Taut Strings: A Rock Star Romance (River Valley Rebels)

by Gabrielle Sands

  I sighed. “I don’t know what to tell you. I can’t work with you on this if one of your band members, arguably the most important one in this case, doesn’t want me here.”

  Cole shifted his weight between his feet. I felt bad for him now that I knew how hard he was obviously trying to make this album happen. “I know. Can you please just give me some time to talk some sense into him? One more chance before you give up on this?”

  I rubbed my eyes, knowing that my mascara would probably smear. I was past caring. “I don’t know.”

  “It’s no excuse, but Charlie’s death has done a number on Abel,” Cole said. “Of course, we were all hit hard. We had no idea he had a problem with drugs. But Abel and him were incredibly close, and without Charlie… Well, it’s like Abel lost the one person who’d kept him grounded all these years.”

  I stared at the ground. If what Cole was saying was true, then the problem didn’t lie with me. I wasn’t the one fucking up.

  A heavy weight slid off my shoulders as I processed everything he’d said. This was Abel dealing with his grief, and I happened to be collateral damage. I thought back to the times I’d done the exact same thing after my parents died, screaming at the people at the funeral parlor, hanging up on my relatives, even giving Molly the cold shoulder at times. If this was what the rest of the guys were dealing with, I wasn’t going to be the one to give them even more shit.

  Cole let out a long breath. “Adeline, can you look at me?”

  His hand sneaked under my chin, lifting my face to his. I knew I had tears in my eyes by now, and Cole flinched when he saw them.

  “Fuck.” He swept his thumb over my cheek, as if wiping away the tears that hadn’t yet fallen. My spine tingled in response.

  “Say something,” he asked.

  This was most likely going to be a massive mistake.

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay. Talk to him, and if he’s fine with it, I’ll keep working with you. But he can’t talk to me like that again.”

  Relief flooded over Cole’s face, and he dropped his hands back down to his sides. “He won’t. I promise you that. Thank you.” He crossed the distance between us and pulled my body into a fierce hug. As he held me, my tension slowly unraveled. “Thank you for giving us another chance. You don’t know how much this means to me,” he said, his lips moving against my hair. “I’ll message you tonight,” he said, pulling away but letting his fingers linger on my arms for a second longer.

  It wasn’t until I got home that I realized I had forgotten my guitar at the studio. I’d never forgotten my instrument anywhere before. It was as if fate was telling me that I wasn’t yet done with the four men.

  SILAS

  We had spent over ten years together working through creative differences, living in close quarters, practically breathing the same stinking air. In that time, I’d never resorted to physical violence, but as I watched Cole run after Adeline, I thought the day might have finally come.

  Abel stood where she’d left him, his palms squeezing the desk behind him so hard his fingers had turned white. The only thing stopping me from throwing the punch was the flash of regret that crossed Abel’s face as he took in my and Ezra’s expressions. It was like he knew exactly how much of a shithead he was being, but he just couldn’t stop himself.

  Why is he doing this?

  That question had been on my mind a lot over the past few weeks. His behavior didn’t make sense in the context of everything I knew about him. Abel was a complicated man, but like the rest of us, he believed in a few simple truths.

  Music was purpose.

  This band was a brotherhood.

  We were stronger together than we were alone.

  Charlie’s death couldn’t change that, could it? It would be like an earthquake making gravity no longer work. Disasters, devastation, loss—they were companions to life, but they didn’t invalidate any of its fundamental rules.

  I ran a hand across my face, forcing the fury back from the center of my thoughts. Then I looked at the singer and shook my head, unable to hold back my disappointment. “Talk.”

  He rolled his eyes. The fucker rolled his eyes.

  “I feel like I’ve said plenty.”

  “Good for you. Generally, when people speak, they aspire to make sense. Since you haven’t made a single coherent point yet, I’m hoping there’s more.”

  Abel pursed his lips. Ezra sighed, flicking his gaze between the two of us. The fact that he had tried to keep Abel in check on the drive to lunch hadn’t gone unnoticed by me. He was finally coming back to himself. I wish I could say the same about Abel.

  “She’s too young. We need someone more experienced.”

  “Bullshit,” Ezra countered, saving me from screaming the same thing. “She’s better than most of the guitarists that open for us.”

  “I don’t like her energy.”

  God, he was infuriating. “Elaborate.”

  Abel wouldn’t look at me as he said, “She is just too…enthusiastic. I don’t want to work with a fan.”

  You’d have to stand outside the building to not smell the bullshit. “It’s a bad thing that she likes our music? Would you prefer she hate us?”

  Ezra scoffed incredulously. “I’m starting to think there’s something seriously wrong with your head, Abel.”

  The singer pushed off the table, getting into Ezra’s face. “How quickly you changed sides,” he hissed. “All it took was a hot piece of ass.”

  Unintimidated, Ezra stared down at Abel. “Actually, I remembered that there are no sides.”

  I heard Cole enter the room behind me and signaled to him with my palm that he should stay out of this.

  “We all know what you’ve been doing, Abel,” Ezra continued. “You haven’t been auditioning anyone. You can’t say you’ll do this album and then lead the rest of us on. I may not be as enthusiastic about recording it as Cole and Silas, but I know it’s the right thing to do for Charlie. This album will be made, and Adeline is perfect for it.”

  Abel ground his teeth, the muscle in his cheek fluttering.

  I looked over my shoulder to see a soft smile on Cole’s face. This was the Ezra we knew. I was so done with the quiet zombie that had replaced him since the funeral.

  Cole cleared this throat. “Well, despite the embarrassing outburst, Adeline said she’d be willing to give us another chance. You can’t disrespect her again, Abel.”

  “I’d be perfectly happy to never speak to her again.”

  Ezra, reading murder in my expression, crossed the room and gripped my right wrist. “Calm down,” he grit out in a low tone.

  “Abel, you are not the only person in this band,” Cole stated, his jaw tense. “We all thought that today was a success. Unless you have a convincing, objective reason as to why we can’t continue working with Adeline, we’ll have to revert to a vote, and we’ll win.”

  The tension inside of me eased. Thank fuck Cole was willing to spell it out to Abel. We’d been walking around him on eggshells for weeks, and it was past time we stopped. After all, he wasn’t the only one who’d lost a close friend. He wasn’t the only one who was hurting.

  Abel let out a huff of air, his nostrils flaring. “Wow. What were you saying about there being no sides, Ezra?”

  A crease appeared between Ezra’s brows, which is how I knew that even his infinite patience was being stretched.

  He ignored Abel’s attempt at provocation. “Like Cole said, give us one real reason why she wouldn’t be good.”

  Abel let out a bitter laugh, but I knew he had nothing.

  “Fine. Whatever.” He reached for his backpack and stuffed his laptop inside. “I’m done with this conversation. I agreed to record this album, so I’ll fucking record it. Then we can be done with all of this for good. I look forward to the day.”

  His words hurt, but I swallowed the pain down. He’d told us as much already. He’d said he wanted to break up after this album was done, but I hadn’t believed it. Now, with the cold
bitterness in his tone, I was starting to think he really meant it.

  Cole blocked Abel’s path out of the room with his arm. “You need to behave. She doesn’t deserve to be treated like this, and I can tell she’ll walk right back out if this happens again.”

  They held each other’s gaze for a long moment before Abel gave him a barely perceptible nod and left.

  “Fuck me,” Cole moaned, sinking down into a chair. “The only good thing about this situation was the look on Abel’s face when Adeline told him off.”

  I snorted. “I was this close to punching him out. Never thought it would come to this. Ezra, I don’t know how the hell you stayed so calm.”

  The drummer laughed. It was a tired sound that scraped against my heart. “He’s still hurting.”

  “So are we,” I countered.

  “I know.”

  Cole sniffed. “She killed it today.”

  “She really did,” I agreed. “I know it was our first day rehearsing, but she fit right in.”

  I still couldn’t believe the events of the past few days, or how lucky we’d gotten with finding Adeline. She played with an intensity I hadn’t seen in a long time, even among professional musicians. There was something special about her, something that made being around her infinitely alluring.

  My thoughts drifted to how her lips curved when she smiled, how her arms flexed when she dove into a solo, and how her hips seemed to glide when she walked. Everything about her grabbed at my heart and tugged it in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time.

  “I need to message her,” Cole said, standing up. “I think I’m going to head home.”

  We all got up and started to pack up our things. My gaze caught on Adeline’s guitar in the studio. She must have forgotten it in her rush to leave. She must have been really upset, because musicians rarely left their instruments behind.

  I patted Cole on the back as we exited the studio, while Ezra stayed behind to work on a drum part. “You did well today handling the situation.”

  Cole groaned, cracking his neck from side to side. “It’s exhausting. I don’t know how Ezra did it all these years. Calling the shots, taking care on the business side, diffusing conflict. I’m a poor imitation, and if this is how it’s going to be, I don’t know if I can keep it up.”

  I understood him perfectly. Ezra was a natural leader—thoughtful, charismatic, kind. We had a manager, but Ezra was the real glue of the band, keeping us in sync and making tough decisions when no one else would.

  “He’s coming back,” I said. “You saw him today.”

  Cole nodded. “It’s a start. I just wish he’d talk to me, you know? We’ve known each other for over twenty years, and I’ve never seen him like this. I’ve asked him so many times to open up to me, but he won’t say anything, just that he’s grieving. But I think it’s more than that.”

  I scratched at the back of my neck as we neared the SUV. Abel must have left in a cab, something I was sure Leo didn’t appreciate.

  “Do you think he blames himself?” I asked Cole, careful to keep my voice low.

  Cole’s shoulders slumped at the question. “Don’t we all to some extent? If we had acted differently in the months leading up to it, maybe we would have picked up on some of the signs.”

  “We did what we thought was right,” I told him firmly. “If we didn’t put that space between us, we would’ve been broken up six months ago.”

  “And now we’ll be done in a month,” Cole muttered, lifting his face to the sky. “We bought seven months with that decision and lost a life.”

  I shut my eyes at the brutal calculus he laid out. When had things gotten this fucked up?

  COLE

  My phone pinged with Adeline’s response as I got out of the SUV in front of my parents’ house.

  “I’m glad you were able to talk things out. I’ll be there tomorrow.”

  The grin stayed on my face as I pulled open the screen door to the smell of my Mom’s cooking. Chili and cornbread. I nearly moaned in delight. There was nothing like a homemade meal to end a long day.

  A really long fucking day.

  I walked through the house and out to the backyard. My dad, Sirus, was wearing his favorite Pink Floyd T-shirt, reading and smoking a joint while my mom, Emma, was dressing a salad.

  “Hey!” she said, looking up with a smile. “You look like you had a good day.”

  “Good, bad, just the usual shit show.”

  My dad snorted before passing me the joint. If Ivy, my sister, were here, she would have said something snarky about it, but she lived in LA now with her fiancé. A fiancé I wasn’t all too fond of.

  “How was the new guitar player?” my mom asked. I had filled her in on Adeline the night before. My parents and I were close, which made me feel like an anomaly among the guys. Mom and Dad were old hippies and had never had an issue with their son joining a band while still in high school and using it as an excuse to skip out on college.

  “She was incredible. We spent the day rehearsing, and she picked it up really quickly. The songs were pretty technical, too. We were all impressed. Now, we just have to hope she’ll survive an entire month sharing a studio with the four of us.”

  My mom studied me with a knowing look. “Look at you, singing praises. She must be someone special.”

  I sucked on the joint before passing it back to my dad. “I think so. What have you guys been up to?”

  Dad shrugged, tearing his eyes away from the book in his lap. If I had to guess it was probably some psychedelic spiritual manifesto. “I cleaned up the vegetable garden, and your Mom did some painting. She found your old work in the back of the closet in the guest bedroom.”

  “They’re gorgeous paintings,” my mom said. “Maybe you want to take them with you to LA when you head back.”

  I rubbed at a spot below my collarbone and looked off to the strawberry patch in the back of the yard. The last time I painted, I’d been engaged. Most of those paintings were of her.

  Amy.

  A shiver threatened to run through me, but I held it down. It had been years, but the thought of looking at those paintings still made me feel hollow inside. It would be like looking at physical evidence of what I’d once felt for a woman who’d betrayed me.

  Who’d stolen from me.

  Who’d told me nothing but lies.

  I should’ve burned the paintings, but I knew Mom would throw a fit. She’d say that pain sometimes birthed the most beautiful art, and I couldn’t disagree with that statement, despite hating the fact that it applied to me in such a personal manner.

  “Nah, I’m good. It’s just old junk,” I murmured before turning back and sitting down at the set table.

  The vegetarian chili tasted as good as it smelled, and I allowed myself to sink into the comforting sensations of cumin, paprika, and other spices. The cornbread was soft and fluffy, with a bit of a grainy feel.

  “So, Ivy’s pregnant,” my mom stated calmly.

  The cornbread turned to ash in my mouth in the span of a second. “Come again?”

  “She’s six months into the pregnancy, and she was too afraid to tell you herself, so she asked us to break the news.”

  My spoon clattered on the wooden picnic table. “I honestly don’t know what to say.”

  Dad’s gaze met mine. “I’d imagine congratulations are in order.”

  “Just to make sure, the asshole is the father?”

  “If by ‘asshole’ you mean her fiancé, then yes.”

  I was going to kill that fucker.

  “Before you say something you’ll regret,” my mom interjected, raising her palm to silence the words halfway out of my mouth, “we should let you know we visited them in LA a few months ago and had a lovely time. I don’t know what he was like when you met him all those years ago, but I can assure you that he is a perfectly decent man who is very obviously in love with our daughter.”

  “Decent?” I barked. “I highly doubt it.”

  My dad sighed
. “Cole, Ivy is twenty-two. She’s not a child anymore. I can appreciate that as an older brother you feel protective about her, but I can assure you she’s well taken care of.”

  My thoughts raced to the image of my sister and that bastard backstage at our show all those years ago. There was no way a guy like that could change enough to be suitable for her. Finding out they were dating threw me for a loop, and when they got engaged soon after, I told Ivy she was making a huge mistake. She countered by saying I could forget about seeing her until I learned to accept her fiancé. I wasn’t worried, sure their engagement would fall apart just like mine, but it’s been almost a year since that conversation and now she was pregnant.

  I shook my head. “I’m going to visit her. I need to see this for myself.”

  My mom pursed her lips. “I thought you’d say that. Ivy will be pleased to see you, I’m sure, but you have to promise to keep an open mind. Listen to their story.”

  “I saw how their story started,” I snapped. “I was right fucking there.”

  “Well, then you should be happy that your decision to bring her on tour resulted in her meeting the love of her life. Because that’s what he is, Cole. Whether you like it or not.”

  Suddenly, my appetite was gone. I knew my parents were smart people and fully believed in the validity of what they were saying, but they weren’t there in the beginning. They hadn’t seen this fucker put his hands on my younger sister while I was supposed to be watching over her.

  The chair scraped the ground as I stood up.

  “I’m done,” I said and saw their faces fall.

  “Cole—”

  “I just need to process the news,” I cut my dad off. “I’m sure I’ll be thrilled for her very soon.” I sincerely doubted that.

  My bedroom was on the second floor, and I lay down on the bed to stare at the ceiling. My gaze caught on the triangular scrap of paper that was taped up there, and I immediately knew what it was.

  Years ago, there’d been a picture taped there. A photo of me and Amy on stage during the last show of our tour. I’d proposed to her that night, and that picture was the only one we’d taken that evening. When we came back to River Valley the following week, we’d stayed in this room and in this bed for so much time that she’d joked I should tape something interesting to look at on the ceiling. I’d taped up that photo of us, telling her that I wouldn’t mind waking up and going to sleep seeing her beautiful face.