“I’m not her.”
“No, you’re not. You’re nothing like her.”
“Oh.”
“I met Diana at a concert. Saw her in the audience and sent a roadie to bring her backstage. She was sweet, not at all part of the scene. She stayed separate from it, preferred it that way. But for me, it was difficult maintaining two personas. Two separate lives.”
Pulling in a deep breath, he said low, “I loved her. I would have done anything for her and our baby. I was so close to making a decision to walk away from music to be with my family full time, like she wanted me to do, but it doesn’t matter anymore. That’s all over now.”
I reached up and stroked his bearded cheek with my fingers. “I understand how difficult it is to pick up the pieces and start over.”
Gale captured my hand and would have brought it to his lips, but I stopped him.
“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t make me fall for you. I can’t.”
“You use that word a lot with me. I think you can. I think you want to.”
“I do, maybe, but it wouldn’t be right.”
“It could be the most right thing you ever do.”
“I don’t have rightness in me anymore. I’d end up disappointing you, and I don’t want to do that. I won’t do that. Better to stop everything right here.”
“You’re talking about a potential to mess up in the future. All I’m asking for is right now, for you to take one single step. Like you did to come into my arms just now. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
I shook my head. Gale was persuasive, and being in his arms was like a wonderful dream. I wanted him, and I feared how badly I wanted him at the same time.
My world had been ripped up by the roots and destroyed once before because I’d been weak and trusted the wrong man. I didn’t think I could survive it if I made the same mistake again.
On the other hand, I wasn’t sixteen anymore. And this was Gale. I wanted to believe he wouldn’t turn his back on me. And in that moment, I knew what that something was that had drawn me to him in the beginning.
Gale was trustworthy. Not exactly the epitome of what most might think was sexy, but it was a quality that made him practically irresistible to me.
“Take a chance.” He squeezed my hand. “Sometimes life only gives you one.”
“There’s the RFC. I have five more rock stars to fuck. Do you actually want to try for something real with that going on?”
“I don’t. I know how hard that show can be on a relationship.”
“Because of Marsha and Ivan.”
“Yes, but look at them now. Look at Lucky and Raven.” He released my hand and reframed my face. “Let go of your doubt and reach for something better. Say yes so we both can move forward. Say yes to me.”
Gale’s eyes were a pure crystalline gray. I didn’t know about all the metaphysical stuff, but I believed in the sincerity I saw within his gaze.
“YES,” I TOLD GALE while trembling inside. “I say yes.”
“Finally.” His eyes flaring, he dove his hands into my hair, dislodging the elastic. My bun slipped free of its binding, but not me. I knew deep down that I would never be free of the strings that bound me.
“Wait,” I said.
“Wait for what?” The crystal in his gaze clouded.
“I’ll do all the things you said. I want all those things. I want you.” Of course I wanted him. “But there’s something about me you don’t know. Something I don’t feel comfortable telling you yet.”
“Will you tell me eventually?”
“Yes.” I squeezed my eyes shut. Fear simmered behind my lids, where the truth burned. It was an ugly, burdensome truth.
I opened my eyes to find Gale’s narrowed, the surface not as beautiful and clear as they’d been a moment before, but just as compelling. I swallowed and took more than a step. I took a giant leap.
“Before we take this—whatever it is—to the next level, I promise I will tell you everything.”
It was a promise I intended to keep, but I offered it knowing when I revealed the truth, there would be no next level, no next anything for us.
“The next level, meaning sex?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“So you want another agreement?” His lips twisted in displeasure.
I nodded.
“I don’t like this.” He withdrew, his fingers sliding from mine. He didn’t move away, but his hands dropped to his sides.
“I’m sorry. You don’t have to accept it.” You don’t have to accept me. “Your life would be better and so much easier without all the hassle.”
Reject me. I practically begged him to. Either way, now or later, I was going to be hurt.
“Better? I don’t believe so. Easier? You might be right. But I accept your terms.”
He didn’t reject me!
My heart soared, but it didn’t fly very far. A heart needed wings to fly, and mine were misshapen and carried a loathsome load. Gale thought he was taking the bigger risk agreeing to my bargain, but my risk was actually greater.
“I have a stipulation to add.” His brows drew together.
“What?” I tensed.
“You agree to spend your free time with me. All of it. Whenever I ask you to. Whatever I ask you to do.”
“No sex.”
“I won’t ask you to do anything that violates the physicality restriction of our current agreement,” he said, sounding like a lawyer. And I didn’t like lawyers.
“Okay,” I said. In the end, I wondered if there would be anything I would deny him.
“Great.” His lips curved. “It starts right now. Tonight.”
“What does?” My stomach fluttered.
“Front-woman training.”
“What?” I exclaimed. The fluttering stopped.
He cringed at the off-pitch screech. “I suggest you never use that octave at center mic.”
“I don’t do center mic.”
“And I don’t usually do bargains. So now we’re both doing things outside our comfort zone.” He curled his fingers around my elbow and turned, changing his trajectory. “C’mon.”
“I don’t understand. Where are we going now?”
“To my room.” He yanked open the glass door and steered me through it.
I tried to slow him down by dragging my feet. “But you said—”
“Keep up, Jo. Things have changed.” His hand remained at my elbow. “Shuffle your feet faster inside those boots, or I’ll pick you up and throw you over my shoulder.”
“You wouldn’t dare.” Yet I found myself jogging to keep up with him. And not just literally.
Gale was smart. Clever. Challenged me intellectually. In fact, he challenged me on all fronts.
“You know I would.” He flashed me his half smile as we reached the elevator.
Stopping abruptly, I swayed from my momentum. I swayed internally from him too.
“You have a commanding voice.” He depressed the call button. The door slid open, and we entered. Taking both my arms, he turned me to face him. “You need to stop downplaying it and step up your role in the band. Joey’s Band won’t go anywhere until you do.”
I shook my head.
He slapped his hand against the panel to press the number for his floor. “It baffles my mind how stubborn you’re being about this. Will sliding into oblivion achieve your brother’s dream?”
Good point. I snapped my open mouth shut.
“I’ll share what I know about using your voice to direct an audience. Then, if we have time after that, we’ll figure out what you need to do about your band’s sound.”
I frowned. “What’s wrong with our sound?”
“You’re trying to do too much—blues, rock, rap. They don’t mix.”
“Um, hello. The Stones.”
“You like the Rolling Stones?” His brows arced to a disbelieving altitude.
“Are you kidding? I love them.” Most days it was a toss-up between them and Iggy Pop.
/> “Bowie?” Gale asked.
“He’s cool. But I prefer Iggy. Why go with the protégé when you can have the master?”
“A punk-rock purist.”
The curve of Gale’s lip deepened. I wanted to press the pad of my thumb in the creases in his skin and trace it.
When the elevator door opened, we walked out together. He turned to the left, and I followed.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, waving at me to keep up. “You should too, on vocals.”
“What’s your point?” I asked.
“Mick Jagger. Iggy. Bowie. They’re showmen. Your current lead singer is none of that.”
Dolly was a follower, or she definitely was when it came to her or me.
Gale was right.
He listened respectfully to my opinion, no longer steering me. Now that he didn’t force me in the direction he wanted me to go, I moved alongside him in the hallway, almost as if we were equals. Talking to him, being with him like this, it seemed as natural as breathing.
“Here we are.” He stopped to withdraw a keycard from his pocket, then opened and held open the door.
I stepped inside his room with my lips lifting into a smile. Taking the lead, albeit only the lead he granted me.
He flipped on the switch, flooding the room with light. I saw in a glance that it was much the same as mine. One bed instead of two, and that huge bed seemed to suck all the oxygen from the room. Or maybe that was only the man behind me.
“How’s this going to work?” I asked, turning to find him only inches away.
His gaze was on the bed, like mine had been.
“It’s late, Gale.” My mouth caressed every letter of his name, since I couldn’t and wouldn’t ever have the privilege to caress him the way I wanted to. “How are we going to practice anything without getting kicked out of the hotel?”
“Carefully.” He reached out and tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear. His eyes darkening, he swallowed. “Very carefully. Like with you and me, your restrictions, and that bed in here.”
His Adam’s apple moving, I followed the length of his strong neck to the masculine hollow of his throat. It would take more than being careful.
“Should I stay standing since we’re avoiding the bed?” It took a tremendous amount of effort to bring my gaze up to safer territory.
He nodded. “Just let me grab a guitar first.”
I watched him cross the room, noticing the instrument cases against the far wall. It was my turn to swallow as he bent over, and the denim of his jeans stretched to accentuate the tight contours of his amazing ass.
Lifting the case, he laid it on top of the bed and clicked open the latches. He withdrew a beautiful spruce-topped acoustic, clipped on a strap, and threw it over his shoulder as he turned.
A guy with a guitar. Gale with a guitar. Total swoon.
“It’s beautiful,” I said softly, not referring to the guitar.
“Thanks.” He smirked at me, well aware I was admiring him. “So we’re going to have to improvise. I don’t know your songs all that well, and you don’t have a mic or a mic pole to work with.”
“How can you know my songs at all?”
“I have my ways.”
“The twins?”
“They may have emailed me some files, and Marsha may have given me a link.”
“Traitors, all of them.”
“Let’s call them empathizers.”
I snorted. “You and your fancy words.”
“You’re stalling.”
“Maybe. This is awkward. What do you want me to do? Sing into my fist like it’s a microphone?”
“It’s what I did as a kid.” He strummed a few test chords, adjusted the tuning, and started playing the intro to “Last Farewell.” Perfectly.
When I just stared at him, he stilled his fingers.
“You missed your cue,” he said, telling me what I already knew.
“Sorry. I’m having a little difficulty getting over the fact that you’re playing one of my songs so well.”
“It’s a beautiful piece.” Lifting his head, his brown hair falling in his shimmering eyes, he glanced up at me through the fringe. A moonbeam couldn’t be more enchanting than his gaze was. Especially when his lip curved on the one side.
“Stop being sexy,” I said with a pout, and when both sides of his mouth curved, I put my hands on my hips. “I said stop.”
“You stop first.”
“Gale.” I smiled. “Seriously.”
“All right. What should I do? Not look at you? You not look at me?”
“Might as well try to stop the moon from rising in the night sky.”
His eyes widened. “That would make a great line for a song.”
It would, I thought. “But back to my original point.”
“I have to look at you, Jo. My eyes are inevitably drawn to you. Your music is beautiful. You are beautiful. Plus, I have to look at you to help on this project. So you’ll just have to deal.”
“Right.” My voice was husky. My throat was on fire. The embers of my former self were fanned to roaring flames on the fuel of his approval. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“You can. Try. I’ll help you.”
“Okay.” I pulled in a breath and gave him a nod.
He started the song again, and I sang.
Each note.
Each word.
All of it.
Just for him.
“EVERY GUY WHO HEARS will want to make love to you if you sing ‘Last Farewell’ like that,” Gale said, his gaze hot. “The truth of you inside that piece doesn’t need interpretation or any embellishment.”
“How do you mean?” I asked, staring at him where he sat on the end of the bed with his guitar resting on his lap.
“It’s about loss. About your brother. Writing songs is putting words and your truth together. Performing them is showing that truth and connecting it to your audience.”
“My music is very personal.”
“It is for me too. It usually is when it’s real.”
“I don’t know if I can put myself out there like that.” I ducked my head, allowing my hair to fall forward and curtain my face.
“You can. I think you have to, though you don’t see it that way yet.”
“I do the band stuff for him.” My hands curved into fists at my sides, and I cleared my throat. “For Joey.”
“I think it’s for you too. Look at me,” Gale said softly.
I lifted my head, and my hair slid back.
He narrowed his eyes. “What does music mean to you, Jo?”
My eyes burned. My chest squeezed tight around that cavity inside my chest that maybe wasn’t as empty as I thought. There was a beat, and within that beat, a one-word answer pulsed.
“Be brave, babe. We both know the pit. What it’s like in that dark place. How you fall into it as one person and then crawl out as another. If you come out. There’s a moment down there when you have to choose between getting on with dying or deciding to live. Riding was the first rung on the ladder that I put my foot on when I decided to climb out. Books. Music. Friends. Those came later. I think the process was different for you. Wasn’t it?”
I nodded.
“So, what does music really mean to you?”
“Everything.” My eyes blazed with sincerity. “It means everything.”
“Yeah, I thought so.” It was his turn to nod. He looked proud of me. “Give the audience that when you perform. Acknowledge it, not just to me, but believe it yourself. Then put it all out there. The world needs to see and hear pure truth like that.”
• • •
“What are you doing?” Dolly asked on the bus the next morning as she dropped onto the couch beside me.
The cushions dipped beneath her weight, rocking me and my laptop more than just the slight rocking motion of the high-profile vehicle on a windy day.
“Nothing much. I’m having trouble focusing. I keep hoping my Red Bull this morn
ing will kick in. I’m tired. I missed you last night.” I threw one arm around her shoulder and hugged her. “I don’t remember. When did you finally get in?”
“Late.” She narrowed her green eyes. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“I’m watching YouTube concert videos.” I scrunched my face. “It’s my homework.”
“Who gave you homework?”
“The professor.”
“Who?”
“Gale Lafleur.”
“What’s up with you and him?” Dolly phrased the question casually, but the vibes she was putting out were anything but.
“We’re just friends. He’s helping me.”
“Yeah? That’s what you said yesterday when you went on his bus. I thought you’d decided not to be friends with him.”
“I changed my mind,” I said, simplifying what wasn’t simple at all. “He’s persistent.”
“You know he just wants to sleep with you. Ty’s pissed.”
“You’ve been hanging out a lot with Tyler. What’s that all about?”
“We’re both just worried about you.”
“Is that all it is?”
“Would it matter to you if it wasn’t?” she asked.
“No,” I said, noting that she looked upset by my honest answer. “He and I are over.”
“I know that.” She glanced down at her lap and started plucking at the frayed hem of her cutoff jean shorts.
Realization dawned. “Do you want to know if I’d be jealous if you were interested in him?”
Dolly hesitated, then nodded.
“We talked about this a long time ago,” I said and glanced around us.
The Rock Fuck Club technical crew was in the back. It was just Barbara and the twins on the other couch in the front lounge.
Looking back at Dolly, I said softly, “I love you. I’ll always love you. But I can’t love you physically the same way you love me.”
“It was good, though? Me and you? Together?” She worried her full bottom lip with her pearly teeth.
Was she feeling threatened by my having sex with the twins? By my friendship with Gale?
“Being with you was an experience I’ll never forget. I told you that. You know how I was before you . . .” My throat got so tight, it choked off my words. Back then, I’d been lost, uncertain, and afraid I’d never be able to accept physical affection from anyone ever again.
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