’ upcoming shows on his laptop. Booker should’ve been with them when the tour started back up. It was time to suck it up and get my focus back on work. Eye on the prize and all of that. I was here to take care of Marina and make enough money that my savings account looked like a pig about to go to market. Swollen and fat enough that I don’t have to panic if a bill was a little more than I’d expected. Or have a small heart attack if my car broke down.

  In reality, as a nurse, I made decent money. But life was expensive, and I’d grown up with nothing and none of it ever felt like enough. Barrett had said that I wouldn’t feel like it was enough until I found someone to share my life with, someone to lean on, and take on some of the responsibilities. I’d told her she was that person, but she’d scoffed and said she wouldn’t put out.

  After deciding Marina was correct, I soundlessly scurried back to my room and hopped in the shower like I’d originally intended. Then I pulled on some pajamas and grabbed my laptop. I had some charting to do anyway.

  Twenty minutes later, I was sitting on my bed with the computer in front of me and notes spread out around me when someone knocked on my door. It had to be Booker. Neither of his parents had ever knocked on that door once the entire time I’d lived here. They always sent a text.

  Tempted to pretend I was asleep, I thought better of it. I might not be able to be with him, but not seeing him until he left wouldn’t work out for me, either.

  “Come in,” I called out.

  The door opened and no surprise, Booker peeked in.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey.”

  That was all the encouragement he needed to fully enter my room and close the door behind him. He looked so good that it took all my willpower not to push everything aside and throw him down on my bed. But that would’ve been awkward. We hadn’t done anything other than kiss though it sure felt like he wanted to earlier.

  “What’s up?” I asked as he sat on the corner of my bed.

  “Wondered if you want to watch a movie tonight. Or hang out and talk.”

  “I have so much work to catch up on,” I said almost right away.

  His face fell.

  “I’m sorry,” I added.

  “No problem,” he said, though he was clearly disappointed. “Tomorrow?”

  “Yeah.” I shrugged. “We’ll see how much I get done tonight.” I should’ve come up with a better excuse, given the fact that he knew I had the weekend off. But distance was something I needed from him if he was going to leave. It was stupid really. I knew it and kept reminding myself that I had no claim on him. Yet the idea of him saying the words that meant he was going back out on the road made my heart sink.

  “Work, huh?” he asked while maintaining direct eye contact.

  He had no illusion as to what I was saying, the distance I was putting between us, the wall I was forming to insulate myself from being hurt. I’d done it all my life, so it was easy for me. I hadn’t known him long and the feelings that were already developing were so unlike me. Sure, I cared about people like Marina and the patients I’d had over the years, but deep connection… I’d had a lot less of that in my life. The ease with which I’d grown comfortable with Booker scared me.

  In all this silent contemplation, I suddenly realized that I hadn’t answered him about work really being the issue.

  “Well.” He pushed off my bed and headed toward the door. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  He didn’t glance back at me and I wasn’t sure if it bothered me more that he didn’t or that I knew I’d have caved if he had.

  After Booker left, I fell back onto my bed and stared at the ceiling. The important things I needed to get done had really just been busywork to keep me from joining in the living room. Not long after Booker left my room I pushed it all aside and tried to go to sleep.

  There had been few people in my life that I truly cared about. Byproduct of not having many people care about me beyond making sure they kept me alive or sometimes only for the check the state gave them for me. Yet somehow, Booker had quickly weaseled his way in with his humorous Star Wars references that he couldn’t have known reminded me of a happy time in my childhood with the best foster father I’d had. He wasn’t what you’d expect from someone in a band as big as Courting Chaos. But hey, it was my fault for letting down my guard.

  I’d fix that.

  In the morning, I headed out early before the rest of the house was awake. It was Saturday, my day off; I could do whatever I wanted to. My head and my heart wanted me to turn around and take Booker up on his offer to spend the day together. He hadn’t actually said that, but it’s what he’d meant.

  Instead, I sent Barrett a text telling her I was shopping all day, but that I’d drive down to meet with her if she wanted to join me.
Unfortunately, she was working, though she offered to pretend to be sick to get sent home. I said no way. We didn’t call in sick unless we were unable to get out of bed. We knew too well how precious it was to have a steady job with a decent income.

  The downside to shopping was that I never bought much, so it turned out to be more of a window-shopping experience. Splurging wasn’t in my DNA.

  In this case shopping reminded me of the trip to the grocery store with Booker. Meandering around a store had much more fun with him there to talk to. He’s said women like shopping and for most, that was probably pretty accurate. But not for me. I’d spent my life scrimping to buy necessities or watching my foster families budget down to the penny. Sometimes it was hard to force myself to even buy those if it’s something I could do without.

  After wandering for hours, I realized I hadn’t eaten breakfast and was starving. That meant early lunch for me. I headed for the food court to indulge in, what I was told, the best burger and fries around.

  With the first bite, I knew that what I’d heard was entirely right. I’d never had such a juicy hunk of meat in my mouth and I even let out an audible moan. But since I was eating alone, I pulled out my phone and began checking my Facebook for updates on people I’d met over the years. Barrett may have been the one person I counted as a true friend but there were others that I was friendly with. That was normal.

  The basic status updates were there, I rarely posted but used it more to not lose complete contact with people I’d met through work. Then I found that one of my friends shared a link to an entertainment news article. When I saw Courting Chaos in the headline, I couldn’t stop myself from clicking.

  I skimmed the article to find that there were reports of more turmoil within the band, centering around “insiders” who said that Booker Coyote left and wasn’t coming back.

  But that couldn’t have been true. I’d heard him talking with his mother and he hasn’t once indicated that he was done forever, actually quite the opposite. The question was, did I have the guts to ask him when I got back to the house?

  Chapter Nine

  Booker

  Mornings had never been my thing. Being on tour made that worse. It was almost noon by the time I left my room for the first time in search of food and, if I were being honest, Paige. She’d been weird last night. Kind of cagey. A total turnaround from the moment we’d shared by the fire pit.

  As I stood at the stove making some eggs for my breakfast, most people’s lunch, I heard the telltale clack of Mom’s walker coming down the hallway.

  “You’re finally up,” she said as she lowered herself into a chair at the table.

  “I am.”

  “You must’ve needed the sleep.”

  I chuckled. “I also go to bed a lot later than the rest of you.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” she said. I brought her a cup of coffee, decaf, because that was what Paige had told me she should have. She took a drink and winced. “It’s like I can taste the lack of caffeine.”

  “You cannot,” I said through a laugh.

  “You sound like Paige.”

  Well, that abruptly ended any humor I was feeling, and I inadvertently glanced down the hallway again. As if I was hanging around waiting for her to come out of her room.

  “She’s not here,” Mom said.

  “OK.”

  She rolled her eyes, sighed, and took another drink of her coffee but didn’t say anything more until I joined her at the table and dove into the heaping plate of eggs.

  “I saw you looking for her earlier,” she said. “Her car isn’t here, so she left before any of us normal people were awake.”

  “You’re telling me this why?” I took a long drink of my water.

  “I’m not stupid. I can plainly see that you like her.”

  “Sure.” I sat back and folded my arms over my chest, my gaze not wavering from my mother. “She’s nice and I want the best care for you.”

  Mom snorted. “This isn’t about my medical care and you know it. Something happened between the two of you.” I raised an eyebrow, hoping nothing in my face gave away the truth of it. “You’re going to fuck it up,” she added.

  “Mom!” I flung forward in my seat in complete surprise. In all my twenty-five years, I’d never once heard my mother say the word fuck.

  “What?” she asked looking over at me sheepishly. It was probably the first time she’d said it in her life. “It’s true, Booker. Paige is amazing. Beautiful, obviously. But she has such a big heart and is so caring. Though I don’t think life has given her a lot of reasons to have a big heart and care about others. I don’t know for sure, but she’s made certain comments and never mentions her parents. Nor does she ever talk about when she was a kid. Everybody has funny stories from when they were young that naturally pop up in conversation from time to time. Yet she doesn’t say a word.” Mom too another long drink.

  “You don’t know for sure?” I couldn’t eat anymore with the direction this conversation had taken. Still, I pushed the leftover food around the plate as if I intended to.

  “Your father obviously did a background check on her before hiring her, so I do know she grew up in foster care from a young age, but because she was a minor, we don’t know any of the details as to what landed her there. The foster care system isn’t always the best for everyone from what I’ve heard, and I never wanted to pry.”

  I was listening to Mom, but she hadn’t said anything Paige didn’t already told me, so I sat there nodding absently as she spoke. Though a nagging thought kept popping up that someone had hurt Paige. The idea made rage shoot through my veins. Mom told me that Paige had worked in an inner-city ER in Detroit for a couple of years before splitting her time between ER shifts at another hospital and the much better-paying rehab facility.

  When mom had her stroke, Dad insisted she be transferred down to Ann Arbor because, according to him, they were the best. Which, yeah, our local hospital was good but not exactly ready for anything. Before she was discharged, Dad talked to the doctor there about her aftercare. They recommended she be transferred to a rehab facility. But she only spent a couple of weeks there and then was well enough to finish recovery at home given the fact that my parents had the means to hire in whatever she needed. The doctor, before discharge, gave Dad a couple names that she’d gotten from a friend. Names of recommended nurses with rehab experience that were supposed to be great.

  By luck, they called Paige first and she jumped at the opportunity, according to Mom.

  “I don’t envy you, Booker,” Mom finally said.

  “Why is that?”

  “You’re going back on the road, but the girl you’re starting to fall in love with is here. That’s not a position I’d want to be in. Your father and I have had our obstacles, but we were always able to be near each other.”

  There was so much to dissect in that statement, but I knew where I wanted to start.

  “Girl I’m starting to fall in love with? We don’t know each other well.”

  “Not yet, but I see the way you two are so comfortable with each other. The looks on your faces when you came into the house last night and I know you stopped by her room afterward.”

  How in the hell… “She was working. I didn’t stay.”

  Mom nodded. “You’re a grown man. It isn’t my business either way.” She readjusted herself in the chair. “But, Booker, Paige is such an amazing person that if you don’t do something, even just try to figure out if there’s something between you two, someone else is going to get her heart eventually. How would you feel then?”

  I’d fucking hate it. Probably more than I should’ve admitted even to myself. I couldn’t love Paige yet. We’d basically known each other a week. I liked her. The idea of Paige living out her life happily made me happy. But having her do it with someone who wasn’t me made me want to punch the imaginary fucker in the face and I wasn’t even a violent person.

  “Not great, I suppose,” I said, hiding the tru
e extent of my feelings.

  “Then you need to figure all of this out.”

  “But she’s here and I’m… well, everywhere.”

  Mom nodded slowly and got this faraway look on her face as if there were something more she wanted to say but wasn’t exactly sure she should. “Your father left me once.”

  “What?” Pure rage filled my veins. That wasn’t something I’d ever heard mentioned or even insinuated before. What the hell?

  “Before we moved to Stone Creek,” she added. “You were just a baby.”

  I had no memory of ever living anywhere but in this house in this town and began to wonder if dementia was a side effect of the stroke. Mom wasn’t that old, but clearly her memory was fucked up. My dad doted on her. It was one of his few redeeming qualities, the way he loved my mother. But damn… maybe this was why.

  “It was too much for him. Wife, child. We were very young. He sent money to take care of us while he was gone. Of course, he sent money. Money was always the easy part for him.”

  She didn’t have to add that money was the easy part because he’d gotten it from his grandparents. Dad worked hard, but he didn’t have to. He could’ve lived whatever life he’d wanted to and not have to worry. Though his family had always stressed that hard work was made you a strong person. Not the money.

  “Mom… ”

  A tear fell down her cheek. She made no move to brush it away. She probably didn’t realize it was there. “Sorry. We don’t like to think about that time. Anyway.” She cleared her throat and sat up straighter. “You and I were on our own for about three months and then he came back.”

  “You better have made him beg,” I said because how was I supposed to tell my mother, clearly upset, that I wanted to find my father and wring his neck? This happened twenty-five years ago and if she could forgive him, who was I to tell her she was wrong?

  “Oh, yeah,” she said with a smile. “How do you think I got this house?”

  I chuckled but had always thought the life we’d lived had been an attempt at making up for something and truth be told, knowing now made me less angry at Dad. He was still making up for the asshole he’d briefly been a long time ago. It was likely I wouldn’t even tell him I knew. Unless I needed to get him off my ass about my lack of a real job. Then I’d pull the death card out.