Rock Wedding(10)

Noah was the one who’d finally caught on to what was happening. He’d walked into their favorite bar a couple of days after all three men returned home, to find Abe partying with a dozen groupies, white powder scattered openly on a glass table in front of the sofa where Abe was seated. Noah had known he couldn’t make Abe move, not in the belligerent mood Abe had been in at the time.

So the guitarist had gritted his teeth and just kept an eye on him.

Later, Noah told him he’d kept shouting, “She sent me fucking divorce papers!” As if he was the injured party. Eventually, sometime during the night, the drugs and the alcohol had done their work. He’d passed out… to wake the next day and discover his three closest friends had hauled him physically into rehab.

Eight weeks later, he’d come out sober and angry. Always so angry. At fate. At God. At Sarah. She’d left him, wanted to divorce him. Even then, he hadn’t realized he should be begging and crawling on his knees to make up for what he’d done, how he’d abandoned her.

No, he’d fallen back on anger, the emotion that made it easier not to feel pain, not to feel panic, not to feel the staggering sense of loss that would’ve rocked him had he stopped for a second and thought about what those divorce papers actually meant. Anger was a great insulator. Furious, he’d gone to get his wife, to remind her she’d taken vows with him that he wasn’t about to allow her to forget, but he’d been months too late.

His demons had awakened with a vengeance when he pulled up and saw Jeremy Vance kissing her on the doorstep to her apartment.

He hadn’t been sober for most of their divorce battle.

He was stone-cold sober now. But while he’d gone through rehab and stuck to it this time, stuck hard, there was one thing he’d never done until Zenith: apologized to Sarah. Not because he didn’t think she deserved it. No, it was because he hadn’t been able to face her. Sarah’s opinion of him meant everything—and he’d screwed that up beyond redemption.

He’d known seeing disgust or hate in her eyes would kill him.

Even more, he’d thought she was happy with Vance, was painfully aware he didn’t have the right to push himself into that happiness. He’d given up all such rights. The fact he missed her each and every day didn’t change that.

But the moment at the music festival when he’d realized Sarah was bare feet away, he couldn’t have kept his distance if his life depended on it. He’d barely breathed until she met his gaze… and he saw no hate in her, only a guarded wariness that was a thousand times worse.

The apology he’d given her that night was nowhere near enough to make up even a tiny bit for the monumental bastard he’d been to her. Part of him said it was selfish to push himself back into her life, even if it was to say sorry a thousand times over.

Another part of him said she deserved a pound of his flesh.

Pushing back the piano stool, he stood, grabbed his keys. Sarah wouldn’t expect him to show his face again so quickly after she’d flipped him off—and he knew where he was most likely to find her if she wasn’t at home.

He swung by her neat little house first; the gate was locked, the windows all closed, and no one human responded to his long press of the gate buzzer—but he did hear a canine woof or two from the fenced-off backyard. He’d jumped the gate earlier today, but given that he was much bigger and stronger than the asshole who’d hit Sarah during Zenith, he wasn’t worried that Jeremy Vance would do the same. Still, he’d make it a point to tell her about the possible security vulnerability.

If she didn’t punch him in the face the first second she saw him.

Getting back into the rugged black SUV that was the only vehicle in which he felt truly comfortable, he drove out to the Los Angeles County Arboretum. He wouldn’t even know the place existed but for Sarah—and he’d lived in LA far longer than her. One day soon after their wedding, she’d disappeared without warning; when he’d called to check that she was okay, she’d told him she’d discovered “the most amazing garden” within easy travel distance of the city.

Abe had gone with her during the good times, enjoyed the peace of the serene landscapes. Enjoyed even more how bright and bubbly and happy his wife was as she told him about the flowers, his sexy nerd who fooled people into thinking she was a party girl without a brain. Abe had always known different, always known Sarah had one hell of a mind to go along with that knockout body.

He’d figured she’d study further once they settled in, get herself a bunch of letters after her name. It had given him a proud kick that his wife was so intelligent. The only thing he hadn’t factored in was his own assholishness. How the fuck was Sarah supposed to study when he was off his head half the time?