by Neve Wilder
Dedicated
Rhythm of Love, Book 1
Neve Wilder
Copyright © 2018 by Neve Wilder
Cover design: Mayhem Cover Creations
Editing: One Love Editing
Proofreading: Jill Wexler
Beta reading: Leslie Copeland
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.
References to real people, events, organizations, establishments, or locations are intended to provide a sense of authenticity and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All song titles, songs, and lyrics mentioned in the novel are the property of the respective songwriters and copyright holders.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Acknowledgments
A Quick Note
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Daily Scoop, July 2016
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Guitar Times, March 2017
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Elite Guitarist, June 2016
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Tease, May 2017
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Music Journal, January 2016
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Nashville Times, May 2017
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Teen Scene, December 2015
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Tell All Weekly, September 2016
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Top Tracks, January 2016
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Stages, December 2016
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Tripwire, March 2017
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Noise, April 2017
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
String & Strum, February 2016
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Resonance, October 2016
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Soundcrush, December 2016
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Music Page, October 2016
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Sound Scene, September 2016
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Legends, February 2018
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Thank You
Story Notes From Neve
Need More Neve?
About Neve Wilder
Acknowledgments
Thanks to C. Decherd for reading the first two chapters and demanding more. To Leslie, my go-to for basically all the things, and to Julia and Jill for their keen eyes.
Heaps and heaps of gratitude to Sandra for her edits, suggestions, and insane timeliness. I hope one day you have time for real sleep.
Thanks to those I consulted about various things, but especially M. Jahnig, who let me ask five billion questions about the music biz, knowing all along I would take that knowledge and flout it in many instances.
And to my number one dance partner for life. Your support is an amazing gift.
A Quick Note
POSSIBLE SPOILERS BELOW:
This is very much a story about two men falling in love. That being said, there is reference to and description of a MMF scene in this book. I hesitated over whether or not to include this alert, as it’s not the point of the story, but it is integral to the story, if that makes sense.
In the end, you’re the reader and you bring your own preferences with you to every book, so if that’s something that might affect your decision to read, please make the choice that’s best for you. :)
Your chemistry onstage is legendary. Is there something you attribute that to? Did it come naturally?
Evan: Is that something that can even be quantified? I think a band either has it or doesn’t, and you can tell the difference between someone phoning it in and a band that’s having fun when performing. We spent a long time before releasing our first album just writing and playing together, and we love what we do.
Les: It helps when the person you’re onstage with is also your best friend.
Evan: Absolutely. Wait, did we just give an entirely serious, straightforward answer right out of the gate?
Les: We did. Oh God, have we slipped into an alternate universe?
Evan: A flux has occurred in the space-time continuum.
Les: Maybe I should punch you in the face real quick and fix it.
Evan: Try it and see what happens.
Les: Annnnnnd we’re back. Next question.
Chapter 1
I’d always thought there was something poetic about moments of certainty: the way someone kept their gaze riveted to yours, the hand that lingered a little too long passing a napkin, a lighter, a beer. That moment I knew it was going to happen, that it was a sure thing. Whatever else may have come before didn’t matter. The starting line moved. This was the new beginning.
There were lyrics in that, maybe a whole song, but I was too busy riding a nice buzz and capitalizing on one of those very moments to chase after the words—which I realized was ironic considering I was a lyricist with no fewer than eight number one ballads to my name. I should work on that, probably, but right then I was taking advantage of the nice smile the guy next to me kept feeding me like loose change into a slot machine.
He wanted it.
I wanted it, too.
We’d spent the last two hours in the cramped hotel bar trading small talk back and forth like playing cards, dealing out hometown stories, anteing up with dumb escapades, raising the stakes with a few bedroom scorchers until we were both primed and ready to cash in the chips elsewhere.
I’d always been slightly pickier with men than women, and earlier I’d had my eye on a curvy redhead down the bar who still had her attention trained on us. But there was something about this guy, Jamie, when he walked in that hit me in just the right spot. He’d draped over the bar like his jacket was made of long days and disappointment, yet when he’d smiled at me it was so ineffably bright and resilient that I kept looking back. He wasn’t searching for love, and neither was I. I’d planted that seed before, and it still lived in me somewhere I guess—hibernating, rotting, or maybe frozen in some state of suspended animation.
Jamie was taking off tomorrow for Pennsylvania on the last leg of some business-related trip with details too boring for me to bother remembering, while Evan and I were set to play another show at a smaller venue in Cleveland. Intimate, our manager Byron had said. Let’s get you guys off the pedestals and back to your roots. Which I thought was a diplomatic way of saying, You assholes aren’t booking the big gigs anymore. Fix it.
We had a couple of shows left on the tour before a much-needed four-day break, and then we’d reconvene at the East Tennessee cabin where we’d written all our albums. So I was planning on getting while the getting was good. And Jamie, with his quirky charm and sexy smile, definitely fit the bill.
“Nightcap upstairs?” I asked him.
He grinned and tipped his head back to finish off his beer. “Sure thing.”
We flung money
at the bartender and headed for the elevators. There would be no nightcap upstairs; we both knew that.
Jamie wasn’t a starstruck groupie like some others. He’d played it regular-guy cool all night, and I liked that. But the way his steps hastened the closer we got to the elevators was telling. It was gonna be a good night.
As soon as the elevator doors shut, I hooked him by a belt loop and pulled him toward me, running my hands over the T-shirt beneath his jacket for a tactile preview of his rib cage and abs, imagining the way they’d look when that shirt was on my floor and he was on my bed beneath me. The vision was a promising one.
Jamie planted a palm against my shoulder and shoved me backward against the brushed-metal wall, his mouth dropping to sweep a kiss over the hollow of my throat, tongue caressing a slow burn that radiated in a wave toward my groin.
By the tenth floor, I was as hard as a fucking rock. We were in safe territory, though: four short floors left and not many people went up on the elevator. At least at this time of night.
Right as I was thinking that, with the backs of my knuckles skimming over his strained fly, the fucking elevator dinged and stopped. Jamie took a breathless half step aside, and I wrapped my arm loosely around his waist. Nothing to see here besides the bulges in our pants.
I just wished it wasn’t Evan standing there to witness our flustered rearranging. Because there he was when the doors slid open, the heel of his hand smoothing over the bridge of his nose in a way I knew meant he was frustrated or tired. My bandmate, my friend. My ultimate secret crush. It was one of the few times I wished the body next to me was a woman’s. Or better yet, not there at all. That dormant little seed inside of me, the traitor, rattled around in my chest.
Fuck.
Chapter 2
I was tired. I was thinking of my place in Nashville where I’d missed the spring—my favorite season—rising up from the ground in green shoots that made the Midwest tundra we’d been cycling through feel that much colder. I was thinking of the call time tomorrow, the set list, the balls of fast-food wrappers piling up on the bus, how I felt like I was wearing a second skin of road dust and smog. Whether this tour had been successful or not. Sleeping in my own bed—a novel concept since I couldn’t even remember what color my sheets were at this point. And also, about a couple of weeks from now when Les and I would seal ourselves in a cabin and try to recreate the success of our second album after our utter bomb of a third.
But mostly I was thinking about crashing hard in my hotel room as I came down the hall from drinking a few beers with some of our roadies. Leigh, my girlfriend, was up there waiting to curl around me. Or should be. And I knew she’d smell good. Like home. Like coffee and Southern sunshine.
So I was caught off guard when the elevator opened and there stood Les, his dark hair mussed, a heated flush across his neck, his arm wound loosely around a dirty blond who faintly resembled me. Maybe it was ridiculous. Maybe I was just being a jerk. But it got to me a little, and I could feel it in my expression, in the way I had to fight the automatic downturn of my mouth.
“Leigh here yet?” Les asked as I stepped into the elevator. It reeked of booze, and his tone struck me as self-conscious. But when I looked up from the columns of buttons, he had a half-cocked smirk on his face like he was already high on the post-fuck endorphins of the sure thing beside him—who I was trying to pretend didn’t exist.
“Should be. She said some time around midnight.”
And then it got quiet. I eyed his blond prize up and down and waited for Les to fill in the gap with an introduction. Something. But he didn’t. There was just more of that thick, heavy silence. The kind you could dent with the poke of a finger. After another couple of seconds, I couldn’t take it any longer. “The guys want IHOP tomorrow. You in?”
“Fat stack of pancakes and endless coffee? You know you don’t even have to ask.”
My gaze flicked up to meet Les’s. Brilliant green set within olivine skin, that leonine-lazy curl of his mouth so damn confident and desire-flushed. I knew that look. I wished I didn’t.
I blinked away and focused on the display above the doors that flickered as we rose, but in my periphery I could still see Les’s thumb moving in slow sweeps low on the other guy’s hip, pushing up his T-shirt just an inch to expose his skin.
I couldn’t get off that elevator fast enough. When the doors opened, I launched forward down the hall, calling over my shoulder, “See you at eight.” Then, before I could stop myself, I tacked on, “Be safe.”
Stupid. I was irritated with myself all the way down the damn hall.
I slid my room key from my back pocket and paused outside the door, hearing the elevator doors snick shut behind me. I should’ve been more excited to see Leigh than I was. We’d known each other for years. She shot our first show, but it was only in the last five months that we started dating. She had her own career, traveling the country as a photographer, and lately our schedules aligned less and less. And for some reason I wasn’t bothered by that, but I suspected I should be.
The green light blinked on the door, and I pushed it open, forcing my mouth into a smile even as I wondered if Les and that guy had made it to his room yet. Or if they even would. Les was capricious. His give-a-fuck was a nuclear wasteland where nothing grew. For all I knew, the second the doors slid shut again, Les had pulled the guy’s pants to his knees and fucked him right there in the elevator.
I hated the way the thought soured in my stomach.
“Ev?” Leigh’s voice was soft like a comb of honey warmed in the sunshine. Feminine and familiar. She pushed her laptop aside and slid from the edge of the bed as I came around the corner, her lips curving up in a shy grin. The distance between our visits always made the first five minutes awkward, like we needed some time to resituate ourselves in the relationship.
“How was the show?” she asked as I pulled her into a hug and buried my nose in the scent of her shampoo, trying to drag my mind out of that elevator.
“It was good. I think? I don’t know. I kept seeing the empty seats and the gaps between people.”
She chuckled and stood up on her tiptoes to brush a kiss over my cheek. “I think you’ve been spoiled. I caught a live feed and the crowd looked decent to me.”
“The label’s on our ass constantly. It’s all I can see now. Song downloads, tickets bought.” I exhaled a long breath that ruffled the fine blonde hairs on the crown of her head and then released her so I could flop backward onto the bed
Leigh sprawled next to me, rolling onto her side and running her fingers through my hair. Her touch was light and calming, and as soon as I closed my eyes, exhaustion crashed over me.
“Is Les behaving?”
I nodded without opening my eyes. “You know Les. Caught him on the elevator up with his hands stuffed down some dude’s pants. But Mars hasn’t had to cold shower him in three days.”
She was quiet for a moment, making a face probably. “Typical.”
Leigh knew how Les was. He’d tried to get in her pants the first show she shot for us, and she’d shut him down so soundly he’d spent the next three days soothing his bruised ego with a revolving door of women and men.
Leigh’s lips brushed over mine, her mouth yielding and warm, and I reached for her blindly, eyes still closed as I pulled her on top of me. Maybe I could just bury myself in her for a while. Forget about the show, the road, the last shitty album. She spread her thighs, grinding her hips against me, a quiet hum of pleasure escaping her mouth as I arched into her. Her hands roamed my chest, pushed under my T-shirt, then slid behind my waistband and stopped.
I knew why. My eyes snapped open.
She broke the kiss and straightened, her golden hair falling in a curtain on either side of my face. The tips dusted over my shoulders as her gaze searched mine. She was beautiful: the slight pout of her lips, the big blue eyes. I should be aching to sink inside her and I barely had an erection. Releasing my grip on her thigh, I smeared my hand down my face and
shook my head in frustration. Another failure to rise to the occasion. Except it wasn’t funny. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”
Leigh put her hands on my chest and then rolled off me onto her back, frowning up at the ceiling while I studied her profile.
“It’s not you.” It felt like such an ineffective and lame thing to say, but it was true. Had to be. There was nothing wrong with Leigh. Leigh was great.
“I keep telling myself that. That it’s the tour or the album or stress. But shit, Evan, it’s not like this is the first time. And I’m trying to be understanding, but it’s like you can’t relax or can’t let go. With me, at least.”
I drew in a deep breath. “I know. It’s going to get better. Once we get that next album down. I can feel it.”