His steps were slower than he would have liked, and more careful, but they had to be, he consoled himself. He couldn't take a chance on slipping and breaking a leg, or even worse, an arm.

Hell, the record company was going to be pissed enough that he'd left the relative safety of the so-called tour bus, but he'd been damned bored. They should be able to understand that. Luz had never dealt well with boredom; they shouldn't be surprised to hear that hadn't changed in the six months he'd been on the road.

It wouldn't have been so bad if he'd been traveling with the rest of the band, but he wasn't. Hadn't since nearly three months earlier, which was when his long-term and supposedly serious relationship with Thom had ended in a sharp, hard burst of fury.

It still made him growl when he thought about that night. He thought it probably always would.

Of course the rest of the band had come down on Thom's side. Thom was the one who got them all the free drugs ... the one who set them up with more groupies than they could handle.

Luz was the one who actually wanted them to practice. To work. To not embarrass themselves and him when they played. And so what if they were only doing the small club circuit right now? A few good tours of the smaller venues would lead to more exposure, then higher sales ... and if they were lucky, one day soon they'd maybe be opening for one of the big headliners.

Of course, that wasn't going to happen now. Hell, Luz would be surprised if they managed to finish this tour as a band, rather than five guys who just happened to play music together, which he kind of thought they might already be, anyway.

He had no idea where the other bus had ended up. It had been in front of his when they'd driven into that fucking storm that had put him off the road with a swiftly dying battery. When the thankfully brief buckets of snow stopped, the other bus hadn't been in sight. Two hours later, it still hadn't come back, and Marco hadn't been able to raise them on the radio. Then the guy had decided to head out on foot, which only led to more boredom for Luz.

He'd stuck it out on the dark, partially remodeled old school bus for another hour before he'd decided that even stomping along the winding road they shouldn't have been on in the first place was better than just sitting there waiting to die from lack of stimulation.

Okay, it was cold. Bitterly cold, even with the heavy parka he'd thrown on over his leather. The wind slammed into him at random intervals, driving small bits of icy snow against his cheeks.

Long, pale hands slipped from the pockets of the parka to cover his ears, blocking the frigid air from the silver rings in his lobes that felt like tiny icicles piercing his flesh.

"God damned mother fucking snow," he groused again. "And what the fuck kind of place is this that there isn't a damned thing anywhere but rocks, trees, ice and more fucking snow! I swear, I'm never doing a winter tour up here again!"