Beautiful Mistake

“Fine. We’ll talk later.”

Of course, I immediately started to protest. “Later? Why can’t—”

Caine silenced me with a kiss. Again.

Later works.

I listened to Caine’s heartbeat as my head rested on his chest.

“In high school, I had a girlfriend for a few months. I cheated on her.”

His voice was low, and I had to move my ear away from his heart to be able to hear. Turning my head, I rested my chin atop my hands. The room was dark, although my eyes had adjusted enough to see him as he spoke. We were both naked, and I was feeling pretty content.

“You were young.”

“With her twenty-two-year-old sister.”

“How old were you?”

“Seventeen.”

“Well, that still sounds like you were young. She was older and should have known better.”

“My first year of college, I met Abby. We’d been dating for about five months when I decided to take a semester off and go on tour with my band. We were opening for a band that wasn’t much bigger than us, but we thought we were going to be rock stars. That was my first experience with groupies. I didn’t technically cheat on her, I guess. After seven weeks on the road, I called her and said we should see other people. She thought I was just lonely, so a few nights later, she flew out to Seattle to surprise me and see our show. She caught a show alright, but it was backstage and involved me and two women.”

I wrinkled my nose. “You had a threesome?”

“I hadn’t even known Abby was there. Apparently when she walked in, one of the girls invited her to join us, but I was too busy to notice.”

“That’s kind of gross.”

“Abby got pissed, drank too much, and apparently fell walking up a flight of concrete stairs at her hotel. She rolled her ankle and broke her nose on the way down. Spent the night in the ER, and her parents had to fly out and get her the next morning. I didn’t even know she’d been in town until the following week.”

“That’s horrible. Although I’m not sure that was even your fault. It sounds like you tried to do the right thing by breaking it off with her.”

“Even if I try to do the right thing, I wind up fucking things up.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

Caine was quiet for a long time. When he spoke again, his voice was pained. “My best friend Liam and I started our band when we were twelve. He was a pretty incredible songwriter. The only problem was, he did his best work wasted.”

“I’ve read that Dylan wrote most of his best work on heroin.”

“Yeah. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. It’s not just a tagline to sell T-shirts. The year things really started to take off for our band, so did Liam’s drug hobby. At first he drank a few Red Bulls to stay up and play or write songs—eventually the Red Bulls turned into Adderall because it’s easier to take a pill, and we were playing gigs near college campuses, and students take that shit like it’s M&Ms. But the Adderall keeps you up for twenty-four hours, and you need to crash, so you take another pill to help you come down.”

“Are you talking about Liam or about you?”

“I dabbled, but nothing like Liam. At the time, I didn’t see it as clearly as I see it now. I guess I thought it was the norm. Me and the other guys didn’t even know how bad things were for a while. Then one night, we tried to wake him for a gig, and we couldn’t get him up. When the hospital pumped his stomach, there were so many drugs in there—and not just pills—it was a miracle he’d survived. I had no idea the Adderall had turned into coke and meth.”

“Oh, God. I’m sorry.”

“Liam went to rehab the first time, and we went back to Red Bulls for a while after that. But it never lasted long. He’d build back up to out of control, and we’d drop him off at rehab. We got a recording contract offer during his last stint in rehab. I should’ve known it was too much for him to handle. Part of our deal was that we had to bring five new songs. That’s a lot of pressure on someone who’s just getting out of rehab.”

I already knew one of his band members died from an overdose. I didn’t want him to have to say it.

“I read about your friend when I Googled you after we first met. I’m so sorry.”

Caine was quiet for a long time. He shut his eyes, and when they opened, I could see them glistening, even in the dark.

I stroked his cheek. “You can’t control someone with addiction.”

“No. But I didn’t have to pile on the stress. We shouldn’t have taken the deal and put that on Liam.”

“Was Liam happy about the deal?”

“We all were. We were twenty-one with a record deal from a major label.”

“What happened wasn’t your fault. Addicts look for reasons to justify what they’re doing. If it wasn’t that, it would have been something else.”

Caine sighed. “I don’t have a good track record, Rachel. Even when I try to do the right thing, I fuck it up somehow. I haven’t told you about even half the bad choices I’ve made. About Liam’s girlfriend, who was too damn young to be on the road with a band, but I let it happen anyway. About when I was sixteen and met this girl—”

I’d heard enough. Just like he’d done to me earlier, I silenced him by pressing two fingers to his lips. “Shut the fuck up, Caine.”

He smiled through his sadness. “You wanted me to talk to you.”

I climbed up his body and straddled his hips. I’d been holding the sheet around me and let it fall to my sides. “Thank you for sharing with me.”

He gripped my waist and surprised me by lifting me up to my knees. Reaching down, he grabbed his cock and held it up, positioning it at my opening. “I’m not done sharing yet.”

Rachel

Things between Caine and me changed last night. The struggle that had been ever-present in his demeanor toward me seemed to have ended. The dawn of a new day brought a lighter—even happy—version of Caine.

After kicking him out of the shower so parts other than my breasts and between my legs could get cleaned, I took a few minutes to reflect on everything that had transpired. The pulsating stream of water massaged my neck as I closed my eyes.