He scooted closer on the couch, wrapping his muscular arm over my shoulders and kissing the crown of my head. “I get it. You anticipated the most probable reaction. It’s a good thing we’re different from most other people.”
“Have you done this before?” I asked even though I was afraid of learning the answer. Admitting my feelings for all of them to myself had been so difficult. Had I been making a big deal out of something that meant nothing to them?
“No,” Silas said, and I was immediately relieved. “Never. I was ready to fight for you, but then Cole floated the idea of sharing, and I didn’t hate it as much as I thought I would. We’re all drawn to you. All of us are eager to explore what this could be.”
“You planned this?” I asked in a tentative tone. What exactly had they envisioned?
“We talked about it.” He squeezed my shoulder. “There wasn’t much of a plan besides agreeing that you had to be the one to initiate. We didn’t want a repeat of what happened at my place that first day.”
I nodded and lifted my gaze to Silas. “Was…Abel part of the conversation?”
The guitarist ran a hand over his beard. “No. We didn’t think he was in the right state of mind to consider something like this. Plus, he was being a dick toward you.”
Because he was grieving the death of not only his friend, but his lover. Of course, Silas didn’t know that.
“We aren’t sure how he feels, to be honest,” Silas continued. “Or how you feel toward him.”
“It doesn’t matter.” I shook my head, feeling a harsh wave of sadness crashing over me. All the things that had happened over the past three and a half weeks were coming to a bittersweet end. “I’m glad I found the courage I needed so that we can enjoy these last few days. I’ll…” My throat was tight. “I’ll miss you when you’re gone. I’ll miss making music together.”
Silas’s expression changed. I thought he was holding something back, but then the doorbell rang, and he went to get our takeout.
“What happened to you, Adeline?” he asked me as we ate our dinner while sitting on the carpet in his living room.
“What do you mean?” I asked between bites.
“What made you stop believing you could make it as a musician? Someone doesn’t become a guitarist as good as you unless they pour years into their craft. A hobbyist could never put in the time required. At some point, you must have wanted something more from music. What changed that?”
I lowered my plate onto the coffee table, casting my eyes down. I knew it was going to sound stupid when I said the words out loud.
“Growing up, all I ever wanted was to study music in college. From as young as around ten or eleven, my plan was to go to Julliard. I thought that once I got in, I’d meet like-minded people, master my craft, and figure out a way to make music my career.”
Silas was completely focused on me as I spoke.
“I sent in my application and got invited for the audition. I was so nervous that day. It felt like my whole life was at stake. This was it. I had my biggest dream within reach, but even before I started playing, I could feel something was off. The judges were sitting in a half circle around the room, their faces so serious, and all I could hear was my pulse in my ears. My anxiety shot through the roof. When I started to play, it was like I was holding an alien artifact rather than my guitar. I knew I was screwing up, but I couldn’t do anything to stop it. And so, a few weeks later, the rejection letter came, and that was the end of it.”
The crushing disappointment I felt that day was a clear memory. I’d revisited that memory often, a masochistic habit I couldn’t seem to shake.
“I fell into a deep depression for a few months and didn’t touch my guitar until much later. When I finally picked it up, I decided I never wanted to go through that kind of experience again, so I carefully set up boundaries around how I would engage with music going forward. And that’s what got me here.”
I lifted a beer bottle to my lips and met Silas’s eyes.
His brows were pinched together. “I’m not saying this to minimize your feelings,” he said after a while. “I know how badly rejection can sting, even when it becomes a distant memory. But have you ever considered that your childhood understanding of how you could succeed as a musician was a little limited?”
I tilted my head. “What do you mean?”
“Many, if not most, successful artists skip the whole arts-school thing. Why did you anchor so much to that?”
“Well, in my mind, that was the only sure way for people to take me seriously. A degree from Julliard would give me legitimacy.”
Silas shrugged. “An institution can’t make you a real artist, Ade. It’s what’s inside of you that counts. It’s your attitude, your skill, your worldview, and your faith in yourself… Your ability and willingness to take risks.”
I flinched at the last part, earning a nod from Silas. “There it is. You’re afraid of taking a risk.”
“The stuff that you’re so good at, right?
A corner of his lips ticked up. “I am good at that. It’s gotten me in a lot of trouble over the course of my life, but it’s also brought me a lot of joy. It gave me this band. It gave me you.”
My skin heated at his words.
“Maybe you’re right,” I admitted. “Maybe it was a mistake to put so much weight on getting into that school. But I did, and I can’t change the past or the effect it’s had on me.”
Silas shook his head, reaching for my hands across the table. “That’s where you’re wrong. It is never too late to change how you choose to respond to a setback. Your past doesn’t need to dictate your future. You’ve shown that to all of us over the past few weeks by agreeing to work on the record, and in the process, you made us realize that we still have a band even with Charlie gone.”
The hair on my arms stood up at his admission. “So you’re going to keep making music together?”
I watched his chest drop as he let out a heavy breath. “We’ll make a decision soon enough.”
I woke up in Silas’s bed. His chest was pressed against my back, its hard expanse making my insides coil before I had even opened my eyes. He made soft sounds as he slept, his breath caressing my neck.
I turned to face him, and he blinked open at the movement.
“Hi, beautiful.” His voice was laced with sleep.
I pulled my hand from under the sheet between us and brushed the hair away from his face. His arm snaked around my bare waist and pulled me closer.
The dark lines of his shoulder tattoo caught my attention, and I traced a path down his arm. Yesterday, I’d shared something with him that I didn’t talk about very often, so I met his eyes and finally asked the question that had been on my mind for weeks.
“Tell me about your tattoos.”
“Okay.” He gave me a soft kiss and pulled away to sit up on the bed.
The sheet pooled at his waist, revealing an impeccably sculpted torso that belonged on the cover of a magazine. I couldn’t resist dragging my nails down his pecs as I moved to straddle his thighs. He caught my hand and brought it to his mouth, a dangerous glint in his eyes.
“You’re very distracting when you’re naked on top of me.”
I laughed and pulled at the corner of the sheet to cover myself, but he tore it out of my hands with a grin. “Shhh. Don’t wiggle too much, and I should be able to get through it. Then I’m eating your pretty little pussy for breakfast.”
I bit my lip, forcing myself to stay focused on my question despite his words pulling my mind toward considerably less-verbal activities.
He pinched a nipple before clearing his throat and looking down at his left arm. “I got this sleeve when I was twenty. I’ve always read a lot, mostly fantasy. Dragons were my favorite creatures in those books. Strong, dangerous, but also wise. They had this awesome power, greater than anything a human could ever possess, but they didn’t corrupt it with their ego. They lived for thousands of years, protecting secrets that could change
the trajectory of the world around them, forever stable in the presence of chaos.”
I reached for the head of the first dragon, touching the green scales that parted to reveal bright-yellow eyes. The other two were painted blue and gold, their tails and bodies folding onto each other in what looked like a braid.
“Plus, they look cool,” Silas added with a smile. “When I was twenty, that was probably the most important thing, but over the years, whenever I feel beaten down by life, looking at them always gives me strength. I know that a dragon would stay resilient through any challenge thrown at him.”
He grabbed my knee before showing me his other arm. “There’s a lot of stuff here. Around my wrists and lower forearm, it’s a picture of the house I grew up in. My family lived out in the woods about a few hours from here when I was younger. My earliest memories are from there, and it’s always been a special place for me.
Twisting his arm a bit, he let go of my knee and pointed at a large depiction of a square-shaped gem in an intricate setting. “This is an amulet from one of my favorite fantasy books. It was a mystical object created at the dawn of time to hold the evil spirits at bay. When the amulet was broken, the world would be consumed by darkness. In the book, the hero’s goal is to get to the amulet before the villain so he can hide it where no one can ever find it again. I wanted to get it tattooed with just a thin crack through the middle, a reminder that the world as we know it is a gift we shouldn’t take for granted.”
My chest felt tight when he finished his explanations. Learning all of this about him felt as intimate as reading a person’s diary, and the fact that he hadn’t hesitated when I asked him about it touched me deeper than he could ever know. I felt connected to him. To all of them. What was I going to do when that connection was severed?
Silas grabbed my waist, his large hands covering it almost entirely, and flipped me on my back.
“I want to make love to you before we go,” he whispered against my skin, trailing kisses down my abdomen, and I told myself not to read too deeply into his words. It was a figure of speech.
He spread my legs and dipped his tongue inside, tasting me and making appreciative sounds as I squirmed under his touch. As he worked me up to my release, I thought my body was like the amulet on his arm—holding something back and cracking under the pressure. When it broke, would it be darkness that was released or something else?
Minutes later, when I finally splintered on his bed, my eyes fell shut, and all I could see was light.
“We’re going to do a quick rehearsal in the studio,” Abel said on Thursday about an hour before we were due to leave for the concert. He turned to Kyle and told him he could leave for the day.
“What are we rehearsing?” I asked, a little confused. We were recording parts of the last song for the album, and I thought that if we kept going, we might be able to finish everything today. That would give us all of tomorrow to rerecord any parts on earlier tracks that Abel didn’t like.
He ignored me, which struck me as strange. I had thought we were past that kind of thing.
Ezra shrugged when I raised a brow at him and walked inside the studio, leaving me with nothing else to do but follow.
Before I made it inside, Abel turned to me. “You don’t need to join for this. Just listen in the control room.”
His words stung, even though they shouldn’t have. Maybe they had a song they didn’t need another guitarist for. I pursed my lips and went to sit in Abel’s chair on the other side of the glass while the guys gathered in a circle and adjusted their instruments.
After a few moments, Abel looked back at me and flashed a sign that meant I should turn up the volume on my side. I quickly pushed my disappointment and confusion aside, curious to hear what they would play.
Nothing could have prepared me for what I heard.
It was the song we had written, but it was made ten times better with the addition of the other instruments. My heart was crawling up into my throat as I took in the sounds and the visual before me. The guys were shooting me excited glances as they played, watching for my reaction while I tried my hardest to keep it together.
Abel sang the whole song while looking at me, the words somehow made more powerful because of the unbound emotion in his voice. He wasn’t holding anything back. I imagined the sea of fans who might one day hear this song played live at a concert, and I hoped that they would appreciate it as much as I did in this moment.
I’ve never given birth to a child, but I’ve often thought that songwriting was in many ways a metaphor for watching a child grow. It got expelled out of our minds and bodies in its most primitive form, then it took on a life of its own and changed in ways we could never have predicted initially. I listened to our song evolve under the influence of the other players and grow into something exquisite.
When the song ended, Abel waved me inside, still holding onto his mic. I walked through the door with shaky steps, my tears successfully contained, but my emotions still running high.
“What did you think?” Abel asked.
I opened my mouth a few times like a fish, unable to get the words out. “It was incredible. I can’t believe how good it sounds.”
Silas grabbed another guitar and handed it to me. “Play with us. I wrote a backing track I want to try, so you play the melody.”
I looked around to see the encouraging smiles on Ezra’s and Cole’s faces, and I nodded. “Okay.”
My hands were clammy as I grabbed the guitar from Silas. The guys moved to make space for me in the circle until I fit right in.
We began to play, the melody unravelling from my fingers into the room. Even though this was my first time playing this song with all of them, we sounded just right, as if we’d practiced it for weeks. I couldn’t believe how natural this felt, and something similar to my awe played out across all of their faces. That feeling of being infinite, of being part of something larger than myself, swept through me with enough force to make me stumble.
We finished and let a quiet moment linger for a little while.
“Adeline, we have something to ask you,” Ezra said in a steady voice even as his eyes danced with excitement.
“What is it?” I asked, raising my brows.
“We want you to join the band.”
I froze, his words slicing through my euphoria.
“What?” Everything around me began to spin. “I could ne—”
“Before you say no, hear us out,” Cole insisted. “We need a guitarist, and you’ve more than proven yourself over the past few weeks. You wrote this incredible song with Abel, which captured our sound perfectly while at the same time pushing us forward. You can’t tell me playing it together just now didn’t feel like magic.”
I shook my head, not to refute anything he was saying, but rather to show my disagreement with the conclusion they had settled on as a result.
“More importantly,” Silas sounded from my left, “this is what you’ve always dreamed about. This is your chance to push past your fear and pursue your calling as a musician.”
What they were saying was insane, and I looked at Abel for backup. There was no way he’d agree to this.
His eyes were softer than I’d ever seen them before. “I agree with everything they’ve said. I think we can be amazing together.”
The way he said that last sentence made my heart skip a beat. There was a waterfall of feelings contained in those few words, engulfing me and making my head pound. Together. He wasn’t just talking about me joining the band, was he? Did he know about what had been going on behind the scenes?
“Look, this is impossible,” I muttered, panic creeping up my neck like a dozen sharp vines. “I thought you didn’t even know if you wanted to keep going after this recording the album.”
“For a while, we didn’t,” Ezra said. “But after working together—after working with you—we realized we wanted to give this another chance. You helped us see that there is still a band here. That we can pick up the p
ieces and glue them into something even better than before.”
My laugh was an empty huff of air. Inside my head, alarms rang. Danger! Move away! High-voltage area!
But as I looked at their resolute and hopeful faces, I knew I couldn’t just dismiss their request outright. I owed them more than that. “I need some time to think about it.”
“Of course,” Cole responded. “Take as much time as you need.”
I nodded and walked out the room, feeling their eyes on my back.
22
ADELINE
We got into the SUV, Abel and I in the back row, and began the drive to the venue while I tried to come to terms with what they had asked of me. I was glad they’d decided not to break up, and I was even more glad that I had helped them make that decision, but asking me to join the band was madness.
I couldn’t just leave my life behind. I couldn’t work with four people when I was sleeping with three of them. Abel must know—they had to have told him. How could this possibly work? None of it felt real.
Abel, probably sensing my unease, reached over and squeezed my hand. This action from the moody singer only added to my bewilderment. Who was this guy, and what had happened to the cold asshole who couldn’t spare me more than a few words only a few weeks ago?
Ezra plugged in his phone and started blasting In Flames loud enough to make it hard to think. Instead of fighting it, I surrendered to the music. My brain needed to be wiped clean if I wanted to enjoy the show I had been so excited about.
“You ready to meet the guys from Mastery, Ade?” Cole called out over the music.
“As ready as I’m ever going to be.” In the midst of all the craziness, I had nearly forgotten I was about to meet the members of one of my favorite bands. My life was a surreal reality TV show.
Taut Strings: A Rock Star Romance (River Valley Rebels) Page 28
