The Rocker That Needs Me (The Rocker...) Read Online Free PDF

was. By then, I had found a second bottle of Jack Daniels and started chasing it with beer. I had no idea what was going on with the football game and no clue as to who was even playing. I was numb but still unable to breathe.
    When the bottle was empty, Jesse helped me up to my room and I fell onto my bed. “So what happened?” he asked as he pulled off my shoes. “You and Lana have a fight?”
    “Yesterday...” I told him about the shopping trip and the argument we had had. “But I ‘pologized to…day.”
    “She didn’t forgive you?”
    “Nah. She did. Spent rest…the day ‘er…and Wucy.” My words were getting slurred and I tried to concentrate on forming them. Not that it mattered, all my band brothers had spent so much time around me in a drunken state that they had picked up the language. “One of… best days of my wife,” I admitted.
    “So why the fuck are you drinking?” Jesse demanded.
    I glared at him. Was he crazy? How could he not know why I was drinking? Was he blind? “‘Cause I want ‘er so fuckin’ much! ‘Cause I feel like I need ‘er to breathe. ‘Cause she is seventeen fuckin’ years old!” I shouted.
    The drummer dropped down on the edge of my bed. “Dray, she’s beautiful. A blind man could see how beautiful she is. And it isn’t just on the outside. She’s really sweet, man. Lana is special.”
    I knew all of that. It made all my feelings that much more intense. Lana was my angel. And I couldn’t touch her. “I know that,” I whispered.
    “And I think she has some strong feelings for you too.”
    I knew that too, but for Lana it was just a crush. A girl her age couldn’t understand the feelings I had. I couldn’t imagine her feeling for me what I felt for her. No, I refused to even think about it. I was her friend. That was all.
    “What are you going to do?” Jesse asked after a few minutes.
    I scrubbed a hand over my wet eyes. “Nothin’.”
    “Nothing? So you just go on being friends, but killing yourself with alcohol to numb your pain?”
    I shrugged or at least thought I did. “I can’t touch ‘er. I won’t touch ‘er!”
    “Have you at least talked to her about this?” Jesse demanded, sounding frustrated.
    “No. She’s too young ter understand. I’m not going ter burden ‘er with it.” I didn’t want to put my nightmares in her head. That ugliness didn’t belong inside my angel’s mind. “Shanks for taking care of me, man…” I attempted to say as I let myself float off to sleep…
    The dreams haunted my sleep. The fight, the gun shots… Emmie crawled into bed with me, holding me close and whispering things that I couldn’t make sense of through the drunken haze. My tears dried and the shaking in my limbs slowly faded. Her presence alone soothed some of my pain, her fingers stroking through my hair like a lifeline connecting me to the present.
    As I drifted back off to sleep, the dream was still waiting to consume me, but it took a different turn than usual. Instead of a nine year old Emmie sitting on my couch, it was Lana. She smiled up at me in that mysterious angelic way of hers, but it didn’t calm me like it normally did.
    The trailer was dark, the heat from the summer pressing in on us as Rusty came down the hall. He said something and I watched as Lana turned to me with a disgusted look on her face. Then she faded from the couch as if she had never been there…
     

Chapter 3
    Lana
    I should have known it was going to be a sucky day the second I woke up.
    The sound of the alarm only made me groan. Since we had moved to Malibu I had to get up an hour earlier so I could get to school on time. Normally I would shower, but this morning I wasn’t in the mood to get my hair wet. I climbed out of bed and went into the bathroom. As I passed the sink, the mirror caught my attention and I saw the effects of a sleepless night.
    After falling into bed last night, I hadn’t been able to get to sleep. Instead, I had stared at my cellphone,