Forever Wicked: Wicked #4

by Piper Lawson

  A familiar bus with the words Big Leap Studio lettered on the side. My heart’s thudding even before the driver’s door opens and sunglasses and red hair appear. A woman steps out wearing a boho sundress and the biggest sunglasses I’ve ever seen.

  “We’re here!” Lita shrieks.

  I’m down the steps before I can put together coherent thoughts, and my friend and Jax’s former opening act wraps me in a huge hug. “I thought you were on tour this week!”

  “We managed to find a couple days’ wiggle room,” she says, beaming as she pulls back.

  Her words catch up to me. “Wait, you said we. Who’s we?”

  She rounds to the passenger side and opens the door. “Jerry.”

  I run to the old man and grab his frail form in a hug.

  “The man really doesn’t like planes,” Lita says drily as my eyes fill with tears.

  “It’s flirting with death even before you eat the food,” he gripes, and I hold him tighter.

  “Hi, Jerry.”

  “Haley,” he says when I pull back, and my chest swells so big it could burst.

  I want to say I’ve missed him, that I’m beyond glad he’s here, but he’d call that sentimental crap. So, I settle for memorizing the comforting feel of him, the lines of his face.

  Jerry cuts a bleary look over my shoulder. “This the hotel? Where’s my bellhop?”

  Tyler steps forward and grabs one of his suitcases as Jerry rounds the bus, surveying the group standing on the porch.

  “Why the hell’s everyone so down? We didn’t sell out the show?”

  “There’s no show tonight, Jerry,” Lita says, but Jax holds up a hand.

  “Course we did,” he says. “We’re Riot Act. You remember the last time we didn’t, old man?”

  “Fall of ‘06,” Jerry pronounces.

  “Nebraska,” Mace, Brick, Kyle, and even Jax chorus with him.

  “I’ve got it,” Mace blurts. “Two words: Granada Theater.”

  I have no idea what that means, but everyone else seems to.

  Brick and Kyle exchange a look. Even Nina drums the fingers of her good hand on her lips as her expression lightens.

  “It’s short notice,” she says.

  “It’s us,” Brick points out.

  “It’s good.” Jax’s vote is the deciding one.

  I don’t know what’s been decided, but anticipation hums in the air.

  “What’s the Granada Theater, Uncle Ryan?” Annie asks Mace as he pulls out his phone. I’m as curious as she is.

  Kyle waves a hand over the tableau of bewildered, frustrated people. “Exactly what we need.”

  “We’re watching a concert?” I ask as we pile out of the Big Leap bus in front of a repertory theater with a marquee.

  The past two hours, the guys and Nina have been on the phone and busy doing… something.

  “Close.” Jax has changed from the button-down shirt into a black T-shirt and jeans and white sneakers. He follows me down the bus steps, stopping on the sidewalk next to me.

  “Nice kicks,” I can’t resist commenting.

  He produces an Astros ball cap and jams it down on his head. His grin makes my heart beat faster. “Had to go through a few boxes to find ‘em.”

  Annie points at the marquee. “Look! Jason Ryker’s playing.”

  The guy’s a mashup of country and rock, but I know him.

  Mace is right—a night of hanging out together and enjoying a great band could be the perfect thing.

  I start toward the front door, but Jax’s hand finds my arm. “Wrong way, Hales.”

  We round the building to the back door and are immediately welcomed. The guys disappear backstage, probably to say hello. They know everyone in the industry.

  Jerry and I head toward the front of the house with Annie, Nina, Serena, and Wes.

  “Jerry!” I call over the noise as I realize he’s stopped behind us. I go back to get him. “Come on. Let’s go check the sound.”

  He grunts but complies, and we get settled in a booth by the stage.

  When the band comes on, we cheer, but the guys still aren’t with us. I glance past the band into the dark wings, and given the angle of our table, I see a familiar ballcap flash at the corner of the stage.

  I lean over to Annie, who’s sitting next to me.

  “They can’t watch the whole show from backstage!”

  Annie cocks her head at me. “You don’t think they’re going to watch the show, do you?”

  I’m still processing her words when Ryker’s Texas drawl drags my attention back to the stage.

  “Thank you, Dallas! Now, before we sign off, I have an outrageous surprise for you that I take full credit for.”

  As he talks, his band unplugs and a roadie runs out to make adjustments to the equipment.

  No, they’re not…

  Kyle steps to the drum set, twirling a set of sticks in his fingers as the excited buzz from the room yields a few shrieks and “oh my God”s.

  I exchange a look with Annie, and she grins.

  Mace and Brick walk out next, slinging guitars over their necks.

  “No fucking way,” Serena blurts. “When was the last time they played together?”

  “Not in ages.” Excitement and disbelief have my chest swelling. “Jax hasn’t even messed around with Big Leap since he got the bad news about funding.”

  The next person on stage isn’t one I expected, but a hand grabs my arm—Annie’s—as Tyler strides out, hooking a guitar around his neck. He doesn’t even look at the crowd as he adjusts some settings before plugging in and straightening his mic, one of three and the nearest to our side of the stage. Then he shoves a hand through the dark chunk of hair falling across his lean face.

  If there are any teenage girls in here tonight, Annie won’t be the only one watching him.

  “What do you think it’s like?” she breathes, her eyes locked on the stage.

  “What what’s like?”

  She turns big eyes on me, wide with anticipation. “Being up there.”

  I haven’t had time to process my surprise at her response when the lights cut.

  The crowd screams, and a thrill races through me. Instantly, I’m twenty-one again. The world doesn’t exist beyond this venue, this room. Beyond the molecules in the air, vibrating with potential and promise.

  A spotlight cuts the darkness, illuminates the center of the stage, and screaming rips the quiet in two.

  Because there’s Jax, taking up the entire stage with his presence, his physicality. It’s a wonder there’s space for anyone else, for instruments, with his broad chest and shoulders, his cocky stance, his hard jaw and blazing amber eyes.

  He doesn’t count off, but I know the second before the band breaks into their track, before Jax’s low voice that the world has paid hundreds of millions to hear fills the room.

  “Bass is off. I need to fix it,” Jerry complains over the music.

  But when Jax wraps his hands around the mic, all I can think about is how it feels when he wraps his hands around me. I’m throbbing with need.

  Lita’s hollering, Annie’s applauding, and even Wes looks impressed. Because it’s impossible not to give in to these guys and the music they create.

  I scan the room, the screaming fans, lucky women fumbling with cell phones to capture this moment that Jax Jamieson and Riot Act reunited after years apart.

  I get it. I feel it too.

  I remember every part of being on tour, of learning the trade, of falling for Jax.

  Emotions roll through me. Fear, anticipation, longing, desire. They collide in my gut as past blends with present, memories and possibilities dancing in my mind.

  My hand rubs my stomach lightly as “Redline” heads into the final chorus, then rests there as the final chord hangs in the air to thunderous applause.

  “You think she knows?” Annie asks.

  I lift a brow. “Her?”

  “Come on. It has to be a girl.”

  Ting
les work through me as Annie turns back to the stage with a smile.

  I glance to my other side and see Serena looking between the stage and the bar, the direction Wes is disappearing toward.

  Reluctant to miss a second of the show but knowing I need to, I tap her arm before jerking my chin toward the hall.

  She follows me to the bathroom.

  “You guys okay?” I ask once I’ve shut us both inside.

  Serena’s face scrunches up. “He’s being weird, Haley. I mean, he’s always weird—he’s Wes. But this is different. I hate that he’s not talking to me. He has to know he has nothing to be threatened by. Wes is smart and sexy, and he’s worth a thousand Kyles.”

  Empathy has me squeezing my friend’s arms. “Maybe he’s not threatened. Maybe he feels like this isn’t his world. I still feel that way sometimes.”

  “It is his world. This week it is because it was mine. And we’re together now. How can he not see that?”

  “You could spell it out for him,” I suggest with a half smile. “I’m not the most qualified to be handing out dating advice—“

  “Actually, you bagged a rock star. You’re the most qualified to be handing out dating advice.”

  I roll my eyes. “Anyway, when men try to guess what you’re thinking and feeling, it usually ends badly for everyone.”

  She blows out a breath. “I’ll talk to him. What about you?” Serena squares her shoulders, staring me down. “You told Annie you’re pregnant, but you still haven’t told Jax?”

  I brace my hands on the vanity. “It’s strange. I remember this one morning a few years ago when I slept through my alarm on tour. I was in a panic, my entire body shaking, because I missed catching a car to the venue for the concert that night. It was all I could think about, all that mattered, because I knew Jerry would chew me out. The only thing I cared about was doing my job, getting my course credits, succeeding in school.”

  It seems so far away now.

  “Later, I was in Jax’s change room backstage with him and he gave me his hoodie.” My skin tingles at the memory of pulling it on, of feeling the soft fabric against my skin, of smelling his masculine scent up close. “And I swear I felt it.”

  “What?”

  “My life expanding.”

  I shiver thinking of it now.

  That tour took me from being a starry-eyed kid to knowing I could take control of my life. That I get to make my choices and live with the consequences.

  “Now, I feel like my life’s exploded again, only I missed that moment. And it’s crazy, but I swear if I could pinpoint the second it happened, if I could understand it—“ frustration has my fingers turning white on the sink “—I’d know how to handle all of this.

  “But in three days, I’m marrying Jax. In a few months, we’ll have a baby together.” I swallow. “I can be a coder, Serena. I can be a fan. I can even build a business or date a rock star. But now, I’m supposed to be a wife and a mother, and I don’t know how to be those things. What if I don’t have it in me?”

  The dull roar outside the door hangs between us as Serena stares at me with compassion. “Don’t worry about it until you have to. You’re Haley Telfer,” she reminds me. “You’ll always be Haley Telfer, and no matter where you live or who you’re married to? That won’t change.”

  Her words ease the knot in my chest a few degrees, the feeling that the ground under my feet is shifting yet again.

  As we find our way back to the seats and the band starts another song, I decide that for tonight, I don’t have to have all the answers.

  “What are you doing?” Serena demands as my fingers dig into her shoulder to help me boost myself up onto the table.

  “Enjoying the show,” I tell her before straightening.

  Jax’s gaze meets mine, his eyes dancing with approval.

  I cup my hands around my mouth, and with every other living thing in that room, I scream.

  12

  Nothing feels like being on stage. As I make my way to our crew, it’s still thrumming in my veins—the power, the creation. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt that way, and the adrenaline is addictive.

  Nina hollers, “Boys, you’ve still got it.”

  I stop in front of Haley. Her face tips up to me, her lips full and eyes big.

  Jerry’s voice breaks into my thoughts. “You were all right, but the—”

  “Bass was too loud,” Mace and I echo.

  Brick throws up his hands.

  I grin, still looking at my fiancée. “Well?”

  She steps closer, breathless. Her fingers trace my arms. “Not bad considering you’re retired.”

  With a groan, I claim her with a kiss that’s one part love for her attitude and one part punishment for it.

  I get a high from the show, from the music, from the crowd worshipping us. But since her, hers is the opinion that matters.

  She’s the one I want saying my name. The one that makes it all worthwhile.

  “Break it up. That’s what the honeymoon is for,” Serena teases, but I take my time before stepping back.

  Then the group of us sits and drinks and talks. We catch up, hearing about Lita’s drive from Philly with Jerry, and the tension that’s been hanging over the week eases a few degrees.

  Eventually we pile into the bus to drive home.

  Inside, Mace starts toward the studio in the back, but I grab his shirt. “Everyone stays up here. My bus, my rules.”

  Catcalls go up, and Haley flushes as she tucks a piece of hair behind her ear.

  But she shrugs with a smile. “Sorry, boys. It is Jax’s bus.”

  The fact that she agrees with me, even on such a small thing, sends a surge of satisfaction through me.

  The crew drops onto the couches up front as I grab Haley’s hand and tug her toward the back—the studio where my bedroom used to be when this was my tour bus.

  We shut the glass door that separates the studio, then I pull the curtain over it. It’s silent back here, and the only sensory stimulus seeping in is the cushioned gliding of the bus moving over the streets.

  Haley looks around the studio. “You built all this from scratch?”

  “Me and the guys. Jerry weighed in on the tech.” I follow her gaze to the soundboard, the amps and mics and soundproof walls we installed with our bare hands. “Been awhile since I was in here.”

  “Getting denied that funding for Big Leap hit you hard.”

  My chest twinges, but I shrug as I run a hand over a panel of wall filled with Sharpie signatures—one from every kid who spent time here. There are close to fifty, but I want hundreds. “Like you said, it’s nothing personal. A bunch of bureaucrats pushing papers. They don’t know music. They don’t know what we do, why it matters.”

  But her gaze works over mine. “Don’t give up on it. Not on those kids and not on you. Just because things don’t happen the way we expect doesn’t mean they won’t happen.”

  Her words soothe the ache inside me that hasn’t gone away since the news. The part of me that wonders if I fucked it up somehow, if I let those kids down.

  I pull her toward the couch on one side of the studio. She stretches out next to me, and her body lying over mine is comforting and arousing at once.

  “Tonight was something else,” she says. “Do you miss it? Being on stage.”

  “Being on stage is good.” Half my mind is already on the feel of her against me, wondering if I can get her naked before the bus pulls up to our house. “It’s everything else that’s bullshit.”

  Haley lifts herself over me, one arm on either side of my head and a curtain of hair shielding us from the rest of the studio.

  “It doesn’t have to be that way.”

  I reach up to stroke a thumb over her cheek, thoughts of what I want to do to her temporarily paused as I huff out a breath. “Hales, I’ve been on the top of this industry, and the more venues we packed, the more I was at its mercy.”

  “You’re Jax Jamieson. You don’t have to
be at anyone’s mercy.”

  I tug her against me, kissing her deeply.

  I love how she sees me. I’m not only a face, a name—I’m a man. She knows when to remind me I’m mortal and when to tell me I’m invincible.

  Haley’s the first to pull back, but I keep her close enough that our breath mingles.

  “You should’ve seen Annie tonight. She wanted to be up there.”

  Few things catch me by surprise, but this does.

  I turn over the presence of Annie’s birth mother and multiply that by a thousand when Annie’s the one in the spotlight. I curse as protectiveness bristles through me.

  “I don’t want that for her. It’s a dangerous dream.”

  Haley’s lips curve over mine. “I’m starting to think life is a dangerous dream.”

  Before I can turn that over fully, there’s a knock on the back window.

  “We’re back at the house, so we’re heading out. We’ll leave the door unlocked,” comes Mace’s dry voice through the gap in the frame.

  Haley calls back her thanks.

  I stare up at the ceiling and the little glow-in-the-dark star stickers that were Kyle’s contribution to the studio’s decorations. After we renovated, he insisted on replacing them on the new ceiling—an ode to the past.

  “I always dreamed of having a gazebo,” Haley murmurs, fitting her curves against my hard body and tucking her head into my chest. “Sitting out in it at night. Did I tell you that?”

  “No.”

  Yes.

  “There’s something about sitting outside with the stars that’s so simple and beautiful and romantic. Nothing we can create is as awe-inspiring as what already exists, but that’s not a reason to stop trying.”

  I could listen to her talk all night. It’s one of my favorite things about her, the way she thinks. I know she doesn’t let many people into her head, and I’m endlessly humbled and amazed she lets me in.

  “That’s why I started coding. The idea that we can construct music that moves us, deep down, so that we can call on that kind of wonder whenever we want...”

  “Sounds like being a god.”

  “More like being an engineer. A god creates something from nothing. You were always a god to me, Jax. You always had that power, and you wield it with more grace than I’ve ever seen.”