Consumed
Consumed
Lost in Oblivion 3.5
Taryn Elliott
Cari Quinn
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
eBooks are not transferable.
They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
CONSUMED
© 2015 Taryn Elliott & Cari Quinn
Cover by LateNite Designs
All Rights Are Reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Rainbow Rage Publishing print edition: August 2015
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ISBN: 978-1-940346-26-7
Created with Vellum
For Cari - Uphill climbs are the suck, but we always get through them together. And dammit, we end up better for them.
For anyone who had to start over.
Chapter One
Simon Kagan came into consciousness, fists swinging. He gasped as someone held him down. He tried to open his mouth, tried to tell whoever was pressing down on him to get the fuck off.
He couldn’t get air into his lungs.
“Mr. Kagan, please calm down. It’s okay. You’re in the recovery room. You’re fine.”
His muscles shook and his head spun as his gaze crashed around the room, not settling on any one thing. Too many lights, too many windows, too much white and blue.
Too many faces.
Worried ones, blank ones, tear streaked ones.
Then her.
Just her. Violin girl. His violin girl.
Margo.
She stepped forward from where she stood on the side with the ridiculously large dude in scrubs. She touched the guy’s arm and he shot her a harried look. Long, elegant fingers swiped down his almond skin and he backed up.
“Hush.” Her fingers feathered over Simon’s brow and down his cheek. The tiny callused tips were as soothing as silk. “There you are. We’ve been waiting for you to wake up.”
He struggled to sit up, but she rested her hand on his chest and he stilled. Her huge dark eyes were trained on him. Nothing but him.
Breathing under water seemed a helluva lot easier than coming out of anesthesia. The fact that it felt more like he’d swallowed gasoline than spit may have had something to do with that.
Surely he had to be pre-surgery.
This couldn’t be what fixed felt like.
She tucked a hank of hair behind his ear and ran the backs of her fingers along his jaw. “The doctor will be in soon.”
He mimed writing and she reached for the small marker board on his bedside.
Am I fixed?
Her fingertip brushed over his lower lip. “The doctor will explain it better, but essentially you had a cyst on your vocal cords.”
He stiffened.
“They were able to get it without doing more damage.”
More damage? So that meant there was already some. He sagged against the mattress and looked away from her. His gaze tripped over Jazz, her huge blue eyes swimming, Deacon with his forced smile, and finally Gray, the bottom half of his face lost in the wild of Jazz’s hair as he stood behind her. He didn’t give anything away.
Like a heat seeking missile, he narrowed his focus on Nick Crandall. Nick was his barometer. Nick’s no bullshit meter was stuck on high at all times.
He was sitting on a chair hunched over with his elbows on his knees and his hands clenched in front of his mouth and nose.
His eyes were in shadow, his hair disheveled from countless swipes of his fingers and hands. Simon couldn’t read his best friend, but Nick’s blank face spoke volumes.
No further damage.
But there was damage.
Damage he’d brought on himself.
He remembered falling. Remembered all the blood flooding his tongue and throat. Remembered drowning in the sounds of the crowd and the bright red splashed across the stage. The one girl’s screams.
Why did he remember that one girl?
“Mr. Kagan, welcome back. I’m Dr. Connor.”
Simon couldn’t even dredge up a winning smile from that little pocket that always remained inside of him. No matter how pissed off or tired he was, he kept that pocket alive for fans. They didn’t want to know he was having a shitty day.
Today had gone so far beyond shitty that he should probably sew up that fucking pocket. It would be empty for the foreseeable future.
The doc, a redhead that made even blue scrubs look good, pulled over a chair to sit by him.
Guess that meant it was heart-to-heart chat time. So she could tell him definitively that he couldn’t sing again.
Fucking wonderful.
Margo’s fingers curled over his hand and held on. He tightened around hers and a little bit of calm seemed to flow in from her touch. If he dragged her on top of him, could he find the rest of it?
Probably would cause another problem.
“So, you probably have questions and since you’re a captive audience right now, I’m going to run through a few things and whatever I don’t cover, you can use your handy dandy whiteboard to ask, all right?”
Simon nodded.
What the hell else could he do?
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it.”
Redhead logic. Seemed like that was exactly what he deserved after his stunt. C’mon, red, give me all of the bad news.
Do it.
Tell me my career is over.
I dare you.
“You have vocal chord damage. It’s too soon to tell just how bad it is until the swelling goes down after the surgery. I removed a cyst that was slowly growing over the last few months. That itch in the back of your throat?”
Simon’s grip tightened on Margo’s hand. He nodded.
“Yeah, that’s one of those things you should have been listening to. It was telling you that something wasn’t right.”
He opened his mouth and pounded his other fist on the bed and reached for the marker board.
The doctor stilled his hand. “Nope. Listen now. I can see how angry you are. And yes, you probably thought it was allergies or just that you were singing too much. And in eighty-nine percent of cases, that’s true. But what makes it different is the persistent tickle. Was it every day?”
Simon looked around at everyone. The urge to shrink down in his bed was strong, but he didn’t. He’d fucked up. He nodded.
“Dammit, Simon. Why didn’t you tell us?”
His gaze shifted to Deacon. Saint Deacon who did everything right. Saint Deacon who probably would have had a million specialists out on the tour.
Saint Deacon would have made better ch
oices.
But he wasn’t Saint Deacon. He was Simon the Super Slut Good Time Charlie.
His gaze slid back to the doctor.
“In the good column, you’re young and healthy and you don’t smoke. In the bad…you beat the crap out of your chords.”
He pointed to the board. The doctor sighed and nodded. He picked up a marker and pulled off the cap with his teeth.
Is that a technical term?
The doctor smiled. “Sometimes a spade is a spade, Mr. Kagan. I got in there and removed the cyst. I sent a tissue sample down for testing just to be sure, but I’m fairly certain it’s not cancer.”
“Oh, God.” Jazz’s voice came out in a sob. She rushed to his bed. “No way, Simon. That’s not possible.”
The doctor held up her hand. “It is possible. It’s my job to make sure that I cover all the bases. From the looks of the cyst, it wasn’t. It was very isolated and not overly large. But you’ve probably had it for a while. The more you talked and sang, the more irritated it got.”
She held up two fingers together. “Vocal chords work like this.” She held them apart and then tapped them together. “When you’re singing they come together to make the notes and such. Each time yours touched, the cyst irritated them and vice versa. Along with the swelling, the cyst continued to get harder and larger. Finally, you had that episode a few nights ago when they were just too swollen.”
“And when we had the ENT doctor come out, why didn’t he find this?” Lila asked.
“Simon’s tissues were way too swollen to find it unless he was scoped with a camera. Which they would have found when he did the follow-up visit. But unfortunately, he—”
“Sang that song,” Nick finished.
“No. Actually, just talking could have ruptured it. He was really torn up at that point. So, while it wasn’t advisable to sing tonight, it could have happened at any time.”
Simon slumped back against the pillows. One brick of guilt he didn’t have to carry, imagine that?
Margo rested her other hand on his shoulder. He wasn’t sure what to think there. Was it just that she felt bad for him in his hour of need? She never touched him in front of people. Not like the others didn’t know they were bouncing on one another, but she never owned up to it.
“So, what are our next steps?” Lila asked in her manager-of-all-things way. All business as always.
“I’ll know more in a few weeks.”
“Weeks?” Lila’s arms fell to her sides.
Simon shot up in the bed.
The doctor pointed at him. “Don’t you dare. You are on complete vocal rest for ten days—no talking, no humming, no whispering. I want you back here for a follow-up after that.”
He opened his mouth and she made a zipping sound.
“Nada. After that, we’ll see.”
“That seems excessive. I’ve been doing research.” Lila folded her arms.
“You can second opinion all you want, Ms. Shawcross. And I encourage you to do so. I’m a vocal specialist in California and my resume speaks for itself. The treatment I’m setting up will get him singing again within six months.”
Simon’s vision grew hazy. Six months. She kept talking about coaches and gave Lila names of people to talk to as well as a host of treatment particulars. The only thing he could focus on was no talking for almost two weeks.
No singing for so much longer.
None.
Margo’s hand moved up to the back of his neck as she touched her forehead to his. “It’s going to be okay. I’m here. We’re all here for you.”
He slipped down and turned away from the doctor. Voices around him rose and fell in degrees of hushed whispers and shouts. The one voice he didn’t hear.
Nick’s.
He was afraid to look. Afraid to see if he’d walked out.
Nick’s precious band. Their precious band—and the voice was gone. Just as they were climbing into the stratosphere. There was no way to soften that blow. It was a baseball to the head.
Because that’s what it felt like to him.
It had to be ten times worse for Nick. He opened his eyes and found dark brown eyes staring back at him. Sympathy was there. So much that he wanted to shut down and shut it out. He didn’t want to hear I’m sorry. He didn’t want pity.
That was always next.
No matter what people tried to do to prevent it, there was always pity.
He couldn’t take their pity. So he closed his eyes again.
#
Margo pressed her lips to his forehead. His inky black hair was disheveled and his skin was pale. Not the normal Scottish heritage hot rocker look he sported. His light skin was more wan and his beautiful blue eyes were red rimmed with shock and sadness.
And now he was just gone. He’d locked out the world and the bad news coming his way. Much like he’d been doing for the tour. Only this time he couldn’t hide behind a grin and wave off their concern.
This time it was real.
She looked at the doctor. “What can I do?”
The conversation slowly came to a halt. Nick stood up. “What exactly do you think you can do, Violin Girl?”
Nerves jumped to life in her belly. “Simon and I are…involved.”
“How hard was that to say?” Nick asked. His golden eyes were back to that frozen-in-time amber. No warmth, just a blank mirror. He was so much like Simon and yet completely the opposite. It was a strange and fascinating dichotomy. Neither of them would let people in.
Nick deflected with sarcasm and a shitty attitude. Simon used his sexuality to draw people in, but hid behind the physical act. At least that’s how she’d been reading him for months.
Until last night.
She laced her fingers around his relaxed ones. Until last night when he’d told her he loved her. Blindsided with a single one word.
Margo wasn’t exactly looking for that. Simon was supposed to be the perfect man for no strings, no love. And now…nothing made sense.
Everything felt heavy and too real. This was a job, nothing else. Simon was the cherry on top. Outrageous sex and finding out that she had a sexual side hidden away. Finding out she wasn’t a prude lost in the chamber music that had ruled her life for so long.
Funny that at twenty-five, she learned that sex was amazing and that lust came in more forms than skin on skin. That his music—their music together—had been just as eye-opening as the rest of her time with Simon.
But now it was different. They were different. And now she found herself standing up for him.
Oh yeah, this definitely wasn’t in her job description.
“Yeah, you can’t even answer me,” Nick said. “And you think you can take care of him?”
Margo’s chin lifted as she turned toward the doctor. “What does vocal rest entail? After the initial ten days.”
“Most of the time it’s a gradual introduction to talking, but I’ve found that if they limit talking as long as possible, the patient has less recovery time to deal with.”
Deflated, Lila shut her mouth.
“I realize he’s in the middle of a tour, but this is non-negotiable. If he wants a prayer of keeping his career on track, then he isn’t going on the road for six months. And even then, it’ll be a lot of vocal coaches in his future. He’s going to need to relearn how to sing.”
“It’s not like he’s lost his knowledge base,” Deacon said.
“No, but he’s been compensating for the cyst for a while from the looks of things. Usually once a cyst is removed, it’s just a waiting game. The problem is, the vocal chords can be prone to polyps and other issues once they’ve been damaged. Babying them is what he really needs.”
“Okay. Are there any dietary concerns?” Margo asked.
Nick’s eyebrows shot up. “Is she for real?”
Ignoring him, Margo turned her entire body to face the doctor. “I need instructions and the best possible treatment plan for him.”
“Excuse me. What makes you think you can
just take over?”
“Shut up, Nick. She’s doing this for Simon.” Deacon held his arms out. “Are you going to be with him day and night?”
“Fuck no. I’m not his babysitter. That’s not what he needs.”
The doctor stood up and pushed her chair back to its spot along the wall. “While I wouldn’t call it babysitting, I would say he needs a relaxing environment that he can stay quiet in.”
“We don’t relax,” Nick snarled.
“Well, he’s going to have to learn how to.” The doctor looked at her. “Acid is not his friend. So if he has any acid reflux issues, I’ll be prescribing him something to keep that to a minimum. This also means no alcohol. At all.”
For the first time, Lila actually looked shell-shocked as she pushed her fingers through her hair. Lila’s hair was always neat and orderly. Even her curls were under control.
Now it was a tangle of wheat colored waves down her back and her suit jacket was open. A rust-colored smear actually dared to mar her lapel.
Simon’s blood.
Margo closed her eyes for a moment. When she’d seen the blood, her heart had literally stopped. It wasn’t like there were rivers of it. Just a mouthful, but it had been on his lips, on the stage. Streaked across his cheek.
She shook her head. “I can handle that.”
“Right. Your first response to anything heavy is to walk, Violin Girl.”
She stalked across the room to Nick. “Margo. Learn it, because my violin, my bass, and my cello doesn’t mean shit right now. He does. Simon does. So I don’t care what I have to do to get him better, I’ll do it.”
“And I won’t?” Nick crowded in on her and they were almost eye-to-eye with her heels on.
“I’ll do it better.”
Until just then she hadn’t realized how true that was.
Nick shook his head. “What, because you’re going to fuck him for two weeks? I’ll admit I can’t do that better than you.”
She curled her fingers into fists at her sides. She’d never struck another human in her life. And her palm itched. Oh, it itched so badly. But she could see that’s what he wanted.