Starting From Zero (Starting From Series Book 1)

by Lane Hayes

  The far left side was set up like a stage in front of a wall of acoustic and electric guitars. Any band could walk in and be ready to rock at a moment’s notice. An elaborate drum kit sat in the far right corner near a collection of bass guitars, and a series of keyboards. A gorgeous grand piano anchored the space. On the opposite end of the room, a massive array of computer screens and engineering equipment were positioned in front of a real live sound booth. I noted the acoustic panels on the stone walls and the comfy sofas along the perimeter as I turned in a slow circle, taking in as many details as possible. The studio was clean and orderly but had a lived-in feel lacking in the rest of the house. It was fucking incredible.

  “This might be the coolest place on the planet. Do you work here? Stupid question. Of course you work here. Wow. Just fuckin’ amazing,” I blabbered.

  “Thanks.”

  He crossed his arms, fixing me with an amused chuckle as I moved around the room like a kid in a candy store. “Do you play all these instruments? You probably do. That’s another stupid question. Wait. I think you told me. Guitar and piano.”

  “Right. The rest I can fake with varying degrees of success.” Gray met me in front of an elaborate wall of guitars and pulled a beautiful mahogany Gibson down. “Try this one. She’s got a true sound. Clear and strong.”

  “That’s okay. I don’t want to mess it up.”

  Gray scoffed. “Unless you smash it against the wall, I don’t see how you can mess it up.”

  “Uh, all right…”

  I held his gaze in a strange standoff of sorts before taking the guitar and sitting on the stool next to the drum kit. I settled it over my knee and fingered the strings idly, hoping something amazing would come to me. I drew a blank. When in doubt, start at the beginning.

  The first song I ever learned to play on the guitar was Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline.” It was an inspired choice because it was easy to learn, and everyone loved it. If you could fake it well enough on a popular song, people tended to fill in the rough patches and not notice the guitarist needed a tune-up. However, I’d never played an instrument that belonged to a real songwriter and potentially cost more than everything I owned put together.

  I liked to think of myself as a fairly confident guy, but nothing felt familiar. I was a nerve-wracking combination of edgy and horny around Gray. This would have been a hell of a lot easier if I didn’t know how rough and tender he could be and how amazing it felt to have him inside me.

  I sucked in a deep breath and strummed the first few chords. When I flubbed the intro, I covered it up by singing. Loudly. It was a habit I’d developed to cover my mistakes when I was in Gypsy Coma. If I sang above anyone else, they might overlook my amateurish guitar skills. It had worked in my favor. For a while, anyway.

  My philosophy applied to everyday life too. If I distracted someone with a laugh, I could temporarily make them forget the color of my skin, my lack of education, my sexuality, my social inadequacies, and the fact that I didn’t have a dime to my name. It was a perverse kind of magic. I could fake anything for a short time, but I wasn’t a comedian and I wasn’t much of a musician. The one thing I did pretty well was sing. Hopefully well enough to distract Gray from my fumbling fingers. Fuck, I was nervous.

  I powered through the song, then flattened my hand over the strings when I reached the chorus and belted out, “So good, so good, so good!” like I would in a karaoke bar.

  “That was inspired,” Gray enthused. “You have an amazing voice.”

  His smile morphed into a wide, luminous grin that stopped me in my tracks like a car skidding off the road into a brick wall. Cue sound effects—screeching brakes, metal-on-metal, glass shattering, and boom! My heartbeat reverberated in my head, making me feel dizzy and dopey. I felt warm and then hot. Too hot. And maybe a little punch-drunk, ’cause wow, I’d never seen a smile quite like his. It started in his eyes and took over his face, radiating from him like sunshine.

  “Um. Uh…thanks.” I covered my mouth and coughed to hide my embarrassment as I stood and looked around the studio. “So you have records?”

  He pulled the strap over his head and set his guitar on a nearby stand. “It’s the library next door. I have to warn you, it’s a disaster zone. If you’re a type A neat-freak, you may find this disturbing.”

  I snorted. “I’m not actually sure my socks match. Bring it on.”

  “This way.” He paused with his hand on the doorknob to the adjacent room and then winked before slowly pushing the door open. He stepped into the cavernous room, his arms spread wide. “Welcome to the library.”

  “Holy fuck.”

  My notion of what an enormous record collection might look like didn’t jive with reality. I wasn’t sure why, but my mind conjured neatly stacked vinyls waiting to be alphabetized and stored on a shelf. My mom kept a few of her favorite albums from the eighties in a cabinet under the TV when I was a kid. Rory and I used to pore over them, checking out the covers and reading the lyrics while listening to them on her ancient turntable. This was that version on steroids. And Gray was right. It was a fucking mess.

  The room itself looked like a recent addition. The ceilings were high and vaulted like a chapel. Light streamed through the skylights above and from the series of small windows located above the shelves that lined every inch of wall space. There might have been seating on the other side, but it was impossible to see much beyond the forest of boxes stacked high on every surface…floors, tables, chairs…everywhere. The sea of cardboard reminded me of a storage facility. If he’d told me UPS was using his home as an outpost, I would have believed him. Some of the boxes were ripped open, but most were taped shut, waiting to be shipped out or put away.

  “Those are all filled with records?” I asked in an awestruck tone.

  “Yeah. I just purchased this collection. Mine was decent-sized to begin with, but this takes it to a whole new realm.” Gray headed for the table and popped open the top of a box and pulled out an album. “Check this one out. It’s a rare jazz recording from the early thirties. Oh. And this is a bossa nova classic.”

  “Mmm…cool,” I replied.

  I took the albums he handed me and glanced unseeing at the faded artwork on the covers as he went on about the lush sound and how each record provided an incredible glimpse into history. Not just about the music but the people who bought the music as well.

  “…music is a mirror into the soul. The words, the beat, and the arrangement provide clues about the human experience. But the physical vinyl record tells you about the owner too. You can’t get a more in-depth picture of who we are as a species. This is history!” he insisted excitedly. “You can get to know…”

  I tuned him out when he detailed the impact of fashion, social commentary, and poetry through the vinyl disc medium. His enthusiasm was charming as hell, but I was more fascinated about his transformation from cool musician to history geek than the amount of records he owned. It was…cute. Weird adjective because Gray wasn’t cute. He was sexy and a little scary. Almost as scary as the sheer number of albums in this room. I tried to think of a formula to estimate how many might be in each box, but I didn’t have my brother’s mind for math. The direct approach worked best for me anyway.

  “How many records do you have?” I interrupted.

  “A few hundred thousand. There’s a bit of every—”

  “A few hundred thousand?” I repeated incredulously.

  “Yeah.” Gray shot a wry grin at me. “I need to organize them by genre and alphabetize them. It’s a daunting but necessary job. I’d love to do it myself, but I don’t have time.”

  We stared at the sea of boxes together like a couple of sailors analyzing the impact of an iceberg in the distance.

  “How long would you say a project this size would take?”

  Gray put his hands on his hips and gave a cursory glance around the space before answering. “A few months. Are you interested?”

  He seemed as surprised by his offer
as I was. He narrowed his eyes and twitched his lips. I could practically hear him thinking of a way to unask the question.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Why not? I bet you could have it done by summer. It’s not a bad gig. You can stay in the bedroom I showed you, swim or use the hot tub when you feel like it, and I’ll even let you use my studio when I don’t need it if you want to practice.” When I didn’t immediately jump at the opportunity, he added, “Think about it. No hurry. This mess isn’t going anywhere.”

  “That’s a very generous offer, but no.”

  Gray frowned. “Why not?”

  “Because I like you.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. If you like me, you should stay.”

  “But I don’t casually like you.” I shook my head and reached for a Patsy Cline album. I pretended to study the liner notes while I gathered my thoughts. If I walked away not feeling like an idiot, it would be a minor miracle. “I’ve played that night over in my head a few times a day for two weeks straight. I stared at your number and almost pushed Call more than once. In fact, I almost did it before this meeting.”

  “I wish you had,” he whispered.

  “But see, I’m glad I didn’t now. We were equals that night. I knew you were older and probably wealthy and successful too, but in the dark, you were just a normal guy. Better than normal. You were interesting and funny, and sexy as fuck. And maybe this sounds paranoid or shortsighted, but I need that night to stay complete. I don’t want to ruin it with reality. I have a lot of shitty things to deal with that stress me the fuck out and I need this…need to be able to take that memory out of a box in my head and just remember things aren’t always crappy. Does that make sense? I hope so, ’cause I feel like a real moron, getting all moody and sensitive here.”

  “No, it doesn’t make sense.” Gray licked his bottom lip and looked away. “I want you to stay. We can pick up where we left off. This time we know who we are.”

  “Employee, employer. Top dog, little dog, alpha, beta. How old are you?”

  “Forty-four.”

  “You’re eighteen years older than me. You were probably in college when I was born. That’s a whole lifetime. There’s a built-in huge divide between us, and working for you would only widen it. If I was smart, I’d take the job and laugh at the irony of someone paying a guy who gets distracted halfway through the alphabet to organize this insane collection. It wouldn’t take me months, it would take me years to get through it. And then what happens? I lust after my boss from the sidelines and hope he drops by to chat about something silly he watched on TV, like The Westminster Dog Show, while I try to remember if M goes before N.”

  “Okay, first of all, The Westminster Dog Show is not silly. But pretending you’re stupid is and—”

  “I’m not stupid. I have concentration issues.”

  “ADHD?” he asked with a frown.

  “Yeah. Whatever. Not a big deal. I make it work. But I know my limitations. And this is one of them.”

  He regarded me thoughtfully with a hard look I couldn’t read to save my life. “So what I’m hearing is…you’re an ageist with trust issues.”

  I snorted. “I am not! I mean…yes, on the trust part, but I don’t care how old you are.”

  “You just said you did. You walked into my house and judged me before I could judge you. Then you put a label on me and decided the idea of me is better than the real thing.”

  “You know, you’re making me sound like a real asshole,” I huffed.

  “Really? Because I think you’re fucking amazing.” He moved in closer and grabbed my hand. “And I’m so glad you’re here.”

  I grinned like a fool. When I tugged my hand away, he tightened his hold and then lifted my fingers to his lips. I tried to act cool and unmoved by his unexpected gallantry, like I was used to hot guys making romantic moves on me. It didn’t work. I wasn’t just moved, I was swept away.

  I didn’t argue when he slipped his arm around my waist and pulled me against him. And I didn’t turn away when he cupped my chin and gently pressed his lips to mine. I went completely still and tried to find a balance that would allow me to enjoy this with enough distance to not lose sight of reality. The moment he licked my lips and pushed his tongue inside, I knew it was useless. I wrapped my arms around him, moaning when he backed me against the wall.

  Gray set his free hand above my head as he deepened the kiss. I fucking loved having him over me. He was big and imposing, but his size didn’t overwhelm me. Somehow, I felt safe, which was strange. I was bi, but my experience with men was limited, hurried, and usually involved some measure of regret. Gray didn’t give me room to overthink, but he was careful not to suffocate me.

  We made out leisurely with twisting tongues and roving hands for a while. When we finally broke for oxygen, Gray smiled and pointed at the album I’d dropped.

  “How do you feel about Patsy Cline?” he asked.

  “Love her.”

  “Good. That was a test. You can stay. Let me show you around.” Gray winked before playfully pulling me into the room.

  His library was impressive. Any music lover with an appreciation for vinyl would have been in heaven. But I was more enchanted with him. And yeah, I was fully aware “enchanted” was a goopy word to even think about a guy. But it fit because I didn’t recognize my thought process. It was like I was under a spell that put a dreamy look in my eyes and had me hanging on his every word. Of course, it was a matter of time before my brain tripped my internal wiring and asked me to clarify what the hell I was doing here with someone like him.

  “…this is an original Fats Domino recording from—”

  “Why did Charlie call me? I mean, I get that he’s your godson, but I don’t know him. He seemed to know about me, though.” I furrowed my brow in distaste. “Did you tell him about us?”

  “No. But his dad is my best friend. He knew.”

  “And decided to play matchmaker?” I asked incredulously.

  “No. Seb is a producer. He was with me that night and…well, he’s interested in switching up the music for his next movie. He talked to Xena about contracting a—”

  “Whoa!” I raised one hand, then paced back toward the door to lean on the jamb for support. My legs felt like jelly, and the roaring noise in my ears made it difficult to hear. That was probably a good thing. I pulled out my cell and read the text Declan sent me that morning. We need to talk. Xena’s signing a contract you might be interested in.

  I couldn’t believe it. This really was a setup. I had no idea what they wanted from me, but something told me my starry-eyed infatuation was like fish bait to a shark. Gray might have remembered that night fondly…who wouldn’t? But he hadn’t called me here to rekindle something or even give me a fucking job. He was working for his friend. Writing him jingles…and somehow Xena and Dec were involved? Fuck this shit.

  “Justin, whatever you’re thinking, you’re wrong.”

  “I don’t think so. You’re using me. I don’t know what you want but—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Let me explain,” Gray said in a rational, mature tone.

  “No. Don’t.”

  There had to be twenty perfect comeback lines, but I couldn’t think of one. Nothing funny, nothing snarky, and certainly nothing intelligent. Surprise warred with pride and made it difficult for me to see through the fiery red haze clouding my vision, let alone think of a pleasant way to tell him to shove his record collection up his ass.

  A little voice in my head told me I should take advantage of this not-so-chance meeting. But using sex and making the right connections to get ahead wasn’t my specialty. Hell, anyone who knew me agreed I was an expert at destroying opportunity, not exploiting it.

  And just to prove it, I pushed Gray’s chest and backed him against the wall before capturing his face between my hands and sealing my mouth over his in what I referred to as a “fuck you” kiss. Something sexy but harsh that should have said everything I couldn’t without
sounding delusional.

  Unfortunately, my “fuck you” backfired.

  My body responded to him like a match to a flame. It was instant and all-consuming. The scrape of his stubbled jaw, his soft lips, and his hard body. The wicked combination and his immediate response made me horny as fuck. I moved between his open legs and tilted my hips, moaning aloud at the feel of his shaft alongside mine. The friction felt amazing through his flimsy swim trunks. I lowered my hands to his waist, then nipped his jaw before cupping his ass and grinding against him like I was riding a pole at a strip joint. We made out in a furious tangle punctuated by rhythmic thrusts until I dipped my hand under the waistband of his trunks and traced his crack.

  “We can’t do this here.” He gasped for air and shook his head.

  I blinked in surprise. Holy crap. What was I doing?

  “Save your speech. I don’t need you to tell me this is a bad idea. I don’t need your special treatment, I don’t want any favors, and I don’t want your fucking job,” I huffed humorlessly. “Thanks for wasting my time and ruining a perfectly good memory. It’s been fun.”

  I flung the door open and hurried along the maze of sunlit corridors and posh living spaces, retracing my original path to the main entry as quickly as humanly possible. I sucked in a breath of fresh air on the landing, then pulled my keys from my pocket and raced down the path. I made a mundane to-do list to keep from spinning over the disastrous meeting. Something bigger than a chance meeting with a former hookup was at play, but I couldn’t begin to make sense of anything in my current state of mind.

  I paused at the bottom of the driveway to stuff my cell into my pocket when I noticed Charlie next to my car, posing like a superhero in training with his hands on his hips.

  “How did it go?” Charlie beamed.

  I scoffed. “Peachy fucking keen. Later, dude.”

  He chased me to the driver’s side and flattened himself against the door. “Wait! What happened?”