by Malcom, Anne
Mistake’s Melody
Unquiet Mind Book Four
Anne Malcom
Copyright © 2019 by Anne Malcom
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
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Anne Malcom
Chapter One
There wasn’t love at first sight.
No fireworks. No butterflies.
Nothing.
Pardon the cliché, but he was just a boy and I was just a girl. There was a spark because he was hot and I was a hormonal, confused teenage girl. But nothing like that stupid Hallmark movie shit.
Nothing to warn me that in the years to come, this boy would turn into a man. One of the most famous rock stars in the world.
And he’d ruin my fucking life.
But we needed to start at the beginning before we got to the end.
I met Wyatt Summers when I was seventeen years old. When he was just a kid with a bass and a smile that ruined teenage girls.
Average teenage girls.
Whose hearts only got broken by attractive boys. Whose biggest worries were their hair, the Prom and...whatever else teenage girls worried about.
Even as a teenage girl, I wasn’t a teenage girl.
I was forced to be an adult since I was old enough to talk. Old enough to comprehend my parents were hateful, spiteful and just big fat assholes, really. Because graduating into an ‘adult’ wasn’t a twenty-first birthday or a driver’s license. No, it was the second the world stopped giving a shit about your age and gave you all the worst of the pain and ugliness it had to offer. I was born in pain and ugliness, therefore I was never really a kid. I was a small human with an adult’s threshold for pain.
So those normal teenage girls were getting their hearts broken by boys like Wyatt. My heart was chiseled, chipped, and whittled away at by my parents. That was something that wasn’t heavily advertised about heartbreak. It wasn’t something that just happened between lovers. It was when anyone gave themselves over to another human being—or two—and trusted them to take care of them, to take care of their fragile heart and that person or people did what people did to fragile things, break them. My parents didn’t love me in the first place, so there’s that agony of having people you loved—biologically, intrinsically, even though you didn’t want to—have nothing but indifference toward you.
Then there was the abuse.
That sucked, to put it lightly.
I didn’t tell Lexie and Mia about that. Or Steve and Ava when they were alive. They would have taken it upon themselves to help. Because they were good people. Some of the only good people I knew. The first good people I’d ever met, actually. And no way was I corrupting good people’s lives with my own troubles. Even as a kid, I was fiercely proud in a way that didn’t make sense since my parents didn’t raise me to be proud.
They didn’t raise me to be anything but their minor annoyance and sometimes punching bag. Their punches, their indifference, their insults had nothing on the day that I learned about Steve and Ava’s deaths.
They may have adopted Lexie and Mia, but when Lexie and Mia adopted me, they didn’t blink. They welcomed me into the family with ease, with a love that I’d never experienced. Never realized existed outside of Hallmark movies.
And then they died.
A day I learned about more heartbreak. About how giving your heart to kind, loving and amazing people still got you punched in the chest when they were ripped from the face of the earth.
Lexie and Mia lived in California, and I was alone with my miserable fucking family and my miserable fucking life. The one I escaped from not long after the funeral, also one I’d never truly get away from, despite my geographical location.
Then, just before Lexie’s band made it big, I met Wyatt.
I didn’t have a heart to break by the time I met him.
It had been crunched up, shredded and ruined by the world in general.
I didn’t want to give it to him even if it hadn’t. He wasn’t remarkable. He was incredibly attractive, sure. And his grin was somehow goofy, cheeky and sexy at the same time.
But all of the boys in the band were attractive.
Sam, more goofy and egotistical but somehow still made it sexy.
Noah soulfully beautiful but utterly gay. Something that he wasn’t admitting to the band—or himself. I got that. There was a boatload of issues I wasn’t admitting to myself either.
Namely being I was totally and utterly emotionally crippled.
Hence me running away from home and finding temporary solace with two people that represented home to me. Hence me meeting Wyatt in a garage outside Lexie and Mia’s house.
“Emma,” Wyatt said, grinning and shamelessly leering in a way that he only pulled off because he was attractive as all hell and wearing a Smashing Pumpkins tee.
And because I was kind of doing the exact same to him. Lexie told me about her bandmates, sent me pictures so I’d been prepared for hot. And he was hot. So I leered.
“I’ve heard a lot about you, glad to put a face to the name,” he continued, leaning against the garage that served as their rehearsal space. Not that it would stay that way for long, they’d gotten some amazing record meeting—which was why I was here to celebrate—and they’d be in mansions in no time.
And here I was, with fifty bucks to my name and nowhere to live.
Not that anyone around here knew that, namely my unofficially adopted mother and sister who were currently bickering over which pair of boots Lexie should wear to the meeting.
“You’re not what I expected,” Wyatt said, distracting me from listening to Mia and Lexie argue about a ‘sensible heel,’ quirking his brow and shamelessly checking me out.
I responded. Because he was hot. But he was also a teenage boy having the reaction I desired from them. I wore skimpy clothes to show off my generous rack and slim body—thanks more to lack of nutrition than any kind of diet. I had more hunger for some kind of attention than I did food anyway. I dressed to feed myself, to give myself empty interactions with boys...and lately, men, just so I could feel wanted.
I knew that was totally fucked up.
But I was totally fucked up.
“I’m rarely what anyone expects,” I replied to Wyatt, grinning wickedly.
And rarely do they expect, or want, me at all.
I turned before Wyatt could say anything else, because Lexie and Mia were getting very irate about the boot argument. “Don’t do tan,” I called to Lexie. “It makes you seem indecisive.” I looked her up and down. “And it’ll go better with your outfit. Black. All the way. And wearing a ‘sensible heel’ to a meeting to get signed for a music deal is the kiss of death. Nothing should be sensible. It’s kind of the point, no?”
Mia folded her arms triumphantly and smirked at Lexie.
Lexie glared at
me. “You’re meant to be my best friend.”
I nodded. “And best friends never lie. Even about things as important as boots.”
An attractive chuckle sounded from behind me.
I pretended I didn’t react to it.
Lexie was still glaring between me and her mother. “I’m writing you both out of my will,” she decided and stomped off.
“Joke’s on you, I wrote you out of my will that day you decided caffeine was bad for us and threw out all my coffee,” Mia yelled back.
I smiled at that. At the kind of relationship they had. Rarer than anything as stupid as true love. I didn’t want true love. I wanted that right there. A mother that would yell at me about silly things she didn’t mean, joke with me, die for me, love me.
Not a mother who yelled at me for how worthless I was, how she never wanted me, joke about the fact I was lucky I didn’t have a life insurance policy because otherwise, I’d be worth more to her dead.
But I shouldn’t be lamenting on that, bathing in self-pity. There was no point and I’d gain nothing from that apart from letting my mother win. She would not win.
“So,” Wyatt said, still behind me. “Wanna go and grab a beer or somethin’?”
He was seventeen and he was asking me if I wanted to grab a beer. Because he was that kind of boy. The kind that would know where to get us beers, who knew just the right way to flirt a girl out of her panties. Who likely left a trail of broken hearts in his wake.
I turned. “No, Wyatt, I do not want to grab a beer.” I narrowed my eyes. “And let’s just get this out of the way. I’m not going to go out with you. Kiss you, fawn over you, laugh at your stupid jokes and I’m definitely not going to sleep with you. I’m Lexie’s best friend. That friendship is the most precious thing to me on this godforsaken hunk of rock, so I’m not entering into any kind of ill-fated flirtation with a boy who thinks he’s a lot more attractive than he really is.”
The last part was kind of a lie, because Wyatt was exactly as attractive as he thought he was, his blond hair mussed perfectly, his long body lean and muscular, his style effortless and cool and his blue eyes piercing and mischievous.
But he didn’t need to know I thought he was attractive.
That would add fuel to the fire. And my world was already in fucking flames.
He blinked, long and slow, grin gone.
I waited for him to turn away, storm off, or fling something nasty. That’s what guys like this—who were used to girls doing aforementioned fawning—usually did when they were rejected.
There were few insults I hadn’t heard, few I couldn’t handle.
But he didn’t insult me or walk away.
Instead, he smiled bigger and infinitely sexier than before.
“Yeah, you’re not at all what I expected.”
Then he winked and walked away.
* * *
One Year Later
“Why are you calling me, Wyatt? I asked, shifting the phone so I could jam the wooden spoon in the correct position for my oven to close.
“I just wanted to check up on you. Lexie said you moved.”
I was evicted, but same difference.
“Since when do you keep tabs on my living arrangements?” I snapped. “Aren’t you some kind of rock star that’s meant to be fucking groupies, ruining hotel rooms, and doing blow?”
He chuckled, and I hated how it warmed me so much better than the space heater I’d found at a second-hand store. It wasn’t hard, the space heater didn’t work, and it was January in Chicago.
“Oh yes, I’m doing that, don’t you worry. I’ve got time in between orgies and rehearsal sessions.” His tone was joking but I didn’t think it was too far from the truth. In the year since they’d signed their record contract, Unquiet Mind had blown up. They were top of the charts, their faces splayed on trashy magazines I wanted to frame out of pride—but even the trashiest I couldn’t afford. I definitely couldn’t afford the frames. Plus, I was never anywhere long enough to unpack boxes, let alone mount pictures.
They’d gone from practical nobodies to, well, everybodies in the space of a year. Though they were all still technically underage, Wyatt and Sam were already been labeled as the party boys of the group. Each of them was photographed with different socialites and supermodels hanging off their arms on any given night, usually with a bottle of something dangling from their other hands. In any other industry, it might ruin their careers. But they were rock stars, so if it did anything, it helped their image. Especially with the sweet, hippy, lead vocalist, Lexie, contrasting the entire image.
“And you decided to spend that precious time talking to me?” I asked sweetly. “Aw, you shouldn’t have.” I fiddled with the dial on my space heater, hoping it might do something more than expel room temperature air. The result was a shock that reverberated through my arm.
“Fucker,” I cursed, jumping back.
“Emma?” Wyatt demanded, teasing tone gone.
“What?” I hissed, my voice somewhat garbled since I’d managed to bite my tongue as well as electrocuting myself. Because I didn’t do things by halves, especially things that made my life worse. I really excelled at those things.
“Are you okay? What happened?”
I shook myself off. I also excelled at doing that. But then again, there was no other choice, either shake myself off and keep going, or stop and succumb to...everything. That wasn’t an option. No matter how enticing it seemed sometimes. “Nothing,” I muttered. “A minor electric shock.”
“Electrical shock? What the fuck?”
“I don’t judge you for your kinks, so you don’t judge me for mine,” I snapped, hating the concern I pretended was in his tone. Only because I was grappling for someone to give a shit about me. That was an unhealthy addiction. Needing someone to care about you in order to function. It was a deadly addiction. Especially when directed at someone like Wyatt.
“You judge me for all my kinks,” he replied, voice mildly teasing and mildly concerned.
“Welcome to the gender divide, double standards are rife.” I yanked at the wooden spoon, my bones still watery inside my skin from the shock. But that was the price of poverty. Electric shocks, broken ovens, heating that somehow made the apartment colder and dinner that came in tinfoil. “Now I’ve got shit to do, you want to get to the point? How is she?”
I knew that he wasn’t calling for me, not really, no matter what small girly part I had left in me desired that. He was calling because he was a good friend to Lexie. And he was a decent-ish human being to me, hence him calling me with updates of her status over the past year.
Killian breaking up with her had hit us all hard. Namely, because Lexie was the glue that held everyone together. She inspired fierce loyalty in everyone who came across her. Seeing her in the amount of pain she was in had me wanting to put a hit out on Killian. If I could afford it.
Considering I could barely afford to feed myself, contract killers were out of the question.
“She’s not great,” Wyatt said, voice grim. “She’s pretending she is, of course. But the girl can sing, write songs, and play the shit out of a guitar. She cannot act.”
My heart clenched. “No, she can’t,” I whispered.
The last time I’d seen her were the days after Killian dumped her on the same day she signed a six-figure record deal. She was Lexie so she didn’t give a shit about the money. She all but used the check to dry her tears on. She did care about the fact that the boy who had become her whole life since she met him at sixteen ripped out her heart and stomped on it with motorcycle boots. Watching her go through that amount of pain had damn near killed me.
I knew it did the same for Mia, Bull, and the boys—every one of them inventing different ways to torture Killian during those first hellish days.
But because she was Lexie, she’d emerged, red-faced and dry-eyed and announced she was ‘okay.’ It was comical, seeing someone bleeding from a fatal gunshot wound, striding around the battlefiel
d ready to take on more.
But that’s what she did.
Walked around with a big gaping hole in her chest and packed up and moved to L.A., started recording music and living her dream.
In the middle of her nightmare.
I hadn’t visited yet because I didn’t have the cash. The last of my money had been spent on going to Amber to support her before her record meeting, then to change my flights I could stay around and try to support her when Killian dumped her. I told them my lack of visits were because I was busy with work.
It wasn’t a lie. I worked at a print store during the day and waitressed during the night, without a day off and even that didn’t cover the bills.
Hence the eviction last week.
Lexie knew none of this.
Not while she had enough going on.
Neither would Mia, who called me about as much, if not more, as her daughter. She had some kind of mom sense since she not so gently probed me about my financial situation every time we spoke, offering to fly me back to California ‘so I could be Lexie’s groupie, manager, stylist or partner in crime.’
I’d refused the offer. I wanted to be with my best friend more than anything, my loneliness in shitty apartments eating crappy dinners was almost overwhelming. I didn’t, because I didn’t take charity and I was determined to rely only on myself. The only person I could count on. I knew Lexie and Mia would do anything for me, but I didn’t want them to have to. I didn’t want to be an inconvenience to have in their lives. I had been an inconvenience to my parents just by existing.
“What do we do here, Em?” Wyatt asked.
I sighed. “We can’t do anything. That’s the thing. She’ll heal...” I trailed off, thinking of what the two of them had together, even though they were just kids. There was something more about it. Something that had taken root within them. I thought about what had taken root within me, with my parents. I still had a gaping and bleeding wound, and I knew it wasn’t likely to heal anytime soon.