Anything You Need (Cataclysm Book 1)

by Jerica MacMillan

  I choke on my own spit. “Three?”

  His steely eyes assess me. “Yes. Three. I believe in you. We’ve been waiting quite a while for you to make progress on this album. We need at least three singles to choose the first lead. Your fans are waiting to see what you’ll do next. You need to deliver.”

  “Sure.” My voice is hoarse again, my throat dry.

  He claps me on the shoulder again and leads me to his door. “The sophomore album can make or break a band, you know.”

  I nod, having no words to respond to the veiled threat. But his meaning is clear. If I don’t deliver three songs and at least one hit single in two weeks, our record deal is in jeopardy.

  Because added pressure will definitely make everything better.

  Fuck.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Kendra

  After we get back to Boston from our trip, Marcus basically moves into my condo. He still goes off to Auburndale to meet Danny at their rented studio. When I asked why they weren’t using a space closer to town, Marcus said it’s because Danny’s staying in Newton with his parents and son.

  I still forget that Danny has a son.

  It’s stupid of me and just serves to illustrate how wrapped up in my own stuff I am, because when that story broke it was everywhere. Danny knocked up some groupie at the beginning of their tour, and when she told him she was pregnant and asked him to pay her off to keep the abortion quiet, he told her he wanted the kid.

  It turned into this huge media circus with certain camps trying to make it into a pro-choice versus pro-life debate.

  Danny wasn’t interested in the publicity, though. And the kid’s mom didn’t have a problem with staying pregnant once Danny paid for everything—medical care, a nice place to live, a stipend for wardrobe and living expenses—nor did she have a problem leaving the kid behind and going back to wherever she was before.

  Marcus filled me in on a lot of what went on behind the scenes at the time. But since they’ve been on tour and I was caught up with all my own silly drama, it slipped my mind.

  Just shows how petty my problems are in comparison.

  With Marcus gone all day, I’m back to kicking around my condo on my own most of the time, not sure what to do with myself. I only work two days a week at the nonprofit, and I can only spend so much time debating with myself about the nonprofit management program.

  With my degree in business, I could go into the venture capital or investment sector with my father, but I don’t want to. And getting Dad to find a spot for me at his company would be a hard sell anyway. If I were a boy, I’d be there no question. But a girl?

  Well, I’m supposed to get married and organize fundraisers.

  Since I’m not married, I thought he’d at least get behind the idea of forming a nonprofit arm of his company. It could go along with the venture capital thing, but giving grants for startups that are working to solve problems that affect the poorest citizens of our planet.

  I’ve put together a presentation for him, but even getting on his calendar is proving tricky lately. Which tells me he’d rather I focused on the finding a husband thing and helping Mom with her latest fundraiser.

  And while I like that these fundraisers bring in a lot of money for the selected charity, I wish I could do something more meaningful than planning parties designed to show off my wealth and impress my friends more than anything. Most people don’t even know what charity they’re raising money for by showing up. It’s about networking, showing off, and getting a tax write off as an added bonus.

  Speaking of, my mother calls to invite me over as I’m revising my presentation for my dad for the thousandth time. “We can have tea and start going over the preliminary planning. Are you busy this afternoon?”

  I suppress a sigh, wishing the call were from my dad to discuss my nonprofit idea. “No. I can come.”

  “Don’t sound so excited, Kendra. I’ll think you enjoy spending time with me,” Mom says drily.

  Her comeback makes me smile. “Sorry, Mom. You know I love you. I’m just getting bored.”

  “Then this is perfect. See you in an hour.”

  Ninety minutes later, Mom and I are seated next to each other, the remnants of our tea and blueberry scones littering the table in the breakfast nook, brochures from several hotels spread out on the table.

  “If we do this in May, we get in before the height of wedding season. Otherwise, I think we’ll have to wait until September or October. Unless you want to move it to the Cape and make it a summer festival?” I’ve convinced her to raise money for the nonprofit I volunteer for. A music festival would be a perfect fundraiser for a music-focused foundation.

  Mom taps her finger on her lips. “That does have a certain appeal from the music standpoint, but I’m not sure we’d get the high society draw we’d need for the fundraising aspect.”

  I roll my lips between my teeth, biting back the urge to say we could just sell tickets to normal people and raise the money that way. Cataclysm could be the headliner, and I know they’ve played charity concerts before. With their connections, we could put together an amazing lineup and have way more fun than a stuffy party with her society friends.

  But this is what Mom knows. This is what she wants to plan. A dinner. A silent auction. Probably a string quartet. If we can get a variety of musicians to show up as guests, especially a celebrity or two, all the better.

  “Okay, let’s do it in May,” I suggest. “It’ll be a tight timeline with only three months to plan, but that way they’ll have the money in time to plan for next school year. I’m sure Marcus can come. Probably some of the other guys from the band too. If we want more celebrities, and I’m sure we do since we want to draw a big crowd with deep pockets, they have lots of contacts. I’ll talk to him about it tonight.”

  Mom sits back and smiles at me, her eyes twinkling. “I take it things are going well if you feel comfortable enough to volunteer him for something without talking to him first.”

  I reach for my tea cup and take a sip of the tepid liquid. “He’d do it for me even if we weren’t dating. Marcus has always been there for me whenever I needed something.”

  “Hmm. Yes. Which is why the only surprising thing about the two of you together is how long it’s taken to happen.”

  I scoff, straightening the brochures in front of me. “Why would you say that?”

  Mom just gives a soft chuckle. “So we’ll have the boys from Cataclysm at the very least. Possibly several others. I’ll talk to Bonnie, too. She has connections with the symphony. Maybe we can get the music director and the concertmaster to come too. They won’t have quite the same celebrity draw as your friends, but they’ll add status, which is important to people too.”

  By people she means her friends. I know how this game works, so I don’t say anything, even if I find it irritating.

  At least she and Dad aren’t upset that I’m dating Marcus. He lacks the status that she’s referring to, even if he does have money and celebrity now. Probably that’s the only reason they’re okay with our relationship. If he were still just a working-class guy in a band, I’m not so sure they’d accept the situation with such alacrity.

  “I’m sorry, what was that?” Lost in my bitter thoughts, I missed whatever Mom just said.

  She gives me an assessing look. “I said that Mitchell’s been asking your father about you. It seems he tried to visit you but was turned away by the staff of your building.”

  Once again I turn my attention to straightening the brochures in front of me, stacking them so that their edges line up perfectly. I clear my throat. “Yeah. He, uh, started coming around more than was appropriate.” I push my hair behind my ear. “I took his name off my list of approved visitors.”

  “At Marcus’s insistence?”

  I shrug, gathering a few crumbs from the tablecloth and brushing them onto my plate. “He suggested it.”

  “And you …”

  With a sigh, I meet her eyes. “I didn’t
want Mitchell visiting me anyway. I broke up with him. It’s not appropriate for him to drop by whenever he likes. Or to put me in the position of either agreeing to go somewhere with him so he can try to convince me to take him back or having him barge into my home.”

  Mom’s eyebrows draw together, her mouth pinched in disapproval. “He’s that forceful with you? I don’t like the sound of that.”

  I sigh again. “I wouldn’t call it forceful. Not like he’d be violent with me. He’s just … stubborn. And unwilling to take no for an answer. I don’t think it’s a word he’s used to hearing.”

  Her face relaxes, and she lets out a snort, reaching for her tea cup and making a face at the dregs she finds. “I’m quite certain you’re correct about that. I don’t think he heard it much growing up, and it seems that it’s so infrequently used around him as an adult, that he doesn’t even register it as a word.”

  My mom’s assessment is so accurate and cutting, it catches me by surprise. I let out a loud bark of laughter. “You are so right, Mom. He doesn’t even register it as a word. It’s like it doesn’t exist, or it’s from a language he doesn’t understand.”

  Her face clouds again. “I can see how that would make being in a relationship … difficult.”

  Something inside me relaxes at her words. Something that I didn’t realize was knotted up. “Yeah. It does.”

  Her eyes are warm when they meet mine. “Marcus, though …”

  “Marcus isn’t like that at all. He listens to what I say. Cares about what I want and what I think. He …” Loves me are the words that almost pop out. But I swallow and take an alternative route. “He cares about me.”

  Mom nods and reaches out to give my hand a squeeze. “Good. That’s what I want for my baby girl.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Marcus

  “I still can’t believe you fucking played those fucking recordings for Jeff fucking Shaw.”

  I throw my pencil at the notebook propped on the piano in front of me and spin around to face Danny, where he sits in his favorite position, his feet propped on a chair across from him, his guitar in his lap. “What was I supposed to do? Tell him we’ve got nothing?”

  Danny’s eyes blaze with anger as he turns his face to me, his mouth set in a stubborn line. “Damn right that’s what you do. Make him wait until we’ve got something for him to actually hear.”

  “Oh, sure. Spend even more time working on songs he’s going to kill. Smart.”

  “Maybe he wouldn’t’ve killed ‘em if they were more polished.”

  I shake my head, running a hand through my hair. We’ve had some variation of this conversation for the last three days. “He would’ve. He said they were too much about lost love and broken hearts. Too much like our first album. We need something new. Something different.”

  “But still the same.”

  “Yeah.”

  He lets out a low chuckle, but there’s no real amusement in it. “Riiight. What’s our problem then? All we have to do is come up with something the same but different.”

  I crack a smile. “Yeah. That about sums up my reaction.”

  Like a lazy cat suddenly deciding to chase after something, Danny gets up. Sets his guitar in its stand and starts pacing the room, hands on his head. “Alright. So we can’t do broken hearts and lost love. Or at least not so much of that.” He stops and turns to face me. “Other than when you’re talking to me, you’re all dopey happy and in love with Kendra these days. Write about that.”

  Suddenly the air’s gotten too thin. “Oh, sure. No problem,” I choke out, trying to sound flippant. “I’ll just rip my heart out and put it on paper. No big deal.”

  He shrugs and drops his arms. “How’s that different from before? All those other songs were about her too, right?”

  “That’s not …” I can’t formulate a sentence. They were. But no one’s supposed to realize that.

  Danny laughs. “C’mon, man. We all know. You might think you were hiding it all these years, and maybe you fooled other people, but we’ve seen the two of you together. She’s always been your muse. Let her be your muse for something different now. We can be sappy about found love instead of lost love.”

  I swallow down my automatic denials. There’s really no point. He’s right, even if I’ll never give him the satisfaction of admitting it out loud, and Kendra and I are together now. And not just for pretend. Once we’re done here, I’ll stop by my place and head over to her condo for the night, only to do this all again tomorrow. “I need to go for a walk.”

  Danny nods and steps out of the way of the door as I stand and grab my jacket. “Cool. Walk around. Clear your head. Grab a coffee and get some new lyric ideas. I’ll stay here and fiddle with chord progressions. Maybe when you get back we can actually write a song.”

  “Right. Good plan.”

  Especially since we need at least three in the next ten days. Knocking one out today would be a huge step in the right direction.

  I wander around for about an hour, coming back to the studio with two cups of coffee and a bag of donuts. Danny’s strumming his guitar when I open the door, and he looks up when I set the donuts and coffee on top of the piano.

  He grins, the first genuine smile I’ve seen from him since we’ve been holed up in this studio. “Man, Dr. Rosenker would kick your ass for using a piano as a table for donuts and coffee.”

  I laugh, remembering our piano professor at Berklee. He’d lose his shit anytime someone set their water bottle on a piano, much less actual food or drink. “You wouldn’t put coffee on your guitar, would you?”

  Danny stands and fishes a donut out of the bag. “If it were large and flat like a piano, I probably would.”

  I touch my cup to his before taking a drink, enjoying this rare moment of levity. “Truth.” Joking like this while writing used to be our norm. When he found out he was going to be a dad, he got a lot more serious. Add in the pressure of touring and now the pressure from the label to make a new album … things have been tense for a while. It’s nice to recapture the way we used to be.

  “Come up with anything?”

  Holding up my phone, I nod. “I think so. A few starting points at least. What about you?”

  He shrugs. “Maybe. Depends on how it lays with your lyrics. You know how it is.”

  “Yeah. Let me hear what you’ve got, and I’ll see which of my starting points seems like it’ll be a good fit.”

  “Oooh. You’re letting me be the one to go first.” He reaches out a hand to feel my forehead. “You feeling alright?”

  I swat his hand away. “Shut up. You make it sound like I’m a selfish asshole who always has to be in charge of things.”

  Brushing the crumbs off his hands, Danny grabs his guitar, a half smile still on his face. “Well, y’know, if the shoe fits …”

  I flip him off, and he laughs, settling into his chair. “Fine. Since I’m so bossy, play what you were playing when I walked in.”

  He gives me a mocking salute, adjusts the tuning of his guitar, and starts strumming. I open the notes app where I typed in a few lines that came to me while I was walking.

  This is how our last album started. I had some lyric ideas, a hook, and Danny came up with a chord progression to support it. We crafted the melody to lay over the top of it together to fit with the words, and we went from there.

  It’s a fairly short riff, only a few bars for now. “I like it. Play it again.”

  “Yessir.” He smirks, bending over the guitar to play the same progression again.

  I ignore his snark, though, focusing on the music, humming a melody, seeing which line best fits. The words start melding with the notes, fitting together like they were always meant to be.

  “There we go,” Danny says when he gets to the end of the progression. “Write that shit down.”

  I grab the notebook and pencil off the piano. “Gimme the names of the chords.”

  The jokes are done now as we get into the flow of actually wr
iting a song. Adding new chords, new melodies, new lyrics. Putting together the chorus and the first verse, roughing in a bridge. I still need to come up with the rest of the lyrics. But we’re onto something here. We can both feel it.

  This is the magic we’ve been searching for.

  Chapter Twenty

  Kendra

  I’m later getting home than I intended. Planning the charity event with Mom took longer than I expected, especially since we decided on the May date. It’s already the beginning of February, so we had to get a jump on reserving everything.

  I have to call caterers tomorrow to schedule tastings, and Mom is having Bonnie come over so they can organize their high brow guest list. I’m in charge of enlisting Marcus’s help, plus his bandmates and any friends he has who might be free that weekend.

  At least we got the venue booked, so the date is settled. It’ll make it easier to get into people’s calendars.

  I’ve helped Mom with planning before, but never from start to finish like this. She’s always just delegated certain tasks to me, usually closer to the actual event date.

  This …

  This stuff is exhausting.

  “It’ll be good practice for planning your wedding,” she said at one point with a knowing smile.

  I let out a weird laugh. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  Yes, Marcus and I have been friends forever, but the whole relationship thing is still really new. My mom doesn’t realize how new, though. And I had to remind myself that Mom thinks we’ve been together since before Christmas. Not just a week.

  And she and Dad were engaged within a couple of months of their first date, so expecting wedding talk already isn’t ridiculous for her.

  She did the same thing when I dated Mitchell. But it all seemed like just talk until she said he asked her opinion on a ring. Then I knew it was something more, and I bolted.