by Emma Lea
It was well after two in the morning when Stevie finally made it home. She was wrung out from the ups and downs of the night and really wanted nothing more than to slide into bed and close her eyes and leave the night behind. But as she tiptoed into the house, trying not to wake anybody, she heard the soft murmur of voices and saw the light coming from the living room. With a sigh, she headed towards them knowing that it was better to get it over with now and then she might be able to get some sleep.
“Hey,” she said as she walked into the room.
“Oh hey,” Darla said getting up and coming over to her.
They were all there; Darla and Tom, Vanessa, Nadine and Jace, and they were waiting for her.
Darla hugged her before leading her over to the couches were everyone was seated. She sank gratefully down into one and closed her eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath and then looking at each person individually.
“Okay, so,” she began. “We are going to release a statement saying that Court’n Jacks are collaborating on a track with Nate Nash for his new album.”
“No press conference?” Jace asked.
“Not at this stage,” she replied. “Mabel told Nate that he should do one soon, but to wait until this bit of media bullshit had calmed down first. He is collaborating with other artists as well, so the idea is that he will do a press conference and tell the world all about his new album.”
“And what about us?” Jace said. “We’re just going to get lumped in with all the other artists?”
“Well, yeah,” she said. “Jace, we’re like the lowest on the totem pole as far as this album is concerned. He’s doing a duet with Lily and he’s doing other tracks with Camille Bracket and The Winchesters. We’re the nobodies.”
Jace didn’t answer, he just gritted his teeth and looked away from her.
“But that’s not everything, is it?” Vanessa asked.
“No,” Stevie said. “Marci agrees that it’s a good idea for us to do the song with a small audience. She wants us to do it in the studio with just a select few and to record it.”
The three other members of the band exchanged glances before looking back at her. “Okay,” Jace said. “That sounds like a good idea.”
“Good. Great,” Stevie said, taking a breath. “She also wants us to do some bar gigs between now and the tour—”
“What!” Jace said standing up. “With Nate?”
“No, not with Nate. This has nothing to do with him. The fact is, we have only ever played together in a studio. We’ve never performed as a band in front of a live audience. We are going on tour with Lily Ames… a sold out tour. That means thousands of people who have never even heard of us. We can’t just turn up on stage and play and pretend it’s just like being in the studio together. We need to start building our own fan base and we need to do that by playing local gigs and getting our name and our sound out there.”
“Our single—”
“Our single is doing great, but it’s just one song. We need to get our other stuff out there and quite frankly, we need the practice of a live, not so supportive crowd. You know what it’s like to go to a concert and sit through the first act. Nobody cares. We need to make them care and win some fans in the process.”
The siblings exchanged another glance but Stevie could tell that at least the girls were on board. Nadine was vibrating with excitement and Vanessa’s leg was bouncing with anticipation. Shit, even Stevie was keen to get on stage again and sing songs that they had written together.
“Okay,” Jace said.
The girls whooped and there were hugs all around. At least something good had come out of tonight. It was the last missing piece to truly gel them as a band. They had been playing together for years in the studio, but it just wasn’t the same as standing on a stage under lights and being vulnerable to the whim of the audience. They could get heckled off stage - or worse, completely ignored - but until they took that step, they would never know if they could truly make it as a cohesive unit.
“Okay, I’m off to bed,” Stevie said when they had all calmed down. “Marci wants to hear the song tomorrow. Well today, six o’clock tonight at the studio.”
“Who’s going to be there?” Vanessa asked.
“Marci is going to call Derek and get him to call a few people. Darla and Tom can come and Nate’s people will probably be there too.”
Darla jumped up and came over to Stevie, hugging her tightly. “Are you okay, really?” she whispered in her ear.
“Just tired,” she whispered back, not prepared to tell Darla about seeing Natasha at Nate’s apartment. She knew the look Darla would give her and she just wasn’t in the mood for a lecture. She had already decided to steer clear of Nate apart from when they had to work together. She didn’t need Darla to tell her that.
Her friend leaned back so she could look into Stevie’s eyes and Stevie tried really hard not to fidget. She’d never been able to hide anything from Darla, but this time she really hoped that her bestie wouldn’t see the hurt and confusion that swirled in her mind.
“Okay,” Darla said with a sigh, “but if you need to talk—”
“I’m fine,” Stevie said, extricating herself from Darla’s arms. “I just need sleep.”
Darla let her go and she waved to the others as she headed for her room. She really was dog-tired which probably accounted for her fragile emotional state. Once she got some sleep she’d be fine and she could get her mind back under control and shove those confusing feelings about Nate back in the dark corner and forget about them. She needed to find that anger that she had harbored all these years. It was the only way she could stop herself from falling under his spell one more time. That was the absolute last thing she needed right now. She had a tour to prepare for and a new album to write. She was far too busy to get tangled up in a romance, especially one with Nate. She would just refuse to let her heart go there. Easy.
Chapter Fifteen
Nate paced the studio as Court’n Jacks set up. He was anxious and didn’t quite know what to do with the nervous energy that was coursing through his body. He wasn’t worried about the song. He knew that it was good and with the edition of Stevie and the others it was even better. No, what he was nervous about was performing in front the people that sat on the other side of the glass. His last live performance hadn’t gone well. The concert had had so many empty seats it was a joke and of the crowd that did turn up, half of them walked out before he was finished. It had been a blow to his ego and it had robbed him of the love he had for the stage.
From the first moment that he and Stevie had performed together, he had loved being on stage and feeding off the energy of the audience. Even when the atmosphere had been tough, and some of the dive bars they’d played had been plenty tough, there had been a certain electric energy from the crowd. But that last concert… that had been different. There had been no atmosphere and performing the songs that he hated to a crowd that was uninterested was like pushing a boulder up a hill. They’d cancelled the rest of the tour after that, citing health issues, and no one had seemed too upset about it.
Except him.
He’d been terrified of repeating the experience and the longer it had been since he performed, the harder it seemed to get. Now that he was standing on the precipice of it again, he felt torn in two. The need to perform was still there. That yearning to get on stage and feel the vibe from the audience, to ride it like a wave, was an addiction and his psyche craved it, but the other half of him, the half that had been hurt by his last performance was pumping his system full of fear. Nate Nash had never had stage fright before. He’d never believed it existed, but he was about to have a panic attack that proved he was wrong.
“Hey,” Stevie said, coming up behind him and resting a hand on his shoulder. He jumped at her touch and shied away from her. She couldn’t know that he was afraid. He would die before he let her know that this was who he was now.
“Hey,” he said turning to her and plastering a coc
ky smile on his face. “We all set?”
She gave him an odd look before letting the corners of her mouth tip up in a small smile. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Great,” he said, moving away from her and towards his guitar.
He pulled the strap of his Les Paul over his shoulder and sat with it balanced on his thigh, the comforting weight of it grounding him. He let his fingers wander over the strings as his other hand pressed into the fret board, playing the chords of the scale that Stevie had taught him. She sat beside him, her old Takamine acoustic on her lap and played with him. They made their way up the scale and then down and then changed key and repeated the scale. He felt the nerves melt away as he played. This wasn’t a stadium, it was a studio. Yes, there was an audience, but they couldn’t heckle him from the other side of the glass. They could still walk out, but he didn’t think it was likely. This track was so much better than the crap he released on his last album and there was no reason for him to worry about getting a bad reception from this audience. He just had to control the nerves buzzing under his skin and use it instead of letting it use him.
Derek tapped a button on the control board and his rich, deep voice filled the sealed room.
“Okay guys, when you’re ready.”
Nate stood and moved over to stand in front of his microphone while Stevie moved to the piano where her microphone was set up. Nadine had her vibrant purple violin up to her chin, Vanessa was behind her turquoise drum kit and Jace had his black bass strapped on. He made eye contact with each of them before nodding his head and starting to play. The soft, sad melody wafted from his guitar and he closed his eyes, letting the sound surround him. Nadine’s violin joined in, adding a haunting quality to the song, and the minor chords of the piano lifted it again. Jace’s bass grounded the song and the steady drumbeat gave it direction. He opened his mouth to sing and the fear he had been feeling dissolved completely. The words poured out of him in a way that he hadn’t been able to produce during their studio time.
Stevie’s harmony wove around him as they sang together and he was transported back to a time when things were simpler. Singing with Stevie on a rickety old stage while old guys with beards who drank too much and middle-aged women trying desperately to hang on to their youth with big hair and too much make-up watched on. It hadn’t been an easy time. They’d scrimped and saved and lived off bar tips and Ramen noodles. But it was all about the music then and it seemed more pure. His life now was all about image and brand and sound bites and somewhere along the way he had forgotten this part, the part where a song was able to strip away all the pretense and leave him feeling open and raw, scrubbed clean of the dust from life.
He felt the cleansing of the song as they reached the bridge and then the elation as they moved into the final chorus. This was what he was meant to do, not that other crap that had soiled his soul. This was the real thing and he was prepared to do whatever it took to make sure he didn’t lose sight of it ever again.
The final strains of the song faded and he opened his eyes, his head turned so that the first thing he saw was Stevie. He saw it in her eyes too, he knew that she was feeling the same thing he was. For a single moment they were fully exposed to one another and he knew that his destiny would be forever tied to hers. He didn’t know how that would even work, he just knew that they were not done and that there was a whole lot more that needed to happen between them.
Movement behind the glass shifted his focus and he grinned. He couldn’t hear them, but he saw them clapping and he knew that he had found what he had lost on that last night. Even through the glass and the soundproofing he could feel the energy of the small audience and it infused him with a confidence that he hadn’t felt in too long to acknowledge. If he was honest he’d have to say he hadn’t felt this good since the last time he and Stevie had performed together.
He turned his head to take in the rest of the band and they looked as shell-shocked as he felt. What they had done today had been magic. The challenge was to be able to reproduce that same magic on their record.
He was keyed up, just like old times. The adrenalin from playing a good - no great - show coursed through him, even though it had only been one song. He hadn’t thought he could do it, not with how his last tour ended, but tonight proved that he hadn’t lost it, that he hadn’t pissed away the best thing in his life.
The old urges were there too. How many times after a show had he sought out the company of a woman to get rid of the excess energy? Every damn time. Mostly it hadn’t mattered who the woman was, just that she was willing and available. At the height of his career there had been no shortage of willing women and they had congregated backstage just waiting for him to take his pick. Sometimes he hadn’t been able to choose between two, so had taken them both.
The flow of women had ebbed when his career started to go south. Oh there were still plenty willing to bed a rock star, but a lot of them had done the dance with him before. That’s when Natasha had come in handy. Being in a relationship with her, no matter how twisted it was, gave him an out when he didn’t see a woman that took his fancy. Looking back now he could see what a dick he’d been, but he’d never made them promises and they all knew the score. He was a rock star and they were his groupies, and there was no other relationship beyond that.
It was different now and had been for a long time. With the failure of his last tour, extricating himself from the destructive claws of Natasha and his stint in rehab, he had taken a long, hard look at himself and realized just how much he was responsible for the shit he’d found himself in. Working with Court’n Jacks had opened his eyes in a whole different way and even the short time he’d spent with Mabel had changed him. He knew that he couldn’t blame anyone else for his spectacular fall from grace, he alone was responsible.
But he felt stronger now, more confident. Performing that song in front of the people he respected the most had shown him that all was not lost. He could in fact make his way back to what he loved. He could actually fulfill his dream. And that had him psyched, even more so than the adrenalin high from performing.
He felt the familiar buzz under his skin and the need to keep moving. Even as people slapped him on the back and congratulated him, telling him that the song was going to be a hit, he was distracted by the sudden need to feel the soft press of a woman’s skin against his. And not just any woman. He wanted Stevie. He wanted her more than he had a right to, more than he had ever experienced before. She drew him to her like a moth to a flame and he didn’t care that he knew she would leave him burnt, he had to have her.
And maybe, just maybe, she felt the same.
He felt her eyes on him, the heat of her gaze scorching his already overheated skin. He knew her eyes tracked him, just as he kept watching her out of the corner of his eye. They circled one another, surrounded by people but only aware of each other. It was a heady dance, a drawn out foreplay that guaranteed fireworks were they ever to actually act on it. He knew they would, they had to. This thing between them had somehow blown up into something so much more. He’d been attracted to her since the moment she had walked back into his life, but this, what he was feeling now, it surpassed attraction and was headed full on into lust.
He watched her as she walked towards him on her way to talk to Derek. They hadn’t spoken a word to each other since the song ended because he knew it wouldn’t stop at words. Her hand brushed his as she prowled passed him, sending sparks shooting through his veins. Her intent was clear; she wanted him and she was as anxious as he was to get everyone out of the studio so they could be alone. He heard murmurings about going out to celebrate, but that was the last thing he wanted. If he didn’t get his mouth on her soon, he was going to lose it.
Finally he noticed people starting to leave. There were promises to meet up at a local bar and he told them he’d be along shortly. He busied himself winding cords and putting his guitar away, taking more time and care than he technically needed to in order to prolong it. He noticed Ste
vie kissing Darla goodbye on the cheek and heard her tell the other woman that she would be along soon, that she wanted to freshen up and pack her gear away. He tried not to stare, he tried to pretend that he hadn’t heard what they were saying, but he knew Darla gave him the evil eye before she left, whispering something to Stevie that he couldn’t hear.
Eventually the silence descended and there was only the two of them. Nate put down the cord he was holding and stalked towards her. She held her ground and her breath and he saw the pulse at her throat flutter wildly. He came to a stop inches from her, close enough that he could feel the warmth of her body. Slowly, so as not to startle her, he lifted his hands and threaded them through her hair, cupping the back of her head, his thumbs resting on the underside of her jaw, as she looked up at him. Her lips parted and she ran her tongue along the bottom one before catching it between her teeth.
He lowered his head and brushed his tongue along the same lip before drawing it between his teeth gently. He let it go and slid a tender kiss against her lips, taking his time, forcing himself to go slow.
“Tell me to stop,” he whispered against her mouth.
Instead of responding, she stretched up and kissed him, her arms going around his waist and pulling him close so that their bodies touched from hip to knee. He didn’t need any more encouragement, so he deepened the kiss, losing himself in her and not caring in the least that she just might destroy him.
She was mad at him, angry about the whole Natasha thing, resentful of the way he had left her five years before and pissed off that he’d never noticed her as a woman. She was mad that they’d never connected on that level even though she had been completely besotted by him. But singing together again, performing together for an audience after all these years, crystalized all those feelings into something else, something darker. The feelings she’d had for him when she wasn’t much more than a teenager were nothing compared to what was burning through her now. Even the kiss they’d shared a few days ago couldn’t compare. She was on fire from the inside out and she knew that the only relief she would get would be with him.
