1984: Against All Odds (Love in the 80s #5)

by Rebecca Yarros

  “And the broken leg?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Mom thought it was better for my image if my leg was broken instead of my mind.”

  He reached across the piano and intertwined our fingers. Waves of warmth pulsed up my arm, as if he could give me some of his strength with a single touch. It was familiar and jarring all in the same breath.

  “What did the docs say?”

  “Two out of three said social phobia.”

  “And the third?”

  “He used ‘anxiety,’ but it all has the same gist. My mind knows there’s nothing to be scared of. My body…well, it doesn’t quite get the message. After Chicago, the doc said I needed down time. Quiet, therapy, and a chance to rebalance. I don’t like taking the meds, they make me feel too disconnected, so she wanted me to build therapy around routine, which meant taking last year off so I could get myself under control.”

  “Do you want to quit?” he asked me again.

  “No. I wasn’t certain for a long time, but I played and sang a lot during the down time, and remembered how much I really love the music, especially stripped down to the acoustic level. I always have. And it felt like if I quit, then I was letting the fear win. But then they started shoving the same crap at me for the new album, and something inside me just broke. No matter what I tried, they wouldn’t let me write, and told me I could never pull off an acoustic set. What would you do? Would you spend your life doing something that not only made you miserable, but actually made you physically ill?” I asked, honestly wanting his opinion.

  “No. I’d rather die young than live a long life by someone else’s rules.”

  Rules. I had plenty of them, and he knew it. They’d been the only way I could keep control of everything and keep my life from spiraling on me, and he’d lived by them for the years we’d dated.

  “I didn’t mean you,” he added softly. It was the first semi-nice thing he’d said to me all day.

  I cleared my throat. We’re so not going there. “Epic told me that I needed to basically shut up and sing.”

  “Ouch.”

  “When you spend years letting someone walk all over you, they get a little confused when you take the welcome sign off your face. You were right, and it was my fault for letting it go on so long.”

  “Oh, shit. I didn’t mean…”

  “No, it’s okay,” I said, my thumb stroking over his. “I’d already known it, I just hadn’t had the right leverage to fight back with. So as much as I didn’t want us put in this situation, it’s oddly what’s going to give me my voice back. That’s why I finally agreed to it. Besides, I guess it’s like a two-for-one special on facing my demons.”

  “I’m that demon?”

  “In every way possible,” I whispered.

  He cleared his throat and pulled his hand away from mine, effectively stopping that line of conversation. “Maybe we should get to work.”

  “Maybe something a little more fitting?” I suggested. “You know, a little more us?”

  “Us now, or us then?” he asked, his brow furrowing in a way that told me the musical genius gears were turning.

  “Both.”

  He nodded slowly, then turned to meet my eyes. The intimacy of the moment stole my breath and jump-started my heart. “Kind of like a requiem.”

  A tribute to something dead.

  “Exactly. Requiem it is.” I ripped my gaze from his, knowing if I stared much longer, he’d see so much more than I was willing to share. He’d see how much I’d missed him, the ten thousand letters I’d written and burned, the phone calls I’d planned but never made, the apologies that died on my tongue. He’d see that that my heart hadn’t noticed the passage of time, it had lain dormant, waiting for his return.

  But he couldn’t see, because none of that mattered. He wasn’t Hawthorne Owens anymore, no matter how much I wished he was. He was Hawke, lead guitarist of the Birds of Prey, song-writer, bad-boy and general man-whore. He was the door I’d shut to save myself.

  So I looked away and let my harmonies and lyrics speak, instead.

  Note by note, we combined melodies, mine in my range, and his in Chad’s, since he’d be singing lead. Our voices intertwined like old lovers, wrapping around each other in a musical caress that reached deeper than the notes.

  We’d never have each other again physically, but this felt even closer, more consuming even than the moments he’d moved inside me, the times our bodies had communicated perfectly.

  He kept the pencil between his teeth, marring the previously flawless wood with tiny indentations before putting our music to paper.

  In those moments, the air between us stayed charged, but in the way it always had been—ripe with possibilities that we only had to act on. There was still the underlying frequency of his anger toward me for leaving, but it felt like I’d taken the biggest hunk out of his ire.

  Sitting next to him on that bench we could have been seventeen again, writing music we thought no one would hear, doing it for ourselves and our simple love of the craft.

  “I think we have it,” he said quietly, marking in the last few notes. “This song has a shot.”

  Then he looked down at me, and though I knew it was impossible, I wished he was talking about more than just the song.

  But nothing had changed. He was now a bona fide rock god, complete with groupies, a tour, and little black book hundreds of pages deep.

  And I still wouldn’t go near a rock star, let alone one as big as Hawke.

  No matter what my soul was screaming at me, my brain was smarter. It knew what men like him were capable of, what they did to hearts, and hopes, and futures.

  I would never become my mother.

  Did he really have to stand so fucking close to her? There was more than one mic in this recording studio, right? They didn’t have to share. Yet there they were, all of four inches from sucking face, singing about love, and heartache, and wishing for second chances.

  Singing our fucking song.

  I hadn’t seen her in the last two weeks, since the night we wrote ‘Requiem,’ but God help me, I’d thought about her every single minute. I’d written three more songs which all had a hopeful, rocking tone that made me question my feelings toward Brie, and I hadn’t touched any of the more-than-willing groupies, which made me question my general sanity.

  Just holding her hand had reminded me why no one else been able to fill the hole she’d left.

  “What’s got you so tense, Hawke?” Bianca asked, rubbing my shoulders as I leaned forward on the couch in the production booth. She took my movement as the invitation it wasn’t and slid behind me.

  “Just hoping they get this track right.” We’d already laid down instrumentals, and they’d been at vocals for the last three hours. I patted her hand so she didn’t take too much offense, and stood. Hers weren’t the hands I wanted on me, and yeah, I was stupid for so much as thinking it, but the thought was already there.

  “How are they doing?” I asked Danny, leaning against the soundboard next to him.

  “They’ve got the notes, but something is missing.”

  I watched them go for the bridge, where the lyrics turned toward the dream of a second chance, and Danny was right. They hit the melody, and the harmony was tight, but the words were missing the punch I’d felt that night we wrote it.

  Chad nudged Brie playfully, and she laughed, ruining that take.

  But damn, her laugh was beautiful.

  Her hair was tied up in a little ponytail and she’d played it low-key with her clothes today, opting for an oversized shirt with a belt and leggings. She may have been aiming to dress down, but it only made me want to peel those pants off so I could get to the softer skin of her hips.

  She left you, walked away because you dared to succeed, I reminded myself.

  But she was here now, and her proximity somehow outweighed my common sense at the moment.

  “Okay, let’s try this again,” our producer said, rubbing his eyes. “This
song, guys…man, it’s full of pain with this small hint of promise, right? And we’re not capturing that. Sabrina, you co-wrote this, right?”

  “Right,” she said, her eyes flying to mine only to fall away quickly, like she was embarrassed or uncertain.

  “Okay, well who is it about?”

  Her gaze hit her toes, which were beautifully bare, as her cheeks flushed a bright red to match her toenail polish. “Umm…”

  “I just need you to channel that person, those feelings.”

  She nodded, but didn’t look up.

  “Chad, just imagine there’s actually a woman in the world you’d consider pining for, okay?”

  “Let Hawke sing it once,” he suggested, motioning toward me.

  “What?” Sabrina and I answered at the same time.

  “He wrote it with her,” Chad said with a shrug, pushing his bandana back up his forehead. I vaguely wondered how much hairspray he’d used this morning to get his mop that high.

  “And?” I asked, leaning over Danny to talk into the mic.

  “Let me hear how you two sing it together, and then I can channel that.”

  “I don’t sing.”

  “You do backup vocals,” he countered. “Just show me how you want it. It’s not like we all don’t know it’s about you two, anyway.”

  Brie’s eyes flew wide. “Just because we wrote it together…”

  “Oh please. We’ve all had a front row seat to your saga. You don’t think we’d recognize it in lyrics?”

  Now my face was heating up, and it wasn’t that I was embarrassed for outing my emotions in music—I’d done it for the last two albums, but having them called out in front of Brie made me feel sixteen again, asking my best friend if I could kiss her and praying I didn’t ruin everything.

  It was my best first kiss, and it hadn’t ruined a damn thing…until it ruined everything.

  “Fine,” I said, and walked into the sound booth. “Just once.”

  “Once is all I need,” Chad promised, and left.

  I took his place, just a breath away from Brie, and let her citrus scent wash over me. Her breath quickened, and I tilted her chin so she’d meet my eyes.

  My eyebrows raised in question, and she answered with a nod, a small, shaky smile playing at her lips. “We got this,” I said.

  “We got this,” she repeated.

  The music cued, leading us in, and I started, singing to her about how much it hurt to be abandoned, how the longing—the love—didn’t leave just because she did. I let that pain flow through me, the bewilderment I’d felt, the anger that had followed, the prayer that she’d eventually come back.

  She answered, our eyes locked, singing to me of the regret, the sleepless nights, watching from afar as I replaced her with women she longed to be. She apologized through lyrics, wishing there had been another way to keep our love from ripping us both to shreds, wishing she’d been strong enough to stay.

  By the time the bridge came, I’d forgotten there was a microphone separating us, or other people behind the glass watching us. There was only Sabrina—my Brie—standing in front of me, telling me that love was the rarest currency, and though second chances were expensive, she’d bet everything she had on us.

  Our voices intertwined, blended together in a combination of pain and acceptance of what we’d lost, and then soared to acknowledge the risk we’d take if we tried one more time, put our past to rest with this requiem, and trusted in the love that had brought us here.

  The music faded out, but we didn’t move, locked into each other as if bound by something more tangible than the music, than the ghost of love that had once seemed as dependable as gravity. I finally saw what the song really was—an open-ended love letter to the one woman I’d never been able to let go of.

  My chest burned with the need for her—for her kiss, her laugh, her love. I wanted those days back, when she was the only possible future I saw. In that moment, I didn’t know if I wanted Sabrina, the beautiful, talented woman in front of me, or Brie, the girl I’d lost my heart to at sixteen, and it honestly didn’t matter.

  She was both, and she was neither, all in the same breath.

  “Let’s take five, shall we? Give ourselves a minute and come back with a fresh set of eyes,” the producer suggested.

  A fresh set of eyes. The ability to look at everything from a new perspective, one where maybe Brie wasn’t under the power of her mother, where she didn’t care if I was a rock star, or that she was one, too. The thought of a clean slate where we could see who we were now, and not be tangled up in who we remembered.

  I vaguely heard the room clear, saw that we were alone in my peripheral vision. The rest of me was focused on Brie, on the way her lips parted, how she searched my eyes for the answers to the very questions I was still asking myself.

  My hands cradled her face, the rightness of her skin against my palms sending signals even the most stubborn corners of my heart couldn’t deny. Lost in the ocean of her eyes, I lowered my head slowly, savoring every nuance of the descent. Her eyes closed tightly, her body tensing before I could taste her mouth, and I halted.

  “What are we doing?” she whispered, slowly opening her eyes as she waited for my response.

  “Whatever you want,” I answered, so close to her lips that I could smell her cherry lip balm. Consequences be damned, I want you.

  “We can’t,” she said, stepping back so that my hands fell from her face.

  “Why not?” I asked. “Don’t try to tell me those words weren’t for me, when you sure as hell know that mine were for you.”

  “Nothing’s changed. It would never work. We’d just tear each other apart.” Panic crept into her voice and she retreated until her back hit the piano.

  “You don’t know that,” I countered. “Are you still playing by that childish rule that you can’t be with someone else in the industry? Another musician? Because I don’t see your mother holding your leash anymore. These choices are on you, now.”

  “I do know that. How would anything work? You’re on tour all the time, surrounded by beautiful women who take off their panties the moment you snap your fingers.”

  “Okay? What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Ugh,” she sighed. “Everything. When would we see each other? Would you even consider monogamy? Is that word in your vocabulary anymore?”

  I blinked. “Oh. You thought… No, Brie. I mean the girls wouldn’t have anything to do with us because I wouldn’t touch anyone else. Not if I knew I had you waiting for me.” Shit, I meant it. I wouldn’t go near another woman if I knew I had even the slightest chance of getting my hands on Brie again.

  “You say that now.”

  “I’ve said that always. You’re the one that left, remember? Not me.” I struggled to keep my voice even, knowing I was bringing up the thousand-pound elephant in the room.

  “I know,” she said quietly, her whole body softening.

  “Why? What was it about that night?”

  She tugged her lower lip between her teeth and glanced at the ceiling as her eyes watered. “It was… God, it was stupid. I came to the show, and I was so proud of you, of what you were accomplishing. But then backstage, the girls came, and you were signing shirts, and then skin, all with this dopey grin on your face because you knew you were going to make it. And I realized that it was just going to get worse, and that my jealousy would eat me alive. There would always be someone prettier, better, more accessible, and I just kept hearing my mom’s voice telling me never to love a rock star…and I finally understood why. In that moment, you had the power to destroy me. You’d become the one thing I had sworn I would never play around with, and I ran.”

  “If I had known what it would cost me, I never would have signed a single autograph, or even booked that damn show.”

  “Don’t say that. Don’t second-guess your dreams because I can’t get my head on right. It was never about you. The more time I spent away from you—when I started doing my o
wn shows, and then the therapy—the more I realized that I wasn’t running from you, but my own fear of the inevitability of you shattering me. It was cowardly, and I’m sorry, but at that time, I don’t think there was any other option, and seeing what you’ve become after, maybe I was right.”

  What I’d become—the careless amount of women I’d taken to bed, the drinking, the music, the shows, the overall life…it was her hardline, and I’d danced across it. “You broke me,” I admitted. “Anything I turned into after that was because you weren’t there, so it didn’t matter. But I knew your limits, and I went there anyway, booked the shows, got the deals. And it wasn’t like I chased you, right? You weren’t exactly hard to find.”

  “I know. Maybe there’s just too much pain between us, too much history.”

  “Or maybe we both need to accept that the blame isn’t all one-sided. We were both responsible for what happened, even if I’m just now catching on to that fact.”

  She looked as torn as I felt, her face showing every emotion from disbelief, to hope, to the same fear that raced through my veins. “I didn’t expect this, but here we are, and even after everything it feels the same. I can barely breathe the minute I see you, and my heart feels like it’s going to claw itself out of my chest just to get closer to you.”

  “Brie,” I whispered, and crossed the distance between us.

  “No.” She held out her hand, and I stopped with a lurch. “You can’t just kiss me, and tell me that we’ll live in the now. That would never be enough when it came to us. I’m not easy, or always healthy, and you’re not always available, or…alone. So don’t do this right now. Don’t kiss me because we wrote an amazing song and you’re still high off those emotions—I can’t handle the fallout when you walk away. I’m so sorry I hurt you then, but I’m begging you not to destroy me now because you can’t tell the difference between past and present, or worse—you just want the closure.”

  Shit. Was that it? No. My feelings for her were certain as the sun. They’d been hidden by a veil of anger, but had they ever left? No. But she was asking me to look into the future when I could barely see past what we were doing next week.