Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Cash

Iturn to the clock on Gunner’s side table. I’ve been watching the time tick by slowly for the last hour. The last month has been amazing—beyond amazing. Gunner Shaw wasn’t what I was looking for. He definitely wasn’t what I expected to find when I left New York, but he’s everything I need.

Gunner, simply put, is perfect.

Turning to my side, I see his face peacefully sleeping. The moonlight illuminates his pouty lips and long dark lashes, juxtaposed with the dark tattoo etched on his neck—a skull with a blade going through its eye. I’m not sure a man who looks like he could cut out your heart and eat it should be so beautiful.

A smile forms on my lips as a sweet melody swirls in my mind. I gently caress his face, careful not to wake him as I rise from the bed, draped in Gunner’s soft cotton Ramones t-shirt. I walk to the guitar in the corner and pick it up. My fingers glide along the neck, and I close my eyes, cherishing the warmth the wood and nickel strings ignite in me. It’s been a long time since my love for music has been pure. A long time since it was solely for the artistry and not for the money.

Plucking the strings is so natural, like an extension of my being. I’m so lost in my mind that I don’t notice the knock on the door right away. The sound becomes louder and louder, and a woman’s shriek is so ferocious that it almost splits my ear drums.

“Gunner! Gunner, get up,” I say while shaking him out of a deep slumber.

When his eyes open, they appear like they might bulge out of his head.

“Fuck,” he mutters, stumbling around the room and throwing on his discarded clothing. “Get dressed. Quick,” he orders, shoving my clothing at me, one piece at a time.

“That’s something I don’t hear often from you,” I mumble.

Confusion bubbles inside me. I’m unsure why Gunner’s being so stern. After last night, I assumed we’d gotten closer. The way he’s acting now makes me uneasy.

“You don’t have a girlfriend, do you? Was all this some fucked-up game? Are you a cheating piece of shit?” I ask, shoving my sweater over my head and pulling it down.

“I have a girlfriend.”

Red. Big blotches of red blur my vision. Without thinking about it, I grab the wineglass on the nightstand and throw it at his head. “You fucking scum bucket. I know a lot of assholes. I never thought I would get tied up with one.”

I rush to leave the room when he grabs my arm and pulls me to him. “I have a girlfriend who goes from being a good little slut to a hell demon in two seconds flat. You’re the only girlfriend in my life, Sparrow. Relax.”

My eyes lift from his grip on my biceps to his steel-blue eyes. “Then why are you freaking out as if another woman is about to catch you having an affair?”

“She isn’t another woman. Well, I guess she is, but it’s not what you think,” Gunner says in a frantic rush.

“Isn’t that what all cheating scumbags say? It’s not what you think. I know I’m young, but I’m not a complete moron,” I spit at him. I shake off his hold and push him aside, blinking back tears.

“Hey…” Gunner grabs my arm again. “It’s my mother.”

My feet freeze to the ground at his words. The room spins, yet I’m firmly in place. Loretta Shaw, the woman who ignited my love of music, is on the other side of that door.

I tidy my hair and try to smooth the wrinkles on my shirt.

“Are you prepping?”

“It’s Loretta Shaw. She’s about to find me in her only child’s apartment. I don’t want her to think I look like garbage. I need to set a good first impression.”

Gunner stares at me with a panicked smile. He grabs my hands in his. “My mother is difficult.”

“It’s Loretta Shaw!” I yell.

Her slurred voice reaches us from the other side as she jiggles the door handle. “Who the hell is in there, Gunner? Open the damn door.”

Gunner gives me an apologetic look and rushes to open the door. I’m rendered speechless as I finally see my musical hero.

This isn’t the same woman I’ve seen in magazines, full of life, wearing beautiful ball gowns. She was a feminist in denim-washed jeans, her fiery red curls tied back in a loose ponytail, wailing on a guitar as if she were born to play.

The woman staring back at me now looks like a ghost. Unkempt hair. Eyes sunken and ragged. Her once glowing skin now pale and withered.

This isn’t the Loretta Shaw I grew up watching. This is a mean drunk on her way to rock bottom.

This is Gunner’s mother.