Matter of Fact (paperback)

Carl has spent the better part of his life wrangling rock stars. As Double Blind Study’s tour manager, he doesn’t get a lot of time to think about himself. His life is about keeping the guys happy and safe. He failed at that once, he’ll never do it again.
But an unexpected encounter with the one great love of his life has him thinking about more than the band.
Miranda’s old college boyfriend shows up at her family’s house for Christmas. Surrounded by carols, cookies, and rock stars, old feelings surface.
Is it just the magic from the mistletoe bringing them closer, or has the intense love they once shared come back for good?
This book takes place during the Christmas break of Learn to Fly.
PG 13 for language, repressed feelings, light heat, and too much eggnog.

Prologue

Cologne, Germany


Luke’s gentle guitar strum was joined by the lead singer’s soft hum as the melody came to him.
Carl had had the privilege of witnessing the man write songs before, but never like this.
The emotional weight of their circumstances contrasted with the hopeful lightness of the new song being created. The combination had kept Carl’s heart in suspense. In anticipation of a musical cure for the ugliness that they were now all faced with.
And the greatest weight—the one of responsibility—hung on all of them.
Though no one more than Carl.
Because he’d known.
He’d recognized the signs and had chosen to not confront the drummer.
His friend.
Addiction was a monster that thrived in shadow and secret.
And now Mike lay in a hospital bed hooked up to machines whose sole purpose was to keep him alive.
Three days.
It had been three days since Carl had brought Mike into the ER in Cologne, Germany.
He would never forget the moment he found him on the floor of his hotel room.
The door had been left hanging open, kept from closing by Mike’s limp body crumpled on the floor.
Carl’s phone vibrated in his pocket, making him jump.
He stepped out of the room as he frowned at the display.
All it said was “Unknown.”
If a journalist had gotten ahold of his number, he was gonna lose it on them. Ilsa’s unseemly press conference hours after the overdose and before Lindy had a chance to write up a statement had left all of them jumpy and suspicious.
“Hello,” he growled into the phone, spotting a stairwell at the end of the hall and heading that direction.
“Carl?”
The sound of her voice sent an unexpected rush of emotion through his body and he gripped the phone tighter.
“It’s me. It’s Miranda.”
Carl let the door to the stairwell close loudly behind him.
After that he stopped.
Stopped moving, stopped breathing, stopped thinking.
“Carl?” she asked carefully. “Are you there?”
He cleared his throat. “Yeah.”
She sighed softly through the phone. “If you’d rather not—”
“No,” he cut her off. “Please don’t hang up.” He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Please.”
“Okay,” she agreed gently.
Carl took a deep breath and sat down on the top stair.
“I saw the news,” she said after a minute.
Of course she had. The music world had been rocked within the past 72 hours.
Double Blind Study drummer hospitalized. Drug overdose suspected.
It had been everywhere.
Ilsa, Mike’s girlfriend, hadn’t shut up since the moment it had happened. She was all sorts of tearful with the press.
And yet she hadn’t made one attempt to come to the hospital to see the “love of her life.”
“I’ve always said women are trouble.”
“You’re usually right.”
The connection between them took hold over the phone and he felt it in his gut. An anchor. A center amidst the chaos that had always been his life.
“I was the one who found him,” Carl confessed. A fact that he had relayed to the authorities but one he hadn’t been able to process on his own yet.
“Oh, Carl,” she whispered.
He had no fears of telling her the things he would never want the press to know. Miranda was a safe place. As the older sister of Harrison O’Neil, the band’s lead guitarist, and also Carl’s first love, Miranda knew the ins and outs of band life in a way most of the world never would. She’d seen it from its inception. Been there for the rise.
And now the fall.
“I failed them,” Carl said, voice thick with fear and regret.
“Why would you say that?”
“My job—my entire purpose for taking off with them all those years ago had been to keep them safe.”
“You didn’t do this, Carl.”
“Didn’t I?” he argued. “I saw the signs. They were all there. And I didn’t do anything.”
“Okay…What could you have done?”
Carl pressed his lips together because he knew what she was doing. And truthfully, even though it sucked, it helped.
Because he had no idea. And having that reminder, while it should have alleviated his guilt, even a little, made him feel that much worse.
“I don’t know,” he growled. “But not doing anything sure didn’t help, did it?”
He instantly regretted snapping at her.
For three days he hadn’t talked to anyone about what he was thinking or feeling. Sure, he’d talked to Lindy and the nurses and the boys. But that was all work stuff. Keeping-it-together stuff.
Miranda was personal.
“I’m scared too, Carl,” she said, reminding him of all the things he’d promised and all the promises he hadn’t been able to keep.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice rough. He cleared his throat and breathed deeply through his nose. Crying had never been Carl’s emotional outlet. The closest he’d ever got was at his dad’s funeral but that was only because he’d had so much whiskey he’d nearly pissed himself.
But he was scared.
The center of his gut was in a never-ending freefall.
“I shouldn’t snap at you.” He patted the pocket on his chest, feeling the familiar pack of cigarettes. Miranda hated it when he smoked, that’s why he’d tried to quit years ago. And he almost had. But then they’d fallen apart and soon after so had his convictions.
He stood and made his way down the stairs to the exit.
As he wrestled with his lighter and a smoke, Miranda cleared her throat and her voice went up an octave. A sign she was nervous.
“I, uh. I was thinking about flying out there.”
“Out where?” he asked, sitting down on the curb.
“To where you are.”
Pain shot through his gut and he closed his eyes.
“You know, to be there for the guys.”
Carl took another slow drag of the cigarette, drawing the smoke and nicotine deep into his lungs.
“Right,” he murmured, releasing the smoke into the air around him. “For the guys.”
“And for you.” Miranda inhaled audibly and she rushed out, “Unless you have someone there for you. I don’t want to… ”
Across the parking lot a bird swooped down into a space and pecked through what was left of food that had been tossed. It was just crumbs. But the eagerness with which the bird gobbled them up make Carl hurt in old places.
“No, I’ve got it,” he said, sounding way more casual than he felt. But that had always been his gift. He sucked hard on the cigarette and burned his throat. “I’m sure you have work anyway.”
“Dammit, Carl,” she said softly. “Please. Let me care about you.”
He shook his head even though she couldn’t see him.
Hope was a dangerous thing to give a man.
As long as he was away from her, he could maintain the façade of being all right. He could put on his grumpy face and say his swear words and no one would know he was only half alive.
But being around her, seeing her, hearing her… his incompleteness would be apparent.
“Carl?” she asked when he hadn’t spoken for a couple minutes.
“Yeah,” he acknowledged, putting the little that was left of his cigarette to his lips and lifting his eyes to where the bird had been. A pair of legs blocked his view and he followed them up to brown eyes.
He froze, still pressing the phone to his ear.
Miranda stood before him, worry in her eyes and wrinkles in her clothes.
She shrugged in frame and expression.
Carl slowly removed the cigarette butt from his lips and dropped it onto the concrete. He swallowed, trying to figure out if the combination of stress and sleep deprivation was causing him imagine things.
“You’re here?” he asked.
She nodded, sliding the phone away from her ear and ending the call.
“I didn’t want you to be alone,” she said after a beat.