Dave shakes his head like I’m just not getting it. “But they see through me and know that I’m the one dragging them down.”
“The point is, they see you.” I stand, my knees aching from the floor. Maybe I’m revealing too much, but the more I trust him with my story, the more Dave lets me see his own vulnerable places. “That’s enough for now. Tomorrow we’ll talk about you.”
He looks up at me, so much need naked on his face. The need to be validated. To be enough. To be connected.
“You got a bed somewhere?”
I follow Dave up the stairs to a soft blue room with another set of rectangular dust patches and a mattress in the middle of the floor. He shrugs a little. “Don’t judge.”
I’m awkward as I step closer to him, feeling the heat of our bodies chest to chest. His arms circle my waist, skim up my back, and he buries his fingers in my hair. His fingers tighten, tugging back my head and exposing my neck.
When his lips touch my throat, it’s the difference between the cool haze of dusk and the stark pulse of night illuminated by a thousand neon signs. My skin’s on fire where he tastes me, lit up by his tongue tracing a path to the ridge of my collarbone, electrified as the stubble on his chin grazes the top of my breasts.
I make noises that I’m pretty sure I’ve never made, little moans and pants and ohgodpleasedontstop. I yield to another side of him that is revealed as he learns every inch of my exposed skin with his mouth.
Until there is no uncharted territory.
We shed our clothes in a fumble of groping hands and tumble on the mattress and he finds new places to explore. When he traps my nipple between his teeth and tongue, my toes actually fucking curl and I arch off the mattress just to get closer. To feel him more.
I feel my control slipping away as he strips me of that and the rest of my clothes. My breasts tighten with each lash of his tongue, doubly sensitive from the stubble that rakes across my skin, leaving it tender and undeniably alive.
It’s like walking a building edge as I creep toward where I want to paint. The fear of falling, the fear of the unknown, only heightens the ecstasy I feel when I get to exactly the right spot.
And I fear I’m falling for him.
This unknowable, conflicted, walking contradiction.
This man with more baggage in his past than I have in my whole apartment.
And even though my brain’s a soup of lust and desire, I’ll be damned if I let him take all of the control.
I scissor my legs from around his waist and use their leverage to flip us. Now I’m on top and his eyes go wide, startled by my aggressive move.
“Willa—”
“No talking. Just moaning.” I grin at him and lick my lips, soaking up every clench of his jaw and furrow of his brow. Rolling my hips against his hardness is utterly melting his brain.
I can’t suppress a devilish smile as I work my way down his chest, tracing the primary lines on his tattoos. I bite his sharply pointed nipple just enough to draw a gasp, then kiss my way down his stomach, relishing each ridge and valley.
The hair below his navel beckons me lower, to curling coarse hair and a cock that glistens with moisture on its tip. I ignore the smooth shaft, instead teasing the insides of his thighs with nips that finally get me what I want.
A moan.
On Dave’s lips, it’s more than just a noise. It’s primal, a sound pulled from the depths of his gut and maybe even his heart. He groans when I trace the seam of his sac and his balls draw up tight. I lick each one and press my tongue between them, feeling his whole body bow up from the mattress in a quest for more, more, more.
And I give him more. I’m not a rock star or a groupie worth photographing, but I can give him the core of who I am. When I take him into my mouth finally, I swallow him like I’m bringing him inside me, inviting him to understand the inner workings of my heart.
Dave’s groans muddle his words and I run my tongue up the ridge of his cock, swirling around the head in a greedy quest to make him lose control.
When I tug at him with suction, his ohjesusfuckyesyes is beautiful nonsense. His eyes are open but I’m pretty sure he’s blind to the whole world and this room and its few bits of leftover furniture.
He’s blind, but he sees me.
I am not invisible.
I’m powerful.
The rush of knowing that makes me forget all the details of where we are and what we’re doing and what’s about to happen. I just suck him deeper and when he shouts and writhes and pumps heat inside me I swallow and swallow and … I’m sated.
I release him, feeling his aftershocks, wrapping myself in the warmth and power of his skin and strong muscles, letting him come back down from wherever high-up place I took him.
I went there too. And now we’re in this together.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“Try it again. This time, follow Tyler more closely.” Ravi pops his headphones back on and the rest of my band grumbles from the latest start-stop, change-it-up, do-it-over interruption.
I don’t grumble because he’s right. Ravi’s latest jab was aimed squarely at me.
I clack out the tempo with my sticks and Jayce leads us into the song, a driving, hard-edged beat for “Darkest Night.” With a few songs left to fix on Wilderness and a drop date fast approaching, we’re running out of room for any mistakes.
If there’s one bright spot, it’s the track we laid down first this morning, when we were tight and I was feeling it. “Say it Louder” will be the last song on the album, and for once I’m not just going along for the ride.
For once I’m the creator. Open up the jacket notes on Feast and Beast and you won’t see my name listed more than a few times on songwriting credits. That’s usually Gavin and Jayce’s thing, and sometimes Tyler.
But this time, I earned my place on the album. I cruise through “Darkest Night” feeling strong and sharp, but Ravi cuts us again and my good mood evaporates.
“Stop. Stop. This is where you’re falling down.” Ravi’s out of his chair and yanks the second set of headphones off his ears, leaving them hanging around his skinny neck with the other pair.
I have no idea why he needs two, but they seem to be part of his whole person, same as his thick glasses and endless energy drinks.
Ravi rubs his temples and walks out of the sound booth and into the recording room. It’s hot in here, getting rancid with sweat, and the two little plastic fans aren’t doing much more for me than blowing Jayce’s stink right in my direction.
Before he speaks, Ravi wrinkles his nose a little. Maybe he smells it too. “We’re losing focus. Jayce is going off-script, which would be fine with what Gavin’s doing, but Dave’s about a quarter-beat slow on the bridge and it’s killing your momentum.”
I cringe, and if I were the Hulk, the drumsticks would splinter in the strength of my grasp. “I’m keeping up!”
“You’re not,” Jayce snarls, but Ravi shuts him down with the most commanding glare I’ve seen from anyone, this scrawny five-foot-eight dude channeling a superhero.
“Not your place, Jayce.”
“Right. My place is at the guitar, and Dave’s place is back at high-school band camp.”
That slams me in the gut and I stand so fast my stool topples backward with a crash. “Asshole.”
“I’m an asshole who’s keeping up. You’re just an asshole,” Jayce counters.
“Enough!” Ravi says, and even though he’s only a few decibels louder, his command shuts us down before things get even uglier. “Bitching like that will ensure this album never gets finished. You don’t get your tour, you don’t get your next chart-topper, and you do get to be a music-history footnote for being the band that crapped out after its sophomore release.”
That shuts us all up. I gingerly right my stool.
“Dave, follow me. We’re going to try something new. The rest of you, take ten.” Ravi turns and sweeps out of the studio as if he’s certain I’ll follow.
I d
on’t meet anyone else’s eyes, least of all Jayce’s, as I slide out of the room. Ravi’s not back in his sound room, so I go down the hallway toward the office space up front—and run smack into a girl.
“Ooof,” she says as she collides with my chest. She takes a step back, reeling to regain her balance, and I get the immediate impression of a babysitter with a four-oh grade-point average.
She’s wearing a fucking gray cardigan.
In New York.
In August.
“Sorry. I didn’t see you.”
She adjusts slanted fifties glasses and hitches a leather bag back to its place on her shoulder. “My bad. I’m late.”
I step aside to let her pass as Ravi pokes his head out from an office down the hall. “Come down here for a minute.”
I sit across from him, a wide desk cluttered with tech—tablet, phone, speakers, more headphones, two monitors, trackpads and a pile of CDs. There’s not a single pen or scrap of paper anywhere.
“How do you think today’s going?” Ravi asks, and I feel like I’ve just landed in the principal’s office to answer for a crime I didn’t commit.
“Fair.”
Ravi’s brow does this weird twitch. “I’d call that a generous assessment. Look, it’s not getting better. Each take is coming apart worse than the last.”
“So use our first take,” I quip, but that only makes his brow twitch lower.
“I think we need to go a different direction, actually.” Ravi pauses, pushing his keyboard and mouse into alignment, perfectly parallel with the edge of his desk. “I’m going to have someone else sit in on drums for a while.”
My throat goes dry. “Sit in?”
“For a few takes. See how it goes. Give you a break.”
“I don’t want a break.” The dry throat spreads rapidly to my tongue, which is feeling too big for my mouth. “I just want to get this done.”
“I get it, and I applaud your dedication. But the band hired me to call the shots for this album. I’m supposed to manage it to completion, and I think this is the best way.”
A tiny alarm goes off by Ravi and he stands immediately. “Break’s over. You can take an hour, get outside, take a walk, whatever.”
“No.”
“Or you can join me in the sound booth. But you can’t interrupt.”
“But—”
He holds up a hand, his feet already moving toward the door. “Take it or leave it.”
***
I hear it before I see it. The band sounds tight, strong, thoroughly owning the song. It’s a sucker punch, this knowing that magic is happening in the studio.
Happening without me.
The first door on my left is cracked, and I push it open to reveal the dim sound booth, dozens of little green and red lights reflecting off Ravi’s glasses. He’s watching the band intently, his fingers moving gracefully over slider switches like a pianist’s hands dancing over a keyboard.
I follow his gaze. In the back of the recording room, practically blending into the gray egg-crate foam lining the walls, is the mousy babysitter.
And she’s totally rocking out.
This can’t be happening.
Somehow Ravi’s sixth sense prompts him to put up a hand to shush me even before words come tumbling out of my mouth. And so I shut it like a stupid guppy, and just stare.
In the time it took me to go outside and grab a couple of tacos—and run through every curse ever invented—Ravi’s replaced me.
And she’s better. Way better. That much is fucking objectively clear.
The song winds up and she wraps it with a snap-pop flourish that I’ve practiced for hours but never perfected. I really want to hate her, but when she looks up at the guys, a fierce kind of pride mixed with a fragile question on her face, I also kind of respect her.
She’s got the goods.
She brought it, and she’s not backing down.
Ravi hits a few buttons and taps the mic to the studio. “Great take. Let’s switch to the ballad. Give Ryan the rundown, Jayce, and we’ll go in five.”
So the babysitter’s name is Ryan. Ravi swivels on his seat slowly, deliberately. “What did you think?”
I swallow hard. “Fair.”
“Bitter’s not a good look for you, Dave.”
“What do you want me to say? That it was fucking awesome?”
Ravi gives me a wry smile. “You’re getting warmer. What else?”
Damn him. Damn this babysitter with a boy’s name, and damn my band for getting so fucking famous that they realize they can do better without me.
So I go all in. “She’s on. Really on. She’s driving the beat more than Tyler is. She’s forcing Jayce to play tighter and she modulated the tempo a little on the last chorus to really land it.”
Ravi nods. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
But that nod feels condescending, and it pushes my thin grasp on control past its breaking point. “Are you fucking kidding me? You bring in a … what? … a babysitter for a studio musician? I built this band from the ground up. I was there in Tyler’s garage every fucking practice. I called the venues. I set up the gigs. We wouldn’t even be here without what I built!”
Ravi is silent, his face impassive, like he’s waiting for my storm to blow over.
And because his silence gives no more fodder for my fight, I shut up.
Finally, Ravi answers in a voice barely over a whisper. “You want me to play that back to you?”
“What?”
“What you just said. Or maybe you want me to point out what you didn’t say. You didn’t tell me the band’s famous because you’re the drummer. You told me Tattoo Thief made it because of how you managed it. That’s your strength, Dave.”
I snort. “Management.”
“Yes.”
“We’ve already got a manager. You. I trusted you to help us finish Wilderness—we all did—and the minute you took over, you found a way to kick me out.”
Ravi holds up his hands. “Guilty. Look, if it’s any consolation, the other guys didn’t know. I know Ryan from her work with other bands, and after you hired me, I signed her on to sit in without asking you first. Judging by how well she’s doing, she’s been practicing round the clock on these songs.”
“You should have asked.” I’m still fuming.
“I’m more about show than tell. If she didn’t work out, we’d just send her on her way and you’d get the break you needed to get your head back in the game.”
“It’s in the game,” I insist.
“It wasn’t an hour ago.” Ravi taps the mic to the studio and gives the band a one-minute warning. My band. “You were dragging down two perfectly good songs. I’m a producer, and it’s my job to fix what’s not working, even when you can’t see it. I don’t even want to be your manager long-term. What I want is to manage you into another album release, another great tour, and the next evolution of your band.”
“Which is what?”
“Bring Ryan in. Bow out as Tattoo Thief’s drummer on part of this album, maybe even part of the tour, or take a smaller instrumental part. Bring her in as your main drummer.”
“Why in the hell would I want to do that?”
“Because you’ve got bigger fish to fry. Tattoo Thief needs a drummer and a manager, but you can only be one of them. Be the one you do best.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The canvases are becoming a blur. My paint-sticky fingers shake as I lay one stencil over another, secure it with blue tape, and then pick up the wadded T-shirt again.
Dip, blot, daub, repeat.
I reach for a can of turpentine and the twinge between my shoulder blades spiders out into a full-blown knot of doom that no amount of stretching can work out.
I feel like I’m bleeding out on these canvases, every ounce of creativity pouring forth until I am so entirely drained that I can give no more. I’m sluggish when I clean my brushes, starving and sleep-deprived, but there are six more canvases in various stage
s of completion and I’ve got a deadline that feels more like a gun to my head with each passing hour.
I. Can. Not. Fail.
I hang my head, trying again to reach some magical stretching pose that will give me the strength to keep going, or at least temporarily relieve this knot, when a brisk knock saves me, at least temporarily.
Dave’s smile is absent.
I hold up my hand. “Nuh-uh. I have no room for negative vibes in this space.”
Dave shuffles his feet in the doorway and attempts to plaster a smile on. “Better?”
He steps toward me and I sink into his strong arms, feeling his fingers knead the muscles bracketing my spine. When he hits just the right spot I moan.
Embarrassed, I try to pull away, but Dave keeps me firmly anchored against his chest. He stoops to kiss me gently, but I guess I’m more than starved for food—I’m starved for human contact—so I return the kiss with gusto.
Dave bites my lower lip and I moan again, feeling him harden as I soften, as I melt into his body. Sore muscles forgotten for the moment, I wrap my arms around his neck and thread my fingers through his hair.
Out of breath, I manage, “Much better.”
I lead Dave inside, letting the sounds of the city and other tenants in the apartment building fill our silence. He walks around the room looking at canvases. Once. Twice.
Finally, he looks at me. “I don’t know how you do it.” This time, his smile is genuine. “These are much better than the first set.”
I can’t help beaming a little and I feel my neck flush with pride at the compliment. “I still have six more to finish.”
“You’ll make it.”
I gesture to my uniform: too-ragged-to-be-cool jeans and a button-down streaked with paint. “I feel like I’m falling apart. Like I don’t have what it takes to go the distance.”
Dave’s brow creases and he turns away from me, stalking toward the kitchen. “Trust me. That’s not your problem.” He grabs a plastic fast-food cup and fills it from the tap aggressively, like the sink pissed him off.
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