Chapter 9: Reconnecting
The grey light of dawn found them still entangled, a knot of limbs and damp sheets. It was a cold, clinical light that stripped the room of its neon mystery, exposing the empty glasses, the discarded clothes, the reality of what they’d done. Lily watched it creep across Andy’s sleeping face, smoothing the harsh lines of tension into something younger, more fragile. For a moment, she could see the boy she’d fallen for, before the tours and the theatrics and the bitterness had carved him into this complicated man. The guilt, which had receded in the dark, surged back with the sunrise, a nauseating tide. Adam was likely awake now, too. He was probably a man who saw dawns cleanly, without the hangover of other people’s mistakes.
Andy stirred, his eyes fluttering open. He didn’t smile. He just looked at her, the blue of his eyes clear and frighteningly sober. “You’re thinking again,” he murmured, his voice gravelly with sleep.
“It’s morning,” she said, as if that explained everything.
“It’s a Thursday.” He shifted, propping his head on his hand. The sheet slipped to his waist. “What’s the plan, Hartley? Walk of shame? Redemptive hug with the boyfriend? Pretend this was a fever dream?”
“I don’t know.” The truth was a hollow pit.
“I do.” He sat up, the movement decisive. He reached for his phone on the nightstand, its screen already blinking with a dozen missed calls and notifications. He ignored them, thumbing open a contacts list. “We tell them we’re gone.”
“Tell who?”
“Everyone. Management. Label. Your band. My band. The fucking hotel concierge.” He found a number and put the phone to his ear, his gaze locked on hers. It was a challenge.
Lily’s heart hammered against her ribs. This was insanity. A nuclear option. “Andy, you can’t—”
“Watch me.” Someone answered. “Mike. Yeah. Listen. Something’s come up. Personal. I’m going dark. Two weeks. Minimum. No, it’s not negotiable. Cancel what you can, reschedule what you can’t. Handle it.” He didn’t wait for a reply. He ended the call. The finality of it echoed in the silent room.
He held the phone out to her. “Your turn.”
It felt like picking up a loaded weapon. Her fingers were cold. She took it, scrolling through her own contacts. Her manager, Jessica, would be apoplectic. They had demo sessions booked, meetings. Adam… Adam would be destroyed. But looking at Andy, seeing the absolute, reckless conviction in his face, she felt a perverse thrill. This was the kind of line you didn’t come back from. It was a declaration of war on the ordinary life she’d been trying to build. The scavenger heart beat a violent, triumphant rhythm.
She found Jessica’s number. “Jess. It’s Lily. I’m… I’m out. For a bit. Two weeks. I know. I know what’s scheduled. I don’t care. Personal emergency. Tell the guys. Tell… tell Adam I’m safe, but I can’t talk. No, you can’t reach me.” She hung up before the shouting really began, her hand trembling. She had just torched her career bridge and set fire to her relationship. The air smelled like ash and possibility.
Andy took the phone back, a slow, fierce smile touching his lips. It wasn’t a happy smile. It was the grin of a man jumping off a cliff. “Now,” he said, tossing the phone onto the rumpled bed. “We’re ghosts.”
The first week was a descent into a private, hedonistic underworld. They ordered room service at strange hours, leaving trays of half-eaten steaks and congealing fries outside the door. They never left suite 712. The world outside the floor-to-ceiling windows became a silent film, a diorama of irrelevant lives. The suite transformed into their universe: the bedroom a confessional, the living room a stage, the massive bathroom with its steam shower a ritual chamber.
Time lost its shape. It was measured in crescendos and silences, in the emptying of minibar bottles and the refilling of the ornate bathtub. Sex was the primary language, the only dialogue that didn’t end in circular arguments about the past or the terrifying future.
It was relentless. It was on the black leather couch at three in the afternoon, her knees digging into the cushions as he took her from behind, both of them still sticky from the bath. The only sound was their ragged breath and the wet, rhythmic slap of skin on skin. “You feel that?” he’d grunt, his hands gripping her hips hard enough to bruise. “That’s the only goddamn truth left.” She’d cry out, not in protest, but in agreement, pushing back against him, meeting each thrust with a force of her own.
It was on the thick rug before the dead fireplace, the patterned wool scratching her back as he knelt between her legs, his mouth a ruthless instrument. He’d lave at her with a focused intensity that felt less like pleasure and more like archaeology, as if he were trying to unearth the exact version of her that remembered only him. “Taste yourself,” he’d murmur, pulling back, his lips glistening. “Taste us. That’s what we are now. Nothing else.” And he’d kiss her, forcing her to share the salty, intimate flavor, a carnal communion that left her dizzy.
It was in the walk-in shower, steam fogging the glass as he pinned her against the cold tile. The water beat down on them, and he fucked her slowly, agonizingly so, his eyes holding hers the entire time. It was a contest of endurance, a silent war where the weapon was intimacy. She’d cling to him, her nails scoring his shoulders, her legs wrapped tightly around his waist as the water plastered their hair to their skulls. He’d whisper filthy, beautiful things into the shell of her ear, promises he had no right to make and descriptions of what she did to him that were so graphically raw they bypassed her brain and went straight to her core, making her clench around him violently until he finally, shudderingly, lost his meticulous control.
They slept in tangled heaps, woke, and did it again. It was an exorcism performed with flesh. Every fuck was an attempt to purge the other—Andy trying to fuck Adam out of her memory, Lily trying to fuck her own guilt into submission. They used each other’s bodies as battlefields and sanctuaries, interchangeably.
The second week, the intensity curdled, became something darker, more desperate. The silence between bouts grew heavier, filled with the unspoken question of what now. The room service trays piled higher. The decadence began to feel less like freedom and more like a slow suffocation. They started arguing again—sharp, toxic bursts about nothing. Who used the last towel. The volume of the vintage jukebox he’d had wheeled in, forever playing their own history back at them.
One afternoon, the argument escalated. She’d found his secret phone, a cheap burner tucked in his luggage, and a text thread with a label exec asking if “the situation was contained.” He’d lied. He hadn’t gone fully dark. He was managing the narrative, protecting his own ass while she’d burned her life to the ground.
“You manipulative bastard!” she’d screamed, hurling the phone at him. It bounced off his chest. “You’re still fucking curating! I quit everything! I ghosted everyone! And you’re still on the leash!”
“I’m protecting us!” he roared back. “You think they’d just let us disappear? They’d send a fucking SWAT team! This keeps them placated!”
“It’s a lie! It’s all still a performance with you!” The hurt was volcanic. She felt duped, a fool in his grand, tragic opera.
The fight turned physical. Not violent, but desperately carnal. It was a collision of fury and betrayal that found its only outlet in possession. He grabbed her, his mouth crushing hers, tasting of coffee and venom. She fought the kiss for a second, then bit his lip until she tasted blood. He growled, spinning her around and bending her over the back of the plush velvet armchair. He didn’t bother with foreplay. He yanked her silk shorts down, and pushed into her in one brutal stroke. She was tight, angry, dry, and it hurt, a sharp, stunning pain that made her gasp.
“This what you want?” he snarled, pumping into her with a rough, punishing rhythm. “Raw and real and ugly? No curation? Here it is.”
Tears of pain and rage sprang to her eyes, but she pushed back against him, meeting force with force. “Fuck you,” she spat, the words choked.
“You are,” he grunted, his hands gripping her shoulders. “You absolutely are.”
It was hateful. It was perfect. It was the logical end of their two-week dive. It stripped away the last pretense of romance, leaving only the addictive, dysfunctional core. When he came, it was with a shuddering, angry groan, his body slumping against hers. She felt raw, used, and profoundly, terribly connected to him. She came a moment later, a sharp, clenched release that felt more like a seizure than pleasure, wrung from her by friction and emotional chaos.
They stayed like that for a long minute, breathing hard, still joined. The anger bled out, leaving a spent, hollow exhaustion. He pulled out slowly. Without a word, he went to the hidden bar, pouring two hefty glasses of bourbon. He brought one to her, handing it over. She took it, her fingers shaking. They drank in silence, standing naked in the wrecked living room, like survivors of a shipwreck.
The knock came two days later, in the deep, silent heart of the night. They were, by then, creatures of the witching hour. The argument had passed, settling into a grim, quiet détente. They were on the bar—a long, lacquered slab of reclaimed wood lit from beneath by a soft purple glow. Lily was sitting on the edge, her bare feet dangling. Andy stood between her legs, slowly, almost absently, tracing the sigil tattoo on her inner thigh with his tongue. It was a quiet moment, a lull in the constant storm. They were both drunk on expensive tequila and the fragile, unfamiliar peace.
The knocking was insistent, not the polite rap of hotel staff but the firm, familiar pound of someone who knew them. Bam. Bam. Bam.
Andy froze, his head lifting. Lily’s blood went cold. The outside world had found them.
“Ignore it,” Andy muttered, his voice low.
Bam. BAM. BAM.
“Andy! Open the fuck up, man! We know you’re in there!” The voice was muffled but unmistakable. Ben Bruce. Concern laced with impatience.
Then another voice, higher, sharper. “Lily! C’mon, enough of this shit!” Ronnie Radke.
More voices, a murmur of them. The management teams, clearly, had sent in the cavalry—their friends, their peers, the only people who might be able to breach the fortress.
Andy cursed, pushing himself away from her. He grabbed a black silk robe from a nearby chair, shrugging into it but not tying it. “Stay here,” he said, but it was pointless.
She stayed on the bar, frozen, as he stalked to the door. He didn’t open it. “Go away!”
“Not a chance, mate,” came another voice—James Cassells, pragmatic. “We’ve got a fucking intervention out here. Open the door or we get security.”
Andy looked back at Lily, his face a mask of furious defiance. This was their sanctum. Letting them in was a surrender. But the pounding intensified, a chorus of fists now.
“Fine!” Andy roared, striding back across the room not to the door, but to her. It was an act of pure, rebellious theatre. If they were coming in, they’d see the truth. All of it. He reached for her, his hands on her waist, and lifted her as if she weighed nothing, laying her back flat on the cool, smooth surface of the bar. The purple under-lighting threw her body into stark, surreal relief.
“What are you doing?” she whispered, shock cutting through the tequila haze.
“Showing them the fucking ‘situation,’” he hissed, his eyes blazing. He pushed her knees apart, his robe falling open. He was already hard—the adrenaline, the anger, the possessiveness firing his blood anew.
The pounding was now accompanied by the sound of a keycard swiping. The lock clicked.
As the door swung open, Andy pushed into her. It was a deep, claiming, brutal entry. Lily cried out, a sound of shock and intense, unwanted stimulation. Her head turned toward the door, her eyes wide.
They flooded in. Ben Bruce first, his usually cheerful face etched with worry, then Ronnie, all sharp angles and dyed hair. Matt Good and Max Green, Danny Worsnop with a raised eyebrow, James Cassells, Bobby Schubenski, and Mitch Lucker bringing up the rear, a wall of disbelieving male musicians. They stopped as one, just inside the doorway, a tableau of stunned immobility.
The scene before them was raw, explicit, and utterly unconcealed. Lily was splayed on the bar, her hair fanning out, her body completely exposed under the garish light, her knees hooked over Andy’s shoulders. Andy, robed but open, was buried inside her, his hips moving in a slow, deliberate, and unmistakable rhythm. He turned his head, just slightly, to look at the gathered men. Sweat dripped from his brow. His expression wasn’t one of shame, but of savage, defiant victory.
“You wanted to check on us,” Andy said, his voice steady, thick with a dark pride. He thrust deep, making Lily gasp. “Well? Here we are.”
The room was silent save for the wet, rhythmic sound of their coupling and Lily’s hitched breath. The neon from the alley bled in, painting the horrified, fascinated faces of their friends in pulses of red and blue. No one moved. No one spoke. They were audience to a crash they could no longer prevent, forced to witness the spectacular, ugly wreckage of the last two weeks, made horrifically, publicly physical.
Lily shut her eyes tight, but it was too late. The outside world was in. It was staring. And she was, irrevocably, forever, Andy’s.
And she was, irrevocably, forever, Andy’s.
The silence in the doorway was absolute, a vacuum sucking the air from the room. It lasted three heartbeats, four, punctuated only by the wet, intimate sound of Andy’s hips meeting hers and Lily’s stifled, shuddering exhalations. The purple under-lighting from the bar carved their joined bodies into a tableau of shocking clarity, every detail rendered in obscene high-definition: the sheen of sweat on Andy’s back, the tight clench of Lily’s toes, the dark flush spreading across her chest.
Ben Bruce was the first to break. He let out a long, slow breath, more a sigh of profound resignation than shock. “For fuck’s sake, Andy.” He didn’t look away. None of them did. It was a train wreck they were mandated to witness.
Ronnie Radke barked a short, humorless laugh. “Well, that answers the ‘are they shagging’ question.” He stepped fully into the suite, kicking the door shut behind the group with his heel. The final click echoed. They were sealed in now, eight men standing in a semi-circle around a bar that had become an altar.
Andy didn’t stop. If anything, he seemed to draw a perverse energy from their horrified audience. His thrusts became more pronounced, theatrical, each one making Lily’s body shift on the polished wood. He kept his eyes on Ben, a defiant challenge in his blue glare. His hand moved from her hip to her breast, palming it roughly, his thumb circling her nipple in a grotesque parody of tenderness. “You wanted a status update,” Andy grunted, his voice strained with effort. “This is the status.”
Lily wanted to disappear. The exposure was a physical agony worse than any of their roughhousing. She turned her face away from the men, pressing her cheek against the cold lacquered surface, but she could feel their collective gaze like sunlight through a magnifying glass, burning precise, shameful holes into her skin. Her body, traitorously, was responding. The shock, the sheer audacity of the situation, the relentless friction—it was coalescing into a tight, involuntary coil of pleasure deep in her gut. A moan escaped her, high and thin, and she bit her lip to trap it.
“Christ, man, have some dignity,” Matt Good muttered, rubbing a hand over his beard. He looked at the ceiling, then at the floor, his eyes skittering anywhere but the central spectacle.
“Dignity’s overrated,” Andy shot back, his rhythm faltering for a second as he adjusted his stance. He was close. Lily could feel the telltale tension in his thighs, the shortening of his strokes. “You’re looking for two people who are very, very alive. Aren’t you?”
Max Green, ever the pragmatist, finally moved. He walked past the bar without a glance, went to the window, and yanked a heavy velvet curtain off its rod. The fabric groaned as it came down. He turned and in two long strides, he threw the vast drape over them.
It descended in a cloud of dust and faded opulence, plunging them into sudden, muffled darkness beneath the burgundy fabric. The world reduced to smell—old velvet, sweat, sex—and touch. Andy’s movement didn’t cease. If anything, the blind, enclosed space made him more frantic. He drove into her, a final, desperate series of thrusts. Lily grabbed fistfuls of the curtain above her head, the fabric tearing at the seams as she arched her back, a silent scream on her lips as her climax ripped through her, sharp and shameful. He followed seconds later, a raw, gut-deep groan vibrating through his chest and into hers, his body locking, pulsing inside her.
For a moment, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing under the curtain. Then the weight of him partially collapsed onto her, hot and damp.
Outside their fabric tomb, the world began to move again. Bottles clinked. Someone turned on a lamp. A couch cushion sighed as someone sat.
“You two finished with the live show?” Danny Worsnop’s voice drawled, laced with a weary amusement. “Only, we’ve been fielding calls from hysterical managers for a fortnight. We’ve got questions.”
Andy stirred, pushing himself up. He dragged the curtain off them, the sudden light making Lily blink. He didn’t look at her. He tied his robe closed, his movements jerky, and stepped away from the bar, leaving her exposed and messy. She scrambled to sit up, pulling the torn curtain around her shoulders like a shawl, covering herself. Her face was aflame.
The guys were arranged around the room now, a tribunal of rumpled jeans and tour jackets. They looked tired, concerned, and utterly done with the drama. Ben had found the tequila and was pouring shots into water glasses.
“You’re alive,” James Cassells stated flatly, accepting a glass. “That was the main thing. Jessica was convinced Lily was in a ditch. Mike thought you’d finally topped yourself, Andy. So, mission accomplished. We’re glad you’re not dead.” He knocked the shot back. “Now, what in the absolute hell is this?”
Andy paced to the window, his back to the room. “It’s none of your business.”
“It became our business when we had to fly to fuckin’ Seattle to be your goddamn lifeguards!” Ronnie snapped, pointing a finger. “You ghosted the world. You.” He pointed at Lily, huddled on the bar. “And you. The new golden girl with a decent guy and a promising start. Poof. Gone. You think that doesn’t ripple? You think Cole isn’t losing his mind?”
Lily flinched at Adam’s name. The curtain around her felt like a shroud.
Bobby Schubenski, quieter than the rest, spoke from the deep armchair. “We’ve all done stupid shit. Gone on benders. Hid from the press.” He looked at Lily, his gaze not unkind. “But this? This is a cathedral of stupid shit. You’ve been in this room for two weeks. The whole industry is talking. The rumors are… biblical.”
Mitch Lucker finally spoke, his voice a low rumble. “We’ve seen the room service bills. Literal tons of food and booze. We saw the… the evidence.” He gestured vaguely at the bar, at the general disarray. “This isn’t a bender. This is a suicide pact with room key.”
Andy turned around, his eyes blazing. “It’s not your concern.”
“It is when you’re my friend, you selfish prick,” Ben said, his voice quiet but cutting through the room. He walked over to Andy, holding out a glass. Andy ignored it. Ben set it on the sill beside him. “We’ve been worried. Actually worried. Not label-worried. Friend-worried. So you can drop the tortured artist act for five minutes and talk to us.”
The fight seemed to drain from Andy’s shoulders. He stared at the glass, then picked it up and drained it. He looked past Ben to where Lily sat. “There’s nothing to talk about. It is what it is.”
“It’s a fucking mess is what it is,” Matt Good said. He walked over to the bar, not looking at Lily directly, and picked up her discarded robe from the floor. He held it out to her, arm extended, eyes averted. A small gesture of decency that nearly undid her.
She took it, muttering a thanks so soft it was almost inaudible. She slid off the bar, her legs wobbly, and hurriedly put the robe on, tying it tightly, hiding herself within its folds. She felt six years old.
“You need to call your people, Lily,” James said, not unkindly. “You especially. You have more to lose here.”
“I know,” she whispered. The reality was a cold tide rising up her ankles, her knees, threatening her chest.
The group lapsed into an uncomfortable silence, the kind that follows a natural disaster when the initial shock wears off and the scale of the damage becomes clear. They drank. They looked at the astronomical minibar bill someone had leafed through. Max fiddled with the dead jukebox.
Ben broke the silence, his tone shifting from concerned friend to pragmatic bandmate. “Okay. Practicalities. You can’t stay here. The hotel management is… aware. The paparazzi are starting to circle the block like vultures. You’ve got two choices. You come with us, right now, to the airport. We’ve got a charter. You get on it, you go to your respective homes, you face the music. Or you stay here, and this gets infinitely uglier.”
“There’s a third choice,” Andy said, but his voice lacked its earlier conviction.
“No, there isn’t,” Ronnie said. “The third choice is you both become a permanent hotel folk legend and your careers are toast. This isn’t 1975. You don’t get to just fuck and snort your way into mythology anymore. The internet eats that and spits out bankruptcy.”
Lily’s mind, numb for days, began to click forward, each gear grinding with awful clarity. Adam. Her band. The demos. The palimpsest, still wrapped and sitting on the credenza like an accusatory ghost. She had made a choice, a catastrophic one, but it was made in the dark, drunk on him and tequila and despair. In the grey, sober light brought by these men, the choice seemed like the act of a stranger.
“I’ll go,” she said. The words tasted like ash.
Andy’s head snapped toward her. The betrayal in his eyes was fresh and immediate. “What?”
“I’ll go with them,” she said, stronger now, wrapping the robe tighter. “Ben’s right.”
“So that’s it?” He took a step toward her, ignoring the others. “Two weeks, and you just… walk? Back to him? After what we just did?” His gaze flickered to the curtain on the floor.
The guys shifted uncomfortably, a collective desire to be anywhere else.
“You made them watch, Andy!” The words burst from her, high and strained. “You fucked me on a bar to prove a point to them! That wasn’t about us. That was another one of your performances! So don’t you dare act like this is some sacred thing I’m violating. You turned it into a sideshow.” She was shaking, the adrenaline of anger momentarily overpowering the shame.
He recoiled as if slapped. His jaw worked. No witty retort came. Her accusation had found its mark, piercing the armor of his theatrics.
Ben stepped between them, a physical barrier. “Enough. Both of you. Pack. Now. You have twenty minutes. We’re leaving.” His voice brooked no argument. He was the adult in the room, and they were the chastised children.
The next twenty minutes were a silent, frantic scramble. The guys dispersed, giving them a semblance of privacy. Lily went into the bedroom. Her clothes were everywhere—discarded, stained, reeking of sex and smoke and him. She found a pair of leggings and a hoodie, the simplest things she owned. She dressed mechanically. She avoided looking at the bed, a tangled monument to their failure.
She emerged with her small bag. Andy was in the living room, dressed in black jeans and a threadbare band t-shirt, shoving items into a duffel. He wouldn’t look at her. The wrapped palimpsest still sat on the credenza. She walked over to it, her fingers brushing the black silk. It felt cold.
“Take it,” Andy said from behind her, his voice toneless. “It’s yours.”
She didn’t want it. It felt like a cursed object now, the origin point of this entire collapse. But leaving it felt like a deeper betrayal of something she couldn’t name. She picked it up. It was heavier than she remembered.
The convoy to the airport was a somber affair. They rode in two black SUVs. Lily was in the back of the second one with Ben, Max, and James. No one spoke. The city lights blurred past. Andy was in the first car with Ronnie, Danny, and Mitch. She could see the back of his head through the rear window, a dark shape against the glass, unmoving.
At the private terminal, the mechanics of escape took over. They were ushered past security, onto the sleek, waiting jet. Lily took a seat by a window, as far from the front where Andy sat as possible. The guys piled in, the mood lifting slightly with the familiar routine of travel. Beers were cracked. Poker hands were suggested.
As the engines whined to life, Ben slid into the seat beside her. He didn’t speak for a while, just looked out the window as the plane began to taxi.
“He’s a disaster, you know,” Ben said finally, his voice low. “A beautiful, talented, fucking tornado of a disaster. And you… you’re smarter than this.”
“I know,” she said again, the only phrase that seemed to fit.
“What are you going to do when we land?”
She looked at the black-wrapped package on the empty seat beside her. “I don’t know.”
He nodded, as if he’d expected that answer. “The guy you’re with… Adam. He’s a good bloke. He’s been going out of his mind.”
The guilt was a physical compression in her chest. “I know.”
“Knowing and doing are different things.” He patted her knee, a brotherly gesture. “Get some sleep. The chaos starts fresh when the wheels touch down.”
She didn’t sleep. She watched the dark continent of America slide by below, dotted with lonely clusters of light. She thought of the hotel suite, now being cleaned by discreet staff, all traces of their war removed. She thought of Adam’s face, kind and confused. She thought of Andy’s eyes when he’d turned from the window after their final, brutal coupling, the defiance gone, replaced by a hollowed-out emptiness that mirrored her own.
The plane began its descent. The guys gathered their things, the buzz of a plan forming. They would be met. There would be cars. Strategies for avoiding press.
Andy stood up and walked down the aisle toward the lavatory. He had to pass her. He stopped, his hand on the headrest of the seat in front of her. He didn’t look at her. He looked at the palimpsest.
“It doesn’t end here,” he said, so quietly only she could hear it. It wasn’t a threat. It wasn’t a promise. It was a simple statement of fact, as incontrovertible as gravity.
He moved on. The plane touched down with a screech of rubber, and the real world, with all its consequences, rushed up to meet them.