by Emma Lea
Stevie just shook her head in disgust. It seemed he was still selling out. The man would never learn.
She had bought his second album and had wanted to hate it, but secretly loved it. She’d bought this new one too and, apart from a couple of songs, she thought it was a complete piece of shit. It made her sad to think that he would produce something so subpar, especially when he had made such a splash with his second album. The songs had been real and raw and she’d felt everything he felt when she listened to it. It was classic Nate Nash, the Nate Nash that she had loved to partner with. She’d sung along with the album, adding her own harmonies and feeling melancholy because it was the closest she would ever come to singing with him again. Nate Nash was way out of her league now and she wished him well… most of the time.
“Did you see his interview?” Derek asked as he punched some keys on the board in front of him. The screen lit up with a shot of Nate in torn jeans and a Stones shirt, mirrored aviators on his face looking every inch the rock star that he had become. She was lost at the sight of him, seeing his mouth move, but not hearing what he was saying until she heard her name.
“Stop, what did they say?”
Derek rewound the clip and hit play.
“What happened to the songwriter from your first album,” the reporter paused to look down at his notes, “Stevie Jacks?”
Stevie sucked in a breath. She watched as Nate’s jaw tightened and felt the butterflies in her stomach.
“Stevie’s a very talented songwriter,” he said. “I’d love to work with her again if the opportunity arose.”
Fuck. Would she work with him if he asked? She didn’t know. Her anger and hurt over the way they parted had burned hot and any feelings she’d had for him had been consumed by the flames. What was left was ash and sadness at what could have been.
“Wow,” Nadine said when the interview finished and the screen when dark. Four pairs of eyes turned to look at her, pinning her with their gazes.
“Did Nate Nash just ask you to write a song for him?” Vanessa asked.
Stevie scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said.
“But you worked with him before,” Nadine said.
They didn’t know about Jacks & Nash. Nobody did, although that thought was turned on its head when she heard the opening chords of a song that took her right back in time to the very stage it was performed on at The Red Boot.
“Holy crap,” Vanessa said.
“Fuck me,” Jace whispered.
She turned to the screen, knowing exactly what she was going to see. It was the clip of her and Nate that Darla had uploaded to YouTube, the one that had brought Gina to The Red Boot that fateful night and destroyed her dreams.
“Turn it off,” she said.
“NO!” Vanessa and Nadine cried at the same time.
It was a song from his first album. It was supposed to be a song on their first album. He’d stolen it, stolen her dreams and made them his own. Oh, there was that old anger that she’d thought she’d misplaced.
She blew out a breath and let the song play out. When it finished, the control room was quiet.
“You were a duo,” Jace finally said.
“Yup,” she said, popping the ‘p.’
“What happened?” this from Nadine.
“Gina Fucking Grimes from Rocksteady Records happened,” Stevie said. “Now can we get to work?”
Chapter Eight
Present Day
“I can’t believe you still have that old thing.”
Stevie looked down at the Takamine in her hands. It was old and bore the scuffs and scratches that come with being dragged from pillar to post, but it was her first real guitar and she didn’t think another instrument sounded as sweet.
“You’ve added to it,” Nate said pointing at the line design she had inked onto it with a black Sharpie.
He sat down beside her on the couch and pulled out his guitar, an acoustic as well, and one she remembered. She laughed.
“Callin’ the kettle black, much?”
He grinned at her as he sat the instrument on his lap and strummed. They were at her house, the first of many rehearsal sessions to work on the song they would do together. Jace, Nadine and Vanessa hadn’t yet arrived and so it was just the two of them and it almost felt like old times. He must have been feeling it too because he began one of their songs, one that they had included on every set list, but that he hadn’t included on his album. She found the chords and joined him, the song coming to her like it was only yesterday.
There was a comfort in slipping into the old skin that she thought she had left behind. She closed her eyes as he sang, letting the sound wind its way around her. His voice was mostly the same; maybe a bit scratchier, a bit richer, a bit more technically correct, but it was essentially the same. The deep tenor, the barely-there twang that he had all but irradiated from his ‘new sound,’ the way he managed to sing like he meant it. She joined him in the chorus, just like they used to do, and the music flowed through her.
It was one night in summer
The year you turned seventeen
I saw you standing there
All alone in a crowd of thirty
Just begging to be seen
She remembered when she wrote the song. She wrote it about him, about the first time they met, the night she fell in love with him.
You caught my eye across the room
Your smile set my heart aflame
It made me catch my breath
And I took a step toward you
Oh so glad you came
She hadn’t played any of the old songs since that last night at The Red Boot. When she picked up her guitar again, she had put away that part of her life, determined to put the past behind her and find a new dream that didn’t include Nate Nash. And she had, for the most part, but now here he was, back in her life, singing the songs they had written together and it would be oh so easy to just slip back into her old life and forget the pain and heartache he had caused her. But she couldn’t let that happen again.
Nate was such a big personality that he seemed to suck all the attention his way. Was it any wonder that Rocksteady had wanted him? She hadn’t been strong enough back then, but she’d learned her lesson. She used to think that being a musician was only about the music, but it was more. It was about performance. It had been inherent in Nate and he had shone the brightest, dulling her by default. Not this time, though, she wouldn’t let it happen this time. She’d grown from her experiences and now knew how to perform rather than just play.
The last notes faded and she became aware that they were no longer alone. Jace and his sisters stood, transfixed, in the doorway watching them. She felt the soft smile on her face and became aware of the tears that wet her cheeks. Nate looked at her and sat his guitar down before pulling her into his arms.
“I have missed you so damn much,” he whispered into her hair. “Nothing feels like that. Nothing feels as good as sitting beside you and singing songs we wrote together.”
She sniffed and huffed out a laugh before pushing away from him and wiping her eyes. She could have stayed in his arms forever.
“Is that a new song?” Vanessa asked as she walked gingerly towards them.
Stevie shook her head. “No, it’s an old one…a really old one.”
“It was your first wasn’t it?” Nate asked looking at her quizzically, trying to remember.
“It was the first one that we worked on together. The first original song we played together.”
“There were others before that? Others that you didn’t show me?”
She laughed. “Nate, I had notebooks full of songs that I never showed you.”
He looked stunned by her admission and she couldn’t help laughing again.
“Why didn’t you show me?”
By this time the others had come in and taken their seats and watched them eagerly.
“They weren’t good enough,” Stevie said simply with a one shouldered s
hrug.
“Are you still like that?” Jace asked. “Do you have more songs than the ones you’ve shown us?”
Stevie blushed and nodded.
“Will you ever show us any of them?” Nadine asked.
Stevie shrugged again. “Maybe, maybe not. I write all the time, sometimes it’s crap and no amount of polish will make it better.” She took a breath, desperate to change the subject. “So shall we get started?”
They used this room for writing and rehearsing all the time. Vanessa had a paired down kit - just a snare, kick and hi-hat - that sat in the corner. There was also an old upright piano, both Nadine’s traditional and electric violins, various tambourines and other percussion instruments, a double bass, an electric bass, and Jace’s Gibson Les Paul.
“I suppose we should start with the arrangement,” Jace said, pulling out his tablet.
“I’d like to hear Stevie sing it through with me first,” Nate said.
Stevie could see Jace grit his teeth. It was going to be interesting working with these two. Jace was all technical and technique, Nate liked to work more organically. Ultimately they were chasing the same thing, they just had different ways of getting there. There was bound to be fireworks.
Nate was about ready to throttle Jason Court. The guy was a musical genius, but he was driving Nate up the wall with his pedantic tendencies. He’d allowed Stevie to sing the song through once and for the last four hours they’d done nothing but arrangements. Nate had no doubt that the end result would be impressive, but he just wanted to sing with Stevie. Sitting on the couch with her singing one of their old songs had given something back to him that he thought he had lost; pissed away because of Gina and her proposition that night. For just a moment it felt like they were back there on that stage, just the two of them and their guitars and he wanted more of that.
“Okay,” Jace said, sitting back from his damned tablet and raising his eyes to the rest of them. The girls were obviously used to the way he worked and had started a card game, but Nate had been too amped up and restless to concentrate on the game. Every now and then Jace had had them play phrases from the song with different instruments or sing different verses with obscure harmonies, but all in all they’d done fuck all and Nate was just about going out of his mind.
“Okay?” Nate asked. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means,” Stevie said, resting a hand on his shoulder, “that Jace is ready to do a run through.”
“Finally!” Nate raked his fingers through his hair.
They fluffed around for a few more minutes as Jace got them set up with a copy of the music and the changes he had made and they tuned their instruments and then they played. If Nate was expecting choirs of angels then he was sorely disappointed. He’d never worked with a band before, he’d only ever written the song and handed them over to whoever was producing or taken direction from his producer on songs that had been written for him. He’d surprisingly never been involved in this side of things and had thought that once a song was written, it came out perfectly. Right now, after running through the song for the first time, he doubted that they could rescue it.
“Good,” Jace said when they’d finished.
“Good?” Nate asked, flabbergasted. “That was fucking terrible.”
Stevie sniggered and he shot her a glare, but instead of shutting her up, it made her laugh harder. “Oh, this is good,” she said, flopping down on the couch.
“What the hell does that mean?” Nate could not understand what the hell was going on.
“Are you seriously telling me that you’ve never been through this stage before?” Jace asked.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’ve never spent time in the studio with the musicians going over the arrangement?”
Nate shrugged, feeling suddenly very naive and inexperienced. “I usually just hand my raw stuff to the producer and they work with band. When they’ve got it all worked out, they call me in to lay down my vocals and guitar.”
“Fuck man,” Jace muttered with an angry shake of his head. “You’re one of those.”
“What the hell do you mean by that?”
“Can you honestly tell me that you never wanted to have more control over how a track was produced?”
“I, ah—”
“Not even when you were doing the circuit with Stevie?”
Nate shot a look at Stevie and she smirked at him. “No, ah, Stevie—”
“Oh for fuck’s sake!” Jace yelled getting up from the piano where he had been sitting. “It’s a wonder that you had any success at all. You’re lazy, Nate, lazy and self-absorbed. You just expect everyone to do everything for you. Does someone wipe your ass as well?”
“Jace,” Stevie said, a note of warning in her voice, “give him a break. We’ve all worked with artists like Nate. To be fair, nobody probably asked him for his input. He probably didn’t even know it was an option.”
Now he felt like a fool. With the first album, he’d come to them with songs and arrangements already worked out - all thanks to Stevie - and with his second album, Derek seemed to have an innate sense of where he wanted to go with it and hadn’t asked for his opinion. The last two albums he’d pretty much handed over complete control to the studio and his label and they had been more than happy to keep him out of the loop.
“Is that true Nate?” Vanessa asked.
He looked at her and was sure they could all read it on his face. Jace swore under his breath and raked a hand through his hair, turning away from him. The three women looked on him with pity which was the last damned thing he wanted.
“Okay fine,” he growled. “Nobody wanted my opinion or input into anything I recorded. I’ve been pretty much managed and hand-held through the past five years, but I’m done with it. I want to learn this, I want to have complete control over my music.”
Jace turned to face him, a hard look on his face. “If we’re going to put our name to this thing, then I won’t accept any half-assed collaboration from you. You are either all in or we’re out.”
“Fuck, Jace, didn’t I just say I was all in?”
He could see the other man weighing up what he said, judging him in a way that no one, other than Stevie, had ever judged him and he was afraid for a moment that Jace would find him wanting.
“Okay,” Jace said with a rough exhale that made his nostrils flare. “Let’s run through this again.”
Three Years Ago
“Cold Hard Bitch” by Jet blasted from his phone waking him from the alcohol induced coma he had been in. He heard a moan that definitely wasn’t his, and blinked his eyes open. The sun poured into the room and burned his retinas, causing him to slam his lids closed and groan. He didn’t even know where the fuck he was. What he did know, though, was that he wasn’t alone.
“Cold Hard Bitch” played again and he tried to sit up only to find that he was entangled with more limbs than he could make sense of. He pushed himself up and took in the two naked blondes that were asleep on either side of him. Fuck me. He didn’t remember anything from last night, the least of which was their names.
“Come back to bed,” one of them said in a sleep husky voice.
“It’s too early,” the other one said.
Nate sat on the end of his bed and rested his aching head in his hands while he tried to sort through the inky mess inside his brain. He remembered the concert. He remembered the arena full of screaming fans and he remembered the adrenalin high the likes of which he had never experienced before. It was the first night of his world tour. His sold out world tour. His.
“Cold Hard Bitch” played again and he forced himself to his feet, not caring that he was as naked as the day he was born, and stumbled over to where his jeans lay in a heap. He rifled through the pockets until he found the phone and hit the answer button to silence the noise.
“Where the hell are you?”
Gina. He knew it was her, he’d given her the ringtone so h
e would know who it was without looking at the screen.
“I have no idea,” he replied looking around the room.
“Seriously Nash,” she bit out, “you were due at the arena half an hour ago for some promotional shit. Get your ass down here now or I will send Frankie to come get you.”
He disconnected without uttering a word and looked around the room again. It looked somewhat familiar… maybe it was his hotel suite? He spied his open suitcase and breathed a sigh of relief. Okay, he was in his hotel. He still didn’t know who the hell the two girls were, but he had more pressing matters. He liked Frankie, he just never wanted to be on the wrong side of the guy.
He stumbled into the bathroom and managed to get under the spray of the shower. By the time he stepped out, he was feeling a little more human. He dressed in a pair of torn jeans, designer torn jeans, and a Rolling Stones t-shirt that fit him snugly. He grabbed a pair of aviators and opened the door to his suite just as Frankie was lifting his hand to knock.
“You really pissed her off this time,” he said as Nate fell into step beside the big man.
“Yeah,” he said with a shit-eating grin.
Nate and Gina had a volatile relationship and lately it had been getting worse. His first album had done well and had gotten his name in lights, but his second album had launched him into the stratosphere. Nate had become a bonafide rock star, a superstar, and he was on top of the world. This tour was to launch his third album and he was not loving it. The tour was a sell out and they’d had to add extra dates, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that the studio had decided to ‘tweak’ his image a bit more. They thought his sound, the sound that had made him a star, was a little bit too country and not mainstream enough.
He’d had a bitch of a time writing and the studio had brought in a song writer. It didn’t feel right singing songs that he hadn’t penned. It was different when Stevie wrote the songs because they had always performed them together, but this cookie-cutter shit that they wanted him to do just felt all kinds of wrong. He’d managed to get a few songs onto the album that were his, but not enough and they weren’t even the ones that they were releasing. His first single off this current album released yesterday to coincide with the start of the tour and he was yet to see how it fared, but he wasn’t confident.