“I love you.” Without even thinking, my head shot right back up, eyes filled with worry. Did I just really say that out loud to him? I shimmied myself off of his body and part way off the bed before I got a reaction.
Cale grabbed me by my ass, back to the same spot as before. Sounding like he was choking up, he asked “You just said you loved me?”
Trying to hide the glow, I covered up my face with my hands.
“Don’t cover up your face, baby,” Cale pushed my hands away, trying to make eye contact. “I love you too.”
I stopped resisting him, arms falling to my sides as I felt the butterflies coming again. He said he loved me too. Cale Pelton loved me.
Without a pause, my mouth crashed down on his, leaving no room to breathe. Cale moved me so I was lying beneath him on the bed, my head resting comfortably against the pillows. We continued kissing each other until our lips were swollen, and I heard the sound of glass being thrown into the street.
“Are you going to like hearing all of the noise when you’re trying to sleep?” Cale groaned, stretching his arms as we tried to go to sleep. After our declaration of love, Cale left for about an hour and came back bearing chocolate and my favorite movie: Magic Mike. He told me since I didn’t put him and the guys up to watching the horrible site of male strippers, I could play it one time and one time only. Except the whole time his eyes, and lips, were on me, not even paying attention to the movie.
I propped myself onto my elbow so I could look at him. “I put up with loud ass men for a few months, so I think I can I survive hearing the noise in the street.”
Cale put a hand to his heart as if I offended him. “Oh, so I’m just a loud ass man? I’m hurt.”
I leaned over and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “No. You’re my loud ass boyfriend, who I wouldn’t trade for the world right at this moment.” Nothing could hide the smile on my face now. Except the fact I needed sleep. Badly. I yawned and laid back down facing the opposite way he was. “Now I’m going to bed. No funny business, alright?”
I could hear him shift and let out a sigh. “I promise, B. Sweet dreams.”
Chapter 14: Love like War
Cale was right. We had a couple of days for ourselves to unwind and return to normal, but then Walker called us during a band practice and wanted us to meet up at Pollock studio, a recording studio about 2 hours from us. He seemed adamant that after all of the publicity the band received with my joining and this major tour with Ignite the Flames, it could catapult us into something big.
We arrived at Polluck Studios before the traffic in the city got too crazy. It was located in a town called Hillside, which was known for its diversity in music and mainly for the enormous studio, which sat at the end of downtown before you entered the suburbs. I couldn’t believe my eyes as we got out of Raptor’s moms van and went inside through the wooden door.
“Can’t believe we’re here.” Raptor threw his arms over his head and shouted at the top of his lungs.
I looked over at Cale as he bent down to whisper in my ear. “This studios a pretty big deal. A lot of bigger Alternative bands have recorded songs here through the years.” He showed me some of the copies of gold and platinum records that hung on the walls of bands that have been in the same position we are now. I was in awe. But then again, before June I never would’ve imagined I’d be doing this right now…recording my first record with Everlasting. I couldn’t wait to get started.
We met in one of the recording rooms, where there was a younger guy sitting in a leather backed chair. “HEYYY man good to see you again!” The guys shook hands with who I was assuming the producer and he faced me.
“Gates Noble. Nice to meet you.” Gates didn’t look a day over 30. His shaggy black hair was covered by a green Michigan State hat, and wore ripped jeans and a plain white t-shirt. “You must be Bryn…”
I firmly shook his hand in return. “That’s me.” Flashing a friendly smile. “Bryn Schaefler, nice to meet you too.”
“We worked with Gates on our last album. He’s fucking killer,” Vince told me, and Gates laughed.
“I wouldn’t say I’m that great, but hopefully we can make this album platinum and get you a bigger fan base.” Gates explained. While he was showing us around the room and the equipment we’d be using, he went into further detail when I asked way too many questions. I immediately liked this guy. I felt right at ease, grabbing a bottle of water from the miniature fridge that was sitting over by the drum set.
“Now Walker thinks it’d be a good idea for you to do a collaboration with Ace…”
“Ace fucking Patterson? Are you serious!??” Cale asked, and I couldn’t figure out if he seemed thrilled by the idea or pissed.
“Who’s Ace Patterson?” I asked, completely oblivious. Everyone turned to look at me as if I was an alien. I certainly felt like one.
“Only the lead singer of Take Me Home, and has the best voice in the game right now.” Cale explained. “I’ll play one of their songs for you later. He has a higher register and can scream better than anyone I’ve ever heard. He’s actually interested in collaborating with us, G?”
Gates nodded. “Appears so. We’ll set up a day this week for him to come in and we can get an arrangement going. He seemed pretty stoked so that’s a good sign.” Changing the subject he said “Why don’t we get started on that one you were telling me about a second ago?”
He was referring to ‘You Were Young,’ a song Cale had written with Luke during one of our recent practices. Cale grabbed the guitar and started playing the basic chords for the song, which was heavier than the other songs they’d written. I thought the lyrics were absolutely brilliant: a story about a girl who fell in love with a guy, and breaking his heart. Total cliché, but the words stuck in my brain the whole time I listened to them play it through.
“Love the sound you’re going with.” Gates tapped his fingers on the sound board in front of him. Then he gestured me over by him. “Know what would make this song number 1 is if you had Bryn sing the girls point of view towards the end.”
“That’s what I had in mind.” Cale told him. “She’d be the perfect touch.”
“Alright. Well how about let’s starting recording the guitars and the instruments then we can call it a day.” Gates suggested and that’s what we spent the next few hours doing, sorting out who played what instrument where and by the end of the day we were finished, minus vocals. I was completely beat when the guys dropped me off at the loft.
After protesting, I told Cale he could stay with me ONLY for that night.
“They say that love is forever…” I heard him sing to himself as I got out of the shower. He must’ve heard me open the bathroom door because his mouth clamped shut and his eyes were raking over my naked body under the brown towel.
“Keep singing.” I encouraged him, digging through my dresser to find a pair of pajama shorts and a tank top to slip on. “What song is it, by the way?”
He stopped what he was doing to jump onto the couch, patting a spot down next to him, meaning he wanted me to sit with him. “‘If I’m James Dean Then You’re Audrey Hepburn.’” He replied with a smile. “Total love song if you ask me. Come here and I’ll play it on my iPod.” I quickly changed out of my towel into my clothes and plopped down next to my boyfriend, wrapping my arms around him.
Cale put on the song for me and I plugged the headphones into my ears, laying my head on his chest. Once the song was over with, I lifted my head and kissed him on his chin. “I think it fits us pretty well. Really though, ‘how the hell did you ever pick me?’” I quoted the words from the song and Cale chuckled.
“It was easy, as a matter of fact,” Cale joked, “When you auditioned I knew I wanted you in the band even if you couldn’t play any decent notes.”
I slapped him on the arm. “Jerk.” I said to his face. “I should’ve known you’d do that.”
Cale grinned like a Cheshire cat. “Well now you do and you’re all mine Bryn.”
>
Snuggling up to him as close as I could get, he kissed me on the top of my head. “Mmmmm…” I groaned, getting comfortable and laying my hand on his firm chest. This was perfection. I never would’ve seen it coming but I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else but in Cale Pelton’s arms. “I love you.” I whispered to him as I drifted off to sleep.
Squeezing my arm, Cale sighed. “I love you too, Bryn Michelle. So much more than you know.”
A few hours later, I was awoken by a pounding on my door. Realizing I was still cradled in Cale’s arms, I glanced to see it was only 1 in the morning. I slept this long? I thought to myself, sliding out of the bed carefully and quietly without waking him up. I was scared to open the door, so when I inched nearer I tried to see if I could hear a voice or something close enough.
“They’ve got to be in there,” One of the voices loudly whispered from the other side. “He stayed here last night.”
“Well knock again idiot.” Another voice chimed in, a little bit louder. It sounded a lot like Vince and Luke. What the hell would they be doing knocking on my door this late at night?
“Who’s there?” I demanded, not trying to yell to loud.
“It’s Luke and Vince.” Luke spoke up. “Let us in. Something bad happened, Bryn.”
My heart stopped. Something bad obviously never meant anything good. I unlocked the door and opened it, hurrying them in. “Cale’s sleeping, but we can talk in the other room where he won’t hear…” Once they were inside, I took a good look at them. There was blood on the sleeves and chest area of their shirts. Fuck. My mouth dropped a couple of feet, wanting to know what the hell happened and where was Raptor?
“What the fuck?” Cale shot straight up from where he was laying. “What the hell is going on guys?” Running a hand through his bed hair, he pulled up his baggy gym shorts he wore to bed and looked like he was ready to kill.
I could see fear in Vince and Luke’s eyes. It was scary. I’ve never seen them look like they did now. “You wanna tell them, Luke…”
Gesturing towards the blood on their shirts, Cale’s face turned beat red. “Blood? How the fucking hell did you get blood on your shirts? Was it Rap?” No one said anything. The two guys looked from one to the other, waiting for someone to spit it out. “What happened, dammit? We’re all here except for Raptor, now where is he!?”
“He’s being transferred down to U of M hospital right now. It was bad, you guys. We were at the bar just having a couple of drinks before going back home and he told us he was going to run to the bathroom because he had to piss. Five minutes later we still didn’t see him and the bar was crazy, so we looked outside…” Vince paused, sucking in a breath. “I couldn’t hear him screaming. There were these guys kicking him from every which way, he was completely limp and he got shot in his arm right by his elbow from what the ambulance medics told us along with the bones in his hands getting nearly all broken from being stepped on.”
I collapsed into Cale’s arms. Raptor, who had become my brother, was fighting for his life because some assholes at a bar wanted to pick a fight. Maybe there was more to it. That’s what we had to find out.
“What did they look like?” Cale asked, gently stroking my hair and resting his head against mine. “We have to go find them and make them pay.” I could hear vengeance in his voice.
“One was pretty damn big, like one of those WWE wrestlers, but I couldn’t see his face, it was completely covered with a mask.” Luke explained with a tone of fear. Then his body went rigid. “The other guy looked really familiar though…I can’t figure out from where.”
“It was probably a fuckin psycho fan. Guys we need to go see him.” My voice turned frantic as I drifted from Cale over to my dresser to find the first pair of jeans and t-shirt I could find. “He might not…” I couldn’t find the words. I wanted to spit out ‘he could die.’
“Relax, Bryn. You should get some sleep.” Luke scolded me, and I scowled at him. “Cale, Vince and I will go drive down and see what’s going on. Cops will probably want to question us more down there since we did find him.”
My eyes flickered over to Cale. I silently pleaded ‘Don’t leave me all alone now,’ but seemed it didn’t work since Cale was already putting his clothes back on and rushing towards the door along with the others.
“You need to stay here,” Cale murmured into my ear. “We won’t be gone long. I’ll call you once I know more babe, I promise, okay?”
I knew I wasn’t going to win the battle, so I just nodded and told the guys to let me know once they got to the hospital and could give me more information. By the time the three of them left there was no way in hell I was going back to sleep. Just the mere thought of someone so close to me getting hurt like that sent chills through me, and not in a good way. I felt a sudden sense of fear. Maybe I was freaking out about nothing? What if someone was trying to go after all of us? For all we knew it could’ve been someone who had it out for Raptor, but for now I had to play the waiting game.
My phone finally rang at about nine in the morning, waking me up after the little sleep I was able to get.
“Hello?” I mumbled into the speaker, adjusting myself so I lay on my side instead of my stomach.
“Hey,” Cale spoke softly and my heart started beating a million times a minute. Just hearing one word out of his mouth comforted me “Did you sleep at all?”
“Barely,” I whispered back. Pushing my bed hair out of my face I asked him “How is he?”
Hearing him take a huge breath in he replied “He’s alive. That’s the only good news right now.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded.
“It means that whoever attacked him messed his hand up pretty badly. The doctors are already saying that he might have permanent damage, meaning he’ll barely be able to move them again, or just with limited movement.” Cale paused. “He looks like shit B. He’s all covered up in bandages and hasn’t woken up yet and probably won’t for a few hours at least. God, I don’t even know.”
“So he might not be able to use his hand, meaning he can’t play in the band anymore?” My voice shook with every word.
“Pretty much. I don’t even care about that. All I care about is whether my buddy is going to make it out of this hospital bed in one piece.” Cale replied, and soon I heard a bunch of background noise. “Look, hun, I’m going to get back to the guys and get breakfast. If I hear anything more I’ll let you know, okay?”
“Alright. I’ll probably be down helping at Lozano’s, so just call there,” I told him and we hung up.
I rested back against my pillows and replayed everything from the previous night in my head. I remembered when the guys said that one of the attackers looked really familiar. I blew it off thinking it could’ve been someone who came to the shows before then, but it was really bugging me now. I had a weird feeling to call Braydon so I called him and a voice immediately spoke, notifying me the number I was trying to reach had been disconnected. Really? I wondered. Why would he disconnect his number out of nowhere? When I saw him at lunch in California he seemed happy to be in his element…I thought things were going to finally change and I’d see more of him.
This didn’t feel right to me.
Lozano’s was busy from the time I got down to help at lunch time, and Louisa was thankful that I was still around to help.
“You should still be resting, Miss Bryn,” She scolded me when I walked in with my waitress apron and work attire. “We can manage.”
Shaking my head I smiled and hugged her. “It’s okay, Lou. I don’t mind helping out while I’m back.”
I really didn’t, either. They gave me a place to stay and have continued to do so, taking care of it while I was on tour so the least I could do was take a few orders and fill up drinks for customers. I needed something to take my mind off of how I should be down visiting Raptor. I worked until just before the dinner rush so I was able to change and put my hair in a ponytail before driving down to U of M hospita
l…courtesy of Hal.
“Thank you so much, Hal.” I told him as we pulled into the enormous parking lot of the hospital and went in through the emergency room doors. “I appreciate you driving down here with me since everyone else is already down here as it is.”
Hal wrapped an arm around my shoulders and shrugged. “Not a problem, sweet. I didn’t want you making the drive by yourself in that traffic. I’m used to it.”
I hated hospitals. I’d never had to step inside one thank goodness, but as soon as I stepped in, I felt sick to my stomach. I saw people knees to their chest in pain sitting by the windows as nurses' took patients back by the minute. Poor Raptor…the thought of him lying in one of those cold hard beds scares the shit out of me. I pulled out my phone to text Cale and let him know we were here while Hal sat down beside me.
Me: I’m here in ER. Where are you guys?
Cale texted me back instantly, telling me they were coming down since the doctors had to run a bunch of blood work and other tests. I literally jumped into his arms as soon as I saw him, Vince and Luke come out from the elevator. Saying they looked like shit was an understatement. Their clothes were disheveled from sleeping in the chairs I’m assuming and their hair was sticking up in every which way.
I breathed in Cale’s scent as I buried my face into his neck. “How bad does he look, babe?”
Cale’s looked into my eyes and all I could see was his bloodshot amber eyes near tears. “According to one of those pricks, they say he might never play an instrument again, and if he does it would take years to work on his mobility in the fingers. Fuckers broke nearly every bone in his hand on top of that gunshot wound. I got to talk to him though. Said he can’t wait to see you, but he wanted to try and clean up a little first since he was a bloody mess.”
Straight from the Heart Page 15