Treat Me (One Night with Sole Regret #8)(77)

"I need to go get ready for the show," he said. He'd had his fill of fan worship and if Adam really was writing lyrics, he wanted to see it with his own eyes. "I hope you enjoy yourselves tonight."

After a few last handshakes and hugs, he slipped back into the limo and the crowd parted to let the car creep forward at a snail's pace.

"I thought they were going to kill you," the driver said, glancing anxiously at the fans visible through the windows.

"They love me," Shade said, with a smile. "Why would they kill me?"

"Not intentionally." The driver jumped when an eager fan slapped his palms against the hood of the car with a loud bang. People continued to walk beside the car all the way to the barrier fence that had been erected around the tour buses and equipment trucks. After verifying that it was Shade in the car, security let the limo through, but kept the crowd at bay.

"I love you, Shade!" a woman screamed from the crowd as he stepped from the car in the fan-free area behind the venue.

He waved to the people pushing against the barrier fence before trotting up the bus steps. He strode up the aisle and paused at the dining room table. Adam was sitting there with his sketchbook open and he was writing. Not drawing spiders. Not creating the fanciest "the" to ever grace a page. Lyrics were pouring from the tip of his pencil like he had no conscious control over the process. Shade's heart soared. They were going to be okay. With Adam's creativity on the loose, Sole Regret's success was guaranteed.

A long lean body blocked Shade's path, and he looked up into Gabe's grinning face.

"Is he writing?" Shade whispered, not wanting to disturb Adam.

Gabe nodded. "It's as if he can't stop. He also drew this wicked piece of artwork that we have to use for our next album cover. The dude has amazing talent."

Adam did have amazing talent. Shade could never do what he did. But he could try to keep Adam off drugs and scrape him off rock bottom every time he found himself there.

Shade pushed Gabe aside and slid into the empty booth across the table from Adam and waited for the guitarist to come up for air. Shade didn't want to be responsible for interrupting the man's flow of ideas, but he did want to witness what he'd feared he'd never experience again. 

As soon as Shade settled into the seat, Adam glanced up and met his eyes.

"It's back?" Shade asked breathlessly and nodded, as if the motion would make it true.

"Yeah," Adam said, though the haunted look in his eyes didn't make him seem too happy about his breakthrough. "I guess it is."

"Any guitar music yet?" Shade asked. He couldn't wait any longer; he pulled the sketch pad toward himself. "Lats oGodbey" was his first impression of the title, but after a second of concentration, he decided that "Last Goodbye" made more sense. He'd ask Adam to read the lines to him later and blame the man's handwriting for his inability to make sense of the written words. The trick had worked before; he had confidence that it would work again. "I'm ready to harmonize."

"And I'm ready to bang out a new tempo," Gabe said as he leaned his hip against the back of the bench behind Adam and made drumming motions with both arms. His eyes were still blackened from his run-in with that MMA fighter, but he no longer looked like roadkill. He seemed almost as enthusiastic about Adam's sudden spawning of lyrics as Shade felt about it.

"And I'm ready to bang," Owen said from the back of the bus.

Nothing new there.

Shade flipped through Adam's notebook, excited to find several pages of scrawled words. His stomach turned when he came across a drawing of Melanie's friend Nikki, and rage pulsed through his skull. It wasn't the work that upset him. The details of the drawing were remarkable and if it had been of a woman he didn't know, he would have appreciated the meticulous care Adam had taken in his sketch. The subject matter, on the other hand . . . Shade couldn't tolerate that. Half of Nikki's beautiful face and flawless body was torn and decayed-her guts were spilling out, bits of muscle and lengths of bone showing through the gaps in her flesh. The sketchbook dropped from his suddenly numb fingers.

"What in the hell did you do to Nikki?" he yelled. Hadn't the woman been through enough? If she ever saw this drawing of herself, it would destroy her already delicate psyche.

"Isn't that awesome?" Gabe said. "That's the sketch I was talking about. It would make a fantastic album cover."

"It's sick." But maybe it would make a fantastic album cover. If the woman depicted weren't easily recognizable as someone they all knew, he'd have thought the drawing was badass. "How could you draw a living person all torn apart like that?"