The grin I was wearing seemed to encourage Abel. “What if we change it slightly to this?”
Bit by bit, we excavated the song from whatever alternate universe all works of art inhabit before someone brings them across. I’d never made the journey with another person before. It was exhilarating and unsettling at the same time, and as the minutes ticked on the clock, I started to see Abel in a new light.
His usual coldness was gone, replaced by an elite-athlete level focus and what seemed like a childlike curiosity at times. Whatever pretense we had between us, evaporated as quickly as early morning fog. I understood then that songwriting was how Abel communicated. He may have been closed off in normal circumstances, but when he wrote music, he put all of himself on display.
When he finished playing what I thought sounded like an excellent chorus, he abruptly stood and put down his guitar.
“This is shit.”
I looked at him aghast. “What are you talking about? It’s great!”
His eyes narrowed. “I need you to be honest.”
“I am being honest,” I insisted. “It’s a great beginning. Some parts need polishing and refinement but that’s okay. It doesn’t need to be perfect yet.”
He looked at me in confusion and then settled back down.
“Charlie would always…tear my work apart.”
Saying that cost him something. I could feel it. His green eyes were fixed on a spot on the ground and I waited for him to continue.
“He’d tear it apart and make it better, but he’d never like anything I wrote on my own.”
“You wrote Bleeding Moonlight’s first album,” I reminded him gently. “It was praised by the critics.”
“But our second album is considered our best work,” he said. “I’m not complaining about Charlie’s process. Clearly, it worked. I just… Well, I’m surprised you like the song.”
He lifted his eyes to mine, and I saw that mask slip again.
“You and Charlie were very close?” I asked.
I didn’t expect him to respond with a humorless laugh. “Is that how you’d describe someone who knows every single one of your buttons? Even the ones you try to keep carefully hidden?”
I frowned in confusion. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”
He shook his head, more to himself than to me. “Few people do. Charlie made me a great musician. Sometimes, when we’d be writing together, he was more a force of nature than a human being. His magnetism, his energy… In the studio, he was a fury of inspiration. And now, without him—”
He choked on the unsaid words and straightened his spine. When his eyes met mine, they were cold once again.
“It’s late, and I need to get at least a couple hours of sleep before we’re all back here.” He stood up and placed the guitar down.
“Abel, wait—”
“I’m very tired, Adeline,” he interrupted. “Tired enough to seek validation from a rookie guitar player. Forget about tonight, and forget what I said.”
The sting of his words was as violent as the slam of the door.
13
ADELINE
Tuesday morning started off with Abel greeting me with a curt nod and making no mention of our late-night meeting. I spent half the day trying to puzzle out where we stood with each other. I gave up after realizing he seemed determined to ignore me. Despite him urging me to do so, I couldn’t forget what had transpired in the studio last night. I’d enjoyed writing with him as much as I’d hated the subsequent fallout.
On Wednesday, Cole surprised me with an invitation for dinner at his parent’s house, and it turned out that Ezra was invited as well. That’s how we ended up driving over together in the drummer’s Jeep after wrapping up at the studio.
“They’re excited to host the two of you,” Cole said as we sped through a neatly landscaped neighborhood. “My mom’s been bugging me about bringing you over ever since I told her we have a new guitarist helping us with the album.”
“Are you close with your parents?” I asked.
He turned in his seat to look at me. “Yeah, I’ve been staying with them since coming back here, and Ezra spent half of his childhood at our place. They nearly killed me when I told them I was thinking of booking a hotel for the month. So here I am, thirty years old and living with my parents.”
Cole’s house was a whimsical two-story colonial-style home located on the other side of town from where Molly and I lived. It probably would have looked regal if painted white, but instead, murals of plants and various flowers covered the facade.
“Wow, this place looks cool,” I commented.
“Yeah, my mom’s a painter, so she did most of this herself,” Cole explained, earning a surprised gasp from me. It must have taken a lot of time to get something like this done.
We climbed out of Ezra’s Jeep, and moments later, a woman emerged through the front entrance, waving at us with enthusiasm.
She had jet-black hair, a few shades darker than Cole’s, and as we got closer, I noticed a familiar curve to her lips. She must have been Cole’s mom. Her big, easy grin confirmed my suspicion. She looked just like him when she smiled.
“Ezra! Good to see you, my boy.” She pulled the drummer into a tight hug, before leaning back and scanning his face. “You look much better than the last time I saw you a few weeks ago.”
“Thanks, Em. I’ve been going to the gym more often.”
I blushed at that, remembering him saying I had inspired him to do so.
“And this must be Adeline?” she asked, peering over Ezra’s shoulder at me.
Ezra stepped aside, and I walked up to Cole’s mom, giving her my best smile and stretching out my palm.
“Nice to meet you. Thank you for inviting me,” I said.
She glanced at my outstretched hand and spread her arms wide. “I’m Emma, or Em. We’re huggers here.”
Apparently, that was another thing that ran in the family.
Emma led us through the house and out to the backyard where a gray-haired man was grilling something on the barbecue. His head turned when he heard us approach, and my eyes widened when I saw he had what could only be a joint sticking out of his mouth.
“Jeez, Dad, you couldn’t wait for us before lighting up?” Cole chided in a light voice that told me this behavior wasn’t particularly out of the norm.
“You know I find it calming to smoke while I grill,” he drawled, putting the joint on the ashtray on the table to his right, and moving to greet us.
“Adeline, what a beautiful name,” he said after introducing himself and giving me another signature Abbott hug. “Are you named after anyone?”
“My great grandma, who I unfortunately never met. When I was born, my mom thought I had her eyes.”
“Ah, how nice.” He nodded, moving to pick his joint back up. “We wanted to find a name with history like that for Cole, but when he was born, his energy was truly one of a kind, so we settled on a name that didn’t have roots in our past.”
Cole winced. “I should warn you that won’t be the last time you’ll hear about energies tonight. My parents have never left the counterculture. Don’t even get them started on the therapeutic properties of psychedelics.”
I grinned at him. “I’m starting to understand so many things about you.”
“Oh, I’m sure tonight will be a revelation.” Sirus Abbott chuckled. “Ezra, why don’t you pour us some wine. The food is almost ready.”
It turned out Cole’s parents were vegetarian, so Sirus had grilled us a mountain of eggplant, corn, and artichokes marinated in some kind of a tangy sauce.
I couldn’t help but like Cole’s parents, who seemed as free-spirited as their son. They told us stories of Cole’s childhood. Ezra had become a prominent presence in Cole’s shenanigans after they had met and started hanging out.
“I always thought Cole would be a painter,” Emma said, looking at her son with obvious fondness. “He has such talent for it. But music called to his sou
l, and of course he’d be a fool not to listen to his calling.”
I glanced at Cole. “I didn’t know you painted.”
He shifted in his seat as if uncomfortable. “She’s exaggerating. I’ve only ever dabbled.”
“He helped paint the mural on the house when he visited us the summer I was working on it,” his mom interjected. “And I had found at least a dozen of his works hidden away a few weeks ago. Cole, you should show Adeline your pieces. They’re quite beautiful.”
“I’d love to see them,” I said, immediately curious. “What kind of stuff do you paint?”
Cole looked down at his lap, and I frowned. He definitely looked uncomfortable now, which didn’t happen very often. I shot Ezra a questioning look, but the drummer didn’t react.
“Mostly people,” Cole finally answered in a clipped tone. “But I haven’t painted in years, and I don’t have any plans to resume, so maybe you two could stop talking about things that are no longer a part of my life.”
The air had grown suddenly cold. Cole’s mom pursed her lips and resumed cutting her eggplant, while his dad took a long sip of wine.
What was that all about?
The silence hung for a moment too long before Ezra decided to come to the rescue.
“I forgot that congratulations are in order. You’re going to be grandparents soon,” he said, tipping his glass in the direction of Cole’s parents.
Just like that, a smile bloomed across Emma’s face. “Yes, thank you. We are thrilled for Ivy. Cole just came back from a visit and said that she’s doing great, right, hon?”
To my relief, Cole seemed to be ready to move on from the earlier moment of tension. “Yeah, it’s still surreal to think my baby sis is about to have a kid, but she’s doing well.” Then he added more reluctantly, “Her fiancé waits on her hand and foot.”
Emma was beaming. “I couldn’t be happier to hear the two boys have finally made up. The aggression coming from this one was just unbearable. I had to burn sage every day after telling him about Ivy’s news.”
Cole rolled his eyes even as a smile tugged on his lips. “The horror.”
We wrapped up the dinner and moved on to dessert, a decadent tiramisu that had more than just a little kick from the rum.
Cole’s parents asked me about how I was enjoying working with the band before inquiring about Through Azure Skies.
“Cole told us all about how they discovered you,” Emma began. “We used to go out to local shows a lot more often when we were younger, but in the past few years, we’ve become homebodies. Maybe we can come out the next time you play.”
I forced a smile. “Definitely, that would be great.” I didn’t mention that the band’s future was more than a little uncertain.
When it was time to clean up, Emma told me to relax and got Ezra to help her and Sirus. “You need to tell us about how your father is doing,” I overheard her saying to the drummer as they headed inside. Cole stood up from the table and walked over to the edge of the patio, looking out at the dense forested area at the back of the backyard. I walked up to him and put my hand on his shoulder.
“Are you okay?”
He quickly turned to look at me, his expression carrying a hint of bitterness. “Yeah. I’m sorry about earlier. It’s just that my mom has been on my case about doing something with those paintings ever since I’ve gotten back, and I’m tired of hearing about it.”
“Why don’t you want to do anything with them?” I asked in a low voice.
He lifted his face to the sky, closing his eyes. His profile was stunning—straight nose, a slightly pointed chin, and strong cheekbones that begged to be kissed.
When his hazel eyes landed back on me, my skin rose with goosebumps at the intensity in his expression.
“They’re all paintings of a woman I once loved more than anyone else. It was a consuming, destructive kind of love. When I was with her, I treated her like she was the only thing that mattered, and I hurt a lot of other people as a result. During those months, I had pulled away from the guys, even from Ezra. They tried to warn me, told me that she wasn’t good for me, but I didn’t listen.”
He crossed his arms, and I waited for him to continue. An uncomfortable sense of doom was building inside of me. This wasn’t a story with a happy ending.
“I asked her to marry me and brought her home to meet my parents. We spent most of our time in bed. When we weren’t making love, I’d paint her. A painting for every day she was here. The day she betrayed me, I was working on painting number twelve.”
My breath caught in my lungs. I wanted to reach out and comfort him, but instead, I stood frozen in place.
Cole shifted on his feet, his gaze once again back on the forest.
“She was married the whole time we were together. We met after a concert by accident, and what was meant to be a one-night stand turned into something more. I paid for her to come on tour with us and gave her money so that she didn’t have to return to a job she hated back home. She saw it as an opportunity to pay off her husband’s gambling debt. But it wasn’t enough, so eventually, she started spilling private details about me and the guys to gossip outlets. Our manager had suspected it and tried to talk to me about it, but I categorically refused to listen. It all came to a head when the husband showed up here at my parents’ place, apparently tired of having his wife being gone and demanding she come back to him.”
His humorless chuckle was as cold as ice. “Even with him here, I refused to believe it. That’s how far gone I was. Then my mom emerged from the front door holding Amy’s purse open to show me that it was full of her jewelry that Amy had taken. Amy finally lost her poker face and started screaming at my mom.”
I closed my eyes in shock and chewed on my lip. A wave of sadness swept through me, but it was quickly replaced with blinding anger at the woman who could do something like that to Cole. He didn’t deserve that kind of pain.
“I’m so sorry, Cole,” I whispered when I was sure my voice wouldn’t crack. “I can’t imagine how difficult that must have been for you.”
His jaw tightened. “I hate being here—back at the house where my life crumbled right in front of my eyes. And those goddamn paintings…”
“You should burn them.”
At that, he whipped around to look at me, his eyes wide.
“That’s exactly what I want to do.”
“I’ll light the fire,” I offered, nudging him with my elbow. His expression grew tender, and he threw his arm over my shoulders, pulling me into his chest.
“Thanks, partner,” he said, the sound muffled by my hair that must be tickling his face. I curled my arm around his waist and squeezed him back.
“You know, we never told you what you smell like,” he said, and I lifted my chin to look at him. Our faces were inches apart. There were gold flakes in his eyes.
“What?” I asked with a smile even as heat creeped up my neck.
“Like gardenias. Mom used to take me and Ivy to the botanical gardens when we were kids, and I would bury my face in those shrubs while Ivy screamed that I would get bugs on me.” He chuckled as he recalled the memory, and I felt the vibration in his chest. “It smelled so sweet and fruity, just like candy. I think I tasted it once, and the taste was not at all like the smell.”
He ran his thumb down my shoulder, leaving goosebumps in its wake. “But I have a feeling you’d taste just as sweet as I imagine,” he said in a low voice, and his gaze dropped to my lips.
My breath hitched at his words. My body buzzed with tension even as the logical part of my brain screamed at me to relax. This was Cole, and he was a flirt. He was just trying to rile me up. But there was nothing teasing in his gaze, nothing remotely dishonest.
Ezra and Cole’s parents returned to the patio, their voices bursting the moment. We quickly untangled our arms from each other.
“Hey, guys,” Ezra called out. “Emma and Sirus want us to play for them in the garage. You up for it?”
Cole rais
ed his brows at me.
“Sure,” I said, glancing between Ezra and him.
The usual smile was back on Cole’s face, and he offered me his arm. “C’mon. Time to be the entertainment.”
We played a few songs to the enthusiastic reception of his parents, who requested a bunch of classic rock as well as a small preview of the new album. Eventually, they bid us good night and headed back into the house, leaving the three of us in the garage.
I placed the guitar down and walked over to a bookshelf full of records, curious to see Cole’s collection.
“My dad started putting it together before I was even born,” the bassist explained, coming to stand by my side. “There’s a lot of sixties and seventies rock—stuff I grew up on.”
I pulled out Led Zeppelin III and showed it to him. “This is one of my all-time favorites.”
Cole grinned as Ezra came to look over my shoulder at the record. “Me, too,” the bassist said. “Should we play a song from it?”
“Mmm, what’s your favorite?” I asked.
“‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’. I listened to that song on loop for weeks at a time.”
“God, that’s a good song,” I agreed.
Ezra hummed his appreciation beside me. “Let’s do it.”
Placing the record back on the shelf, I grabbed the guitar and strummed a few of the chords.
“Cole, why don’t you sing?” Ezra asked, surprising me.
“I didn’t know you sing,” I said to Cole.
He returned a shy smile. “Sometimes.”
We switched spots so that he could be closer to the mic. I’d been singing on the songs we’d played so far today.
“Kick us off, Adeline,” Ezra said.
We launched into the song, and the decadent melody filled the small space of the garage.
When I first heard this, I thought it was the sexiest song ever written. The lyrics were so melancholy and heartbreaking, but the melody was pure sin. A lethal combination.
Cole started to sing. He had a powerful voice that reached higher than I would have expected—a perfect fit for this song.
Taut Strings: A Rock Star Romance (River Valley Rebels) Page 16