Broken Open. Lauren Dane
did everything else she’d seen him do. Though their show had ended nearly two hours earlier, the surface streets around the venue were still busy. He seemed to be doing some sort of complicated geometry so she looked out the window as he wended and wove his way to the freeway.
Once they’d got away from the crowded streets he relaxed a little. Enough that she felt she could speak again.
“You were on point tonight.”
He smiled, keeping his attention on the road. “Yeah?”
“I saw you once. I mean before. When you were still touring. In Louisville. I was there visiting my family.”
“It’s crazy to me that we both have family within a forty-mile radius of one another in Kentucky.” Wariness edged his words. She talked about family but she bet he thought about his addiction.
“It was early,” she said because it was important he know she saw him at his best. Preheroin. “I think maybe right after Ten To Midnight came out. Anyway, that’s a long way to say I saw you play before so I have a comparison to make. You were good at the club shows last December. You were like that times a thousand. Tonight, Ezra Hurley was a rock star.”
And it was hot. So hot she’d nearly melted just watching him move. The Ezra he’d been out there, utterly self-assured, sexy, in charge, made her shiver. When he played and wasn’t singing, he’d worn a smirk like he was thinking of something really dirty.
Best of all, he’d owned it, putting it on like a shirt that fit perfectly. All that hot, in-charge stuff had rolled off him in rushing waves. Tuesday wondered what he did with all that energy when he wasn’t onstage. Except for those brief moments when he turned it on her and she nearly drowned in it, he was pretty chill.
From a distance.
There was a darkness to Ezra. Something the darkness that lived in her seemed to respond to. A bone-deep grief he didn’t use as a shield—in fact he tried to downplay it. But it was there and she bet it was part of what motivated him to succeed now.
She shivered at the idea of being the focus of that sort of attention. She had a very strong feeling Ezra didn’t hold back in bed. At all.
She also had a very strong feeling she’d know. Soon.
She’d never been so attracted to another person. Not in the whole of her life, which also made her uncomfortable and feeling as if she was being disloyal to Eric even though he’d been dead four years. It wasn’t like she’d achieved expert-level widow status or anything. Nope, she had zero idea of how to begin to think about it.
Thank goodness Ezra spoke to pull her out of that particular self-punishing reverie. “It felt right. Tonight I mean. There’s a rhythm onstage. It’s different than anything else you do as a band. I’ve been off tour for years now. Enough that my brothers have a timing that’s apart from me at this point.
“In the studio, well, that’s one thing. Out on the road they’re working with tour musicians, who are really good, no lie, but it’s about the three of them. The club shows were more like jamming in the studio. Tonight, that unit of three opened up and I fit where I had belonged at one time when there were four of us in Sweet Hollow Ranch.”
She wondered if it was hard to see that they’d moved on without him. Or if he was tempted to go back out on tour after tonight’s performance. But she didn’t know him well enough to delve deeper. Not without knowing if she’d make it worse.
She liked Ezra a lot and she didn’t want to screw things up, but she wanted to know him better.
“Do you find yourself, you know, wishing you’d be able to go back out on tour? I mean... I don’t know what I mean. I mean, I do, but in my head it sounded better than it does out loud.”
He snorted. “It’s fine. I’m not sure how to feel about it. Not yet. Not entirely.” He paused and she left it, hoping he’d elaborate but knowing he might not.
“The album just dropped. Mary and Damien are about to have a baby and of course they’ll want to be home, close to family. Paddy and Natalie are going to be intertwined for a while—it’s not like he’ll be willing to leave her behind. It’s time to put our lives first. Take care of what’s important.”
Tuesday didn’t miss the way he referred to the band as we.
“We should have done it for Vaughan,” he muttered.
“Do you want to elaborate?”
“You’re not just going to insist I share?”
She waved a hand. “Who am I to do that? I say things out loud sometimes that I may not mean to. Or maybe I do, but I’m just tossing it out to talk about it later.”
“I suppose with Vaughan it’s more a tossing the idea out there and maybe we can chew over it later.”
“Okay.”
Things settled into an easy silence for a while. Tuesday liked quiet. She grew up in an insanely loud house. Always alive with kids, family and friends. It meant she cherished silence and guarded her life zealously, keeping the number of people who didn’t appreciate the same to a bare minimum.
Except her family. They were loud and crazy and there was no changing that.
“So tell me what you’re thinking right now,” Ezra coaxed in his supersexy voice.
“You really want to know?”
“I’m a grown man, Tuesday. I say what I mean.”
Okay then. Why was that so hot? Why did he make her itchy and sweaty and a little lonely after they parted?
“I was thinking about quiet. About how I like it and how we’d been sharing a nice quiet moment. I wish more people liked it.”
“Quiet amplifies loneliness for some people. Maybe for most people.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being lonely sometimes.”
He hummed. A sound of agreement and approval and it, too, was hot. God, everything about him was hot. How did that even happen? How did one person come with so much on every damned level? What sort of cosmic Scooby Snack was Ezra Hurley anyway?
“I didn’t come to appreciate silence until I was in rehab.”
* * *
TUESDAY SETTLED INTO the seat, looking out the window as he spoke. Ezra had a gut feeling it was because she knew he’d prefer she not watch him as he revealed himself.
He didn’t know why he was sharing this stuff. Other than he liked her. He liked being with her and the slow getting to know one another thing was new. And slightly disconcerting because she was such a stupid choice for him to make and he was going to make it anyway.
“They sent me to this place in the middle of nowhere. Just trees and fresh air and mountains in the distance.” He’d gone straight into their detox unit for the first week. “Rehab is loud. I mean, and look, I know how lucky I was that the place I went was as great as it was. But there’s a lot of crying in rehab.” Puking, too. He hated that part worse than all the crying.
“The rehab was on acres of land and the main house and the outer cabins were fenced off. It was, I remember even now, a three-mile circuit and I’d walk it like four times a day just to go be alone.”
“Did you feel lonely?”
“Yes.” He’d alienated everyone who’d ever mattered to him. He’d fallen so low and had hurt so many people the loneliness had nearly drowned him.
“When it’s quiet you can’t avoid it.” Her words, the tone in her voice, told him she knew this firsthand.
“No. No matter how much it hurts. No matter how much of it is your own fault.” He shook it off. “Anyway, I had to find better ways to process all my shit. What I’d been doing was killing me.” It wasn’t in a group