Taut Strings: A Rock Star Romance (River Valley Rebels)

by Gabrielle Sands

  We loaded all of Molly’s stuff and stood at the end of the driveway, the moment for saying goodbyes finally upon us.

  Mason gave me a hug before jumping in the car to give Molly and me a moment.

  I wrapped my arms around my sister. “I’m going to miss you so much. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.”

  She squeezed me back. “You mean like sleep with a rock star?”

  “Definitely don’t do that,” I grumbled into her hair. “But seriously, stay safe and call me if you need anything, okay?”

  Molly pecked my cheek. “Stop worrying. I’ll be fine, you’ll be fine, and I’ll see you next long weekend. Love you.”

  I waved until the car turned the corner. Walking back into the house, I was struck with loneliness so heavy that I had to stumble to the kitchen and sit down.

  My phone’s incessant buzzing woke me from a nap I hadn’t intended to take. I was curled up on top of the blankets on my bed, and when I finally found my phone in one of the folds, it was Ezra’s name on the screen.

  “Hello?” I answered, my voice groggy.

  “Hey.”

  Some alarm bell started ringing in my head when I heard the worried tone of his voice.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, we’re just about to start the hike to the campground, and I wanted to call you before we lose signal. Silas didn’t come with us this morning. He has a fever. Could you do me a favor and go check on him at some point today? For as long as I’ve known him, the guy’s been too stubborn to go to the doctor. I just don’t want us coming back on Sunday to find him in rough shape.”

  I jumped up from the bed. “Of course, why didn’t you say anything earlier?”

  “I knew you were sending Molly off, so I didn’t want to bother you in the morning, but I figured she would have left by now.”

  “Yeah,” I said, holding the phone between my shoulder and ear while pulling on my jeans. “She’s gone. Okay, I’m getting into the car right now. I’ll bring him some food and meds.”

  “You’re the best. Thanks, Ade.”

  I smiled at the phone. “Have fun. I’ll make sure Silas survives.”

  EZRA

  “Ade’s going to go check on him,” I updated Cole and Abel as I hung up my phone.

  We were about to get totally unplugged, and I couldn’t remember the last time we’d done that together. It may have been on that old camping trip. It was a damn shame Silas couldn’t come, but there was no way we’d be able to drag his 250-pound body back to the car if he passed out.

  I was strong, but I wasn’t that strong.

  “Ade, huh?” Abel quipped. “Seems like you two have gotten nice and close with our session guitarist in the past week. So close, you could practically be inside her.”

  Cole and I shared a look before turning to Abel.

  “You jealous?” Cole asked, his voice taking on an edge.

  Fuck. We weren’t supposed to be talking about this with anyone. We had promised Adeline. I had to divert the conversation before Abel managed to rile up Cole even more and get him to accidentally spill everything.

  “Please, if I wanted some metalhead pussy, I’d be eating it for breakfast every day,” Abel sneered.

  “That’s enough,” I snapped, leveling him and Cole with a look that said this needed to end now. If this was going to be how we started our day, there’d be no chance of a productive conversation later on.

  “Grab your gear, and let’s get going.”

  We had a two-hour hike and a one-hour canoe trip before we’d make it to the campground.

  “I don’t like the look of those clouds,” Abel muttered when we stopped for a quick break about an hour in. He was sweating through his quick dry T-shirt after lugging the big canoe on his back together with Cole.

  I wasn’t looking forward to switching in.

  “When I checked the forecast, it said cloudy for today with a chance of rain tomorrow,” I reassured him.

  “I wish we’d brought a guitar or something,” he added. “The fuck we’re gonna do all night?”

  “I dunno, talk?” Cole piped in with an irritated voice. “Catch up? You know, that thing we haven’t done properly in ages?”

  Abel adjusted the straps of his pack and gave Cole a dismissive look. “Fine. We can have one last hurrah.”

  I let out a long breath and stepped toward the canoe. “It will be good to talk away from the studio.” A few moments later, the wooden seat was pressed against my shoulders, and we were on our way once again.

  Abel flipped the canoe before we even had a chance to get in.

  “Dude,” Cole said between gasping laughter, “you look like a poor man’s Aquaman.”

  Abel was dripping wet, his hair hanging down in a stringy curtain around his head. Thankfully, he had taken off his backpack before attempting to climb in.

  “How the hell did it flip?” he yelled at us from the water, shaking a fist in the air.

  I laughed with Cole, and soon Abel joined us, his laugh a little hoarse.

  The good mood continued for the rest of the ride, and by the time we had built a fire and settled in for the sunset, I was ready to broach the subject.

  “How do you think the recording’s been going so far?” I asked, sipping on my beer.

  Abel swirled the liquid in his bottle, his eyes fixed on the growing fire.

  “Fine. We’re making good progress.”

  “It’s been…fun, hasn’t it?” Cole piped in, giving me a knowing look.

  “Sure.” Abel shrugged. A moment later, he turned and squinted at us. “I think you’ve been having a good dose of extracurricular fun as well.”

  I ignored the insinuation. “We’ll be finished on schedule, and I’ve started to think about what’s next. Have you?”

  Abel’s tongue skirted across his teeth. “I’m staying in River Valley for a while.”

  “Doing what?” Cole pressed. I couldn’t blame him. Abel wasn’t exactly helping the conversation flow.

  “Starting a fucking family,” he snapped. “Jesus. I don’t know. Trying to figure shit out, I guess.”

  I scrubbed at my chin. We had to stop beating around the bush.

  “Abel, I think we should give Bleeding Moonlight another chance. Hear me out,” I rushed to say, seeing the flash of anger across his face. “This recording has been going so well. The material sounds as good as we could ever hope for. And I’m having fun being back in the studio together. Cole agrees, and so does Silas. It feels like we’re giving up on something that’s still working so well. Why?”

  Abel sucked on his beer and then put it down on the ground beside him. “We had an agreement.” His voice was too neutral.

  “I know. But that was then, and this is now. When Charlie died, we had no idea what we could still do together. Now we do. If we can record this album without him, why can’t we write a new one a year from now? Why can’t we go on tour?”

  “What changed for you?” the singer snapped. “We were on the same page about the band for a long time. You were ready to walk away.”

  I held his gaze. If I expected him to open up, it was about time I did the same thing. “I wanted to walk away because I felt guilty for leaving Charlie to fend for himself. He was toxic, and I thought I was doing the right thing by setting firmer boundaries, when in reality, I should have tried harder to help. When he died and we found out about the drug use, I felt so worthless. I didn’t think I deserved to keep making music without him.”

  Abel watched me, his face not betraying his thoughts. If he thought I was a piece of shit, I wouldn’t blame him. I could work on forgiving myself, but I couldn’t demand forgiveness from him.

  “You’ve always shouldered responsibility for us,” he finally said. “But his death wasn’t your fault.”

  I bit on my bottom lip, relief and sadness surging through me at the same time. “I appreciate you saying that. It means a lot. And now you know why I was on board initially with breaking up the band, but aft
er talking to Cole and Silas, and having this experience working together without Charlie…”

  “You think we can still have a future together,” Abel completed my thought.

  “I know it’s hard, dude,” Cole jumped in. “We all miss him. I feel his absence in that studio every single day. But it still works. We still work.”

  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about how things would be between us if we ended up staying together. Could we work this well when Adeline was no longer with us? When her enthusiasm and passion wasn’t there to awaken the same in us?

  I had no sure answer, but I wasn’t ready to retire just yet. Music, after all, wasn’t a choice for any of us. It was our lifeblood, and without it, I wasn’t sure who any of us would be.

  “Working together with Adeline reminded me why we do this,” I said. “We’ve got art that we need to share with the world. We’re not asking for forever, Abel. We can take it a year, a month, a week at a time.”

  Abel cracked his neck. His gaze was fixed on the flames, but I thought he heard me.

  Silence didn’t exist this far out in the wild. The forest was alive with sounds—grasshoppers, the rustle of branches, and the sound of the river rushing nearby. We sat there for a few long minutes, just listening and thinking.

  Finally, Abel cleared his throat. “Fine. I don’t know how well I’ll be able to write on my own, but we can give it a try.”

  A smile spread across my face and a weight I didn’t know I had carried for the past few months lifted.

  We were starting to find our way back.

  19

  ADELINE

  Thirty minutes after Ezra called, I was knocking on Silas’s door after finally convincing the security guard downstairs to let me come up. I was lucky he remembered me from the time before, and when I showed him the warm soup I had with me, he seemed to understand I wasn’t some obsessed fan.

  Silas hadn’t picked up when the guard had tried to buzz him to check my story, and my knocking didn’t seem to fare any better.

  “Silas! Open up! It’s Adeline,” I shouted at his door and then pressed my ear against it. I thought I could hear some shuffling inside.

  My fist hit the wood again, and when the door was flung open, I found my fist hovering in front of the guitarist’s chest.

  He looked at me through squinty eyes, his face tinged with a pink glow.

  “Adeline?” His voice was a deep rasp. “What are you doing here?”

  “Making sure you don’t die alone. Get inside.”

  I pushed him back into the apartment, my worry escalating when I felt how warm his chest was. Leading him to lie on the couch, I kneeled on the carpeted floor and took out all the things I had brought.

  “Have you taken any medicine? You’re running a fever.”

  Silas’s three-seater couch was much too small for him, and his feet hung over the far side. He shook his head, letting his eyes drift close.

  “No medicine. I’m fine.”

  He wore an adorable little pout as he tried to wave my hand away.

  “You have to take this, Silas. We have an album to finish, remember? You need to get better by Monday.”

  This seemed to get through to him, and he propped his mouth open to accept the pill.

  “Here, sit up for a second so that you can drink some water.” I wrapped my arm around the bulk of his shoulders, helping him sit up.

  “Who called you?” he asked.

  “Ezra. Told me you weren’t looking great this morning.”

  “Nosy bastard,” he grumbled without any energy behind it.

  I found a blanket stuffed into the far corner of the couch and spread it over him. “I brought some soup.”

  “Not hungry.”

  “Okay, but you’re going to have to eat something today. Get some rest. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

  His long hair spilled over his shoulders as he gave me the tiniest nod before passing right out.

  It was past eight when Silas woke up. While he slept, I managed to examine all of his guitars and pedals, even playing around with a few in the soundproof music room.

  He seemed confused to see me before recognition spread over his face. “You’re still here.”

  “I told you I’d stay.”

  At that, he gave me a small smile. “Yeah, I guess you did.”

  He ate his soup in silence while I made some tea. Given what had happened the last time I was at his place, I was glad this didn’t feel awkward.

  “Your sister left today?” he asked when I handed him a cup and sat down on the coffee table across from him.

  “Yeah. She texted me a little while back to let me know she arrived at her dorm,” I said, looking down at my steaming green tea.

  “How do you feel?”

  The loneliness I had managed to stave off for the past few hours nudged at me again.

  “Honestly, not great. Not really because of Molly though. I’m happy she gets to go to college and have the experience I missed out on, but I dread going back to our house and seeing it empty. A big house like ours isn’t meant for one person. Or even two people…” I trailed off. The last time I’d felt truly at home there was before our parents died.

  He nodded. “I know exactly what you mean.”

  My gaze was curious. “You do?”

  “I once bought a house for a girlfriend as a proposal gift.”

  The casual way he delivered that bomb made my jaw drop. He studied me with an amused expression.

  “Do tell,” I urged him.

  He placed his tea down beside my thigh and folded his tattooed arm under his head like a pillow.

  “My high school girlfriend. We were together for three years when Bleeding Moonlight finally started to take off. Our first album made me more money than I’d ever imagined. I was so in love with her.” He chuckled. “She was my first everything, and I was sure we were meant for each other, so I used that paycheck to buy a house outright. While I waited to propose on her birthday, I imagined us and our brood of children running around the house.”

  I sipped on my tea, enraptured by his tale.

  “After a fancy dinner, I took her for a drive in the neighborhood before stopping in front of the house. She must have suspected something by then, because she kept saying that she was tired and we should be going home. I was, of course, too excited to pay much attention to her reluctance. So, I showed her the house, told her it’s ours, and got down on one knee right there on the porch.”

  “Oh God.” I breathed out. “Then what?”

  “She burst out in tears. And not the happy kind. Told me she wasn’t ready to commit, that she’d wanted to break up with me tonight but felt guilty about doing it in such a nice restaurant.”

  My heart broke for Silas, even though he seemed long to have gotten over this incident.

  “I’m sorry, that must have been awful at the time.”

  He shrugged. “It sucked. I tried living in that house on my own for a while, but like you said, it felt too big and too empty for just me. I sold it and eventually got over the entire ordeal. It allowed me to learn something about myself. When I fall in love, I throw myself off the goddamn cliff with no parachute. I come on hard and fast, and that scares people off. Unfortunately, I still haven’t figured out how to change any of that.”

  He thought that was the reason why things between us had ended up the way they did, that it was his fault. I could see it play out in his brown eyes as if they were a TV showing a tragedy. How could I let him think that when I knew it wasn’t true? It wasn’t his intensity that had scared me off. It was my own feelings and the possibility of getting hurt that had made me clam up.

  Are you going to tell him all that and then admit you’re sleeping with two of his bandmates? How do you think that will make him feel?

  I swallowed the things I wanted to say and placed my mug beside his own. He got up from the couch.

  “Where are you going?” I asked, standing up in case I needed
to convince him to lie back down.

  “I’m moving to the bed,” he said gruffly as he walked toward his bedroom. “You should probably go home. You’ve spent enough time babysitting me.”

  His dismissal hurt more than it should have. “Are you feeling better?”

  “A bit.” Then, as if regretting the curtness of his words, he looked at me over his shoulder. “Thank you for coming today.”

  I sat back down on the coffee table. “I don’t want to leave you here alone. What if you feel worse at night and need someone to take you to the hospital?”

  He sighed. “I’d argue with you more, but I’m too tired. If you want to stay, I can take the couch.”

  “Absolutely not,” I said firmly. There was no way he was going to play the gentleman while he was sick. “I’ll be just fine here. Could I borrow a shirt or something to sleep in? I didn’t bring any extra clothes.”

  He waved me into his bedroom. “Just take whatever you want from the closet.”

  The walls of his room were painted a rich forest green. A bay window with a built-in reading nook caught my eye, and judging by the messy throw pillows and the tall stack of books, Silas read there often.

  Tearing my eyes away, I opened the dresser Silas had pointed to and grabbed the first shirt I saw. I felt like I was intruding on his sanctuary, so I rushed to leave once I had what I needed.

  He grabbed my elbow on my way out, and I noticed his skin was still too warm. “Sheets and stuff are in the closet to the right of the main door.”

  “Thanks,” I whispered, all too aware of our proximity. The room smelled like him—black pepper and cloves and something unapologetically male.

  His hand dropped away, and I scurried out of the room, closing the door behind me and leaning against it with a sigh.

  Why did I think staying here was a good idea? Somehow, even the clean sheets I’d scavenged from the closet carried Silas’s scent, not to mention the enormous T-shirt that cascaded halfway down my thighs and had a little hole by the neck.

  I twisted in my sheets, hot one minute and cold the next. For about thirty minutes, I worried I may have caught whatever bug he had, but sleep did eventually come to claim me. In my dreams, I held Silas’s hand as he walked me to a Victorian-style home and handed me a key. The house was empty except for an enormous, plush rug that felt pillowy under my back. As Silas fucked me on the rug, Cole and Ezra came in and stood watching by the door.