Rock Star by Roslyn Hardy Holcomb Read Free Book Online

tired and didn’t want to hang out. Hell, we all were, so we weren’t suspicious. Anyway, Twist started screaming…We all ran down there…yeah, I saw him, too. He had turned blue, his mouth was all purple, the veins in his neck stood out. It looked like he had vomited. There was…” He rubbed his eyes again. “Oh God, I’d never seen a dead body before.”
    Callie felt like screaming herself at the picture Bryan had painted. She could not imagine what it felt like to see the dead body of a close friend. Especially a friend who had died such an appalling death. She was relieved for Bryan’s sake that he hadnactually had the initial shock of finding Brodie, but knew that seeing someone he loved in that condition had to have been incredibly traumatic.
    She took a deep breath to regain her composure, “So what do you think you could’ve done? I mean, you tried to talk to him. You got other people who were close to him to talk to him. You were available for him. What else do you think you could’ve done? Do you really think he’d still be alive if you had stopped the tour? Maybe he would’ve died sooner. Maybe having to get it together for the tour actually helped prolong his life. Do you really know?”
    “That’s the real pisser, Callie. I don’t know if it would’ve made a difference or not.” Bryan sighed heavily, finally ready to acknowledge the truth. “I know you’re right, Callie,” he choked out, “but it doesn’t make it any easier. It just seems like I put the band before Brodie’s life. Did we really have to go right then? Why didn’t we stop and make him go to rehab? I should’ve been able to do something.”
    “Bryan, the person has to want help. You offered help, and he didn’t accept. What more was there to do?” She looked on as he put his head back down on his bent knees and brought his hands up to cup the back of his head. She could tell that he was deep in thought, but wasn’t sure that her words had penetrated. After watching him for several long moments, she finally touched his shoulder. “Are you okay?”
    Bryan raised his head and gave her a bittersweet smile. Then he reached out and grasped her hand in his, raised it to his lips, and gently kissed each finger. “Thank you, Callie,” he said, looking intently into her eyes. “No, I’m not okay, but for the first time in a very long time, I really do think I’ll be okay soon.”

Chapter 5
    Much to Bryan’s frustration, after the trip to Chattanooga, his relationship with Callie remained pretty much the same. He continued spending as much time as possible with her, but she seemingly felt, at most, a polite interest in him. Bryan couldn’t help being aggravated by her behavior as he knew he had not imagined the closeness between them that day. She had given him exactly what he needed to realize the futility of blaming himself for Brodie’s death. Others had given him sympathy, even pity, but Callie had been the first to make him stop kicking his own ass and look at the situation in all its sordid glory. Of course, she’d probably forced him to let up on himself only so there’d be room for her to ride his ass. He puzzled over the heretofore unknown but perversely masochistic quirk in his nature that caused him to actually enjoy and even look forward to the sarcastic little comments she was prone to make. Had he become so jaded by the way people fawned over him that he actually enjoyed being on the receiving end of her witticisms? Apparently so. He couldn’t recall ever delighting in a woman’s company the way he did with Callie. In all his previous encounters with women, he’d participated in the niceties of conversation only to the degree necessary to get the woman into bed, and sometimes if she was particularly star-struck, conversation wasn’t necessary at all. That wasn’t the case with Callie; he was astonished to find that he actually enjoyed talking to her. His celebrity status notwithstanding, she didn’t