by KT Strange
What the hell was a heartstone? I’d never even heard the word, but when Cash said it, he almost sang it, his voice lilting like it meant something special. I should have asked for more info, but I thought of Ace and his happy rambling talk about everything, of Charlie with his sarcastic little quips and obsession over his smartphone, even of Eli’s glowers and low-murmured Miss Lewellyn’s. And Finn, raking his hand through his hair and grinning at the audience, making them swoon, making them his.
If what Cash said was true, and I knew in my heart he was telling the truth, they’d all die, die at the hands of men who had become the real monsters.
And of all of them, right then, I wanted Cash to suffer the least. He carried his guilt of our little make-out sesh around his neck like an albatross.
“I’ll do it,” I said. Cash’s eyes lit up and he started toward me, one arm out as if he wanted to wrap it around me. The dog barked and Cash stopped short. I swallowed hard, and closed my eyes before I stepped forward, wrapping my arms around Cash’s middle, hugging him tight. His free arm came around me and he held me close.
“Thank you,” his voice was low and half-broken.
“You shouldn’t have to thank me for doing the right thing,” I whispered back.
“Well I’m gonna do it anyway,” he argued. I kept my eyes shut tight. I knew I was making the right decision. Wasn’t I?
Fourteen
When you read about preparing for tour, there’s a lot of making lists of everything in the case studies. But that doesn’t seem to really tell you how many lists you’re gonna end up making. Lists of what everyone needs for gear. Lists of what everyone eats (meat, meat, and more meat, according to Charlie). Lists of the venues, their talent buyers, when to send in posters and to who, the local poster guys in every town, the names of street teams that were for hire, and everything in between.
The worst part of it had been telling Max, and seeing her war between being happy for me and being devastated that I was going to be gone for long swaths of time with the tour.
“You’re lucky that your supervising professor doesn’t mind you doing your classwork from the road while you’re interning. Also, we’ll keep up by text, right? Add WhatsApp on your phone, you absolute peasant,” was all she said about it, before bursting into tears and consoling herself with half a carton of Ben & Jerry’s. Willa had welcomed me back into the fold with a brief nod and a smile. Jake Tupper was nowhere near my desk when I was at work because he was already on tour, and I could breathe easy without him and his stupid prickly gifts. My days were filled with doing social media blasts, checking in with my departmental professor at college, working with the street-team leaders in various cities where me and the guys would be in just a few weeks, low-key wondering if hunters were really after the boys, and not seeing much of the band.
They were hard at work with some performance coach the label had hired for them, getting their show road-worthy. Maybe I was biased, but they were already so good, what more could a coach do?
Finn appeared at my side one afternoon as I glared at a spreadsheet, hating life.
“Hey,” he said, startling me. I yipped and my fingers skipped across the keys, destroying a few cells of data entry. “Sorry,” he said, not sorry at all, when I glared up at him. It was hard to be angry when he looked so good in a simple gray t-shirt and a pair of well worn-in jeans, but I shoved the low-simmering attraction to the side. If I couldn’t manage to keep the thought of touching all five of the guys, or them touching me, out of my mind for three seconds then the tour was going to be painful.
“What do you want, wolf-boy?” I smirked when his eyes flicked up and around us, but my words had been quiet enough that my voice wouldn’t carry.
“So we’re leaving early. Tomorrow, cause the next tour date is a few hours north. We’ll meet up with them down in Eugene and join up for the show then. Willa’s in a meeting with Troy, and the rest of the band, but I snuck out to get coffee so I could tell you before anyone else did.”
“Manager’s always the last to know,” I groused, but it was something that I was getting used to. Decisions were made so fast in the business that things changed from hour to hour if an artist was hot and up-and-coming enough. Ugh, I’d need to let my professor know—the college was fine with me going out of state because most interns in music industry did, but I’d still have to keep him updated. Finn laughed and chucked me on the shoulder gently.
“Don’t be grumpy. You should be happy. You told me yesterday when we were prepping that poster pack that you liked the work, and now you have more of it to do.”
“Ugh, right. Well, that’s great, but please go away now so I can get this stuff done in time for Willa to give me extra stuff on top of it, okay?”
Finn obliged and vanished, leaving the soft hint of mint and soap behind him when he went. I tried not to breathe it in, but couldn’t help it. The few times I had seen them up close, I’d started noticing more that each of the guys had a unique, soft scent to them that wasn’t after-shave. In fact, after-shave seemed almost choking in comparison, and I had slipped into more than one day-dream about what it would be like to be enfolded close into the mint scent that clung to Finn’s clothes, or more of the heated rocks and water of Cash, Ace’s curling paper and honey wax, or Charlie who was like worn in leather. The only one that I hadn’t been able to suss out was Eli, and that was because he was either glowering at me (resting bastard face as Willa called it), or breezing by me with a low-murmured Miss Lewellyn too quickly for me to take a guilty deep breath of his trailing scent.
I asked Ace about it, the next morning when we were packing up the gear into the back of the trailer that would be towed by our tour-van.
“Scent?” He lifted his head from re-coiling a bunch of cables. “Shit, really, you’re that sensitive to it?” I blinked.
“Um, doesn’t everyone smell it?”
“Nah. Only other wolves, or you know, I guess witches. I don’t know, I’ve never been close enough to another witch to ask them if they can smell me.” His grin was cheeky. “I guess this is like a first, right? We should write a book, submit it to your council for consideration under their educational program. Witches and Wolves: An in-depth study of close proximal relationships.”
A laugh burst out of me. Shaking my head at him, I zipped up Cash’s drumstick case, making sure he had enough for the first show. The guys didn’t have an official sponsorship yet, but one of the major brands had sent over a box of drumsticks anyway. Maybe Cash wouldn’t even need to buy any on tour, but the way he splintered them during every show made me think we’d need to make a few Guitar Center trips.
“First of all, they’re not my council. They stopped being my council when I fucked off at nineteen. Secondly, I’m pretty sure they don’t care what any werewolf has to say, so if we’re publishing this then it has to be under my name only.” I shot Ace a cheeky grin right back and he wrinkled his nose in response.
“Would you two stop flirting and get the trailer packed?” Eli came around the corner, storm clouds on his face as he carried an acoustic guitar case.
“Sure thing, captain,” Ace said, taking the case from him. “Maybe if you guys didn’t leave all the heavy lifting to me and the girl, it would get done faster.”
“I have a name,” I protested. Eli didn’t look at me, but sighed.
“Fine. I’ll get Cash and Finn and we’ll get this done.”
“What’s that, Eli?” Ace crossed his arms over his chest. Eli growled.
“What’s what, Ace?”
“I think that’s the sound of you being totally wrong, and me being right. So you’re welcome, since you forgot to thank me,” Ace said, and my eyes widened at the subtle challenge in the younger wolf’s voice. That was something else I’d noticed. There was a subtle pack-dynamic change all the time. Like Eli was the alpha-wolf, but he didn’t rule over the rest of them without question. They’d come to blows at least twice that I knew of (in the studio and at Candy’s h
ouse show), but for the most part they settled disagreements with a few heated words and curses. And Eli wasn’t always the one who had the last word either. He was less of a dick than I’d first thought, because he did seem to listen when the other guys countered his opinion with their own.
“You’re right, Ace,” Eli said, although it sounded as if his teeth were hurting from the way he was gritting them. “I should have gotten the much stronger, and faster members of the band to load the bus instead of leaving it to you. Why don’t you call Finn and Cash over to help?”
Ace’s face fell at Eli’s insult and I quickly revised my opinion. Eli was a dick. Ace glared at him and stormed off, without another word.
Eli moved past me to grab a drum case as if it weighed nothing. He walked inside the trailer, his boots thumping on the metal floor.
“That was an asshole move,” I said as he went.
“I didn’t ask your opinion,” he answered, voice flat as he came back out. “Either pass me something or go find Charlie.”
“What’s your problem, Gunner?” I got in his path, standing between him and the rest of the gear. “You’re pissed off about something and you took it out on Ace. He’s a good guy, and he had a point about you guys not helping.”
“Miss Lewellyn,” Eli started but I made a noise in my throat and he fell quiet.
“Yeah don’t go all formal on me, okay? It’s not as charming as you think it is—”
“Charming?!” Eli actually sputtered.
“Yeah, that old-timey-wimey-yes-ma’am-aw-schucks thing you and Cash do. Finn’s your twin and he doesn’t do it, so I’m guessing either he got with the times, or you two think it makes the ladies like you, but it doesn’t cut it with me.” Standing in front of 6’2” of heavily muscled, apex-predator in a man’s body should have scared the crap out of me, but I’d been spending enough time with the band in a professional way to know that I could stand up for myself, and anyone else, if I needed to. Eli shifted his weight from one foot to the other, looking uncertain.
He cleared his throat.
“I call you that because it’s polite,” he said.
“Well that’s the only thing about you that’s polite right now.”
He had the grace to flush with shame and sighed.
“I’m sorry, I just... I guess I want to get on the road.” He looked away, and I had to take a moment to remember half the reason we were going on the road on the first place. The guys weren’t twitchy, not very much that I’d noticed anyway, but it had to be weighing on their minds that they were running from a fight. Elias seemed to hear my thoughts. “It feels like I’m being a coward,” he said. “But whoever they are, we can’t face them down. It’s my job to keep the pack safe, and until the day we get a heartstone of our own again, we won’t be.”
There was that heartstone again.
“A new heartstone?” I passed him another drum-case, a smaller one this time. “You guys can get a new one?”
“Yes,” he said. I was interrupted from asking more questions by the arrival of the rest of the guys, sans Ace. Finn waltzed right up to me and wrapped an arm around my shoulder.
“Say cheese,” he said, and held up his phone, smooshing me right against his chest as he took a picture of us both before I could argue. “Looks great.” He held the phone out of my reach.
“What’re you doing?” I asked, reaching for it. “Let me see.”
“You look hot, don’t worry,” he said as he tapped on his phone, way above my head. “Just something for the band Instagram.”
“Chrissy’s going to be pissed at you,” I said, “she told me that you guys aren’t supposed to be posting on there without her approval after the ham-sandwich incident. She wouldn’t tell me what the ham-sandwich thing was, but I’m assuming it has something to do with dicks.” Chrissy, as I’d gotten to know her, managed all the social media strategy at the label, as well as worked with the radio trackers who pushed songs to music directors at radio stations around the country. She was older than Willa, liked to wear all black, and had an affection for calling me ‘honeycakes’. I liked her and I didn’t want her to get mad at me for the band dicking around on their Instagram.
“I’m offended you would think that,” Charlie commented as he pushed his amp stack up the ramp into the back of the trailer. “We’re more well-behaved than Jake Tupper.”
“Shut it about Jake,” Eli ordered with a grunt as he pushed up his own amp stack and Charlie grabbed the other end of it, pulling it inside. “We’re lucky to be on this tour, and if we so much as look at him the wrong way, we could get kicked off.”
“Nah, he won’t do that. He just wants to stare at Darce’s ass, not that I blame him—” Finn cut off with a yelp when Eli reached over and grabbed him by the arm, twisting it up and behind his back in a heartbeat. “I’m sorry, shit, I’m sorry, Eli, you asshole—”
The scent of petrichor engulfed me, and a hand covered my eyes. Cash. He pulled me back, against his chest, his other arm wrapping around my waist.
“You shouldn’t watch this,” Cash murmured, his lips near my ear. A shiver trembled through my muscles that I hoped he didn’t notice. I swallowed hard. Cash had been keeping his distance from me, not in a rude way, more of a cautious way, but each time he did get close... my body reacted like he was a live-wire.
From the trailer I heard Charlie laughing. There was more sounds of scuffling, and Finn’s muffled cursing.
“Stop screwing around. You guys fight like you’re brothers or something,” Charlie joked. Above and behind me, Cash snorted. Prying at his hand on my eyes, my fingers bit into his skin.
“Let me see,” I said.
“Yeah?” he asked, his voice so soft I knew it was meant for me. “You like the idea of two guys wrestling each other? Fighting over you, maybe?” At his words, a small puff of heat blossomed in my belly and I inhaled slow and quiet. “That’s what I thought,” he chuckled in my ear again, and this time I felt his lips close, brushing my skin. “We’re never gonna fight over you, Darcy, I can promise you that. Maybe we’ll fight over who’s first, or who gets to fall asleep holding you, or who gets to wake you up in the morning, but fight each other? Never. So if you think for a minute you can make us jealous of each other, you can’t.”
His words hurt. Not as much as the elbow to his gut had to. I jerked my arm backward, driving the joint of my arm in to his stomach hard.
Cash grunted, and his hand fell away from my eyes, his arm away from my waist.
I spun and glared at him.
“Seriously, dude?” I spat. “What makes you think I’m trying to—”
“What’s going on?” Finn was at my side in a moment, apparently free from Eli’s clutches. Cash looked at me, his eyes half-lidded, a smirk on his face even as he had an arm wrapped around his gut.
“Girl’s got a good strike on her,” he commented. “You should watch out, Finn, just in case you get a little handsy.”
“I have a name, Cash.” I stared him down for a long moment, until he dropped his gaze and looked away, to the side. His words still confused me, waking up all sorts of thoughts, bringing back what Charlie had said, how they shared, how they were very much okay with sharing. As in sharing me. The idea was as scary as it was arousing.
“Well, unlike you, I only get handsy in the polite way,” Finn said, his arm sneaking around my shoulders. I let him and he pulled me against him. “I’m thinking you were rude just now, and maybe you ought to apologize to our manager. Our—” his tongue tripped for a moment and Cash tilted his head, one eyebrow hiking up as if he knew something that I didn’t.
“Our?”
“Our manager,” Finn finished lamely, his fingers squeezing my shoulder gently. “Now say you’re sorry. Or I’ll make what Eli did to me look like a fucking picnic.” I met Cash’s eyes.
“I’m sorry for being rude,” he said, and shrugged. “Let’s get the rest of this gear packed.”
Willa came out of the label office into t
he loading-bay to see us off when we were ready to go. She took a step back and surveyed the tour van. It was like the one we’d used the night of Candy’s party but bigger. This one actually slept six people, although two of the guys would have to share the pop-up top area that turned into a queen bed and opened up over the front seat. It wasn’t a luxury tour bus by any rate, but I still had excited butterflies in my stomach as I stored my duffel bag with a week’s worth of clothes, and my backpack, in the back of the van.
“Is that all you’re taking?” Willa asked me as she eyed my stuff.
“Well there’s not a lot of space,” I said with a shrug. “And we’ll stop to do laundry, right?”
“Yeah, you will but still—” She shook her head and sighed, before passing me an envelope. “Here’s your per diems for you and the guys. Don’t spend them on clothes, or you’re going to starve.”
“Is that a thing?” I asked, opening up the manilla envelope. Neatly sealed envelopes were in there.
“You’ll get another drop-off of per-diems in two weeks, so that you guys don’t run through the cash all at once. You already have your merch float, right?”
“Yup.” I’d been loaded down with a box of merch stuff, not just t-shirts but all the paperwork and sales reporting sheets that went with it. XOhX was a vinyl-preferred label, so we’d have records waiting for us at each tour date stop in advance. I don’t know how Troy had gotten them pressed so fast, since most of the wait times for vinyl records to be manufactured were six months to a year and half, but he’d done it somehow. Charlie had muttered about ‘back-room blowjobs’ when I’d asked so I didn’t question it further. I’d met Troy once, and I didn’t want to think about him giving anyone a blowjob. Plus I was pretty sure he had a wife and kids, and the way he’d eyed up my breasts made me think he probably wasn’t gay. Maybe bi, but definitely not gay.