Redeem

by Rachel Schurig

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Redeem

  A Ransom Novel

  Rachel Schurig

  Copyright © 2014 Rachel Schurig

  All rights reserved.

  Kindle Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  To find out more about her books, visit Rachel at rachelschurig.com

  Join the mailing list for updates and exclusive content!

  Visit her author page on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/RachelSchurigAuthor)

  Follow her on Twitter (https://twitter.com/rems330)

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to Jennifer Harris for all of your help with editing.

  Cover Designed by Najla Qamber Designs

  Photo by Lindee Robinson Photography

  Models: Destiny Mankowski and Ahmad Kawsan

  For my mom.

  Chapter One

  Cash

  I’m fairly certain my brothers are going to kill me.

  They’ve picked the perfect place for it—Daltrey’s house is in the middle of freaking nowhere. If they decide to jump me here, no one will be the wiser. There isn’t a neighbor close enough to hear me scream.

  The driver finally reaches the end of the long driveway, little more than a dirt road, really, and pulls up in front of the yellow farmhouse. I lean back into the soft leather seat, closing my eyes for a long moment. I had the entire drive in from the airport in Nashville to collect my thoughts, to prepare for how I’m going to deal with them, and I’m still at a loss.

  All I know is that I’m dreading walking into that house.

  A figure appears on the porch—a tall, blond, gangly figure in worn out jeans and a Dropkick Murphies t-shirt. I swallow. Reed. My big brother crosses his arms, staring out at me, and my trepidation starts to give way to resentment. Of course he’s going to pull the whole father figure act now, and I’m not really sure I can handle it. I lean forward to toss the driver a few hundreds and climb out of the car, pulling my single duffle with me before slamming the door.

  “Glad to see you could fit us into your busy schedule.” There’s no mistaking the bite in Reed’s tone and my resentment grows.

  “I swear to God, Reed, if this is an intervention I’m out of here,” I snap, climbing the steps. As I move to brush past him, he reaches out and grabs my arm. I stiffen immediately, almost expecting a punch, but instead he merely meets my gaze. He looks better than I thought he would, considering the circumstances—sure, there’s some stress in his eyes and he could probably use a few hours of sleep, but I’d been expecting much worse. I briefly wonder if I’ll find his girlfriend, Paige, inside. She tends to have a calming effect on him.

  “How was your flight?” he asks, his voice gentler now, more neutral.

  My resentment fades a notch, the trepidation of earlier taking its place. “It was fine.”

  He nods once and releases me, grabbing my duffle and following me inside.

  They’re all gathered there, in the living room. My younger brothers, Daltrey and Lennon, are sitting on opposite couches. Daisy, Daltrey’s girl, is next to him but I don’t see Paige. She’s not the only one missing. I scan the room twice, my mouth dropping open with realization. “Dad’s not here?”

  “We didn’t invite him,” Reed says, dropping my bag on the ground and settling into a worn leather armchair by the fire.

  Daisy jumps up from the couch and throws her arms around my neck. “If you ever do something like that again I will kill you,” she murmurs into my ear.

  I roll my eyes but squeeze her back. The little girl from next door is about as close to a sister as I’ve ever had, even though my brother has yet to make that relation official.

  She pulls back, peering up at me, her clear green eyes wide and worried. “I mean it. You scared me.”

  “I’m sorry.” Not for the first time in the last forty-eight hours, I realize that I really am sorry.

  She nods once and returns to the couch. Daltrey and Lennon are both watching me, Len through narrowed eyes, but neither makes a move to welcome me. I sink down into the love seat, not meeting their eyes, and wait.

  “Are you okay?” Daltrey finally asks.

  I roll my eyes. “Of course I am. It wasn’t really a big—”

  “If you say it wasn’t a big deal I’m going to punch you.” Daltrey’s voice is flat. “I swear to God, Cash.”

  I don’t answer. I hate this feeling—knowing that they’re right, knowing that I messed up pretty bad this time. Guilt is not something that I’m familiar with.

  “Why didn’t you invite Dad?”

  Reed snorts. “Because we wanted to actually talk to you, and that would have been hard with your head ripped off.”

  I look at the floor. “He’s pretty pissed, huh?”

  “That’s one way of saying it.” Daltrey sounds almost amused and I wonder if maybe there’s a way to make light of this whole thing.

  I give him my best sheepish smile. “Hey, I’m not the first member of this band to get arrested, you know.”

  My attempt at humor does not go over very well. Daisy stiffens next to my little brother, who glares at me. “Not really the same thing, Cash.”

  I feel bad immediately. Daltrey was locked up for a night a few years ago when he beat the shit out of some punk kid who had made life hell for Daisy. Though it had caused some business problems for us as a band, I was intensely proud of my little brother—I would have done the exact same thing for Daisy. His actions had been justified—maybe even a little noble. A far cry from totaling a brand new S-Class after one too many shots and getting picked up for a DUI.

  No one says anything for a long minute. I fidget with my jacket cuff, wishing they would get on with it. I was expecting yelling, swearing, slamming things around. Maybe even a few thrown punches—your basic Ransome family melee. I could handle that. Would actually enjoy it, to be honest. It was the way we had dealt with our problems for years—let the anger out, everyone feels better.

  But this. The judgmental silence. The glares and the disappointed expressions. I’m not sure how much of this I can take.

  “So what’s the deal?” I finally snap. “You guys are the ones who invited me out here. Start talking.”

  “We invited you out here to get you the hell out of L.A.” Daltrey says. “Since you seemed to think it was smart to continue to get your picture taken by paparazzi at fucking clubs less than twenty-four hours after being released on DUI charges.”

  I glare at him. “Sorry I wasn’t a good little girl who stayed home to think about what I had done. It was a shit day, okay? I needed a drink.”
>
  “You added fuel to a fire that didn’t need any more fuel,” Reed says, his voice much calmer than I would have expected.

  “And, you know, you ignored all of our calls,” Lennon adds, speaking for the first time since I entered the room. “That was cool.”

  I rub a hand across the back of my neck. I don’t really have a good excuse for that one, besides for not wanting to hear them lecture me.

  “Look, the press is having a field day with this,” Reed says. “A Ransome brother in trouble again. You know they eat this shit up. We thought it would be a good idea to get you out of there.”

  “So you demanded my presence with a threat to kick me out of my own band,” I snarl, the resentment back in full force. “That was a nice text to get, by the way.”

  “We didn’t say anything about kicking you out,” Lennon argues.

  “You said you would find another guitar player to record the album!”

  “Because our current guitar player seemed hell bent on getting thrown back in jail!”

  I roll my eyes, collapsing back into the chair. “God, Lennon. I used a driver to go to the bar that second night, okay?”

  He raises an eyebrow. “How mature of you. Didn’t have anything to do with your license being suspended, did it?”

  “Why don’t you go fu—”

  “We’re not messing around!” The calm has finally gone out of Reed’s voice. He sounds like it’s taking everything in him to not throttle me. “Damn it, Cash. Do you think any of us are enjoying this? Do you think I want to lecture you like you’re a damn two year old?”

  “Probably about as much as I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Then grow the hell up!” He slams his hand down on the table next to him, breathing hard. I watch as he physically tries to calm himself, taking deep breaths and squaring his shoulders. “We’re not going to sit around and watch you throw away everything we’ve worked for. If you can’t get your act together to record this album, if you choose your damn lifestyle over working with us, then we will find someone else to do your job.”

  I deflate back into the chair. In spite of his obvious efforts to keep it together, he sounds like he’s about to lose it. Have I really let them down so badly?

  “Look,” I say, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “I was planning to settle down in plenty of time to record. I really was. I just wanted to have a little fun first. It was supposed to be our time off, right?” When Lennon looks like he wants to argue I go on quickly. “The DUI was stupid. I know that. Really stupid. But it’s not something I plan to ever let happen again. It was just a…mistake.”

  “You could have called us,” Daltrey says, staring daggers at me. “We heard about it online. That’s messed up, dude.”

  I hang my head again. I had called the lawyer instead of my brothers because I hadn’t wanted to hear the disappointment and anger in their voices that I was hearing right now.

  “It wasn’t just this last week, either. You’ve been ignoring my calls for ages,” Reed adds when I don’t respond.

  “And mine,” Lennon says.

  I wish I had a drink right now, I think, rubbing my hands over my face. The mixture of guilt and defensiveness in my stomach is making me feel nauseated. I don’t know if I want to apologize or curse them all and get the hell out of the house.

  “What’s going on with you, Cash?” Lennon asks, his voice quiet.

  I swallow, hard. How am I supposed to tell them that I’ve been feeling disconnected from them—from everything—for months? That sometimes I find myself thinking that this whole rock star thing is not turning out at all like I thought it would?

  “You can talk to us, you know,” Reed says. “We’re your family.”

  I just shake my head.

  We sit in silence for a few minutes, the only sound in the room the crackling of the fireplace. Outside the chorus of cicadas picks up their intensity. There’s not a single sound of civilization for miles and I wonder how Daltrey stands it. I get him wanting privacy in his time off, particularly considering Daisy’s situation, but to hide out here in the mountains like this, miles away from any kind of nightlife—it doesn’t make sense to me.

  And that, right there, is the problem. Nothing my brothers do seems to make any sense to me anymore. I feel like they’re a million miles away from me, even sitting here in this room.

  “I’m sorry, okay?” I finally say, unable to handle the quiet any more. “I’m sorry for the DUI and I’m sorry for not calling. I’ll do better.”

  Reed rests his head against the back of his chair, watching me. “Here’s the thing, little brother. Our management isn’t very eager to take your word for it.”

  I narrow my eyes at him. “By management do you mean our father?”

  He nods once. “And the label. No one is happy.”

  I sigh, resting my head in my hands. I’ve had a hangover for days now, and the intensity of my headache is getting worse.

  “It’s not just the arrest thing,” Daltrey says. “They’re not happy with the songs.”

  That gets my attention. I snap my head up, staring at him before turning to Reed for confirmation. He nods.

  “They want us to start over.”

  “Start over? Start over? Do they have any idea how long we’ve worked on those damn songs?”

  “They don’t think they’re up to par.” Reed turns his head to look out the window and sighs loudly. “Honestly, I think they’re right.”

  “You do?”

  He doesn’t look at any of us. “I do. I think they’re plastic. Soft.”

  For the first time since arriving I consider actually punching him. “Soft?” I had written a good portion of those songs—no one called my music soft.

  “Oh, come on, Cash.” He finally turns back to face me. “Every single lyric you wrote was about partying or hooking up.”

  I splutter, incoherent with rage.

  “I’m not saying it was just yours—my shit was lazy, too. It’s obvious from everything I wrote that I’m distracted. I think the only genuine thing we turned in was Fatality.” He nods in Lennon’s direction, and I screw up my face, trying to remember Len’s song. Nothing comes to mind. In fact, now that I think about it, not many of the songs are jumping out at me. They had seemed perfectly passable when we gathered to record the demo, fun and loud. But not memorable, apparently.

  God, maybe the label was right.

  “Shit.”

  Reed nods. “My thoughts exactly.”

  I run my hands roughly over my face. “So we have a pissed off label, a pissed off manager, and a record’s worth of songs that we can’t use.”

  “That about sums it up.” Daltrey stands and walks to the adjoining kitchen, grabbing several beers from the fridge, which he passes out to each of us. “We have to take this seriously.”

  “So what do we do?” I try to ignore the little knot of fear in my stomach. This band means everything to me. Our current level of success is what we’ve been working toward for the past ten years—most of our lives, really. Our dad had us taking lessons in our perspective instruments as soon as we were able to walk. Sometimes it feels like everything we’ve ever done has been in preparation for getting to this point—is it possible we might lose it all? Right after finally achieving it?

  “We’ve been talking about that,” Reed says, gesturing at the other boys. “Before you got here. It’s time we think about going to see Blake.”

  “Blake.”

  He meets my eyes as if challenging me. “Yes. Blake.”

  “Shit, Reed.” I turn to Daltrey and Lennon, raising my eyebrows. “Are you guys on board with this?”

  Lennon shrugs. “He helped last time.”

  “He bossed us around last time,” I argue. “He totally took control of the entire process.”

  “We were green back then,” Daltrey argues. “We needed more guidance.”

  I shake my head. I can’t believe they’re considering this. Blake McHale is a legendary produce
r and songwriter. He lives in some Podunk town outside of Seattle, where he runs a recording studio out of his sprawling log cabin. When we first signed with the label four years ago they had sent us out to Blake’s for three weeks to clean up the last few songs on the album—and we had all sworn that we would never work with him again.

  “You’re just mad because he called you a pretty boy,” Lennon says, failing to hide the little smirk on his face.

  “I’m just mad because he treated us all like kids,” I shoot back. “He gave us a curfew, for God’s sake.”

  “And maybe that’s what some of us need right now,” Daltrey mutters in an undertone.

  “Look, we’ll set up some guidelines,” Reed says. “Talk it all out ahead of time and let him know just how much guidance we’re looking for—”

  I snort. Yeah. Like Blake McHale was going to be receptive to our guidelines. If anyone had a power trip, it was that guy.

  “It will look good, Cash,” Lennon says. “Going off to the mountains for a few weeks to work. The label will like it.”

  “Because they’ll think I can’t get into any trouble out there,” I suggest.

  He nods. “Yes, actually.”

  “It will look like we’re serious about things,” Daltrey adds. “And get you out of the spotlight for a while.”

  “Not to mention,” Reed goes on, “that Blake actually really helped us out a lot last time.” He shoots me a quick, apologetic grin. “Even if he was kind of a pain in the ass.”

  I blow out a gust of air. I can’t think of any way to argue this. Telling them that I just don’t feel like it probably won’t fly. I’m in the doghouse here, and I can tell that my brothers are honestly trying to help. The very fact that our father isn’t here right now is evidence of that.

  “Was this Dad’s idea?” I ask.

  Reed shakes his head. “No. It was mine. Dad’s idea involved moving in with you and locking you in your room when we aren’t working.”

  I’m quiet for a long moment, considering the alternatives. Maybe if my brain wasn’t so fuzzy, if my head wasn’t pounding so much, I could come up with something. But I’m drawing a complete blank.