“Be good, Dad. I’ll try to visit when the tour’s over. I’m working on Leo to get some time off. We can hang.”

“No such thing as love—remember that! At least, no such thing as a woman’s love.”

I stand by the door, battling with myself. Battling with the memory of a girl, and an angry woman who wants me inside her like she needs to breathe—even if she hates her body for wanting me.

No such thing as love . . .

“I’m a rockstar, Dad,” I say, the words bitter in my mouth. “Clearly, I sing about that shit because I believe in it. I just don’t believe in it for me.”

Outside, though, I’m morose as shit as I pull my cap over my face, slide on my aviators, and slip into the back of the waiting car.

I drum my fingers on my thigh and stare out at the windows of all the buildings outside.

I used to climb to her bedroom window. It’s not as simple as it looks in the movies, but I managed. One particular night, I’d wound through the thorny, spiky bush, up the damn trellis, onto the window ledge, then up to her window—which had the tiniest fucking ledge in the history of ledges—hanging by one arm and knocking until she opened. Then I swept inside, both of us plucking the thorns from my T-shirt.

“Fucking bush,” I growled.

“Shhhh,” she said as she ran to check the lock on her door. “What are you doing here?”

“Can’t sleep. Dad’s drinking. Breaking whatever the hell’s left. Wanted a look at you.” I take her in and holy shit, I never thought she slept in that sort of sleep gear. Tiny shorts. Loose T-shirt hanging over one shoulder.

“And you came to me because . . . you needed a teddy bear?” she asked. “If I were ever to be considered a bear, I’d be more like a grizzly.”

“Then, Grizzly, you’ll have to do.” I kicked off my shoes and slid into her bed, pulling her in with me.

She laughed lightly and tried to stifle the sound. She never laughs, this girl, but she laughs—with me.

“I couldn’t sleep either,” she whispered suddenly up at me, tracing circles on my forearm. Right where I have my tattoo now. Fuck, she killed me. She’s always been a closed little box, Pandora, and not prone to saying much at all about how she feels. She can be bleeding to death and be asked if she’s in pain, and this girl? She’d probably shrug even when it’s killing her.

I get her. Somehow, I get her. And she gets me. That night, I clutched her tight, and within seconds, she dozed off in my arms. She used to trust me enough to do that. Lie asleep, pressed close to me. I set my phone alarm for 5 a.m. so her mother wouldn’t catch us. Then I stared at her ceiling and wondered if she thought of me whenever she stared up at that twirling fan. Or if she thought of me at all the way I thought of her when in bed.

My mother died when I was just three. I remember how she smelled, and felt, but not her face. I kind of hate that I can’t remember her face. Hate even more the fact that my father didn’t cope well and got rid of any pictures before I had a say in it.

When my dad was caught dealing, the government was quick to take the cars, the house. We moved in with Uncle Tom until the trial, and he was worse than Dad. Alcohol is all the man knew. My friends? Interesting to see how they scattered once my dad’s face was plastered on the evening news.

In a day I went from being the most popular little shit in private school to being the loner at the table. Everything, poof, in the wink of an eye.

It felt surreal. Unreal.

Couldn’t sleep, eat, because I somehow knew what would happen next.

I dreaded it, even while I waited for the last shoe to drop. That last drop to spill the glass of water that would drown me. Tighten the last fucking notch of a noose that hanged me. I kept waiting for the one thing I had left—the one I most wanted—to go poof as well.

When your life does a one-eighty on you, you develop fears. And I feared losing her more than I feared anything. Hell, I feared I already had.

At 5:02 a.m. I hadn’t had a wink of sleep, but there she was, and all I wanted was to make sure she was there for me. Digging into my pocket, I curled my fingers around my mother’s ring. The only thing I could save. Because I’d hid it. Legally, I shouldn’t even have had the ring. But it was all I had of my mother, and I wanted my girl to have it. The next day I took her out to the docks and gave it to her before we left the yacht we stole into.

The way she’d kissed me . . .

Guess every time she kissed me back like that, I kidded myself that she loved me too.

One day, months later, the day after Dad was sentenced, it happened.

I found out that the girl I wanted to love me like I wanted to breathe . . . could never be for me.

I had to go. I left, hating every step I took.

No booze, no prostitute, no girl, nothing could numb me enough for me to stop, just fucking stop, needing her.

Not even a song.

Drunk, I poured it out months later, needing to blame someone for my shitty life. So I blamed the source of my pain. And my new friends, the Vikings? Hell, they embraced the anger in it, the irony of mixing it with Mozart. I sing it now, every day it seems, and I could sing it a million times more, but I still won’t believe that I wouldn’t kill for her to love me.

For a fucking minute.

A second even.

To just give me a fucking kiss and tell me that at least back in those days, she loved me.

NINE

DANCING TO THEIR TUNE

Pandora

I wake up early, and the choreographer waits for me in the hotel ballroom, along with eleven other dancers. Letitta is also there, watching with a smirk as I come in. I’m coffee-less, humorless, and sleepless. I don’t even smirk back.