Mason pulled her in for a quick hug, making her heart race. The scent of his labor made her woozy. It was masculine and musky, and she wanted to lean into his neck to get better acquainted with it. But she didn’t.
“That was fucking insane!” Lucas slapped Mason’s hand, also beaming at the most incredible drummer in the world. “You’re the master.”
Sindy raised her hand to give Mason a high five. “I’ve never seen anything like that.” Her eyes swept across the audience. “I don’t think any of them have either.”
Tessa could barely contain her enthusiasm as she took in the reception Mason received. She couldn’t have been prouder if she was the recipient of the over-the-top applause that was shaking the walls right now. She stepped in front of the mic and extended her arm toward Mason. “The phenomenal Mason Wilder.”
Humbled, he waved his hand at her and lowered his eyes.
“How did you know to do that,” she asked, stepping away from the mic stand so the arena wasn’t privy to their conversation.
As he shrugged his shoulders, the dimple in his cheek caught a shadow from the overhead lights. “Drumming is all I know. It’s what I do. No matter what, playing the drums chases away all my troubles. I figured it’d work for the audience too.”
She tilted her head to the side as she contemplated his simple yet profound explanation. He was right. The beats he created filled a person’s soul. The boom of the bass drum drove the blood through your veins. It made your chest vibrate and pumped energy into your heart. When Mason hit the drums, everyone felt it.
“I think you guys better play something to keep the audience occupied,” Mason stated, his smile never wilting. “I need a five-minute break.”
“Take all the time you need, bro,” Lucas said. “I’ll handle it.”
Mason nodded in thanks and grabbed two bottles of water from one of the amps. As he walked off stage, he poured one bottle over his head and then put the other to his lips
Lucas was entertaining the audience with an insane arrangement on his Les Paul. Tessa watched her brother, almost as proudly as she had watched Mason. Long blond hair falling over his shoulders, Lucas commanded the legendary Les Paul, which was as famous as their father. Tommy Blade had handed down his prized Les Paul to Lucas right before Prodigy’s promotional tour over a year ago, and it continued to make magic with its second-generation owner.
Mason returned to the stage but instead of climbing onto the drum riser, he sauntered over to Tessa. He took a sip of water and wiped his face with a towel, then jutted his chin at Lucas who was on his knees at the apron blowing up the sound system with power chords. “Your brother is something else. Man, he’s incredible.”
“He is,” Tessa agreed. “But so are you. And so is Sindy. I’m honored to share the stage with such amazing musicians.”
Mason turned his head a quarter of the way so he could look at her. “Don’t sell yourself short, Tess. You got more talent than any of us.”
She choked on a laugh, taken back at the over-the-top compliment. “Yeah, right. No one matches your talent, Mason, least of all me.”
He pursed his lips and eyed her playfully. “Are you kidding? You run the band, play the bass like a lunatic, sing your face off, write killer lyrics and entertain the crowd. Sometimes, I think we could all leave the stage and you could carry the show by yourself.”
She was flabbergasted, unable to form a coherent reply at not just the enormous compliments, but by the utmost sincerity in his voice. Before she could regain her composure to at least thank him, Lucas finished his explosive guitar solo and Mason ran behind his drum kit. He clacked his sticks together and the stage erupted into the fast, hard beat of Confessions of A Rock Chick. The four of them were so in sync, their timing so spot on, that they transitioned into the song flawlessly.
Rock God followed, then Fast Forward. Confetti rained down as they finished the night with Free Ride.
“Thank you, Cincinnati!” Tessa threw the mic to the floor with a dramatic thump, mimicking her father’s signature move. Angel Garcia handed down not just his killer vocals, but his dramatic stage presence, as well. She left her bass with the stagehand and approached the apron to wait for her bandmates to join her in a final bow.
Her brother threw a handful of guitar picks into the audience, which caused a near riot from a surge of screaming girls, then slung his arm around her neck.
The color of Sindy’s bright red hair flared under the lights as she leaned over to set her Strat down in the guitar stand, and she joined Lucas and Tessa. They waited for Mason, who decided to end the night with another impromptu drum solo. Tessa watched him for the second time tonight, arms flying in a blur of tattooed muscle, his fluid movements delivered with his signature killer smile, conveying how much he loved his craft.
“He’s such a showoff,” Lucas said, smiling at his best friend.
“If ya got it, flaunt it,” Tessa replied. And Mason definitely had it. At last, he finished by bringing his sticks down on his cymbals a half dozen times, sending a shimmer throughout the arena. It punctuated the close of the show and the end of seven months on the road.
Tessa was still filled with adrenaline from tonight’s final show as she entered the shower in her suite at the Millennium Hotel. A celebration in their honor was being held in the ballroom downstairs, sponsored by the tour’s promoter. It would be filled with music journalists and industry professionals, all vying for an interview, as well as a select list of VIP invite-only ticketholders. Although she would never tire of the limelight, in a way, she was looking forward to the normalcy of life again now that the tour was behind her. A short unexpected laugh bubbled from her throat. Her life was far from normal. Growing up with world-famous polyamorous parents provided her with a life different than most.
She stepped from the shower, wrapped her hair in a terrycloth towel and tied the complementary fuzzy robe around her waist. She wore her own slippers though. Someone knocked on the door to her room as soon as she exited the bathroom, and she knew it was Sindy. “Be right there!” she called. She opened the door without checking the peep hole, and found Mason staring back at her. His jeans were loose, his tank top tight. It left the upper part of his chest on display, as well as the round muscles of his shoulders and arms.
“Hey,” was all he said.
Surprised at his presence in the doorway to her hotel room, she tied her robe a little tighter and placed her hand on her cheek, embarrassed at her appearance. “Mason, I thought you were Sindy.” She touched the towel on her head. “I just got out of the shower.”
Mason let out a soft chuckle. “I can see that. Cute robe and slippers.”
She unraveled the towel and squeezed the water out of her hair with the absorbent terrycloth, attempting to make it look halfway decent. It didn’t matter that he’d seen her a million times in her pajamas, fresh out of bed in the morning. He’d never seen her moments after stepping from the shower wearing a short robe with nothing underneath, while they were alone together. It made her feel as if she was on display in a very provocative way.
He glanced down at her legs and she immediately felt a shimmer across her flesh. “I got this drum beat in my head.” He tapped his temple. “I can’t get rid of it. I thought we could go to the tour bus and I could play it for you on my electronic drum pad. I want you to tell me what you think, maybe even add a little bassline to it. It might be the start of a song.”
Tessa tilted her head to the side, wondering when the hell he had time to think up a new rhythm. “Did you come up with it in the last 15 minutes since we’ve been at the hotel?”
“Yeah. In the shower. That’s the best time. The tapping of the water on the tile always gets in my head. It makes me want to make music. Just like the way you always gotta sing in the shower.”
He listens to me sing in the shower?
“I’m not spying on you in the shower,” he quickly clarified, with a shy smile. “I used to hear you from Lucas’s suite when you
both lived at home. Your voice is so powerful I heard it clear across the floor.”
“For a mansion, the walls are incredibly thin,” she said modestly. “And our suites shared a wall.”
“Don’t underestimate your voice, Tess. It’s a behemoth. So, you want to throw on some clothes and head to the tour bus?” He looked at his phone. “We got some time before we have to go to the promotional party.” He flashed a wide smile. “Plus, we’re rock stars now. We don’t have to arrive on time.”
She threw on a pair of jeans and a tank top, and they both quietly made it out of the hotel’s back entrance and onto the tour bus with only a minor commotion. While Mason grabbed his electronic drum pad from his bunk, Tessa unleashed her blue-green Quantum Modulus bass from the storage closet in the back and plugged into a cabinet amp.
Mason sat across from her on the opposite couch and started pounding on the pads with his sticks, sending a loud rhythmic beat through the enclosed tour bus. Tessa tapped her foot and grooved to the sound, but she didn’t want to add a baseline until she really felt it. After about thirty seconds Mason stopped and looked at her with a pensive expression.
“Why did you stop?”
“I feel like I’m overdoing it.”
The corners of her mouth curled into a smile. There was no holding back when Mason got a beat in his head. His talent didn’t conform to structure. It needed to be wild. She thought long and hard about the beat he just played. Not in terms of whether it made her chest shake and her body move, but how it would transcend into a song. Mason loved to play without inhibitions or constraints and let his arms fly freely over every single drum and cymbal in his elaborate kit. “Let’s try this. Tessa followed the rhythm he just played, but she scaled it back. She plucked out the excessive beats and concentrated on the grungy notes that gave the beat backbone and played it on her Quantum so Mason could hear it the way she heard it.
His eyes suddenly lit up and his mouth opened into an enormous smile. Without saying anything, his stick started slapping the electronic drum pads. She let him take the lead and followed with the baseline, sharing an incredible connection as the basic underlying rhythm of a song took shape.
He suddenly stopped playing and jumped to the seat next to her, dimples punctuating his elation. He put his arm around her and squeezed a hug onto her shoulder while a musical laugh left his throat. “This is why I love writing music with you, Tess. You hear what I’m trying to play even before I hear it.”
She chuckled and gave him a quizzical look. “What does that mean?”
“It means you filter the unnecessary noise from the beats I create. I’m out of control. I know that. I just start playing and I don’t stop sometimes. You know how to take that raw unedited material and clean out the unnecessary beats so it can be turned into a song.”
As he spoke and gushed with so much excitement, Tessa’s ego soared. Moments like this are exactly why she learned to play the bass. The two of them were responsible for the underlying current of every piece of music that Prodigy created. It was something they shared intensely, and it brought them closer than she ever thought imaginable.
The smile on his face consumed her. It fed oxygen into her lungs and sent her heart racing. These were the moments she loved, and there had been so many of them in her lifetime.
“Man, that was awesome!” He gave her another side hug, then slapped his knees. “We better get back and get ready for the party.”
Part of her wished they could skip the party and stay on the bus, alone, and continue to write music. The other part of her was looking forward to the events ahead. Tonight was a big night, in many ways. She locked her bass away and they headed back to the hotel.
Back in her room, Tessa took extra care with her makeup and outfit. Tonight was an important night. A life-changing night. Nerves tickled her belly, unsettling her usual steadfast confidence. She reminded herself that she had been waiting for this moment for as long as she could remember.
Her life had followed a pre-determined path – graduate college; embark on a music career; release an album; go on tour; claim stardom. Done. Done. And done. It was a series of events that would lead up to this night. Tonight was the final checkmark on a long list of accomplishments that needed to happen in a specific order. Tonight’s crowning moment would be the period on her long list of semicolons, and the one that meant the most to her. She was finally going to tell Mason that she was in love with him and had been since she was five years old.
She took a deep breath that calmed her nerves and strutted to the elevator that took her directly to a corridor that led to the ballroom. Media was everywhere. She smiled for photos and waved, but she didn’t stop for any interviews. She needed to get inside.
A man in a black tuxedo opened one of two large double doors and Tessa entered the grand affair. As she navigated through the crowd of people, a waiter offered her a glass of champagne. Not really her drink of choice, but she took it anyway. She was more of a mojito girl, but tonight’s celebration was in honor of Prodigy’s successful national tour and she was a newly-famous rock star.
She didn’t recognize any of the faces that she passed, although a young woman’s expression lit up when they made eye contact and a good-looking guy gave her the onceover with an excited smile. She wasn’t interested in having a conversation with either one of them, so she gave them an obligatory nod and moved on. She searched for her bandmates, tilted her chin up to see over the heads in front of her, and her eyes landed on her brother right away. It wasn’t hard to spot his mane of long blond hair and bright blue eyes, along with the group of people who always surrounded him. The present cluster appeared to be journalists.
Lucas had his arm firmly planted around Sindy’s shoulder as he rambled to the reporters without pausing for a breath. Sindy seemed bored at whatever Lucas was saying, which probably entailed an intricate explanation of music theory. Tessa loved the way Sindy teased and challenged Lucas, and it made her smile.
Tessa continued to sweep the room with her eyes until she found who she was looking for – Mason. Her jaw immediately tightened when she saw the group of girls that surrounded him, and her heart rate sped up. She headed toward him, moving swiftly through the crowd, but she abruptly stopped when she got within 15 feet of him. She paused to take in the skimpy outfits worn by the group of girls. Plunging necklines practically collided with the hem of miniscule skirts. Bare midriffs left more skin exposed than covered. Tessa was no prude. She dressed provocatively on stage, but there was a fine line between sexy and slutty.
She watched the way Mason interacted with them. He wore a flashy smile and had an ease about him that projected coolness – both traits from his father. There was no question that Mason was Jimmy Wilder’s son.
A high-pitched laugh, courtesy of a busty blond who looked like she was about to spill out of her low-cut top, pierced through the general chatter in the room. She rested her hand on Mason’s arm and leaned into him, pressing one half of her double D’s into his bicep.
Tessa took a step forward, her cheeks hot, and then stopped. She looked down at her own outfit. She was wearing black jeans with metal grommets, stiletto boots with spikes on the toe and heel, and a studded cropped leather jacket over a tank top. Even though she had a small band of skin showing above her waistline, she felt as if she was wearing too many clothes as she approached this group of half-naked girls, who were totally captivated by Mason. She spun around, intent on returning to her room in order to change into something that showed more flesh and cleavage, then stopped again. She had no reason to feel inferior in front of this group who acted as if their bodies were the only thing they had to offer the world. Tessa was petite, but she had a well-toned body with a trim waist. She was smart, witty and talented. She was a rock star. Standing taller, she marched toward Mason but a cell phone was suddenly shoved in front of her face.
“Tessa Blade Garcia. What do you plan on doing now that the tour is over? Is there a new album in the works?�
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She glanced at the placard around his neck which announced that he was with a prominent satellite radio station. Thoughts of Mason and his female groupies forgotten for the moment, she reveled in discussing the future plans for Prodigy, and a smile stretched across her face. “We’re going to take a short break. Lucas and I purchased new homes a few months before the tour started and haven’t had much time to enjoy them. We’re going to jump into writing a new album and start planning our next tour which should take Prodigy to Europe and Asia. But first, we’re going to enjoy some down time, and spend time with our parents.”
The journalist’s face lit up at the mention of her famous family. “They must be very proud. Have they been to any of the shows?”
This guy needed to get on board and keep up to date with media news. The entire Immortal Angel family attended the show in L.A. a few weeks ago, which necessitated an entourage of security, bodyguards, and private limos.
Tessa continued to answer a series of questions with the appropriate responses, making sure to plug the band’s album on several occasions. After a brief explanation of what it was like to work so closely with her brother for so many years and assuring him there was no sibling rivalry, she turned toward the corner of the room to check on Mason, but he was gone. It sent a flutter of unease through her belly, and she wrapped up the interview.
Quickly moving through the crowd, she wondered where the hell Mason went. She caught sight of Sindy when she stopped to deposit her empty champagne glass on a tray and weaved toward her best friend. “Have you seen Mason?”
MASON WILDER: Radical Rock Stars Next Generation Duet Book 2 Page 2
